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a photographer or, who was a modern-day rickey allying walker evans, we pulled off to the side of the road, came up over the road attracts, across this dirt road here, posthumous vineyard with hold up to shack. basically a tar paper shack. as we walked up we could see there were rabbit furs that had been, that were hammered onto the wall. remember knocking once, twice i've misplaced the sun still in the door creak open and there stood this black man, who looked a cute lifted out of the mrs. a 1930s. he had a stutter. later he told us he can't bless with a stutter one state at a time. his name is james dixon. he was 95 and he was living here, happy to send the 40s. he was part of this migration?

who did something no blacks in america, kind of win against the grain of the great migration. the great migration within the south to north industrial cities and came west to oakland san francisco and l.a. there was a tribe of black okies from the south and southwest, who wanted to retain the rural lifestyle. it was important for them to feel the wind at night, to be out in places where no one bothered them, to be closer to the land. about 25, 30,000 of them didn't go to the industrial cities. they followed the cotton show west. james dixon was one of them. he was from louisiana. he worked in a row boats for a while porter. when i met him, he had a little water pump year and a little

pecan tree and he was cutting down the pecan tree to burn fire to keep himself warm. he was five-foot five site.iron crate. the iron crate was too small, so he had to beekeepers box for his head. i remember looking inside and there were vienna sausage cans, empty ones that he put in the credit saves to keep the place from falling. chickens have a better roost than he did. this is where he was living. we found and a half a century later and he was paribas. he thought we were government workers here to maybe inspect the house, shut it down, whatever. i told them no, we were here to tell his story. standing in the old to the relay could be said was the biggest

body of freshwater west of the mississippi, 800 square miles right here in the middle of california. these cotton growers from the south were chased out by the bull weasel, came last and they claim this land, this blakely and. they took the rivers and dams them and shoved to the flow to places where they wanted to go cotton. at some point they had to go find labor. a number of folks came to the basin and their nerd is played out here. quite okies, bitchiness and black okies. no one had ever written about lack okies. they came in the 40s when this cotton picker was started in the fields. it could take the middle swath of the fields in the 40s and 50s, but it could not take the

edge of the rows. so the black okies were working across the machine that would eventually idle them, picking the edges of the cotton and in 10 years time they were idled. the women ended up becoming mates and housekeepers for wealthy white farmers, much like the south. and the men, where they occurred, found work. many of them were idled. the children left this place. when we came upon it, it was mostly old folks. when i wrote my last book, west of the west and i came back to find them to open up the book with the black okies in every place it onto a decade earlier with empty. >> there is a yellow house to

fields away. in 1945, 46. they set up a room for her in the front, where she could see this grapevine her husband and planted when they arrived here in california. she had come to dispatcher brown surrounded by a sea of white cotton in a sea of 1945. she decided the first night she wouldn't be staying. what kind of land have you brought me to she asked her husband? driving three miles to fetch water, reading scripture by kerosene lamp. you might as well have kept me hitched to the plantations of east texas. she wanted a home, nothing fancy in a civilized city in fresno or bakersfield would do. but willie patterson and her husband kept pounding nails and boards onto that crooked hut in the middle of horned toad country and the black people

kept trickling from oklahoma and arkansas and texas and louisiana. they had come looking for a place with the cotton grew a little taller in the white folks have been raised that the little nicer. they found the taller cotton. i'm not sure they sound away folks any nicer. >> the black okies thought coming wednesday with the behind the racism. the sun did shine a little bit more benignly here. but i remember a number of them telling me it was even a more cruel kind of racism. a smile on the face with a dagger behind the back is how they describe california. they were not allowed to live in any of the cities, not even the small towns. and so the only land available for them with these patches of alkali land. literally, right upon the land you look at it. it is so salty. it looks as if it snowed there.

this was land available to them. they built their wooden shacks here. no water. they had to go into town to fetch the water. they had outhouses. no police roamed this area. it was a no man's land. basically he's glorified squatters. this is a place that got bypassed by the civil rights movement, by the war on poverty. none of it ever came here. and so, it was a tough life. one of the things dixon told us before he died, he was stuffing cardboard boxes into the plywood of that house to keep insulated. and he looked up i remember a nice that i worked on my days in the cut field and on the railroad. i wasn't lazy. what happened to my life?

we are standing in some of the poorest places in america right now. you'd have to go to the borderlands of texas, were appalachia to find poverty that we have here. that really is a function of the agriculture we have. big industrial agriculture that concentrates well in a few hands. that depends on a constant supply of cheap labor. for most of a century, the cheap labor came from south of the border and farmers you are reaching deeper and deeper into the rural part of mexico to bring out the laborer. there had been problems with the flow now and again and that's why the farmers have reached two other people. sikhs came here to pick, armenians. chinese, japanese, mom, although they are more small farmers. and on the black okies at some point in the weight okies were

brought from the south and southwest to come here and pick crops. some of them moved up the economic ladder, became tractor drivers, truck drivers, business owners. that happened with the white okies. it happened with latinos, some of them. the black okies had to leave this place to find economic asperity. the original family members who came here, the old folks remained, stayed behind. they never acquired much. i think theirs is the saddest story of all, those group. they stayed behind here, simply because they loved the rural lifestyle. we went by merit the williams house today. it's no longer there, she was an 86 your widow of an arkansas sharecropper living with her son

in the second house. don't feel sorry for me, williams said. this is a shot, but it's my shack. god gave it to me. i ain't got nobody coming to me saying you only read. i sleep as long as i want to and get up when i'm ready and when the beautiful when it's appalling, i can flap my wings when i want to slap them. i sleep easy at night, right here in my little run down shack by the highway. it may not be your dream, but it's mine. now you can just turn around and leave us alone. >> randolph roth presents a history of homicide in the united states and its next interview of columbus, ohio. >> the homicide rate since world war ii have correlated best at the answer to this question.

do you trust the government to do the right thing must have time to do the public officials? when we've answered yes to those questions like the late 50s and early 60s, we don't kill each other. when we say now, we don't trust the government, we don't trust public officials, the homicide rate was high. >> a homicide rate in the united states has been extraordinarily high compared to the rest of the world for over a century. compared to most other affluent nations, our homicide rate for most of the 20th century was between say four times just 10 times or more the homicide rate of the other society. we had a pretty highway. it doesn't always some very high when you hear it in the newspapers. most of the century the homicide rate was 9010 per year. that sounds like a kind of small number. one year, nine out of 100,000.

you have to multiply that by your life expectancy because you are exposed to that reach her entire life. each year you've got that chance. so when you look at that homicide rate that we had for most of the 20th century and multiply it by life expectancy, we were to maintain that rate, it would mean roughly one out of every 160 children in the united states today would be murdered. it works out to about one month of every 460 white females. the statistics are white and nonwhite. one out of every 160 white males, about one out of every 110 nonwhite females and 127 nonwhite males. it's a huge toll. so when we think about those numb errors, it is a really costly tape. the homicide rate is lower than it was at its peak treatment mid 60s and the early 1990s. but still, as the race went

today between five to 600,000 were there for part of the 20th century at the straits before. they are still talking about one out of every 200 children born out of america will grow up to be murderers. as a matter of fact, we think they'll the united states right after the revolution down to the mexican war in the 1840s if you look at the north, probably have the lowest homicide rate in the western world. if you factor in the improvements in emergency care and emergency medicine and think how many were killed in that. but survived today, it was an extraordinarily low rate. as well as the lowest rates in the world today. there have been periods where it's been very low. take a look today. african-americans are the most likely to commit murder and be murdered today. it was all like that in the past. on through to reconstruction,

african-americans were the least homicidal of all americans. so something changed in the late 19th century, early 20th century to shift as well proportioned. the europe team americans had always been the most homicidal murderers, became slightly less murderous and african-americans became more likely to kill. that doesn't mean african-americans were not less likely to be murdered. in fact, they were murdered at a high rate during reconstruction, compared to other americans. but there was a big guns. african-americans really had a low homicide rate amongst yourselves. if you take a look at slavery or early reconstruction in the south, african-americans are less likely to kill each other than the white square. so these patterns have changed dramatically over time, which i look and say there's hope because it's not inevitable that the united states is murderous

or that a particular group of americans is murderous. the figure it out by those rates go up and down and how that changes over time is what we try to figure out. we got out of balance was beginning in the 1840s and 18 to use in the country fell apart over the issue of slavery. what we are beginning to see is what drives the homicide rate. it's hard to imagine that whether somebody and murders a young woman they don't know, whether somebody gets in a deadly firefight killed their best friend has to do with the political system, feelings and beliefs associated with government and society. one of the things that we really see breakdown in the mid-19th century. we have a failure of the nation. our nation falls apart and we are now thinking over 700,000 people were killed in that conflict. during reconstruction come

easily 100,000 murders of four coming out of that devastating events. when you have that kind of law, that kind of hemorrhage, when the state breaks down to political instability and when they don't have that feeling that goes beyond their family, and encompasses a racial group or national group or religious group, the murder rate can really skyrocket. you can go to ted to hundreds of thousands. the murder rate is getting up over 100 to 100,000 a year. up until then, our homicide rate was lower than canada and england. up until that state breaks down, our country was working pretty well. it is the peak for african american government came during the nixon administration. 19712 mike 70 when african-american homicide rates were high.

