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 appearance on 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 bookstores 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 what a justice system would look like if we treated everybody equally, treated even fairly and wanted to keep the streets safe. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org: [inaudible conversations] >> our final author presentation of the day is with deborah solomon. the author will be next live from the savannah book festival. ..

we'd like to send a special thanks to georgia power, members and individual donors who make saturday's free festival possible. if you would like to lend support we welcome your donation and have provided yellow buckets for both buckets.

i would like to ask you to turn off your cell phones and also not to use flash photography. immediately following the presentation ms. solomon will be signing festival purchased copies of her book at the book tend. also please join me in thanking ernest for sponsoring deborah solomon's appearance here today. deborah solomon is an art critic, journalist and contributor to "the new york times." she also wrote a column in "the new york times" magazine section called question for that address questions asked by celebrities and other people of interest in

the new york city area. she takes a fresh look at artist norman rockwell's life in her book american mirror the life and art of norman rockwell. she has a life different from his humors and optimistic thinking. ms. solomon was an art history major at cornell university and earned her masters master's degree at columbia graduate school of journalism. she's written several biographies of american artists including joseph curnow and she is the art critic for the radio which is the npr affiliate in new york. she was awarded a guggenheim fellowship in 2001 in the category of biography. asked to characterize her political beliefs, and this is my favorite part, solomon once said not dependably pro- anything except thinking.

please welcome debra -- deborah solomon. [applause] >> hello, savannah. it's great to be here. thank you, linda for that gracious introduction. i arrived yesterday and i can't be revived in here less than 24 hours because i already have so many new girlfriends. especially to say to stephanie i had her yesterday and i said where can i get a haircut. i had just come off of the plane and was looking a little shaggy and she said you want to get a haircut and savannah on a saturday without an appointment and i realized i asked a large favor but she managed to squeeze me into the schedule where she regularly goes, so thank you. and logan who has been my escort

which we agreed is a terrible term. she is amazingly spirited company. i asked her what i should talk about today and she said haven't you planned anything? she said we'd really like for authors to talk about themselves as opposed to your books. try to get a little bit about your process and why you became a writer and i thought i am a journalist and writer of nonfiction and art critic and the reason i write about art is because precisely so i don't have to think about myself or talk about myself so i'm going to keep the part about myself very brief at the risk of boring you to tears. i grew up in new york and i always wanted to be an art critic. i don't know how to explain it.

i'm sure one day they will discover something for it. as a child while other girls were writing fan letters to paul and ringo and john i used to write fan letters to cramer who was the chief art critic of "the new york times," and i'm sure i'm the only person who in fact ever did write him fan letters. he was sort of famously crabby. i found him to be a marvel of frank s. and perceptiveness. he never wrote back that when i was in high school he did publish one of my letters in the times called art mail back and i remember screaming with joy and my mother said what are you so excited about and i said they published my letter and she said why is that exciting.

but i do find it very exciting and i continue to find it exciting to write and publish and i think it is the best way of thinking. a lot of critics agree they don't really know what they think about a show or work of art or almost anything until they sit on a deadline and are forced to decide. writing for me has always been a very clarifying process and if i'm away from my writing for too long i feel -- i feel the need for clarity. it comes to me when i'm reading. i love reading in bed but i find that being away from words generally just confuses the situation and words for me have always been a great clarifying source. let's see. i studied art history at cornell university. i worked as a guide during my

college years, not a guide to make hard at the herbert f. johnson museum of art which was my university museum and i wasn't a very good guard. i don't think i would have noticed if anybody made off with any art i just sat there reading and i was also an editor of the cornell daily sun and during my senior year of college, playboy magazine arrived on campus because they were doing a feature called women of the ivy league. they were going from school to school asking women to pose and that caused a predictable uproar on campus. as is the 70s the height of feminism and at that point i wrote an editorial defending the right of women to pose because i thought free choice, women should be free to choose whether or not they are going to subject themselves to the degradation of playboy magazine. [laughter]

so then phil donahue invited me to fly to chicago and deviate a militant feminist from brown university who was a pretty scary woman but i did that and that was my first big controversy. and no i did not pose. [laughter] okay. then columbia journalism which is an interesting experience because it gets into new york city and i think it's good to live in any city that has cultural institutions. for most of my career while i did briefly have full-time jobs. i worked at the miami herald, the sentinel and the dallas times as a newspaper reporter covering anything i was asked to cover and highlighted my career when i was sent to cover a

