expect the president to do that by themselves so i don't necessarily relwhy don'tnecessat they do they recognize when there are constraints on their powers. when obama is thinking about going to the war in syria he said you can't do that. the hope is that the congress does, what the press does to set the limits of the presidential power and if they see that there is a downside or that there will be consequences if they go too far to expand the power to far then they will change how they act in syria is a hopeful time for that. ..

facebook.com/booktv. >> booktv is live from savannah, ga. home to the annual savannah book festival we will bring you several authors including mike redmond, lily cobble, scott bird, john rizzo and debra solomon. we kickoff live coverage of the savannah book festival with gabriel asherman, author of the loudest voice in the room.

>> good morning, everyone. my name is alex gold and i am happy to welcome you to the seventh annual savannah book festival presented by georgia power. into our new venue of the lutheran church of ascension which is made possible by the generosity of fred and john kane. many of you have already attended our terrific special events with our opening and keynote addresses. today your work is cut out for you as you choose which authors to visit during this day that offers dozens of announce writers to established astounding books in the last year. we would like to extend special thanks to our presenting foster, georgia power, individual donors who make saturday's free event possible. if you would like to lend your support we welcome your donations at the door as you

exit. before we get started i have a couple housekeeping notes. take this moment to turn off your cellphones. i will demonstrate. but also ask that you please don't use flash photography. also immediately following this presentation mr. sherman will be signing copies at the square. and thank john and stephanie for sponsoring gabriel sherman's appearance here today. [applause] you made an excellent first choice for the 9:00 hour. gabriel sherman stirred the pot with his new biography "the loudest voice in the room," the inside story of how roger ailes and fox news remade american

politics. he is a contributing editor at the new york magazine and is a bernard schwartz fellow at the new american foundation. and new york magazine mr. sherman reported on cover stories on media, politics and business. previously sherman was the media reporter read the new york observer. has appeared on cnn, fox news, and nbc, abc world news and national public radio. mr. sherman lives in new york city with his wife, jennifer. we know he is a competitive marathon runner and hope he will come back for savannah rock-and-roll marathon november 8th. please welcome "the loudest voice in the room" author gabriel sherman. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, savannah book festival, for having me down to talk about my new book. real treat if anyone has looked

at a weather map. over the last few days i would come down to leave new york for any reason but it is a real treat to get down here to talk about my book and thank you for that. we can thank bill airlines for losing my luggage on the way down which is why i am wearing a sweater and not a jacket which would be more appropriate attire for such a nice venue. we can all thank delta. it is a great opportunity to be here. i spent the last three years working on this book. has been the most challenging and inspiring part of my journalism career and i am so excited to talk a bit about it. as a nice introduction mentioned i work at new york magazine. i cover media politics and business. i covered media for a decade and i am fascinated by how our

largest media organizations, television networks, big newspapers play such a role in our national politics and the big issues of our day. i have written stories about the n.y. times, cnn, msnbc and rupert murdoch's media empire. the news corp.. in the whole range of those stories over the last decade there was no one story that was bigger than fox news. it is a phenomenon that has changed both away americans get their news and also the way our national politics works. as a business story is also a fascinating story because fox news generates $1 billion of profit. it generates more profit than all of the other evening newscasts combined so you look at the big three on cbs, abc and nbc. those three programs put

together don't even equal fox news's profits. the business story is unmatched. the way to tell that story, three years ago i said i want to write a book about fox news. undeniably a major story. i set out to write a history of the network launched in 1996. very early into that research i discovered that the way to tell that story, the best way and ultimately the only way was through the life and career of roger ailes, the creator of fox news and chairman and ceo on the network. most people in this realm who don't know who roger ailes is. in the course of my research i would tell people what my book was about and who is roger ailes? it was such an opportunity as a reporter that i can introduce a man who has wielded such power over american life.

he remains unknown to so many people. the reason i chose to write this book through the life and career of roger ailes fox news is an expression of him. it was an expression of his world view. his power is such that he runs it absolutely, everyone inside fox news take their cues from ales. in interviews, he built fox news from life experience. and doing what he is and how ultimately he made fox news such a staggering success. i want to sketch out to ailes is and you can see how these formative experiences, translated into such success at

fox. and what we see on screen when you turn on fox news and watch the famous personality sean hannity, sarah palin, and others i wanted to go on a journey to find out what happens behind the curtain and ultimately in a larger sweep of history where does fox news come from. biggest media story of the last 50 years. and so roger ailes is an man who has this amazing american story, rags to riches story. he was born in 1940 in warren, ohio, a factory town in northeastern ohio, a symbol of postwar american prosperity. the factories were booming, turning out cars, products, vibrant downtown, talk about people like to talk about how things were better back in the day, in warren, ohio it was true. this city was a vibrant civic

space, there were churches, newspapers, factories through picnics and parties through all the workers, workers retired on generous pensions. it was the american dream so this was the world into which roger ailes was born. his father was a factory foreman, worked at the packard automotive plant. his father did not have college education, i went back to warren, to archives i interviewed people who grew up in the town, i interviewed roger ailes's brother and the theme that emerged from that experience were two things. several things. one was a romance and nostalgia about america in its golden age. another thing was the hardship roger ailes knew as a boy. he was born a hemophiliac and hemophilia in the 1940s was a

serious medical condition. the average life expectancy was about 10 or 11 years old. his parents didn't even know if he was going to make it out of childhood. the other theme that defined his childhood in addition to his overcoming that disability was growing up in a household with a father who was a very volatile demanding man. he thought the boys lessons, was a violent man and it was a painful childhood experience that gave the will to succeed and to triumph and overcome and ultimately dominate other people. fast forward a little bit. he has a childhood that is marked by hardship but also by a love affair with american history and culture growing up in a very proud time in america. fast-forward to the early 1960s,

graduates and takes a job at a tv station in cleveland, ohio. we all today think tea is being done in new york and hollywood and los angeles but in the 1960s tv was booming all over america. in cleveland, ohio there was a new daytime variety show called the mike douglas show. ales gets a job as a gofer, making $68 a week as a low-level producer. this is the experience which is something that translates into the success of fox. on the mike douglas show, television is about entertainment, drama, spectacle, daytime television was about connecting with an audience, the entertainers of the day came through -- there was a place where television is about appealing to people's emotions. the mic douglas show was also a

place where it was in the middle to the cultural tilt of the 1916s, clearly on the side of the existing, where the new culture, it was a conservative place. one of the things my book really shows is how roger ailes's life brings together the two worlds of television and politics. now it seems like everyone -- it is common knowledge that to be a national politician, whether you are a democrat or republican you have to be a compelling television performer. sarah palin's speech at the 2008 republican convention was a knockout home run. introduced her to the american people and she became an overnight sensation and

celebrity. in the 1960s this was a new concept. using television to appeal to the american people was a new idea. roger ailes was really the person who figured it out. unlocked the secrets how to use television. he almost was like if you think of now in our modern world facebook and the internet as this new technology. in 1960s one of the producers i interviewed talked about television almost like the social media, the facebook of its day. in 1968 roger ailes has a fateful encounter with richard nixon that change the american political history, changed american television history. it was on the set of the mike douglas show where he meets richard nixon and nixon as many people know lost the 1960 presidential election to john f. kennedy in part because he had such a disappointing performance

during the televised presidential debate. it was the first time presidential debates were televised and richard nixon had the wrong makeup, he wore a gray suit with a grey background, maybe he couldn't blame delta for that. he had the wrong wardrobe and so he appeared almost ghostlike on the screen next to john kennedy who was 10, looks like a movie star. fast-forward 1968 richard nixon running for president again and the one thing he has to do to win the presidency is to win television, to triumph over this medium that let up his political downfall earlier in his career. he needs ales on the set of the douglas show and is grousing backstage and says it is a shame a man like me has to use a gimmick like television to get elected. as the legend goes ale's snapped back if you think that way you will lose again. richard nixon was so taken with this young 27-year-old producer, this brash kid to talk to back to him that he told his campaign

advisers hire him, he must know something we don't. roger ailes who had no political experience wasn't involved in the young republican club, people i interviewed did not talk about him being that publicly active, found himself on the richard nixon campaign, in the crucial role of producing his televised town hall debate, his town hall appearances all over america. richard nixon as we know when on to win the presidency. that experience also made roger ailes an overnight star in the political world. roger ailes, the conservative icon and a sense owes his career to a liberal. 1968, a journalist from philadelphia named joe mcginnis was traveling with the campaign writing about the way nixon was using television to revive his political career.

he wrote a book, a landmark book that i recommend, the selling of the president. it is a fascinating account of the behind-the-scenes juicy behind-the-scenes mac and nations of how the television consultants to nixon helped introduce him to the american people and that was a best seller, a total sensation of its time and roger ailes was the star. he was the most vivid character, he was profane, brash, making fun of nixon, kind of remarkable that a 27, 28-year-old kid would be quoted in a book making fun of the future president of the united states but there is roger ailes. the book comes out and make sales a star. it ultimately cost him his job with nixon. never really got hired at the nixon white house, he wanted to work in the nixon white house but never made it into the nixon circle because nixon's handlers

were so upset about the book. what it did it made him a star political consultant and republicans all over america wanted to hire him to do for them what he did with nixon. he moves to new york city, sets up shop and becomes a political consultant and he offers his services coaching, being an image maker and producer to republican candidates all over america. at fox news you see how he understands daytime t v is about appealing to an audience keeping engaged and hooked, see how he maries that with nixon and uses those to tell a political story. so i want to jump through a couple more things because i am trying to show you fox news is the culmination of his remarkable life. after nixon he moves to new york and get jobs as a political consultant but the other thing

he does, he tries to fulfill a childhood dream of his which is to work in the theater. he was a child actor, he acted in high school plays, active in college plays, moves to new york and in addition to being a political consultant he works as the broadway meter producer, this was another fascinating moment in his life, we also see roger ailes as being a conservative icon. he put sarah palin on tv, he is the man who runs television network that is the strongest voice for conservative ideas in america. in the 1970s some of his closest friends were liberal artists, people who had been blacklisted in the 1950s under mccarthy, of people who were active as members of the american left and this shows roger ailes is this larger-than-life charismatic figure who will forge unlikely

relationships because he is interested in amassing power and interested in how the world works and how media works and in the 1970s, largely controlled by liberals, that will forge these unlikely relationships. the idea that performance is about drama, spectacle, and to keep people engaged, you need to bring that theatricality to your production. his work as the theater producer ultimately did not lead to a runaway career. he produced several productions, one of which was critically acclaimed, probably his biggest hit but it didn't really click for him. by the 1980s decides to get out of show business and the theater

and that is the decade where he becomes a preeminent political consultant of his generation. he was the man who worked for ronald reagan, senators like mitch mcconnell, phil gramm and culminated in 1988 with his work for george h. w. bush, he helped make george h. w. bush the first sitting vice president to hold on to the presidency since martin van buren which by all accounts was a stunning achievement. what he did is revolutionized american politics in the 1980s because he brought the show business savvy, entertainment values to his work as a political consultant. he made the most memorable attack ads that still to they are tossed in campaign schools. one of his ads which i want to highlight two of them that showcase the thing that defines him as a political strategist

which is his use of humor. now, with the daily show on comedy central region to a degree rush limbaugh and talk radio these guys are entertainers. that is sort of common knowledge now but in the early to mid 1980s the use of humor wasn't so widespread and he was better at it than anyone. in 1984 mitch mcconnell was running for a senate seat in kentucky. he was a long shot. the seat was occupied by a goal boy who had been the seat for years, a democrat, and mitch mcconnell was trying to appeal to young professional class, a new voice in politics but it was an uphill battle. everyone thought he was going to lose. he created an ad that made fun of this idea that he was traveling around the country giving speeches but wasn't looking out for people back in

his home state and he got a pack of hounds dogs in an ad called the hound dog at and film these dogs running around washington d.c. looking for huddleston. it was quoted in newspapers and leslie. became a total sensation this idea that he was missing and ailes had to track him down and mitch mcconnell came surging back and won the seat in the senate ever since. the other at i want to highlight which showcases his use of humor was his work for george h. w. bush in 1988. and again, george bush was a long-shot candidate. michael dukakis, the massachusetts governor was up by double digits during this sort of meet of the campaign. what ails it was poked fun at michael dukakis, made obscene and electable to a majority of americans and the way he did it was you may all remember this,

the ad with michael dukakis running around in a tank wearing a helmet. is one of the old adage is where you never want to be photographed in a funny hat. ales new most people get that, if you are going to be out there in public don't wear a funny hat but there's michael dukakis riding around in a tank looking like snoopy in a helmet. so he makes this ad that shows michael dukakis riding in a tank and ultimately the ad was trying to show that michael dukakis was weak on foreign policy but the message and the words didn't matter. what mattered was indelible image of michael dukakis looking ridiculous in the helmet. it was that kind of image of michael dukakis not appealing to a wide majority of americans that really resonated and stock. as we know george bush went on to win. fast forward. the end of the 80s. he has this incredible run as the preeminent political strategist of his generation.

his attack ads were devastating, helped dismember his client's opponent but he never lost that love for television so he wanted to get back into television. in year 1990s he decides to get out of politics and goes to work for nbc as president of the business news channel cnbc. this is a time when cable television is really starting to explode because for much of the 1980s cable television was still kind of a novel thing. cnn had started but the number of channels was limited and many americans didn't look to cable news to get their news but by the year 90s cable news was starting to thrive. he spent two years at nbc, a tumultuous time. roger ailes if you think about it as a theater producer, tv producer and political strategist, he worked in these environments where there were no clear-cut rules so you bring him

to a large public company like nbc with its hierarchy's and all of its different rules it is a very different environment at the start feuding with executives. very conflict written time in his career and ultimately he ended up leaving cnbc after a losing power struggle with a rival executive. that was really the moment that changed american television and politics because he went to work for rupert murdoch and in 1996 he started fox news. so i think if you see the sketch of his career, show business, theater, politics, show business, theater, republican politics, you see those building blocks. in 1996 when he started fox it really was this perfect moment to create this force because cable television was taking off and there is this vast audience of americans who felt the news media did not speak to them,

talk radio was booming but there wasn't a television news network that spoke to that audience. so ale's sort of started it at the perfect moment. it seems in hindsight but in 1996 it was really unclear fox was going to work. but ailes had the most incredible luck because two years after starting fox in 1998 bill clinton handed him an incredible gift which was the monica lewinsky scandal. i would be curious to hear from some people in this room but going out and talking to people around the country, one of the things i would ask is when was the first time you started watching fox news? one of the most common answer is i would here is during the clinton scandals in the late 1990s is when i tune in. this was a testament to ales's genius as a programmer because he transformed fox's lineup,

added shows, move bill o'reilly struggling in a 6:00 p.m. broadcast to and 8:00 p.m. time slot when many americans were at home after dinner and wanting to catch up on the headlines. o'reilly exploded, became this national voice who was outraged that clinton's failings. that is when folks -- fox took off. bill o'reilly's audience jumped by 400%. that use of storytelling. ale's new to appeal to people you needed to tell stories and the clinton scandal was an epic story. that momentum continued through the 2000 presidential recount, coverage of 9/11 antiterrorism, through the iraq war. fox news build an audience through ailes's unparalleled use of storytelling techniques and his use of theatricality. fox is the most entertaining news source.

these were the building blocks he used to build fox and it was crucial for me as a reporter and writer to understand that. there has been so much written about fox. is one of the most widely covered organizations. what i wanted to do, there hadn't been a book that tried to explain how it worked. how did this phenomenon that created. to see how his career, the of the book attempted to do, fox news is one of those polarizing institutions in american life. what we don't have up to now is a lot of facts how worked on the inside. a journey into the secretive world that tried to show how this organization works, how roger ailes removes over it,

influenced america. as i said at the beginning of my talk i covered the new york times, cnn, msnbc, i approach this story with the exact same interest in trying to write about an institution. i love the way institutions work in addition to writing about the media, i right about large organizations whether it is a wall street bank or a political figure because i love how the secret of world's function, unspoken rules, idiosyncrasies that exist inside these institutions of fox news is no different. it is a fascinating world. this book was a journey inside that world. roger ailes as anyone who has read the book knows, an incredibly combative and as the title of my book says a

bombastic person. this book was the most challenging assignment of my journalism career. i was the subject of a tax on conservative websites. roger ailes discouraged people from speaking to me. relieve this -- one of the reasons this book took three years to report and to write because i had to go out and talk to everybody and build this measured and detailed portrait of a man and an institution that played such a large role in our national politics and ultimately i think i delivered. i think this book is a testament to roger ailes's brilliance and his volatility. he is a charismatic larger-than-life figure. people who don't follow media when i talk about my book one of the analogies i make is in a certain sense he is similar to

steve jobs figure, very different men obviously. obviously there politics but what steve jobs and roger ailes have is a charisma that shapes and institution in their image and they figured out how to make their products appeal to people, apple iphone and ipads appeal to millions of people and roger ailes figured out how cable television and news could appeal to millions of people who didn't perhaps think they would be captivated by it. here is an american icon, decades and years from now when you look back, about how cable television, how television generally and cable television specifically influence national politics, the man they need to understand is roger ailes and that was the goal of my book. i wanted to thank you for giving me a chance to speak to you and i would love to take questions from anyone who has them.

[applause] >> that was wonderful. thank you. first of all, i am trying to get past the thought of mcconnell being responsible for anything funny. my question is this spectacular and polarizing nature of fox, obviously creates audiences, creates great television. but does he care about what he has done to the country? what he does to the country with those cutely slanted stories

that are shot down by other objective news sources? >> thank you for the question. one of the things i was captivated by in reporting this book is roger ailes as a character. as i mentioned, he is a charismatic figure and one of the things that my book shows is how he sees himself, he speaks of himself and fox as preserving a certain vision of america. to your point does he care, what i found some interesting is that he talks about fox, giving voice to the segment of america that felt left behind by the culture. the millions who felt the media wasn't speaking for them. and the whole idea of fair and balanced, the genius and what makes fox so interesting is the fair and balanced slogan will go down in advertising circles as

one of the savviest marketing slogans of all time because while roger ailes tells his audience they are getting both sides, really, this is the key point, the true nature of fox is that it gives a balance, for roger ailes to help balance the rest of the media. she talked-about fox news being the balance of the rest of the media. so it is that. what he would say is that he is trying to balance out the rest of the media and that is the purpose of fox and he sees himself as almost, talks of himself as a freedom fighter. this is why he is interesting because he casts himself in these grandiose terms. i don't think he thinks of it in terms of the questioner's point about is he slanting the news? he thinks of himself as a crusading to advance his vision of america.

>> what did you think of the piece in the new yorker, particularly comparison with william randolph hearst? >> that was a very interesting essay about my book that i think is an accurate reading of my book and we could be here all day talking about roger ailes's eccentricities and what makes him such an interesting character but the two points the is a made that i want to touch on is roger ailes's desire to control stories and did it on behalf of republican clients, he does it on behalf -- with the news business, a way to control the news agenda and america but ultimately the story you wants to control most is his own. and so after i was at work on my book for about a year i heard from someone i had interviewed

that there was another roger ailes book in the works and i was surprised because i thought my book is the roger ailes book. i didn't know there was another one in the pipeline and it turned out roger ailes had teamed up with a journalist who had written a glowing biography of rush limbaugh. this book was fast-track, raced out last february. kind of interesting companion to my book because it is a fun house mirror about how little they actually line up. what that showed was the way people told me he couldn't stand this idea i was going down and interviewing hundreds of people, consulting archives, reading private letters, trying to build a true historical record of his life and career so he wanted to control his own story by hiring, working with a writer that would be more amenable to his desire for control. what that new yorker as a touched on was the same

historical parallel to william randolph hearst because william randolph hearst hated the idea that the media would define his legacy, journalists would ultimately help shape his legacy. and william randolph hearst commissioned a sympathetic biography in a very similar fashion so both in roger ailes's use of media to advance his agenda and his desire to control his own story there are these fascinating historical echoes of william randolph hearst and i was captivated the new yorker talk about that in there as a. >> i heard you interviewed a couple times and i would like you to share with the audience the story about the blondes because i think the blondes show exactly what fox is and on a hopeful note if you tell the

story about the demographics that his audience is dying which i think is great. >> it is more but for 9:00 in the morning but we are in the church so it is okay. to the question about his female anchors and the beautiful blondes roger ailes pass almost in a hitchcock fashion, that is again a point that harkens back to show business, part of the building blocks of fox that roger ailes and use of showbiz this techniques and one is that you cast beautiful people for television. what i found so interesting as a reporter is how explicitly the use of beautiful women figured into the way fox works, there is an episode in the book where i

recounted how during one of the newscasts, the desk that the anchors was using was missing with script that he is on the set and roger ailes was watching the television and called down to the control booth and scream that the producer tell the akers to move the papers because they can't see her legs. he literally wants his women to be physically beautiful and attractive and he wants them to show off their beauty on the screen because that is what fox's audience which is often a male audience wants to see or at least roger ailes thinks that is what they want to see. and point about the demographics. this is something i get into at the end of my book because it is kind of an epic journey from roger ailes's childhood to the present. it traces the rise and the eventual fall of that period of american history and fox's audience continues to get older and older.

the median age of the fox viewers least 60s. roger ailes understand how to produce television for that demographic but what he has shown a weakness for is producing television that can appeal to young reviewers and ultimately to move beyond television. we are at the dawn of the next media age which will be defined by the internet and social media and whatever comes next and fox is a very simple web presence. they don't experiment with new technology the way other media organizations do and so the real question for the future of fox and that style of politics is what happens when that audience continues to get older and older. and ultimately what happens to fox news? roger ailes turns 74 this may and one of the most common questions i asked people is what is going to happen next? who is next in line? is there a successor? is there someone who is a show

business visionary like roger ailes who can program television to appeal to the audience the way he has? the question was the answer that came back was no one knows. roger ailes has yet to name a successor. he says he has one but the big question is can fox appeal to younger demographic and also what happens to fox news if roger ailes leave the stage? >> i think you may have answered my question but frank rich wrote a column a couple weeks ago on this point saying that the power of fox is waning. you may have already said it. >> it is connected and i read that piece as well. is a compelling argument and my book covers a lot of that ground because the end of my book talks

about the 2012 presidential election which really showcased the limits of fox's power. roger ailes told his inner circle in a meeting before the 2012 election he declared i want to elect the next president. he has set about making fox the voice of the opposition. he wanted to stop barack obama's agenda. he told -- roger ailes told his inner circle that obama was destroying america and it was his job to fight back and preserve the vision of america that he knew as of boy. so roger ailes said about helping the republican party try to defeat obama. but what they did is because the message, the type of program roger ailes puts on screen on fox is a very populist a angry divisive politics it ended up

harming the very goal he set out to achieve. mitt romney, who throughout his political career as governor of massachusetts was the sensually a moderate republican but to win the nomination, to get the republican nomination you had to court roger ailes. i show in the book what happens if you cross roger ailes. i want to talk about the stakes for what happens if you don't get on board with the fox news agenda. jon huntsman, the former governor of utah, was also running for the republican nomination in 2012 and he was running on a campaign that was trying to run on a moderate message, not appeal to a republican primary voter but to appeal to the general election voters and he came to new york city to see roger ailes when he was at the early stage, jon huntsman, unique position in the

republican party by being vocally supportive of efforts to curb climate change and acknowledging the scientific evidence is pretty solid that the climate is changing and humans are causing it. and so roger ailes -- jon huntsman comes to new york to have a meeting with roger ailes and it does not go well. roger rails essentials leases to him you are not orthodoxy wire you talking about this climate change stuff, it is a hoax and basically be rates him for having this progressive position. jon huntsman got only about four hours of screen time at fox compared to a candidate, let's say herman cain who took very conservative positions, 999 and all that stuff, wants to build a fence at the border, very conservative position, he got more than ten hours of airtime on fox during the primary. their campaigns last did the same amount of time.

that shows if you are not on board with fox roger ailes will limit the amount of time you can get on his channel. therefore you will be in front of republican voters for a shorter period of time and it will damage your ability to route win a contested primary. mitt romney at the general election very much campaigned on a fox news style message. it was ultimately that style of politics that turned off many voters in a year when many political analysts would say it was a tossup. republicans have very clear shot to win. anthem -- the point it ends on its politics and television are very different things. what makes a great compelling television and entertaining television is often times not a winning political message and in that sense i regard roger ailes as sort of a tragic character because he is out there crusading for his beliefs and he

is trying to help the party has devoted his professional life to serving, the republican party but ultimately fox news is damaging the republican party so he is bringing about an outcome that is not in his interest even though he is out there every day working for it. i right in the end of the book with a little bit of sadness because he has devoted his life to this cause and now the future does not look so bright for it. >> good morning. i am glad you lost your luggage because after staying up nights reading this book this is exactly what i thought you were going to look like. also to hear these questions, you would think the body of politics in savannah, georgia was overwhelmingly liberal. you get the wrong picture here. i am a liberal. i want to talk a little bit

about a topic, richard sherman, he to me is the hero of the book. he is the only one, all the characters who really stood up to roger ailes and also after seeing the interviews, i don't think any of those people read your book. i was totally surprised at the objectivity and admiration, i thought, the you had for roger ailes. it was a wonderful story from seeing both sides of the picture even though some of it is not very pretty. i love the way you did that. in regards to the early 1996 time period, i thought when roger ailes and fox tried to get in the new york market. that was a brilliant time for him because he headed straight to the midwest to his kind of people and if anything that was,

i thought, the key time of his successful success and he was able to come back later and get new york but those times, without new york, he was dead. he made it happen. how did that work for guys like roger ailes? i get out of his personality, often strong, paranoid. >> one of the quote love is roger ailes's paranoia is central to his character, rupert murdoch tells his executives roger ailes is paranoid. roger, you are paranoid. to take to extremes, can cause problems, has been one of the things that has fueled his career and it is what makes him such a fierce competitor, that

belief that enemies and people are out there trying to plot against him but he uses that as a fuel for his drive. >> you might talk about his house in garrison. that was fascinating. this is my last point. i want to say if anybody hasn't read it it is a great read. if you are old like me you have to stay up and lose a little sleep. thanks for being in savannah. >> very kind, thank you. since you asked about his home in garrison on will talk briefly about it. one of my favorite sections of the book is towards the end of the book, i right about roger ailes's adventures in a small town in upstate new york. he bought a weekend home, built a sprawling mansion on a hillside with the most beautiful view of west point. one of the other themes i didn't get time to talk to with his lifelong romance with the

military and his hemophilia kept him out of serving. you wanted as a teenager to serve in the military but was kept out. he built his vacation home overlooking the military academy. gives a panoramic view. in 2008 he and his wife bought the small town newspaper, sort of wahabi side project. what i love about this story is roger ailes sort of in a microcosm, you see how he uses media to create political conflict on a small scale in a small town. i don't know what the newspaper is like in savannah but in this town of only 10,000 residents the name of the town is philipstown, roger ailes lives in a hamlet called garrison. political tensions simmer that low-level. people had differences of opinion on issues like schools and zoning, taxes, but they all kind of figured it out.

