school for 29 years. i was not even on the market. i was not going to be a law professor. i was all set my third year of law school to work for the naacp. as a litigator. one day i got a call from the dean of harvard law school who said to me we heard nice things about you. have you ever thought about teaching law? my response was no, but i am game. he says good. we will fly you up. and over the course of 18 months he and his colleagues said why don't you do this, why don't you do that, they got me into it. i have benefited. i would like to think that i have put those benefits to good use and have put them to good use for myself, put them to good use for my family and put them to good use for society. you all have been very kind, very patient. ..

>> especially public figures that have spent millions of dollars creating their own image. and so i think it is valuable sometimes to go behind that. so usually i am the one who is trying to get behind that and tell you what is going on. >> presidential history and american culture, kitty kelley sits down for your calls and

comments live for three hours beginning at noon eastern, sunday on booktv's in depth. and look for other guests, including this feminism critic, christina hoff sommers and mark levine. >> this fall, booktv is marking the 15th anniversary and we look back at 2007. they have a legacy of ashes and the history of the cia. and this was given to angela roberts for the history of the english-speaking peoples since 1900. she recounted her family's immigration to the united states on booktv. >> it was difficult to register

an emotional voicebox, but uncle frank said he thought he was caught up in something he had no way of understanding and it is not true, they can put you in prison, you have a visa and you have papers. did you tell them how long we had been coming here. uncle frank asked uncle joseph to put the officer on the phone again and he is going to call, the officer said. he can't, heat 81 years old, he is an old man. uncle frank been asked if he could speak to my uncle one last time. cbp officers said we are to have a translator for him and hung up. at 11:00 p.m., but uncle was given chips and soda and again in 1145, he signed a form saying that his personal property was returned to him. this includes the money plus the wristwatch and i received my phone call and that 4:20 a.m., my own was transported to the

detention area and by then my uncle wrapped the blanket he was given tightly around him as he curled in a fetal position on the cement bed until 7:15 a.m. at around 7:30 a.m., they boarded to rome. they asked for my uncle not be handcuffed due to his age and they agreed not to. i told him to tell him that if you he tried to escape, he would be shot. got over the next few weeks, booktv in its 15th year is taking a look back at authors and publishing news and you can watch all of the programs for the past 15 years online at booktv.org. ♪ ♪ oh, for spacious side entrance guys ♪

♪ >> oh, for spacious skies and mountain waves of grain. >> it is in the place that i am in today. ♪ ♪ ♪ and this land is bound to my heart. ♪ >> welcome to whole in music vessel at montana rockies music festival. and for the next 90 minutes we explore

we explore the rich agriculture and its effects in society. >> we begin by domesticating wheat. we gave up the freedom to wander and to hunt and gather as we have done for 50,000 years and that may be better or worse than agriculture in some ways and we can argue that is a value judgment. evolution made us to be that way and we have surrendered the conditions and people still argue a lot about how agriculture happened. the classic story is that we ran out of game and became the only way to feed ourselves. this is not the way it happened, that is one story. another story is that we just had to services by living

together, the disturbance in the soil and people compacting the soil and we started eating the weeds, which was grass, essentially. but it happened in five different places in five different places released independently. it was inevitable because it happened so many ways. but once that happened and people started raising grain, and they became highly dependent upon that grain and city living and pretty soon we were domesticated dislike our livestock in some ways. the domestication occurred in five different places of the planet and each of those had a different crop. in the middle east it was wheat and we domesticated wheat from wild grass that grew there and the predecessor and an area that is now iraq, oddly enough. and in asia there were two separate domestication and the

analog for wheat served exactly as it did in the middle east. there is a separate domestication that we talked about this includes north america and south america, corn and squash and beans and south america it was potatoes, essentially. so those are the main crops and still the main crops today, the fortified crops that accomplish 70% of nutrition today. >> effect was like domestication and other animals only started moving a lot less because we were sedentary and we lived in cities and we were able to store grain and because we could store grain, that was wealth. there was wealth, poverty, hierarchy, leaders or in control which we had never experienced before and institutions like churches and governments, which never instituted before that

time. and those things regimented society in ways that we continue to produce our food. the main thrust of the agriculture and our environment was there from the beginning and we came to think of it as industrial agriculture and somehow that is different than what we have been doing for the six or eight or 10,000 years. we are not doing all that much that is different. but the plans that we eat our biological freaks. annual grasses, which are very rare in nature or, nature prefers pringles. they are there for a special purpose to colonize and something to reset the biological clock down to zero. it's and so what we do is mimic that disaster. we create disaster.

and that is what allows them to grow. we reduced the biological clock down to zero and it requires energy and fertilizer to sustain that disaster year after year and that is farming. the change really occurred in 19411930, you begin in the united states. there was almost an intensification -- actually it was a serious intensification would have gone on before. but a number of things made it possible. it is called short plants and breeders were able to make wheat and especially rice to grow much shorter so it invests more of its energy into its seed head. and at the same time, it would sustain heavy doses of chemical

fertilizers. those two things occurred in the green revolution around the world. it very much wasn't a revolution in agriculture, but we can read up by what it required, which was a very rapid intensification of the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and irrigation water and those things came together to really intensify agriculture on the environment. one of the results of the green revolution also was the economy of scale and it became much more efficient to grow and small farms went away. typically the farms in the midwest would be a couple hundred acres, 500, 600, the typical wheat farm here is about 3000 acres and that generally

employs one person is able to take that and raise a crop of wheat from it. the other thing that happened is fewer people live on the farms and on land and they populated the landscape and created a series of very large farms and those are the farms that are important. these go to hundreds of thousands of acres and profitability of farming is really a very interesting question and people who long for the free markets in the united states would be good to start with farming and the only place where we really don't have anything that looks like a free-market, most of the income in the united states is based upon the subsidy system and has been since world war ii and it was designed with the best of intentions by a very progressive government that wanted to make farming less financially hard on the people who did it.

