students to say we are going to meet at 12:00 tomorrow and we are going to march and 2000 people showed up. today we have got twitter. we have got facebook. we have got all the social media stuff and i believe if we were to organize ourselves using social media rather than worry about all this foolishness that we get off the internet lets put some stuff on that internet that

will say to the people of ferguson missouri, get to the polls by 7:00 this evening so you won't have to march at midnight. that's the kind of stuff we have got to do today. use the tools that we have. we have great tools to communicate but everything else we can text what do we call it? let's do some voting organizing over the internet. we have the tools. let's use them for a new massive movement that will make sure that we can have in november 2014 the kind of turnout at the polls that we had in 2012 and november. if we voted in presidential elections at the same level, i mean in local elections at the same level that we vote in presidential elections a lot of this stuff that you are fearful

of right now will dissipate, go away. >> guest: we have to do what we can wear began as a professor. i ran the center for the state of democracy and we are organizing a national dialogue. this ear ferguson is on our minds. i think locally it has to be these ferguson problems are local problems. they are in new york, boston and washington d.c.. the university is very important here. our students don't know the story. some of us teach african-americans history and we teach sort courses on social movements and social justice. one thing i find really remarkable is that many people have never taken a civil rights course and never taken a black history course before they enter a college campus whether they are white or black so our students need to know the story. why does martin luther king and

representative clyburn matter? why did ferguson happen? they need to understand everything from slavery to a movement to citizenship and voting rights in this country and we can do that by organizing on our campuses, tea tins. we have teach ends against the vietnam war in the 1960s. we can do tea tins for racial and economic equality. we can do a lot in the key and this is education but also dialogue. black and white people are not speaking to each other. we need to have a dialogue with each other that's not about recrimination or accusation but rooted in reality and where we are today if we have that dialogue than you can connect that dialogue to a push for public policy at the local level, the regional and state level and finally at the national level.

>> guest: i'm very pleased to hear that. in fact last wednesday evening my wife and i had dinner with the present of the university of south carolina and this is the kind of discussion we had. what we can do on that campus which is in my congressional district, to really take the mantle of them to make these kinds of efforts and what role can the university play m? they are doing a tremendous job i think of trying to find a way to make the university of south carolina relevant to this going forward. if you go back and look in history and 1860s that was one of the few integrated universities that we had in the country. it has gone a different way in recent years but he's trying to

bring it back to that. >> guest: dr. bobby donaldson reminds me so much of you. i don't know which one is the oldest. maybe you remind me of him but he is leading this effort on the university campus. he just did a tremendous effort. i heard you earlier today talking about 1963. bobby has done a tremendous piece on all that took place in 1963 and how it ignited south carolina. when you get a chance he should take a look at that. he has all these tapes some of which were taken by the police who were really surveying rather than recording. he dug up all that stuff and he has updated it to make it relevant. >> in your book blessed experiences i think it's your daughter mignon when she went to the university of south carolina

there was an incident there regarding a black homecoming queen. >> guest: absolutely. i tell that story in the book. it starts with mignon getting ready to go to college. her mother said to me you have insisted that she live on the campus. you need to have a talk with her before she goes. i kept putting it off. finally the day came. i sat down with mignon and i said to her now mignon you are about to go up on the campus. you have got to understand that when you get on my campus a lot of things are going to happen to you that are good because you are jim clyburn's daughter but something's going to happen to you that ain't so good a place you are jim clyburn's daughter. i said now don't you worry about any of that. it will wash out but something's going to happen to you because you are a woman and you are black. those things will never even

now. you will have to work hard to overcome those things. she didn't say anything. thanksgiving she called me and asked what i come and pick her up because they were closing the dormitories for thanksgiving. i went by the dormitory and picked her up and on our way home and automobile passed us and this was in 1980 and it had a bumper sticker on the back of it george rogers for heisman. he won the heisman trophy that year. she said to me dad did you see the bumper sticker on a car? i said yes. she said do you think that man would put your bumper sticker -- i just run for secretary of state on his car? i said no i don't think he would but why do you ask? she said that little conversation we had as you are

about to take me to school i did not understand what you meant until the recent homecoming game. i said what happened at homecoming? she said at the homecoming game i noticed that when our black homecoming queen that was introduced, she was booed and i noticed she said the stands the booed the loudest was the same section that cheered the loudest when george rogers was introduced at the beginning of the game. i said okay and what did i say to you. she said well i deducted from that was okay for us to entertain them but not okay for us to represent them. i said you know what's? you are going to do well. and she has done well.

