this is the presence of the united states in 1887, in his state of the union address. so that power has been put on steroids by the supreme court in the way that i think it's unconstitutional. it's a violation of article iii section two of the constitution, among other things. and the only way that i know of that we can really serve as a dig at august to amend the constitution to say corporations are not people and money is not speech. so thank you for showing up, and -- [applause] beer, wine and dinner over in the other room. [cheers and applause]

>> you are watching booktv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. spent welcome to boeing in washington on booktv. located on the puget sound uprising 20 miles south of the canadian border, it is know for its rich airtime history and is the largest city in the county. >> an american often late 19t 19th, early as 20 center. she was the reason everyone knew what the pacific northwest was like at the time but it was a very remote area and al hankinson was the one who translated the region for the world really. >> people read all kinds of books and telling them. i think the biggest difference between here and some big city is that i think in places perhaps like ally in new york people some of the old an obligation to read certain books so they can talk about them at cocktail parties. i think the kind of books people talk about at cocktail parties here are not those things that

are extremely popular. there's something unusual. >> would help of our comcast cable partners, for the next one i will explore the literary life of the area beginning with ice and bookbinding and letterpress. >> booktv's most recent stop on our cities tour was bellingham, washington. we visited the area with the help of our local cable partner, comcast, to bring you some of the cities rich literary culture and history. weser with a visit to buy some bookbinding and letterpress where co-owner kevin nelson explained the operations of his 19th century letterpress. >> [background sounds]

>> my name is kevin nelson, and we are in bellingham, washington, at bison bookbinding and letterpress, our business that we run from her home. we been in business for nine years. resort in 2004. my wife is an artist, and she went to the college of art and craft a steady bookbinding and letterpress printing. when she got out she's saw that there was no letterpress shops in bellingham, and it was the perfect opportunity to open one and take over the world. she does the design work on the computer, and then we have a piece of filmmaking the design and then we used photopolymer plates to do our printing. primarily we used heidelberg windmills which is a letterpress that sounded most commercial print shops. of the use of or die cutting

stamping, scoring cards, but we use it for printing. not that many people in modern times used heidelberg's for printing. because they are slower, a lot of print shops are using these 40-foot long, six tower presses which can send tens of thousands of prints in an hour. this is more for meticulous handiwork doing artistic sort of printing. we used heidelberg for everything. we print all of her cards, all of our book covers, most of our jobs. this press is really the heart of our business. we have a number of other letter number of other letterpress is and they'll come in handy. they have different sizes, some are really large the we can do large-format printing but they are handcranked prices, much slower. if we're doing a short run, they are perfect for that. this press right here is an old vendor could.

they only made 2000 of this particular model so we feel very fortunate that we got one. this wa was in 1947, originally owned by sunset magazine. this is a very simple operation. you just press this foot pedal down here, and lift up these grippers which grab the paper. and then run it through the press, take the paper off, bring it back. right now it's set up to diecut. so diecutting is taking a piece of flat paper and turning it into an object. on the heidelberg we have what's called a top sheet, which is a piece of paper that has a very specific size and full lines that we use to print against. and we make those here by taking a piece of flat paper, running it through this die, and then

pop it out of here. easier to pop out when you pop out a whole stack it once. put these fold lines in here, and then you use these on the heidelberg. very important piece for that, that press. [background sounds] >> now i will take the piece of

paper that i just diecut and put it into the heidelberg. lock it in with these bars. now it's ready to print. we got this heidelberg from a lovely couple in surrey d.c. who spent a lifetime printing in stamping. they took immaculate care of it. it's just about the nicest version of this press that i've ever seen anywhere, and i've seen a lot of these in print shops. this one still has the original shine to the paint. so it's, i always try my best to keep it in the best shape i can, because we feel like we are stewards of these presses. they outlive tables lifetimes,

so in the time that you have it, it's your responsibility to keep it in great shape so it can get passed on to the next generation. this is, before the heidelberg existed there was no letterpress. they started building these, in fact the original one was built by a guy named gordon, and he had a dream. he said that ben franklin came to him in his dreams and told him how to construct a press. that is basically what a start working on and cratered and it revolutionized the printing industry, before this type of breast existed, all letterpress is were just printing one print per minute where they were the kind you had a big wooden handle that you pull on and they would create one immigration and it was a long press to get paper in and out of that. this press changed everything overnight.

some of you would from one impression a minute to 12 or 16 or 20 prints a minute. this one is from 1918. as the original motor. still runs great. we use it for most jobs when they are done, they will either get diecut or scored on this press. and after 3000 pounds, it really is overkill for what it needs to do. it was built to last forever. some of the presses i've had to take apart and clean and figure out, but people asking what do you do when these things break? the short answer is that they never break. there's a reason why they are still being used 100 years later. because they just run so efficiently. just keep them lubricated and

clean, they will just run seemingly indefinitely. so it's really fun to work with a printing press. only imagine how many jobs we've done over the 100 plus year life. i think is when you're buying something that's made with so much attention, it just has more presence like if you're sending a card to someone that hasn't been mass-produced that has been handled by an individual, and i would hope that it would have more meaning for the person on the receiving end. that it's made with love. it's interesting, as the world becomes more virtual, i think that there is a swing in the other direction, balancing out the bit where people want to have some sort of tangible connection. everyone loves getting a letter in the mail. no one ever says i'll never forget that e-mail that i

received the people will hang onto letters. i know i hung onto every piece of correspondence i've ever gotten in my life. it's just one of those records of your life back, when the power goes out you don't have access to your e-mail, or if your battery is dead you can't read your phone messages, but you can always light a candle and read letters, or write a letter. so i think there's still going to be a place in the future for people to want to write letters and feel that deep connection. >> during our visit to bellingham, washington, booktv visited with western washington university professor laura laffrado to discuss the life of the late author and poet ella higginson who reside in bellingham and spent much of her writing in the pacific northwe northwest. >> i know a place where the sun is like gold and cherry blossoms

burst with snow, and down underneath is the loveliest note with a four leaf clover school. one leaf is for hope and one for faith and one is for love, you know, and god put another in for luck. if you search you will find what they grow. but you must have hope and you must have faith. you must love and be strong, and so if you wait, you will find a place where the four leaf clover screw. this is ella higginson's column four leaf clover. it was published in 1890 and it was an immediate hit. it was popular all over the place. it remained high growth throughout her lifetime. it is the only work of hers today that you can readily access. ella higginson was an american author in the late-night teens, early '20s century in the united states. she was celebrated nationally and internationally for her fiction and her poetry, nonfiction, a couple