but they are going to the point where corporations take advantage of it and live off of that subsidy more than anything else and we can't say how profitable farming the land is. and so here in montana to use one example, one county was profiled by an entire county of farmers and every farmer except for three of them were accepting subsidies. the average subsidy payment for family was 30,000 dollars per year. that is the profit of the farm. politically, the agriculture industry has a very interesting problem, especially with a declining number of people. farmers are now about 1% of the american population, so how can they be politically significant and only 1%. but the answer is that we are very good at multiplying a

couple of effects. one of those is kind of a warm spot in our heart that we have for farmers and there's a great myth is that the foundation of our country that farmers are good people and some of them are really good people. i'm not disputing any of that at all. that plays out a lot. but what also works and even more so in the past is that agriculture has big business and it's not just about farmers, but fertilizer and the process in the food industry and making tractors and all of those things come together in a much larger business, and it is in alliance with other businesses that farmers multiply things and become very powerful. and if you notice that a lot of that has to do with the industrial side of agriculture and those farmers were trying to escape the industrial system do not have that political clout because they don't have those industrial allies and it's a

very different system and it's why the industrialized system has momentum of its own. the issue of political farming has a lot to do with what goes on in the system itself and the published knowledge of the raw politics of farming is pretty scant and people really don't understand exactly how their food is produced and if they did, they would be outraged more than they already are. what they do want to understand its quality of their food and so during the last 10 and 15 years, especially since i have been covering this issue and thinking about this issue, there has been almost a groundswell of the quality of food and that is really a good thing. it's a selfish thing in some ways, but that is fine because people begin their awareness by what they eat every day and at some point they understand that they are buying this food at the supermarket and harming them and

it's not even very good or pleasant to eat and food is supposed to be pleasure. by understanding that in beginning the process there an understanding how our health is affected, with what is more important. by understanding people are becoming aware and attach it to these other issues and demanding something better from the agricultural system. i used to talk about change as a hypothetical that this could happen and things like farmers markets in every town, where grass finished beef being available, that's not very long ago that those things where a dream. and people were saying that the american consumer will never accept this, well, they have. and everyone of us knows today that we can go to the farmer's market in our town and it happens in big cities like little towns like montana and we

have farmers markets and it's a really healthy step. there are many networks bringing this up to consumer direct marketing going on and i can buy half of beef here in montana, knowing the rancher. i shake his hand, he shows me how that animal was raised and he shows me the exact conditions of what created that meets and that is very important to me. but that was impossible 10 years ago. industrial agriculture has taken notice of the changes that have happened in the biggest response has been an attempt to cooperate and we see all sorts of green labeling and green marketing going on, saying that this was a natural product, stretching the bounds of the word natural.

but nonetheless that is a backhanded complement in some ways in the industry recognizes that there is a power there for change and they attempt to tap into it by showing profit out of the deal. but it's pretty easy to expose that of the same time and say, no, here is the real deal and so that strategy is pretty easy to defeat. the behind-the-scenes industrial agriculture -- obviously we have a subsidy system and we try to preserve the status quo and we argue that we have to raise wheat and edit access to sugar and in the end, that is the powerful forces the addicting powers of sugar. when people read my book, i hope they understand the complexity of the problem. but we are almost evolved to be absolutist about food and understand food in a very narrow perspective and i don't like this, i like this instead, food

fetishes abound. we are like that about food. i hope that is not what they do. the hope people respond and say that, okay, this is interesting, but at the same time understand the broader implications and also understand that food is part of our humanity and who we are in italic commune with each other in many ways. hate to see people give that up and to be so moralistic about food that they fail to understand that this is how we come together. and that this is how we enjoy life with food. a few minor adjustments, we can enjoy life again with our food. >> u.s. army veteran david abrams called his experience in iraq as a military journalist during a recent trip to montana and he described his time in baghdad in 2005.

>> a file that we have is called a "fobbit." and what that is is an installation in iraq and afghanistan. fobbit is from hobbit and they didn't want to go outside of ayrshire, they were a little cowardly and afraid of going out into the big world. likewise, a soldier who is a fobbit kind of busy themselves with paperwork to avoid the hazard of danger and i think a lot of people, when they think of combat or war, they think of your average combat soldier who is out there firing a weapon or a rifle or a mortar or whatever, a basic field artillery piece and not as a stereo typical

image. they don't think of someone sitting at a desk or working in a dining facility or someone working at a motor pool working on an engine driven all of those parts go into the whole about this. so that is one of the reasons i decided to write about the fobbit experience. it's sort of like if you were to take your average office vehicle cubicle out of any corporate america office and plunk it down into a war zone. that is kind of what i try to re-create. my military background is that i joined the army in 1988 as a journalist. and i spent my entire time in the army working in public affairs and i worked with the media and various audiences. this includes the soldiers and

communities and i went to baghdad in 2005 and they were out of georgia. i spent about a year there when i first landed in iraq. it was hot and kind of beige colored. and i think the most interesting thing that i saw when i got to baghdad was a soldier took me to the place where i would be working and not that i would be working under a hail of bullets or anything, but i expected more spartan conditions and it turned out to be a maze of cubicles, someone grinding espresso beans over to the side. you know, people passing around computer jokes and working on powerpoint presentations. so that was an eye-opener for me. when i got there that was going to be my battlefield for the next year and in early 2005 the

iraqi people were holding their first elections and we had removed saddam hussein from power and they were having their first elections to vote on the constitution. later in the year they actually elected their first leader and first president and there is a lot of change and turmoil and a lot of unrest, people didn't know what to expect from the future and we were right there in the middle of it. my job and actually i was in task force in baghdad and i was the public affairs nco for the third infantry division, which meant that i worked with the media and sent out press releases and i answered calls from good folks like you and "the new york times" and i was the typical army spokesperson lives there. so i was hoping to tell the army's story to folks back here.