roger ailes buys this newspaper and almost overnight the town is -- erupts in political conflict. conservatives think the progressives are trying to turn it into a commune, progressives think the conservatives are trying to turn it into a tea party state. and so the town is split into political conflict because the newspapers covering issues in a very aggressive and polarizing way. so roger ailes becomes this kind of bogeyman around town especially to the liberal presidents and fast forward to the questionnaire's line about his house, he builds this mansion and one of the things roger ailes is concerned about is his physical safety. he travels with a bodyguard, travels by suv, his office at fox news is behind a locked security door. he has this mansion and build the security bunker under it.

out in the country panic rooms are popular but this is a panic room on steroids. someone i interviewed who described it as an underground complex with different rooms and food supply for six months and i love this detail because it is straight out of a movie. roger ailes is an eccentric charismatic figure and when he talks about fearing for his physical safety because he is such a conservative icon he actually acts on it and build these very elaborate, takes these elaborate steps to protect himself. one other detail i love was he told someone i interviewed in the book that he trained his german shepherd, named champ, to control his property. when they arrive at a vacation house they let the dog out first and the dog is trained to patrol the perimeter and report back to the car that it is safe to get out and they get out of the car. maybe someday i will have to

adopt these measures myself. we will see. >> you have spoken about this a little bit. it is very clear that fox is a cult of personality built around roger ailes. those things have a shelf life. they don't last forever. i remember years ago i interviewed jerry falwell at the beginning of the moral majority movement, terrified of him and wondering what was going to happen and i had two our lunch and i found him to be astonishingly brilliant, charismatic, elegant and therefore very frightening because he had a lot of power. all of a sudden, this man with so much power in floated. roger ailes is old and he runs fox from his own personality. the ratings are slipping, the demographics are leaving. so it seems to me even though

some people say it is a good thing, to the country, it does seem very dependent on one man and his vision and even if he names a successor, it is his baby and that must be odd to think this whole thing could disappear. it really could or change drastically with his illness, death, retirement. >> it is a smart observation. away i explain the culture of fox in the book is it all revolves around him. i think we talked about this a bit earlier. if you take him out of the picture it is a giant question mark about what happens next and that is the best answer i give people. i don't want to predict the future. there could be another roger ailes we in the wings although no one knows who that is.

most likely outcome is it can't exist in its present form without him. real quickly want to tell folks how it works. the way fox is programmed is roger ailes has come morning news meeting did take place at 8:00 every morning and he monologues about the news, free associate about what he read in the headlines and what he thinks about it and his top guys, all his top producers sit there absorbing those ideas and then go out and throughout the day those messages filled out through the channel. if you take roger ailes out of the picture and don't have the driving force, driving ideology there is no one in that room, none of his top producers have the charisma and ultimately brilliance to script story lines that will work. so i as a writer will be fascinated to see in years to come what happens to fox if roger ailes is no longer running

it if it can continue. >> you were never able to get an interview with roger ailes. i wonder if you could talk about that and why you were comfortable going forward with a book with such a major omission. >> of course. it wasn't for lack of trying to. i contacted roger ailes in person and in writing more than a dozen times in . i contacted roger ailes in person and in writing more than a dozen times in the course of my research and he repeatedly declined and i see that as a reception of him. was a very revealing decision. he may not have intended it showed me that he was so focused on trying to control his story because i wouldn't put any conditions on how i would write double or who i would talk to. i want to talk to everybody and write a measured and full account of your life and career as while i wanted an interview i was not going to make the book contingent upon that. to your point about how i could

go forward, as a reporter one of the amazing things about being a reporter in america is we don't need to ask permission to write things. what we need to do to the reporters is to be fair and accurate. roger ailes did not agree to cooperate with the book, i made sure to go out and tell the story that was rigorously reported, fact check, i had a team of two professional fact checkers that spent 2,000 hours vetting every worker in the book, read interviewing people i had interviewed, consulting document secondary sources, it is interesting to point out fox has not challenged any specifics in the book. they issued a couple general blanket denials but have not challenge any of the reporting because it is accurate. on a final point, to your question how can i go forward without his cooperation?

by that standard, that would completely nullify the entire nature of historical biography. we wouldn't have biographies of thomas jefferson or any of the iconic americans who have played a role in our national life. was i wanted to do was lie fell roger ailes has played such a pivotal role in the culture that now is the time to have a reported biography of his life and i wasn't going to wait for his permission. the fact that he is still alive does not change the standards by which reporters and writers can go out and rigorously researched a subject and what the the subject cooperate or not does not change my responsibility to getting the facts right. [applause] >> thank you very much. >> gabriel sherman, everybody.

[applause] >> if you would like to meet gabriel sherman in person and have him sign your book please allow him to quickly exit the church so he may head to be signed in the middle of the square at this time. thank you. ..

we are not in a post-feminist era. i am very concerned about the quote on women. we are rolling back access to reproductive. there is no end to the three

credible statistics on violence against women. we haven't stopped shaving girls about their bodies. we have so much sexism in the media which implies the have to have a certain shape to be loved or popular. the problem in terms of defining feminism is that it's true that what unifies a lo unifies a lotn globally is what it's done to the women and i don't want to identify feminism as about victimhood. but as that is a critique you dt want to pick them feminism. in howard feminism says that women should be equal in their rights and opportunities where we don't see that we want to push forward to make that possible. but there is so much work to do and globally at the statistics are frightening in terms of the lack of access everything from education to health and

information about their options. our live coverage of the savanna book festival will continue in just a few minutes. >> i was more political than religious. but i feel like before 9/11 i would call us accidental muslims because i think that many of us are perhaps of a certain religion through an accident of

birth and i think what 9/11 did them and i'm not alone in that way i think it did that too many american muslims a sort of forces you to grapple with the notion of what it means to be american islam after 9/11 was on trial. and every pundit and on tv was an expert suddenly and you were told that you can be a woman and muslim and you needed to be liberated from the violence of islam was in here and so there was a lot coming at me and as a mother of a toddler at the time when my daughter was starting kindergarten i very much was worried about my children as american muslims and i thought if being muslim is just something that we are as a family because of sort of industrial loyalty then why put him through that challenge?

and that begins this journey. >> so they blew up two beautiful buildings in our city, our state and our country. what is the impact on you living a comfortable life in manhattan would impact does that have on you and what do you think of those people? >> the audience barely gets to hear from people like you what you tell us what you think of these terrorists and how they have affected your life lacks first they affect the lives of people they took away. from my own personal perspecti perspective, those lost in the terror in that day it is

compounded by another challenge by virtue of calling ourselves muslim we were guilty by association is said that was difficult. and as a mother even more so as you grapple with trying to make sense of it all. her first day at school was the morning of 9/11, the first official day of kindergarten and i read about this in the book where i packed a miniature her aunt and her backpack as a kind of protect my daughter thing. >> at uthat's like a christian carrying a cross. >> and it was a big oversized backpack with a teeny tiny

koran. and i remember thinking that what i packed so lovingly in my daughter's backpack was being used to wreak the havoc and the hate and distraction and the jokes to the -- juxtaposition was mindnumbing and confusing at a very access control level and at the parenting level so the journey has been for me turning my religion and understanding the issues and. when you have stereotypes out there.

there's a lot of people shying away from celebrating in the office. >> and that is a natural reaction. it's a difficult journey. by taking my children along on this journey and insisting that we take them along as we learn together and slowly they have chosen to self identify as muslims, and i think that by doing that they can hold america accountable to its higher ideals

as they can hold islam accountable. it can be agents of change for a better world. you are looking at the inside of the lutheran church. the site of this year's savannah festival. more coverage in a couple minutes

i would say that i am working from nine to three. those that say they are writing for seven hours a day are exaggerating. you can't.

because the edges of your imagination starts to blur after i would say that this case about three hours. but even when you are writing a nonfiction book you may be put putting three good hours and then the rest of it is research, looking at e-mails, making another cup of coffee, that sort of thing. fiction usually begins with a theme for me. identity, fame, things like that. but the whole process picks up steam when i start to ground some of my thoughts in a character who will become the protagonist and that character becomes sharper and sharper to me. it is because it leaves a piece

of yourself behind. say that you are blogging the fruit or 20s and almost no one reads it but almost 20 years from then you will have children and you can show them what you wrote and they will understand things about you that they might not understand otherwise. i always say that writing, even in its most basic form, a letter or poem or a note to someone we have all had experience of loving someone and of losing them as opening a drawer and finding a card design or letter they wrote into thinking still alive in some way. any regrets about anything that you've written? >> i think regrets are things i

like to think i am a good columnist get out before she publishes. in other words you spend a fair amount of time at the computer backstopping yourself. when you are writing about your family constantly coming and even when you are writing about event part of your brain is thinking how will this feel in ten years and how equivocal do i want to be about certain things so i think you do a lot of -- is more taking the long view. and because of that i don't have any regrets about anything i pretend. >> any advice for writers? guess, don't wait for inspiration. i don't know where she is, but she's not coming or at least she's not coming here. occasionally there is a flyby

and then she's gone again and it's all just about hard work. the hard work part doesn't largely consist of thinking about it. people say i'm thinking about writing a book and know what ever gets written by thinking about it. at some point you just have to sit down whether you feel like it or not. people think if you're going to write well it must be because you wake up in the morning and your heart sings. mine doesn't because i constantly think it isn't going to be good into takes at least an hour before i think here i go. if you wait for that moment to come before you sit down, you won't do it.

now from the annual savannah book festival. mike ritland describes his experiences with elite navy seals k9. >> good morning. i am happy to welcome you to the seventh annual savannah book festival presented by georgia power an ended to the new venuet the lutheran church of ascension, which is made possible by the generosity of john and fran came. many of you have already attended our special addresses. today your work is cut out for you as you choose which offers to visit during this day that offers renowned writers that have published outstanding books

in the last year. we would like to extend a thanks to our special sponsor georgia power, the individual donors that makes saturday's festival events possible. if you would like to lend your support, we welcome your donations and have provided yellow bucks for book sbuckets. please take this moment to turn off your cell phones. [laughter] also, we ask that you please do not use flash photography. and immediately following the presentation, he will be signing festival purchased copies of the book tend. please join me in thanking the appearance here today. [applause]

mike ritland, the author of "trident k9 warriors" is a former navy seal who trains selected blogs for training missions. his memoir is an exciting account of highly trained dogs, their extraordinary loyalty, courage and lifesaving role they play in the military missions. he'd crew up in waterloo iowa and joined the navy in 1996. it was during combat deployment in iraq that he saw military dogs in action and he knew he found his calling. he served active duty before finding the international where he is the trainer that served in the department of homeland security, u.s. customs, border patrol and the department of defense. mike ritland also founded the warrior dog foundation for nonprofit special operations

retirement foundation. please welcome mike ritland. [applause] >> good morning. first i would like to thank the savanna that festival for having me here. i think what they are doing is a marvelous thing and it gives a lot of access to venues like this to be able to talk about what they do and what they are passionate about. so first and foremost i would like to thank them for bringing me here and everybody that is sitting out here for taking interest in what it is that i do in the book i wrote into the message i like to convey in terms of the importance of military working dogs and of the

things they are capable of without your support. this wouldn't happen to think you for supporting me in the book. as it relates to the working dogs i grew up in northern iowa and there isn't a lot to do. there's farming and hunting. so it was kind of a i wouldn't say a destiny as picking one of the things there are to do so i got involved with bird dogs. we had a black lab growing up that i talked about in the book and kind of the gateway into the dog world. but at a very early age i recognized and appreciated the traits that all of them

possessed in terms of their ability to use their nose into their steadfastness in terms of what they were willing to go through from an environmental standpoint bursting through brush and thorns and they were just motivated to do the type of work that we were asking them to do. they would use the wind to their advantage and would find things that for me was very surprising and it was kind of a foreshadowing in terms of what i do now and where it led me ultimately, and that fascination for them to use their nose is frankly why they are so valuable from the military standpoint. i didn't realize at that age to me it was just cool to see a dog

in the dead of winter because he would've buried his nose told him just to the snow and find a ketchup packets that had been buried six weeks before. it was neat to see something like that and obviously the applications that i got involved with later on. i spent a number of years with friends and the dogs would go out and we would do dog or bird hunting of some sort and i just always marveled at their ability to do what they did. once i graduated from high school, i joined the navy and a 17 right out of high school as soon as i graduate i went to boot camp. six months after boot camp after my initial training i went in to the basic underwater demolition training. i completed that and after that i worked through more

specialized training until you get to an actual seal team, and i was there for a number of years. while i was there and prior to that i got involved in hunting dogs etc. which i talk about in the book of hope, and again i found myself marveling at the physical characteristics that they possess but now there was an added element in that there was a natural attrition that they possess towards other animals and i found myself impressed by their tenacity and will to succeed and to win and take down animals two or three or four times their size. it was at that point that i got into the animal husbandry aspect of the dogs where i paid really

close to nutrition and conditioning from a veterinary aspect i learned a lot after they would get injured etc. and i just learned just about every aspect of raising dogs from an animal husbandry standpoint the same way a dairy farmer would. and i started to get into the genetic theory of bloodlines and how they affect the different aspects of a breeding program and why it's important to pay attention getting into the weeds as far as breathing is concerned. after that i got more and more involved in every aspect of managing and i have a number of dogs in which i bred and raised and trained for working purposes and in iraq deployment there was

a marine detachment of headache single explosive purposed attention dog and what he did was he essentially alerted on a complex there was a small doorway not much bigger than one person could get through at a time. the dog was going back and forth with changing behavior you could tell he was onto the targe on tt odor and it maybe if we write inside the doorway he sat down and stared which is the indication that there is an explosive odor present. upon close inspection of the doorway there was a clump of grenades attached to a booby trap right inside the doorway. for me without question that was my life such moment in terms of really realizing the potential of these dogs and the role that they were able to play in

augmenting mankind overseas in the battlefield and from that day forward i was starved for knowledge in terms of working dogs as it relates to military and police type of work. i found it very fitting and powerful. it's one of the things i mention in the book is from the earliest reported times of the battle, there is one constant in terms of what we still use even today. we have billions if not trillions of dollars invested in smart bombs and drones and laserguided everything and any omissions and explosives. from the earliest recorded times when man battled each other there is a constant and that is the use of canines even as far back as egypt is concerned they

used dogs to augment themselves in battle. and to me it really speaks to just a truism of man's best friend not only are they great pets and companions but they are also dogs that could save our lives and we literally depend on them to help keep us safe in a number of capacities. when i was finished with my time i moved onto an instructor role in to the nice thing about that is it gave me a little bit of a break from an operational standpoint i was able to get into the weeds of job training as it relates to military work. i trained with a number of different clubs and groups and units and organizations etc. that gave me a well-rounded perspective of what dogs did and how they did it, all the

different multitudes of ways that they were incorporated into the military service and there's truly the sky is the limit in talladega. i realized very quickly and the only thing that limited us as human beings but we could do was if we looked at it from a training perspective and put our minds to it there is almost nothing we could do with these dogs. it was eye-opening to me the level of capability and capacity. as i transitioned to get ready to get out of the navy is when the regular seal team started implementing their own k9 program. it's frustrating from a military standpoint and has a special

operator that all the programs were used before in the special warfare communities back in that he there was a number of units that used them. they got to where and they knew how to train the dogs and get them where they need to be and like a lot of programs that are expensive and from a building standpoint they are hard to maintain and when the budget cuts come, programs like that are one of the first things to go because they are labor-intensive and expensive. there wasn't a single operations unit that still used canines from the end of vietnam until post-9/11. with few exceptions where military police and handlers with augment the different units

for certain capacities, there was no self-sufficient entities in terms of canine programs. canine programs are no different than a police unit, special operations group, military branch and that it's not a light switch type of application. you can't turn it off and 20 years later say let's get them back going, flip the light switch on and now you are a unit that operates in the same capacity that you did before you turned it off. no different than a special operations unit. you can't expand the operations after the military conflict is over and then ten years later something happened and put them back on. it doesn't happen that way. after 9/11 it has become very apparent that with all of the work that we were doing in afghanistan and then later on in iraq the military working dogs were something that were of enormous value. first they started using military police dogs trying to

incorporate them in that capacity that they were limited in terms of the ability of the dogs because they are not special operations and so there can be a conflict in terms of dynamic nature that you can operate. when each unit to figur securedt they needed their own program each one devised their own program and because each group, whether it is rangers were green berets or special warfare or any of the other counterterrorism units out there is a different mission where each group really needs its own program. it's all run in-house. it isn't a part of the program. they are all self-sufficient from the ground up with each prospective unit. it's something that from the big picture standpoint i think it's

hard for a lot of people to understand why there is such a difference puts kind of the nature and the beast and that the level they operate freely dictate each group has its own program. it was a stumbling process at first for a number of groups because unlike any other tool coming in to use the word tool not in a disrespectful manner but in the fact that they are a remarkable and incredibly valuable tool that we use to help augment us and stay safe overseas and in that it is just like anything else you have to learn how to use it properly. dogs unlike any other thing used to get weused to get a weapon s, night vision vehicles, whatever platform you want to apply are pretty cut and dry. it's usually a piece of mechanical equipment from having

used other similar pieces of it and. when you get to the dog is this a completely different animal than a pun intended. but it is being able to truly understand what the dog is communicating with and from his body language is something that takes years to develop. it takes an enormous amount of experience from both the volume standpoint and the disparity between different blogs because they are all individuals the same way you and i are. they have different characteristics and traits into past life experiences that forge and dictate how they respond to certain scenarios and until you have experienced these different environments it is difficult to understand what he is feeling and thinking and how he is going to respond. the only way that you can manage and dictate how they respond is

to first understand where he's coming from and then also use our body language to communicate back what is expected of them and that transfers to pet dogs, any type of working dog in that animals are almost overwhelmingly nonverbal communicators and so it is our job to be able to communicate back to them what it is that we expect of them. you have to reinforce the behavior to get it to occur again and it's really that simple, but to teach somebody that it's not a weekend course or three-day seminar. it's years of experience. and so there were a lot of lessons learned the hard way, dogs not doing what they needed to be doing, going overseas with them and then not performing up to par what we needed them to do it was a very steep learning

curve and a lot of the handlers and trainers and other operators for that matter were drinking from the firehose in terms of what they were learning. once the bugs began to get worked out, there was a very fluid operational capacity that dogs now played. most of the operators had been overseas and operated before and knew what to expect. the dogs had been operating for several years and everything was getting hammered out and started to transition very smoothly and now it got to the point where every unit has multiple dogs and they are doing a fantastic job with them, be it parachuted or any number of high-level different missions in the environments that we operate with them and the guys that

operate within its remarkable and it speaks to the versatility of dogs in general in terms of what you can get them to do. moving forward, i was at a crossroads personally. at the end of 2,008 i could either stay in the navy and become one of the handlers early on and become a part of the program or i could separate from the navy and start my own company and try to have a larger impact in terms of training, supplying the different scenarios and training courses for the military and it was a tough decision for me personally. it's one that from a selfish standpoint if i'm looking at it just selfishly i wanted to stay and be a handler.

it was a very tough decision for me to make instead of getting that one-on-one time and doing the dance with them and they did try to make a bigger impact to get out and form a company and provide a multitude of services and ultimately and obviously that is what i ended up doing. it was important and dear to my heart to make as big a difference as i could. no different than when i joined the navy to the reason i went into the team is because i wanted to make the largest impact i could. i have always kind of taken that train of thought with everything i've done as that is going to make the biggest impact and thus far it has worked out pretty well. but it was still a difficult decision for me to say i'm going to forgo what i want to do personally and i'm going to to transmit a larger impact and do thtodo that greater good for the entire community. i started my own company.

we did a lot for a host of different clients and in a number of different capacities. some of them are going into drug dog programs for the border patrol and some of them were going into the land security for airports to and some of them are going to the department of defense for military work and i realized very quickly that again this is something the level of impact they can and act in the role they play is much bigger than me or anyone person and that's why there are a multitude of people like me that do the exact same thing. there's a number of vendors and companies that provide similar services. a few years and we secured the training contract for a special operations unit. myself and one other employee went out and we were trainers

for a period of time and for me i would say that was kind of the best of everything for me in that i have put several years into the company and now i was back to where i owned the company that was providing the trainers and dogs and training for the same group by group a thing and it's something i will always be very proud of and just tickled to death to have been part of because they put everything together for me. once i decided to write the book i was essentially approached by my publisher to write it and one of the reasons was the amount of information or misinformation or lack of information that has been out there as it relates to military dogs especially in special operations groups there is a ton of misinformation out there and there's also a lot of

just american citizens that have no ideas that the dogs are used at a minimum in the capacity that they are. it can't be overstated how important they are. there are literally tens of thousands of american troops who are here today because of dogs like these. and it just -- for me it's important that it was and still is important and everybody realizes that so for me it was a tough decision to write the book because of the amount of exposure that it gives. the guys like me are not typically ones that want to be in the spotlight and want people to know who they are or what they do or what they have done. so again i was kind of at a crossroads and not do i stay keeping the low-profile just providing the work or does it make sense to put a highlight on these blogs and make the entire public understand just how vital

and important they are and how lifesaving they are and again it would have been easier to just keep doing what i was doing and that none of you would be sitting here and no one would know who i am. but again, when i look back at post-vietnam programs getting turned off or here in the next year or two when things are rounded down to the point where from a penny pinch her standpoint it doesn't make sense to keep these expensive k9 program, i hope, and michael is that there is enough interest and passion behind the general public to keep these programs going because they are so vital. once i decided to write about it is largely been a great experience for me in terms of the feedback that i've gotten and the questions i get asked and got e-mails and messages i

get from people that say i have absolutely no idea that the dogs were used to the way they are and people are just behind. they are excited about it and they support it. from the time i started with dogs and providing all these dogs from day number one, it was always on the front side essentially and i put a lot into providing job training services etc.. one of the things i realized very quickly was that on the back and, there wasn't much of a support structure and there was essentially none as it relates to special operations working dogs. once they are done whether it be from combat injuries, combat stress-related mental issues or just old age just like the guys like m me gets get to a certaind

can't do the job they are doing at the level we need to anymore it is time to write out of the e pastor and go do something else and dogs are the same way. what i realized is that there are not any support structures for those dogs and it honestly happened by accident and that there was a unit that approached me and said we have to dogs both of them have been wounded and are almost nine years. it's time for them to retire. we don't have the capacity to do what we need to do with them. a lot of people when they hear that are angered by that and let me clarify that one thing you have to realize about any operational unit is that their job is first and foremost is to be operationally ready at the highest level possible. while nobody wants to know that there'there is not a place for e dogs to go, which there is, but i think a lot of people assume i don't have the units take care and the reason why is because if

it detracts from being operationally ready because we are taking the care of the dogs and we can't get the resources necessary to train and equip the existing dogs than that is one of those necessary evils and a conflict of interest etc. where you have to make the right decision for those that are going down range all the time and put the resources into the actual operators. where i came in they said we need a place for them to go and i wasn't really set up to accommodate that but given the circumstances there is nowhere for them to go we need somebody to take them. that was almost four years ago now and we've been doing it ever since. we have an actual foundation that organized into ten nonprofit that rehabilitates or if that isn't possible to act as a sanctuary essentially for them

to live out their years in an environment where they are not asked to do anything. they can be a dog. our place is in texas and it's a great facility in terms of it is on 20 acres and it's surrounded by tens of thousands of acres of pastures and wooded areas where we let them just unwind and get to be dogs whether it is being chasing cows were running through the lord's having a blast playing ball, going for rides etc.. ideally we'd like to rehabilitate them if necessary and home then. sometimes that works out and sometimes it doesn't. one of the questions i get asked frequently is due dogs get ptsd and the answer in short is yes. it's different in that dogs are simple association animals. they don't have the ability to reason the way people do. and so more so than ptsd it is essentially a negative association with different types

of experiences that they've had overseas via to gunfire or helicopters, fire crackers, you name it. there are certain things they've been exposed to and have had enough negative experiences that they associate that with that you see issues and problems when they are exposed to those types of things. sometimes it can be something as simple as being in a crate or loading up into a vehicle or trailer. there's a host of things you can see the dogs both have issues with the nice thing about a dog is that generally speaking, you can't unwind the process in two simple ways. number 100 don't ask the dog to do anything. you don't put pressure on him to be obedient. you don't send him to do any of the complicated maneuvers or training scenarios he has done in the past and you just do the things we know as all the people

what they like which is throwing balls into taking them for walks, letting them run around without any obedience tasks being given to them. that's first and foremost. once you let them unwind a little bit, then we find out what it is the negative association is and then we very slowly bridged that gap and say okay we will use gunfire for an example. gunfire is a defaults to the aggression where he is fighting anybody that he can when he hears gunfire which is not an uncommon thing. so now we are going to desensitize into it where there will be gunfire 2,000 yards away while we are playing ball and then it thousand, then 500. and once you get enough repetitions of positive associations with these things that previously they had negative associations with, you can't unwind and essentially untrained those negative

reinforcers with a dog. so we found while some of them may not be of the temperament and the capacity to be home with an average family, they are now no longer a danger to everybody around them and themselves, and from a mental stability standpoint they are much more relaxed and calm and confident dogs. so for me it is something i hold very dear to my heart because as a special of -- special operations guy trading but that after vietnam versus now begin the polar opposite, i feel it is every bit as important to do the same thing for these dogs because they are no less of an operator than any of us special operations or any military member for that matter as they play just as big a role as

anybody does. one of the things that's also important i think for everybody to understand is the level of respect and care that is given to these dogs if they are wounded and when they are retired if they are killed and an action it mirrors the human counterpart. when they are lost or injured, they are lifelike it if need be and stabilized wherever they need to be and then they come back here for more advanced rehabilitation type therapy. they are the exact same way. a lot of people unfortunately have the idea that if a dog is injured or wounded they are disposable we will put and down and move on to the next one. i assure you with 100% guarantee it's nowhere near that.