screenplays. she was the reason everyone knew what the pacific northwest was like at a time. it was a very remote area, and ella higginson was the one who translated the reason -- the region for the world. she was born in kansas public in 1862, and as a child she moved to oregon with her family which is where she grew up. in early '20s she got married and she and her husband moved north to bellingham, washington, where she spent the next 52 years of her life until her death, in which he very quickly established a national literary reputation. she had been born in kansas, she considered herself to be pacific northwest are through and through. in one of her poems called yet am i not for pity, which she had engraved on her burial monument, in that poem the poem has two parts and the first part she talks about how she would never go to europe. shall never see all these statues and paintings. she'll never see wrong or

venice. but in the second part of the poems she talks about the pacific northwest and says wes things in europe are wonderful, but you may, things in the pacific northwest our god made. she writes an essay entitled i am a moth act to my very fingertips. ella higginson was very famous in the pacific northwest because this was a very, the pacific northwest was a very under popular region at the time and in addition to being underpopulated, indent and a population there many more men than there were women. they were almost no office, no publishing centers. ella higginson was really out in the field by herself. the pacific northwest was extremely proud of her because she was a great ella higginson. she brought international attention to the pacific northwest. in the late 19th and early '20s centuries, the only way the rest of the world knew about the pacific northwest region and

its cultures was through the poetry and affliction of ella higginson. people outside new of the pacific northwest at the time was that it was beautiful, that it was considered to be extremely remote. even in 2013, it is the seattle seahawks allowed to travel for this and any nfl team. so the remoteness was considered be a place that was it difficult to get to answer difficult to live in because it was beautiful but very wild. so ella higginson and writing fiction and poetry about this place, fiction and poetry that became so popular introduce the people of the pacific northwest, the towns from any particular the women of the pacific northwest to the larger world. it's important to keep in mind that the pacific northwest was so underpopulated compared to the rest of the country at the end of the 19th century and that there were many, many more white men than there were white women. so for instance, in new england

after the civil war when so many young men are either dead am due to the war, or have gone west, many women do not have the opportunity to marry. there are many more white women in new england at the time than men. pacific northwest, a woman can marry the other that she wants to come there are so many men. so that really skews things in a certain way. never won the pacific northwest is underpopulated at the time. number two, the are many, many more men than there are women. number three, pretty crucially, the pacific northwest is much more inclined toward the political in franchise but of women than the rest of the country is. so women finally get the right to vote in the united states in 1920 with the passage of the 19th commitment to the constitution. women get the right to vote in washington state a full 10 years earlier in 1910. as a matter of fact, as early as 1854, there is a measure to give women the right to vote in the washington territory, and it failed by a single vote.

ella higginson is writing from a place that is underpopulated, that has many more white men and women, and that is inclined towards enfranchisement of women. what that means is that when you read ella higginson's writing, you see these fictional pacific northwest women who are very independent, who are very hard-working and who are very rural. many of them choose not to marry. many of them when they do marry, if they find themselves in a very restrictive or oppressive marriage, they choose to leave that marriage so the pacific northwest that she presents to the world is one that is extremely specific in terms of how it's women are presented and how those women are presented tells us a lot about what the culture was like at that time. whawhat you want to configure tm about the pacific northwest is that it was not at all a lost to spend your life in what was used as such a remote place. indeed, they could be considered

to be a blessing to be in such a widely beautiful place. you would not have a urban areas. you're not able to go to the opera all the time. however, what you would be able to do is live in this rest achingly beautiful place, which for her was very spiritual. so she was very, very careful to prevent the pacific northwest to the large world as a place where it was a privilege, what was a privilege to live and also a place that in its privilege was an integral part of the united states, not something that should be pushed off to the side and sort of glossed over. it was a real problem for riders who are not in the pacific nortt where the printers were. it was a real problem for riders, particularly women writers to have access to publication methods. ella higginson happened to be born at the right time. at the end of the 19th century in the united states, there is an explosion in periodical publication. the numbers are just staggering. as you get more and more

periodicals, more and more magazines, more and more literary journals, you have a need for more and more material. at the same time suddenly now that the civil war is over with, suddenly there is this big drive to get -- higginson, a woman who seemed be born to write, found herself at a point where when she said after writing to mrs. out of the kind of fighting they were looking for. ella higginson's impact on the air he was profound in her lifetime. in the early 20th century, well, let's see, in 1914 she has won a national price for her short story, the message of -- she won $2500 for the story which then and now is decent literary money. the panel that awarded the prize had former president theodore roosevelt on it. ella higginson was the one who translated the pacific northwest for the rest of the world. her impact was unique at the

time. however by the time she died in 1940, all her books were out of print. she was virtually forgotten outside of bellingham, and she has remained virtually unknown, virtually uncovered since then. a lot of women writers tended to be forgotten or neglected once he made the turn into the 20th century. women writers, some of whom had been so famous, when alice walker goes looking in 1975, she can hardly find out anything about her. mary e. wilkins to know if i would ever be forgotten was almost entirely forgotten. a little bit harder for ella higginson, because she had no children osha no children to protect the reputation or keep her books in print. she had no close family members who would have been able to do the same thing. she was very far from

northeastern publication centers, which meant that her papers will be archived here at the center for pacific northwest studies, which is wonderful that they are there, it still far away from the papers of other writers of her time. and so she disappeared from sight. some of those other women writers come back, and come back strongly with the rise of the feminist movement in the 1970s. that is not something that is happened yet with ella higginson, though of course i'm hoping to change that. since i started researching her, she published -- these are the numbers i have right now. i suspect there are more. she published over 100 short stories and over 300 poems. now that we are able to google so much in summary different ways, i been able to access a lot of the reviews of the time, many reviews that she herself probably never saw. a huge range of reviews all extremely positive, comparing her to other writers of the day or earlier writers such as jane austen, charles dickens, leo

tolstoy, emile zola. to the point where that's a prolific she was, surprise me. the amount of surprise me. the amount of reviews of her work surprise me. the very celebratory nature of those reviews surprise me, too. and even though intellectually and theoretically i know women writers are forgotten every single day, this blew my mind. it was just, she was so big and so important and she has disappeared pretty much without a trace. i think it's important, i think it's almost more important that people outside of washington state know about ella higginson been people within washington state. in terms of the diversity of american literature, you have people like william faulkner or mark twain who put certain regions of the united states on the literary map. that's what ella higginson did for the pacific northwest you're the only way people knew about the pacific northwest at the time was through her writing. as long as the writing isn't