it was 1980 when you see that accumulated anger over affirmative action. welfare, vietnam, the humiliation of the hostagetaking in iran and their inability to do something about it proactively but it lingered. that's when white trust in government went down most. the way of murder rate the highest, which is a huge rate. then, ronald reagan comes then it speaks to the concerns of those people. same thing happened when franklin delano roosevelt came in the depression and said we are going to have another direction. it wasn't the first service administration, but the second you people started to trust them and say this as someone who cares. an empowered, included, i matter. he said the homicide rate dropped rapidly.

you see that drop under reagan interestingly enough. it's not a partisan thing. it has to do with how people feel generally about that person, whether they feel connected. another thing is how connected we feel to fellow americans. the best corollary i found that the homicide rate from colonial times into the 19 century is the percentage of new counties in any decade named after national heroes. romanian archives after national heroes, george washington, thomas jefferson, this is unrelated adults. when the number is low, dropped in 1840s and 1850s as people start to think we are not a nation anymore. we are deeply divided on the number went down and the murder rate went up. the same thing happened in the colonial. wind from -- people won't know about the glorious revolution of the 1680s, but that increase

trust in government in great britain, the identifications have a number of counties named after british heroes went up to 80%. but the imperial crisis came in the 1760s and 70s, the number dropped and we started to kill each other. it is a way of saying something about alterity. we are starting to map out the use of words now. how intense the feelings were. if you map out the use of the word imminent century and the percentage -- how often is used in the books published, you'll knock up the homicide rate. it is scary. in other words, when the racial hatred, the racial edition of hatred, and the crisis in the 1840s and 50s, the homicide rate and it just goes up, peaks

during the civil war because donna's reconstruction ends it goes back up again. it follows the same pattern. it works the other way. the other phrase that the anti-evolution's use is the slave power. these are not our fellow americans. they are tyrants. they brutalized their fellow human genes. we want nothing to do with them. when that anger towards the ways comes then, you'll see it knocks out the murder rate, too. so we try to look at ways to measure these kinds of emotions. the political instability in the break down of national cohesion seems to be what we're looking at. it is something my friends in europe and canada have always asked me. you americans hate your government. we've never heard so much future government speech. i am not talking about that in a partisan way. people get upset in this country and it goes back to the

distress. a really good example is i dream of the civil war. you look at the electoral map of bush v. gore. it is the flip of the electoral back. those political divisions are still there. the feelings are still there. so that is why we think as historians, a social scientist or many of us began to think, this is how we got into this. the thing that i would say, to, both liberalism, conservatives have contributed very importantly to human process. the ideas and ideologies are constructed. there are series of violence don't work because it's not about deterrence. it's not about the economy working well. you know, sometimes than the great depression the homicide rate goes down. in the 1960s that goes to.

we look at religion. we are the most churchgoing people of any affluent nation amid the highest percentage of people who believe in god. so we kill each other. how can that be? so our faith doesn't even -- are extraordinary faith doesn't solve this problem. if you think the people who are doing the murders don't regard themselves as god, most of them do. there are contouring people who think that person deserves to die. he'll even read in the smarter things, god told me he got what he deserved. that doesn't work because when you have that angry bear, people use their religion the wrong way. and so, i think we have to get away from the idea that her ideologies are going to have the answer to the homicide problem among adults. we've got to look elsewhere and that's what we're trying to do.

>> next county where first edition of the rare life of billy the kid published in 1882 and signed by pat garrett. mr. garrett is known as being responsible for the death of the well-known teenage outlaw. >> today he were in the historic center and library built in 1935 and we were in the conference room, which is one of the words used for prayer books and rare materials, which is pretty appropriate to the front of us here is that 3 million volumes the library, which we will be celebrating on april 1st. the 3 millionth volume is the authentic life of billy the kid, one of the single most, probably most important books of the western americana, certainly for

new mexico, but also the west and one of the most rarest as well. we only know six copies of this particular edition that is autographed in the country in three of those we know are in private hands. one is here and the other two are not exactly sure where they are. they are not in any other institution. it's really a pleasure for us to have the rare material in our library. it's important because it really sets the stage. it's the fountainhead for all the billy the kid history or non-history as you can imagine. the intertwining of the myth and legend of billy the kid with the facts really stem from this book. pat garrett wrote this book in response to a lot of other books being printed in new york city and the east coast that really exaggerated the kid and almost made the kid a hero.

pat garrett was then being seen as being the guy who ambushed billy, killed billie and he wanted to set the record straight by writing this biography and how it all happened. so it becomes the first account, fueled a first-hand account we have of what happened that day in july 1881 in fort sumner, new mexico. elise from pat's due. but it is what everybody else takes the facts from his this book. since this really is the first edition, first print team and an autographed a complimentary copy by the author makes it extremely rare and one that is almost unheard of, even to find now. like i said, so few of these are still available, which is funny because when they were first

published, maybe a thousand copies were made. pat kept a small number of books that are in this special red calf leather binding that makes it unique because like i said, it is theention copies that he gave to important people in dignitaries had had his compliments. the other copies were never found. they were just loose in the person who had the actual book would have had bound themselves perhaps by david unbound. here is the title page with billy's picture. this is an engraving from and the known picture of elite have recently sold for over $2 million i believe. even the image is pretty rare. folks were given this than they

had to buy it themselves. that really didn't help itself as well. but the story goes as these were on sale in santa fe and there is the show basket of them, not the red ones, but the other copies for a quarter a piece and they couldn't sell them for a quarter apiece. somebody came by about the whole bushel basket of these. consequently it was not the moneymaker they all thought it would be. of course because of that it really is rare to have that kind of history with this book. the most interesting part is the culmination of the book, where pat is pretty sure that billy is a madhouse. and the stakes out the house. it is almost like a television

detective show, where they know that the bad guy is a madhouse and they know they are the civilians in madhouse and how do they go about getting that desperado. and so, just the idea when he creeps in the house that goes into the bedroom because he doesn't know where billy is. he doesn't even know if he's in the house. could you imagine no way. it's not like electricity. they had kerosene lamps. not much latecomers so you really have pat venturing into a place he does not know where a murderer might he goes into the bedroom of the owner of the house and confronts the offering pretty much says, is he here? have you seen him? .us repeat maxwell says, he's been around. he doesn't say he's here now. he's been around. so you can imagine pat lovell of

anxious anxiety and potentially fear because you don't out for this murdering fellow ways. so when it comes down the hall and into the bedroom and 60 p., who are you talking to? who are these people? that is when pat backs up into the dark corner. that is the moment in time that a decision is made. do i take them in a light? do i try to overpower him? to issue him? what happens? that is the kind only pat can tell us about because he's the only ones still around i was there when it happened. so when he says billy drew his gun, because apparently billy didn't have a god and a knife. when he drew his gun and pat shot him, in pat's mind is self-defense. and again, that becomes the real crux of the entire story.

did that really happen that way? did really really racist god or did pat shoot him? it's a series of these things and you wait for the big climax. so when pat talks about that, those few minutes of time that really bring all this together really is kind of exciting. it's an exciting story. pat did a good job with it. for a while, pat garrett was the darling of new mexico. he is captured, he had killed the outlaw billy the kid. but it was a short time. people started asking the question, was it a fair fight? did he really have his gun pulled? was he shot in the back and all these questions started to be asked about pat garrett. what did she really do? all of a sudden, pat was feeling

like he was becoming the billing instead of the hero. he then talks to a friend of his named marshall upset and, who is a journalist from back keys and asked him to write this book that was the true account. he was in new mexico and feeling the sting of being now a tyrant or the bad guy. when he really saw himself as the hero to the people of new mexico for capturing this fellow in taking a fellow off the streets. even when this first happened, when he first killed early, the governor had offered a $500 reward for the capture or death of billy. when pat went to get a $500, the

governor didn't want to give it to them than the citizens of new mexico raised a thousand dollars to give it to them because they were so pleased with what he did. again, for pat that was important and i think that when that started to be questioned as to what really happened in his billy unarmed and shot in the back and all these rumors started to go around the pat really wanted the people of new mexico to know. that is why i think that he did not go towards east coast publisher to publish this, that he wanted it published in santa fe so it would be available to the people of new mexico to get and read and learn. again, there was one of the reasons it wasn't as successful because the distribution was bad and didn't get to where he wanted to get out. so pat, in the end, even though he wrote this for the short-term did not benefit from getting the story out. and i want her, and this becomes

the truth fountainhead for all stories about billy the kid because it raised the first-hand account. over the years you have people being interviewed who were there, either on the porridge or came in afterwards or from even pete maxwell, saying what really happened and there's all these different accounts of what really happened. some folks billy never were shot anyway. he escaped in the guide there was not billy the kid. so even as late as three years ago, they were trying to exhume billy's body to make sure he was in that grave at fort sumter. there is a lot of questions still unanswered about billy the kid and which makes it so interesting as an historical phenomenon that intertwines fact and fiction and legend and myth all into one person and into this one book.