some of the dogs i've retired have been shocked and essentially blown up in explosions and they were sent out from a stabilized, wi-fi why flighted, rehabilitated for months to be able to retire them. so for me it's important that everybody understands, you know, not only do they play that enormous role, but the level of respect and care that is given to them is no different than their human counterparts. on a more grave note, the same thing with if they are lost. the special operations command generally have memorials set up where they will have humane names on one side and k9 names on the other side. and it's like this. it's not in balance at all. we are a team and they are considered operators just like the rest of us and so again it's

important for me to relay that to you. i would like to finish before i open up for questions you know, again, going back to the importance of these dogs i can't speak from personal experience that i am standing here because one of these dogs saved my life. what i can tell you is i have dozens of friends if not in the hundreds it's impossible to quantify because if a dog comes onto an explosive device and finds that it's there, how do you determine how many, that's impossible. but there are a ton of people from a fellow american citizens and our service members who volunteered to get their hands dirty that are standing here today because these dogs have

been trained and equipped and managed effectively into these canine programs and its something that i hope as a nation we not only never forget, but also that we move forward and be steadfast in our allocation of funds and resources across the spectrum. as things wind down overseas to a certain extent, things are focused on a little heavier back here and there would be an enormous success and victory for any unit that can find a place to use dogs for their safety to implement the program and use them because they are phenomenal at what they do. i can't thank you enough for being here. before i get into the q-and-a,

one thing i want to bring up is as far as any questions that you want to ask, historically speaking i found people are afraid to ask the questions in terms of how do you justify sending dogs that there is absolutely nothing off limits. to me if you have a tough question or you think it's tough fire it away because my job and my goal is to relay information so you don't have to ask -- you can ask me whatever question you want. it can be as simple as what kind of food do you feed or sleep in terms of theoretical discussion as you want to get. but i encourage anybody to take that and run with it because i -- that's what i'm here for and i'm happy to answer to whatever degree i can from an operational standpoint there are things i

can't and won't answer, but if it is something i can answer, i'm happy to do it. so moving forward, are there any questions? >> yes. >> [inaudible] >> that's a question -- for those that couldn't hear is what breed or three do you prefer. the answer is i prefer the breed of dog that passes my selection test. having said that, the dutch shepherd and a german shepherd are the only three in my experience that have passed my selection test. i don't have a preference for any of those three. use the military and police work now there are more and more dutch shepherd's being used and again it's not a preference, it's the fact that for a number of reasons, which i want to believe her or get into, there is a higher prevalence for those

dogs testing the unit selection criteria. >> are you involved with training service dogs? the question was am i involved in the training of service dogs for veterans with ptsd. right now the answer is no. there are a number of groups i've been introduced to and have spoken with in the last 18 months or so that do that and i would love to get to the point where we have an involvement in some capacity. i will see the type of dog that is going to be a good personal protection or military dog etc. is usually not in the same category as a dog that is good for a fellow soldier with ptsd.

there are two different missions in terms of how the dogs perform with their temperament and character trait but obviously it's a very important thing and we are taking it one step at a time doing the providing and retiring. it's not to beat a dead horse but it's a whole different animal. anybody else? >> do the enemies target the dogs and how do they view that whole issue? >> they do. here's the short answer to what our enemies do. they target everything we have. they don't use any discretion in prioritizing necessarily. if we have something whether it is a truck, weapons truck, convoy, group of soldiers patrolling they are going to target. is there anything that we have

is a target. yes. >> i came in a little late so i apologize if you addressed this. i have a friend that is very active in all of these now. he feels that the training of the dogs has not kept up with the technology in the military, and i wonder do you agree with that and has it changed dramatically from vietnam to malpractice >> the short answer is yes and no. the interesting thing about dog training is that it's just like any other aspect. it depends on which unit is conducting the training. some are incredibly productive in the use of the commissioning and employing all four quadrants in the reinforcement quadrant and using the body language and

reinforcement training. some units are still very old-school and much more compulsive than their training methods. so in some respects, yes absolutely there are some that are doing it t the same way they were in vietnam and some are doing it on a much higher level and capacity to. >> i would like to thank you for your service and the dogs that you train. [applause] with depending wind down in the far east, what are the implications for us maintaining some programs and not have what happened in vietnam and what implications does that have for your company because obviously if they switch off, what do you do? and finally how many do you

process in the retirement? >> to speak to the first part of the question of the conflicts internationally winding down and how it impacts us is very simply alternately it shouldn't come as no different than bringing the troops home from anywhere we shouldn't say let's cut the military and half for the reasons i depicted earlier it is imperative that we keep a level of maintenance at the capacity that we are working now. it can be tricky because there is a bare minimum of infrastructure trainers and facilities and training area equipment etc. but has to be maintained whether it is 30 dogs or one dog.

i'm hopeful that given the success record of these dogs they won't turn the light switch off and i see a falling back to the bare minimum to maintain the capability, but instead of having 30 dogs, you have four or five which is how i see is panning out. ..

and unequivocally at the end of the study, the use of k9 knowledge was above any piece of man-made equipment and the interesting thing about a dog's nose is a use of dogs period, it is not just their nose that is valuable. their ability to apprehend people and be as mobile as they are and the possession of the ming general lacked as an enormous deterrent for a lot of police forces and military units. they are getting a lot of bang for your buck with a dog's nose. >> you have already mentioned the nose part, the main selection criteria. what a the other main selection

criteria you use to choose the dogs to train and how do you go about doing that? how do you decide which one is better equipped than another one? >> basically we have a end product that is our ideal and we work backwards from that. to give you the four or five most basic different kind of sections, i guess, that i look for, i look for confidence first and foremost. i want to see a dog that walked around like he owns the place no matter where he is, interact with me very confident we. he is social, is paying attention to me, not defaulting to aggression towards me just because i am a stranger in close to him but a happy medium. the don't want him to be aggressive. don't want to be shy or aloof with me either. so he has to be confident and he has had an enormous level of play drive, just a natural drive

to chase and capture things when they're waved in front of his face, throwing the ball and has to have an enormous amount of hunt drive, if i tease him by ball, throw the ball in the thick brush and let him go he will spend minutes using his nose, not his eyes but his nose to find the ball, he can't see it, he will sit there and you can watch, like nose on legs snaking back-and-forth and he will do that ended distractions if there is hot and water nearby or other dogs who have marked in the area, if there's traffic or somebody -- gunfire going of which are all things we may simulate to test dedication of the hunt drive for that dog and i want to make sure under all those circumstances he is still going to hunt which mimics a combat environment. if i take a dog who is distracted by food or a female or gunfire while asking him to search, when i send the dog over

to and austere environment where he will be used to save people's lives and he is surging and there's a hot dog, oh, there's a hot dog, that dog is not of enormous value to us. the sociability in environmental nerve go hand-in-hand. i need a dog that can go anywhere. open stairwells, elevators, escalators, people with wheelchair's, played down the equipment is a good test, the dog will spider monkey his way around, all over playground equipment, usually a good indicator that dog is environmentally pretty sound, taking him into dark rooms, slippery floors i want to see a dog that will do all that. last but not least, i am looking for a dog the one i get in a bright student put pressure on him, mostly mental standpoint and a little from a physical standpoint, i want to see a dog that when i communicate to him with my body and not only am i here, i am not scared of you but

intent on doing you holland and make sure you understand that. when i put all of that into a dog i want the dog that is going to say you want to roll, let's roll. there are very few dogs that act fat way, from experience. most dogs don't have that genetic trait and it stands to reason, it is counterintuitive that a lack of self preservation exists in most animals, cumin beings included. it is an anomaly treat even when breeding for it, it is rand v. elusive but some things that is crucial for the type of work we do. what makes the selection process so difficult is finding a dog that has everyone of those qualities in very high caliber. kind of like the analogy i use a lot is lebron james or michael jordan of dogs, they have to be at their very best level in every aspect of what we are asking them to do.

it is difficult. >> what are your options? >> the question is in terms of inbreeding and line breeding, without getting too into the weeds in genetic theory essentially with breeding programs of any animal we are funneling genetics. there is a desired outcome we are trying to accomplish with the breeding program and you have to double up on these qualities. the thing you have to be careful with is when you double up on good qualities you also double up on the bad ones. this isn't a good idea for people, it has to be absolute textbook consummate examples of what you are trying to accomplish and even then you have to be very careful with it. with again, thank you. that is all the time we have. i appreciate it.

[applause] >> before we close out this session if i could still have your session of like to call bill and diane patterson to the stage, mike ritland has something to present to them. if you words. >> i will come up to the side. >> come on up. >> we will be presenting you with a bag with some memorabilia and souvenirs for this company, for your dog's foundation. [applause] all right, thank you again to mike ritland.

now, if you would like to need mike ritland in person and have him sign your book please allow into quickly exit the church sunny may 5th to the author signing tent at this time. thank you all very much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> we just heard from mike ritland about his experiences with the navy seal k9s. more from savannah in just a few minutes. >> women's history for beginners is the booktv book club selection for the month of february. booktv.org, you will see at the top a tab that says book club and you can participate in our discussion at booktv.org. we will be posting video and reviews and articles of to their tomorrow so the discussion will begin tomorrow. we will also be posted on a regular basis discussion questions. i hope you will be able to participate in. bonnie morris's women's history

for beginners is our february of 2014 book club selection on booktv. >> you make an observation about childhood that really struck me. you say children of baby boom children were in control of their own childhood. our parents worked as children, our children worked like maniacs and yet we were a generation, our generation of people who had childhoods. >> get out of the house. it is a beautiful day. it is raining comet it is 30. they said it was a beautiful day, get out of the house. never quite figured out the parenting style. we take a lot of grief for being helicoptered parents but our parents, they were strange. they could be so cautious and so fearful of things.

don't get to know people who are not from europe. that would be scary. on the other hand the fourth of july would come around and dad would hand out dna babies with some explosives, should probably take a license. everybody has uncles. uncle mighty mike. he would give us -- more spectacle, businessman uncle did this. he would give us the firecrackers at his cottage at the lake, blood on the for the july and give us become its cigarette. not to smoke but because that was the safeway to light the fire cracker. cent of course they drank. they were real strict all day long until about 6:30.

i know i am only 10 but can i take the car? >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> booktv live coverage of a savannah book festival in georgia will be back shortly. [inaudible conversations] >> welcome to book stevie on c-span2 this weekend, three days of nonfiction books and authors every weekend. today booktv is live from the savannah book festival. check booktv.org for complete schedule. code name johnny walker:the extraordinary story of the iraqi

who risked everything to fight with the new u.s. navy seals. tomorrow booktv interviews a couple professors from catholic university and sandra grimes talks about a hunting down and capture of cia mole aldrich ames. on president's day jeffrey frank on i can and dick. richard reitman talks about fdr and the jews and cokie roberts describes the women who influenced our founding fathers. all this and more on booktv on c-span2. the full schedule available on booktv.org. >> there are a hundred things i want to write about. it is hard work but it is a joy. i am not mahatma gandhi. i am a capitalist.

what drives me is to get my books, my arguments into as many hands as i possibly can because my books are intended to affect people's thinking, to give them ideas, make them think they haven't thought about, and as i say i can't imagine other authors aren't thinking the same way but that is where i am coming from. i had one of the greatest editors in publishing. he really is terrific and he has and i for is this so he might say you might not want to use that sentence or you might want to reorganize this chapter or that chapter, but he is also gracious about how he does it, knowing full well i am a little stubborn like the thing most authors are but i certainly am. he might say may not want to include that and i will say i am, okay, or in a is a my not want to include that and i say you are right. i like to bounce things off him but in the end i make those decisions and has there ever been head butting?

no. have i ever attended a book where they said lord? they have always said there will be thrilled to have the book because i actually hand them a complete book with all the end notes in the book, all the sourcing in the book, all the arguments in the book, all the chapters in the book, i put it together and hand it to them. at the end of this desk, i don't know the other authors zoo that, other conservative others, i don't know but in my case because i have no ghost authors or co writers or anything of this sort, there glad i tournament and the tournament on time. there are things i want to write about, things i want to talk about the life is short. i don't need to miss my deadline, i am excited to get my book in on my deadline and excited to go with my next one. it is hard work. i do a radio show and i am not done until 9:00 eastern time and

that means i work until 3:00 in the morning and i work every weekend so it does have an affect on your social life. this is what i do. this is what i love. people say what the you do for a hobby? this is what i do. it is wahabi ended is work and i love it. >> cotton avenue serves as a metaphor for making history. when it was first laid out in 1823 they laid out in nice square blocks with alternating, large, wide boulevards, wider than washington d.c. boulevard, said that has its squares, bacon has its linear parks but anyway as they were laying it out of farmer with a load of cotton on his wagon headed towards the river to market it downstream, rode right through the stakes

the engineers had laid out and the engineers simply boils the angle road into the layout. >> this weekend booktv and american history tv look beyond the history and literary life of macon georgia, on c-span2 end c-span3. [inaudible conversations] >> more from savannah in a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> which is to say colleges this year in particular are starting to see fire resistance. people are thinking very hard

about what did they want to spend 50, $60,000 a year and up. when people find out what to wish in is i can't believe how expensive it is compared to last year or five years ago. they are not seeing that as good especially when financed by debt. a lot of colleges are dealing with some growth price discrimination, that is what financial aid really is, price discrimination, how much can you afford to pay, that is the price for you because i like you. that is what is going on. you are seeing some schools having their credit rating downgraded by moody's's because moody's look at high tuition and high expenses and doesn't think it is sustainable. you are seeing enrollment drop across the board, lots of schools and within colleges you are seeing humanities on this, kim manatee's departments unhappy because they're losing their prestige and losing majors and enrollees because people,

especially women, don't want to major in humanities because they're concerned about getting a job when they get out and that has ramifications within universities based on how many students take your classes and things like that, fairly dramatic. of sal it can't go on forever and i think it won't. what happens next? there are lots of things people can do. one thing we might see is people just not going to college. 40% of college graduates wind up in jobs they could have gone without a college degree. what is the difference between a starbuck barista and starbucks barista went to college? which one would you rather be? not sure i got it right but when donald trump was in financial trouble he pointed at a homeless guy in the gutter and said that guy got $500 million more than

me. he was broke, not in debt. that is the lesson for some college graduates. and in it in today's world, getting ahead is probably harder than it has ever been, just getting by is probably easier than it has ever been between videogames, internet porn and hookup culture needs college? you have a pretty nice life. many things people used to think they had to exert themselves to make a life for themselves to enjoy are now available much more easily. i will be that at that. one thing there is some evidence men in particular are less likely to go to college because they don't find it sufficiently rewarding but i will leave that to the experts to write on that subject. another possibility is cheaper alternatives and we are seeing growth too. one of the ms. online education and there is a lot of that going on and is now no longer just the domain of the university of phoenix and a few other for

profit schools, georgia tech is offering a master's in computer science online that is a full-service degree. everyone is good at their regular masters except it is supercheap kind of appealing. another thing we are seeing that i would like to see more of and i think we will is certification in place of diploma up. i'm not as optimistic, not as convinced, the harvard business review says people are just going to get certificates to show they know how to do useful things instead of diplomas which no longer do that but i do think that certificates of actual ability, people who think that, because higher education establishment is getting the side third-party certification as a way of proving their degree means something and that is pretty useful. another thing that is starting to happen is the rise of apprenticeship. i thought was a sad article in

the washington post, it was about people who had gone to college and couldn't get a job going back to trade school to learn to be electricians and plumbers and things like that. there is nothing sad about being an electrician or plumber. i was talking to one of my fellow law professors about one of michael lind's articles about the exploitation of the working class and his response was i might find that persuasive and manhattan scene might electrician's house. being an electrician is good work and there is no reason why a smart person can't be an electrician. the story said the sad thing is they had gone to college to run up the debt before deciding to become plumbers or electricians, would have been better off if they had just skipped college entirely. according to the article guidance counselors in high school don't want to tell smart people to pursue a trade. smart people make better

electricians. i don't know if it is a bad. electricians make good money. people in skilled trades make good money, often more than people with be as and in coming years one huge that the judge hands on jobs is they can't be outsourced to bang the lore. back in the 90s of the sun from robert wright and michael lind about growing hegemony of the symbolic analysts and knowledge workers and how they were going to run the world. here is the problem being in knowledge worker. when you a knowledge worker you are in competition with every other smart person on the planet thanks to the internet. when you are a toilet fixer you are only in competition with people within 15, 30 minute drive. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.

[inaudible conversations] >> you are looking at the inside of the lutheran church of dissension, the site of this year's savannah book festival. more live coverage and a couple of minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at the top ten best-selling nonfiction books according to the los angeles times. former secretary of defense robert gates tops the list with his memoir duty followed by new york writer malcolm glad well's david and goliath and the fight for women's rights in pakistan in i m malalla. their programs can be viewed on booktv.org. atlantic editor scott stossel

chronicles his struggles with anxiety in my age of anxiety. and fifth, charles krauthammer prevents a collection of his political columns, things that matter, three decades of passions, pastimes and politics. watch the pulitzer prize-winning syndicated columnist program from the george w. bush presidential library at our web site booktv.org. 6 on the best-seller list is stagees followed by a short guide to a long life by david angus. and the internal and external pressures that israel faces today in promisedland. in ninth place is gary's memoir little failure and wrapping up the list is gabriel sherman's profile of fox news president roger ailes in the loudest voice in the room. look for mr. chairman's appearance on booktv ads offering reprogram after were daring in the near future on booktv on c-span2 and that is the top ten best-selling

nonfiction books lists according to the los angeles times. >> one of the concluding sections of the book is in effect on lessons learned about war. and one of the things that you would think people would understand would be how frequently people who advocate going to work and people who make decisions to go to war almost always are convinced the war will be short. this year we will celebrate the centenary of world war i which is a classic example of where everybody thought the war would be over by october and november, 1914. the problem in iraq in particular and it really is true of iraq and afghanistan, what began as a swift military

victory quickly degenerated into a long and grinding wars. in the case of iraq it was always believed that it would be a short-term commitment. i think it would be interesting to ask those who were participants in the decisionmaking, had they known in march of 2003 that the country would be at war in iraq for six or seven more years, whether they would have made the decision they did. but this assumption that the war would be short or that its end was right around the corner afflicted the department of defense as badly as it did the decisionmakers themselves and because everyone assumed that war would be over quickly there was a great reluctance inside defense to spend significant

sums of money on equipment that might be needed to protect the troops but that might be useful only in iraq or afghanistan. as i described it in the book the department of defense is organized to plan for war, not to wage war and so the services dedicate all of their efforts, pretty much all of their efforts to developing their long-range procurement plans and then defending those plans in the budget process regardless of what comes along and so people were reluctant to for example fund development fund pmi resistance ambushed protection vehicles the save so many lives and limbs because that particular kind of vehicle was not in any plan for the army or the marine corps. >> i would like to ask about that. one of the key themes in that portion of the book it seems to me is that the military planners

inside the beltway, civilian leaders inside the beltway simply didn't adjust or respond and you do ride they did not adjust to changing situations on the ground in iraq. >> i also right that after the initial invasion was just a series of stunningly bad decisions and mistakes. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. you are watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. weeknights watched the 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 web site and you conjoin in the conversation on social media sites. >> we are back with more live coverage from the savannah book

festival in georgia. next lily koppel un "the astronaut wives club". [inaudible conversations] >> my name is alex gold and i'm happy to welcome you to the seventh annual savannah book festival presented by georgia power. and to our new venue at the lutheran church of ascension which is made possible by the generosity of fran and john mccain. many of you have already attended our terrific special events with our opening and a keynote addresses. today your work is cut out for you as you choose which shoppers to visit during this day that offers dozens of renowned writers who have published outstanding books in the last year. we would like to extend special thanks to our presenting sponsor georgia power, our literary

members and individual donors who make saturday's free access events possible. if you would like to lend your support we welcome your donations and have provided yellow box for books buckets at the board's you exit. before we get started i have a couple housekeeping announcements. please take this moment to turn off your cellphones. let's all do it together. also i would ask the deeply is to not use flash photography during the talk. immediately following this presentation lily koppel will be signing books over at the book tent. also when it comes time for the question and answer period i ask that you please form an orderly line behind this microphone in front of us and ask your question and please return to your seat. we have also found a pair of sunglasses so if any of you lost a pair of sunglasses please

check with one of the ushers and we will get them back to you. now, please join me in thanking the savannah bank for sponsoring lily koppel's appearance here today. [applause] >> new york times writer lily koppel takes us to the 1950s with her recently published true story "the astronaut wives club". overnight these women were transformed from military spouses into american royalty. the collateral damage done to them during the u.s. race to the moon is the subject of the book. lily koppel is a college graduate, she wrote the lead rather diary address written for new york times magazine, daily beast, huffington post and grammar. she lives in new york with her husband and two rescue dogs. please welcome lily koppel. [applause]

>> good morning. so nice to be here. i heard there was a vicious rumor going around and i didn't make it out of new york city because of the weather's so i am so glad volunteers believe this is actually me and i'm here sharing the story with you this morning. i love great american stories and i love beehives. and a combination of those two sayings as you will learn lead me to tell this amazing but looked over american story of our original astronauts wives. i want to bring you back to 1959. april 9th there is a press conference in washington d.c. and the whole country is riveted and waiting for the announcement of the mercury 7 astronauts. is the height of the cold war and we are looking to lease seven men, gus grissom, john glenn, allen sheppard, among

them, as our cold war warriors, these silver suited spaceman who are going to take us to the stars and beyond. so you have these macho test pilots sitting up on this stage and something peculiar start happening. the reporters are raising their hands and instead of asking tell us about your bravery, about why you wanted to volunteer, the reporters want to hear what does your wife think about this? she is going to let you be catapulted into space, and so there is this immediate attention to the wives of these men. i want to tell you about some of the women. renee carpenter is sort of the maryland monroe of the space

age. she wakes up in garden grove, calif. early in the morning and sees these headlights hovering in her yard. is a the ufo? what is that? they are reporters who have come to interview her about what it is going to be like to be one of the wives of these spacemen. it is almost science fiction. reporters can't believe it. renee wanted to be an actress in high school, she opens the door, offers the reporters coffee. some of them of brought doughnuts and they start taking pictures of her and her family as they are crawling all over her and she is a real dish. jfk would later say he found her the most attractive of all the astronaut wives because of course as they are going to learn, they're going to quickly go through this cinderella like transformation. in ohio at wright-patterson air force base, and gus grissom's

wife betty received a phone call the night before from her husband, he said you might want to straighten up the house of that. some reporters might be coming tomorrow. she looks around, the house is a mess, she is just getting over the flu, she feels terrible but somehow pulls it together, goes to the doctor the next morning and as she is stopping at a grocery store on her way home two reporters from life magazine encounter her in the vegetable aisle and want to know what she thinks about old gusts going into space. she just wants them to leave her alone. they followed her home. she is the shrinking violets of the group, very down-to-earth, folksy, always repeated a quote of gusts's which is we don't give a damn about keeping up with the joneses which is more along the lines of we don't give a darn about keeping up with the

glenns, annie and john glenn, the superstar couple of the space age. you can't get more apple pie than them. they literally met in a playpen as toddlers in ohio. they are just both sprinkled with freckles, john glenn having that mad magazine kid face, annie to go with it and annie was the ultimate astronaut wife. as the women soon learned, it is not only emission about getting their husbands, these great a military test pilots who not only are picked for their piloting skills but as some of the scientists say when they pick the astronauts, there were wild series what we're going to happen, where their hearts going to stop in space? would they stop urinating?