recovered, a crucial piece of the diversity of american literature remains missing. so i think it's important in terms of state pride, i think it's important that people remember ella higginson. but in terms of national pride when you're talking american literature, you want the whole country represented. because if you don't have a whole country represented, you can make the mistake of thinking american literature is one monolithic voice. that's not what it is about. we want all the literary voices involved. so it is still a real pleasure to read ella higginson's work today because suddenly you see this remote frontier location come to life in this very dramatic way. >> on our recent visit to boeing in washington, booktv stop at village books to talk to the bookstore's owner, chuck robinson about bellingham's literary scene. >> i'm chuck robinson and we are at village books in bellingham. my wife and i opened the village

books in 1980 in june of 1980. been around almost 34 years. owning a bookstore in bellingham has been through the. we knew when we picked bellingham that it had a great connection to books already. one of the things we have checked out with a libra circulation your, it was amongst the highest per capita circulation in the country at that time. that was 34 years ago. i assume it is probably stay there as well. the connection with university, a lot of people having chosen bellingham as a place to live. i tell people all the time our commercial fishermen here, many of them are people who are going to college up here at the university and fish in the summertime and ended up. so before they go out on the boat they come and get a stack of books. it's a reading community. people read all kinds of books in bellingham i think. i think the biggest difference between here and some big cities

is that i think in places, perhaps like l.a. and new york, people sellafield an obligation to read certain books so they can talk about them at cocktail parties. i think the kind of books that people talk about at cocktail parties your are not those things that are extremely popular. they are something unusual. people tend to read all kinds of things. i think literature certainly. i would say not -- i was a very well-written books, both fiction and nonfiction. not necessarily what you would call high literature, but things that are very well-written. i think people here have very strong taste in that way. history and politics are very important and very popular. i think things about the northwest and the environment, things about outdoor living here, outdoor living is a big thing in bellingham. constantly rates as one of the

highest places for outdoor rec it -- recreation. that is reflected in what people read. read. northwest authors sales are very well. people are very interested in knowing what the people around them are writing, knowing people who live here in bellingham but all over the northwest. anybody in the northwest was written a book has a much better chance of selling here than some of the places i think. we, about a little over four years ago village books started, we had an espresso book machine that was on demand printing, printing machine, that we could print books here and print and bind them in a way that they looked very much like any book that would come off a major press. and so we did that for several reasons. we want to be able to help local people self publish their books. because we knew that there a lot of books that would never get major publication by the people

would have interest in locally. they didn't have to do a lot of internet and on-demand printing press and bind it. then we want to publish some books off our own here at the store, things that had real local interest and value right here in our community that we knew wouldn't have distribution or interest outside of the kennedy very far. so we launched into that and it was, we had a lot of success with it. we help a lot of people get their books into print. i think we have almost a dozen books of our own imprint that we call, check them out additions, check them out the mountains that are right outside bellingham. publishing in general is a very interesting piece of our entire business, and bookstores have been involved in publishing almost forever. it goes back to the old days of dickens and others in england when bookstores published books, and authors often were more

self-publish at that point. there's always been some bees of the business what has changed most recent is a technology that allowed that to happen. it was impossible until just a few years ago for that to happen inside of the bookstore. and now that's changed over time. it's a very interesting business. i think if you control on a local level, for instance, the books that we have published, all of those books have some financial success. they at least broke even, got better. major publishers would love to have a record like that. but i believe the latest thing i heard was major publishers are fortunate if they are profitable on a three out of every 10 books that they publish. but we have a very -- were very careful about what books we picked. we have a very targeted audience here, and so we weren't publishing for the masses and hoping marketing would reach them. we thought there was a built-in

interest. i think the important thing about bellingham is i think bellingham works really hard to build and maintain that sense of community. if there's an important message for people to live elsewhere, it's not necessarily you should move to bellingham, although we would welcome you here, i think the important message is the commute is an important, everything you can do whether it's from businesses or 1830, service groups or whatever, that's a really, really important thing. and it makes it a place that's a wonderful place to live. >> on our recent visit to boeing in washington, booktv talk to david christiansen, author of "the red umbrella: danish resistance and johna's escape from nazi occupation" about his sister's escape from nazi occupied denmark in 1943. ..

>> jonna and my mother, our father, my mother was orthodox jew and her family. my dad was pretty much an atheist, and he was viking, danish. and she lived between two worlds. my grandmother, my father's mother, owned a tavern and brothel in copenhagen, and she was making a lot of money off nazis, off the germans who were coming in there. they were spending a lot of money on food and booze. and it actually was pretty good

for the economy there initially. so people didn't really believe a lot of the early reports, and i think a lot of the world didn't understand how bad nazi germany was acting. and in 1943 they were starting to see some resistance, so jonna's life was pretty much kind of normal, and it was pretty happy in little denmark. all of a sudden, nazi germany started cracking down. tanks started coming in, planes started coming this be, and they took over. they disbanded the police force, they closed down jewish operations, stores, and things were being pretty bad here and restricted. and my dad even had some nazi friends in the tavern here which actually helped him work in the danish resistance later because there was a lot of bribery and things going on. germany had been there for several years, and they kind of got some danish friends and they were sympathetic to the cause. so that's what was going on in

denmark at the time. one thing that's unique about denmark during this whole time is i don't think people realize that denmark saved over 99% of the jews. they said if you're a jew -- we're danes. doesn't matter if your a gypsy -- if you're a gypsy, a jew, an atheist, a rot instant, doesn't matter. -- protestant, doesn't matter. they all helped each other, and they pulled together to save all the jews in that country. they thought what nazi germany was doing was unfair. jonna, my sister, so she's only 6, 7 years old. the other thing about jonna you need to know is first of all, so she's half jewish, half danish. she was also born with a birth defect. her left arm came down to a little stub with five little nubs on it. she had glasses, she didn't see really well. she had black, curly hair, and

she was made fun of a lot. her best friend, hannah hanson, this blond, blue-eyed little girl. and as it started going that jews are bad and they're not sure and the nazis are going to come after them, all of a sudden her mother wouldn't let her play with her best friend, jonna. she was confused, why is that? you know? she was just very confused about all this stuff. she had, i was counting as i read the book again, she had like 16 secrets she had to keep. things from my father was trying to pick my mother be danish. and he would make her cook pork, which is against jewish law, of course, and she had to keep the secret that she could not tell the jewish part of the family about that. she found -- my dad was go away to secret meetings, and she saw a gun if his pant -- in his pant pocket, and that's a secret she had to keep.