the kind of information that the media was looking for was of course to confirm any information about a big incident that went down, if there was an ied or a roadside bomb that went off. if there were casualties, they would like to know how many and who is skilled and things like that. also they just wanted to know the latest news on some of our various projects we were doing within the infrastructure, like the sewer and water and electricity and all of the projects that we were working on that the media was hungry to know about as well. they couldn't give the full story to the media in some cases. but that was this is part of the offset of the operational security. and we had a helicopter one time made a hard landing.

so we were not able to tell them much about that at the time because obviously we didn't want the enemy to know our weakness and not. and we didn't want them to know what allies. so we had to guard information like that at times. i was able to leave the base, but i really did not leave the base. i only left camp maybe once. that was like one week after i arrived and we were doing what i would call a dog and pony show, which economy and that is like a big ceremony and a lot of pomp and circumstance. as we were doing one of those big media events at the old military parade grounds and i was sent out there to help set this up and i landed, set up the

chairs in the ropes and we have the ceremony and took less than 15 minutes. there were no bombs or mortars that came in and we packed it up, folded up the chairs and i left on the black hawk helicopter and it was all said and done in about five hours to minutes last i saw of the real bad guy. and that's the time that i spent there. i lived in a bit of a little sooner. but i was also at the same time kind of at the heart of the information because i worked in the task force headquarters in so we had a lot of information flowing in at various levels of classification and some of it was classified top secret and so on. i was right there at the time. i didn't know what was going on, it was outside the wire, as we called it. i never really experienced what it was like to be out there on the streets patrolling day in and day out like a lot of my

colleagues did. i was kind of sheltered within my air-conditioned cubicle and as far as my relationship with other soldiers goes, i think it was good, but at the same time i was living, you know, the good and comfortable life and when you see all of these combat arms soldiers come into the chow hall and they have dust and blood and sweat and they have been through some really bad times in the last couple of hours you have been sitting in your air-conditioned cubicle eating a candy bar or whatever. there is honestly going to be a little bit of a disconnect between those two tribes, if you will. but overall we did our jobs and we all got along. i left baghdad in december 2005. so when it came time for me to write the book, i had a choice and i could do a memoir, which a lot of people have done very

well. or i could go with my gut instinct and turn up the juice and make it a little bit larger than life and turn it into a novel. when i went over there, i knew that i would probably be writing about the war, but i didn't know what would come of it. it could be a short story or a play or a poem. or it could just be a novel. so that when i started writing has come i didn't know that it was going to be comic novel. i was just kind of getting out some of the things that i experienced and i think gradually the humor worked its way in and i did have a choice. i could stick with the facts and frankly it would be a bit of a boring book because who wants to read about a guy sitting at his desk typing at a computer 14 hours a day and not doing much

else. or i could make it a little bit more exciting and comical than a little bit more tragic because when i am writing fiction and allows me to really go outside myself and have a lot more freedom to tell the story that i really wanted to tell. >> on our recent visit to montana, we talked with stephanie ambrose, who described the lewis and clark companion. >> i would say that some of the biggest misconceptions about the expedition are that it was a big family camping trip in part of that is because they had a dog with them and had an african-american slave with them and they also had a young indian woman with them. to that kind of makes you feel like this is a large family, but

actually it was sent by thomas jefferson to survey that was outside of what was then the united states and they went all the way to astoria oregon. which at that time was basically the louisiana purchase. and pretty much stopped when they started getting into the mountains, and that is when they started meeting with tribes they really didn't know were out there. and so they were doing a survey for jefferson. 1803 to 1806 and there was many years in preparation. we call this the years of the expedition. he was his private secretary, and lewis picked captain clark because they had worked together during the whiskey rebellion and they have become friends and he

said i would prefer no one else other than you to cocaptain this expedition with me. although clark never did get the rank of captain at that time, he was always called captain and lewis insisted that he got the same pay when he got back. so he was the copartner, there is no distinction in rank. the first months were -- they were trying to make sure that the group as they got together, the 30 or so men would have been able to be up to the task. so they were trying to enforce military order and get them to get going up the river. they also wanted to make sure that there were no gentleman, that there would be men of orchid hunters and they started -- let's just say there were indiscretions in the beginning. some of them would get involved in the whiskey and they brought out with them as part of the

rations of the day and at that time, the military officers would give little symbols full of whiskey to the man, so there wasn't a big storage keg of whiskey and some men got into that and it would cause some disruption in the ranks. one of the ways they would discipline him with having the men to a court-martial and they would decide who is guilty. so that was another way of getting them together as a unit and say that we will enforce this discipline and one of the things they did call the gone or they would have men line up on either side and have them run shirtless and the men would be whipping them with robs from the rifle were sticks as they went by. and so it it was lashes well laid on, as they said. but because lewis and clark had firm disciplinary actions to counteract that, that was settled. by the time they took off from

st. louis, things were in working order and everyone respected both captains. so their experience was either feast or famine. when they were around all the bison they would eat up to 9 pounds of meat a day. and a lot of people think of those guys must've been huge in that amount of meat. they were burning it off but i think that they looked more look more like runners and their bodies were then pretty thin. but the experience and montana, they start getting towards the mountains and this area and that meant, okay, it's not going to be as easy as they had been, even though they were pulling up river. they realize that now we have to transport the stuff over the mountains in order to find that northwest passage, which, you know, people said that they never really did fine. but they did find the drainage of the columbia and they were able to proceed on to the ocean. this particular area where we are right now, when louis got

here it must have been late in the evening because they couldn't -- they said everything wore a dark and gloomy aspect that might have been that it had just rained. so these rocks behind me would've looked darker and they were looking for ways to set up camp. but they couldn't really find sufficient ground space on the men to set up their tents and they finally, we believe, got to an island on the mouth of this canyon and they were able to stop there for the night. so we always joke that yes, he came to the gates of the mountain and it was a dark and gloomy aspect that he saw. but if you are here today, it's a beautiful place, it's gorgeous. so once again, there goes all the game and we have to rely on our native american friends who help us find the meat and the trail and that is what the shoshone tribe and another tribe