it's a great thing for us to have for students and faculty to use and see that original piece. >> now for mesa, arizona, someone talks about the colorado river. her book is "contested waters." >> it is considered to be the most litigated river in the world and none is probably very accurate. one lawsuit, compact laws created to regulate what is collectively known as the law of the river. there's probably 13 to 15 major laws that have spanned the whole 20th century up to the present time that talks about is how much water and who can take it, how much every year, how to share it in a relationship with mexico on the water as well. the colorado river is about 1450 miles long. it is not the longest river in

north america by any means, nor does it have the most flow. probably about number seven in terms of size. but it drops a dozen feet or so from the source in the rockies. it used to flow out the way down to the gulf of california, reaching the ocean. it doesn't reach very often anymore. on the rare occasions just to get that far. there are seven states in the united states to depend on the river into in mexico. you have wyoming, which probably has the least amount of water, but it also has most of the source tributaries along with colorado. in nevada, utah, new mexico and arizona and california. the basic water law in the west is what we call the law of prior appropriation. it differs from repairing water law, which is in most of the rest of the united states, where water rights or connect it directly to land and if you have

land that has water come you have a right to the water. if you sell land come you saw that water. you can't sell the water without selling the land attached to it. there's just not enough water out here to operate that way. so the minors very early in western has read in the early 1800s coming to california made up their own sort of agreement with each other. whoever got their first stop the water and they have the right to direct it where ever they needed it and sometimes a long distance you have to send water to where it's needed. so this law of prior appropriations as it evolves over a few decades becomes law, which basically comes down to first in time, first in great. if you get there first coming of the most water. whoever comes next guess was left over.

there's one caveat to that law, the caveat that official use. you have to put your water to beneficial use to have a right to it. in other words, people can't simply get to a river, claiming nike said. if you use it for some beneficial purpose and you got there first coming you have the right to that water. all of us here in the colorado river basin watershed. we are talking about somewhere between 35 and 40 million people now in the united states and mexico as well. we all depend on the colorado river is a basic water source. there are other rivers, but most of rivers in this area are simply tributaries that are part of the colorado river indeed and we need it for everything. we need for municipal use to drink. we need it for our industry, from mining and most importantly

the biggest water use are out here adheres to agriculture. we can't go anything without it. the land is very fertile and the growing season is very long. so it's a good place to do agriculture, even though it's ironic. it's a desert. you have to bring water here. that is the reason we use the colorado and how it was first seen as an important source of this whole region and was first settled because the people recognized they could redirect its flow, bring the water to the desert. the federal government regulates the operations of the dams on the mainstream of the colorado river in a dozen or so others on his tributaries. the bureau of reclamation which was formed early in the 20th century as part of the reclamation act of 1902 is a body within the interior department and is in charge of overseeing dam operations up another river.

they also operate on other rivers as well, but the colorado river is almost exclusively to bureau of reclamation's domain. that is where the federal government gets involved. at the same time, you have lots of competing interests. the states themselves have a certain amount of right to control their allocation of water is used and distributed. they fight amongst themselves. the supreme court in american history was about the colorado river. throughout most of the 1950s was finally settled in 1863. a big fight between arizona and california over water, how much of a vertebrate to? there have been a few lawsuits prior to that time might arizona against california. the major argument with california believed, hoping to get as much water as possible, california believed they were entitled to more than their 4.4 million-acre share. that's how we measure the water

in terms of how much water can cover an acre of land a foot deep. it is the largest share of the river. they believed they were entitled to more and certainly arizona was not entitled to a full 2.8 million-acre feet. there was not as much agricultural usage of the river going on in arizona at the time of the compact back to 1922, which remains the governing who gets how much water. californians said they need to give us some of that water. they shouldn't have all of that because the gila river, one of the largest tributaries runs all the way through the state. so the water they pull up as well as salt river, a major source for mesa right here is part of the colorado. we have to subtract that amount of water. what is left is their share of the main stem of the river. arizona of course that or you can name? no. refuse to sign the compact for a lot of years until the treaty

with mexico. the disagreement was still there. california was saying no, arizona can't told the kid now they want to build in federal funding was blocked because california believed i would take away water they needed, hence the lawsuit. once it finally was settled, the judgment to come down in favor of arizona. the decision said you can't count to tributaries in arizona. they're entitled to the full 2.8 in acre feet of water and if they build a canal big enough, and he can do that. california had no choice but to accept the judgment and understand the have to live in the 4.4 limitations. but what happens after that is interesting. as soon as the decision is made from arizona starts thinking as though they cannot, but you have to have federal funding for the

project at large. so they try to find funding in congress for it in at that point california with the can work two funding. in the end, arizona has to almost give up some of it gained in this lawsuit. yes, it was granted the right to the full 2.8 million-acre feet, but in order to persuade congress to get money for the project canal, arizona at that time had to agree with it the most junior rights, that the captain now would he cut off first in times of shortage. so arizona knows this. they are not happy about it. there's always been an anchor at california about them having better rights in our priority right. it is the imperial valley that begin to divert the water first comes to their water rights and much much easier than ours. however, the good news is for arizona, everyone realizes we can't just cut arizona off.

at least we hope they realize that. the research for my book i found lots of examples of attempts to make agreements about sharing shortages. it's not been an easy thing to do. just this last november, 2012, there has been some progress. we give mexico about 1.5 million-acre feet about the treaty between the united states and mexico. so arizona, how many most junior right to the colorado feels upset about the situation, saying why should mexico always get their 1.5 million-acre feet he comes to the treaty while we have to have a shortage, while less water will run down the central arizona project canal and the shortage sharing would cascade. they do have a plan in place for shortage in arizona would still

take the first cut. but they are negotiating to minimize that. california understands it will have shared some of this. if you take prior appropriation the time of the way it is laid simply suffer and maybe somebody next, whatever the most junior right is probably colorado because those projects are much murphy's sin. utah as well as nevada appeared las vegas would really suffer. california most senior right. as part of a stretch over the years. california has understood that it will have to give up some of this water in times of drought as well. we all will. california gets a bigger share of the colorado river, even though a lot of that is pumped out of the watershed to los angeles for a huge agricultural bread basket of america. so they will have to cut back. but it's not really clear how

that's going to go smoothly. the good news is we're talking and that's as far as we've gotten. their interim guidelines for shortages. the bureau of reclamation in 2003 sent to the state, okay, if you don't come up with an agreement, we will make it for you. if you don't want us to a side a shortage in how we're going to manage this, all of you get together for one and sit down to negotiate. that is what has really started the process of profitable talks between the state and the beast basin has been very helpful. another good thing is finally we are bringing mexico into the conversation. we left mexico out. we like to think back in the early 20th century and throughout most of it but since the river started in the united states, it was all ours. never mind it used to flow into mexico. all of us willing to have to sit

down and talk. it's unclear how the shortages will really play out. i think everybody understands it is only fair to share. this book has been a fascinating project for me and i've been interested in reverse for a very long time. grew up on the banks of the river. looking at the importance of this river in the southwest has been a fascinating mix areas. it's an odd river. it's a plumbing system for a garden hose really if you want to think of it that way. we have put lots of straws into it, so that it's been a fascinating story. it's story over time, the human relationship with the river can provide a microcosm of a very much larger picture of the human relationship to the environment. we have no choice in the southwest but to figure out how

to create a sustainable relationship with the colorado river. without the hoover dam, we wouldn't need here. without the cannot you bring the water to us, we wouldn't be here. there'd be a few people here, but not all of us. the great megalopolis that is grown here in phoenix and los angeles, on those areas wouldn't have the growth that had if we don't pay attention to the importance of using the river in a more sustainable way. that's been a huge challenge. advocate a hundred years of the river's history and i've only seen some real hope towards the end of that hundred years and beyond in the 21st century starting to pay attention to the crisis before we look for a reasonable solution. looking at the whole picture, the whole history of the river helps us understand guess, why we exist the way we do in the southwest.

