i watch over the publication and helped get it all organize and make sure things are on track. started with living history but in this case making sure our best people are working on at the >> we are publishing hard choices on june 10th, it is her fourth book with us and i was the editor of the book. i was involved from the beginning of its acquisition and overseeing all aspects of it working very closely with all the people at the company. >> as the editor is there are lot of e-mail back and forth between you and the author? that how it is done? >> every case is different. in this case i try to give as much attention to secretary clinton's book as i have all the other authors we published. i should mention in the same breath we are publishing james webb, a terrific united states senator and his book is out right now. i don't want to favor one author over another.

>> when we acquired that book jonathan karp down here, and ask if there was anything we could do for the e-book specifically and we brainstorm and some ideas and talked about when the right time to act on those ideas might be but we were thinking of that as a digital product from the very beginning. >> my role is national media in partnership with the communications team. >> what is an effective media campaign? where do you go? >> depends on what the book is and it depends on what the potential for the book is. there is what i think the best top-down campaigns which are campaigns like hillary clinton's which begin with national media and breakout from there. a few big hits generate a number of things that create themselves. >> my role with the clinton title has been to work on the marketing side of that which

involved a website for the book dedicated to the book, facebook page, production of promotional videos, the release of content on the web. at my role up to now has been the digital marketing role in this particular title and it has been fun because so many people are watching and so many people care. wheat will wait to make a lot of videos but we don't have many that bill up on the homepage of a a well the day we hand it over or yahoo! picks of instantly and puts on a major page. >> watch for hillary clinton to appear on booktv to discuss her latest book hard choices >> john demilio is next. his book is in a new century:essays on clear history, politics and community life. ..

>> at the end of this discussion, we're going to have a brief q can and a, and when the time comes,6x we'll have you line up to your right and speak into this microphone for the benefit of our television audience. if you would like to watch this ram again, please be aware that it's going to be rebroadcast both this evening and tomorrow evening at 11 p.m. on c-span2. please keep the spirit of lit

fest going all year long with a subscription to the tribune's membership program. this year we've also introduced a new digital bookstore through the tribune books app. you've been given one of the promo cards which has information about that app and has special discounts for book deals. before we begin today's program i ask that you, please, turn off your cell phones and, please, turn the flashes off of any cameras or photographs that you have. but feel free to take photographs and post them to instagram, facebook and twitter with the hashtag printersrow. that being said, we can begin our discussion, and i'll introduce our moderator, geoffrey stone. >> hi. my name's geoffrey stone i'm a professor of law at the "pu'iversity of chicago, and it's my pleasure to have the opportunity to have this conversation with john d'emilio. i've long admired john's work. i drew upon have drawn upon his

work in the past, and i had the opportunity to read his latest book that we're here to discuss today, "in a new century: essays on queer history, politics and community life," and it's a terrific read, and i highly recommend it. john is a professor of gender and women's studies at the university of chicago, and he's a pioneer of the developing field of gay and lesbian studies and the award-winning author and editor of more than half a dozen books. he's been honored by yale university received guggenheim awards, he's been a fellow at stanford, and his book, "lost rough fete," was named a national book award finalist. so john, this is a collection of essays rather than a single historical study. so can you give us some sense of the range and scope of what these essays cover? >> sure. i think what i try more than

anything else to do in these essays is to connect history to lgbt issues in the present moment, to take advantage of the fact that there's been more than 50 years now of struggling for equality, struggling for change around sexual identity. and to use the insights of history to give us a better sense of what's going on now and what alternatives there might be and things like that. so i move back and forth between past and present. >> so the title of the book, "in a new century," evokes the sense of change, of something new. in what ways would you say that the 21st century has represented a break with the past? >> a number of different ways. one is, and i have to say i've noticed this tremendously in the terms of my students' changing relationship to these issues over the years.

one is that in the 21st century there's been an escalation you could say in the level of visibility of gay and lesbian increasingly also transgender issues in popular culture. i like to describe the period that we're in now as the post-ellen generation that ellen's coming out in 1997 sort of marked a that to -- a shirt that occurred. we now have unimaginable theories from that perspective. back then like glee and modern family and rupaul's drag race and things like that. so visibility. a second thing is just the way, we'll use marriage as the example, but there hasn't been a time before where some kind of gay and lesbian issue has been constantly in the public eye. and not only in the public eye, but embraced by large segments of the public.

and i would say that a sort of a third example of sort of change in the 21st century is that it's become more and more clear the way in which gender identity transgender is separating itself out from sexual identity, gay and lesbian, as a stance or a relationship to self and society. >> what do you think triggered the change? we went through, you know, a very long time in which these issues were submerged and simply not discussed or addressed. >> uh-huh. >> i tell my students that in the first almost 20 years i was a law professor, i had only one student who was openly gay. >> uh-huh. >> and now there's so many, i don't know who's gay and who's not? it's not all that interesting anymore. so what made this happen? >> well, one aspect of it is and, really, do not underestimate the power of

individuals and individuals working together is we've had 50 years of activism now. be and that activism has, you know, there have been ebbs and flows to it. but people have kept coming out of the closet, they have kept banding together to make change they have pushed against the limits of what's possible. a second thing that may, has made a huge difference, you know we always talk about the stonewall rebellion and gay pride marches commemorate the stonewall rebellion, and that's the beginning of gay liberation. but really it's the aids epidemic of the '80s and early '90s that made a much more dramatic difference in terms of bringing huge numbers of people out of the closet and people organizing for change. so, you know, those are two things. the one other thing i would say though, and this is going to sound funny in the context of all the movement around marriage, but over the last 50

years as lgbt people have been organizing, the lives of heterosexuals have changed. and they've changed in ways that have made them more like what we imagine gay life to be like, which is that you don't spend your whole life there the age of 18 or 19 married in a a household with the children that you're raising. but, you know you meet somebody, you hang out for -- anyway heterosexual life and gay life isn't as different as it used to be. >> interesting. you seem to have a great faith in the power of history as a force for making change. but for a lot of people, history is nothing more than names and dates that they memorize this high school. talk about this. why are you so committed to history? >> um, oh, well i mean, at the most personal level -- [laughter] i grew up in an italian catholic family who, you know, we learned

early on that god always was always will be, always remains the same and so does everything else. nothing ever will change. the way it is now is the way it's always going to be. you do what you're told, your here and father and grandparents. history was so personally liberating for me because history is the story of change. you know? it's like you read about the past, ask is you realize, oh -- and you realize, oh it wasn't the way it is now. but i think for lgbt people i mean, this is changing for some of us now because of changing family configurations. but unlike an italian heritage person who grew up in a family of italians and who taught me about my culture and my heritage, when you're gay or lesbian, you don't usually grow up in that context. so as you begin to figure this out about yourself, it

represents this sense of, oh, i'm not connected to anyone i've ever known or i have no stories that have been passed down to me. and so discovering lgbt history is like finding a place for yourself in the world. so, you know and in addition to that there have been campaigns where history has made a difference. the work that alan barabirdied about gays and lesbians during world war ii had a tremendous impact in the '90s, for instance. so i'm a fan of history,st true. >> i was surprised to see that for someone who's devoted so much of his time and his life to the lgbt cause you expressed a certain skepticism about identity movements and the change they can bring about. >> yeah. so right. i spent a good bit of my life in an identity movement working on

identity-based issues. but one of the perspectives that history provides, you know it's like 50 years now of activism on this issue, is that we have enough time to notice that -- and this is the way i put it in a couple of the essays -- the benefits of identity-based movements are not equally distributed. so, i mean, just to give kind of examples of what i mean, you know, barack obama can be president of the united states, and on the south side of chicago the police are rounding up young black gay men, and they're going to spend a lot of their lives in prison. you know, hillary clinton can, you know be a prospective candidate for president and secretary of state, and lots of young women are facing teenage pregnancies and really will have a hard time in life. i can be a tenured professor of history and gender studies with