were very instrumental in doing, if helping him. and this brings present-day sacajawea into play, where a lot of the tribes live and she had been a shoshone girl and brought in was either traded or bought by a man and she was married to a french trapper when lewis and clark came through. they were looking for translators and people to interpret, they look to looked at him and they looked at her as also equal, as they traveled up the river. she delivered her son, jean baptiste, and i think he was like three months old when they started out and she carried him on her back away. >> a lot of people, especially

when it comes to having this young native american indian woman with them, they are unfamiliar with the fact that a a lot of times in american history is, we condense things down to their simplest element and a lot of people think, well, she is the one that pointed the way and brought these white guys. well, what happened as she was actually along for the journey and just by her sheer presence, the other indian tribes would see her and the baby and say that this is really not a war party committees people are not coming here to start fights. so she was kind of a token of peace by her presence and then, there was a place where she identified a path that other people use and she was able to say that this is the way we went. and he calls her his pilot at that point. so she recognized landforms and was able to say that i recognize this and we are in the land of

my homeland and their other places by beaver had rock. so i like to say that her intelligence to the expedition was based upon the fact that she pay close attention when they were sitting on the campfire with her people and they would be talking about we are going where the bison are now and we go by this route looks like a beaver's head and she could have really been almost a cartographer in their own way because you remember the stories and she would travel seasonally, whether it was time to hunt bison were corn picking time, so they moved around according to where their food source would be and then when she got there, that was another lesson for her because they stayed put and they were agrarian to an farmers and the women raised the crops, so she knew a lot about plants from them. so her the worthiness is a lot more complicated than people really think.

misconceptions from lewis and clark are that they were finally the whole time and they always got along and that they were brothers in arms and they were always united. but i think that there were times when lewis really tested the friendship of clark because he was kind of the more moody one and clark was more of the glue that held the expedition together and oftentimes lewis would be on the short gathering specimens walking with his dog and hunting and clark was with the men on the vote with the day-to-day orders and keeping them in proper form and on those kinds of things and these guys were really working hard and also sacajawea was working really hard. all of these votes, basically the whole enlightenment of the river to find the northwest passage and they were trying to do a job that one of the most brilliant leaders in our history had given them and hand-picked,

basically, so they really didn't want to let anyone down and i think that that added to their cohesiveness and there was no -- there was maybe one guy who left the expedition and went awol. but the rest of them were relying on each other and they believe that if they remained a core unit that they would come home fine and they would get that land-grant and be able to tell all these great stories in the important role that lewis and clark played in u.s. history is that they came out here and they told jefferson and they were the ones who took the notes and gathered the specimens and tried to keep a list of the languages in the vocabularies of the native americans. they were citizen scientists sent out to get an account of everything that they saw and some things like the bison they couldn't even count because they were so many of them. but they wanted to come back as

a report to jefferson so that he could say here is what we are going to encounter as our generation fills up canvas. here is what is out there. and they were the ones that brought it back. they brought it back and told jefferson that yes, that purchase was worth it. >> booktv took a trip to explore the hill literary culture of montana's capital city. we sat down during our visit with nicholas vrooman in his book is "the whole country was.one robe: the little shell tribes of america." >> the little shell tribe is a fascinating group of people here in montana. actually it is a name that has come into formal use only in the

1970s as part of the way that this tribe deals with the federal government and there are a group of chippewa indians as the base, but they are really a poly ethnic group representing what was occurring on the northern plains in the 17th and 18th and 19th century as europeans came in on the east coast and move their way west. they relocated and dislocated confederated and became part of this. so the group really is more complex than the name suggests. the upper missouri country on the side of the divide that we are on right here, first time

the federal government negotiated with the people who are living here was in 1855 is part of the isaac stephenson treaties to come to terms with who was aware so that the united states could ensure safe passage for the northern route of the railroad coming through, all the way from chicago to minneapolis to puget sound, seattle. so there was a treaty in 1855 and not really was not about land, although the government afterwards had used that information to say who was where. the people who are the ancestral people were party to that gathering and rather than the negotiation, there really wasn't a negotiation in rights, but it

was more the native people telling the federal government that we are here, they are over there, this is disputed land and the government got a sense that this is where the flatheads are, the shoshone are down south and people got a chance to say that this is our territory and the head chief by the name of broken arms find it as a witness of sorts. but they were not part in the eyes of the federal government, at least in subsequent years in interpreting what this treaty was about. they were not a party to the treaty. and that is because the treaty was really about all of the lands south of missouri river and most of the chippewa were

those of the mixed heritage, they were north of the missouri river at that point. what was supposed to occur was another treaty was supposed to take place and that decree would be treated in this way and all the lands north of the missouri river up to the canadian border, that those plans would be considered along with this and that would be assessed. but the problem was the civil war occurred before that treaty could take place in and after the civil war, the united states basically had it with the indians. they really didn't bother with any more treaties. so the confederacy, sometimes

called the native plaque, that alliance of the original peoples were never really dealt with and it just sort of was like -- they were left to be ignored. the united states went right in to defining the border and so by defining this, that is when these boundary commissions went along the 49th parallel and put them in and put the markers on them. this is how a nation defines itself and has to control its borders. so the people living in the country were these ancestral people and that's poly ethnic group of people and all the people who were living there and this group of people because the blackfeet were on the reservation and they were on the reservation and the shoshone were down in wyoming and

everyone else is on a reservation and there is this poly ethnic group of people and so they had to be ethnically cleansed from the territory, and that is basically from the early 1870s and there were a couple of examples in 1868 after the civil war. but they really started in earnest in the early 1870s, all the way to 1896, there was an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of this group of people from this region. the modern group of people had talent. he had fully developed towns with blacksmith shops and schools and churches and people lived and lodges or canvas tents