it also helps us understand the role of rivers, surface waters in arid regions in other parts of the world, but also gives us a larger picture, a piece of a larger picture of how humans relate to the environment and the stresses and strains to come along, the political fight that hamper creating a sustainable relationship. all the barriers that stand in the way of making better use of our natural resources. we can look at what didn't work. plenty of that. we can also look at what did work and what is working out what kind of changes we can make. it's a fabulous example for river watershed throughout the world. >> the namesake of the pulitzer prize to change the face of modern journalism. james mcgrath morris talked about tv from santa fe, new

mexico. >> and james mcgrath morris and we are here today in the palace press. i newsstands in early printing presses and this seemed like an absolute perfect place to talk about a man who revolutionized american newspapers. when i first started working on the book, people would react with recognition, but it was clear from their expression they knew the name and not anything about a slave because poets who shares his faith have been well-known for a price, but not for what he did. very few people remember alfred nobel was an explosive munitions maker in understand the significant role he played in american history. yet like the giants at the 18th century whose names to remember, carnegie, morgan, rockefeller, pulitzer played a significant role, which is the industrial age that made america the way we think of ourselves today. the role he played was really

the midwife of the birth of the modern mass media. before his time, we didn't have the media we now swim in every day, the notion of americans checking the news on their phones are going to cnn or watching c-span. these were all cultivated in that. it turns out pulitzer not only and historically significant role, let a fascinating life, that the influence he yielded still is with us today. the reason people don't remember pulitzer today is much is because in some ways his accomplishment is so happenstance. we are used to what it is. in an 18th century, printing with the internet. we all go wow, i can book a ticket now and every day we exclaim. so the idea of getting news today quickly and easily are all commonplace things that we don't think it's such a big deal in the same way, i'm not so sure of americans remember organ was or

who rockefeller was or who carnegie was coming up to drive across bridges made this deal is a carnegie gift. cars powered by oil we are using our financial system renews old tonic system developed and created by people like pulitzer. blitzer was born in the 1840s and came to the united states as a mercenary soldier to the north and soldiers and they went to europe and recruited single young men promising passage here. he didn't see any action. but many veterans committee was unemployed. it's hard to reintegrate people into the economy. he ends up missing the list, where he becomes befriended by a major german-american becomes the senator from missouri and as a newspaper publisher. pulitzer enters the world of the press. he's doing everything a mixture of very rate. it's interesting to compare his

life with immigrants. it's that kind of speed of integration we have in the 19 century when people were coming. he becomes fabulously successful. i'm really shortening the story and inventing a new form of journalism. pulitzer is much like the modern-day surfer. if you go to a beach in the cut on the water, beyond where the waves are breaking, you see men and women paddling easily. suddenly one of them paddles with extraordinary speed because they perceive that undulation will be the best wave of the day. the others don't see it. but pulitzer season in 19 century were tidal waves of social change that he was going to ride. people really been the funds are coming into the cities. women who made important economic decisions were now becoming house waves. paper was being made with such

strength out of work, not out of cause it to go for printing presses at high speed that it became possible to print a newspaper and get it out in the street. the victorian internet have been invented. the telegraph bring you news from washington d.c. that warning. what happened in congress reached by the afternoon. they produced an afternoon paper that was entertaining to read the contained economic information, advertising so why is it no where to contains the latest news of the next these papers for printing yesterdays news. he did more than that. he discovered an urban life was this tremendous trauma that you could write up a nonfiction way, of the poor in london. the paper was interesting to read in all these elements combined to a pupil then called western journalism. silica broadway play, because

broadway plays in the hinterland. pulitzer did the same thing. he brought us out to new york city and was making millions of dollars in new york. new york being the media center and the world at that time. one set of and does it as i said, there created in the new york world in new york and the down to the lower east side for the masses of immigrants were coming in the 1880s and 1890s. lancet people were coming from overseas. ellis island was about to open up on the upper class saw folks is a dangerous group. they saw them as poor, dirty, pulitzer didn't do them that way. he saw them as potential readers. so he went and what about their

lives. the paper was a tiny tot falls to his death from his tenement loading. the upper class in such sensation is. they were missing the point. to the people of the lower east side in the overcrowded tenements, this was their life being portrayed in print. kids did fall to their death. in the summer was so hot in those buildings. this is the most densely populated place in the world. people would go up to the roof and children fall to their deaths and this is chronicled by the journalists. by writing about them, he was dignifying their lives. i have people, if you were to take me home, i bet on your refrigerator is a clipping of some sort that you've kept. your child's graduation, accomplishment of school. those events occurred.

so why do we keep these? because writing in print rings dignity and meaning to actions. so the lower eastside saw the paper as their friend that produced this dignity. the paper also has the entry to american life. on sundays to get a paper is thick as a telephone book with dress patterns come easy to understand stories, serialization of literature. we download music now. then he printed sheet music so you could play the latest music. pulitzer but this enormously important symbiotic relationship of the poorest people and in return, two things happened that were really amazing, one of which is the statue of liberty being given to the united states by the french people. in return, we were supposed to raise the money on our own, not the congress. the statue is basically on its

way over my head raise money for the pedestal. there were on a front-page story in an editorial saying bring me your pennies and the clothes. i will put your name in the paper and thank you for it. you have to understand, he's at the 19th century, so trusted by the lower classes of your tickets at common with pennies, workers with nichols. i trust you will use this. the major corporate leaders as here's fi bucks, i hope to use it in the right way so it amplifies the relationship. the next in the paper, your name will be listed for the contribution. the vanderbilts, the morgan's would appear, michael ishida seasoning for having given the pennant. he was built that way in time and the statue of liberty was put up.

so my last bit of this architectural new york. pulitzer now has recruited american journalism. it's vital, it's important. the papers are published every hour of the day. if there's an important trial in new york, a reporter would sit in the room, write a story, hand it and sit down and pick up an open phone addict to get to the paper. to print the hours trial and say so and so it accuses so and so. that was the cnn of that time. ..

he came back to the hotel, tour down. he build the tallest building on the globe and at the top it was a dome shaped building at the top where the editorial offices were indeed the gold leaf on the top. the top floors which overlooked new york was where the news room was and where his offices were. what's a significant is it we made a landscape of new york at this point. think about in terms of the empire state building in the 20th century, that kind of profound affect. said just like he remade the landscape of journalism, he remade the landscape of new

york. windows immigrants kept coming in from new york harbor, and this is something people forget. when immigrants left russia there was no delta flight, a virgin or fled to go home and see mom the next year. you were betting your last dollars you might be able to get away from the operation and reestablish your life in this new land. so as you went to the harbor, terrific moment, you'll have your first look at the new land and maybe the fog will clear and you see the statue of liberty. those immigrants would see that the they wouldn't esso know the pedestals have been built with pennies and nickels other once again before the ever turning of the first look at them your city skyline. the city that would welcome them. the city where they would learn their english. where they would get their first foothold on the american economic life. the sun would be claiming off the gold building the not a monument to 90, not a monument to manufacturing or agriculture

but a monument to the american press, the only constitutionally explicit because it usually protected form of business. and the new york world that will be there him a ticket understand how to get head, there take a charming english and a ticket to american politics the that's the effect pulitzer had. he was a very difficult and to live with as a biographer. he was sort of like the howard hughes of the 19th century. at the peak of his power when he was the publisher of the most, the most powerful publisher on the globe, his paper the power of "the new york times," cnn and the "washington post" and cbs news all combined. people read the world in the way that people, when i was a child used to watch the free networks on tv. he reached this enormous pinnacle power and he began to go blowing. so like they don't have good news on music, pulitzer couldn't read his own paper. at the same time he became beset

with a number of psychological issues and one of which was sound, disturbing. he built a name for himself, the famous tower of silence. is ne new york city matching haa special bedroom which was separate to keep the noise. if you invite of lunch with him and you ate your stellar in a fashion that was too noisy, you get the memo the next day saying next time you lunch with mr. pulitzer, no crunch. he became obsessively beset with all these problems. the second of his life he set out on his yacht, where these massive jobs. the engines were put in a special part of the yacht so sad when region and to basically went back and forth across the world. one of the most daring ride that worked for him, a very famous

novelist was later aske a suspey one of his readers, wrote him a note in which had the courage to say to mr. pulitzer, that your problems are not the kind, a geographical solution is not what you have. >> once his daughter had a minor operation, very, place but involve something. so household was in a tizzy. would become a teenage daughter. and pulitzer stands up at the dining room table and the waiter had written a just and that's it folks, what about me? i'm suffering. so his self-centeredness, is egomania, his social issues makes him an absolute faceting character. but the thing i love the best about the book was that his wife understood him better than any of us did. she loved him and where that no one else could love him. as he went blind should to a locket he had with any of his mother and what we've done today is gone to kinko's and a large.