a really secure job, and there are all of these young, queer folks who are getting bullied and beat up and thrown out of their homes. so identity movements have done wonderful things but as time goes on, you realize that some people in a group benefit from that identity movement more than others in the group. and so it's not enough just to be lgbt focused. >> so you just need more movements. >> well, you need more movements, but you need more redefining of issues. like, for instance, this is a really good example of what i mean. okay, so there's a lot of organizing going on right now around school-based issues. there's an illinois safe schools alliance. i'm on the board of directors. i totally love the organization, and a lot of the work around schools has been around bullying and, you know, the way in which

queer kids gender-nonconforming kids are bullied. and that's good. but why are we making the issue the nature of sex education in the schools, which is not really a gay issue? but if you worked on sex education and came up with sex education curriculum that really spoke to the needs of everyone that empowered young pill that taught -- young women that taught young men differently about sex, well, you'd take care of lgbt issues, but you'd also take care of so much else that needs taking care of in the schools. so it's sort of like crafting issues and campaigns that bring different identity groups together but not because they're working on only their issue, they're working on something bigger than that. >> it's interesting that talking about these issues in school is itself a huge roadblock. that is, talking about sex in

schools. >> yeah yeah. >> whether it's about contraception or whether it's about any of the issues you just mentioned, there's this deep sense of discomfort about talking about sex because it's sex. >> yeah. >> itself. >> well and i you know, in the courses i've taught over the years at uic, there are a couple of courses. there's always a point in the course where it's completely appropriate to ask my students, say, okay as an assignment i want you to write up a short description of what your experience of sex education was like, and then we're going to talk about i. -- talk about it. so they do, and we talk about it. and in a class of 40 if there are more than three students who have not had a hour tying experience -- forfying ex-- horrifying experience of sex education, that would be a lot, you know? it's just, it renders you speechless what is being learned in the classroom. and one of the obstacles,

though, is not simply about school board policies and things like that it's that so few of us in the classroom have any experience with a sex education curriculum that might be good and instead have absorbed all of the tensions and worries and conflicts around sex. and so how do you talk about it with 10-year-olds or 12-year-olds or 15-year-olds? yeah. >> yeah. i even find it with my law students. i teach a first amendment course, and i've always wanted to show a obscene movie which would be legal today, and i've always said, nah i think i'll pass on that. and i'm always 'em parissed that i haven't done it -- embarrassed that i haven't done it. anyway same-sex couples have just been allowed the right to marry in illinois. but i gather from the long last chapter in the volume that you're not exactly a fan of marriage. >> no.

[laughter] i'm, you know, i'm, i'm glad that there's movement towards marriage equality. i think any way in which you sort of erase structural inequalities in law and public policy is a good thing. but for the last 20 years now, the marriage issue, i have to say at some deep level both with intellectual and clearly emotional, has driven me crazy. andor this, the thing i said earlier the benefits of identity movements are unequally distributed. you know, the lace of marriage in this -- the place of marriage in this society has really changed a lot in the last 50 years, 50-60 years. instead of it becoming something that almost everybody does, you know, in the 1950s a majority of young women were married before the age of 20. majority, you know?

increasingly, marriage is something that privileged people do and that privileged people -- and i'm talking about education and income -- succeed at, whereas increasingly for working people and for poor people marriage is almost an addition to to presentation that they're experiencing -- oppression that they're experiencing. and there's a way that the focus on marriage has taken away attention from a lot of other gay and lesbian issues that would have crossed, for instance class lines more profoundly. it's also created the illusion somehow, the rhetoric on the gay side, the rhetoric that's used about marriage has created this sense that, oh, once marriage is legal for same-sex couples all

of our dreams will have come true. i can hear sort of popular culture echoing in this statement, but it's as if if we get marriage equality, then we can all go home and be married and be happy. and that worries me because there is a lot that has not been tackled yet. so -- >> my own guess is that the reason why so much attention has been paid to marriage equality is twofold. first, it's an extremely visible indignity, and as long as that indignity is there staring you in the taste, it's hard to think about -- staring at you in the face, it's hard to think about equality. secondly, the experience of gays and's lesbians in this country is different from say, blacks and women. unless they can be in the closet and could avoid people knowing who they were, there were very few laws that discriminated against gays and lesbians other than the fact, of course, that made it criminal. but marriage was one of the few.

and so there weren't laws that said gays and lesbians can't vote or can't serve on juries or the like, or they can't work in certain professions. there were moments and we'll get to some of them later, but in terms of the legal structure marriage was one of the very few visible legal restrictions on people because they were homosexual. and i think that's part of the reason why so much focus has been attached to it. >> yeah. you know, i disglee. disagree. >> we're done. [laughter] >> and here's why i disagree, and this is where history comes in because, actually implied in what you're saying is that marriage from the moment that gays and lesbians started organizing, that visible indignity should have been there, mobilizing people. but what's interesting about the gay and lesbian movement is how marriage was sort of not on anybody's radar screen for a generation. i mean, a handful of people

might have brought early lawsuits although some -- one of the early lawsuits about marriage was brought by somebody who identified as a radical fairy. and he applied for a marriage license with his partner probably because he wanted to headache screw of the institution of marriage. i think, i think there's something else going sort of on with the marriage issue and its power now. and one of it has to do with timing and the fact that this issue started to surface in a meaningful way after a decade and a half of the aids epidemic in which one of the things that was overwhelmingly being dealt with was death. and in that context when i teach the marriage issue one of the ways i teach it is i show this documentary film called chicks in white satin.

and the first time i used that film i used it because i us -- it was the first time i was teaching the course. i was scrambling to find things. i heard about the film. i thought, okay yeah, i'll use that. i view the -- it's in my syllabus. it's the night before. i view the film for the first time and think, oh, my god, this is the worst movie i've ever seen, i can't believe i'm going to show this in my class the next day, but i have nothing else i can show. [laughter] all right, we'll live through it. and i go into class the next day. i can't, you know, the video goes on, they're watching the film. i'm sitting there in the dark as my undergraduates are watching the film. and as this documently about two -- documentary about two women in a partnership who have a wedding they plan a wedding -- chicks in white satin -- more and more of the students in the class are sobbing. i mean, even the straight guys

are crying. and i realize that what it is is it's culturally the power a a -- the power of love. the notion of marriage and coming together and celebrating your love brings people out to celebrate with you. and it's the most powerful cultural and emotional contradiction i can imagine to the isolation that queer people feel. and i think that's the power of the marriage issue, the emotional power of love and how it stands against the oppression as opposed to the benefits of marriage or equality and things like that. >> it's interesting, you're saying that reminds me that about ten years ago one of my daughters, who's gay had gotten married. it wasn't legal in kwreu8 but they decided they were going to do a straight up, so to speak

marriage. we had 120 guests there and the minister who performed the ceremony at the end of it she said by the power not quite yet vested in me by the state of illinois -- [laughter] and there was not a dry eye in the house. part of it was because it was about love. >> so on the other on the one hand i have this tremendous political critique of the marriage issue. and on the other hand, i have to admit that the marriage issue has been her powerful than anything else i know in terms of bringing people together and kind of winnowing out that isolation and that sense of being apart there and being embraced by your family and your family embracing you and things like that. it's one of the contradictions here. >> uh-huh.