and there was a mixture between the townspeople and the buffalo hunting people and they would maintain their wintering grounds. but what we need to talk about is how there was a modern original society here in troops would come right in and they would build up next what we call have her, montana and this indian fort was built specifically to clear indians from the border and most montanans are really unaware that there was his active campaign by the u.s. military supported by the political establishment to ride in and burn these villages to the ground and with troops, driving

them over the border were driving them in dispersal so they were not a cohesive community. these folks have come back and build their bridges up again and troops would come back and try them out and it was really a great hardship. after the buffalo went away, then why? word of the people have to go? they were not able to sustain themselves in their own communities and so they moved to wherever there was resources for them. that means either working and trying to get work on the new cattle ranches or developing at that point, and some than that and many along the highlight of montana, all the way to the north dakota border from here,

many of the small towns had on clay populations of little shell tribe people to this day who got work on local branches and local work and stuff like that. there were only so many of those kinds of jobs and they were still living in original band societies and the cohesiveness of those family relationships, they just like knew nothing else. but they had to disperse because large populations could have lived together. there were no resources for that. so the family bands would go to places like this right over here or missoula or billings or great falls and they would live on the outskirts of these newly formed anglo-american communities and they would pitch a lodges and 10

next to the dumps and slaughterhouses. those are the resources that they had. these new communities started realizing, who are these vagabond and poverty-stricken indians and what are they doing on the edges of our town and was in the land clear in what is the problem here. who are these people? well, in 1896, little do most americans know -- on the other hand, most americans do know about the chinese exclusion act and what happened with oriental peoples in the american racism that occurred at the end of the 19th century. and by purchasing this land,

they were referred to and decree was part of the northern plains tribe during the 19th century and was the main language of this poly ethnic group of people that they spoke, along with multiple other languages. but the thing was is that they were considered to be canadian indians, although they had been here undocumented since the 1600s and we had time accounts of it in montana. so the congress passes his deportation act, which was kind of a last hurrah for the u.s. army and are part our part of the world here of the american west, where it was part of the

first five-star general in world war i, as includes a young lieutenant and these are all buffalo soldier troops and african-american troops that this one american lieutenant on his first assignment was waiting to go around montana and literally round up, a human round up of all of the half breeds, garbage can indians, from have her come in under great falls, down to missoula and back across the divide and to augusta and rounded up and drove in a human cattle drive to great falls and shifted to

canada and alberta north of the border. and drop them off. then they forced march them on the border on foot. but most of the folks came back in the family came back across the border. they ended up back here at the dump in the same cycle because they had no other options. that went on until 1916 in the outrage about indians not being on reservations certainly continued. but the fear of the indians was gone by 19141915, wounded knee had happened and all the sudden we are in a progressive era in

american history and there is a new compassion for the unfortunate and they are the threat that they were in the 19th century, even in the 1890s and all of a sudden there is a different case on how to deal with these unwanted and displaced people living on the margins of these white communities. and this time around, what was created for was no longer necessary and it had been decommissioned with this military reservation i was sitting there and the idea came around to create a new reservation to take care of these people. so in 1916, the reservation was created and them being one of the numerous banshees that comprise a large group of

landless indians as we call them here in montana. but the problem was -- that was good, it was good. but the problem was there was not enough resources to take care of all of the displaced people unaccounted for through the treaties in the 19th century. so 570 families show up in box elder, the reservation, and are taken in. and they are taking in twice as many at least if not three times as many people that were so left out of the settling and those people left out of the settling in 1916 of who we today call the

chippewa indians of montana. so we have today is a group of people that are directly related to the integrated history of the northern plains. but a cross between miscommunication and misunderstanding and negligence, that had been left out of the settling and there's another one, there's just not enough money. in certain points of history with the u.s. government dealing with little shell tribe, up until world war ii they recognize their responsibility to deal with these landless indians of montana. the only reason that they couldn't deal with them, and they understood this in the

reservation was created, but they didn't have enough money and congress would not allocate the indian affairs enough money to purchase more land. that way that more people could settle there. so really came down to congress and the union department said it's not our fault, we would love to give you a place to live, but congress will not give us the money and we cannot lobby congress. so it's one of these catch-22 situations down the line for the indian department cannot lobby the federal government, even though they understand that is what is necessary and they really don't understand the situation and their projects and priorities are different. it goes along and the people and the just -- everybody got used to the landless indians living in their enclaves in the margins

of montana communities and living in poverty. the people themselves got used to living in poverty as well and it became a whole new thing. if you just let it go, if you ignored it, basically wasn't there. and that is part of the current situation and what we never talk about in this country is the foundational issue in the creation of the american nation and the creation of people, the people of the land. and the genocide that occurred in that event and that ongoing event that actually remains a current issue. but this is part of one of the stories because it happened right on our border.

and it shows the ethnic cleansing that went in and then it's how we deal with racism and this has to do with a great many groups of people. throughout the primary sources, many times along the way, these are not indians but children, and that was a way that the government didn't have to deal with the problem because they weren't indians. so this is one of those stories and by reading the book, can see that here is a complex story, but by moving through it, you dive in and if you can stay with it to the end, you come out the other side and there is a path through the complexity that does make sense. and you come to know that

america and all of its beauty and its flaws, there are still places where we need to revise our society and our national identity. >> booktv took a trip to explore the history and literary culture of montana capital city. most recent stop assisted by her cable partner. >> we are standing here near the launch state prison and it was in use from 1871 until 1979. and it was originally a federal penitentiary that was established in 1871 is how federal prisoners -- not only federal prisoners, but also territorial prisoners who were

convicted in district court, it was in use as a federal penitentiary until 1889, at which time the administration talked about the new state of montana and there is unfortunately no money and so two guys formed a partnership and proposed that they operate the state facility is a private enterprise and their officer was taken up and it operated as a private business until 1909 when the state oversaw the administration. frank became a very well-known wharton and he was very controversial as a figure and he did some good things at the prison, but he also did some things that were maybe a little bit questionable as well. his main focus to put men to