tornado in texas. it was exciting we went in any helicopter right after the storm settled. but after just a few years i thought i should be writing on my own. i think if you are very disciplined and the kind into the kind of writer that can be at your desk and eat in the morning you don't really need to have a job. if you can keep yourself at your desk and stayed there all day the chances are you are going to get something done because i think that is the key to writing is sitting at your desk as obvious as that sounds and sometimes it can be hard to sit there for a variety of reasons not just because the world is full of distractions but also because to sit at your desk is to inevitably look at your own writing and that can be a very discouraging experience when you look at your own pages so i think the trick is to assume

that it will work out if you sit there long enough. i worked as a critic for "the wall street journal" and then ended up at "the new york times" doing the questions call him for years which was fun because i didn't have to write at all i just got to ask questions and interview people. there is nothing more fun than being a writer that doesn't have to write and that was the year my sons were growing up and i was grateful i didn't have to write because when i writing i go into -- mygoing to -- my husband calls it the zone. and i don't really notice anything around me. he said i suffered from an attention surplus disease. is that what it's called? so that was great to do when my

kids were growing up because it allows me to become conscious of what is happening around me. and then they went off to college and at that point i'd already written a few books and i started my norman rockwell book and i really threw myself into it. it was a perfect thing to do once they were gone. i became quite obsessed. i started years earlier after writing a piece in "the new york times" about the rehabilitation of certain reputations including rockwell and i received a phone call the next morning from norman rockwell's ®-registered-sign. he's now 82 and he's an artist himself and he said that was a fun piece by don't you write a biography about my father and he was kind of joking that kind of but kind of not and the more i thought about it the more i became deeply interested in the subject.

this subject. i came from a traditional art history background. it had always been written off as a promoter and grandmothers and thanksgiving turkeys. but i saw a show of his in 2001 and i was completely blown away by it and i realized i thought the time had come to look at this career into figure out who he was and why he had been treated so harshly by the 20th century. so i had been working on that book for the past few years, and it was just endlessly fascinating to me. i found the more i learned the more mysterious he became and i found it fascinating i could look at the paintings for such a long time and that they raised so many questions.

he died 35 years ago and did the illustrations come as you all know, isn't supposed to last for the ages unlike the arts which is supposed to end her. life is short and art is long. it's only supposed to last until the max magazine cover or illustration just like the news stories. so here we are 35 years after and what fascinated me is that his work continues to hold so much mystery. for me it holds as much certainly as any of the abstract art in his lifetime in which i studied in school meaning in particular the exhibitionist you probably all know the american artist who was said to the capital ofhave thecapital of charge to the united states after world war ii.

so rockwell's life was full of surprises the first that he was born and grew up in new york city. he was not from a farm in new england and didn't move to new england until later in his life but he was a city kid who was i would say a prodigy and he dropped out of high school and he knew right away that he wanted to be an illustrator and nothing else really mattered to him other than getting to the saturday evening post which at the time was the leading magazine in the united states and had no rivals. i'm talking about mouse in 1916 when he had his first cover at the age of 22. he was pretty much an immediate spark. everyone loved his covers because they were unlike anything. if you look back at the illustration of that era, a lot of it consisted of paintings of

pretty women doing things that didn't require much energy like at my hearing aid of were standing in a garden. they never sweat. they didn't quite seem real and along comes rockwell with his humorous tableaux about everyday life about boys playing pokey from school and running away trying not to get caught. there had been nothing quite as humorous and as a down-to-earth because magazine covers if you think about it now and then were always sort of about the life he wanted to have. they are supposed to be glamorous and aberrational. it's like you will look like this your skin will become clear in your hair will look better. in nearly 20th century magazines

also appealed to america's aspirations. but with rock while he wasn't thinking the life he wanted to have such a life people already had. people usually were not gorgeous and through, they were never gorgeous. they were ordinary looking into such asuch a see them on the cover of magazines was in itself a surprise. so he was an illustrator he distinguished himself during the second world war when he painted the freedom which illustrated president roosevelt's goals for the country during the second world war when rockwell first proposed the idea to the office of war information he was turned down. he was told by an administrator, they said in the last war you did the posters and this time we want a real artists. so by world war ii already it