she a painter paint a large version so before he would lose all his eyesight he could still see his mother. and then later i portray that at one point she does have an affair and i think the sense that leadership at the point is you go, girl. he was just so impossible. people say what is his legacy? his legacy has two parts. he left in his will money to create two things. when is the journalism school of columbia university which is just celebrating its centennial right now. this is very important. i will admit that missouri has a journalism school, kansas. but what's important about is pulitzer came to realize that journalism like any profession whether a lawyer or dentist required professional training. so we took his money to great a school to which people could become professionally trained to become journalist because it is a responsible press. what i think is so important about his legacy is i think a lot of the solutions to the

modern mass media problems today will come out of those institutions where younger people are trying to become journalist and have to figure out a way just like pulitzer had to figure out a way to make it work. so in essence the next pulitzer make them out of the school history. the other is the pulitzer prize. pulitzer prize was when he left behind to report journalists and newspapers and writers and artists and other people for great contribution. there are two aspects of it that are significant. one, if you get a come it of course changes your life. the joke is not know the first three words of your of which we will be because it says pulitzer prize winner so-and-so passed away. that influx the power of the gift, of the price. now a century after his death we're still honoring people using pulitzer's name. the other thing it does it shares with the nobel peace prize. if you look carefully, nobel peace prize is often given to people who are in danger. could be a woman in burma

standing up for democracy. it could be a group trying to bring about peace and a dangerous place like northern ireland. the reason the prize is given, in essence to protect that person because you're not going to go and assassinate somebody who just won the nobel peace prize is bring world attention. the most significant pulitzer prize is the wonderful public service and it's often given to newspapers who have been daringly covering something that communities didn't want him to cover. and when they cover something like that, the journalists are often sized. the local towns often pull out their advertisements which is the economic, and the newspapers take a tremendous risk to write about something that could be scanned, something important, but the community doesn't want to hear about it. when they get the pulitzer prize for public service, it's a recognition, national recognition of the importance of the event and innocent provide the same kind of umbrella of protection that the nobel peace prize does.

pulitzer was an extraordinarily significant person who still to this day affects our lives. and just like a child by recognize the mannerism from the father or mother, or habit, i'm just like my mother, you know? you recognize those roots. we as a culture need to understand that a lot of habits we have today come from people who came before us. when you read pulitzer, you begin to understand a lot of the traits we have about consumption is, understand the news, news that is a form of entertainment. these are all radical notions on this time that we inherited and taken on to build our society. the other thing that i think is perhaps really important about pulitzer and we need to think about in a seismic change going on with american media, pulitzer hammered away over and over again that the newspaper business is not just a business. it's a public service aspect to it, that a democracy cannot function without an informed public that somebody has to be

at the school board meeting at 2:00 and one when they're voting on a contract as to who will build the next school. as the press shrinks today there are no people at this meeting keeping an eye on things. the press ultimately likes the darkest recesses of our society. we know about the hardships of a poverty whether we want to or not because of the press. we know about corruption and the government, and it gets fixed because of the press. we know about what's on the public agenda, sometimes too much like the fiscal cliff. we hear about over and over again but these are critically important roles the press plays and i think pulitzer's story is a reminder of that, that yes these are businesses run by the grams of the "washington post" but they perform this enormous important civic action of informing us and the clash were to do with as a society, as these papers the log can support themselves what will come next replace them? that would be part of what a people will take away from the book.

>> roger ransom exports of domestic and foreign policy would have been different if the civil war was won by the south. his book is "the confederate states of america" and bespoke with booktv while we are in palm springs, california. >> the premise of the book is exactly the type exist until suggested, what would've happened if the south would've won the civil war. i think of something worth worrying about because the truth of the matter is the reason we worry so much about the civil war is the south did not win in the north bay. and so i'm trying to go back and reconstruct from what we know about the way the war actually went and the reasons for it and say, now if we change a few things we would have to change more than one, what a few things, then what would the world be like? if a southern confederacy was on the southern border of the united states of america?

>> wants one of the first things you look at? >> the first thing i look at is why did we fight this war in the first place? and i won't go into all the details, but to make a long story short, it is, we went to war over the issue of slavery. there were a lot of issues between north, south. but as my daddy used to say about money, slavery may not have been the only reason, but it's way ahead of whatever is in second place. and that's important because the issue of slavery turns out to be something that is extremely difficult to resolve. so as the war progresses, there aren't very many exit path, so to speak on tuesday let's stop fighting and see if we can settle this. we already tried this and it didn't work so we have to fight it to the finish. what most people concentrate on is one of two battles, hattiesburg is one and that's the most famous battle, and that's the one that lee could

have won but didn't buy the other one a lot of people lately have moved towards thinking maybe more pivotal death was indeed him. antietam is the battle in which the british basically decided the south didn't win. we won't go in and, of course, it's also the battle that prompted lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, and that sets the tone of the rest of the war as being the war against slavery. the inability of lee to defeat mcclellan in the maryland campaign was a turning point in the sense that it meant that the south was not committed to have keep on fighting them something they really were not as perverted as simply because they were a small country, fewer men, not the capacity to fight at the north end. the south really would have preferred to end this quickly. and antietam put any in the hope. the other turning point, once

you get past gettysburg, the other turning point would've been, lincoln would've had to have lose the election. i think one of the premises i've always felt about the civil war is that a majo major thing the h had going for it was a leader who is totally and completely committed to waging that war until the end, the ending slavery and to winning the war. that meant the election process for would've had to go the other way. that wouldn't have happened without some things prior going different the two things i have differently are that the northern forces are not as successful in the west, particularly in shiloh, this leads up to situation whereby the time you get to gettysburg, if the south wins that battle, it is likely to turn the populace against lincoln and maybe they could have lincoln when the election and then end the war. >> so now tell the story of the history was in your book, lincoln lost the election in

1864, what's going on a? >> well, i follow what is probably a pretty standard practice for people who speculate on the outcome of gettysburg. i have lee winning, because he does a couple of things because luck goes with them rather than against them, and the union army then has to retreat. lee doesn't have to do a whole lot more. he just has to stay in the north and make a menace of himself, and you know the way elections go. these things build and opponents jump on it and the next thing lincoln is defending himself because lee is rampaging through pennsylvania. there goes pennsylvania. there goes new york. the next thing you know he loses the election. the person coming in is going to be in a position to try and negotiate with the confederacy. and it's not that they necessarily want to negotiate with confederacy. the problem is that with a victory at gettysburg, the french and english, who have

been wanting ever since early in the war for a chance, not necessarily to send troops to the united states, but to metal to we are familiar with this today because you always see people, we will mediate the peacefully. the british offered to do that. lincoln would've turned them down. but in his place as the new president, there is no way we will let you mediate a peace. the piece is mediated. the treaty is signed, and the confederate states of america with jefferson davis as the president become a nation to the south of the united states of america. and that opens up a whole new world, a world that we can only imagine because it never existed, but think for a minute, united states, from baltimore all the way down through around florida, down along the gulf coast, the end of texas, that would be a foreign territory.

would not be part of the united states. in fact, the united states would have no real access to either the atlantic or the caribbean, except for a narrow path from baltimore north as far as boston. beyond that it's not very good harbors anyway. so all of a sudden the great coast, the atlantic coast of the trend is mirrored down to the point where it can be blockaded, everything has to be funneled. it doesn't mean for the united states would collapse under its own weight. it means that united states would no longer have anywhere near the presence in the western hemisphere in terms of dealing with british intervention, or french intervention. i remind my readers that in 1865, the french had troops, technically it was the emperor maximilian, in mexico, and my theory is that had the south won the civil war, the french would'vwouldhave stayed in mexie british would've expanded their influence around the caribbean,

and what became for the last half of the 19th and into the 20th century, the caribbean as american leg dominate by this big north american state would not be there. they would be a south and the north, and the south would be allied to the british and french. that would change geopolitics. now, i think he would also change the politics within the united states of america. losing wars does not come easy to any populace. and in the case of the civil war going the wrong way and having the south when, the republicans would be cursed because they were the ones that started the war, in the eyes of the public, and then lost it. but the south would be the ones who surrender to the enemy. and both parties could use that against the other. so my fear is you probably would get a huge realignment, probably

the rise if not what became the populace but some third party. most would get a situation of much more instability and much less, one has to remember that the actual path after the civil war was a republican dominated perseverance that led to the united states becoming the great intellectual nation of the 20th century. i'm not sure we would have been a great end of show mission of the 20th century had the south won. >> so what happens to the institution of slavery in the confederate states of america and? >> right out of my mouth. as far as the slaves are concerned, the ironing, the slaves would become free. they would have become free not because the confederates wanted to free them. not because of abolitionists in the north. they would have become free because the cotton market was going to collapse in 1870s. whatever the outcome of the civil war.