was there blood pressure going to fall to zero, they were picked for being literally human cannonballs. can they withstand it? the why is too were actually investigated by the fbi before the couples were announced. betty remembers investigators coming over to her neighbor's home and asking questions about her. would miss is grissom quote home cooked meal every night? she doesn't drink too much? doesn't have any communist leanings? all of a sudden not only the astronauts but their wives, a r astrowives wives are tisch step to the entire world as examples of the height of american family values and these wives, the most stressful time to be an american housewife, the late 15s and

early 60s, has to hold up the model of perfection. so overnight they are transformed. i think of them as america's first reality stars. life magazine bought the rights. they bought their personal stories, like magazine in 1959, a huge amount of money. in exchange for that, to reporters and photographers into their homes to chronicle their day to day lives. what was it like to have your husband sitting on top of that rocket, about to be blasted into space. the women were caught in this catch-22 which is they are supposed to reveal who they are, there is acute pressure to keep

up the glens to be the modern american housewife, and the book is being turned into television show which is going to air this summer on abc and just looking at some of the story lines it is very funny because one of the other wives of this group, trudy cooper was the only licensed pilot among the group, very adventurous girl, you had to be an adventuress woman to be married to one of these guys who were testing in their early careers these high-performance experimental aircraft, to go where no man has gone, first into space, then to the moon. trudy cooper had had a little too much of this top gun mentality and her husband bordeaux --gordo playing around on her. before he was picked as an astronaut, he came with his tail

between his legs back is like saying trudy, i have this amazing opportunity, i will be picked as an astronaut. the only problem is they are not going to pick me if i don't have a white and we were just separated. they get back together for the sake of the space race. they would later get divorced after gordo's career is over. those of the kind of detail the wives were very skittish about letting out as they are having this incredible public eye and spotlight shined into their lives. the program starts out in langley, va.. all of the families pack up and moved to virginia and the men start training and they are down in cape canaveral, florida and one of the most interesting things i learned just starting out in the book was how the cape, this sort of incredible men's playgrounds down there where there are working hard but

also playing hard, was a no wives zone at first. going to the cape for a wife was totally off-limits. they weren't allowed to go out where the rockets took off from, all the wives would watch the early flights from the beach. at one point deke slayton's wife marge said this is ridiculous. you are going into space. i can't go to the cape. what is going on out there? she tells him that he'd better drive her out there and he hides her under some blankets in the back of his car and they go past military guards and she gets out there and pops up her hat and it is sort of a lonely beach jetties and scrub brush and what not. the whole country is dying for a cigarette. this is the kind of spunk and irreverence that these women brought to this brave new world of being an astronaut wife.

you have seven women, all different walks of life, allen sheppard's wife louise was very highbred. i think of her as the sabrina and audrey have removed character. she drew up as the gardener's daughter at longwould gardens and stayed on the east coast so when she met jackie kennedy she almost treated jackie like she was an old friend, they were two private school girls almost, getting to know each other. you have this band forming, these women are in the public eye and they don't know how to deal with it at first so they start giving each other words of advice. if a reporter asks you, something you don't know anything about, don't worry, just say it is classified. one of my favorite stories, because a lot of the inspiration

for writing the book came out of these technicolor looking photographs from life magazine because the wives were on the cover of life dozens of times from 1959-1972 at the end of the apollo program. the wives have their first cover shoot and they will be clustered around this mercury capsule, which when you see it today at the smithsonian, this thing looks really flimsy, you can understand why its nickname was the can and you can understand how terrifying it would be to have your spouse ride in that thing especially since many of the early test launches had gone absolutely haywire with explosions and things just not going right until the last minute but the women are told by life and nasa that they are to where these proper pastel, the

epitome of the perfect american housewife, so they set this tradition of the round robin phone call which will last throughout the space race and calling each other, i you going to wear that? what color lipstick you going to where? and they decide to wear pink lipstick and everyone will wear a shirt waist dress except for run a carpenter, scott carpenter's life. usable character, intellectual, a really independent woman who will end up hosting her own feminist talk show in the mid 70s and looking sort of gloria steinem like in the dresses and skirts but she says according to the other wives i am not going to let the government tell me what to wear. we are astronaut wives now. our husbands are civilians, they are no longer military, so she shows up to the photo shoot and she is wearing this cocktail dress, big red roses and red

high heels and of course other wives are sort of aghast. she makes the shot so you have that melding of personalities coming together. stuff of course the men, meanwhile, they are becoming rock stars. everything that goes along with it. they are getting $1 corvettes which they can trade in every year and get a new one. alan shepard get the snazzy white corvette. they're getting $1 a night hotel rooms at the holiday inn. this is down in cocoa beach which is space city, lit up with all sorts of neon signs, moons and stars and intergalactic fanfare. the women actually come down to cocoa beach for a lady's weekend and jo schirra remembered

walking into the lobby of the holiday inn and two women, the astronaut crew piece who come with the adorable name of cape cookies, fall to their knees in front of her astro not, her husband. what is going on here? so you have throughout the space race, having to maintain this semblance of everything is fine at home, of course my husband, i am sure this goes home for the holiday, as soon as he finishes work. meanwhile of course there are all sorts of tabloid headlines coming out and everything. the space program moved to houston in 1962. i had a lot of fun learning about this whole area known as

togethersville. this makes nonfiction writing so tantalizing. this was the space verbs' where all the astronauts and wives moved. it is almost like beverly hills of spacemen. there were tour buses that would wind their way through the streets of these little subdivisions where john and annie glenn lived next to scott carpenter and his wife renee, where betty grissom and jo schirra lived a few streets down, where the media attention on these families was so acute that renee and jo had doorway built in between there two yards which they called the rabbit hole and that they could scurry back and forth between during a flight so the press wouldn't see them. astronaut kids were chased down the halls of the holiday inn when they went to visit and were always told not to open the door to many reporters because they

had this exclusive agreement with life magazine. one anecdote one of the astronaut kids shared with me that i always have fun remembering is daring apollo levon, that flight, the wives first of all, janet armstrong, pat collins, buzz aldrin's wife joan, had to hide in back seats of neighbors cars, go to the beauty parlor, the grocery store, there was a media circus on their suburban lawns. at one point of michael collins's kid opened the door and they were given a present of a panda bear, two journalists from china handing them this caddy bear, oh wow, this is great. turned out there was a microphone hidden inside its stomach. this kind of marx brothers relationship with cat and mouse game with the press and the

wives. as one of the wives put it, she said our lives were composed of highs and lows, and what is so remarkable about this group of women is how down-to-earth they maintained sort of their personalities. they were strongly patriotic. they felt they were given sort of an equal task in supporting their husband's mission into the stars. they were going to do everything they could to support the country's effort to support their husbands even when it meant tucking things in the backs of the worse, emotional things to deal with for later, sweeping things under the rug. as i mentioned they were living in an almost truman show existence, no divorce was actually allowed within nasa

until 1967 when it erupted in the first space divorce. the women had to rely on each other. the men were away at cape canaveral, flying their teeth 38s to florida monday morning, they would not return until friday night when they would fly their planes down low over togethersville and rattle the houses. that was some of the astronauts's way of saying hi, honey, i am home. put the rose in the oven. your astronaut is home. i recently went back to togethersville with some of the women and went into sue bean, alan bean's first wife, looking at the pool and alan bean who was the fourth man to walk in the route moon with pete conrad on apollo 12 did this mosaic bar with the ignacio zamora insignia and sue was very beautiful,

blond, texan, looking out over the pool and said buzz and joan used to live over there and the bass ats were over there. thists were over there. thisets were over there. this was a really swinging place. the wives and 60s for the astronauts' wives club which would meet once a month to support each other and get to know each other. these were monthly tea and coffee events. fabulous scenes that are not reproduced in women's gathering today because times have changed, doubled as and over crowing -- overflowing ashtrays and martini hours and just sort of being there to support each other and going through something very few will ever experience. the way the wives don't with the

pressure was very different. you have the pressure of your husband and the pressure of the media. and the most dreaded moment, even more than the possibility of something going wrong on the launch pad, was opposed flight press conference. this was the moment when all the wives would have to walk out on their suburban lawn, face the cameras and give a statement and receiving very little formal coaching from nasa besides what they heard back in their air force and navy days which was feed your husband a good breakfast of steak and eggs so he doesn't get white headed up in the air. these women were basically just told to act picture-perfect and so they did this send up together and ran a carpenter who i mentioned, glamorous and outspoken, blond, came up with

this 1-woman show and called it released a land that was her send the name of the esteban wives and she was married to squarely stable, her perfect astronaut husband. they had their perfect astronaut children and their dog smiley and she said whenever reporter asks you tell them you are happy, fraud and thrilled, throughout the decade whenever the wives are asked how they are feeling, when their husbands were up there, in space, being blasted into space, they often say, happy, proud and frills. and of course reporters are tearing their hair out. we want to deal -- to hear how you feel but back then it wasn't -- they really weren't able to put the feeling into words. they were scared of revealing

too much in this highly competitive environment. if i show my fear is like my husband maybe he will be bumped from the flight. marilyn lovell, married to jim lovell, a wonderful couple to this day, he was played by tom hanks and apollo 13. when he was going into space on one of his gemini flights, marilyn found out she was pregnant and she hid her pregnancy from jim for a few months which is pretty remarkable until he finally found out and she said i am sorry, i didn't want you to get bumped from the flight. cheese said good idea, we should keep it secret for a longer. this is just a taste of the astrowives lives. i would like to open up the discussion to questions now because it is such a rich topic and i could talk a little more about what it was like going

into these historic figures's living rooms and what it was like getting to know them as well. if anyone has questions, please do line up. >> in your book, you talk about one of the episodes on one of the lunar landings where the camera didn't work and there was virtually sort of a cover-up because they didn't want to show that. i wonder if you could go into that. >> one of the most exciting things, of course, about walking on the moon, being on the moon for the guys and everybody watching back at home, that was what was so incredible about the apollo program. even for someone like me who is one of the wives once asked me when i went to interview her,

where were you when we landed on the moon? how old were you? i said jo, i think i was moon dust. i wasn't born yet. whenever you become fascinated with this subject, you can go there with the guys. all you have to do is look at the youtube footage, television footage they filmed. the incident you were just talking about was apollo 12, the second mission to the moon. alan bean had this television cameras a burgling to use to chronicle their journey and he by accident turned it into the sun, so it was burned out. the only transmission they were able to share with the public in real-time was the voices of the astronauts which are going into the wives's homes versus on the

squawk boxes which are these baby intercom like space-age device is all the wives had at home but the networks are flipping out. we are not going to get our moon footage and we had big swaths of time allowed for it. what they did was nasa had some mockups of the moon where the guys would practice going through their routines for when they were up there so they outfitted some actors in space suits and had them sort of manic what pete conrad and alan bean or beeano as his friends call him or doing on the moon and it has only fuel the conspiracy theories that anyone who has anything to do with nasa including the wives think are absolutely ludicrous. i would like to tell you all how i came to write this book and a little bit about getting to know

these women today. of course i am a writer, i live in new york with my husband who is also a writer, in the front row. our lives are composed on a daily level of thinking about stories, thinking about ideas for great stories. this isn't something you can manufacture. inspiration has to hit. i have to admit at that time i was quite into the show madmen, we were having a carrot -- a tv marathon watching it and i love the 60s time period, my grandmother used to wear pulitzer dresses, we just bought this big soda book of the moon landings with the norman mailer text of a fire on the moon. and i was looking through these pictures of neil armstrong on the lunar surface, buzz aldrin and his sort of marshmallow space suit and just having sort

of a tomboy moment because these are pretty male heroic images, until i turn a page and i am hit with this burst of color. .. and a sort of continue to support each other through

triumph and tragedy. one of the sweetest things about the connection of the wives is many of them when i met them they wore a little gold bracelets with a tiny golden whistle on it and that's one of their symbols we will be there for you and it was a matter of winning over these women's trust. they were always very protective of nasa, of their husbands even if they were later after their husbands back from the moon divorced because astronauts and their wives did divorce after the apollo program and i see it as a casualty of the incredible amount of pressure that was on these families to come for them and tform andto just work aroune rigorous hours. out of 30 couples only seven marriages survived.

so in many ways as they pointed out, there relationships have endured longer than the marriages. it outlasted them as well. there were people that were more difficult to get to know their mothers. at the beginning everyone was sort of whistling is betty going to talk to you? i don't think that he is going to talk to you. she doesn't come to our meetings and so i was nervous because she was someone important to talk to and sure enough i got a lovely letter from her. she doesn't talk on the phone much because of her hearing that she said when you come to houston please come to my home and it was one of these interviews that i expected it to be about two hours and when we

went back to her house about 10:00 at night i told her i think i should go to the hotel and get some sleep and come back tomorrow morning. and she was just fun loving andd honest and had the kind of memory she would've plucked out conversations that she had back in the day. they were high school sweethearts like many of the astronauts and their wives. her story is a tragic one. of course during the mercury program, his capsule thinks so he is given a bad rap for that position of his and from the early days of course way men always had to deal with the pressure of what if he doesn't come back. which is you don't talk about

the danger especially with your husband coming to don't talk about the danger with your friends because it was seen as a james many of them have superstitions and my favorite woman i got to know during the project had a superstition i think we can all probably relates to which is pete's pillow had to be perfectly smooth on his site of the bed in his closet door had to be closed because if she did it, she felt like something wrong could happen and this is just a reflection of the fear these women had to digest and live with. goss always told betty that he didn't like her wearing black and she felt the only time you should ever wear black was to a funeral and purposefully she didn't end up wearing black to his funeral people to listen to something happens to me i want

you to have a party. so early on she promised him, she said okay i will have a party. he is one of the men that died during the apollo fire, and this was the first large-scale tragedy when the men perish in a capsule it catches fire on the ground and this is a very revealing part of what these men went through because it was excruciating. the way that they reported was relatively new lows in the official man always had to tell the wife her closest friends are always called before tuesday something bad has happened out there. i want you to go to her house right now that the women knew they were not allowed to use say anything they just had his agent told the official word could

arrive, so very difficult. in the case of petty end o betto other wives in the fire, debbie ended up saving nasa's -- sueing nasa's and as a result she was basically ostracized from together as bill by the other astronauts and the astronauts lives for not touting the party line for going against the company organization. pat weitz was a tragic story. she never really got over her husband after apollo one and when they were planning a reunion years later she actually committed suicide and they saw

her as a final tragedy of the apollo one fire. so a lot of heartache in this story. but just incredible american moments that were not seen as necessarily input to report back then because we were not as focused on the fact as behind every great man is a great form in or behind every moonwalk or there is a strong woman waiting on earth and it is just a whole another sort of constellation perspective on what it took to get to the moon. do we have any of your questions? >> it could be your next book three of how do the children fare in that kind of upbringing?

>> as i talked to many of the kids it was sort of growing up in the cradle of the american dream, green lawns, a pool that was shaped like the space capsules like the -- the kids almost remember fondly those were the days our mother would lock us out of the house and they don't come home until dinner. you are giving me a headache and it was great because we would ride our bikes and go to the pool and that is sort of the memory. but i think it's difficult having a father who is a hero but often and absentee father because they wer were a way trag so often. one of the kids remembered it was sort of strange.

it was like a dad wouldn't be home a lot suddenly he would be very end of the magazine would be there and we would be doing a photo shoot out on the swing. we never did this in real life. it's probably at a lot of kids in hollywood at the old place now. their lives were made almost reality shows so there was dealing with that and i will share one more funny anecdote which is the wives were always sort of kidding and complaining they had to drag their kids into watch the space launches, johnny would rather be watching star trek. but within your dad is doing some important stuff. well my best friends dad is an astronauastronaut and lives acre street, those are engineers over there, and this was the world

that was normal to them and the wives tried very hard to keep normal and grounded. >> you kind of you who do to help their lives changed after the program and i was wondering if you could share their thoughts on what was it like when that ended? do they feel like it should continue and like there was a sense among these families at that point? everyone was sad when mixing ended the program and these wives who i see today and i think in history they will continue to be seen and i've told this to them as a sort of pioneer space women. they were the pioneers. their husbands were doing something we had never done before. just the moments of going out in your backyard as jane conrad remembered when her house

.-full-stop there walking around on the moon and she -- the house just cleared out and she had all of the wives over for a party about 5:30 in the morning she wandered out by the pool and just look a looked at the moon t of stared at it and i think we can all think this when we look at the mood like we went up there as a country and as human beings. but she said she remembered when she was a little girl how she used to look forward to man in the moon and she said this is trippy. my husband is the man in the moon and for this one moment she had this mystical feeling of clarity. this is the late 60s. people are into that. she said it basically vanished in a moment and then she was going back inside to do the

dishes. but to get back to justify fallout after the apollo program, i think the most prominent example is looking at buzz aldrin and his wife. like many they had a hard time coming back from the moon after the families and the crew members into their lives would go on these fabulous tours especially after apollo 11 they went all over the world presenting moon rocks and little cases to the clean of thing cleg going, etc., the heads of state and while they were on this tour she shared her diary with me that she kept and she starts seeing buzz spiraling out of control. he's been outspoken about his own alcoholism and depression he built with after coming back from the moon and that is something that changed her life. they ended up getting a divorce and they have three kids.

she has an entry in her diary i think our lives will return to normal and he looked at her and said i've been to the moon. nothing is ever going to be the same. and i think that is true for a lot of the families. >> you mentioned how you flipped a page in a magazine and a story came to life. if you have a moment at the end of the red leather and i hear -- diary what caused you to flip their? cynic i will save that for the moment and please -- >> i haven't read the book yet but i look forward to reading it. i don't know the ages of the women that you are referring to but in your research, did the idea come up with a conversation

about the commercialization of space travel and would any of them ever consider the galactic would they do that themselves? to ask about going into space back in the six he sispa and lots of time with life magazine of course, if you have these articles about we are going to be putting up a couple of the astronaut had this sort of crackpot scheme and root beer stands when we colonized, so yes someone like a former tough marine said i would have gone up there in a heartbeat and the early pilot who ended up flying in the powder puff derby she

would have been there in a moment but some of them are like are you kidding i want to stay down here with my feet on the ground and of course they all hope we will continue to explore and push the envelope as their husband used to say. i will just mention very deeply the red leather diary, my first book because i think it reflects on how i wanted to talk this kind of story. i grew up in chicago. and it was a new york guy in a city girl. i was in new york with that density of people walking around looking at these old buildings into these windows lit up and i just sort of naïve, just to be

an incredible amount of untold stories but there are and how everybody has a story and somehow i just wanted to be able to reveal some of those distant stars. so very serendipitously i have to say i feel quite lucky. but strange things happen to me or maybe i see the world in a different way. i notice things that seem almost fear a tale -- fairy tale. i came out after i graduated and i was working as a news clerk at "the new york times" which is like the devil wears prada that without the prada with lots of bow ties and the businessmen who would give me bits of advice. i wanted to be a novelist to which i going to return to for

my next project, which is going to be fiction. i came out of the building and there was something too good to resist pus push with the dumpstr and not an ordinary because it was filled with about 50 old trunks into these were the old kinds that were brought on the titanic from paris and the french line. i am not a dumpster diver by trade but i love vintage clothing and a good story so it's eight in the morning and i literally climb on top of that is to and i start -- you are all looking at the very odd. i started going through these dresses in the collections of handbags and among the urban treasure with a red leather diary kept from a woman from 1921 to 1934 at the height of the depression and a long fairy

tale short i ended up tracking down the owner is 90 with the help of a private investigator and befriending her. she wanted to be a writer and she hosted a literary salon, she was a renaissance woman who had love affairs in her story spoke to me so much i ended up telling this story of how this comical made the way back to her and it was sort of given as a gift to the rest of the world. telling the forgotten story was very interesting to me. little things i remember from professors the good stories are often little margins were footnotes. it's not the typical heroic

model but it's the other side of the coin and it was that desire and hunger to tell the story that is an untold stor story but there's also this sort of emotional catharsis for the subject that has been under the radar revealed to the world and i know from speaking to the boys not only does this book take them back in time but they feel very gratified that people care about their story. i don't think many of them call themselves heroes because they were so in support of their husbands and would have seen that as arrogant and inappropriate, but i certainly see them as heroines myself, and

i think they have the right stuff. [laughter] [applause] i'm going to end up there. thank you so much. thank you, lily koppel. [applause] if you would like to meet his koppel in person &-and-sign your book please quickly exit the church so she may enter the middle of town square at this time. thank you so much.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] booktv is live this weekend from savannah into the savannah the festival. we just heard from lilly koppel and we are going to be taking a break from our coverage for about an hour. during the break you can watch interviews from the booktv college series now joining us on

the tv is the author of this book on constitutional disobedience is the name of the book. professor louis michael siedman is the person that wrote it. are you saying it is time to throw out the constitution? >> you know what, i am. thank you for having me on. this idea is right that almost everyone i know thinks it is wrong. my wife, my kids, all of my students. it is a little surprising that so many people think it is wrong because when you think about it, we are thinking about a document that is over 200-years-old.

it was written at a time that the united states looks nothing like what it looks like today. it was a small republic along the eastern seaboard depended mostly on slave labor when communications were difficult to travel with treacherous. this was a document written by people who had no compunction about other human beings and both women had no role to play in publicaffairs and that men without property should be allowed to vote. we should decide modern public policy questions.

here's another way to make the point on this thought experime experiment. suppose you are what say the president or the senator or a supreme court justice or just an ordinary american citizen and you have some important matter of public policy, and i'm assuming you are quite a responsible person, so you spent a little time on this and carefully considered the implications of the public policy implications. after you are done on that you decide on balance the right thing to do and then just as you're about to do that, somebody rushes into the room and says that, wait a don't have it yet. i have something important to tell you, so people 200 years

ago who are dead and know nothing about our situation wrote down on a piece of paper and then you say i'm going to throw out everything else i thought and just because it is written down this paper. anybody that did that i think needs their head examined. this is pretty abstract so let me make this specific. let's talk for a minute about guns. most of my friends and family are surprised by this, but i'm actually quite skeptical about gun control. it's not that i like the ones. i don't. i would never own one but there are 300,000 of them in the united states and i am doubtful

that any law that congress could pass could do much about gun violence. >> so 300,000 laws clicks submit items aritems i can't 300,000 gn the united states. >> so 300 million. >> 300 million, thank you. 300 million guns in the united states. now, i understand the position is controversial and i like to talk to people about it and people have different views. here's how not to talk about it. that way not to talk about it is that the second amendment. but as soon as you start talking about the second amendment, to very bad things happened. first is the discussion gets sidetracked on the questions that could not be more relevant. so instead of talking about whether they are going to

control gun violence or whether it is an aspect of natural rights to own guns we start talking about the relationship between the introductory clause of the second amendment and what exactly it was 200 years ago and what precisely the relationship is intimate constitution and the english dub of rights none of this has anything to do with the question. it's hard to imagine that anyone would take seriously the composition that we ought to decide what to do an about guns and the united states. but then as soon as we talk about the constitution, the temperature begins to rise so you have a good-faith disagreement about what the best thing to do about guns is and we can come away from it disagreeing the performance.

to say i disagree about a matter of public policy, you are saying i am disregarding the foundational documents that makes the united states. when it starts talking like that to me it is hard for us to still be friends and there is much too much of that in american politics today and if we constitutionalize it that i thk that our discourse would be more relevant and more meaningful and those are really important chapters. now let me qualify or explain in one way to avoid

misunderstanding the fact that we not obey the constitution doesn't mean that we ought to do the opposite of everything that is in the constitution. there are a lot of things in the constitution that are just really good ideas. so for example freedom of spee speech, those are things we ought to do not because they are in the constitution but because they are the right thing to do. maybe they are right and maybe they are wrong but we have been doing things this way for a long time and it's not good to have arguments about everything all the time so for example i don't know whether a four-year presidential term is exactly the right length. i do know it is a bad idea to be arguing about that every four years so i don't think that we should argue about it.

they are not worth arguing about. so just evil. it's not a good somebody can be electeelected president of the d states when an opponent gets more votes. it's very hard to defend that. it is not good at the three people in wyoming have the same representation in the senate as the 35 million in california. that is something that is hard to defend. it's not good for people like me that within the district of columbia or the folks many would defend those results and yet we are stuck with them because the constitution. here is what this is ultimately

about. we live here and we have a right to have the kind of country that we won't. nobody would say that the united nations has the right and for those reasons nobody thinks that we ought to be ruled by people that have been dead for 250 years and whose country is not any more. ..

part of the problem with the institution is that it's not only the oldest written institution in the world, it's also the most difficult to amend in the world. amending the constitution requires a two-thirds vote of each house of congress followed by ratification by three-fourthses of the state legislatures. that means that a tiny number of citizens from one-fourth of the least populist states in the country can block an amendment. and as a practical matter, it means for many of the issues i've just mentioned the constitution's impossible to amend. for example, there is just no way that the senate would permit an amendment that would substantially reapportion the senate. the constitution has not been

amended since 1971, if we don't count the last amendment which was ratification of a provision that was part of the original bill of rights. it's not likely to be amended again anytime soon. the amendment process itself, article v, is part of the constitution that we ought to start disregarding. >> host: what would you replace it with, anything? >> guest: so i think that we have a set of customs, traditions, ways of doing things and ways of thinking about things that would perfectly adequately structure our politics, and we don't have to just sort of imagine what a world would be like if we did that. we have some examples in other parts of the world. so the two most prominent

examples are the united kingdom and new zealand. they don't have written constitutions like our constitution, and last time i looked they were pretty successful countries. there wasn't rioting in the streets, the leaders of those countries weren't arresting their political opponents. things work pretty well there, and i think they would work pretty well here as well. >> host: doesn't the constitution protect the american people from the tyranny that it originally was protecting us from? if we just had a series of laws, those could change every year. >> guest: well, yes, laws can change, although given our situation in washington now, laws don't seem to change very much either. but, sure, laws change. there's nothing wrong with that. circumstances change, people's opinions change. now, there are some things that ought to be pretty much fixed.