seems like illustrators had been pretty heavily stigmatized as non- artists and rockwell went ahead and did the freedoms and you've probably seen those posters. the most famous is probably freedom of speech, a man of standing up at a town hall meeting as the townspeople sit around and look at him and listen very quietly and pay a great respect and the family and friends gather around a large thanksgiving turkey. anyway, before, the four freedoms really elevated his reputation because they were used -- the government used them on the posters and during world war ii if you bought a bond to help support the war you got a free set of posters and this was a big deal

because during world war ii we still pay for our own war three americans understood if you have a war you have to pay for it where instead of now we say put it on a credit card and let future generations pay. so he became known as a great painter patriot and what i find amazing is that if he was able to define the national narrative during the second world war he did it again in the 60s when he painted his famous portrait of ruby marching into a school in new orleans to desegregate and in that painting the problem we live with remains the defining image of the civil rights movement. and it has no competition and i think this year which is the 50th anniversary of the passage of the civil rights act we will be seeing that painting reproduced in many places

because nobody else -- how do you illustrate the civil rights movement in one advantage the hell do you illustrate the goals which we thought and before rockwell, those questions were often answered why artists who used patriotic imagery like the statute of liberty or uncle sam or waving flags, and rockwell got away from that by telling stories about regular americans. i think it's harder to do then you would think to tell a story that encapsulates a moment and a time so eloquently. when i look at the covers from the perco like other illustrators better art details that don't contribute to the story. you look at it and say there there's the pie is evil but why what is

this cover about? it isn't always clear. with rockwell is crystal-clear that story you get it, you get the joke. there's not always a joke that when there is you get it immediatelyimmediately and if they covered that doesn't have a joke you get that last while. his saving grace is a painting for instance without a joke that just received a lot of money and $46 million which is the record for his work and that painting of course consists of a grandmother and her grandson sitting at a railroad station diner in troy new york saying grace as other tables paused and watched this moment. so there is no joke to that one. in the 50s i think he tried to get away from his humor and make large points about america.

a lot of his paintings are set in public spaces such as schools, streets, restaurant counters and i think that he was a poet of our civic life which is pretty incredible because data doesn't sound like the most romantic subject, right clicks he paints people people go into voting booths on election day and you think what can you do with that? how can that compare to love or death as a subject for art? and i think that's one reason that he was so snubbed during his lifetime. the work was about everyday experience. anyone could understand it he was paid to do it and he had a very large following. all of those conditions kind of went against the requirement that art is supposed to be

difficult and only the lucky few are the happy few that can understand it. i have grown very fond of the work since i started my research on him and his personal life i found incredibly poignant. i didn't always like him as a person. like a lot of artists he could be self absorbed and oblivious to those around him. he saved the best part of his work but i found him to be very sympathetic as a character not always the most considerate person but, he was married three times in the first two marriages were very difficult and the third one was cut his third marriage brought in the companionship ihim thecompanionship i think that he always wanted although it wasn't a conventional marriage in many ways.

he had three sons who are still alive and family members generally described him as somewhat distant. so i would say that in terms of his suffering he was right up there with any artist who is better known for his comment. artists write a mark of authenticity if you suffer a lot so he suffered with the best of them and i really miss working on the book. i haven't started a new one yet but i'm looking for ideas if any of you want to point me in a certain direction. should we open up for questions? now we would ask you come to the microphone, line up here behind

the and she will be happy to answer any of your questions. i also need to remind you that she will be available at the tent across the way so at the end of the session if he would meet her there and let her get there, that would be a good thing to do. i also wanted to remind you this is the last session of the day in we hope to see you tomorrow at 3:00 for the closing session which is alexander speaking. with that i will open the microphone. >> interested to know how many covers you would have to reduce in the course of the year and also any insight you have about his style of work did he use models into that kind of thing.