and that collapse is going to cause the prices of slaves to change dramatically. slavery in the united states was a very economic institution. even before the civil war, half the value invested money, capital in the south, was in the form of slaves. huge. now, think of the housing market collapsing recently in the 21st century. in the 19th century, a collapse of the cotton market and the collapse of slave prices would have a similar sort of effect. it would be a financial disaster. now, the way to offset that disaster, if prices are falling and people expect them to keep falling for a while, is that the slaveholders would turn to the government for help. that is, after all, the american way. they would say, by our slaves. emancipate them, get us out from

underneath this debt. because it would become a debt. they paid a lot for the slaves and they couldn't repay them. get us out from under this debt and we will be forever thankful. in the book i probably have to speed things up a little to pursue my telecom and i have that happened in the 1880s. if it were not the 1880s it would be the 1890s. now, i have to quickly remind people, this is the famous saying, the united states would have emancipated the slaves anyway. the southerners could do that because they controlled the outcome. what you would have as far as slavery is concerned is something not very much i would say different from apartheid in south africa. blacks wouldn't be free. they just wouldn't be slaves ignored. you wipe out the economic burden of slaves being capital and to replace it with a racial system of segregation, much stronger than what we actually saw, what we saw was enough to give you a clue of what would happen if

southerners had their hands free to do anything. the one huge loser and a southern victory in the civil war would've been the african-americans. because even if they were freed slaves they wouldn't be able to go north. remember that, in fact, the way many, many african-americans got out from under the deal of segregation at the legacy of slaves, they went north. i don't think the united states would welcome them if it'd been in the context of a war that they lost to the south. >> why not? >> same reason we don't really welcome mexicans, latin americans. i think there are very strong racial aspects your that, i've always told my students, one of the things that made the expansion of slavery so disagreeable to know workers is they really didn't want -- disagreeable to northerners, they didn't want blacks into their territories. it was simple. you don't want blacks in your neighborhood.

and slavery and blacks were synonymous. there were a small number, a very small number of free blacks. but for the most part, a black person was a slave, and, therefore, if you move your slaves in their you're moving black people in there, and i have always argued that this was definitely -- slavery could be tolerated, partly because northern americans were not all that free from racism themselves. they could tolerate slavery if they were in the south run by southerners and never touched our shores, so to speak. but they wouldn't tolerate it if they started bringing slaves into the neighborhood, so to speak. >> so, now we are into the 20th century. what would the united states or the confederate states of america be like? >> in my book i point out that

one of the problems, you a note i keep referring back to what actually happened, you can only do that up to a point there to further on the go, it's kind of like climbing a tree. pretty soon you're way out of the into branches and you too many branches and he can no longer maintain occur in stored. so i end my book in a perfectly willing to concede that to some extent this is just a convenient way to close out, into the book, counterfactual book to its harder than starting. i end it by saying, look, the one thing to win a change is the world still would've caught up in the grips of the first world war. great powers, france, germany, england still would've played out the games and fought the great war. but i say one of the differences about this great war is that the united states would have been drawn into it because the confederacy would be tied closely to england and france, and america would only have one

place left, that would be germany. no, no, no. 20th century americans say we would never join up with the germans. in 1900 the germans were the second largest immigrant group in the united states. behind the irish. there were a lot of germans did to this day you can see it in the midwest. in milwaukee, in st. louis, large german communities. and this actual is a factor in our not getting into world war i, to some extent. so my theory is the trend would've come into the war on the side of germany, and the confederacy would've been on the same side of the allies come at the first world war would've been right here at home. that changes just a couple of things. in my case it's the battles in the war, and then after that you begin to see what the ramifications of that are. but you try, i had a recipe, i'll try to remember it but i

believe it's two parts reality and one part imagination. and you intersperse them and, yeah, enjoy a good meal. but the factual part is very important. >> is what is the question that historians asked often? >> they don't ask it often openly. the way i put it, every historian secret house what if when he is writing his history. or at least if you're dealing with the historians for writing about great events and so forth. they choose their events, partly because they think they are important. why are they important? because if they didn't have to happen, the world would be different but if you're arguing that the world has changed because of your event, then you must be arguing that it would have been different if it didn't happen. so i think what it is very, very much there. and that's what i came out of

the closet, so to speak. i think that's what my book on the confederate states of america was. it's coming out of the closet and saying hey, this is the way i think the civil war should be taught but it should be taught in terms of people understanding what would've happened if that war turned out differently. >> on our recent visit to augusta, booktv spoke with pulitzer prize-winning journalist barbara walsh. up next she talks of her book "august gale." >> august gale is a story of two storms. one storm is about a hurricane that roared up the coast in 1935 and headed straight for newfoundland where my ancestors lived in this fishing village, and during that time period these men sailed in 15-foot stories and schooners that were maybe 40 or 60 feet. they had no warning of this devil, as they called as they come up the coast. this fishing village where my

grandfather was born, 300 people on the south side of mary's down lost, there were 42 children out of this committee that lost their father. said it was devastating. the other part of the storm is my grandfather. he moved to staten island and later abandoned my father, my man and my uncle twice. growing up i never knew anything about him. because my father refused to talk about it. so the book alternates between the real storm in 1935 and my grandfather who created his own storms. i wrote this book because after i saw the movie the perfect storm, i sat in the theater and that movie just resonated with me. i'm irish. i'm connected to the water. i just said i to being a journalist for 30 years but i said i can do that. and two years later when i talked to my father and i said i want to write books, and she said what kinds? i said sort of like the perfect storm. he said give a story like that

in your family. then he starts telling me about this august gale that killed several of her ancestors in this tiny newfoundland village. and all he knew was that potentially his great uncle was lashed to the wheel and many of them died. wow, a great story. until the another piece about my grandfather, the man i never knew who at the time it immigrated to staten island a few days after the gale company's paper is swirling around his seat. so he picks up the headline and he reads 40 newfoundland fishermen killed in august gale. he knows all of his family is out in that storm, and he just loses it. and becomes hysterical. so my father tells me these two pieces, then he says maybe we can get in touch with family. and i'm thinking family? i never knew anything about ambrose because he abandoned my dad and my dad refused to talk

about him. on this night in my home in maine, i dream of giant waves and the grandfather i had never met. that began our research into the august gale. and i spent nine years off and on because i worked full-time as a journalist researching my dad and i and my sister travel to newfoundland to entities these survivors, people who lost their dads in the storm. we interviewed people who remembered the gale and what it did to that community. so it was, the research was incredible because it was, the priest made the remembered the priest going door to door to tell all these families you've lost a son, you've lost a husband, you've lost three sons and one husband. so it was just an event in their lives, sort of like their 9/11. it was a natural disaster that took all of their fathers away. the other piece during that trip is learning about my grandfather. i have never seen a picture of

him. and my father was very ambivalent about going to newfoundland. but as a dad we need to research the story. but as we approached the rock, newfoundland, as we called it, i looked out and i was just overwhelmed the emotion of coming to this island where my ancestors had lived in my grandfather was born. and i turned to my dad and i said, did you ever think you're going to newfoundland? and he said, not in a million years. and i was terrified because i thought, what is this trip going to be like? isn't going to be really emotional? and it was in poor. we were meeting people that kept saying your father was a great men. and my dad would say, well, he deserted us. so it's kind of a mixture of emotion. but a good piece, we interviewed so many of these mr. towns, men and women, who remembered that storm and remembered the night

it came there and many of them saw spirits. they saw spirits. they are all very irish. so they're superstitious. the night of the deal, many of them saw their fathers who returned to their homes. so it was a very interesting story to interview them. and interview some of the fishermen who were out in the gale but as these waves rose from 40 to 60 and 80 feet, they were tied to the ratings and just praying, let us get home. a few of them did. many of them did not. it was just a story that resonated, like i say, because of my irish background. but the families were so grateful because no one had told the story for them. now this book has brought me together with my newfoundland family that i never knew existed. and often, many of these people, they are all cousins.