for example, freedom of religion, freedom of press and speech, rights to equality and liberty. but i think you're really kidding yourself if you think that a piece of paper in the national archives is what's protecting those things. you know, madison had it righting at least about this several hundred years ago, he referred to the piece of paper as a parchment barrier. and what he pointed out was that if, as he put it, men were angels, constitutions would not be necessary. but because men aren't angels, they're not effective. men are not angels, they're not effective. anybody who's evil enough to want to trample on the rights of the american people is also going to be evil enough to trample on what's written in a

document which, after all, the document itself has no guns, it has no power. it's just sitting there. so if you ask a question what is it that protects civil liberties in the united states, no, it's not a piece of paper. it is an informed, an aroused and active american citizenry. and if that doesn't exist, then we're just killing ourselves if we -- kidding ourselves if we think the constitution is going to protect our civil liberties. >> host: professor seidman, how did you come to this view? >> guest: well, i came to it from teaching constitutional law for a very long time but also from just watching the way that american politics works and the way that the constitution is used in american politics. one of things you begin to notice after a while is the way in which the constitution, the content of constitutional law is

determined by politics, by the political views of people on both sides of our political divide. so let's talk about guns again. is it really just a coincidence that all the justices appointed by democratic presidents thought that the second amendment did not bar gun control while all the justices appointed by republican presidents thought that it did? what a coincidence, right? all these people are looking at the same language. are we really supposed to believe that their political commitments had nothing to do with that? and you can -- that's not just about guns. in case after case where the stakes are high and where the politics are salient, the justices are just reading into the constitution their own

public policy views. and that's just bad. and i think the american people are smart enough to understand that that's what's going on, that the constitution is being used for cynical, political purposes and that if -- it's not bad that we disagree about these matters, but it is bad that one side is trying to shut up the other side by saying i don't have to tell you why your policies are wrong, you're just not allowed to believe that because the constitution takes it off the table. >> host: don't we as a nation need a unifying touchstone such as the constitution? >> guest: well, we may need a unifying touchstone, and i think that, interestingly, the constitution could be such a touchstone if we understood it not as a legal document, but as

the answered -- that answered questions, but as a way of framing questions and a way of providing us with a kind of emotional way of urging us to try to behave in a certain way. so the great promises of the constitution -- liberty, justice, freedom -- those are things that all americans can agree on. and i do think it's appropriate for us to take the preamble that we the people are determined to form a more perfect union as a starting point. it's something we can all agree on. one way to think about this is instead of thinking of the constitution as a legal document, you might think about it as a symphony or a poem or a work of art, and one can be

inspired by a symphony or a poem or a work of art. one can even try to in one's own life replicate the values in such a work. but it would be very odd to say one was obeying a poem, right? you don't obey a poem. and so, too, these great causes in the constitution like the equal protection clause, due process clause, they're not things that we obey. they are, instead, things that inspire us. and when things are working really well, they might fill us with a sense of wonder that you and i, say, could both be moved by that same language and come to very different conclusions about how the world ought to be structured. and if we could see that, that might actually be the beginnings

on which we could build political community. the democrats -- that democrats and republicans are both inspired by these same goals,al hoe they see the -- although they see the way to implement t them as being -- different. >> host: you statemented at the beginning, your wife, your kids, your colleagues, your students all think your idea is a little off. >> guest: go beyond that. [laughter] >> host: is this a growing idea in legal scholar circles? >> guest: well, i think it's actually more prevalent than you might imagine. so first of all, i do think many, many not just legal scholars, but many americans are coming to see that when the supreme court or when political figures insist that something is unconstitutional, that they are reading their own political values into the constitution. i think a lot of people understand that that's the way

the game works. i also think that a growing number of scholars have expressed real reservations about the role that the supreme court is playing in our culture and in our law and about some of the dysfunctional attributes of our current constitution and things that are very hard to change within the four corners of the document. but, look, there's no doubt this is an uphill fight. it's not going to happen all at once. i'm not daft enough to think the supreme court tomorrow is just going to announce that they're going to disobey the constitution from now on or that congress is going to pass some law saying that. what this requires, more than anything else, is cultural

change. and cultural change happens one conversation at a time. and, you know, sometimes it happens much quicker than anybody imagines. just look at what's happened in a very short time with regard to gay rights or a little while back although continuing today with regard to the rights of women and their changing role this be society. in society. those are things where the culture changed and the law followed. and i think something like that has to happen here as well. >> host: 1973, roe v. wade, do you consider that to be a constitutional question? >> guest: so roe v wade is a really good example. you know, if you actually read the opinion, there's almost no talk at all in roe about the constitution itself. you have to read the opinion very, very carefully to see which provision of the constitution justice blackman is relying on.

he says in an offhand way, oh, by the way, this has something to do with the due process clause. roe v. wade isn't about the constitution, roe v. wade is about moral and political judgments concerning the fetus and the autonomy of women. and by the way, i'm not necessarily saying that the supreme court should go out of the business of making those judgments. there is something to be said for an elite institution that's somewhat removed from ordinary politics making judgments about political morality that maybe hold us to some higher standard of political morality, something like that. of course, there's something to be said against it also. i'm, for these purposes at least, agnostic about that. but if we have such a body, what i would really want to insist on is that the justices start telling us the truth instead of

pretending that decisions like roe rest on the constitution of the united states. and if they started telling us the truth, then the american people could make an informed judgment about whether they want such an institution or not. >> host: and we have been talking on booktv with georgetown law professor louis michael seidman about his book, "on constitutional disobedience," and you are watching booktv on c-span2. >> the new c-span.org web site gives you access to an incredible library of political events with more added each day through c spank's nonstop coverage of politics, history and nonfiction books. find c-span's daily coverage of official washington or access more than 200,000 hours of archived c-span video. everything c-span has covered since 1987. and our video is all searchable

and i viewable on your desktop computer, tablet or smartphone. just look for the prominent search bar at the top of each page. the new c-span.org makes it easy to watch what's happening today in washington and find people and events from the past 25 years. it's the most comprehensive video library in politics. >> we are not in a post-feminist era. i am very concerned about the, quote, war on women. we are rolling back access to reproductive rights. there is no end to the regret bl statistics on violence against women. we have not stopped shaming girls about their bodies. we have so much sexism in the media which implies you have to have a certain shape to be loved or popular. the problem in terms of defining feminism is it's true that what unifies a lot of women globally

is what is done to women. and i don't want to identify feminism as about victimhood. that's a very important critique. you don't want victim feminism. empowered feminism says that women should be equal if in their rights and -- in their rights and opportunities, period. where we don't see that, we want to push forward to headache that possible. to make that possible. end of statement. but, no, there is so much work to do, and globally the statistics are really frightening in terms of women's lack of access, again, to everything from education to health and information about their options. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> women's history for beginners is the booktv book club selection for the month of february. if you go to booktv.org, you'll see right up there at the

top there's a tab that says book club, and you can participate in our discussion at booktv.org. we'll be posting vid -- video and reviews and articles up there tomorrow, so the discussion will begin tomorrow. we'll also be posting on a regular basis discussion questions. so i hope you'll be able to participate. bonnie morris' women's history for beginners, is our february 2014 book club selection on booktv. >> here's a look at some of the books being published this week.

>> look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> that in our schools there's been a decline of character education and moral education, kind of a move to replacing it with things like self-esteem programs or various therapeutic

approaches of doubtful merit. and we have a tried and true method of civilizing boys through, you know, good sportsmanship they can get from their coaches and kind of moral guidance, certainly from parents, most of all from parents, but reinforced by teachers. and i just find we've kind of moved away from that. second problem with boys, and there are problems with girls too, but i'm right now talking about the boys, is just i believe now that boys have become second class citizens in our schools. and their problems are severely neglected. a young man today is far less likely to go to college than his sister. and you look across all ethnic groups and racial groups and socioeconomic groups, and you find the boys are behind their female counterparts. they are far less literate, the average 15-year-old boy has the writing skills of a 13-year-old girl. he's reading about a year and a

half behind her. and most importantly, boys like school a lot less than girls, they're more disengaged. now, there may have been a time where this wasn't a big problem. we had an economy where you could get a high school degree and go out there and work hard and make it into the middle class. and some educators at harvard said the passport to the middle class used to be the high school diploma. not anymore. there's a new economy, and it involves education beyond high school. and girls seem to be getting it and boys less and less. so i feel that that problem, there's -- i can't find major organizations or government groups. the department of education is still talking about the shortchanged girl because they were deeply, i think, influenced by the early research that said girls were shortchanged in the 1990s. and so they haven't adjusted or adapted to the times.

so we have a white house council on women and girls that's concerned about the education of girls and that girls don't fall behind, and when it's boys that are by every significant, almost every significant metric, significantly behind girls. so i think we need a white house council on boys as well. >> host: christina hoff summers, you write that women in the u.s. now earn 62%over associate's degrees, 57% of bachelor's degrees, 60% of master's degrees, 52% of doctorates. admissions officers were at first baffled, concerned and finally panicked over the dearth of male applicants. if male enrollment falls below 40% or below, female students begin to flee. officials at schools at or near the tipping point are helplessly watching as their campuses become like retirement fill villages with a surfeit of women

competing for a handful of surviving men. >> guest: yes. there are campuses that admissions officers are looking at, you know, 60% female, 62%, 65. it seems to get worse each year. and they are, yes, i would say panicked. there was an administrator at the college of william and mary said, you know, we have to do something about attracting more men. we're the college of william and mary, not the college of mary and mary. [laughter] well, there's one statistician, education alstadt sticks who said that if current trends continue, by the year 2068 the last male will graduate from college. he was being facetious, but there's a grain of truth is that it's quite a mystery why the girls would be so much more aware of the importance of education. and girls now even have higher aspirations. and some people will say, oh, no, this is only among poorer

kids, or it's, you know, manifest in the working class. it's across classes that you see the girls outperforming the boys. and just the this year there's a new study that shows girls not only get far more as and a+s, but they are more ambitious, a higher percentage aspire to go to graduate school and law school. now, again, i celebrate this, what has happened with girls. it is inspiring, and, you know, some of it may be because of the initiatives of the shortchanged girl movement. i don't say that everything they did was wrong. i just wish that when they discovered that there were gender differences in education, what i wish had happened instead of becoming like a girl partisan movement it had become a movement to improve the educational prospects of all children and help girls where they were behind and help boys where they were falling behind the girls. and that would have meant, yes,

more support for girls in math and science because they were not doing as well as boys at one time, and we've managed to close that gap. and, but that would have meant helping boys in just about everything else; reading, writing, school engagement, just in general, classroom comportment. we have pretty good research that shows even -- i don't blame the teachers for this, but teachers have a bias against unruly students. it's understandable. but these students can be 5 or 6 years old. so i don't know be it's something we want to blame the boys for or punish them for. i think we want to find a way to make the classroom a happy place for them and room for their personalities and their high spiritedness. so i just feel that we haven't done a good enough, a good enough job with that. >> host: is there a shortage of male teachers, and does this have an effect if there is? >> guest: there are very few male teachers in elementary school. you have slightly more in high school, but still this may be a

slight exaggeration, but one critic of the current school system said it's as if schools are run by women for girls. now, again, an overstatement, but not by too much. and a lot of boys feel that way. one of the saddest comments i ever read was a group of researchers interviewed boys about why did you leave school, and one little boy said i just thought nobody wanted me there. and there are a lot of boys who feel that way. someone should make it clear to him that they want him there. but there's so much going on in our schools that is girl-friendly and not so friendly towards boys. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.

>> we'll be returning to savannah for the savannah book festival live on booktv shortly. while we wait for the next author's presentation to start, here's another interview from booktv's college series. >> host: and you're watching booktv on c-span2. we are on location at the catholic university of america in washington, d.c. where we're meeting some of the professors who have also written books. joining us now is professor math threw green who has written this book, "the speaker of the house: a study of leadership." professor green, what's the speaker of the house responsible for? >> guest: well, the speaker of the house has a number of responsibilities. he or she is the top officer of the house of representatives and, in fact, the only one named in the constitution. and so there's an expectation

that speakers are there to represent the house of representatives with the senate and to the american people. a practical matter, the speaker is responsible for insuring that the house operates correctly, insuring that legislation is enacted, helping to develop the agenda, interacting with the president, interacting with the american people and insuring that, in general, that the house is working the will of the people. >> host: could anyone be the speaker of the house? do you have to be a member of the house to be speaker? >> guest: technically, you do not. all that the constitution says that the house shall choose its speaker. and so in theory, anyone can run for speaker of the house. as a practical matter, it's always been a member of the house of representatives. but that is not a limitation that the constitution imposes on the selection of the speaker. >> host: how partisan is the post? >> guest: that's a great question, and i would say this, that the partisanship of the office of speaker has changed

over time. from the very beginning, the office of speaker had both partisan and nonpartisan responsibilities. in other words, to some extent the speaker was expected to represent the majority party in the house, but also to some extent the speaker has parliamentary responsibilities, insuring that the rules are followed, that every member has the same rights and is treated fairly and to preside over the day-to-day operations of the house and the house floor. over time the position of the speaker has become more partisan, and i would say reached the height of contemporary partisanship around the 1990s and 2000s with speaker gingrich and speaker pelosi. speaker boehner has pulled away to some extent from that and, i think, has tried to reintroduce some of the less partisan aspects of the speakership, but

it's still a very partisan position, and the majority party in the house expects the speaker to carry out the will of the majority party. >> host: when you look back at the history of the speakers, who have been some of the more effective ones or well known ones? >> guest: well, the first that comes to mind is sam rayburn who was speaker from 1940 until the early 1960s. and he was a prominent speaker in part because he lasted so long. he served off and on for 20 years, and it's very rare to have a speaker last as long as that, certainly not more than two or three terms. but he also was a rare speaker in that he understood the house in which he served, and he understood what it was that motivated members of the house of representatives. he had what you might say is a feel for the chamber, and that made it possible for him to get a lot done as speaker because he knew what was possible. he understood the art of the possible in congressional politics. and some of the, some major

legislation that was enacted during that time period was enacted during his speakership whether it was transportation legislation, some early civil rights legislation, legislation related to world war ii. so he was in many ways one of the most effective and best known speakers of the house of representatives. we've also had recent speakers who have demonstrated considerable effectiveness. newt gingrich in his early years, particularly the first 100 days, really turned the house into a real machine, just producing major, major legislation under his leadership relatively swiftly which was very impressive. nancy pelosi, in particular the enactment of health care legislation which was a huge feat and sort of a last minute outcome in large part because of her leadership. so we'ved had speakers -- we've had speakers, you know, most speakers at least since the 1940s are known for at least producing one major work of

legislation. but certainly at the top of that list i'd have to say would be sam rayburn. >> host: what's the speaker's normal interaction with the senate? >> guest: with the senate? i wouldn't say that the speaker has a normal interaction with the senate. it varies by who the speaker is, it varies by which party is in control of the house and which party's in control of the senate, and it varies on the personal or the personalities of the speaker and the senate leadership. there's an expectation that speakers need to have an open line of communication with the leadership in the senate because you can't get any legislation enacted without the senate's approval. and so to that respect, there is some kind of communication or relationship. but the degree of closeness that there is between, say, the speaker and the senate or senate leaders is going to vary tremendously by who the individual speaker is and who the leaders in the senate are.

>> host: matthew green, who have been some of the least effective speakers. [laughter] >> guest: least effective speakers. well, good question. i'd say there's certainly a host of speakers in the 19th century that didn't serve very long and aren't known for doing very much, and so you could put those on the list. but if we wanted to, again, keep our focus on speakers since the 1940s which is the focus of the book, looking at speakers since the 1940s, i would say the first name that comes to mind is probably either carl albert who served in the early 1970s or john mccormack who came right after rayburn and served from 1961 until 1970. they had for various or reasons a more -- various reasons a more difficult time getting legislation enacted, to some extent they had a more difficult party to work with. the majority party democrats had rebels, it had folks who wanted to go their own way, and that

makes it hard to enact legislation. they also had some personal issues. for example, mccormack, particularly towards the end, he had been waiting to be speaker for many, many years, and so when he finally got the chance, he was somewhat elderly, ask i had heard at -- and i had heard at one point he even provided over the house with an oxygen tank. so he didn't necessarily have the fortitude, the constitution necessary to really put in the effort necessary in order to get big legislation done. so i would say that mccormack and albert were probably on, lower on the list of those who were effective contemporary speakers. >> host: how would you grade john babier? >> guest: how would i grade john boehner? well, i hesitate to grade john bane or to the extent that he's still -- boehner to the extent that he's still speaker. and we see in history that sometimes speakers save their biggest and most amazing accomplishments for the rebelled of their tenure. -- for the end

of their tenure. so i think the jury is still out. i would say this about speaker boehner, back in the early 1930s we had a speaker named john nance garner who later became vice president under fdr, and he once said that the speaker hardship is the hardest job in washington. and i think that that pretty much sums up the experience of john boehner. imagine how much has changed since the 1930s when john nance garner was saying this. if anything, the job has gotten exponentially more difficult where now speakers have to deal with huge amounts of campaign funding, independent groups that are funding sometimes primary challenges against members of your party, you have a 24-hour news cycle, you have a plethora of interest groups, all these things are putting tremendous pressure on the job of speaker to try to get things done without making too many people angry. and i think that boehner certainly has to go, those are

challenges to his speakership. and then you couple that with some of the more, shall we say, independent-minded members of his party right now in the house of representatives that make it harder for him to count on the party loyalty that's necessary to enact legislation, especially when you can't get any votes from the minority party. so i would say that boehner has done in some ways the best he could do with a bad hand that he's been dealt. >> host: professor green, members -- speakers are also members of congress. how much attention do they pay to their particular district once they become speaker? >> guest: this is one of the things that i argue in the book, that traditionally people assume once speakers become speaker, what they're thinking about really is their party. they want to do what their party wants. after all, it's their party, the majority party, who decides who the speaker's going to be. and while i acknowledge that's true to a large degree in the book, what i also point out is that speakers have done things on behalf of issues and concerns

that matter to them personally. and so every once in a while we see speakers pressing for legislation that doesn't seem particularly important to the majority party in the house of representatives or even to the president, but matters to them personally whether it's in the case of speaker boehner issues like education which is very important to him personally, and if we look further back in the past, nancy pelosi and human rights, john mccormack and catholic education, sam rayburn and the energy, the oil and gas industry in texas. we do see speakers sometimes saying, you know, this matters enough to me that i want to pursue this. and they also do have to think about themselves getting reelected. so in addition to issues that matter to them, there's sometimes things they do because if they don't do it, it might put them in danger of losing their seat. now, this hasn't happened very often. the last speaker to lose

re-election was tom foley in 1994. but speakers like other members know that they need to at least be aware of the possibility that they could lose re-election, and so they will pay attention to their districts and do things that might be particularly important to their own constituents just like any other member of congress would. >> host: before tom foley, who was the last speaker who lost an election? >> guest: oh, it was in the 19th century. now, i can't remember his name, but it had been well over a hundred years before foley that the last speaker lost re-election. >> host: what makes a good speaker? in your view? >> guest: what makes a good speaker? i would say it's a combination of a number of things. first, i'd say be a good listener. speakers have to be good listeners. they have to hear what members are saying, they have to know when a member of congress says something if they're really saying, meaning what they say or if there's something else going on there. so being able to understand what members want and need. related to that is knowing the

districts of members of congress so that if you have someone in your party saying, you know, i just can't support you on this because my constituents would oppose it, speaker needs to be able to say, well, actually, you know, i also understand your district, and i don't think it's quite the situation that you portray. in other words, being able to persuade members involves knowing members and their districts. obviously, persuasion is a third thing that matters, being able to persuade. but i think in addition to these personal traits, what makes a good speaker is an understanding that they are, in the end, representing the entire chamber. their representing the whole house of representatives from voters to the president to the senate. and so that means sometimes saying to members of congress, you know, i know you want this, but if we do it, it's going to make our chamber look bad, hurt our ability to do our work. and if you don't like it, you know, i understand that, but this is my job as speaker, is to do things that help the whole

chamber. because when with we help the whole chamber, we help the house of representatives as an institution, fundamentally are, we're helping the american people and the country. >> host: what's the level of interaction historically that a speaker's had with the president? >> guest: historically, speakers have had a fair, i mean, a fairly significant degree of interaction with presidents. again, just because -- just as speakers need to have a relationship with the senate in order to get a bill enacted, they've got to have a relationship with the president in order to get that bill signed into be law. and the -- into law. and the president is seen by the american people as the person who sets the national agenda, who represents the country at large. and so it's important for speakers to have some relationship with presidentses and, hopefully, a positive working relationship. now, that has been a challenge for speakers when they're of the opposite party of the president. and we have seen from time to time cases where issues have

seriously divided speakers and presidents, and if you even look to the late '90s, the impeachment of, the impeachment proceedings of president bill clinton. obviously, that creates a huge strain on that relationship. so, but at the same time, there's an understanding that there has to be some avenues of communication. if they don't talk to each other, nothing gets done. president loses, the speaker also loses. so the ability to at least talk on the phone once a week, to meet if necessary, those are part of the job of speaker. >> host: why'd you choose to write this book? >> guest: i chose to write this book, actually, it was experiences i had when i was a congressional aide in the mid 1990s. i worked on capitol hill, and i was there during the 1994 election which was the election in which the republicans won control of the house and senate and, most notably, the house because they hadn't had a majority in the house in 40

years. and i was struck by a number of things in that experience, one was that you could tell the next day walking through the halls of congress what party a staffer was because people either were, you know, just overjoyed with huge smiles on their faces, or they look as if death had just passed them over. and that was quite a remarkable experience. and then also watching speaker gingrich and how he operated as speaker and the forcefulness with which he exercised leadership, the speed with which he was getting legislation enacted really made an impression on me. and it started getting me to think about what it is that a speakers do and whether gingrich was an anomaly or part of a trend or one of many speakers who used the power of the office to get things done. and so that was kind of the experiences that got me thinking about writing about the speaker. and then later in graduate school when i'm looking for a topic to write about, i realized

that the speakership was something that hadn't been explored very much, and i was still interested in it, and i was interested at this point in the end of the gingrich speakership and then the hastert speakership which had just begun. so based on that, i started doing some historical research and found all these interesting stories about speakers going back to the 1940s and sam rayburn. and then i started thinking, well, if speakers matter, we need to really try to understand that, how do we know that they matter, when can we say that, yes, they're actually changing the outcome of a vote, say? and then also trying to understand why they do it. is it always because it's something their party wants, or is it something else? and then based on my research i found something interesting which was that speakers not only have made a difference and do make a difference, but they do things sometimes because they think it matters, or the direct they're representing thinks it matter, or the president thinks it matters. even if their own party in the

house of representatives doesn't think it matters. and so that became the basis of the book. >> host: could newt gingrich's speakership have been longer? >> guest: well, historical counterfactuals are always difficult. it's hard to say if it could have been longer. there was a way in which gingrich had a somewhat similar problem to speaker boehner which is a fairly large group of new, young members who -- and this is not unusual, both parties have had this. they come in, they're a little zealous, they have a sense that they know how to fix things, and at first that creates tremendous enthusiasm and energy which is useful to the majority party. but invariably, that group or members of it start to get disillusioned, they feel the things they got elected on are not being done, and then they become a challenge for a speaker. and, again, this happened to carl albert in the 1970s, this happened to, and this in many

ways is what's happened to speaker boehner. gingrich had the same problem, so it would have been difficult no matter who the speaker was. but there was another more personal aspect to it, i would say, which is that gingrich was the kind of speaker who believed in being the general, the leader of the troops, and the folks would follow. and the things i mentioned earlier about the importance of listening and understanding where members are coming from, not necessarily gingrich's strong suit. and so because of that, i think it exacerbated these tensions that were going on in the party, and it led some republicans to question his ability to lead past the first couple of years of his speakership. and so those elements of his personality, i think, made it, contributed to the relatively short nature of his tenure. had he been a different kind of leader or acted differently after the first two years, then possibly we might have seen gingrich last longer as speak or than we did.