work, and this is an idea that he had to convince the state of the because there was no money to build a facility, the only thing that existed in 1889 was the old federal penitentiary building, which is really nothing more than a brick shelf, certainly no heating or lighting or facilities of any kind. it was really pretty much a terrible place to house prisoners. so the first thing that he undertook was convincing state that he could use the convicts as laborers. hired a man to teach the prisoners how to construct things in stone in the first

thing that they undertook with the permission of the state was the construction of a wall around the facility. so there was nothing but this that had been built in 1875 in the prison was notorious for escapees and it was very important to create this is a a massive wall that stands today was part of it. so it was built with a donation by the son of a proper king in 1919, but it's interesting because comley and clark have kind of a symbiotic relationship were commonly used as prisoners to work with clark on his branches and he had amassed a lot of property in exchange for using the free labor, clark and

dowd prison with a library and paid for the instruments equipped the men. he also then later donated the theater and the theater was built in 1919 and it was, again, it was designed by the man who never drew a plan that built it from out of his head. it was equipped with a belkin he and the interesting thing about this is that it was the first theater built in the united states within the confines of the prison facility and it was not only for the benefit of the men, but also for the benefit of the community.

the matinees were for the men to attend and evening performances were open to the community and they showed movies here and they also showed they had traveling troops that came for theatrical productions and it was a state-of-the-art theater and exceeded about 1000 people, and so it's very interesting that it was this prison facility and also used by the community and this was used as a reward for the men and the individual is removed from office in 1921 when joseph dixon became governor and she was actually tried in court for the misappropriation of state funds, but he was found not guilty. but the theater continued to be used as a reward for the men. and one thing i learned about

populations is that sometimes the men destroy the things that are most useful to them and most productive to them. the prison was burned by an arsonist in about 1974 and the interior reflects that burned-out shell as well. and unfortunately the men destroy the ron ward that they had. ..

. you can see the damage. the other was far wide of its market hit over the calgary into the neighborhood beyond. fortunately no one was killed. it made national news and people who were employed here were locked into the building, in the facility for three days, people outside the walls had loved ones working here, were terrified and had no idea what was going on until the standoff was over and it ended when the 2 guys in the tower committed suicide:killed the other. looking at the prison, across the yard all the way across to this is doorway is where the women's facility was built in 1908. until 1908 the women were housed

in the facility with the men in various buildings. there was no female staff. no matron's until finally this facility was built. the state then hired a macon to take care of the women prisoners. there were never very many women here. no more than half a dozen and after 1959, after the riot this facility was converted to a maximum security for the worst of the worst criminals that warehouse in the prison and the women were moved out of the men's facility for the very first time. you can only imagine how horrible it must have been for the women because women were housed within the courtyard where the men are. they couldn't even take fresh air because they could have no

contact with the male prisoners and there was no way for them to participate in any of the work opportunities in those early years. they could do nothing but sit in a place where they were incarcerated and contemplate their crimes, i guess so the women who were moved into this facility, this was bad enough that certainly better than being housed in a facility with the men. even to get here they had to come through the men's facility so it was really a prison never meant for women. until this particular building was built. the prison clothes in 1979. and new prison was built in paul county and the prisoners were moved to the new facility in 1979. there were 270 prisoners left in the last years.

the prison was unfortunately of very important facility because they, before the federal penitentiary was built here in territorial days it was very expensive to send a prisoner out of the territory so it really made sense to have a facility where they could incarcerate people but also i think it is a social commentary that there were bad guys here as well as good guys and we had to have a place to house those folks. today this is a museum where you can coming you can see the remnants of the territorial penitentiary, you can see the building sequence and really learn quite a lot about montana's development in. >> hear from jim robbins next from booktv's recent visit to helena, montana with the help of

our local killed partner charter. he is the author of the man who planted trees about david miller, a man who made it a mission to try to clone the oldest trees on the planet. >> a fellow that i met in 2001. i wrote a story about his groove called the champion tree project, i wrote a piece for the new york times science section about his efforts to clone the largest trees in the world to protect the genetic so if he were to clone a redwood tree he would take the branch and make copies of its cloning these copies. doesn't mean tissue cloning necessarily or certain kinds of clothing, just means making copies so you take a branch and grow it and have multiple exact genetic duplicates of that scream and the plan was to take

those copies and plant them around the world to protect the genetics in case something happened to the parent tree. he started cloning these in the mid 1990s, 1995-96 and was working with his two sons who would go out and borrow a pickup truck from his dad and up fruiterer, they were shade tree farmers in michigan and they would ask landowner's permission to cut from the tree and bring those cuttings back and grow copies of them. when he hearst had this vision, that that is how he described it, he said he had a near-death experience in 1980. had serious medical problems and was taken to the hospital and brought home and he said he died on his bed. he woke up one morning at 3:00 in the morning and was told to outline a project to protect the trees, the largest 3 of every species and these trees were going to be important, these

were the survivors and when climate change really gets going these survivors will be the ones to make it through an come out of the other side because they spent 2,000 or 3,000 years on the planet and know how to survive. they bring these cuttings the size of a pencil and face creep bark off of the bottom and are still alive and route them in the soil medium and they get routes on them so they take them and grow them until their four or five feet tall or taller. then they planned those in different places around the world. there are some planted in michigan, as they grow them in the greenhouse, then take them and plant them from there. some are planted around michigan and some in other places around the world. the only new forest he has planted is the five acre one

where they grow sequoias we planted up there. reaction at the time was i wonder what this is about. some people said we don't really need to do this in fact we probably can't do it because these are old trees and i wouldn't worry too much about it and other people said this is a good idea. we should have copies of these trees, why not? if something happens and they die off we will have the genetics to study and what did happen not long after i wrote the story was the wide oak in maryland which was 400 years, giant oak tree, had been there for many generations and it rolled over and died. he had already cloned this tree so they had copies and they replanted it on the site of the original one and other places. in a story for the new york times, the oldest trees in the