my dad, apparently, was having an affair. she was very hurt and very confused. she had all these secrets to keep, and she had two different lives to worry about. she had the fun danish side and the little more conservative jewish side. and her reaction was of massive confusion. her whole world was upside down. she didn't know why, why all of a sudden being jewish was bad. she didn't understand that. and, actually with, my father told her from now on, you're not jewish. don't tell anybody. and she was like confused, why is that a rob? what's wrong with nazis? why are -- my father had some sympathetic nazis that helped them, and why are some good and some bad? she was totally confused. what was really interesting is this memoir's written from her perspective, in the first person. and you could see her confusion about all this, everything being upset, all these secrets she had to keep and i how they had to take away my mother, because she was pregnant during this time, and she couldn't have a baby

during this time, so she had to have an abortion. she didn't understand why she was being taken away. you know, this whole thing about why is it called the red umbrella. jonna always wanted the red umbrella. little girls want special things, and hannah hanson had a red umbrella, she always wanted it. my father thought it was ridiculous, you've got a black umbrella, you can use that. it was just one of the things she just wanted to have. and as they're going to escape, what happened here is really amazing. so the word went out and one night in all the synagogues and all the churches that the nazis were coming the next day to gather all the jews. in one night the word went out, and all the jews went to hiding with friends be, family, out in farms, everywhere. and in the next two weeks today went out to farms, other places and snuck out to get into small boats and get across the orason

sound over to neutral sweden to be saved. so as they were escaping into these areas over by the coast, the nazis kind of knew some of this was going on, and they had checkpoints all over the place. and they were going in an ambulance. they were trying to sneak through, but they got stopped at a nazi checkpoint. and jonna is very young and full of questions, always talking all the time, and my parents needed her to be totally quiet. and they're in the back crammed in with a lot of people in this ambulance. and my dad took a pillow down, and he says i'm going to shove your face into this pillow, and i don't want you to say one word. and he told my mom that if there's shooting, i don't want her to see us getting killed. and he said you just be quiet, hold your breath and don't come up until i say. she goes i don't think i can do it, he says, if you do this, i'll buy you a red umbrella. she did it. this is one shot -- there was

one shot, but they made it through. there was a little bribery going on. they got to the shore, they got in the boat, and they escaped over to neutral sweden. they were processed there, which is a whole traumatic experience because now -- sweden didn't know who they were getting, and they were trying to process them. so here they are, they paid off people, they've used all their money, money was hidden in doorways, sewn into her coat. she lost a lot of the stuff, they lost everything or going across. everyone had to pay off people in boats and ships to get across. so here they are in sweden, they're finally processed and walking in sweden. one of the nurses was taking them in temporarily. and they go by a little store, and my sister sees a red umbrella. and my dad reaches in his pocket, has just a few copies -- that's all they have -- coins, that's all they have -- goes inside and comes back out and says close your eyes, and he brings out a red umbrella. i was born in 1953.

my apartments came over to america -- my parents came over to america in 1948. so there was 16 years -- my parents didn't think they could have a baby again. the doctors told her she wouldn't after this dramatic experience in copenhagen when she went to the hospital. so i was born in america in the seattle area, 1953, and then i had another little sister four years younger than me. when my parents came over after the war, immigrants didn't talk about anything. we're in america now, we're going to speak english. and the only time i heard them speak danish was when they were having a fight, they didn't want me to understand. i never learned anything about the war, they never talked about it. i'm an architect, graphic designer, i like those kind of things. i saw the symbol of the swastika, i thought it was of an interesting sum boll, and i brought it home on a piece of paper, and my mother saw that and went nuclear. she ripped it up, shredded it,

just went crazy. and id had no idea what was going on -- i had no idea what was going on. i didn't know anything about the war, i'm 10, 11 years old. that's when i started learning a little bit about nazi germany at this time. i didn't have any idea how it affected my mom or her family. and so what happened after this is when i -- my parents died, and i went to go live with jonna. she was telling me this story because she had memories of this time. and when she told me the story, basically, of the red umbrella, i thought it was an amazing time and story. and i actually wrote it down. i'm in seventh grade now, and i wrote the story. it's like five or six pages, and i submit it to the school, and i called it the red umbrella because it seemed like there was this thread from beginning to end on this thing. i got an a on the paper. and i told my sister you really should write more of this down someday. and so this is 19 -- early, mid '60s, and she's gone through multiple husbands, six husbands

since that time. and when she finally got rid of the last one, so she's like 60 years old, she's like i'm going to do this. and she started writing it down. and when she first started it, she got some help from a local high school teacher, english teacher, but it ended up being kind of a historical novel, nonfiction novel, almost read like a textbook. it wasn't very exciting, nobody liked it. and she was in a group called would be writers group, and they helped her say you should write this with your own voice, and she kid that. and that's kind of when i came into the picture. how this came to be published is when we got rejections from normal publishers, because she was unpublished, the self-publishing industry was starting to come around at this time. and so i contacted -- there's several national subpublishing companies, and they are relentless marketers. once i'm online with them, they were calling me all the time. and it became very complicated about -- they really just wanted to publish it. they didn't care what condition

it was in, they just wanted to publish it, get your money and go. and at this time chuck robinson, who's the president or owns village books here in bellingham, installed one of the first self-publishing machines here, it's called an espresso machine. and they would actually do small versions of, you know, just a very limited run here of books right in the store. i thought, this is really great. they had a little system here where you could work with somebody locally for the graphics, for editing, for getting all of the isbn numbers, all the library of congress numbers, and it was nice to work with somebody locally to ask questions and go back and forth. so it was extremely valuable to have independent bookstores' help with that self-publishing aspect. without that, i don't know that it would -- it would have taken a lot longer to do. that's what really made it happen. and once that happened and it starts picking up steam here and it's a little more publishing needed to happen, so i have to go to a bigger source for publishing now because a little

more people are wanting this thing. it's starting to branch out here as people hear about it, friends and family, and it's like the social networking thing. it just starts branching off. and i'm going to be sending this now to there's holocaust museums and danish museums and different associations who are interested in this story. and it is kind of an interesting story. but it's really intended for friends and family and the process that i learned about my family. and i think it's something that's really important for more people to do. everyone's got a story, and i think it's really important to dig into that. the value in learning the story of your family is something that people should learn from this that there are a lot of things that tell you about who you are. now, if your story has murder and sabotage and family conflict and religious conflict and nazis, i mean, all the better. it's more interesting. [laughter] i think that's the value here that you come away with.