a whole section of the book is described as local stories and it consists of stories from chicago's past. so what kind of place does chicago occupy in the lgbt movement? >> yeah. well interestingly -- and just in terms of history -- the history of chicago has been underwritten in comparison to some of the other cities like los angeles, new york, san francisco. and it's odd because if you teach u.s. history like i do, you know that chicago is often used as the case study for whatever you want to write about. so you want to write about immigration, write a book about chicago. if you want to write about factory workers, write a book about chicago. there's some books on chicago history, dela croix has one called chicago whisperers, and owen colleaguen put together some biographies. but the whole story of the movement has not been told yet

and it's really a shame because there has been so much vital activism in this city going back to the early 1960s. on a range of issues, you know? >> one essay title particularly caught my attention. quote: richard nixon gay liberationist? [laughter] end quote. that's not a phrase you would ordinarily expect to encounter, so can you explain what that's all about? >> okay. and this relates to your previous question because that essay is actually about chicago history. so i don't -- first i'll give away the ending. richard nixon wasn't really a gay liberationist okay? [laughter] but interestingly, sort of one of the most profound changes that occurs in the 1970s because, we think or we often assume, because of the gay liberation is that police in a lot of cities stop harassing gay bars as a matter of course. so that it became possible for bars to open, to be opened by

legitimate entrepreneurs to become a source of public community. in chicago, however police behavior towards the bars wasn't just about the fact that oh, it's criminal to be gay, and so we can raid the bars. it was really part of mayor daley's political machine. the police had the right to extort bribes from bar owners and no law enforcement was going to do anything about it. and so the bars were at the mercy not just of laws but of richard daley's political machine and what it promised to corrupt policemen. richard nixon yets elected in 1968 -- gets elected in 1968. he hates richard daley was that's why he thinks, he didn't win the presidency in 1960. he appoints a u.s. attorney for the illinois area, and that

attorney has the authority to investigate police corruption in chicago. a democratic president, a john f. kennedy a lyndon johnson would have never allowed for the investigation of police corruption in chicago. and it's interestingly it's that much more than the activism of gay liberationists that leads to the collapse of police harassment of bars in the 1970s. so, you know, the point i was making in the essay was if you want to really understand lgbt history, you can't just look at what lgbt people do. you have to look at the big political and social context. in this case, richard nixon, richard daley. >> as a constitutional law professor, i'm curious what do you think about the role of the supreme court in the 21st sent rein the -- century in the realm

of gay rights? >> okay, so this is another one of those issues about identity movements and how they can sometimes lead you wrong. you know, if we take, if we take the marriage issue as a good example -- well, okay, you know, there's -- go back a little, you know romer v. evans in 1996 an important supreme court decision about gay rights laws. lawrence v. texas in 2003, once and for all the elimination of sodomy statutes. and then last year the two cases, windsor and -- i'm blocking on the name of the other one, but two marriage cases that came to the supreme court. it's important, you know, that i mean if you read the rhetoric especially of the lawrence v. texas case, it can almost make you weep in the way that it talks about gay people and the right to privacy, the dignity of individuals and the like.

at the same time i have to say -- i find myself saying all of those gay decisions are written by justice anthony kennedy. he becomes the key vote. justice anthony kennedy, who has contributed to the unraveling of affirmative action, the end, the unraveling of the voting rights act of 1965 the -- i mean, you can go issue after issue where -- >> campaign finance. >> yeah, campaign finance. and so on the one hand, on a gay issue anthony kennedy is absolutely great, and you see all of these gay leaders activist leaders celebrating justice anthony kennedy. and i want to say, well, i'm glad he did write that decision, but i don't think we should be celebrating anthony kennedy. >> it's interesting to think of how contingent constitutional law is in this respect. so, you know four of the

justices in windsor, for example, would have rejected the constitutional claim and said flat out there's no such thing as a right to same-sex marriage. that's ridiculous. and so anthony kennedy was the critical fifth vote. and it's easy to imagine that kennedy would have taken a different position. be certainly, when he was appointed by ronald reagan reagan never intended that he would behave in this way. >> uh-huh. >> so i'm always interested in counterfactuals, right? so you can easily imagine a world in which -- [inaudible] was the last word on this and all the subsequent opinions since came out the other way and said, you know laws against sodomy are perfectly constitutional, and same-sex marriage, you've got to be kidding. how much would that have changed the world, do you think? >> well, you know as counterfactuals, historians really don't know what would have happened. we only know what did happen. and we can never know what will happen. but i have to say a perverse

part of my soul almost makes me think, oh, my god if those decisions hadn't come down the way they had, it might have done quite a lot to build a more militant angrier grassroots movement that wouldn't have such faith in the courts and in lawyers, pardon me, as the primary way to make change, you know? whopu du8mç knows. but really it would have been interesting if the courts were being closed off as an agency of change. >> i mean, it seems to me there's two effects. one of them is, in my counterfactual, the courts were closed off. but the other is that judicial decisions do have a way of affecting culture. and people's perceptions of what's just and what's not just. >> right. >> and that's the really interesting counterfactual, is to what extent public attitudes

would have been affected by the fact that the court rejected the claims themselves. >> well, and also, especially in one of the cases -- lawrence v. texas which eliminated sodomy laws -- i mean, you know, as long as there has been something -- as long as there have been european settlers heading toward building the united states of america, i mean, for 400 years there have been, there has been the criminalization of same-sex behavior that is so deep in the culture. it is -- even if almost no one was being arrested under the sodomy laws by 2003, it was really important to eliminate those once and for all, you know? to sort of, like not have criminality associated with being gay or lesbian or bisexual, you know? so it is important. >> we're going to start taking questions in a few minutes so if you would like to ask a question and be on c-span, there's a microphone over there, so you should sort of head over in that direction.

and we'll begin taking questions, as i said, in a few minutes. i've always been very interested in the lavender scare and you have a chapter on that. would you say a bit about that and how it played out in chicago in particular? >> sure. so a lot of you have probably heard of the red scare and mccarthyism after world war ii the 1950s, this, you know tremendous hysteria about communism and the government going after communists. not many of us know that the government went after and caught a lot more people for being gay, lesbian or bisexual during this era than they did communists or suspected communists. so the lavender scare is what that refers to. and, you know, there was an executive order by president eisenhower, there were congressional hearings to make sure that no one gay lesbian or bisexual, could be a federal

employee of any kind. it confirmed for the police that queers were dangerous people. so it's a big piece of u.s. history, actually, in the 1950s that most of us don't know about. in chicago the interesting angle on it in chicago is that if you read the "chicago sun-times" for those years, in the early 1950s, there are almost no articles about this issue in it. the "chicago sun-times", a liberal democratic newspaper. if you read the chicago tribune during those years -- and i know they're sponsoring this festival -- but if you read "the chicago tribune" in those early '50s, there are hundreds of articles about sexual perverts and degenerates and deviates and the dangers that they're posing.

so it's just, it was really -- it wasn't named as such, but it was a part of partisan politics. attack those democrats by attacking all the queers that they're letting work for the government. >> it was interesting that in world war i there was no concerted effort to screen homosexuals out of the military. that began to happen i guess, during world war ii. but even then it was done at a fairly passive manner because they wanted soldiers. >> yeah. >> but then at the end of the war, that changed with a vengeance. can you talk a little bit about that? >> yeah. it's -- on the one hand, you know, military codes of conduct military law, there's no tolerance officially in the law for same-sex sexual activity, right? so you can be prosecuted and imprisoned and discharged. but, in fact, you're right it

wasn't a priority until the 1940s. and what happened, what shifts in the 1940s and early '50s is that the psychiatric profession begins to have more influence on how the military's military's -- military understands and implements its own policies. so before that the military only went after you if you did something while you were in the military where you were caught in the act. whereas psychiatry allows one to be concerned about people who have tendencies. are you this kind of person even if you do nothing? and so the military begins to look for them. yeah. >> there's a story, i think i get in the correctly, where eisenhower was told that there was a gay woman in one of the

wac units in europe, and he said to the woman who was the commander we have to get rid of all of the lesbians and she said there won't be any unit left. [laughter] and eisenhower said, never mind. [laughter] questions? anybody? really not? i'll call on you. [laughter] here we go. a brave woman. >> hi. so my question is you mentioned at the beginning that one of those sort of marks of the new century was the increased portrayals of lgbt people in the media, and you mentioned specifically "glee" and "modern family." but i know that some critics have pointed out that these portrayals tend to sort of support the kind of heteronormative model of