>> he usually allowed about two weeks per cover which isn't a lot of time at all because as any movie director he staged a scene from beginning to end. he was a realist painter in the sense that he liked to look at objects in front of him. if he painted a piano he had a piano in the studio. once when he was working on a poster about a soldier he managed to get a bio of blood from the red cross to see how it looked on a piece of fabric. he wanted a child with a bruise to come in. it's made up of a whole rainbow of colors, so he was a great observer of the world and his paintings all began with a few sketches he would submit to his

editors and they would approve or not approve them and was a process that involved finding the right models to pose photographing the models into working from photographs but from as many as 100 photographs per painting so she would take different parts of the figure from different pictures. it might be an arm of someone and a leg from another until he gets done with the scene he has dreamed up. all of them are a centrally fictions. >> first i want to thank you for your work in the times. it's a pleasure to read. you have explored such different artists, norman rockwell probably seeing the house and the museumhouse and ofthe museum and the most stable of them i remember also clearly jackson pollock they re-created the studio exhibit and joseph cornell worked so intimately in your observation of these three

together. can you make comparisons in terms of their work style and just things we learned, and second to that you mentioned that you thoroughly enjoyed norman rockwell at the end. i know that's a 50/50 chance in terms of biographies of artists. i would be curious to share your thoughts. >> a lot of good questions in that question. but in terms of jackson pollock and rockwell, since i've written about both of them it fascinated me that they were taught to 12 talk from the figure meaning a plaster cast come and they both were expected to master anatomical drawings. in pollock's case he rejected that and became an abstract artist who had no interest in rendering the figure but rockwell stayed with it and i

think it's interesting that he came from a traditional arts background that relates more to the past. i do see them as representing the two opposite extremes of the american character. i would say he represents the desire for freedom he wants to detroit tradition, whereas rockwell i would say represents the american desire for safety and security. he's the artist that represents what it's like to come home on thanksgiving and have somebody waiting for you. and i think both of those desires are equally key parts of the american character but the romantic side that wants to rebel against everything tends to be more exalted in the art than the third for safety and security which it sounds boring,

right clicks how many people can make a create art out of that desire. what's interesting to me is that the afghan guard always gets celebrated against the tradition that if you always look at this country and who we are as americans, i think that desire for safety and security represents as large a part of our public life as any desire to be free. people say freedom first. if you say what does it mean to be an american they would say freedom, but it's about other things as well. >> i have always been an admirer of norman rockwell, and i've always been puzzled as to why it's not art. i mean i know a little bit of art and i know that it's not thought to be art.

now all of a sudden it seems likelike its emerging but maybe it is, and maybe it is worth $40.6 million. what's going on at someone like norman rockwell who used to be in anathema is now all of a sudden maybe not so bad after all. maybe he is multimillion dollar good. what's going on? >> exchanges from one decade to the next and in the 20th century, after the painting was regarded as the apogee of art people thought that you had to be an abstract artist in order to amount to anything and i think the figurative painting really was undervalued and even disparaged people fought

figurative painting really has the same emotions as abstract painting. for some reason the fact that jackson pollock through pigment on a canvas on the floor was seen as a more authentic gesture than norman rockwell sitting in his duty on the main street and trying to render his vision of it and you can say that modernism in a way kind of value is the interior sensibility more than the broad social panorama. in literature or you could say virginia woolf was seen as a queue or artist like someone in the 20th century because it was all about the sensibility. now that we are in the

postmodern era which is by no means an artistic renaissance but one good thing that the postmodernism is that we can look back and say some of the old division between abstract thinking and figurative painting are just silly and it would be silly to say for instance that rockwell's illustrations are less interesting than every abstract painting in a museum of modern art. does that make sense? know because some were held up data that might be why they are so valued in their times and then we look again and we look more carefully and see things that perhaps the earlier they didn't allow us to see so clearly. does that answer it? the markets operate pretty independently of anything i say or do. their reputation has the market

has also risen into those are two independent i would say phenomena not completely unrelated but i wouldn't say for instance any artist is automatically good. it's a kind of critic but i don't think it is always a great critic. a device like to see the paintings sold for a lot of? sure. why shouldn't they get as much as georgia o'keeffe and other masters of american art at the same time the high price is no guarantee i would say of the arctic -- artistic substance. right now there is a lot of interest. george lucas in particular george lucas, the creator of star wars has a fabulous

collection of illustrations as does spielberg and george lucas has been trying to open a museum in san francisco for his collection of illustrations and he keeps being rebuffed by the city. we've offered $700 million to go a long with the plan to be the purchaser of saying grace but sold at the auction last fall. so that is just a rumor. i hope you did buy it and it became the centerpiece on the west coast. we already have one of the east coast, the norman rockwell museum which has worked hard to preserve illustrations all these years when no other museum wanted to look at it. what would have happened to the paintings if after his death