and it's a touching story. even though there's a lot of mayhem going on here, it ends in a happy to note. >> booktv took a trip to bellingham, washington, to explore the literary sites of the city with the help of our local cable partner, comcast. during our visit we met science historian george dyson who discussed his book about the history of technology, "darwin among the machines." >> this book, "darwin among the machines," is, first of all, it was sort of to update for the 20th century this essay that a very eccentric, brilliant young man wrote in the 1850s, samuel butler wrote an essay called "darwin among the machines" about how machines were going to become intelligent and take over the world. and then here we are, when i started writing that book it was the 990s, and everything that samuel butler sort of imagined

was now coming true. all these computers are starting to speak to each other in their own language, and in a way we think we're teaching the world of computers to speak our language, but in truth it's the computers are teaching us to speak their language. we're sort of meeting halfway. and so i decided, you know, i decided to write the book that put this in a very deep historical context, going back to samuel butler and even the people that he got his ideas from and how did we get from there to the world of today. where might it be going. his essay was written in answer to charles darwin who had presented this marvelous theory, of course, which we accept now as beyond a theory of evolution and natural selection and how this applies to the world of organisms. and what samuel butler did was sort of take darwin's theory and apply it to the world of technology, of machines. machines would likewise evolve

through a process of selection and mutation and that no one could say where the world of machines would go except that it was going much faster than biological evolution. and that's true. and, of course, now it's faster and faster yet because now we have not only evolution of machines which was something that samuel butler clearly envisioned, but we have evolution of software, of codes which is something that samuel butler did not quite imagine. so it's a good story. it starts in the 17th century, in the 1600s, with people like thomas hobbs and godfried -- [inaudible] a german sort of philosopher mathematician. he imagined building a digital computer that ran purely on digital -- he didn't imagine it without electronics, he imagined it working with gravity and

black and white marbles running down tracks which is exactly what a modern microprocessor does except in stead of -- instead of gravity, you have a voltage gradient, and you have pulses of electrons. but all the essential principles were there 300 years ago. we just sort of, reality just sort of had to catch up. you know, where writing this particular book was placed in the -- it was very interesting. i think of darwin among the machines as the last book about the internet that was written without the internet. i mean, i wrote that book in this, in the beer cooler of this bar, this sort of walk-in cooler right there with no internet connection. getting most of my sources through the library alone. it was a very different world then. google didn't exist. there was a search engine called alta vista that, you know, i could use through a text interface called pine.

i mean, it was a very, very primitive world. so the internet existed, but it wasn't something you used day-to-day unless you were in a university or, you know, in a military lab or so on. it was a very different world. and then in that book, for instance, there's a chapter that's probably the craziest chapter that talks about wireless and how ultimately all processers will be connected wirelessly. and, of course, that's -- we take that completely for granted today. it's the danger with writing books about the technology now is that technology changes so fast that even by the time your book is published, it may be obsolete. so it's a good strategy to write about the 17th century because, you know, it's not going to go out of date next year. when i began writing this book, i didn't -- i hadn't even read samuel butler's essay. and the fact that it was so

prophetic surprised me. and then i had these views about digital codes as sort of evolving organisms, and then i discovered this, again, one of the heroes of the book is this norwegian-italian mathematical geneticist, nils barcelli, who the moment our first high-speed computer became running, he shows up asking to use it at night between midnight and 8 a.m. when the engineers come back to run experiments with, creating an artificial digital universe or and letting these codes -- i could never in my wildest imagination, you know, have dreamed up that this had actually happened and that i would be able to find these documents and sort of make a story out of it. no end of -- and another character in the book was louis richardson who was a british numerical meteorologist, sort of

pioneered the idea of simulating thewet using -- the weather using computing. and he had gone, was also a quaker, had gone into world war i to work in the ambulance unit, and then there was a british science fiction writer, olaf stapleton, who believed in sort of the first, one of the first people to write about distributed mind, how alien organisms might actually have their mind distributed through a wireless network of processers. and it turns out they were in the same ambulance unit. they were in the trenches in france the together, you know? they had nothing to do between battles because nobody was getting injured, and they sat around and talked about all this stuff. and that was unknown, that they had -- so lots of surprises. i'm always asked this question sort of who -- because i write about these people like johnny von nowman or alan turing, and people want to know who's the next alan turing.

you have to remember that alan, you know, alan turing did his great work when he was 23 years old. and the same with johnny von nowman. so if you're looking for the next genius, it'll be somebody in their 20s who, you know, is probably in another country, may not now even be able to get a visa to come to the united states. it's impossible to pick these things out except to sort of wait 50 years and see who changes things. but the world is ripe for young, new ideas to change the way we do computing. we, i think one of the tragedies that we are still doing computing, we're completely locked into the world that was established in the 1950s. we haven't changed the fundamental way we do computation, and somebody could. some of the greatest work in this story was done by someone who was, you know, rescuing

people out of the trenches in world war i and had these thoughts on their days off, you know? they were not in an academic, you know, job. and i think that's true of, you know, einstein did his greatest work at the at patent office. so my view is remember the sort of ordinary people who had the extraordinary ideas with, you know, without a great deal of support yet persevered, and their ideas came true. >> while in bellingham, washington, we stopped by the watt ca museum old city hall to learn about businessman j.j. donovan's role in the discovery of bellingham. >> tucked into the northwest corner, bellingham is not very old compared to much of our world. but bellingham's history is rich

and varied. it wasn't very long ago that right here where this grand old building stands was the edge of a great wilderness forest of giant cedars, sitka spruce and douglas fir, trees so old and to large that some of them were seedlings at the time of christ. the primeval forest stretched from the saltwater where we are now to the high alpine meadows surrounding the perennial snows of mount baker's volcanic peak to the east. it covered all of the present farmland that stretches north to the canadian border and beyond. and the early settlers thought that the timber would last forever. it's gone now, sacrificed for what we have called progress. but a second and even a third growth is growing in our foothills, and in a sense those

pioneers were right. the timber is lasting forever. bellingham bay was peopled only by the aboriginal native americas, those first nations with a common sailish tradition. they're still here, now recapturing their old culture and working to protect this land and their treaty rights to benefit us all. the once-forested wilderness that is now the city of bellingham wasn't even a bona fide part of the united states until 1846. that was just 14 year withs before the civil war -- years before the civil war. the british fur trading hudson bay company on the columbia river was the closest thing to civilization that this area could boast. all of the wild land north of california was, by'ty, jointly -- and i should say uneasily -- shared by great britain and the united states.