homosexuality or family life which would then be contradictory to your feelings about marriage. so i was wondering if you could comment on that kind of disparity. >> well, it seems though, to be confirms of what i'm saying about marriage -- confirming of what i'm saying about marriage or i think, in the sense that it's to the degree that we figure in, quote, mainstream television rather than television on the margins. that the images that are there are images that one can imagine that one can identify with, and it is that kind of mainstream visibility that popular culture supports and sustains. so it doesn't surprise me that that's the case. but the visibility -- oh, and, well -- actually let me step back a moment from what i've just said. one of the things that you notice in the long trajectory of

lgbt activism is this both oscillation back and forth and also tension between tendencies toward mainstreaming and integration on the one hand and tendencies towards the assertion and the insistence on major change okay? so you can see an early radical gay liberation group, organization, you know movement that is talking about, you know, smash the nuclear family, or you can campaign for same-sex marriage. and in terms of, in terms of the cultural visibility of mainstream popular culture it doesn't sort of surprise me that what you'll see are things are images that can be integrated into what is familiar and what

makes us comfortable and what we're accustomed to laugh at and the like. and it actually goes right along with the campaigns for same-sex marriage. so i think they do reinforce each other if that's what you were getting at. so visibility is a good thing, but what kind of visibility then becomes an issue to debate, you know? who are the faces that we're seeing, and how do they live their, their lives? yeah. >> thank you very much, first of all, for sharing your thoughts and perspectives with us today. you mentioned earlier your catholic upbringing. how does religion play a role in your thoughts on this matter? i know it's a big question, but -- >> yeah. and i'll i will admit that religion is not something that i have written a lot about, but we're beginning to see

actually as lgbt history expands in terms of the number of books and what people are studying, we're beginning to see more people starting to write about 10r9 of the his -- sort of the history of religion in the more contemporary, you know, the last half century or so which is really great. i think that many of us -- and so i'm talking about myself, but i'm not only talking about myself -- many of us who were early involved in gay liberation activities, part of what allowed us to do that, to embrace our identities required the rejection of a lot of things that we had grown up with. and sometimes that was family sometimes it was religion because there didn't seem to be any space for religion. and so a lot of us who were both gay activists but who started writing gay and lesbian history,

the last thing that was on our minds was religion because we were leaving religion behind and it was not on the road to our liberation. meanwhile, for instance if you look at chicago gay history gay and lesbian history, one of the things that hit me in the face when i started reading the gay and lesbian press in chicago from the 1970s for research purposes is how much, how many stories there were about religion in the press in the '70s. and how, you know, this was totally went beyond my own life experience but how many lgbt folks were passionate about religion and were organizing separate churches or within their own churches. and one of the interesting things is that okay, so a whole group of queers would get together on a sunday afternoon for an alternative service or a

wednesday evening service or a friday evening for a service. and many of the most liberal churches were located in the lakeview neighborhood which at that point was not particularly a gay neighborhood. and so every friday every wednesday, every sunday you'd have 60 or 70 queer folks hanging out in the neighborhood publicly to socialize together you know? gee, this religious impulse is actually having an impact beyond people's individual religious belief. it's creating a public presence in a community. so i mean, that's just one example. but there's, you know, it's an institution, and it's an institution that's being fought over. and and there are some forms of religious affiliation that have

remained very firmly anti-gay and there are many others that a really have joined the battle. so -- >> so i wanted to ask something that's a little bit related to that question and to the first question which is you mentioned the assimilationist or integrationist model versus the asserting of difference model and i'm curious how that's played out spatially in the city of chicago. it seems like early on in the gay movement and you read about boystown being established relatively, what i think of as relatively late. but now it seems like the gay communities that used to exist in places where cruising was both common and sort of known about are disappearing and so that i can go to a straight bar and kiss my same-sex boyfriend and it's not a big deal. and so the gay bar even is disappearing as a place where people be of the same sexuality come together.

and i'm just wondering how that's had -- or how you see that impact playing out and maybe why. >> yeah. well again, i'm going to try to take a cheap way out of that question although it's a really good question in the sense that again with historians are not really good at predicting the future. but it is, it's very interesting, you know like what will happen -- okay let me step back. when i moved to chicago in 1999, okay? i didn't know the city at all, and i was given a tour, you know right? and one of the places they took me was these rainbow towers which, i think, had just gone up the year before. and i saw them, and i didn't do this publicly, but inside i was laughing hysterically because i was saying to myself, you have no idea how quickly neighborhoods change. i mean, you know, there's going to be a time when people are going to be walking on halstead street and saying why do we have rainbow towers here?

because there's no gay person in sight anymore. they've gone somewhere else. i want to live to be -- i'm 65. i want to live to be really, really old so i see what happens over the next generation to these urban neighborhoods that have been created. because the neighborhoods really are -- they're a form of resistance. we're coming together, but they're a form of resistance that are premised on the fact that we can't bebñgp everywhere because we're oppressed. so i don't know. your life will be interesting. [laughter] >> on that very interesting note, we should bring this to a close. please join me in thanking john d'emilio for his great work and for taking the time today. [applause] >> okay. once again, thank you, gentlemen, and thanks to all of you for attending. the author's book is for sale in

the main lobby, and mr. d'emilio will be signing books right outside of this auditorium. thank you.fí [inaudible conversations] >> we just heard from john d'emilio on gay rights, history and politics. we'll be back with more from chicago in just a few minutes. >> booktv is on facebook and

twitter. like and follow us for book industry news booktv schedule updates, behind the scenes looks and to interact with authors during live television programs. here are a few of booktv's posts from this past week: we tweeted on the content of hillary clinton's soon to be published memoir "hard choices." on facebook we posted a washington post article about the swearing in of u.s. board susie levine on an e-reader with a digital version of the u.s. constitution. we tweeted and posted our author programs onty yen men -- tiananmen square in recognition of the 25th an anniversary of the protests. the author talks can be read at booktv.org. and we want to know what you're reading this summer send us a tweet, post on our facebook wall or send us an e-mail. also watch all weekend long to see what prominent washingtonians are reading. follow us on twitter @booktv

and like us on facebook for more news about the world of publishing and what's happening on booktv. >> here's a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country:

>> let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area, and we'll add them to our list. e-mail us at booktv@cspan.org. >> booktv asked, what are you reading this summer? >> well chris matthews autographed his book "tip and gipper," and i've been anxiously wanting to read it ever since, so that's going to be the first one i'm going to read this summer. obviously, it's a book about tip o'neill who was the speaker and ronald reagan, the president, how the two of them had diametrically opposite views but were able to forge a relationship and get things done. i think the present-day congress can use a little of that advice and so i'll be very interested to see how it relates to the present-day inaction of congress. so i look forward to reading that book. i also have some other books. i've been very much mesmerized by the new deal through the years, fdr and the new deal but

it's really multifaceted. ira -- [inaudible] wrote a book called "fear itself: the new deal and the origins of our time." he looks at the politics of the new deal and how fdr put together this coalition of northerners, northern liberals and southern conservatives at a time when communism and socialism, fascism naziism were rising all over the rest of the world. and then also with the new deal there is a book called america's soul in the balance by gregory wallens who sent me his book "the holocaust: fdr's state department and the moral disgrace of an american aristocracy." i've long felt that the state department and fdr himself, frankly, didn't do enough to rescue the jews of europe from the holocaust.

and there is lots of documents showing that the united states could have done things such as bomb the railroad tracks leading to the gas chambers and leading to the concentration camps and didn't do it because the war effort was taking center stage, and they didn't want to do anything to deviate from that. so this book delves into that, and i think that is another perspective of the new deal. "double down" by mark halperin and john heilemann about game change 2012, the 2012 election between president obama and mitt romney. that's going to be fascinating. and i really look forward to looking at that again. and also "the outpost" by jake tapper talks about american valor in afghanistan. i tried to visit the wounded warriors here in washington at bethesda navy hospital, walter

reed hospital, and it shows extraordinary bravery on the part of our soldiers, and "the outpost" is a book about that bravery, how they all banded together. and finally, just so you don't think i'm too serious there's a book here called my ipad, and i also intend to read this. this was a present given to me, along with ipad for dummies because i'm tired of having to ask my children what do i do when i get stuck on the ipad. so maybe if i read these two books at a nice leisurely pace i'll be able to know when i touch something and it jumps off, i'll know how to get it back. >> do you intend to download books to your ipad? >> listen, after this, the sky's the limit. [laughter] >> thanks so much congressman. >> thank you. >> what are you reading this summer? tell us what's on your summer reading list. tweet us @booktv, post it to our facebook page or send us an e-mail, booktv@cspan.org.