>> host: john boehner recently said after the government shutdown that he didn't really want to do it, but he saw where his members were going. >> guest: right. and this, this is an example of the difficulty that boehner himself, personally, is in with a lot of members who are, have, you know, strong opinions, strong views. and at that time, really believed this was their one source of leverage to try to get the policy outcomes they wanted from president obama, was to use the instruments at their disposal like the debt limit and the budget more generally. the danger, and so in that respect boehner was doing what a smart speaker does, which is you see where your members are, and you act accordingly. it's not as easy as people think for speakers to just tell members to do what they need to do. they don't have as many tools at their disposal as you might think they would. and certainly in ore cups we see -- other countries we see

parliamentary leaders who say if you don't support me, you're not going to be nominated again to office. speakers don't have that power. speaker boehner was speaking truthfully, he had to do what he had to do. but there is also a way in which it is part of the job of speaker to try to educate members and explain, look, if we follow path a, this is going to be very harmful to our party and also harmful to the country and so forth. if we take path b, it'll be less harmful. now, we won't get everything that we want, necessarily, if we take path b. if we take path a, we almost certainly aren't going to get what we want, and we're going to make ourselves, the party and congress, look bad. not saying that it would have been easy to accomplish that or that other speakers, other members of congress could have done a better job, but i think that was what was missing from the equation and what led to so much of the conflict, the government shutdown last winter

was the difficulty of boehner and the leadership team whether it was inability or just not a possible situation to get members to understand that the direction that many of them wanted to go was problematic. and i'll add one orr thing, too, which is an important power. of the equation which is the minority party in the house of representatives. if boehner had been able to get democrats to avoid a shutdown and do something else, the wouldn't have been an issue. and in decades past, something like that was possible. but in today's highly partisan congress, that's just not something that speakers have at their disposal. minority parties traditionally refuse to give votes to the majority on big issues. so that really constrains speakers. now they have to get only the votes of their majority party, and if you've got a critical mass of members of congress in your party who just don't want to go along, you're in real trouble. so this is something that has made it harder to be speaker than ever before. >> host: what have some of the rewards and punishments that a

speaker has at his or her disposal? >> guest: so the rewards that speakers have, today's speakers, and this has changed over time, but the rewards vary enormously. they range from saying, well, i'll schedule a vote for a bill that you want or an amendment you want to saying, you know, i'll put in a good word for you for a committee position, and speakers often have a decisive influence on who gets committee assignments. so that's a very important power that speakers have. speakers can say i'm going to visit your district and help raise money for you when you're running for re-election. that's an important asset. speakers also have little things, smaller things that people might dismiss that are important to members such as saying, well, we're going to have a congressional delegation going to syria, and i can only have three members of congress on it. would you like to be one? this is something that a member of congress wants to do. this is a great incentive. so those are some of the rewards

that speakers can provide. however, and then there are also some punishments which are sort of the reverse of that. they can say you're not going to get a committee position, or i'm not going to give you a congressional delegation spot, a trip on a congressional delegation trip. so that it's important for those to work that the members care about these things. and traditionally, they do. members of congress care about committee assignments, they care about raising money. but what has happened particularly with the boehner speakership is you have a group of members in this party who aren't interested in these things. maybe they're not running for re-election, or they can get plenty of campaign funding from some outside interest group. or they say i don't really -- i'm not interested in moving up here in the house of representatives. i want to stay on the committee i'm on and just do what i want to do. and that's another reason that it's been hard, i think, for the boehner speakership, is you have members saying, you know, what you have to offer isn't enough for me.

and there is one other benefit that speakers used to be able to provide which boehner no longer can, and that are these so-called earmarks when specific items can be put in a bill that provide funding for a dam or a bridge or a road in a district. and the republicans as the minority you should speaker pelosi -- under speaker pelosi campaigned on getting rid of these because they argued they were being abused. and so they stopped using then. when they stopped using them, they now no longer had a very important carrot. so a member of congress would say my constituents don't want me to vote for this bill. boehner would say, well, i wish i could get you that road you want, but i can't do that. well, if you k-7b9 -- if you can't get me anything for my constituent, i'm going to have to vote against you. so that's been a huge problem for the republican leadership in the house of representatives is the lack of this benefit that they can provide members in exchange for their votes. >> host: how would you rate nancy pelosi as a speaker? >> guest: i would -- in terms of

her effectiveness, the kinds of things she got done, i would rate nancy pelosi very, very highly. i think that she was a very active speaker, she, if for nothing else, will be known for providing critical support for the passage of obama's affordable care act or obamacare when it looked like it was going to fail at the last minute. and her, her ability to, and her sort of relentlessness in taking that job and lobbying members and helping members of congress and working to get things done is really quite remarkable. i think, i think jury is still out, but if there'll be any criticism to have pelosi speakership, it'll be whether or not there was too high a price to be paid for some of those legislative accomplishments. so in the first two years of the obama white house, the house of representatives under her leadership passed a slew of major pills. and -- bill withs. some of them became laws, some did not, but some were tough

votes for moderate members of her party; votes on climate change, votes on obamacare. and those members subsequently lost re-election. now, it's not clear if the votes necessarily cost them re-election, but for some of them it may have made the difference. and to the extent that it did, it may have cost the democrats control of the house of representatives. so this is a, you know, this is a dilemma that all speakers have which is do you get major bills passed if it hurts your members' re-election chances, or do you protect them at the expense of getting what you want done? but if the things that she accomplished cost the democrats control of the house of representatives and subsequently hindered president obama's agenda, then that could be something that would be part of her legacy that would be less positive. >> host: so people know where you're coming from, professor green, on that day this 1994 when the republicans took back the house of representatives, were you -- did you have a smile on your face, or a scowl? [laughter] >> guest: wasn't a scowl, but it

wasn't a smile east. i worked -- either. i worked for a democrat, and it was, he was one of the democrats who did not lose. so it was more a sigh of relief, quite frankly, because it was a year in which every, almost every democrat was in danger of losing. it was one of those wave elections. so it was a bit of shock and relief, i suppose. but then also a bit of intellectual curiosity. well, now that the republicans have a turn, let's see what happens next. >> host: what do you teach here at catholic? >> guest: i teach several courses in american politics. i teach an introduction to american politics course. i teach a course on the u.s. congress and part of, for part of that course i have the students play a member of congress. and they try to get a bill enacted through their house of representatives. and that's a great experience for the students and for myself if for no other reason than at the end i get to play speaker, so i have a little gavel that i

get to use. and i also teach a course called power in american politics where we learn about different aspects of power in the united states, power of interest groups, power of congress, power of the president, power of the people, power of voters. so those are are some of the classes that i teach here at catholic. >> host: why don't speakers traditionally vote on legislation? >> guest: speakers traditionally do not vote because it's a legacy of this hybrid position of speaker as i mentioned before. they are seen as both a partisan leader, but also as a nonpartisan leader. and if you're nonpartisan, it means that you're not supposed to be taking part in the issues of the day that put you on one side of the question or the other. and if, to the extent speaker is supposed to be presiding over the house and insure everything's done fairly, people might question their ability to do that if they're also participating in the vote. so traditionally speakers do not participate in the vote. they can. they're not prohibited from doing so. but traditionally, they do not. this also has changed over time,

and in the 1970s speakers started participating more and more often. i think cl many my nateing -- culminating in gingrich who vetted quite a bit. nancy pelosi did as well. but boehner, again i mentioned before, has moved back from that partisan role. he votes very, very, very rarely on the house floor, and i think that is in part a reflection of his belief that the speaker needs to move himself or herself out of these debates and conflicts in order to be seen as someone who really has the whole house and the interests of the whole house at heart. >> host: and we've been talking with catholic university professor matthew green about his book, "the speaker of the house: a study of leadership," published by yale university press. here's the cover, you're watching booktv on c-span2. >> visit booktv.org to watch with any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left

side of the page and click search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the formassachusetts booktv -- format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> here's a look at the top ten best selling nonfiction books according to "the new york times." robert gates tops the list with his memoir, "duty," followed by new yorker writer malcolm gladwell's david and goliath. three authors recently appeared on booktv, and their programs can be viewed anytime online at booktv.org. in fourth, atlantic editor scott stossel chronicles his struggles with anxiety, and fifth, charles

krauthammer presents a collection of his political columns, "things that matter: three decades of passions, pastimes and politics." watch the pulitzer prize-winning syndicated columnist's program from the george w. bush presidential library at our web site, booktv.org. sixth on the l.a. times bestseller list is "stitches," followed by "a short guide to a long life." ari shavit in "promised land," is eighth. in ninth place is "little failure. from the and wrapping up the list is gabriel herman's profile of fox news president roger race in "the loudest voice in the room." look for mr. sherman's appearance on "after words" airing in the near future on booktv on c-span2. and that's the top ten best-selling nonfiction books list according to the lang wills times. los angeles times.

[inaudible conversations] >> and we're back with more live cover coverage of the 2014 savannah book festival. scott berg is next. [inaudible conversations] ..

will conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] guilt

ge built inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. mining is linda hon tuned and i am delighted to welcome you to the seventh annual savannah book festival presented by georgia power. whose lights are shining

brightly in my eyes. this would made possible by fran and john kane. many of you have been to many wonderful sessions this morning. today was a difficult day for some of us as we chose which authors to visit during the day. we would like to extend special thanks to our presenting sponsor georgia power, members, the individual donors who make saturday's free festival events possible. if you would like to lend your support, you probably heard this before today, we welcome your donations and provided yellow box for book buckets which i worked on. at theucks for book buckets whi worked on. at the door as you exit. please turn your cellphones off and keys to not use flash

photography. following this presentation, a. scott berg will be signing festival purchase copies of his books at the book tent in telfair square. it is important that you let him out so he can get over there and be there to sign the books. i have lost the second page of my notes. which seems to be something i do on a regular basis. i apologize. i do know that i want to thank savannah toyota for sponsoring a. scott berg's appearance today. gillick surprise winner and best-selling author a. scott berg's recently published "wilson" is an authority of biography on america's 28president. the author should new insight with the benefit of being the first scholars to access two sets of wilson related papers and hundreds of the president's

personal letters. a. scott berg was born in norwalk, connecticut to a mother who listed f. scott fitzgerald among her favorite authors and gave her son his name. in high school a. scott berg researched the great gatsby's creator and read all of his books. in 1971 he entered princeton, fitzgerald's alma mater. his senior thesis was expanded into a full-length biography on editor maxwell perkins which won him the national book award in 1978. his charles lindbergh biography published in 1998 won a pulitzer prize for biography. this afternoon we look forward to a. scott berg discussing how woodrow wilson really read defines presidential power and was determined to make the world place safe for democracy. please welcome a. scott berg. [applause]

>> thank you. thank you very much. thank you for being here. thank you for that very kind introduction. what i will try to do is spend much of the next hour talking about woodrow wilson, but i was also told by the festival people that you would like to hear a little about my other most favored subject and that would be me. so you are going to get a little of me. in essence you look at how we all got here today, i think. it is highly appropriate we are in a church to talk about woodrow wilson, highly inappropriate to be in a church to talk about me. but here we go. nonetheless. i am going to begin my story actually prenatally as was suggested by the introduction. i promise i will take you through high school and college very quickly, but i do have to begin in my mother's final weeks

of pregnancy with me when she was reading f. scott fitzgerald and became determined to have a son and to name that son scott. to this day i am grateful she was not reading charlotte bronte a. that there we go. as promised we go to the tenth grade. we have to make one stop. my parents did move from connecticut to california, took all the children and there we were. in the tenth grade at palisades high school in pacific palisades california, beautiful school overlooking the ocean, we had to do the obligatory american authors report and i remember going home and telling my parents i had to write about an american author and i said i am sort of stumped. i don't know who to write about. i can't really think of an author to write about and my mother said that is because you

never read any offers. i s . i sayauthors . i say. i say this for all your parents with children who watch tv, i was a television idiot and july was 15 years old and had to do this assignment and went to my mother and she said why don't you write about f. scott fitzgerald's and at that moment she produced a magazine article that had been written in life magazine about f. scott fitzgerald just at the moment i was born. this was a 15-year-old article. she said read this and see if this doesn't intrigues you. i was swept away. she said if you think that was good you should read some of his books. this was a revelation to me. she said why don't you come

down, we will go into our library together and i said we have a library? she took me into her room which i have always considered the tv room and there, sure enough, surrounding the tv where shelves filled with books. the most amazing thing. there, sitting altogether were at scott fitzgerald's novels and we walked over to those if you are familiar with f. scott fitzgerald's work, this side of the paradise, "the great gatsby," the last tycoon, short stories spread out along the way, you will know that i picked "the great gatsby" because it is the skinny as of them all. i thought i am not sure how long i will keep up this reading things, but i could devote myself to that and i sat down and in one sitting read "the great gatsby". by the time i stood up, i was a

different boy. you know how in comic strips the light bulb goes on when somebody has an idea? my light bulb went on. i didn't even know i had a light bulb. but suddenly i did. and i sense spent the next 2-1/2 years reading everything by f. scott fitzgerald and everything about f. scott fitzgerald, first in the home library, then in the school library, then in the public library, then the ucla library such that by the time i had graduated from high school i had literally read every word i believe that had been written about fitzgerald in the english-language. when it came time to apply to college, it was only one school i considered seriously and that was his alma mater which was princeton university. i was going to say by chance but

actually woodrow wilson would say by providence, i had begun reading a lot of other things beyond f. scott fitzgerald. it is the funny thing about reading. one good book really leads to another. by the time i was a senior in high school, i had up on my wall f. scott fitzgerald's picture, needless to say. i am pretty sure i was the only kid in my high school food did. i don't want you to think i was a little strange. i had adlai stevenson, woodrow wilson who i had read a book about and don quixote who i had read and been swept away. there is a through fine as you can see, almost two, one through line is they are all rather romantic, even tragic figures.

at 15, 16, 17, i was deeply into romantic tragedy. there was nothing. not sure which i like more, the romance for the tragedy but they were great, really great. the other through line is three of four went to princeton, don quixote did not go to princeton. bad s.a.t. scores i was told. very bad. anyway, now has promised, i applied to princeton, last question any application today is the same as it was then, why do you want to go to princeton? i wrote a very floury answer, your faculty and blah blah, but i said i have a fitzgerald problem. i details this obsession i had with f scott fitzgerald and said frankly i could draw maps of your school. i have never been there. if you don't accept me i am coming any way to make a pilgrimage.

the prince and admission office made it very easy on themselves. they took me. i arrived on princeton campus in the fall of 1967. i was on that campus all of a day and half when i made my way to the princeton library. within the library the rare books and manuscripts room and i walked in and i sat down and a librarian came over to me and said what can we help you with? do you have any fitzgerald things? why don't you just sit here for a second, she said. she came back ten minutes later with a little frawley with five big blue boxes on them. i said what are these? why don't you just look around and see if any of this appeals to you. i have given you just a touch of what a fanatic i was about f. scott fitzgerald. so imagine what it was like for

this 171/2-year-old to open up the first blue box and see the first draft of "the great gatsby" written in pencil. to open up the second box and find f. scott fitzgerald's liquor bills. to open up the third box and find zelda fitzgerald's scrapbook. to open up the fourth box and find f. scott fitzgerald's liquor bills. to open up the fifth box and find some letters between f. scott fitzgerald and ernest hemingway. i turned to the librarian and said what do i have to do to see all of these and more? she said you have to show up between 9:00 and 4:45 monday through friday. for the next four years whenever i had a free moment between 9:00

and 4:45 monday through friday that is where i was, going through this stuff. i found even though it was delayed 60s and newseums, f. scott fitzgerald was really being discovered in this country and rather iconic figure, as i went through these papers i found a correspondence that nobody had ever excavated. and they were a bunch of letters between f. scott fitzgerald and a man named maxwell perkins. max perkins was a book editor at charles scribner sons. he worked in their his entire career really. i began to see in this correspondence between

fitzgerald and perkins the creation of f scott fitzgerald the artist because it was to perkins that f. scott fitzgerald, a princeton dropped out my father reminded me, that this man who wrote his first novel, what became this side of paradise, send it first to max perkins at scribner is to send him back the series of letters telling him how to improve the novel and maybe then perkins could get his company, then the stuffy is publishing house in america, to published the book and this over a series of year-and-a-half, fitzgerald did until "this side of paradise" was published, became an overnight sensation, became one of the landmark books in american publishing in the 20th century. as a result of that two things happened that i could read in this correspondence between an author and his editor. the first thing i saw was how

perkins stuck with fitzgerald for the rest of his writing life and became not only his book editor but became his closest friend, his marriage counselor, his psychiatrist, his money lender, whenever fitzgerald needed anything, max perkins was the go to guy. i also saw, this is even more important, maxwell perkins in working with at scott fitzgerald change what a book editor does. until max perkins's book editors were primarily mechanical figures in publishing who corrected spelling and punctuation and prepared manuscripts for publication. with max perkins i began to see him coming up with plot points,

titles, structural designs for books, and i began to see because i am not just into a scott fitzgerald's papers, and the scrub nurse had delivered all their archives to the library. now i am 19, 20, 21, and i am going through these deeply personal professional letters between not just as scott fitzgerald and max perkins, but ernest hemingway, ring lardner, taylor caldwell. erskine caldwell, james jones, allen payne, marjorie rawlings, i could name another 40 of the most important writers in this country between the two world wars and one man discovered and developed all of them. this is a man, max perkins, who

changed the course of the american river basically. i had very good luck because in that moment there was teaching in princeton, carlos baker had just finished his epic biography of ernest hemingway. i went to this office and asked if i might work with him. i said i have a great idea for a book. i want to write a book about max perkins, it is a fantastic idea, max perkins is the great enigma of american literature, no one has ever written about him. the big question is whether you can write about him. looking at your transcript here, a very solid d- work, it is a great idea. why, he suggested, don't you write your senior thesis, why don't you do that on perkins'? if you are still interested, carry on, write a book and you

have written an interesting thesis. i spent basically my last three years in college working on my senior thesis. when i turned it in, they turned it back, they gave me an a plus, gave me up fries and most important they gave me three single spaced pages saying this is not relieve a senior thesis, it is the first draft of a book. if i was waiting for a sign, there it was. and i then decided i would turn this into a book. what the princeton english department failed to tell me is it would take another seven years to do that. but, you know, it is a powerful impulse not to want to go to law school. [laughter] >> and so i worked on that book.

we are going to get to woodrow wilson in a second, i promise. i was at work on my book for about two years when i decided, you have to remember i had never been anything but a few postcards and a senior thesis in my life. i began to think wouldn't it be interesting to right not just a biography but a shelf full of biographies of 20th century american cultural figures. and each book will be about somebody from a different part of the country and each subject will be from a different wedge of the apple pie. so after i published max perkins in 1978, he, being all harvard educated, ninth generation white anglo-saxon protestant who went into east coast publishing, i began to think about the opposite coast.

i began to think about those first generation semiliterate jewish immigrants who went out west and started something we now call hollywood. coincidentally the son of a man named smool gepphish. select extensive paper is unchanged his name to samuel goldwyn. samuel goldwyn jr. said there are tons of his archives. before my father died i promised i would find a biographer. are you interested in writing his story? i did a little preliminary research and realized this indeed was a magnificent story and by telling gold when's life and this is what biographer's must always ask themselves, can

i tell larger story. the purpose of writing a biography was not just to tell the single life but it is to depict the life and times in which your subject lived and worked. and gold when it seemed the ideal person to do that. i spent the next ten years writing the life of baldwin. a lot of it was going through those hundreds of thousands of documents that literally chronicled the entire life of hollywood and also, i love to interview people. i was fortunate in my perkins' book to interview a lot of people. i started my gold when book at the exact moment that all those people from the golden age of hollywood, 20s, 30s and 40s were just beginning to die with all too regular frequency in fact. but i was able for several years

to interview the likes of katharine hepburn and bette davis and myrna loy and barbara stanwyck and the great directors william wyler and rubin mullion read and billy wilder, and other writers and other actors, i interviewed i believe 150 people for that book. 85 of them died before the book was published. a lot of people were saying this was no coincidence. it was reaching the point i would call somebody for an interview and they would say no, not yet! not yet! i am not ready for my final interview! no, no, it is time! it is time! let's sit down and have a little chat! it has been a good life. so then, after doing samuel

goldwyn, this great west coast figure my eyes turned to the midwest and i began to think first of all what are the great metaphors for 20th century america? rather the way the motion picture camera is and i thought of the airplane and i thought who is a great romantic embodiment of the airplane? and a midwestern figure, and all roads pointed to st. louis and its spirit, charles lindbergh, who i knew had left extensive archives, but i also knew that his bill had stipulated that nobody could see those papers for 50 years after the death of his wife who in fact was still very much alive. now. i began calling around at the

library alive and discovered actually there was an asterisk that says unless my wife and three of my five children settle on a biographer and then that person can go through the papers. where there is a will there is often away. in this case i began writing to mrs. lindbergh and after a year of letters with no reply i got a phone call asking if i could meet her in florida, in fact in fort myers beach and so i went out, spend a week meeting her and at the end of the week as i was literally getting in my car to get on a plane to go home to los angeles or to go to new york to a publisher to say i met mrs. lindbergh, she came out to my car, handed me a letter that was handwritten, she had called her attorneys that morning who dictated three sentences that

basically gave me the legal right to go through all of her husband's papers. i then took this letter up to the yale library with mrs. lindbergh afterwards ringing in my ear, be very careful with this letter when you go to yale because they have never seen one of them. and i went to the library and showed her the letter. where did you get this? do you have total id? indeed, i was that person and i had that letter and i said i want to see what i got here. this was a real case of be careful what you wish for. because i realized there were millions of documents that he left. this was a man who saved every piece of paper from the time he was a child and there it was and i realized perhaps worst of all,

especially for a princetonian i was going to have to spend the next two years of my life at yale going through the archives locked up in the library but that is what i did and i spent another decade working on that book. now it was time to discuss what i was going to write about next and i began to look southward and i thought as i told my publisher i have never written about a subject from south, and politics and government, i have not written about something from higher education. certainly an extremely important aspect of american culture and i said i have been carrying around in my hip pocket the name of woodrow wilson since i was 15 years old and i would really like to write that book and she said i don't even want to discuss it. she said i love woodrow wilson.

that is a great idea. but she said before you do that, she said there is one thing i wanted to ask you. you never really talked about her but i know you often go off on trips, weekends, have dinner with katharine hepburn. you seem to be friends with her but you never seem to talk about her. have you ever thought of writing the book about her? i said i have thought about writing a book and in fact so has she thought about my writing a book. we have discussed at great length. in fact we started discussing, i can tell you as i told her, we started discussing it the second day i met her. we were having dinner and she said after dinner, you know, you should really write a book about me. and i said yes, i think i probably should and she said because i am fascinating, you know. you really should write all

that. and i said you are. and she said but one thing. i don't want you to publish anything about me while i am alive. i mentioned this to my publisher who said she said you can't publish while she is alive but you can write about her and you can have a book about her all written and we can publish it right after she dies. i said that is a funny thing too because she always said i would like you to publish something as close to my desk as possible. and so for 20 years that we were friends i kept notes, usually because after each trip or after each dinner, every dinner invariably as sitting by the fire drinking the couple's scotches, in my case more than a couple in her case, and after each conversation as the fire would go down low, she would say

go upstairs and write down everything i just said. because i am fascinating and i am never going to tell about the story of my life again. the and write it so for 20 years i compiled these massive notes on the life of katharine hepburn and i took my editor's advice, wrote up the book, proofread it, set in type, gathered the pictures very quietly, loft it up in a safe, katharine hepburn said to say died in 2003, just days before she died, realized this was going -- i rode the last scene we had together in the book which i hope you will read if you like katharine hepburn is part memoir on my part of our friendship but in the course of the friendship, she married her entire life to me. so i wrote up the last visit together and then the day i heard she died i wrote the final

paragraph of her death and within two weeks the book was published. and i realized then why she wanted it published so soon. i always thought it was because she wanted her version of her life as told to me to be the first one out there. what she really knew was she died there would be such a desire to read about her, to have a piece of her to have a souvenir, and so within two weeks the book was published and became a huge sensation. far and away the biggest seller i have had and certainly the most emotional book for me that i have ever done as you will see, a deeply emotional book. which brings us to woodrow wilson. was he georgian?

let's get into that. i wanted to write about that for all sorts of reasons. i have given you the personal reasons that led me up to wilson and how i selected it. i had two thoughts in my head, that for years i had been thinking two things about wilson based on all of my readings, and there with two things i had not seen come out in any of the hundreds, thousands of books that had been written about wilson. and now, 13 years later, having done 13 years of research and writing, i am more convinced of this than ever and here are two things. the first is i believe woodrow wilson is the most influential figure of the 20th century. not just american. i see all of you going to i can come up with -- i hope by the end of my few minutes on wilson

or by the end of your reading the book which i hope you will do you will be convinced too that no man has changed 20th century life, bleeding into 21st century life anymore than woodrow wilson did. the second thing and this was equally important to me for all sorts of reasons, i believe woodrow wilson's life, his personal life is the most dramatic story that has ever unfolded in the white house. woodrow wilson has a son, as a husband, as a father, as a friend. these elements of his life i had never seen a book that captured the man i think is the most emotional, and i am not forgetting lincoln, the most poignant that we have never had as president of the united states, a deeply passionate man.

most think of wilson as presbyterian minister's son and grandson and he was both those things, but he was something far deeper than that. that is something i wanted to capture not just in a book about wilson but presidential biography in general. most presidential biographies feels they were just to get the upper layer of the story, just the professional story but i wanted readers to remember these are men so far who wake up every day, they go to an office, they go to work, it just so happens they change the way the world spins. so this is something i wanted to capture a almost like two threads running along at the same time.

so you could see how the personal life affected the professional and how the professional affected the personal and all times. in the next few minutes i am going to leave you -- i have written a really big book on this subject but a couple of blips points so when you go to a cocktail partyullet points so w a cocktail party and some really informed. woodrow wilson was the most religious president we ever had. i am not forgetting another georgian who became president. this was a man who was the son and grandson of ministers. if you shake a family trees of them, another dozen present minister's fall to the ground. everywhere, everywhere. wilson is an man who got in his knees even in the white house twice a day to pray. this was a man who said greece before every meal, read the

bible every night. i know we have had a lot of ridges presidents. usually they are religious once every four years. this is on man who was religious every moment of his life and that religion is going to interviews every decision he ever made and that is going to affect the way we live today. that is important. woodrow wilson was the first southerner elected to the white house since the civil war. he was elected in 1912, 50 years after the civil war. this was considered an epic moment in american history. this was really, people thought, the first reuniting of the united states after the great divide. divide geographically and certainly emotionally, what happened in this country.