but finally in that year, 1846, the stalemate was ended. the two nations peacefully signed a treaty and agreed to divide this part of the world at the 49th parallel, just 20 miles north of where i stand today. now for the first time, this area became a part of the united states, a part of the newly-created oregon territory. that was just 14 years before the great war between the states. the bay was called bellingham bay, all right, because late in the previous century a few spaniards and an englishman or two had sailed through here looking for the fabled northwest passage. and one of them, george vancouver, had charted the bay and named it after a british admiral who had provisioned his expedition, lord william bellingham. that year was 1792, and there were no white men living here then. nor were there any when the

oregon treaty was signed in 1846. it would be 61 years after vancouver's visit and six years after the land was divided that two white men were paddled into the baby two indians in a dug -- bay by two indians in a dugout canoe. our federal government sought to encourage settlement of these -- this, their new territory, by with enacting the oregon land act of 1850. it offered almost free land to homesteaders, 160 acres to a single man and twice that if you were married. the act achieved its purpose. homesteaders began to come to bellingham bay. the first of them came in december of 1852 in that indian canoe. their names were henry roeder and russell peabody.

today came to build a saw mill at the mouth of the creek, attracted by the waterfall that still drops to the sea at the creek mouth. 1852, only 161 years ago. a few months later they created edward eldridge and his wife teresa to join them, and she became the first white woman to settle on the bay. since that landing in 1852 through repeated cycles of boom and bust, of exuberant eras, of lumber mills and logging, of coal mining and salmonning and ship building -- salmonning and pulp and paper mills, the bellingham of today has grown and prospered and changed to become the regional center for medical care, higher education, finance and technology production for the considerable population between two great cities, seattle -- 90 miles to

the south -- and vancouver, canada, 45 miles to the north. all cities grow and prosper because of visionary, hard working, committed citizens. and over the years bellingham has surely had its share. and that brings us to the man that i would argue is the most important man in bellingham history. 1888 was the year that he came to bellingham bay. and his is a great american story. a horatio alger sort of story. a story of the son of poor irish immigrants who rose to great heights through determination, hard work and sterling character. his is also a wonderful love story. a poor but hard working irish catholic boy be -- boy who fell in love with a new england protestant whose prominent family had come to america in the 1600s. it took 12 years for their love

to overcome the vast social and religious gaps that separated them. his name was john joseph donovan, but he was known by one and all as j.j. his story is told in the museum exhibit now showing in the galleries on the floor just below us. it is called the treasures from the trunk: the j.j. donovan story. i had the privilege of cur rating -- curating that exhibit. well, the donovan story begins in 1845 when a terrible blight struck the potato crop of northern europe. the potato had become the staple food that sustained the poor of your. of europe. especially the poor catholic population of ireland. failure of the potato crop resulted in the deaths of a million irish from starvation and disease, another million

emigrated, fleeing the horror, and no town in ireland was harder hit than the home of patrick and julia donovan and their 11 chirp. 11 children. desperately, the donovans saved their pennies, and by 1848 were able to buy a ticket on one of the emigration ships dubbed famine ships for their son peter, age 23. peter donovan landed in boston and soon had a job as a laborer building the boston concord and montreal railroad up the western valley of new hampshire. ..

at the age of 13. they tell a fastening story of an intelligent, hard-working boy growing up in the post-civil war years chopping wood for the fire, tending the family cattle, fishing in the rivers and ponds, berry picking in the woods. he excelled in his studies. i age 19 had graduated from the plymouth normal school, certified as a teacher. in the one room school houses of rural new hampshire. three years as a teacher, and

this in his long held desire to become a civil engineer, was a better life choice. so with saving some summer work as a waiter, at a summer resort in the white mountains and with some help from the family, j. j. enrolled in worcester polytech institute of worcester massachusetts my east coast friends tell me that i should pronounce that worcester. in 1882 he graduated a civil engineer and valedictorian of his class. he and a friend, billy, were up a newly hired by the northern pacific railroad. the northern pacific was at the time building their railroad across the continent through the northern tier of states. they had started at both ends of the line, saint paul, minnesota, on the east, washington territory on the west. they have been working at it for years. it was still a 400-mile uncompleted gap.

donovan and barlow boarded the train in the east and road to the end of track which was in montana. they then got off the train, boarded the stagecoach and road the final -- to ride the final 400 miles across the continental divide to missoula. there they took a job serving in engineering the final 400 miles of the railroad across montana. well, the transcontinental line was finally completed and celebrate at a grand ceremony on september 8, 1883. now the northern pacific decided to shorten its line by 100 miles by cutting their rail directly across the cascade mountains, thus avoiding the long journey down the columbia river to portland, and then up to puget sound. young donovan did much of the engineering on that huge project. it took four years to build the rail from the columbia river and

through the crested cascades through a two-mile tunnel and down the west side to tacoma and puget sound. for most of those miles and years, he worked with the railroads prime contractor, a man named nelson bennett. the cascade division was considered in 1887 and donovan went home to new hampshire to in this 12 year courtship by marrying his clara. in the meantime, nelson bennett, the contractor, had heard that a third of transcontinental railroad, the great northern, would be crossing the cascades at the slot past coming down on the river. he decided to become a city builder. he came to clear haven, closest deepwater port, and negotiating with dirty dan harris, he bought the down. he and his partners also bought

bellingham. bennett then hired our man, donovan, to build a railroad and to be the chief engineer and planner of the new and larger down. j. j. came to clear haven as used to like to say what impact on his his back, hiking the future railroad route from the river. it was july 1888, and he left his bride, clarke, in a rented room in tacoma as he surveyed the swamps and the force that the railroad would converse. that route is essentially the route now followed by the i five freeway. his letters to clark state that there were 140 people in fairhaven. perhaps 400 in aggregate in the towns around the bay. two years later the population of clear haven had soared to 7000. the boom was on.

j. j. and clara soon move to fairhaven, 89 actually. he immersed himself in the life of a surging usage. he completed the railroad, that fairhaven and the southern railroad. he established bennett's coal mine. he planted the now enlarged city of fairhaven. he served two terms on the first city council a fairhaven. he designed the sewer system. he was an active stockholder in the water company that brought city water from the lake about the coal operator electric plant. he built a reputation of competence, energy, and good character that would bring him many further opportunities. in 1890, the sisters of st. joseph of peace, a new jersey catholic order, sent to young nuns to buildin billing th orders to build a hospital. without funds, armed only with

their faith, sister teresa moran and the other turned to the most prominent catholic in the kennedy, donovan. he persuaded his employer, the fairhaven land company, to give the sisters and entire city block high on the south hill at 17th and adams, and he helped them raise the money to build a the hospital. within a year, the first st. joseph hospital opened its doors to serve the community. that fledgling hospital has grown over the years into bellingham's second largest employer your a first class medical organization that serves the entire region. donovan remained on its advisory board for most of the rest of his life, advising, raising money for the the frequent expansions, using his growing influence and means to assure

the hospital's success. in 1889, a young man named julius bloedel had moved to the booming fairhaven and taken a job with the blue canyon coal mine at the southern end of the lake. soon, the men started fairhaven national bank and he shifted to the bank e-business and became its president. donovan was hired as general manager of the mind. they had an opportunity by the mine, but they turned to a man that donovan had known in his northern pursue the case in montana. peter larsson was quite a bit older than them, and a great deal wealthier. the three bottom line and formed a bond that would carry them into several more ventures, crucial in history of this city. as equal partners, they owned the coal mine.