>> our live coverage from the printers row lit fest will continue in just a few minutes. >> c-span2 providing live coverage of the u.s. senate floor proceedings and key public policy events. and every weekend booktv. now for 15 years the only television network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. c-span2, created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. watch us in hd, like us on facebook and follow be us on twitter. >> what is the d in d-day stand for? >> it stands for nothing. you know, soldiers joke that it stood for death. [laughter] or that it stood for day day day. it's just a it's a code, and

you know, people have tried retrospectively to figure out what it really stood for. in fact, it has no meaning other than d. >> host: why june 6, 1944, about 69 years ago today? >> guest: yes, that's right. it was supposed to be june 5th. that was the day that eisenhower had picked. it's very tricky to invade the normandy coast. the tides are extraordinary 23-foot swing in the tides. the moon has been to be right -- has to be to be right in order to allow paratroopers to see sufficiently and to allow pilots to see. the winds have to be right the weather has to be right. so june 5th had been picked, and the weather was wrong as it turned out. eisenhower never had good luck with his weather. it had been stormy for the invasion of morocco, for the invasion of sicily, and it was stormy indeed -- very unusually -- on june 5 1944.

you can usually count on benign weather on the coast of france then. it was awful. and so he postponed it for a day. he had a narrow window in which those tides and the moon and all the rest of it would still obtain in a way that was suitable for this kind of invasion. if he had delayed it much longer, the next appropriate period was going to be several weeks later. there was extraordinary anxiety that the germans would find out. if they'd had even 24 hours of warning that this invasion force was coming to normandy rather than some other point on the french coast, it could have been and probably would have been catastrophic. so the anxiety level is unbelievable when eisenhower had to postpone it makes the decision to postpone it. but he did, and they got away with it, so june 6th is the day we celebrate at d-day. >> host: number of troops? number of deaths? >> guest: well, there are five divisions that go in over the beaches, basically; two american and three british and canadian.

and then there are three airborne divisions. so altogether you're talking about a couple hundred thousand troops going this on june 6 -- in on june 6th. most of the deaths, the worst beach was omaha where one of the two american beaches. there were several thousand deaths there. there had been concern that the number of deaths could run into the tens of thousands, and this did not happen. by no means were the casualties light, but they were less than anticipated. at utah beach, which was the farthest right in the invasion force, the british and the canadians had a tough time of it. but by the end of june 6th there were canadian troops as far as six miles inland. now on omaha beach, they were no farther than 1500 yards inland. so there was quite a disparity between the resistance that these allied invaders found and their ability to push inland.

and that is the trick in an invasion. you want to get inland as far as you can as quickly as you can. hopefully five miles or more. you want to push the enemy's artillery out of range so that they can't shell beach. that's when you're most vulnerable, coming across the beach. and at omaha beach it took several days to get to that point. but nevertheless, you know it turns out to be quite successful and the casualties -- while we're talking 3,000 or so deaths altogether -- they're lighter than many had feared. >> you can watch this and other programs about d-day and world war ii online at booktv.org. simply type "d-day" or "world war ii" in the search function in the upper left-hand corner of the home page. >> c-span's new book, "sundays at eight," includes financial journalist gretchen or morganson. >> what role should the government play in housing

finance? if you want to subsidize housing in this country and we want to talk about it and the populace agrees it's something we should subsidize, then put it on the balance sheet and make it clear and make it evident and make everybody aware of how much it's costing. but when you deliver it through these third party enterprises fannie mae and freddie mac, when you deliver the subsidy through a public company with private shareholders and executives who can extract a lot of that subsidy for themselves, that is not a very good way of subsidizing home ownership. >> read more of our conversation with gretchen morganson and other featured interviews in c-span's "sundays at eight." from public affairs books, now available for a father's day gift gift at your favorite bookseller. >> live now from the 38th annual

printers row lit fest, barbara ehrenreich will talk about her book "living with a wild god." [inaudible conversations] ..

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] one. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> okay everyone. why don't we go ahead and get started, please. so first of all i would like to welcome you all to the 30th annual chicago tribune printers row lit fest. my name is tom with the festival before we start to my would like to give a special thank you to all of the festival's sponsors. the author's book will be sold in the main lobby. some of you might have observed that on your way in and you

will -- she will be doing a book signing right outside this auditorium at the conclusion. this program is being broadcast live on c-span2 book tv. we are going to and save some time at the end of this discussion for a q&a. when the time comes we will have people lining up to ask questions. if you would like to know what this program again it is going to be rehired at 11:00 p.m. both this evening and tomorrow evening on c-span2. as a general note please consider the spirit of printers row lit fest going all year long . the premium book section fiction series and program. this year we are also enrolling the new digital bookstore. you have been given cards which directs you to the at store and give you information about this at a special book deals.

before we begin today's program please make sure to a silence yourself phones and turn off the flashes of your camera. however, you are more than welcome to take photographs -- photographs and then post them to twitter and to gramm, and facebook with the hash tag printer's row. that being said, please welcome our moderator. [applause] >> can everybody hear me? >> yes. >> first thing i want to say when i tweeted be very proud. a friend of mine and journalists professor and she said while. you get to interview barbara ehrenreich. so i know that a lot of you have come here to hear barbara talked today and feel the same way about her.

she has an amazing, wide-ranging mind. if you read any of her book you know that. she has written about feminism low-wage workers, many other things. now she's writing about the meaning of all. i assume you have seen her book "living with a wild god". bynum i am going to start by asking urban about the photo on the back. i don't know if you can see it from here but it is a photo of her at the age of 18. to you remember where this was taken? >> i was at college and it was taken by a friend and our room. i thought it would be too far from the says to my younger voters of fountain. >> you talk about this book as being a quest. it is easy to just understand it is a quest for the meaning of a dog and my question for whether they're is a god, a larger -- with the way i read, it is also

a quest for you at this point in your life to understand yourself and a younger. >> yes. to understand some things that happened to me. right. >> of talk to me a little bit about yourself as a teenage girl what did you write about? and. >> there is of primary source for this book and that is the journal might cut as adolescents and. nothing gossipy. nothing about high school. you know, there is just -- it is about this metaphysical questions which started when i was 12. >> and this is a journal -- let's go back for a moment. this is a journal you can cross at a particular point in your life and not interested in again >> yes. i knew it was there because i have been carrying this big folder been full of papers.

each entry is on a different page paper. and i knew it was with me to so many moves. i had somehow managed to bring this along. i new kind of was and that but i have never been inspired to look at until 2001 when i was packing up my papers and before a university library of was going to store them somewhere air-conditioned. and too i was fighting breast cancer. there is your life all these papers spread out. and it might not last a long the slight. so i tried the promised myself i would get back to it and read it because i knew you know, that it was calling to me in some way. >> when you did get back and read it just talk to us a little bit about what you first

found, encountered, remembered when you started reading what you had written between the ages of what, 12 and 17? >> the first entries of the journal? >> yes. >> well you know originally conceived us as typing practice in. i did not want to take typing class but it was required for all gross. i said no anything with all girls is going to be troubled. will do this by myself. how do it? what does write down what comes to mind. and after a while, it gets a little more systematic. i go back to those questions. let's go rihanna your -- what is going on here? we live, we die.