world, 4 to 5,000 years old and they are dying and they're all going to die or most of them, in california, utah, nevada, very high elevation. they have survived that long because they have gone to places where it is cold and inhospitable. is not cold and inhospitable there any more. so disease can survive and there is invasive or exotic species from other countries, diseases mostly and insects and they came together in a perfect storm and they're killing all of them and so this is what climate change does. it does things that are unpredictable and it changes the soil, changes the insects, changes the diseases and all those things together are wreaking havoc on trees and then all the things we have done to trees by fragmenting forests, and the cutting down the biggest specimens for generations and generations leaving with the

rounds to perpetuate themselves, so we really destroyed a lot of the genetics on our own and here comes climate change and acid rain which was a big thing in the 70s and diseases and so on. it is of death of a thousand cuts for a lot of these trees a lot of what he said about trees and what is going to happen is coming to pass. they covered 90% of the continent which was here when the europeans came and it is 95% gone. the trees that were here and learned to survive are gone and a lot of trees now are not that old, 50, 60 years at the most except for the old trees and a few other places. most of the old world is gone, and the thing is they have the genetics of survivors, something called at the genetics. as a tree gets older it learns from those things, those

problems, diseases and insects and stores memory of those assaults, so the next time around it does better. it can resist those insects, it learns how to resist disease and it can pass those resistances to trees around which is an unusual nature of things. so that is why it is important to protect what is left india's cloning the largest and oldest 3 of every species. people do pay attention to what has happened to forests and trees especially as trees die or all-around world and that is what we are seeing. long list of trees are disappearing. they don't pay as much attention as they should because again, one of the themes of the book is how little we know about trees and how important they really are. much more important than we think and the problem is not much research has been done on trees and the role they play, there particularly important as things get warmer and as climate

change gets worse. the will be important in cities, they can reduce the temperature in cities there mostly asphalt and concrete by 10 degrees. they filter out republicans, studies show fewer admittances to emergency rooms for as low where you have a more robust tree canopy in urban areas and filter water, clean up toxic waste sites, filter systems are excellent, wildlife habitat, birds eat insects and other things. a lot of ecological services come from trees. what was his reaction to the book? there are parts of it that he didn't like but he also knows he lived larger-than-life kind of life. and so he told me the stories that are in it and those are things that came from him. i heard from some in his family who thought i wish i hadn't put

that in the by and large he likes it, he has bought dozens of copies to hand out to help his project and support his work and there are some things he may be less than absolutely proud of, he quit drinking and he has been doing this project and redeeming himself and is very happy about that and proud of that fact so in the end that is what the book is about. it is about redemption and this is one way one person found a way to redeem himself and that is the hopeful message in the book and it is important to save this is a book about hope. as much as we need trees we need hope and planting a tree is planting hope. it is hope for other generations and also something people can do that makes them feel good about themselves and something positive. >> for more information on

booktv's recent visit to helena, montana and many other cities visited by local content vehicles go to c-span.org/localcontent. you are watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate, weeknights watch key public policy events and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules that are website enjoying in the conversation on social media sites. >> as i see if it wasn't. there has been a presumption that somehow if we confined just the right leader, especially in the military, he will be able to turn around, that is an erroneous conclusion. some times you have to combat a narrative with a narrative.

if the narrative is an islamic country as a special place in the world and therefore the global rules don't apply to us, nuclear-weapons, we told the americans we are not making nukes, and kept getting buried but in the end visa the nukes we said we are not making, maybe we did something, at least if nothing else we broke a promise. that can only be combated by in narrative but the view of developing a personal relationship with top ranking on the other side, it is not new, and and marilyn monroe was not the first to defend the head of the pakistani army and another admiral who was chair of the joint chiefs who is julie mentioned in my book, and president eisenhower. and again the same phenomenon,

meeting with the pakistani leader and building relations and admiral mullen in all sincerity worked very hard, 26 meetings, a lot of meetings. and he called pakistani army chief, who was really committed to eliminating terrorism and he just wanted to find the tipping point where they decided to eliminate terrorists and the desire to maintain military balance with india, he could find a tipping point where instead of india, pakistan's military would focus more on terrorism. >> you can watch this and other programs online on booktv.org. this fall, booktv is marking our fifteenth anniversary and c-span2 by looking back at the notable authors, books and news

from the world of publishing, harrison headlines from 2007. that he was the 52 anniversary of the publication of "atlas shrugged," a novel that touches on themes of individualism and capitalism. also in 2007 amazon release the kindle e. reeder. booktv interview the director of product management, vice president of king about the first-generation the reader. >> amazon kindle the wireless reading device built entirely by amazon.com. newspapers, magazines and books. today we have over 125,000 books available and the key is it is wireless which means you can think of a book, download it immediately and within 60 seconds you can begin reading it wherever you are. the entire book. >> what does that cost? >> most books are $9.99 or less, some are less, is always less than a print book.

>> you have 125,000 titles on amazon kindle. >> we had 90,000 last november so we have been able to add enough to get 125,000 and working closely with publishers who are supporting this very strongly. >> some of the authors who passed away in 2007 included syndicated columnist and author molly ivins, kurt vonnegut, author of slaughterhouse 5, a pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author david silver stand and arthur schlesinger jr.. those are some of the headlines from the publishing world in 2007. keep watching the tv as we look at 15 years on c-span2. >> the c-span bus is parked in the mall, jeff chu has written "does jesus really love me?: a gay christian's pilgrimage in search of god in america".