he was born in 1856 in stanton, virginia. they of course claim him but i think georgia has a bigger claim on woodrow wilson. his father, after a year, after wilson was born, was transferred to augusta, ga. and there wilson spent his formative years. woodrow wilson's first memory in the world before he was four years old was of living in augusta and he remembered hearing that abraham lincoln had just been elected president. i hope you will visit the wilson house in augusta. it is quite splendidly you get a great sense of his childhood and right outside austin, the picket fence, a man walked by and said lincoln has been elected and there is going to be a war. most biographies of wilson leave out this business of the civil

war, which is extremely important. mostly because it was extremely important to wilson. he never forgot his sudden this, never forgot how the war affected even agusta which was really scared, could i say sherman's name? was scared the torch but nonetheless wilson saw his father's church turned into a hospital, saw a lot of neighbors come home maimed if they came home at all. wilson carried all the stuff with him for the rest of his life and it is going to affect him deeply when as president of the united states he is going to remember back what war can do, the deprivations of war, the degradation of war, the devastation of war, and wilson is going to use this to keep america out of world war i for three years until he can hold back no more. so this southernness plays an

important part in wilson's life. i should add that he later opened a law office in atlanta for a brief while, rather unsuccessfully but it was while he was down in georgia having gone north, by no. i mean beyond atlanta, while he was down here he met a woman named ellen act some --axom who was living in rome, ga. but her grandfather was a presbyterian minister right here in savannah. in fact, he was the minister at the first independent presbyterian church in savannah, and and they were married in savannah in the presbyterian church blocks from here.

another bullet point. woodrow wilson was the most educated president we ever had. i didn't say he was the most intellectual but this is the man who was the most scholarly president we ever had. this is our only president with a ph.d. to this day. he went north to princeton, at davidson college in north carolina for a brief moment but to princeton, which really changed his life, he went on to do, went to law school at the university of virginia when he realized a law career was not happening for him here in georgia he decided to go into academia, went to johns hopkins, got his ph.d. a brand new field of study called political science. he became one of the first political scientists in the country, he became a famous orator. on the subject he wrote many books and articles on the

subject, he had a career in academia as up professor first at bryn mawr college, at wellesley college in connecticut and he got the call to return to princeton as a professor where he was so outstanding, a scholar and teacher, that after 12 years he was asked to become the president of the university and he became the 13st president of princeton. and, here, he became a complete reformer. he tried to democratize this rather snobby schools that really catered to the sons of the very rich in this country. in so doing, wilson got great national attention for his school and for himself. he also reformed higher education in this country. if you went to a school or you

know someone who went to a college in which you majored in something, in which you follow courses in a certain sequence in your major and in which you took a few courses out of your major and left some elective sound top of that in which you had two lectures a week or a small class in which maybe there was an honor code, then you studied under the wilsonian method of college education in this country. he took little bits and came up with a few of his own hand came up with that as a model for how colleges should be run in the united states. needless to say it is now century later the way most colleges are run in this country. wilson drew the attention after about ten years as president of princeton of the democratic machine in the state of new jersey who was looking for -- which was looking for a really

good putt that who they could basically put in office and manipulate. it was a very corrupt machine and they thought who is the cleanest guy in this state who will get elected and we can push around. what about the college professor from princeton? easy to push around and clearly knows what he is talking about. he went to wilson and asked if he would like to run for governor as democratic nominee in 1910. by the way we can pretty much guarantee you will win the election. and he did. he won as i don't have to tell you in a landslide. for the next two years he introduced the most progressive agenda of any state in this country. he not only introduced it, he got it passed. got so much past that now he is

drawing the attention of the democratic national committee looking for a candidate for the 1912 election. they went, needless to say, to woodrow wilson and he got elected in one of the most exciting elections in american history. 1912 was a great three way horserace with woodrow wilson the democrat, william howard taft the sitting republican president and theodore roosevelt who bolted from the republican party to start the progressive bull moose party and just for cover from a ford candidate, eugene debs, the great socialist. was a four what way race and wilson won kin in the greatest electoral landslide the country had ever seen and now the way he took over princeton, the way he took over anything he took over, wilson introduced the most progressive agenda of the

country had ever seen and within a matter of months, within the first two years of his presidency, woodrow wilson brought about reforms the likes of which the country had never seen before. he introduced lowering of tariffs, the modern income tax, the federal reserve system which 100 years later is the very foundation of the american economy. child labor laws, the 40 hour work week, he put the first jew, louis brandeis on the supreme court, shattering the first important glass ceiling at the federal level, did all these things, was on a great role and in fact would have continued rolling this way except for two cataclysmss, the first was his beloved wife from georgia, ellen

wilson of rome, ga. suddenly died in the white house after one year. the second thing is she died the very week world war i broke out. and now the president has to face a severe depression, a personal depression, can barely get out of bed because his beloved wife has died, if that was not enough the world has gone to war, the united states has to do something even if that something is nothing. that requires some residential decisions. wilson kept us out of war, largely i think because he went back to his southern roots. he remembered what happened in georgia, columbia, south carolina where he lived as a teenager and he saw a city still charred so he did keep us out of

war until 1917 when he got reelected, on the slogan that he kept us out of work and on april 2nd, 1917, woodrow wilson gave a speech that i considered the most important foreign policy speech in american history. contained in that speech is a single sentence that has been the bedrock of american foreign policy to this day. the sentence is very simple, the world must be made safe for democracy. you can like that sentence or not, you can agree with it or not or understand it or not. but nonetheless every american incursion since 1917 whether it was 80 or vietnam or iraq or afghanistan, whether it is c rea, wherever, all goes back to

that one sentence. and indeed, we did make the world safe for democracy, got into the first world war, helped win that war, we won it largely because i think wilson kept us out for so long and sent over a prepared army before we started fighting. wilson had 14 points he wanted to introduce to the world that would settle not just this war but might see to it that we just 5 full war to end all wars. the heart of this, the fourteenth point was the establishment of something he called a league of nations and indeed wilson introduced this into the treaty, he got it in and he came home to america

where he found much of america wanted it but the republican senate did not want to ratify this treaty party out of partisanship, and didn't believe america should be on the international game board. we should go back to isolationism. wilson took his case to the people, he embarked on a 29 city tour, the most quixotic venture a president has ever embarked upon trying to convince the people to adopt his league of nations. in the middle of that tour he collapsed, he was rushed home and suffered a stroke three days later. here is where the story gets good. because woodrow wilson and his second wife, a young widow he met in washington, because mrs.

wilson and a handful of doctors conspired for the next year and a half to tell nobody that the president of the united states had suffered a stroke and indeed for the next year and a half anybody who wanted to see the president, any document with the president's signature, anything before the president of the united states, first had to go through mrs. wilson. it is easy to argue. you will see it detailed in the book that edith bolling goals wilson, remember her name, became the first female president of the united states. wilson left the office a hobbled man emotionally and physically and even until the. he retired to washington and died in 1924. i will leave you with this, i will leave you with two thoughts. the first is one from woodrow wilson. we are not put into this world

to sit still and know. we are put in it to act. i hope you will all read about wilson and know more about wilson and tell people about him. people should know about wilson but i will be view this moment before i have time for a question or two with something max perkins said. let's go back to the beginning, the origins of my first -- something max perkins wrote, to the most important in his life, thomas wolfe of asheville and it was this, there could be nothing so important as a book can be and the fact that you all are here this afternoon proved that to me as well. thank you. [applause] [applause]

>> mr. bird has agreed to take a couple questions, we ask you speak to the microphone. >> i recall reading that in a delegation sent over to the side peace treaty -- verisign peace treaty, he did not include republican members. >> wilson took over, wilson took a delegation at the end of 1918 for the first six months, was gone for six months, delegation of five, he does have one republican in there but he was a

much older man, wasn't really in the political mix so you raise a really good question, why didn't he think it through and realize why didn't he bring more republicans? wilson felt what he was doing was bigger than partisanship and he knew he was going over now for the first time an american president was going to sit down at a table with representatives, leaders of 24 countries, each with a very detailed agenda. this was going to be a constant headache and i think he figured if he was going to be fighting with the republicans internally, when he is over there fighting with the rest of the world externally he could get nothing done. he had one specific mission, he wanted to be donations. every country there has this agenda. they wanted money, wanted

reparations, wanted territory, wilson, the united states, was the only country that did not have that. he had a super national agenda. that agenda was we want something to stop war. we don't want you people to have to fight each other again or us so that was it. may have been one of the great oversights. a lot of people thought he should have taken henry cabot who was his great foe in the senate, the republican dean of the senate and head of the foreign relations committee, wilson figured nothing would get done if he had henry cabot lodge to their. this we got close but no cigar, no legal. >> i wanted to ask a question about kate. kate's relationship with laura harding. where they just friends? locals and a different take on that. >> of course the locals did.

>> i am a local. >> what to say? i never met laura harding. she was alive when i knew kate. they had a special relationship. i think there relationship was something more than just friends, but i guess i was never in a bedroom or any room so i can't answer that question. it was a deeply emotional friendship. that much i do know. and i know that whenever katharine hepburn wanted to talk about friendship or up problem, she had as a young woman, laura harding was always a nice part of that solution. great figure in her life. and a very generous human being rather like katharine hepburn

herself. >> thank you for a wonderful talk about one unquestioned for you. do you think if wilson or the united states hadn't gone into the war what do you think of the argument that the great powers that were fighting would eventually have stalemated, settled and we might not have had -- we wouldn't have had the lead of nations but would have had a more moderate settlement that might not have produced hitler in the 30s? >> i should say i don't do speculative history. i know a lot of historians to have a crystal balls but i am not one of the. that being said, i don't quite buy it for a couple reasons. the war had been stalemated for a couple years. months would go by and hundreds of thousands of people would die. millions of people throughout europe and a gain six inches of

ground and neither side was showing any sign of stopping so there is that for openers. i do believe to get to the treaty itself and i should at america when i entered the war ended very swiftly. americans were fighting for six months and was all over once the troops got in. we lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers mostly early on and that was bloody and terrible. once we got over that little hump full war was quickly over. so i think tens of millions of lives were saved by our entry. the settlement itself, wilson again was the only one in paris who kept saying especially to the french and the british, ease up, don't make this a vengeful peace. if you do, he said, this is very much in the book, you will all be fighting the same work again

in 25 years and did you pull on your calendar you can check off a monday. he almost got it to the day that they would all be back at work again. so it was hitler, you raise the question, did that treaty lead to hitler? deep down, i don't believe so. the punishment imposed upon germany was not that terrible. it was not so great they couldn't pay it and they didn't pay it. so that wasn't an issue. as for hitler, i think a hitler was going to rise anyway. it was hitler, and it there first of all was demanded but second of all, there were a lot of germans who felt germany never had its day in the sun. this is our time to rise from whatever the ashes are. i do think had there been a league of nations in place, and the germans wanted to belong to the league of nations, i think

the likes of hitler, i think he would have been a fringe figure very likely. maybe i am just being quixotic, going back to my role back here, and wilsonian and maybe the boy wouldn't have happened. maybe the hitleribm ideas could have been stepped on very early on but the league never really had a chance because we didn't join him. ..

he took no money, he had no official title but they send him on a visit to the way you would send a secretary of state he had much more power mostly because he always ha had the president's ear and he was a personal friend of the president. in the middle of the six months wilson was away in pairs he had to come home for a three-week period to do business with congress and when he came back he felt house would have been left in charge basically sold the ranch and had sold out all of the work. as a result of that, wilson felt that he lost a lot of flooding and stature an and have to starl over again and as soon as those

talks were over, woodrow wilson never saw or spoke to the kernel again, ever. and wilson had that ability to cross him he just slammed the door but there was no question of his loyalty to wilson. there was nothing but enmity from this man who disliked wilson from the day that he arrived in washington, d.c.. >> we thank you so much. [applause] he will be signing books and book signing tent that's just over in the square. also, please try to remember the yellow buckets i'm not going to say what the book buckets are that they are at the end of the ideal. please help us keep the festival

free. thank you. and audible conversations going [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] we are going to take a short break but we will be back with more from savannah, georgia, in about 15 minutes.

you mentioned of the affordable care act in the opening. do you think if the affordable care act had been in place with health care have been any different? you were covered by insurance

the whole time the six >> there was a time in my life i was about 23 shortly before we got married and i was sick and hospitalized i had no health insurance and spent our honeymoon money on hospital bills. i needed insurance and when i worked for the government i got the regular blue cross blue shield program and had got through my life and that basically financed and then i believe when i left the white house they were on medicare. in terms of my concerns there are a lot of them. "and the doctors. when i had my second heart attack in 1984 the care was perfect. there had been a couple episodes but one of the thing that

concerns me is i never knew who my doctor was until he walked through the door that morning and that is when i made the decision that i needed to find a first rate cardiologist in the washington area because i planned to stay and embarked on a political career. and to follow that over time was put onto the gw and i think the continuity i wouldn't be here today without it. i think that is a very bad sign. i worry very much about the tax. they have a good idea but no money. i had no idea.

he was in the macaroni grill and so forth and invested $250,000 gave enough to build a patent and sold it to johnson and johnson. the initiative and the incentive for them to do that and make it happen didn't come from the government they make devices from the very first and pay taxes now on whatever profit they make and so forth. but the new tax is going to be composed on the medical devices it's one of the dumbest ideas i have heard.

>> book coverage of the savannah book festival in georgia will be back shortly. on the war on women we are rolling back access to reproductive. there is no end to the record oe credible statistics on violence against women. we haven't stopped shaming girls about their bodies. you have to have a certain sha shape. the problem in terms of defining feminism is it true that what unifies a lot of women globally and what is done to win then i don't want to identify someone

about the victimhood. that's a very important critiq critique. women should be equal in their rights and opportunities, period. aware we don't see that, we want to push forward to make that possible in a statement. in terms of women's lack of access again to everything from education to health and information about their options. the book tv book club selection for the month february. on booktv.org you will see a tab that says book club and you can participate in the discussion at

booktv.org. we will be posting reviews and articles up there tomorrow. so the discussion will begin tomorrow and we will be posting on a regular basis. i hope you will be able to participate. the women's history for beginners is the february 2014 book club selection. >> what i saw was in the same way if it sounds trite and sorry but when i started seeing white people whose racial politics i just trusted i don't read like bob marley anymore. and it took me outside and it's

good in that you can't blame him for that and that does speak to that speech and of the ways in the speech of there is a moment in which king talks about a bad check and we have come to cash the check in the insufficient funds and if you understand it as a speech than it does bring the issues up to date in a way that the dream which is a vision, utopian vision and i like it. when are you going to come good on this check and say no one has ordered a bad check into the metaphor is that the declaration of independence or the constitution said that all men,,

black men and white men were created equal. it does do different things to how that speech can be remembered. not just can't we all get along but they have to be talking about reparations. there has to be a redistribution of wealth. you have to make good on what it means to be. and that is a different way of understanding the speech. 200 years ago in the shadow of which we stand he talks about the legacy of slavery and segregation in a way that makes it clear there is more to a

quality band simply the end of segregation and so when people take the judge by the content that is the only line now on the speech and they use that to ignore the fact that he says they have a legacy and consequences into the concern is quite often america has a set of conservative country rights to do is to pretend that it has no legacy so even you talk about the bombing in syria why are you bringing up old stuff? it may say this one can't.

that was over. you are still fighting that war. you haven't finished the course on the reserve and think about what you're doing but there are ways in which the speech even on its own terms it was not a radical speech.

john rizzo is next from the savannah book festival. his book is company man 30 years of controversy and crisis in the cia. an audible conversations [inaudible conversations] my name is linda and i'm delighted to welcome you to the seventh annual savanna book festival presented by georgia power into the new lutheran church of the ascension venue which is made possible by the generosity of fran and sean.

it's been a busy and a long day. you will not be disappointed by this one. we would like to extend a special thanks to our sponsor georgia power, the members and individual donors who will make saturday's festival events possible. if you would like to lend your support we welcome your donations and have provided you low bucks for books buckets. i hope i did that as well as the others have. we practice that a lot. i would ask you to turn off your cell phone and not use flash photography. immediately following the presentation, minister john rizzo will be signing festival purchased books at the book tend in the square which you have probably all seen.

please join me in thanking courtney and mark for sponsoring john rizzo's appearance here today. [applause] john rizzo spent more than three decades serving under 11 cia directors and seven presidents. his timely and candid book 30 years of controversy and crisis in the cia is an authoritative insider account of american intelligence and highly and hotly controversial operations including enhanced interrogations and drone strikes. he left the cia in 2009 and waited five years before publishing his book. he graduated from brand university in george washington law school not long after in january of 1976 he arrived at

the cia as an untested voyeur and rose to become arguably the most influential career lawyer in cia history. he received the thomas clarke award from the federal bar association and the distinguished career intelligence medal. the highest recognition awarded to an officer. please welcome john rizzo as we step inside the cia. [applause] >> thank you linda and all of you for coming. this is gratifying. i should start with a couple of comment. first full disclosure. this is my first book festival

talk. i have done speaking before the lawyers association, conferences and schools but this is my first festival appearance, so this is a new and exciting experience for me. but it's also a new experience for me albeit somewhat intimidating this is my first talk in a church. [laughter] the idea of an older cia guy talking about spy stuff i will try to stay focused but thank you all. i'm not going to speak any longer than 30 minutes.

and i may not speak that long because one of the things i have enjoyed about the public appearances is honestly not listening to myself talk because god knows after five weeks of either two or you have heard me say everything for about 25 times already. but what i enjoy is the feedback from the audience. i was telling linda right before i came on here that it never fails. i always get asked the question in all of my appearances i've not thought of before. so that is what makes it fun for me. i did, to get the way of the land here, i did attend the previous address of the previous

speaker which may have been a mistake on my part because i think it will become clear to you soon there is a vivid contrast between the two of us. he is obviously just a prestigious highly successful professional writer. i will let you in on another secret company man is my first book. it may not be much of a secret in terms of the book business, i do not know at this point. i'm still processing the experience i have been through. so i am not by any stretch -- i consider myself a professional writer. i thought it might be interesting i read the materials that were given to me to prepare me for this appearance, and i

noticed one of the suggestions for every speaker besides keeping it for 30 minutes is to discuss my life in letters. my life in letters is one book so that would be a short discussion. the idea of how on earth somebody who spends so much time inside of the cia how does one go about writing and getting an agent or publisher and getting the cia to agree to allow such a book to be published? as i said i haven't really talked about this before to an audience, but it's i think it is a fascinating and albeit complicated process with your

indulgence i promise you probably know other writer you listen to at the festival has quite the journey that i'm going to describe to you, but i think it does say something about how the cia operates and how people in the cia, once you leave the cia how they conduct themselves and how they must conduct themselves. when i entered the cia as a young fellow, 28-years-old in january, 1976, first i will preface by saying i'm not one of those people who grew up wanting to be in the cia. you know, i grew up in the 50s and six and it never once crossed my mind.

i wasn't even a fan of the talks as a kid as most of my generation was. it just never occurred to me. i graduated from law school and went to work i had seen enough of the private practice during the summer clerkships to decide i didn't want to do that and wasn't going to be very good at it. so when i did enter the federal government service, which i did i joined the department as a lawyer which is fine for the first job, but after a couple of years you know how it is in your 20s at least the way it was for me i was in washington, young and ambitious wanting to make some sort of mark and i knew i would never make the treasury, the first public revelations about the cia really hitting the media, the first series of exposés followed by

looking at the audience i think most of you were old enough to remember the committee hearings, remember those in the mid-70s. they first came to light and i remember watching those on tv not knowing anything about the cia but simply thinking i have no idea whether that place has lawyers but if they don't they may need some so that was it. that was the total of my planning getting at the cia, so i shot out a resume and it took me a while to address, that long story short, i got in, and when i say long story short from the time i sent a letter it was a full year before i walked in the door because of the security

processing and all that. anyway, when you come to the cia you are asked to sign then and now the whole stretch of forms that in some cases you are basically signing away or restricting your constitutional rights in many important ways. one of the rights that are restricted is freedom of expression. every cia employee has two sign a lifetime commitment that he or she saw never publish anything publicly without having been vetted by the cia in advance of classified information. so that was the hurdle i was facing when i first started to think about the idea of writing a book. as it turned out didn't worry me

all that much. i knew a couple things. first of all, by the time i had retired to 34 years later i had done a lot of work at the cia, one of which at the midpoint in my career, i wrote the internal regulations about how you get your books reviewed for publication. [laughter] i can say that now. so i knew where the lines were in terms of what kind of information you could talk about. and i also knew since i was on the other side of the table for a number of the memoirs over the ear i knew what the agency position was going to be because i had espoused it for many years.

that part honestly didn't bother me. i knew enough that i could write, i thought i could write an interesting, informed and hopefully entertaining story about my career. the problem of course is that i couldn't let anyone on the outside see what i was writing while i was writing it. the cia says you have to complete the entire manuscript before the cia will look at it. obviously that is a problem when you are trying to solve a book proposal first to an agent and then to a publisher. ..

>> you know, i became, i became afr 25 years of being happily under the radar at cia, by the time 9/11 rolled around, by fate i'd become the chief legal officer. so i am the guy who first heard about the proposal for the enhanced interrogation techniques including waterboarding. i was the guy who submitted those proposals to the department of justice, and i was the guy who received, was the dress -- addressee of what came

to be known as the torture memos that the obama administration declassified. so that was me. so i became, suddenly, involuntarily, not only a public figure in the post-9/11 years as the activities became more and more controversial and more and more of them were leaked to the media, you know, i became in some quarters notorious. which, you know, went with the territory. the, i mean, personally, you know, to be honest one advantage it gave me, of course, is that no one, no publisher, no agent would have been interested in me writing a book about my career were it not for that notoriety. you know, i have no illusions about that. but what the attention did give me, and there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of negatives,

negative attention, criticism. but, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't all negative, and point of fact be, near the end of my time in june of 2009 the l.a. times wrote, actually, a, you know, in the scheme of things a relatively favorable profile of me. talking about not just about my nerve years, but the 25 years i had been at the agency before then, and as luck would have it, an agent from william morris read that article. so am i going to write this book, will anybody be interested, can i get an agent, and william morris basically called me up and said we'd like to at least explore the idea of you writing a book. so that's how i checked the agent box. easy as that. but they said you've got to give us something. so i wrote a book proposal and

pursuant to rules, i submitted to cia for review. i mean, i knew it was going to be clean. it was, basically, an outline. so i got that. and then as be many of you have had this experience, my maiden voyage into the murky waters of new york publishing, i remember one frantic day in july of 2011 my agents scurried me up and down manhattan island visiting publishers, interviewing publishers. and i'll be honest with you, a lot of publishers were reluctant. first of all, you know, i was, i had some public profile, but i was not a celebrity. i wasn't a cabinet officer. so it wasn't like, it wasn't like my name meant, had any particular he's. i wasn't a show business personality. and the second thing, of course, is that they were buying a pig in a poke.

i had to tell them, you know, i won't be able to show you a manuscript until the cia reviews it, and they're not going to review it until i'm done. and, of course, there was of when will that be? i have no idea. okay? >> hadn't even started writing yet. and so, honestly, a lot of the, you know, major publishers were reluctant. some passed, some indicated sort of tepid, lukewarm support but nothing, nothing concrete. and then scrivener. it's ironic that we were talking about mac well burke and scrivener, because scrivener came to my rescue. i had an editor there, a couple of editors who, for whatever reason, believed in me, believed that the book might be good,

might be interesting. as i say, my william morris agents felt the same way. on what basis, i do not know, but very fortunate the way this worked out for me. so one thing both my agent and scrivener said though was, look, what have you written before? and, of course, i said i haven't written anything before. and so they said, well, you need a collaborator or a ghost writer. i said, okay, all right. so they found me a ghost writer. and so i talked with him. again, some constrictions here because i couldn't show the ghost writer -- [laughter] so finally, you know, i'm truncating several months of me going through this angst, both my agent and scrivener after i signed the deal said, look, you signed the deal, we gave you, you know, part of your advance. it was adequate. i thought it was a fortune. i mean, in the scheme of things, it wasn't a large -- look,

you've got to start writing. you've got to start doing something. so i wrote a couple of, my ghost writer said, well, why don't you just write something. i'd write a chapter, sort of an innocuous chapter like on early life or maybe when you first entered cia. so i did that. and to his credit, he read it and said, you know, this isn't bad. he said, he said, you know, really there's not much i can do to really change it because it's in pretty good shape. so i wrote a couple more chapters. again, trying to keep it as -- [inaudible] as i could because this guy wasn't cleared. i was still trying to figure out how in the hell i was going to get the cia to clear my ghost writer. finally after about four chapters he said, look, i'm not doing you any good here. he was a former editor, so he was helpful in the adding process, but he said and he told my agent and my publisher, look,

you know, let this guy write, he said, he was confident i could write something at least presentable. so i wound up writing the whole damn thing myself. and every word in this book, for better or worse whether, you know, whether you hike it or you think -- like it or you think it stinks, i promise you, every word was written by me. i will tell you what i did find, and this, i think, probably may apply to a lot of first-time writers, the thing i found is totally intimidating and what's really caused more than anything the block i had about writing -- as i say, i knew in my head i could write an interesting story -- but, you know, i'm a lawyer. i had spent my entire career to the the extent i did writing first in the old days paper memos and then in later years e-mails, letters, i always knew

who i was writing to. i knew who the audience was. i mean, whether it was my boss, whether it was some members of congress or congressional committee, whether it was my staff, i knew, i knew who was going to read what i was writing. you know, it dawned on me far later than it should have that, my god, i'm writing something that if everything goes well, a lot of strangers are going to read. and not only that, i'm writing about me. and the realization hit me on that, and it froze. i mean, i will tell you, i was frozen. i didn't, you know, i started scrutinizing even my childhood thinking how much of this is going to be of any interest to anybody? i ultimately decided how much of it would be, so that came out. but i found that, i found that getting over that hurdle very,

very difficult. odd as that may sound for a hardened, three-decade-plus cia guy, but i found that part of it very intimidating. but the book, the manuscript was finally delivered to cia holding my breath. now be, again, i knew -- i sort of knew what the rules were at cia, and, you know, i wrote it all the while i was writing the man you vicinity, which took about a -- manuscript, which took a year and a half. i did the whole thing in a year and a half. i must say i wasn't burdened by any research -- [laughter] because, you know, i was not

allowed access to any of my files, all of which were still classified. [laughter] sort of liberating in a way, but i had to largely rely on memory. now, i think i have a pretty good memory, but i also think i'm not that unusual among folks in that, you know, i think you tend to remember sort of significant, important, interesting events or even conversations you've had in your professional career. and i could remember a lot of those going back to my early years at cia in the mid '70s. so you'll see in the book that, you know, i talk about conversations or places i went to in the '70s and '80s all the way up to the post-9/11 period with a fair degree of certainty and even quotation marks because, honestly, i do remember a lot of those conversations.