what is all this about? and i don't think that is so unusual to me that series of questions. my -- one of my granddaughter's a couple of years ago when she was only five turned to me in the car, and a car seat and said granma why are real-life? well. there it is. i did back to you on that. working on that. cellblock, you know, i think many people, especially when you're younger not always, these questions cannot be. i mean i remember turning soprano's son, anthony jr. remember when he went in to his big west philosophical faces started reading the philosophy called each you know that was neat. so it is not that unusual. what is more unusual is that i didn't ever totally brought.

air supposed to put those things behind u.s. certain age. all those big questions. we are supposed to say okay i accepted. i am going to go out there and a living and pay a mortgage, you know, pay my student at. and it never went away. so here you are in the middle of your life. you have come across these type things, these writings that are asking the big philosophical questions. and you decide that you need to engage the material again in a way that you haven't tasted in this book. >> yes. and why? and. >> i think part of it is this what the journal records were not really records, he fades because they're is a phrase a

series of unusual experiences the elemental experiences that are very, very hard to talk about at all -- well i will tell you. when i started writing this book or was actually going to work on this i want to have lunch with my son someplace in l.a. he is a writer. and i said i am writing about something that happened to me. he looked at me really kind of alarm. and i said, when i was 17. he looked even more alarmed. and i said i guess it was a mystical experience. no, well, you know naturally. so really hard to say those words. that ought to know if they are the right word. >> was so hard was saying that?

>> i am a rationalist to the core. i am an atheist. i was raised as an atheist. i got up ph.d. in cell biology. i mean, i am so hard-core of the loci published before this one was an attack on positive thinking. how positive thinking is undermining american. so -- and that includes a tax on therapeutic use of teddy bears you know i really, you know the whole world spirituality kind of courage me out. it does address this idea. >> and when you say mystical experience what it does that term and compass for you? and then tell us specifically about your own.

beck said think it as a word that shows how limited our vocabulary as a. and referred to things that we don't have words form. and instead of having the words we throw out those words are we may say god if we are religious person. but an acknowledgment that there is a room that turns in the words of our experience. and i cannot describe the experience too much in words except to say that. it was pretty -- you know, there were unusual things going on in my life but i was very tired and probably hypoglycemic done all those things that the plains indians used to induce visions. and i was and as strange place in the mountains. later that day in the desert. >> in a beautiful named lone pine.

>> yes. yeah. and suddenly the only way i have found in all these tickets to put it is that the world flamed in the light. i was overwhelmed in every way. i -- >> you are seeing the desert and flames. >> well, it was actually more like amount. then we got to the desert. and it is funny how the desert in the mountains feature in -- >> the bible. >> well yeah. all kinds of places. [laughter] and i don't know what that is. my own ancestors are from the north of europe and the british islands. they never had these experiences where meanwhile in the middle east people just wander out into the desert and come back with the ten commandments. [laughter]

there were no words attached to this. there was no face. there was no god no voice. i certainly got no instructions. i mean it would be nice to say and a giant push came out of the hills and said barbara go forth and raise the minimum wage . [laughter] you know, it would make in my story. [applause] it did not happen though. >> this was not the only episode this was maybe the most acute a veritable, visit but you have had a number of other episodes, experiences like this. you felt -- well, you describe it. words fall away. reality shift. every day things and suddenly all french changes in you're looking at something. what is that exactly? you know it looks totally new and strange.

yes. i think that happens to us. we are not always in a group of words. and then we see something. this is a psychiatric disorder. i found no one was working on this book dissociation the personalization some. i did not find anything unpleasant about it. i was fascinated. >> you were also unnerved. >> well you know, question lot of things. i thought i would figure them out. >> whether these episodes these visions were a product of some kind of mental illness this function of. >> you can say it maryann. >> no, but you do raise that question. and then you talk about the lack of vocabulary certainly back

then but even now we have for discussing a mental condition. when you were growing up but did not have the word self-esteem. >> thank goodness. [laughter] >> a couple of other words. altered states of consciousness. we did not have that. you did not even have the verbal from mark much less a big religious framework in which to interpret what was happening view. >> that's right. and as i you know little bit got over this, i must say that i was quite shattered by this the experience. it took me a wild to even have any coherent thoughts to put down. and i mean and mean -- to possibilities. one is mental wellness. that is the only terminal. the altered states.

and that pretty much at that time and schizophrenia because something really scary. the second possibility is that it was what it felt like. it felt like me encounter been with a living of there. am i saying the -- i'm not saying god, person spirit. it had that feeling of being an intelligence. i said, that's not rational. we don't know what that is. so that's not spirit and i. you grew up with parents. you were raced it used. tell us a little bit about your growing up experience. maywood. >> it is all in the book. [laughter] >> i will tell you. among -- i should explain

something. my parents atheism did not come because they were like big city intellectuals he just figured this out of some. they were blue collar people and it was part of family tradition which went back to the 19th century. we came from montana copper mining city. and an ancestor of mine whether it was a great great or exactly what i don't know but he probably lived in the 1890's somewhere in western montana and a mining camp. and when her father lay dying in their little house -- tiny had practically as far as i understand she summoned a priest to administer the last right, an irish catholic.

the priest sent back a message saying he would come for $25. it was unthinkable for these people at that time. then a few years later she herself was dying in childbirth. the priest showed up on some and, came on his own and started administering the last rites and had placed a crucifix on a chest and the story is an that was her last ounce of strength, she took that crucifix and threw it across the room. now, you don't turn your back legacy like that. [laughter] you know if she was mixed up with anti a authoritarianism. my father used to saying you know, these are the people you should never trust among doctors lawyers bosses, priests. you know this was the real kind

of working-class populism. not only found among them. a little bit of a tradition. >> one of the questions that you raise very briefly in the book is, you know as you are wrestling in the riding of this book in the looking back at these episodes that you had trying to understand what they meant, you know what the meaning of it all is becoming you say something about atheism being almost a legacy. right? and a form of identity and that, you know, if you were to discover through your investigations that there was something out there it would be almost a repudiation of your identity. >> oh, yes. but i did much more as i got older and began to see their religions that my family had rejected principally you know, christianity and one former another were not the only

religious and moral. in fact, if you go back far enough in time or a few words rollback the european colonialism and imperialism of the recent centuries you would find probably that most people on earth or animus. >> and tell us what that means. >> the technical answer except edberg the world is seen as a live, which was very much the substance of many of mine moments. and this -- you know, there is some spirits everywhere. everything has a spirit but these parents have not yet aggregated in the god. you know the next stage if you want to talk about stages polytheism and in the standard western way of thinking of it

the ultimate stage is monotheisms. i guess my biggest beef is with monotheism. >> and why you have a beef with monotheism? i know it is in the book, but tell us. >> it swept away other ways of seeing the world. you know there -- and it was quite violent, the sweeping away because certainly has brought about by the western conquerors and missionaries who went with them. you cannot see the world being alive with spirits and gods. you cannot dance yourself into a ecstatic trances in a union with the spirits. there is just one got so far away. and he demands the following of you. all of the goddesses, everybody else was destroyed when.

he. >> i am sure you know that if you look at the polls in the united states you know that the majority of the american public does not agree with that you know, i agree with the atheistic but if you. >> well, they are coming around. really. i mean, the fastest growing religious identity is people who are not religious. now they may say they are spiritual, but not religious. i am not going to argue with that, but -- >> and what do you attribute that to? >> i cannot explain in everybody's case. i would -- i think part of it is reason. we have just had this whole kind of new atheist movement represented. they made fun of the.