they hadn't been there to collect them? no one else wanted to collect them. the museum of art wasn't collecting them. they have several but they refused to show them. they have to study for the freedom of speech and it's a pretty developed work and it's a painting on canvas and they want to hang it up. so the traditional museums have snubbed the illustration and i think it is important places like the rockwell museum that has a passion for illustration is collecting it and makes sure it doesn't end up throwing away. >> in anticipation of seeing your talk i had the pleasure of reading your book over the past couple of weeks and one of the things that surprised me you

raised perhaps delicate relationships that rockwell had with a number of his male models and although you were quick to say that there was no evidence of anything improper it is a subject that you came back to time and again throughout the course of the book so i was just wondering as a journalist if you have any proof of what might have or not have happened what are the rules of engagement that you as a journalist have to think about when you bar going into these delicate subjects and i guess i also couldn't help but think i was wondering what the family come if you heard from the family with their reaction to that was. >> have i received any death threats today? no. i think about you gather

evidence as fully as you can and as completely as you can you'll never have all the pieces come and you can't. there is information missing but you gather what you can and then you put it all together and in my case in the matter of rockwell's sexuality i didn't reach any conclusion. i put the anecdotes together into the information together and any conclusions that are drawn are the readers conclusion. so i will say that i felt that he in both his work and his life he felt very much gratified by mail company and division of ruggedness. he said that he felt very diminished in his childhood he had an older brother with a star athlete and student come and throughout his life he was always attaching himself to men

who were far more rugged than he was. he was sort of more of a neat freak and i don't think that means anything sexual but he preferred mail company to female company. but in the 21st century if somebody is spending their time to go off on long trips with themmenand also celebrate his work that you have to raise the question of what's going on here i don't draw any conclusions because i don't think that you can. some people misunderstood the buck and that's merely by asking what is going on here they felt what i was suggesting was some kind of a sexual activity that took place.

i was never there he did have a shrink for many years many considered it a great psycho analyst and i wish i had them but i wasn't there. so i don't draw any conclusions. i do look at his work and ideas for some themes on the work. what does the low arabic means? it has nothing -- what does allow iran -- homo erotic mean? i think that for him to find any kind of comfort in the world, comfort and his skin he in his skin and he liked to attach himself to a vision of boyish and a sore ruggedness fun and it's interesting also as i

was saying most magazine covers did depict very pale and delicate visions of femininity and he was interested in something else and that seemed worth pointing out to me because i was interested in looking at the sources of his work. if a biographer you are trying to figure out where does the art come from and the question of course is unanswerable because we don't know where it comes from but we can look at what information there is and we can know the patterns between the life and the work. i'd make a note of that pattern some people objected to. let's say he painted boys because it was a liberty of niche. let's just say he painted boys

because those were the covers people wanted and they paid while. i don't buy that. the basic premise is that he was emotionally invested in his work and that's why it fascinates us all these years later. believe me we wouldn't be looking at it anymore. we are looking at us because he is in those paintings and they don't fly. we obviously are not going to do a biography that just tries to preserve the stereotype who didn't have any kind of inter- life but who just kind of went around very small towns. there are representations and writings that were present in

that way. but to me he's not a regular guy guy. he's a complicated figure in american art. but in particular one of his three sons did find my interpretation of objectionable and had spoken out for several months against the buck on radio shows and on my amazon page and wherever people can speak out in this country. >> i have a question about the emotional investment that you mentioned because it seems to me -- i haven't read your book yet but what i have heard about it, he didn't have a norman rockwell kind of life so i am interested in that sort of irony or

whatever was driving him to paint, to illustrate the very americana type with the force security and safety as opposed to as you said the much more competitive life that he had. >> i would argue that go far in his paintings. they operate on two levels you can get from any painting and that's what the illustrators do you have to be able to walk by the newsstand as a consumer and to see a magazine cover that makes you stop and say i want to buy that magazine. that was his job to do images that were very clear and very fast demographically and he did it beautifully. you could look at all of them on a deeper level he couldn't help

but express himself in his work and for instance we look at the girl with a black eye sitting outside of the proposed office. do you all know the girl with a black eye? she's sitting outside of the principals office, she had a fight and she is thrilled. as the principal is conquering principle is conquering in spite of the office with his secretary, deciding how to discipline her she's sitting outside and she doesn't care at all. it's a picture about a tomboy and you can look at it forever. i love that painting and raise the question for instant how come about when men in his work tend to be so boyish?