then in 1891, inspired by the virgin timber around the lake, the partners formed the lake whatcom blogging company. now, eating to get both coal and blogs to salt water, they incorporated the bellingham bay and eastern railroad, and they built its rail along the lake's north shore to their goal and log bunker on the bay. that old railroad beds along the lake is now called the ken hertz trail, part of the county park system. there coal bunker stuck out into the bay just north of where boulevard park ends now. realizing that it was more profitable to sell saw in lumber and logs, they decided in 1902 to build a sawmill. the result was a huge lumber mill at the north end of lake whatcom, larsson mill. the mill would operate until the early 1960s and become a

foundation of industry for this community. in 1913, bloedel and donovan, recognizing the opportunities created by the opening of the panama canal, decided that they needed access to salt water. larsen had died in 1907. the surviving partners formed a new company, bloedel donavon lumber mills. they purchased the old mill on the salt water at the foot of the avenue, and by 1928, they had grown it into the world's largest producing sawmill. ebersol and logs from blow job donovan lover companies timber holdings in the cascade foothills, and on the olympic peninsula, and from logs purchase from the robust logging industry of its region. so for many years the lars thunell at the lake and the

bloedel donavon now on the waterfront led the committee in economic importance. as important as donovan was to the economic and industrial life of this community can he was equally important as a team in the builder. he was one of the major proponent of the 1904 merger of the towns around the bay into the consolidated city we now call telling him. after the citizens have voted to merge, donovan spent countless hours on the citizens committee to develop the city's charter. it was donovan who in an op-ed article in the bellingham herald that encourage the city to purchase the land along whatcom creek that would be, whatcom falls park. his thesis, great cities need great parks. it was donovan who arched city to build the boulevard around the steep hill that horse and wagon to difficulty climbing even in good weather.

it was donovan who served for eight years as a trustee of a then very young bellingham normal school, which would become the great cultural and economic engine of telling him of today, western washington university. it was donovan who stood almost alone in opposition to the ku klux klan's strength in this community during the 1920s. he was simply a man of incredible energy, vision and community spirit who did much to establish a cultural and economic base from which this community has grown into the remarkable city that it is today. donovan died in 1937 at the age of 78. the bellingham herald eulogized him by saying that bellingham had lost its first citizens. from the 400 people when donovan arrived, the city has grown to the population of 82000, with another 120,000 souls in the

former forest lands to the north and east. much of our success as a community can be attributed to our quality of life. we enjoy rich cultural opportunities and remarkable beauty of mountains and sea. living here is an ongoing pleasure. this community is proud of its historic past. pleased with its present, and determined to maintain our quality and livability of the future. [applause] >> for more information about booktv's visit to bellingham, washington, or about the other cities visited by our local content vehicles, visit c-span.org/localcontent. >> you are washing booktv on c-span2. on c-span2. here's our primetime lineup for

tonight. >> that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> definitely a story about rahm

emanuel but it's also a story about chicago and its people on both fronts, ongoing story. and i think talking about it, despite the very valid point about the fact that so many chicagoans did vote for rahm emanuel and mayor dealey over the years, nonetheless we have a pretty amazing hot those with just, so much potential and talent and power. and i think it's important to acknowledge that come especially at a moment like this when i think there really is this sentiment with facts to back it up including the study that was talked about that we are really kind of a tipping point where chicago's future an image and identity is being sort of redefined and reshaped. the mayor has been central to the. he's been open and that's the kind of boastful about the way he is transforming the city. easier all this talk about making it a hub of startups and

clean energy. i love clean energy. i write about energy but greener, cleaner kind of hipper city. that's really been trying to create a classroom all over the country. the urban gardens and cycling and sustainable food hubs and all these things which are great, but they're part of a new image for the city. when was mentioned all these announcements about creating the new jobs, and those have been, there's been a lot of studies that debunked how those numbers really add up in a way that benefit kind of regular people. a lot of these jobs are jobs that are already filled my someone in the suburbs is just commuting into a city or they may be good jobs but you're looking for very specific kind of person who has these tech skills, very specific skills that sort of fit this new image. and they are not in a lot of cases jobs that can be filled by people that are without work, including all the people that

lost their jobs because of the privatization and the cost-cutting during this and mayors administration. but the teachers, the other staff at the schools, the janitors who work for the unions, one of the stories i was inspired by, probably, they already worked for a private company but for a contractor, but the mayor brought in a different contractor, was pretty close that he could -- the new contractor brought in workers that were making much lower wage and much more part-time work. so far less sustainable jobs. the therapist at the mental health clinics, all the black male therapist were laid off which obviously has huge ramifications for their communities and also for the patients that have this strong bond and can just go to another, a white middle-class woman therapist and have the same kind of relationship. so those people probably come

these people that were laid off, one of the janitors from o'hare is probably not going to get a job at one of these new start its. realistically. and that income is gone from their community and all the ripple effect that has. so i think, and that -- the way the mayor talked about reshaping the city and bringing all this talent income is literally ignoring all the homegrown talent and creativity and brilliance that we have here already. and specifically i think one of the examples that i lived in the introduction of the book was in the committee organizations in city hall, they develop a really comprehensive seemingly really innovative fantastic plan that one of the neighborhood schools and to reinvigorate the surrounding committee. and the mayor literally wouldn't even step out of his office to talk to them about the plan. they eventually got it into his hand but there's no indication

that he ever read it all responded to them about it. he has a record of really ignoring input, not only ignored but actively sort of undermining and trying to discredit people like the teachers who were on the ground and have firsthand experience, knowing how to address these problems, like the violence has become a national and even international really embarrassment for the city. he may be talking to these different consultants all around the world about the most cutting edge police strategies buddies not talking to the teachers and the parents who are impacted everyday, and the kids. and that leads me into just one of my sort of pet, among many, pet peeves with the mayor. during a talk that in ignoring public input, he canceled the budget hearings, harold washington had started these budget hearings in the evenings in different communities so people who worked during the day