i found them -- they heard of that. i grew up with that. there is enough of that the next thing we're going to figure out. i don't think science does have all of the answers in the way science -- >> and you were trained as a scientist. your early career path was as a scientist. >> yes. whenever i thought there was anything else for useful for a grown-up to do. [laughter] >> now this book when you first conceded was going to be a history of religion. whenever the next book you were going to do you wanted to write history of religion. an editor at harper's, right? >> no, my agent. >> so, your agent. >> said, no.

make it personal. >> yes. something about him my own life. they said that is the story. for better or for worse. it comes out as a more albeit a metaphysical memoir or philosophical more. you will -- certainly there are life events and things like that in this. very little, for example what i have done most of my adult life. the campaign some things that have you know, riveted me for so many years. i don't talk about that. >> talk a lot about growing up. you read a lot about your parents. your parents were complicated people. your relationship with appearances complicated. maybe everybody's is. >> i think everybody -- who doesn't have a complicated relationship?

show of hands. imbedding yet. now they were -- i was born when they were too young. the -- i don't think my mother was really cut out for a 1950's style home making. in no very energetic and intelligent curious intense person. and she tried to put that all into domestic things because that is what should all was normal. >> and my father, this brilliant man. very unusual. he went from being a copper mine near to being a white-collar professional that doesn't happen a lot, but in the process began:00. so there were problems.

>> your portrait of them could be seen as critical. what did you learn about their parents by writing about them in this book? did your view of them change in any way? >> no, i think not. i think that long ago come to terms with -- the some ambiguity here. on one hand there were no great berenson. today -- their principal of child raising, which i have tried to replicate in my own children and grandchildren was neglect. [laughter] don't bother you. go about your business. and -- but they were also very encouraging of questions. and we did do things together that was not totally alienated.

this -- if they had been deeply or dogmatic the religious i think that would have put an absolute live on mean very on. not that i ever talked to them about the things i am not talking to you about but -- they didn't. they did not get in the way at all. so that is my perris. neglectful parents. >> part of your mark in the world is as a feminist. one of the things that i loved in this book just some of your details talking about wearing metal curlers aaronite and you know, sean montae. and you know, it evoked a certain kind of girlhood that women had just before meaning it

came into the public life. such talk to us a little bit about your mean an engagement with feminism, which at first you got was something that belonged to relieve women right? >> yes. yeah, it was very intimidating one the first young feminists started up in new york city. i decided oh my god. i don't understand them. i don't -- the thing that did it for me -- this is not in the book, but have said it in other places having my first a marine and going through pregnancy in a hospital clinic. we could not afford private care, so it was a clinic. and the -- i did not understand what exactly was thrown and why i was so enraged and tell they

had this big deal exam you know, when you're close to turn. i said to the doctor what i had a phd. i asked -- it didn't seem to me like that our question. so, is the service beginning to be effaced? if you have never been pregnant you know what that means. and the doctor did not even like me. he looked at the emerson said who taught this maestro the top like that. okay. all right. i get it now. and that is what did it. i like to say that when i was -- when my daughter was born to feminists were born, meander. >> have you ever felt in the need to apologize for the word feminist?

>> no. not at all. >> what is the state of feminism today? >> well i cannot give you a report on the movement. it is not -- it is so dispersed now. >> that means it is in its broadest sense in terms of the state of the world for women, the united states for women. >> i am very concerned about the elimination of women's reproductive rights particularly this off. [laughter] i am concerned about that in part because i am a grandmother to gross. and it just, you know it is one of those things. >> what do you think needs to happen to ensure reproductive rights for women? what is your call to action? you'll always been good at cost actions. >> well okay.

i will take arrest and said this i think -- you know what women came to in the late 60's and early 70's is if we can get legal abortions we will learn how to do the procedure cells. now, that may sound crazy because we much prefer a professional medical care and everything. the clinic that is affiliated with hospitals or all of these rules they're making up to eliminate comex but -- and that started -- that was in chicago. that was our group a women's group called jane. they used the one. some women are nodding. what they did, at first they had doctors that they employed. then they began to see this as easy vacuum aspiration abortion they started just doing it underground illegal but you

know at some point you just say no we are to control. >> we've got just a couple more minutes before q&a. let's get back to "living with a wild god". through this quest the was the writing of this book that was the thinking through the writing of this book did you arrive at any conclusions when you changed in any way? >> well, the writing part is just one part. people think -- and i had to explain something. writing is thinking for many. in the thinking goes on well before any words to put on the screen on paper. i am always amused when people say to me will what is your schedule? do you get up and write every day? no of course not. most is i have nothing to say. you know it is huge amounts of

thought and research that go into. and so what i -- over the years i have come to rely want to take this further and understand this more. i don't think that i was crazy. i don't think our is insane as a teenager. i think that that possibly there was some sort of encounter. with what i don't amundsen. and i'm -- what i draw on is some very strange sources here. one is mystical experiences of religious people. not only religious people, but religious people likely to write them down in great detail and to read those very carefully.

kind of take up the pictures from the so i could identify with the experience more. the other thing that i draw on -- and this is not what you would call scientific sources science fiction. i was a complete -- i am always and will always be a science-fiction fan. it certainly was an analogy in the ginger. and science fiction is one of the few intellectual grounds in this country where even in the 1950's it was possible to think about different, completely different ideas, say of god. anybody here ever read arthur c. clarke? yap. i mean the idea of deities or other forces who are not good who are not paternal, or not love and who are doing the

wrong thing, have there are an agenda. so i have all of these things coming at me and draw on them. i think that there are things perhaps conscious days, living things beings. and one of the reasons we don't have, of thought about them is science has been so insistent on saying that only human consciousness is the only kind of the world. just about 20 years ago science began to acknowledge that animals have feelings nonhuman animals have feelings, thoughts, make little -- i should not be so cute. make plans. have cultures even. and most recently -- this is really eerie -- there is beginning of the idea of planned consciousness. do they have feelings? counter the communicate? what is going on with them?

and think we have to get over the view that is really a caucasian worldview but has been saturated and signs for so long that the world's denton except for ross. >> in this folder, first of all or is that now? >> it is in a suitcase and my house. i'm not telling you which closet. [laughter] in your teenage writings you have a question. well what i asked my future self. did you write that down? >> i addressed to those ridings to my features of. >> so if you were going to address something to your future self now which is a? >> well, this could be like just writing a couple years into the future now.

>> i don't now. i think i am old enough not to send notes out across the decades to a future self but that -- i never imagined anything that i wrote being read by the people. but i actually i came across the question. i directed it to my future self. what are you like? what have you found outmanoeuvring and that is something really -- that really hits you. a question like that hurdling avenue across the decades. >> a great epitaph, what have you found out. i think we are -- we have about to match for questions. is there a microphone here for people with questions? the lots of this microphone

which is right there. >> not only questions, answers. >> either way please try to keep them brief. >> where would you put yourself in the schools of thought and maybe you wouldn't espoused by larry deossie carol mace and others see is a that we are increasingly becoming more aware as a species of the kinds of things you have mentioned, having the kind of experiences that you have. there are people who say that they can buy locate. there are people who say that you can deal remotely to telepathy. where would you put your experience in that body of work that body of knowledge? >> well i have to admit, i am not aware of these people or the work, though i will look them up i have to say there are all

kinds of mental phenomenon that are due explain. clairvoyance you know of a body experiences, digs like that i don't know what any of that. i can only report on what i do know. i don't know if as a species we are getting smarter or dumber or just heading straight for l. i don't know. but thank you. i will look them up. >> well, thank you for writing that book. it is an extraordinary book. just two questions. is this the last we have heard of this experience? to : i know how you feel about self-help manuals. have you thought of writing a book on how the think that might help lots of people who could benefit from that book? >> thank you. that is very flattering.

when i figured out our write that book. >> how to think for dummies. >> yeah. the mean, that is what is hard about writing. it's just a matter of writing words on a screen it would be one thing. it's the thinking part. >> they call it prewriting in the great school. first half to give a shout out to my heritage. bynum curious about whether you raised your children as a diaz or do you espouse letting children sort of settle at some point on the wrong with regard to religion our spirituality? >> they're going to set live on their own, but you know, i always say, this is what other people think. here is what i think and your dad thinks and you know if somebody had come back at me

converted to some religion i guess i would have had to live with that. but there has never been an issue nor with my granddaughter's today -- i would like them to be respectful of religion in a way that my parents were not. for them to figure out. >> how do you. [inaudible question] right wing politician. there religious. at the same time minimal wages. how you link this. >> i think what you are asking is is the fact that some many politicians are religious links. >> right. right.