the picture he painted during world war ii is of a very masculine woman and the model later complained he gave her the arms of jack dempsey. so the question why did he do such rugged winning? so many people accuse him of painting stereo typical views in the 50s. and that is the last thing that he did because if you look at the work of other illustrators i'm just fascinated looking at the representations of women in their 50s especially in advertising that showed been happily vacuuming. sometimes they are flying up into space with a vacuum cleaner

because the way men were when men were supposed to really enjoy the domestic. there was nothing more fascinating than vacuuming the carpet. you are supposed to were supposed to be satisfied by homework and housework, so i think it is interesting that rockwell tended to portray women as victors. why is that? throughout his work i think one finds the last thing he did is support stereotypical images of the country that he for instance if he painted about how very rarely the public spaces he set the scenes in schools rather than homes. he was interested in the world where people come together and for him it really wasn't a home

it was more in the community that he found to be a place of genuine connection. he was interested in the side of america. to kind of care about how the other person was doing. so there are a lot of large seems to be read into the paintings. [applause] >> it was a pleasure, i just want to remind everybody about the yellow buckets for books

that are at the back of the room that help us keep this festival free. thank you for coming. we hope to see you tomorrow. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> that concludes our live coverage of the 2014 savannah book festival. spent visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. typetype the author or book title in the search bar in the upper left side of the page and click search. you can share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking sure on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> while visiting they can george with help of local cable partner documentation, booktv speaks with lauretta hannon about her memoir "the cracker queen"." >> describes a person with a certain state of mind and quality of spirit that says no matter what life throws at her or him, it can be anybody you

are determined to move forward to learn and to grow from all of the loss and sorrows and hardships in life. and not only do you move forward, he also maintained your wicked sense of humor and your sass and her determination that you will be a warrior not a victim. you have a lot of fun too. you are not perfect. so if you're a cracker queen this is what's different from a lot of other models for women are meant to be. if you're a cracker queen because you're no angel beginning to think that it can mean you're both a life of the party and the reason the police have to be summoned. so it's sort of been the case on sort of how to really respond to the bad things that happened to you and why those things don't have to damage it. they don't have to make you go in at that direction. they can effect be the very things that move you forward. if the cracker queen is about anything it's about it doesn't

matter what has happened to you. it's how you respond to what has happened the. so you are not all that bad stuff that happened to you or the person who has emerged in response to how you set your mind about growing from it. cracker queen is the story of my life from the story of coming up on literally the wrong side of the tracks in warner robins which is right down the road from where we sit right now. among a pack of heroin, hellions, renegades and bad seeds can. and so it's a store, you know, of a family that is disintegrating, it's falling apart but we're really trying to keep our wits about us. i found that humor was the most supreme coping skill and would always try to find something funny in the darkest hour. and so that's what my book is sort of a dual nature. on the one hand, it's good to get it covers very difficult

subject matter at times a violence and shameful things in a collision and neglect of all this kind of stuff here but also level it with human because that's how we were dealing with it at the time. and so "the cracker queen" is a story really also about the power of love and forgiveness and gratitude and purpose, and begin that whole idea of moving forward, through your pain really honestly so the can come out of it stronger and better. you have an interesting dynamic in my parents. my father was 21 years older than my mother. he was in world war ii, he was in the first little handful of gis to "climategate" and interactive dachau, deliberate dachau. he was a jazz should -- jazz musician. he was really different. he was rumored to be the first

white boy in pittsburgh to wear of zoot suit. so you have that going on, so you have sort of a artistic intellectual father, to my mother grew up in a tar paper shack without running water, without electricity, in a family that was so broke down and for and messed up that when i read tobacco road, you know the famous novel i thought is people are almost middle-class. you know, she was pregnant at 15 not with my father but with the communist, another man. she just had a real, really hardscrabble time of our life. and when they met, here you have two people so different but with a lot of spiritual hurt i think that they brought to the union even though there was deep deeper transcendent love there. so it made for us strange

family. a lot of the book takes place right here near macon and because i grew up here and then we go we go to london. we go to other parts of georgia where i went to school at the university of georgia in athens where i hooked up right away into the art bohemian music theme there and found a wonderful mecca for my communicant my uniqueness, whatever you call it so that was wonderful. a little bit all over the map but most of it is here and middle georgia because i need to tell the story of my childhood so that the last part of the book would make sense so that the reader would know why i am espousing these ways to live joyfully, you know, and how to. because if you have to know the road i've walked, and also i hope it is the credibility. i met someone with a silver spoon sank be happy, you know? and then calling for the show for. no.