jeff chu, if you would, start by giving us a little bit of your upbringing and your religious history. >> guest: i am the grandson of a baptist preacher, the nephew of two other baptist preachers and my family has always been devout evangelical. we did not always go to baptist churches but i grew up steeped in deep in evangelical culture, efforts in california and when i went to high school at a christian school in miami, fla.. >> host: what was your reaction when your family if you cannot as a? >> aeronautics cited about it. my mother cried and cried and cried. was an extremely difficult period in our relationship. i don't think all my relatives know yet. it is a funny thing in a chinese family the way information is passed around. you have leaders of culture, the chinese layer, the christian later, between the two there is sufficient shame that my parents

haven't exactly broadcasted to everyone. >> host: you have written a book about whether jesus loves you. what is your christianity today? >> guest: and an elder at a church called church first. like that of many people my face goes through peaks and valleys, there are ups and downs, good days and bad diet days. is not a consistent thing. it is a struggle, something you worked on. you look for god wherever you can find evidence of god, you try to hang on to face in those hard times and rejoice when you find high points. it with me they tend to be in nature, they pull me closer to something divine. >> host: i you a question today? >> sometimes i am troubled by the basics of the language. when we say evangelical what do

we mean? when we say conservative what do we mean? it is hard but christian is the right term. i followed jesus as best i can. >> in your travels and in your search, what did you find across america when it comes to established religion, established christian religion and band whether or not that is acceptable? >> if you look at american christianity today you find reactions that cross the entire spectrum, open hostility, you find great silent discomfort, you find embrace. it really depends on where you look. the thing about all of this is most of these people are trying their best to do what they think is right and the motive does matter when we are looking at the situation. most people are trying to be loving even if it doesn't always feel like love or a lookalike love to some of the rest of us. >> host: give an example.

wikipedia >> guest: vote worst would be the westborough baptist church. when i went there i very much wanted to dislike the church. they are so angry. it seems they are so hateful and yet they tried to explain to me that what they are doing is out of love because they believe they have been instructed to love their neighbor. how can you love your neighbor more than to tell them that they are going to hell but they have a chance to turn around. they believe what they're doing is a loving thing. that is really hard for the rest of us to accept and i don't expect everybody to accept that without skepticism but i think we have to take a moment to consider where they say they are coming from. >> host: did you interview members of the celts family? >> i spent four days in topeka having dinner with them, talking

to them, worship in with them in church, going on protests with them because i wanted to understand what life was like in a that congregation. they were very open with me and i was open with them as much as they wanted to know. it is pretty obvious on social media that i am gay. i didn't tell them straight out. they never asked. i assumed that they knew but it was never an issue. it never really came up and i realized it didn't matter because they believe everyone is another part of their church and going to hell anyway so what does it matter if i am gay, i am going to hell for some reason. >> host: what did you find in the mainstream christian religions? >> guest: a lot of diversity. much of mainline christianity has moved in a more progressive direction and more inclusive direction but as you can see from the presbyterians pickering go for what to do about their denomination other denominations

struggling with this issue there is no one set of opinions. the general trend of course as with broader society is the church is moving in a more liberal direction but that won't happen without fights. sites within the family, fights with their denomination. >> host: did you visit with the catholic church as well? >> i did not spend a lot of time focusing on the catholic church. here is what happened. as a reporter i can only write about the stories of people who are willing to talk to me and i spent a lot of time trying to find the gay increased to was willing to open a. the price of that because i was never able to find one was catholics are underrepresented in my book. the really funny thing about this is my husband is catholic and i never thought to ask him for his story until after the book went to press so that was kind of a fail on my part.

>> host: jeff chu there is a nomination called metropolitan community church, the so-called gay church. did you visit with them and what did you find? >> guest: at visited two, one in san francisco and one in las vegas. the beautiful thing is it is a spiritual home for a lot of people who want still to hang on to church but don't feel comfortable in regular churches. it was founded by a guy who grew up pentecostal, became a preacher and needed some kind of environment like that himself so it has been a gift for an immense number of christians. it wasn't really the community that i felt was for me. i don't want to go to church that is just give people. i want the church that reflects my community and my church in brooklyn is old and young, gay and straight, black, white,

asian, hispanic. we are a cross section of brooklyn and my neighborhood of brooklyn specifically, probably with an overrepresented population of journalists but that is the kind of church home i was looking for. i found it, strong christians are warm welcome, there's something beautiful in the way they served communion with a embrace the person to whom they are serving communion. so i really enjoyed it. i was critical of some elements of that but tried to be honest as a reporter and as fair as i could be with what i found. >> host: what is your day job? >> guest: i am an editor and religion writer for beacon which is a new startup that seeks to try in new model in journalism. >> host: the answer is unquestioned on the comparable, does jesus really love me, what is the answer?

>> host: >> guest: everyone has a different image of jesus cobbled together from things you learned as a kid, things you read in the newspaper, that instinct, and no person has the same view of jesus, of sexual alley, it is so diverse. fun to explore but also very difficult because the issue is so emotionally charged. >> host: is your answer for years of? >> guest: mensa most days is my jesus does love me and my guide is beginning to end of the mistakes i make. >> host: on other days? >> guest: on other days i try to look forward to the day after. >> host: jeff -- jeff chu is author of "does jesus really love me?: a gay christian's pilgrimage in search of god in america". doesjesusreallyloveme.com is a website. thanks for spending time with

us. >> this event was part of the 2015 national book festival in washington d.c.. for more information visit l o c.gov/book festival. >> january 1963 the communists did something they hadn't done before. they stayed and they fought. as a result five american copters were shot down, three americans were killed. kennedy sees as the front page of the times and says what is going on here? i thought we were winning this war. over the course of the next several months, beginning in december through january into february, there will be very in reports from white house officials, state department officials and military officials giving contradictory evidence about the state of the military campaign in south vietnam. >> the 52 anniversary of president kennedy's assassination. sunday, discussion about his

oval office recordings and fought on vietnam. at 7:30 eastern, part of american history tv this weekend on c-span2. >> october last year malala yousafzai who live in northern pakistan was shot in the head and the neck by taliban gunman who tried to assassinate her for being an outspoken supporter of education for girls. she was 15 years old. during this next event hosted by politics and prose bookstore this -- malala yousafzai was interviewed by her father by michele martin of npr. this is about an hour. a [applause]