>> their opposition to the minimum wage. >> republican politician. [laughter] >> to you think it the fact that some many politicians are religious, he is referring to republican politicians links to the resistance to the minimum wage. >> well, insurer should not be. sometimes the temerity for a second life as in the evangelical preacher. the social teachings of jesus are so clear cut. you know how could you be -- how could you be in any way cool to the core. >> but how do you explain this? >> out the you explain this? >> i have been trying for years. [laughter] >> that will be and how to think for dummies. [laughter] [applause]

>> this is not a question just a shot out and an answer seattle faugh. >> right. seattle. $15 an hour. >> have you had additional metaphysical experiences? if so how recently. >> they're is a touch of that in the book. you know i would say these things don't ever go away all the way. fortunately there not as shattering. >> i think we have time may be for one net -- one last question . >> i love being last. susan tanking from schreiner college in chicago. wondering if you want to talk a little bit between their relationship. on the one some tourists will say you're either mss or an activist. and yet you said a very powerful important and as you said, risky thing.

his he had been a leader and activist circles for a long time you are also recognizing an experience that some people will call mistake. are those of buses connected? to the feed each other? what are the consequences of seeing them as disconnected? especially for women. >> i know very deeply religious people who might fully agree on most social or political issues. they just don't agree about their god. i had dinner with one of them last night here in chicago. and that is fine. i also -- i don't -- i also see a connection. i am aware of a kind of a what is it called, spiritual progressivism more progressive, what is it? i am thinking about the magazine

and that sort of thing. nope. i don't -- i don't feel too comfortable with that. >> neither do i so thank you. >> good. but you know one thing that has been really fun says this book came out is hearing from people who i have known for a long time in a completely secular sort of political environment and having them said it happened to me too. this is something we should talk about. because i don't think that things should be secret forever. i think, you know, the women's movement we bring things out on the open. if there is something strange going on here we don't just bury that. >> thanks. one last question for barbara. we were at a luncheon yesterday were a number of authors of printers are live fest were --

and everyone was asked to -- what author living her dad would they like to have drinks with. and proving what a ride to of wide-ranging mind she has her answer was hunter thompson. let me just ask you why would you like to have drinks with hunter thompson? >> well probably have more exciting chemicals with them. in no, just one of the people i never met and admired. everybody is ryder bb do know, i don't know hardly anybody in any walk of life here does not write a diary palms never.

even a novel that they're working on. and i don't like this sort of mystification of writers as a kind especially lead to. you are not more interesting because your writer. in fact, i kind of figure you're already put it on paper. i've done it starts you that much. [laughter] >> and on that note -- [laughter] [applause] [applause] >> i would just like to say first of all final thank you all of you for coming, but also to barbara for helping us all think not just about one thing or another, but a bottle of that thank you. [applause]

>> on behalf of the printer's row live fest thank you once again. thanks to all of you for attending. the book is available for sale out in the main lobby, and she will be signing books are outside the son of former now. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> and we just heard from barbara ehrenreich. more from chicago and just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations]

>> you're watching book tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. book tv television for serious readers. >> here are some programs to look out for this weekend. book tv is live this weekend from chicago for the 30th annual printers row lit fest. visit us online for a complete schedule of events. and jeremy rifkin talks about his book the zero marginal costs society, former treasury secretary tim at the gannett discusses the 2008 financial crisis, we visit salt lake city utah to take in the literary sides and top with local authors, take a look at recent books on afghanistan and much more. for more information on this weekend's television schedule visit us online at booktv.org. >> r.j. reynolds was one of the original tobacco manufacturers in the ad states. the late 19th century he was selling chewing tobacco if the a

faugh. the manufacturer of chewing tobacco. >> had become that? >> it became that because he was the son the second sign out of 16 children of the tobacco planter before the civil war who owned over 50 slaves, the largest slaveholder in patrick county, virginia. and so r.j. reynolds crew up before the civil war born in 1850 and learn to the whole business of growing tobacco from his father. and his father also was entrepreneurial and pretty shrewd and recognized that it is great to grow tobacco but might be even better to sell the tobacco himself and process and manufacture it. so he took that tobacco and created on his own plantation in manufacturing and had his slaves and his sons figure out how to turn the tobacco plant into chewing tobacco. and so he was selling chewing

tobacco before the civil war. and after the civil war and during that reconstruction he had his sons continue learning this business. so is father was very entrepreneurial figured out that when you were losing money in the tobacco trader the course of the middle of the 19th century in the end of the civil war in the beginning of reconstruction and taught his sons how to do this business. his sons particularly r.j. reynolds realize that the plantation was too far away from marketing possibilities. if you're going to sell the tobacco you could not do it the old way. deal was to get into wagons and take this big job tobacco this big kind of brick of chewing tobacco and head into the appalachian mountains go down the shoulder of those mountains and seldom, sell this tobacco to the people who live in a high areas. and he would send r.j. reynolds' father with him to do this.

they learned how to do this and came back. well, has some realize that that made some money but it was not a very smart way to market. he realized that the future lay in railroads and having close access to a roar of. >> you can watch this and other programs online. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> this is a look inside jones college prep, one of the sites of this year's printers row lit fest. we will be back with more live coverage here on book tv in just a couple of minutes. >> here is a look at some books being published this week. hillary clinton recounts her tenure as secretary of state in hard choices. in the people versus barack

obama, the criminal case against the obama administration ben shapiro, editor at large a breitbart argues the obama administration has been marked by abuses of power. bruce allen murphy constitutional law professor at lafayette college recounts the supreme court justice antonin scalia's career in ciliate a court of one. former secret service agent recalls his career in within arm's length. co-founder of women drive worldwide reports on women are around the world or overcoming poverty and teach a woman to fish, or in poverty around low. in obama's and forster error calder's justice department's a columnist for national review and senior fellow at the heritage foundation present their criticism of attorney general eric holder and the justice department. look for these titles in bookstores this coming weekend watch for the authors in the

near future. >> this tuesday simon and schuster is releasing hillary clinton's latest book hard choices. recently book tv was in new york at the book publishers' offices to talk with some of the people involved in the direction of the book. >> i have been involved in all of the books actually. i am not the one publishing them. i am not the official publisher but i have been involved in the process. way back when she was in the white house and we first went down there to try to persuade her to publish a book which became it takes a village and our first book you know i was there trying to help convince her to do so. i have been involved in every single one for publications. i am not the editor because that is not my might core strength. but i watch over the publish it -- publication and help get it

all organized and make sure things are on track. i have started with living history and making sure that our best people are working on at. >> publishing hard choices on june 10th. her fourth book with us and i was the editor of the book. i was involved from the very beginning. overseeing all aspects of it working very closely with all the people at the company. >> as the editor on there a lot of the melt back and forth? is that how it is done? >> every case is different. in this case i tried to give just as much attention to secretary clinton as i have to all of the others. i should mention in the same breath that we are also publishing james webb a terrific united states senator and his book is out right now. i don't want to era favor one author over another. >> when we acquired that