we are all related but it was also fascinating to learn about my great uncle. he was a legendary fishermen, and he had never lost a man in 25 years. he was fearless. many of the irish catholic fishermen would go to see with their crosses, there palm fronds, their holy water, and as the waves would rise a would throw this into the seat. captain patti wood climbed to the top and shout to god in the middle of the storm, i'm not afraid you. so the catholic fishermen were like, get down, we all going to die. but he was known for bringing home the most god. and so when it would storm people could not believe that he did not make it home. entering the storm they all fear the august her kids because it was the start of hurricane season. the night before he sets out on his wife lillian said, please,

don't go. because not only was he going to see, he was taking his 12 year old son frankie, his fortune your son jerome, and his eldest son, james, was on another screen. so during this storm, he is out to sea with his three sons. and there's a scene in the book, and this is all true, researched. he was last seen as the waves are rising and another skipper is saying, what are you doing? there's a devil coming. and he says, i know, but we have a straight dory. he was looking for his son jerome. meanwhile, he knows his sons on board are terrified and is always james is happening a school for the first time. it's an incredible scene, and the research. i was fortunate that many people have memories and witnessed certain parts of the storm and toby retreated, having seen the

priests who had been knocking on these doors and let the families know. you know, your father is not coming home. so it was an incredible piece of history for me because as a journalist, i have any the many different people for stories, but this was my family. this was probably the hardest story i've ever written about because i was related to everyone. not only the newfoundlanders who died in the storm, but my grandfather and one of the toughest pieces, i did not want to tell the story of my grandfather. i wanted to tell the story about the storm because that was compelling. you know, my grandfather was digging up too much pain in my father's childhood. so originally i said i'm not going to tell about part of the story, but it was like my grandfather was pushing his way in. and, finally, i said, dad, i have to tell ambrose store, too.

he said okay, i trust you but it's funny because a lot of the people who read it will say ambrose, he was a bastard and i'll say no, he made some bad choices. he wasn't a bad man, and it's interesting, after i won the pulitzer for the willie horton story on the newspaper, we want the pulitzer, he knew about that. my name he used to write in and he says i wonder if my journalist granddaughter will come find me? and i did, only many years later after he died. so i feel like i have gotten to know my grandfather, and there were good things about him. he never deserted his second family. he was a hard worker during the war. he worked in brooklyn helping repair the victory ships, so he was a hard worker many times, and he loved his children. he kept the picture of my father and my uncle when they were young in his wallet. he had paintings of him in his closet. and when a second family would

say to are those boys, he could never talk about. they were the secret boys that later in life they learned about. i think you always regretted what he did. >> why did he leave? >> well, he met another woman and got her pregnant, and so in the middle of the night in brooklyn, he packed up this baby. he snuck out of his house and left my father who was at the time in 11, my uncle was about a year, and my nana, closed the door, stole the car and $1000 from a paint job he would never do. and drove away with his mistress and the baby that was just born. and then made his way to san francisco. and then decided, i miss my family come and called them up again, only to leave again, if the mistress pregnant again, and my nana had a nervous breakdown. that was the part my father could not forgive. you abandoned us once, but why

did you call us out to san francisco? and my father, i think the book, it's been some heating for my father. he would never commit suicide ambrose's name can he left the room. he would not talk about it. so this book suddenly, my father story is out there, and i think it's been good for him. i think the story of forgiveness, the story of the cd, of realizing when they were fighting the storm at sea, the courage, it's a time gone by the there are still fishermen to go out but i think these people, the historical piece, it was a very difficult time. they barely survived when they came home with cod, and they were so hard-working. they just never gave up. the women, you know, would raise their children in a much simpler way. they had gardens and so i think

for me the courage and integrity of these people that we can all learn from. they worked very hard to survive. and a lot of times the women lost their men and they still had to carry on. and the government wasn't there to open. and to do what you government helps too much. i mean, these people, they survived on their own. they are very hard-working and i think, too, with family, that connection to family. newfoundlanders are so family needs more than anything today but i think that such a great value. growing up, my father despite being abandoned to me are said to us, test of the more important than family. and i think that's because he knew his father abandoned him. and newfoundlanders come if you are their cousin, they can't do enough for you. so for me, the piece as well, there's nothing more important than family. and i learned that through this book in many ways.

>> end of the bookies recent visit to providence with the author and pulitzer prize-winning journalist michael stanton talks but his book, "the prince of providence: the rise and fall of buddy cianci, american's most notorious mayor." >> the "the prince of providence" is a book of buddy cianci with the longest-serving mayor in rhode island history and one of the more colorful mess you'll find anywhere in the country. he was part to his long and part tony soprano but he was this lovable rogue who helped transfortransform the time intel city of providence into a city that was rated one of america's most livable by a number of publication. and he also presided over a breathtaking corruption over three different decades that ultimate landed them in federal prison. and he's a very colorful character. i call him america's longest-running -- he would be squirelly about the city in his

chauffeur driven limousine with a big jackbooted police officer by his side in the he would have a couple of vodka in one hand and a cigarette in the other hand, and the keys to the city. he was really to me when i set out to write a book about him, he was the embodiment of american politics, the good and bad. he reflected providence which is one of america's oldest cities to me really embodies the american political story. but he grew up in a privileged background. he growth in the silver lake neighborhood of providence, an old italian enclave and he had a waspy private school on eastside near brown university. he became a lawyer. he became a prosecutor. he prosecuted mobsters. he became a republican in a democratic irish city, and then

he ran for mayor in the 1970s. 1974. and he basically upset the providence democratic machine and he became this italian american republican mayor in the '70s and he attracted the attention of the white house at the time, gerald ford was president and gerry ford was very taken with him and he saw them as a way to kind of in body with republicans were trying to capture. a both a user when democratic and buddy had a featured role speaking at the 1976 convention it is a guy seen as going places. he was very glib, articulate. he was a champion of cities and urban renewal. some people audaciously even said he could be a potential vice presidential candidate, or at least go to the u.s. senate where he could have a very long and successful career. but then some problems in suit. he of course, gerald ford lost the election. he went on to become mayor.

there was a massive investigation in the early 1980s. he had characters like buckles and slap jack and bogle were running around the city double -- public works of augustine and hold covers, sitting -- stealing city asphalt, selling city trucks the private owners. and that's where, then there was massive corruption. several people inside the administration went to prison and never got to buddy because his top aides never read them out. but buddy was kind of in a personal marital dispute the he went through a nasty divorce. he basically suspected this businessman had been a friend of his of sleeping with his wife. invited them into his house one night and with the state police bodyguard, held the men prisoner for several hours, tortured him with a lit cigarette, tried to hit him with fireplace logs, and

was charged with assault in that episode and that forced his resignation in 1984. and that seemed like that was the end of one promising political career but it was only the first act. he spent the next six years on talk radio, very popular talk radio host in 1990, he ran for mayor again with the slogan he never stopped caring. and "the wall street journal" called his political comeback of the in the of richard nixon. in 1990 he was elected in a three-way race by about a few hundred votes. and he came back. this is the '90s when providence was undergoing this remarkable renaissance. rivers were being moved, the concrete was being ripped up. as you see now the waters are displayed on the river is in the beauty of the architecture. and buddy was a champion of that. as providence became a hot city, he became a hot mayor. things are going very well for

him. but then just as he was subverting the coming the longest-serving mayor of providence history, the corruption we are to its head again and the fbi found this local businessman who agreed to go undercover. he wore a wire, had a hidden camera in the handle of his briefcase and he taped various aids to but including his top aide taking bribes at city hall for city contracts and other favors. this became known as the federal fbi case called operation plunder dome. it was led by denis aitken whose rigid for minutes that day. he led this investigation ultimate resulted in buddy's conviction. after an epic two-month trial, in a city where people say you'll never get people to convict buddy cianci, and a city where buddy went to prison with 60 some% of voters still think he had done a good job, even though they thought he was guilty, and when buddy was

sentenced by the judge to judge talked about how he was really two people. he was dr. jekyll and mr. heid. and buddy in his own way said, well, how come i didn't get to adding paychecks? widebody was convicted of was racketeering conspiracy kind of thing knowing about it but not being physically involve any of the underlying acts. buddy kind of friend as what thedidi do? i was convicted of being a mayor. some of the jurors i spoke to felt otherwise, that he was a guy who knew how to keep himself insulated, kind of like a mob boss, though he had once prosecutor ironically. and he was able to stay out of the direct line, but that he knew everything there was going on. he was that kind of guy one juror told me he would know how many rolls of 20 paper they were in city hall. later, buddy said that was part of his myth, or accommodate have conveyed that fear in people