you know have jeff foxworthy became famous for his you might be a redneck if common shocks. there are some tail ashman telltale signs if you see a cracker queen of the. here are some good ones. you might be seeing a cracker queen if you see a woman at the waffle house changing a diaper on the counter. you might be a cracker queen yourself if you've ever worn a tube top to a funeral, like my crazy train today. and here's one for you. think back -- i crazy thing to do. think back to a great grandmother and your family. you might be a cracker queen if your memo believed but the moon landing was faked. those are some examples of, if you've ever given your last dollar to the good looking tv preacher, you know? that's assigned there too for sure. i think the first thing is keeping a sense of humor and having a playfulness about you.

being able to look at the worst times of your life and looking for the things you can learn from, from the. those are certainly some things. we have in the cracker queen world, we call it the cracker queen coffee. a whole community now, wonderful folks. the cracker queen posse, we have a few beliefs. i'll give you a couple. in the cracker queen posse, and this is from the book, we have a few tenants we live by. number one, and the great commandment we keep is josh out be badass, okay? that's number one. this has to do with again not being a victim. taking ownership for whatever is going out in your life not letting other people being transparent, being candid and honest, and connected in choosing to be happy. choosing it and realizing and accepting you do have a choice. you really do because see the

way i grew up and especially on my mothers side of the family i had come from so many generations of extreme poverty incest type things. every kind of shameful, awful the down kind of thing you can go through right? so that when you come along in a family like that, you don't realize you have any choices. you think, a people who live on on the other side of the tracks that's for them. those options are open for people like us. we didn't even have a car. it's just yeah so it's almost like a form of mental oppression that you are born with and that is reinforced. so you have to break out of that. that's a good part of the cracker queen thing. and someone said the other day, my goodness there is no shame in your game code is there? of course there isn't. because all the things that happen was growing up i was responsible for them. that's not my shame to carry or to hold onto.

so in the story and mom and the chain gang, when i was a preschooler before i started school so i had my days hanging out with my mom we would ride around in a cadillac that we have because my father want it in a poker game and a poker game yes. it gave us the façade of respectability but it was really one over any card game. we would on occasion run into the men working on the chain gang, the convicts on the side of the road. and when that would happen, mom and i would always have a plan, and a great adventure would ensue. there wasn't much to do in warner robins in the early 1970s, but ride around. so that's what mom and i did. during my preschool days we tooled around in a cadillac which was bought with vodka and orange juice. i sat in the front seat.

this was before child seats and airbags, but i had the ultimate protection, the mama arm of steel. the slightest doubt of the breaks in arm would nail me against the seat. our greatest adventures involve chain gangs. crews of convicts working by the road. we never -- but what we did do was just as thrilling. when we happened upon these crews we would go to the news convenience store and buy cartons of cigarettes for them to we might have been broke but mama was never cheat. she bought the best brands marlboros and winston's. my job was to break up the cartons so we could hurl the packs out the window. timing was crucial as the men had to snatch up the cigarettes before the boss man and his shotgun could intervene. not want to be right by without doing something. our mission is too important and

way too fun. the excitement never faded. we didn't know when or where we comewould come up on a chain gang so it's always a surprise and a call to action. regardless of where we were though are what our plans might have been. mama would floor at what she was sure contact had been made. i would leap over the front seat and press by this against the back window. i loved watching the prisoners smiled and hoist the packs high above their heads as we fled in a cloud of red dust. sometimes one of the men cried but i knew he wasn't sad. as a four year old, i saw the radical happiness i had caused. for the first time, i became aware of my own power, and it felt good. i savored the view long into the distance. once they were out of sight, i would stretch across the back seat and picture them in my head the men in stripes with their wide grins and salty tears

tears. for more information on booktv's recent visit to macon, georgia, and many other cities we visited our local content vehicle, go to c-span.org/localcontent. ..