and had trouble getting downtown to give input about the budget. the mayor did hold those hearings during his first fall in office and he was booed because this was during that the period that he was making these draconian budget cuts and was already breaking, or kind of ignoring the union contracts that were in place. so we canceled the budget hearing for the next two years, and the progressive caucus did hold alternative budgeting for people poured their hearts out but the mayor wasn't there. there were literally several hundred hearings related to the school closings and as far as i know the mayor and disappointed school board members didn't show up at any of those hearings. and teachers, parents, community leaders, students were testifying at those hearings and pouring their hearts out and talk about what worked in the schools and what didn't. you really couldn't get a better forum for concrete input on how we could address some of the problems in the schools. so getting to the pet peeves

imagine, during his campaign for mayor and then also during the time around the teachers strike him which really kind of bizarrely became a second campaign, because the mayor had really despite what the teachers union from early on around the longer school day. the nine races that were actually in the contract. so the teachers strike and they buried around it became, for him and then the teachers were sort forced to shoot it this way as well, a battle where someone was going to win and someone's going to lose. so is more about not actually for the mayor, not actually reaching a solution but beating the teachers. they are redrick was very clear and the larger debate around the role in the shape of public education and the role of teachers unions and the mayor and his proxies were really trying to drive home his message that the teachers are lazy and ineffective angry and they're the ones grandkids over. so around this time you have

this phrase that he used several times with a slight different wording about the kids and the public schools having ndis, having nothing in their eyes, the civil case they were so beaten down and their schools are so terrible that it was robbing them of the personalities and they had no hope. i mean, to be a special of the journalist, you try to look at the meaning of words and think like literally what did these words mean, it was just so ridiculous and to me really revealed how he, despite being this campaign mentality where he was politically obligated to get that he cared about kids, talking mostly like the lower income neighborhoods were all these kids were close and so many other teachers, public school parents who are out on the streets came from, so you know, the facts, i feel like any parent or teacher or anyone who has a kid in these neighborhoods

would not describe their eyes as being empty. i mean, they are full of life and hope and sometimes anger or sadness. they do experience a lot of trauma, but i just felt that phrase revealed the mayor is not only lack of understanding but lack of respect for these whole communities. i know it's really close shave to say that youth are our future, but it's obviously true. son think it is kind of striking that come unicode the mayor, it looks fairly certain may be that he will have at least one more term, and who knows beyond that. so you're talking literally a generation of public school students who are growing up with his initiation and seeing firsthand the debate over the role of the public sector and the way their parents and teachers are removing suspected and also the way paris and teachers and neighbors themselves are going out in the streets and going to city hall

and becoming involved in the civic debate. so that's got to make a difference and i think it will be really exciting to see what unfolds over these coming years and what kind of legacy is one last, even after mayor emanuel has even been voted out of office or left to try to seek greener pastures on its own. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> quality care is that health insurance but it's about more than that. it's about the final nail in the coffin of constitutional system. look at obamacare. obamacare is an attack on the commerce clause. the purpose of the clause was to promote commerce between the states. not to kill commerce, not to kill competition. it would be called anti-commerce laws but that's the commerce clause was to promote private property rights, trade and commerce.

because new jersey and pennsylvania were fighting with each other. they were all blocking each other onyar river's and so forth. so the commerce clause was pro-trade, pro-commerce. the commerce clause, the notion the commerce clause could be used by congress to compel individuals to do something against their will or the best interest. and in particular, to force a person to into into a private contract with a private company, a private company is forced to offer policy that doesn't want to offer, and the individual is forced to pay for it and the company is forced to provide it, that is so absurd, so antithetical to our founding and, of course, as all of you here know, that will be the end because then the government can force us to do all kinds of things that we don't want to do at that will be the president for. >> today, best selling author, lawyer, reagan administration official and radio personality mark levin we'll take your calls and questions, in depth live for

three hours starting at noon eastern. booktv's "in depth," the first sunday of every month on c-spa c-span2. and online for this month's booktv bookclub we will discuss mark levin's "the liberty amendments." repo book and join the conversation. go to booktv.org and click on bookclub to enter the chat room. >> on your screen is as america's, ray suarez. former senior correspondent for cbs news hour and now with al-jazeera america. before we talk about your book, mr. suarez come when did you make the move over to al-jazeera? >> just a couple of days ago. my first day on the air was november 11, and so far so good. >> why the move? >> it was time. sometimes you've been out of place for a while and you done everything you can do there, and they were new opportunities and great chances for advancement at al-jazeera america, and if they started with everything with

that implies. fresh, energetic, forward-looking but it's really, really fun. my staff keeps me young because of that is like 27. >> ray suarez, this is booktv so we want to talk to you about this, "latino americans: the 500-year legacy that shaped a nation." what sparked you to write this? >> the publishers approached me and tbs was about to launch a big documentary series on the same subject, and they wanted something that would be a handbook that would both be for a general audience. so americans were not latinos, kind of wondering what's the difference between a mexican and puerto rican and cuban added dominican? when did they come and why are they here and what's the background? how is this changing the country? and then latinos aren't really taught their own history will as they go to public schools, so in the introduction to the book i say i haven't done my job if at least once a chapter you don't

say, i didn't know that. how come i didn't know that? so i think i hit both assignments pretty well, with the general audience were giving them an idea of how these one out of six of their fellow citizens came to be here, and for the latino audience, some affirmation, a little history they didn't know both proud and not so proud history. and a leaning forward to the next 20, 30, 40 years when they're going to become an even bigger part of the american hold. >> why did you start 500 years ago? >> well, the first european settlement in what became the united states, not in the western hemisphere, not in north america, but in what became the united states was a column of soldiers, priests and settlers who came up from mexico city into what's now new mexico and settled santa fe.

and i started there because to me, that's where the united states is really born. before jamestown, before plymouth, before st. augustine, florida, these people tried to make away in a very dry, scrubby southwest. they were looking for salt. they were looking for gold. they were looking for a place to herd cattle so they could sell hides down in mexico city. that's really where that entrepreneurial, mercantile, restless moving united states begins for me. so i started in new mexico. >> ray suarez, what's one thing that we are going to learn reading "latino americans"? >> that 23 states of the current united states were once all or part in the spanish empire. all the way from vancouver island in what's now british columbia, clear across the

florida in this enormous crescent, that was all part of the spanish empire. and they were really three empires, the spanish, french and english with her elbows out rubbing up against each other, pushing up against each other. so i'm suggesting that you think of the united states, not just as an english thing that starts on the east coast and moves to the pacific, but has a multi-empire thing that wrestles until we have a winner. that's the united states, that takes in people from ever and makes them american. >> ray suarez of al-jazeera, the book is called "latino americans: the 500-year legacy that shaped a nation." you are watching booktv on c-span2. las..

but america is the place of religious tolerance and intolerance is married to. bizarre narrative law from your point of view quite