that he knew everything but he really didn't. so that was his defense that ultimately didn't put up with the jury, didn't play out on appeal and he went to prison and relinquished his famous today, what he called his dead squirrel. and he did his time, came out and he went on talk radio where he's on a local radio station. but it's interesting, providence has changed a lot and i think it went from being a really relevant political figure to be more like the quaint vocal for you kind of have around each holiday but most of the people in providence who live there when he got out of prison didn't later when he went to prison. which says something about the remarkable transmission of the city there's a lot more latino voters, more young voters. we have a strong gay population at the mayor that followed him was the first openly gay mayor of a large american city, who is now in congress but in a mayor

who followed him is in office now, is the city's first hispanic mayor. reflecting a growing population. buddy cianci is, i compare him to huey long in the sense that they were both incredibly charismatic figures. they were both politicians who were beloved and its bite other flaws, in spite of the corruption, who have a real populist evangelical fervor about them that spoke to the ability to be successful on a larger stage. huey long was seen as a potential president can do. transform, as audacious as it seems, being from such a small city, was addressing a summit that could be a national figure in washington. and in one of his pivotal moments in his career in the 1970s, he's in his first term as mayor. there's a u.s. senate seat that opened up in rhode island and he thought about whether he should run or not and he wound up

ultimately in outmaneuvered by john chafee. a lot of people feel that was a turning point for buddy because if you gotten out of providence event, he would have gotten out of the place that breeds corruption and ultimately drag tracking down, not to excuses culpability, and gone to washington where you can be a showman, on the national stage. he spoke at the republican national convention in 1976, and again in 1980. he actually went out, it was funny before the 1980 election, he went out and met with ronald reagan and he pitched himself as a potential running mate for reagan. while he was out there he went to palm springs and he visited jerry ford, who had been good friends with them when he was president. and when he was there he also got invited to attend at frank sinatra's house. so we having dinner at frank sinatra's house and he tells the story, you know, he sees a picture on the wall behind the

bar and the bartender says, you're from providence, how is raymond doing? so there's that bizarre cross occurrences in buddy's life. buddy and i had an interesting relationship as i wrote this book, because the one thing about trantwo, two things that matter to them our power and control. and, of course, money. he didn't have control over this book. he didn't get the money, and he couldn't control his legacy, and he didn't like some of the negatives things that i found about him but i tried to be fair because there are two sides of the coin and that's what makes it so compelling. buddy always wanted to write his own book, and he later did a few years ago called politics and pasta. he always used again become i'm going to write my own memoirs and i'm not going to talk to you about my inside stories. how are you going to write, i remember he called me into his office a month before he went to

prison but he had been convicted. he was awaiting sentencing. it was the summer afternoon, quiet, and as we're sitting in his office he starts to say hey, how about you rip up your contract with random house and we write a book together? allocates you six-figure advance. how much you getting? i'm not getting that much but i'm getting enough to make it fair. and it's really about more than money to me but it's about doing, telling a good story. and buddy looked at me and said, why is this not about money? why did you sell yourself so cheap? at that point a thunderstorm started to play out over city hall. but he said, you know, telling, writing this book without me and my inside story is going like the thunder without the lightning. this book i think says american politics is a blood sport, that it's very entertaining. buddy cianci had a saying, when he was first elected as mayor he

was a republican candidate. he was championed by kind of these uppercrust liberals that lived up on the east side of providence around brown university and they were the lead. they were the people who were not looking for contracts. they were looking for good government. buddy had a cynical saying, he was their champion when he first was elected to good government will only get you good government. when you come down from college hill and across the providence river, you have to cut deals and he had to do things like that to get things done. and he came in as mayor the first time, remember, he was republican in the city that hasn't elected a republican since the great depression. he was the first italian-american mayor in a city that had been ruled by irish democrats for decades, and he had a city council that was committed to his destruction just like the republican congress is committed to barack obama's downfall in his first term. he had to work with those guys

come and he did work with him and he also machiavellian maneuvers that he had, he outlasted them. he outmaneuvered them. they refused to confirm any of his appointments, and then it was a famous massacre, they called, where the city council had a meeting and they didn't have a quorum because there were three members have been arrested or indicted or convicted of the crimes such as insurance fraud and fixing races at a local track your so buddy used that to engineer a coup when he took over the city council and "l.a. times" came to town and a feature about him, and he said that in the general population, one in 10,000 on the providence city council, it's one in eight. the genius of buddy was he could connect with people. he had charm, charisma and he would want into a room and, if there were 100 people there, 99 love him he would go to the one

who hated him and tried when the person over. and convey that he could. they said he would go to the opening of an envelope and he would just show up at any event. i remember being a young reporter at the providence journal not covering buddy at the time, not covering city hall. i was there at another reporter's backyard cookout in the summer and we're sitting around drinking beer, and buddy pulls up in his limousine as the may and he shows up at the party. it wasn't just a politician making a token experience. he was there for hours but he was one of the last persons to lead. he was a champion of the city of providence. the city was a downtrodden city. he would go on national tv. he would go on a show and he would sing the city's praises. they figured we've always had corruption. it predates buddy and it will postdate him but at least he made us feel good about ourselves. at least come to, he helped put providence back on the map. so that's why people love him.

>> from vermont a tour of montpelier independent bookstore bear pond books. claire benedict talks with stores long single of the committee. the impact of commercial competition and how this sort of survivor nearly 40 years. >> oddly, what we are well known for its art squeaky floors. we have these great old wood floors that make a ton of noise and our customers love it. it's a little bit lost on us why this is a wonderful because we listened to it all day long. it's a character. we are not a super slick box door kind of looked. and i think people, i think the squeaky floors represent that, that it's just kind of a real old kind of star like you don't get in a lot of communities

anymore. independeindepende nt bookstores, we've been there since 1973, and i have owned the store since 2006 along with my husband, robert. it was opened in 1973 across the street. it's been part of the committee ever since. they moved the store after a flood in 1992 when the old store got flooded. it was time to expand and start a fresh space. they moved here. we have been here ever since. bear pond books is again the bookstore. people have been coming here since the beginning. kids have grown up here, and we doesn't like being like a demented i don't think you can find too many towns of 8000 people that support three bookstores. at one time we have five bookstores in downtown montpelier all within a stones throw of each other that you don't find it into many places anymore. mostly independent bookstores are closing around the country. some communities are supporting more and opening stores but a lot of them are closing.

they are not surviving, changes of ownership and retirements and things like that. but this is a community that values books, values region. we have a lot of writers again it's also a community beyond that, values independent stores. there's not a lot of box stores and a lot of malls around here and it really makes a huge difference. if a barnes & noble had come into town 20 years ago, i don't know if we would still be here, but it didn't. there are certainly, there were barnes & noble in towns nearby but this committee got long before the buy local and shop local movement started, this community understood that if you want to the bookstore in town you have to shop at the bookstore. not go to barnes & noble and, you know, and say that you love this store. which i think is a problem.

people definitely say they support the store but when you are purchasing elsewhere you're not really supporting our store. so the communities really understood that from the beginning. we've had people, people coming on the ethics i looked up this book on my by want to buy it for me. we do that all day long every day. i looked it up on internet by not going to bite there. buy it there. i would never buy it there. they make sure to tell us. we appreciate that and it's that attitude that keeps us in business but if we didn't have that we wouldn't still be here. >> always involved in the community. from small things like we serve as a ticket agent for a lot of activities and can do everything from school plays the chamber orchestra concerts. we sell tickets for. we have become a supporter of artofthe arts in that way, whico brings a lot of people in. and we are also on local boards

and involved with the local downtown organization, and we are involved with local schools and supporting activities they have. so some of it is monitor and some of it is just hoping out. >> we are definitely, rely on our community because the writing, the readers, the writers, the people who just support independent stores, but there's a great writing community in vermont and in this area come and we have the vermont college of fine arts right of the street that has writing programs for both adults and children in creative writing. so customers, the first place they go when they come in is our best seller table which is right up front and that's the indian and seller list. it's a survey of independent booksellers across the country is not the same as "usa today" or "new york times" although there is some overlap.

but it's what independent booksellers are selling the most a. people go straight there and to the new releases table, and then ago right over to fact pics. doesn't have a lot of publicity. so we definitely rely on local writers to keep things vibrant and interesting around you but you see a lot of local authors on the front table on display. i would also work with the local college when they have visiting her faces in and they have residency programs that come in. >> it is very good writing, very powerful. spent am i going to like this? [inaudible] ..

the biggest challenge to an independent bookstore these days is definitely competition from the internet, both from online marketplace and the whole e-book, he-reader phenomenon that is very popular and definitely effective. a lot of our regular customers -- it's like us said, the lesson supporters, but in the iowa, got this