so i, so i, as i say, the book was based largely, largely on my memory. so that's another caveat. i did talk to some former colleagues to refresh my recollections in various places, various times, and they were helpful. and i found it reassuring, because their recollections squared with mine. honestly, for some of the things in the '70s and '80s, there was no one still around to talk to about those thingses, so those were mine. but what helped me immensely was that i had a research assistant that, the hoover institution i had an affiliation with hired for me, and i asked her to go back and pull contemporary -- [inaudible] off the internet, all the contemporary news reporting about a given event in cia's history that i was part of like the iran contra affair. and, or the alder james' spy

debacle in the article '90s. and i found reading those over and over again buttressed or refreshed my recollection, so it was enormously helpful to do that. so to the extent i performed research, it was along those lines. i also took the time to read a lot of cia books, related cia books, books by cia insiders, but also cia outside journalists encompassing the previous 20 years. which i had never read before. believe me, after you spend 10 or 12 hours inside that bubble at langley, the last thing you want to do is come home and curl up, read more books about cia. [laughter] so i never read any of them. and i read those. and there were, they were helpful. some were better than others. so that was it. so that's how i put my manuscript together.

now, there were a few areas i will admit to you that i sort of knew i was crawling up to a classified line telling a story, and i thought to myself, well, the hell with it, i'll see if i can get away with this. so i pushed it. well, when i submitted the manuscript to cia, dutifully every time i had done that, they ripped it -- they knocked it out again. so they caught all of them. on the other hand, there were certain events i talk about, certain stories -- and the book is really stories -- that they left, i thought they would tear down, and they left them largely unscathed. so the process was very fair to me. what i was finally able to give to my publisher, the cleared manuscript, was actually 95% of what i'd originally written. so what you're reading, if you read this book with, will be

really virtually my unvannished first -- varnished first original man you script now dub man manuscript. now, when the publisher, wonderful editor at scrivener paul whit latch, younger than my own son which i found inknow sating and depressing -- [laughter] he belied what i'd been told about editors which is they get 12 other manuscript, they're not going to pay any attention. he was scrupulous. i but he instead of cutting back on what i'd written, because i'd gone over. i think book contract called for 100,000 words max, and i was at, like, the 0,000. i figure -- 120,000. i figured between cia and between the editing process, it'll be under 100,000. well, cia didn't take out much, and scrivener actually asked me

to expand on some areas, didn't take out anything that i had written. so i expanded. and then, of course, i had to. >> schlepp back to cia with my expansions so they could get ill back again. to say it's a unique experience to be a first-time author when you're formerly with cia. so that's how the -- so at the end of all this, that is how the book emerged, and that is the rather baroque process by which if you're a cia guy, you get your memoirs published. i wouldn't necessarily recommend it for anyone in the private sector who doesn't have to jump through these hoops, but, you know, it's been a fascinating process to me. i must say, you know, 30-plus years in cia you'd think i'd be cynical about everything, but getting an agent and going through the publishing hoops and all of that, i mean, it was just

an eye-opening, eye-opening experience for me. one of the reasons i felt strongly about writing the book myself, you know, this is a memoir, i may not write anything ever again, i wanted to make sure, you know, rightly are or wrongly that it would be me, it would be in my voice. and i tried to accomplish that, and i think i did. i mean, those of you who realize the book and listening to me speak, i hope you'll find that the printed page reflects the way i talk. because i tried very hard to do that. the other thing that i say is i tried to make it accessible. what i mean by accessible is it's not a treatise, it's not a academic piece, it's not -- i didn't want to write it for just lawyers. and i didn't want to write it for national security wonks. i wanted a readable story, have a readable story that people,

regular people, normal people, people who aren't lawyers, who aren't national security wonks could understand, find interesting, have an easy read, you know, not have a doorstopper of a book and which -- and this goes back to this, comes back to the fundamental reason i wrote this book -- was that it had dawned on me shortly after i retired and i had time to reflect on my career, i had those several turbulent years where i didn't have time to reflect on anything. but i stood back, and it occurred to me that i joined the cia, my career arc reflected the modern history of cua. cia. i came in on the first, you know, in the first wave of reform at cia, i mean, first time there were congressional intelligence committees created, first time there was executive orders written about what cia could do in terms of collecting information on americans, first

time laws were enacted to, basically, mandate how a president would approve a covert action program by means of what's called a presidential finding, a written document that the president had to personally sign off on. the idea there, of course, is to do away forever with the old wink and nod days, presidential approval of cia operations where there is plausible deniability. all of that coip sided with my arrival. as i said, i was the first wave of real outside lawyers to come to cia. i was the 18th lawyer hired, just by way of example. by the time i left in december 2009, i had 125 lawyers on my staff. and i think there are about 150 now. so that, you know, among other things i wanted the book to belie the notion cia's always been this rogue elephant that sort of tramples over everyone and everything and has its own agenda.

it's the most heavily-lawyered agency certainly in the national security and foreign policy communityings and lawyers are embedded in every aspect of cia's life. and, obviously, doesn't mean we lawyers have always avoided screw-ups, because you can just google my name and find that's not the case. [laughter] but cia is, i mean, it seems counterintuitive, but cia really does depend on its lawyers. i wanted the book to get that across. as i say, i i wanted to be -- i wanted it to be an accessible read. i was fortunate that i was either a participant or an observer in every major conflict every three or four years like clockwork, and so it did occur to me that my personal experiences do track with the arc of cia in its modern era,

meaning since the post-1970s era. and there, honestly, has not been an insider memoir written like that before and certainly not by a lawyer from cia. so i thought that would, i thought that might be an interesting and useful contribution. so that's really how this book came to be. the whole process from start to finish was, you know, all the back and forthing was probably two and a half, two and a half years. which, to me, was a very long time, but listening to other authors, that's blink of an eye. i feel a little grubby with here about only spending two years on this book. i mean, i'm happy with it. accomplished what i wanted to accomplish. it's gotten, you know, it's gotten extensive attention, it's been reviewed by most major publications, some good, some not so good. but all of that goes with the territory.

and, you know, those things are fascinating and new, somewhat byzantine to me. i would never have predicted three years ago, four years ago that i would ever be standing here at the savannah book festival in a church -- [laughter] talking about spy stuff. but that's where the journey has taken me. and as i say, you know, if folks like you care enough the at least come and listen to me, is, you know, is a pretty heady experience. i know some of you, many of you because i've talked to a lot of the audiences who may not agree with some of the decisions that were made or the acttivities that i was involved in p. that's all right. i've been criticized for that. i was criticized when i was there, and i've been criticized

since the book hats come out. but with i knew, you know, i chose to publish the book, i chose to write the book, so it wasn't like i was hiding, you know, hiding under a rock or seeking anonymity. i accept all, i accept, you know, the good, the positive reactions with the negative reactions. and, you know, i have learned, i have learned from it, believe it or not. so that's about it, i think, in terms of the formal -- sure -- with my opening remarks. [laughter] i'm more than happy now to entertain questions or comments. >> mr. rizzo has agreed to answer questions. we'd ask that you come up to the microphone, form a line right behind me and use the microphone to ask the questions. and i also need to remind you that he will be available for book signing at the tent, so at the end of his session, please,

give him space and time to get out of building. [laughter] sometimes they can't get to the book signing tent. so that being said, have at him. >> thank you. during your tenure, which president and which cia director had the most impact, in your view, on the agency's success? >> well, in terms of cia directors, you know, this is, this may sound surprising, but for reasons that left me amazed, the obama administration when it came into office in january 2009 allowed me to stay as the chief cia legal officer. i mean, by in this time i was -- by this time i was totally associated publicly with the interrogation program which, of course, both candidate obama and

candidate mccain had denounced as torture. so i was reconciled with the fact i'd be going on january 21st. but as you recall, the president named his cia director, a guy named leon panetta. a man i did not know, even though he had a lengthy washington resumé. and he asked me, to my utter amazement, to stay on until the white house could find a new candidate. so i wound up staying for close to a year. in that short year, leon panetta, my last cia director and, you know, the briefest-tenured cia director i served under, i came to conclude he was the most effective. reason for that is i've always thought there were three essential elements to being a successful cia director. one, you have to have clout with the white house, with the president. because without that, cia is

irrelevant. two, you have to, you have to form a bond of sorts with the cia work force which can be, you know, it's not easy. i mean, it's a particular culture. they've been around for, you know, generations. and it's sort of a bond that can't be taught, can't be learned, but you have to have that because they have to trust the guy on the seventh floor. the third is to have effective relations or at least decent relations with congress. now, i served under cia directers, 11 of them. you know, most of them have one of those qualities. a couple had two of those qualities, but leon that pet that is -- panetta is the only cia director even in my brief experience with him that i thought had all three. so i would put him as the best. presidents, that's a, you know, that's a tougher one.

you know, the key thing more me for a president, honestly, was that he paid attention to cia. now, most presidents come around to using the cia sooner or later. some, like president carter for instance, it took them a while, but they all realize cia is a unique tool they have. but they treat cia differently. the, you know, my very first cia director when i was just a kid arriving there was george h.w. bush. he lasted about a year, january '76-'77. i didn't quite understand or appreciate at the time, but looking back on it he came the closest to panetta. it's funny, they were book ending my career. as effective cia director and, of course, when he ascended to the white house, he was the first and, i trust, only former cia directer to be elected

president. and george h.w. bush understood the institution and was was devoted to it, still devoted to it to this day. so if i had to pick one person, it would be him. yes, ma'am. >> two questions, actually. first one is could you tell us which experience that you relate in your book that you most expected the cia lawyers to cut out that ended up in the book? [laughter] and the second unrelated question is would you recommend that kids getting out of college or graduate school or whatever, would you recommend a career today in the cia whether as a lawyer, analyst, agent just given what you've seen of how the cia has changed or not changed? >> yeah. >> thank you. >> let me take the second one first. the, yeah, i would absolutely recommend it. i, as a matter of fact, one of the few tangible, one of the only tangible things i can

really do to help cia now because when i left, i left. i figured 34 years was enough. i just walked out the door, turned in my badge and merv looked back. so that part of my life is over. but what i think, what i like to do, honestly, is to, you know, when friends or relatives, sometimes very distant relatives have someone, a young person that they would like to have someone talk to about cia, you know, i say, you know, it's easy for me to do, i'm happy to do it. and i always, i just strongly urge them to join, you know? the lord knows by the end of my career it was, you know, the last few years were tough. but, i mean, i never regretted a single minute i was there. even when things are bad, they were good, you know? you always feel like -- and not just talking about lawyers, i'm

talking about anybody there, the analysts, the operators, the administrative personnel. it's a place where you go in, and i think this -- it's not unique to government agencies, certainly unusual, that you actually kneel like you're making an impact and no matter how junior you are in the pecking odder. and believe me, i was junior man in the pecking order. it's an exciting place to be. you're not going to get rich unless you start selling secrets. [laughter] but it's just nothing, this is nothing like it in terms of satisfaction, fun. and, you know, and at the end of the today, you know, you're lining your desk, did i live a worthwhile professional life, and i i think i can say yes. in terms of the book what they let in, you know, if you haven't

read the book this won't mean anything to it, but it just occurred to me, the paperback edition's coming up, maybe i should hold my fire here. laugh -- [laughter] there is a story that has nothing to do with 9/11 directly at least. it was a story i tell that came out in 1995, never been reported. it was a leak. and the reason i -- i spend a little time on leak cases in the book with. not much, of course, because where do you start? but this one affected me the most because it was only leak investigation, leak case of cia in my spire career where it -- entire career where it indisputably led to the death of a covert cia agent in a terrorist organization of all places. this was 1995. it was an article in "the new york in the new

york times and the circumstances basically outed this agent. so that was in the public record. what was never in the mix record was fact -- public record was the fact that he was killed not long afterwards. clear cause and effect. he was in europe, and he disappeared. and conclusively he was killed. i wasn't sure they would let me tell a story. i've been, honestly, aching to tell it for 5 years pause, you know, for those who say leak cases never hurt, you know, there may be leak cases where more damaging information, you know, was spilled, and we can all debate whether how much of that was like, you know, snowden. just take snowden for instance. this was the only case i could remember where someone actually got killed because of a cia

leak. and that was the one i wasn't sure they would let me talk about it, but they did. >> i've been aching to ask this question for some time, and i'm glad you're here. kiddied the cia -- did the cia ever consider legal action in regard to the valerie plame case where she was the wife of ambassador joe will soften, and she was outed by dick chain think or whoever? >> yeah. >> for political reasons? >> yeah. i talk about the plame case briefly in the book. i'm actually the guy who reported the leak, robert novak outed her in one of his syndicated news columns. i reported that case at the department of justice as a leak of classified information because she was an undercover employee. that led, as we all know, to a four-year investigation. i don't know how much -- i know

a lot of the manpower at cia that led, ironically enough, to the conviction of a guy named scooter libby who worked for cheney but, ironically, was not the leaker. the special investor, good guy, he had learned early on in the investigation that it was actually a state department official named richard armitage who had talked to novak. so here was the most expensive, long-running leak investigation in cia history at least up to to that point, and i just found it so ironic that with all these other leaks, you know, leaking an agent's name is not a trivial thing. but of all the cases to take to to prosecution just -- i mean, this administration is going gang busters on leak cases, but

no one ever before pursued them with this kind of rigor. this plame case, like i say, counting on the conviction of a guy who budget even a leaker. and i just found that odd. that's my take on the plame case. >> thank you very much. >> okay. >> i would think you were quite involved in designing the architecture of the cia's current drone policy and just wondered what your reforests are on -- reflections are after the recent blossoming of its use? >> yeah. yeah, i, you know, i talk about the dome program in the book. honestly, i couldn't get into as much detail as i probably would have preferred because, believe it or not, the drone program and all of its details are still considered classified. but i, you know, so i didn't --

but the main point i make in the book about drones is the drone program started about the same time as the interrogation programs started, after 9/11, around 2002. now think back all of those years that the interrogation program was in effect, 2002-2008. increasingly politically toxic, controversial for understandable reasons. increasingly leaked. in all sorts of investigations about the legality of the -- [inaudible] simultaneously in 2002 these drones were killing terrorists on the ground, blowing hem to bits. sometimes p a but innocent civilians along the way. and i mean, think about it, up until last year maybe there was

never a peep in congress, in the human rights community, in the media even about the wisdom morality or efficacy of these, this, basically, a sterile policy of fact of the nation on the ground. so it had a interrogations, some would call it torture. i don't call it torture, but yet one was buffetted with criticism and the other, until recently, is largely unscathed. it was considered morally justifiable and legally defensible to kill a terrorist than it was to capture and aggressively, harshly ger gate one. i mean, i just leave it to you

about that. >> thank you. >> yes, sir. >> last question. >> okay. did you enjoy phillip seymour of match's portray l of the cia officer, and what was the award charlie wilson won from the cia? [laughter] >> i did know charlie wilson. >> was he as colorful as the at mrg made it. it's outlandish that that story -- >> [inaudible] >> yeah. if anything, they toned it down. i remember one time him getting a brief of what was in the

classified afghanistan program, and he -- this was like 11:00 in the morning, and he said, son, the sun's over the yard arm, and he pulls out whiskey and has me drink whiskey with him. i was told that was a rite of of passage, looking like a starry-eyed lawyer. of so-a real character. i was a real character. the phillip seymour hoffman character was sort of avuncular, wisecracking. gus was not like that. gus was quiet. so that was a literary invention. but the charlie wilson character was absolutely down. >> and what was the award that they gave him? >> the award. charlie wanted to have what was called the intelligence, what's it called, intelligence medallion which is the highest

honor. you know, see how he does it rather effectively. [laughter] >> no funding for the cia without -- he didn't mention himself, but he made it clear that he wanted that damn me call medallion. [laughter] and, by god, he got it. he got it. [laughter] >> what year was that? what year was that? early '70s? >> i think it was in the mid '80s. >> thank you. >> well, thank you very much. i enjoyed this. [applause]

>> please don't forget our yellow buckets. and mr. rizzo will be available for book signing shortly at the book signing tent. thank you all. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> just heard from john rizzo on his time with the cia. we'll have more from savannah, georgia, in a few minutes.

>> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers, watch videos and get up-to-date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. >> originally, i was writing as a philosopher, as a philosophy professor, and i was writing on sort of technical philosophical topics, and i became interested in more cultural social issues and would write about them when i found no one else was addressing them. and so, you know, i started to write about boys when i saw that it was a thing elected topic. i'm usually upset about something and think that this is wrong, and this is in the going the help people, and this is going to send us in the wrong direction. so i'm almost always motivated by a concern that it's important to get this down right.

all of us are susceptible to confirmation bias. we are much more open to arguments and evidence that supports what we already believe. something that challenges it, you resist. and i know that i have that. is i tried very hard to compensate for that. i know from people that i've heard there are, let's say on some positions, someone who holds a very different position than mine, let's say a male or female differences, and there are ways this which they can present tear interpretation which is respectful of what i believe, and i can listen to them. but be they just come in loaded for bear is and, obviously, it was some kind of sick, set of fixed ideas and rigid ideology, then i don't listen. i don't want to be like that for so many reasons. it's not good intellectually,

it's not persuasive, you don't change minds. >> the all-new c-span.org web site is now mobile friendly. that means you can access our comprehensive coverage of politics, nonfiction books and american history where you want when you want and how you want. our news site's design scales to fit any screen from your december k top computer to your tablet or smartphone. when you're at home, at the office or on the go, you can check our program schedules or search our extensive video library whenever and wherever you want. the new c-span.org makes it easy for you to keep an eye on what's happening in washington. >> the pope is found in his office, he's ailing, he's

elderly, he's infirm. he begs god to give him a few more days to live. he has something he needs to say and has, realizes he has very little time left on earth. for years the pope had been many good health, known as robust mount near pope -- mountainier pope. he insisted on knowing every detail of everything going on in the vatican and making all decisions. but now every day was a challenge. every step caused him pain. he was unable to sleep at night. he had terrible varicose veins that this robbed pain through his -- throbbed pain through his

legs, he had asthma. and as he lay awake at night, he was troubled most of all not so much by his papes, his aches and pains, but by thought that something had gone terribly wrong. >> you can watch this and other programs online at book f.org. [inaudible conversations] >> you're looking at the the inside of the lutheran church of ascension, the site of this year issa van that book festival. more live coverage in a couple of minutes.

>> here's a look at the top ten best selling nonfiction books according to the los angeles times:

>> look for mr. sherman's appearann booktv's author interview program "after words" airing in the near future on booktv on c-span2, ask that's the top ten best selling nonfiction books list according to the los angeles times. >> we are not in a post-feminist era. i am very concerned about the, quote, war on women. we are rolling back access to reproductive rights. there is no end to the regrettable statistics on violence against women. we have not stopped shaming girls about their bodies. we have so much sexism in the

media which implies you have to have a certain shape to be loved or popular. the problem in terms of defining feminism, it's true that what unifies a lot of women globally is what is done to women. ask i don't want to identify -- and i don't want to identify feminism as about victimhood. that's a very important critique. you don't want victim feminism. empowered feminism says that women should be equals in their rights and opportunities, period. where we don't see that, we want to push forward to make that possible. end of statement. but, no, there is so much work to do. and globally, the statistics are really frightening in terms of women's lack of access, again, to everything from education to health and information about their options. >> you can watch this and other

programs online at booktv.org. >> host: women's history for beginners is the booktv book club selection for the month of february. >> guest: whoo hoo. >> host: goo to booktv.org, you'll see right up at the top a tab that says book club, and you can participate in our discussion at booktv.org. we'll be posting video and reviews and articles up there tomorrow, so the discussion will begin tomorrow. we'll also be posting on a regular basis discussion questions. so i hope you'll be able to participate. bonnie morris' women's history for beginners is our february 2014 book club selection on booktv. [inaudible conversations]

>> our live coverage of the savannah book festival will continue in just a few minutes. >> so the final aspect of kennedy's senate career i want to talk about is his presidential candidate. and here, i think, you know, senator lieu ger said, you know, he'd long wanted to run for president, and i think a lot of people think he had decided to run the day his brother was killed in world war ii and sort of the mantle of the family leadership was passed to him. certainly by the time he entered the senate, he was thinking of it. i think, you know, with some people it's sort of hard to gauge where their political career turns. i think with jfk it's very clear, 1956, as senator lugar mentioned, was the year. profiles in courage came out, became a national bestseller. he was the star of the 1956

convention, sort of like obama was, president obama was in 2004. he narrated a film to introduce the convention. he nominated adlai stevenson. he came within just a standful of votes of becoming the vice presidential nominee. that fall he became the most popular sur or gate on the -- surrogate on the campaign circuit traveling around the country os especially the my promoting stevenson's campaign but probably also interested in increasing his visibility. and, you know, stevenson was defeated soundly in early november of 1956, and three weeks later ken key was in hyannis port for thanksgiving vacation and had a little private meeting with his father and came out and told his aides that he's going to be running for president in 1960, you know, four years down. and his rationale was i came within a handful of votes being vice president doing nothing, if i spend four years, i certainly

can get the nomination. and i think kennedy's four-year quest for the presidency is interesting to look at in part because of motto. well, largely because he was, it's very rare that a sitting senator can win the white house, you know? warren harding in 1920, kennedy in 1960 and obama in 2008. but i think kennedy had a really shrewd sense of how to use the senate as a launching pad for the presidency. and i i think his first insight was that windows of opportunity in american politics open and close quickly, and you can be a hot commodity one day, but, you know, the wheel turns in a couple months or years later, you know, you're forgotten. and i think e add a sense that, you know, he was hot after '56 and that there was no one else who was clearly, you know, in line for it, so e had to, he had -- this was his time. this was time the run. and several people said you really ought to wait until '64, and it's either going to happen

this in '60 or it's not going to happen. as-fighting for the nomination -- he was fighting for the nomination, he had other competitors, humphrey, johnson, who were senators but much more ambivalent, much more sort of confused about whether their primary respondent was in washington or on the campaign trail. and kennedy did not have that confusion. he knew where he needed to be, and he was on the campaign trail pushing very, very hard. there's a great moment in the 1960 campaign as kennedy is about to win the democratic nomination in los angeles. and lyndon johnson has entered the race at the last minute. he's the senate majority leader, and johnson still thinks he has a chance to derail kennedy's nomination, so they had this joint appearance before johnson's delegation. so john johnson, you know,

starts citing all of his legislative achievements and just says -- they passed a civil rights bill in '57 and also they're working on another one in 1960, and he was talking about all the work he was doing on that, he had to fight filibusters, and we had quorum call after quorum call, and some weren't here answering the quorum call, but i was. you know, clear reference to ken key. so kennedy comes up and says lyndon johnson does a great job answering core run calls. he's your guy. but that's not what a president does, and he said i think lyndon johnson's a good leader, and i think he should stay as the senate majority leader. in a kabooky sort of way, he sort of turned johnson's experience and gravitas against him, and it became almost a liability as opposed to an asset. >> you can watch and other programs online at booktv.org.

[inaudible conversations] >> more from savannah in just a few minutes. >> here's a look at some of the books being published this week:

>> look for these titles in booksts this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> listening to hip-hop, you're reminded that there are two-and-a-half million people locked up. you can watch these movies about vampires and the hobbit, you'll never know that we lock up more people in the united states than any country in the history of the world. you can't listen to urban radio more than 30 minutes without

being reminded of that fact. there are constant shoutouts in hip-hop culture to the brothers and sisters who are away, who are locked up, who who we're not supposed to think about who hip-hop doesn't let us forget. so anything from kendrick lamar wondering why of all the devastating drugs -- and to him worst is alcohol, he's got this song called "drink" which is about the devastation and the fun of being drunk -- people wondering why we lock up people for selling weed. weed is the hip-hop drug of choice. marijuana is. they love it. so lots of questions about criminal law policy, how it is in the books and also on the streets. lots of opinions about how we can be safer and freer the we

listen to hip-hop -- if we listen to hip-hop. you know, the people who create hip-hop actually are perfectly situated to give us great criminal justice. there's this philosopher nameed john rawls who talks about the best possible justice system being created by people who don't know who you're going to be in the world. so imagine you don't know whether you're black or white, asian or latino, gay or straight, immigrant or citizen, you make the best possible law, this philosopher rawls says. with criminal justice, that's the hip-hop nation. it consists of people who are most likely to be charged with crimes. everybody knows that, young black men. but also people who are most likely to be victims of crime. so in their music, in their art hip-hop artists are laying down on tracks what our criminal justice system will look like,