>> host: mignon clyburn is a member of the federal communications today. michael in philadelphia thanks for holding on. michael we are going to lose michael. you have to turn down the volume on your tv. listen for your telephone and you'll be able to hear everything. stephanie is an r. or a colorado. hi stephanie. you are on book tv. >> caller: hi. thanks for taking my call congressman and mr. joseph thank you so much for being here today and thank you for telling your story. i would like to echo what the lady said from washington is that what is the scope of the federal government? in how they reached the 50 states? the states do have their own laws and jurisdictions and their constitutions and such but it's

all throughout the contiguous united states that there is police brutality with minority groups and also mr. joseph mentioned something very important as well that it's our fellow white americans as well that should be alarmed at this. there are some flights and constitutional rights that have been breached here and i wonder what the federal government, what is the scope, how far can he reach and what can they do or is it just left up to the state? i have five children, we have three boys and two girls. the three boys are adults doing well have six figures. they are very intelligent but i was alarmed at what i saw and what i hear.

they have never been in trouble, done well. one daughter in college and one graduating high school this year but it touched me and i'm thinking what can we do? i live in colorado and i live in a middle-class mixed neighborhood. my kids have grown up that way but my husband and i grew up in the south in south carolina and my parents grew up in arkansas. our kids really haven't seen a lot of this but these things come out now and we talk about it but it has touched me terribly. this could happen to my kid. >> host: thank you maam. peniel joseph. >> guest: it's a great question and stephanie. the federal government can do a lot and i will leave to leave it to the congress and to get to specifics but in a broad historical way i will say the new deal the only reason why we are living the way we do now is because the federal government of the new deal starting in the 1930s and 40s.

the agricultural adjustment act national labor relations board the 40-hour workweek because of the federal government. in the 60s when the federal government did the civil rights act voting rights act and became part of a comprehensive really great society. lyndon johnson, war and poverty. state had to implement in a fashion that they found judicious these big programs. the affordable care act is the largest expansion of government in the last 50 years. what is interesting about the federal government, the federal government can do a whole lot. it's just in our own times we live in an age where there is the most economic inequality in american history since the gilded age in the late 19th century the age of the rockefellers and the vanderbilt, these titans. what the federal government can do when we think about ferguson would be whether it's a great society or an urban renewal program. what's interesting is that what impact white americans as well

and latinos. the reason why i say that as americans we should think about black equality because even the new deal and great society because of institutional racism black equality was not actually achieved even though there were these huge federal mandates. in 2014 because we are aware of racial injustice we should have huge federal programs that achieve things of social justice for everyone. i think the federal government can do a whole lot not just for black equality but just for poverty in the united states. >> guest: i'm going to agree with that but let's take a it a step further. the new deal did a lot for a lot of people but it took truman's fair deal to implement so much of that. if you recall from the new deal and i know you know this much better than i do roosevelt did a lot for it were culture, for

what we might call the wpa the ccc but when those things were taken down to the state levels they were segregated. they had labels on them and roosevelt did nothing about that. it took truman's fair deal to remove some of those labels. it was truman and the executive order. the armed services back in 1948. it was an executive order by abraham lincoln really that implemented the emancipation proclamation. what people didn't realize was the 13th amendment was important because lincoln just knew if he didn't get the 13th amendment passed the moment he stepped out out out of office's executive order was going to be resending by the next executive. these things are interrelated and we just cannot really separate them out. so when you look at the new deal

and then you get to the fair deal, you get to the great society with lyndon johnson, a lot of people felt and i have heard them say some of my colleagues the war on poverty failed. the war on poverty did not fail. in fact the war on poverty that speech was made in january 1964 and the following june and july the civil rights act passed and 64 the voting rights act and 65 the fair housing law 1968. he became state and local governments in 1972. all of that is part of the great society. i would not be where i am today but for the voting rights act of 65. many of us wouldn't be where we are but for the civil rights act of 64. all of that was a part of the great society's war on poverty.

it did not fail. it succeeded. i'm a living testimony and so is john lewis to the fact that did not fail. >> host: temin michigan please go ahead with your comment. >> caller: . [inaudible] >> host: i apologize. we just couldn't quite catch what tim was saying so we are going to move to burn in detroit michigan. >> caller: hello. my name is vernon brown and i'm in detroit. i'm a member of the association association of african-american life and history and the association of black -- and i would like to know how either one of you go about to get june as a national holiday. it is a state holiday in 304

states and we really want people to be aware of what juneteenth is and it is a celebration for all people to celebrate freedom. i would like to know how we can do it in a political archived way. >> host: jim clyburn we will start with you. >> guest: i'm going to leave it up to the professor is why that's a big national holiday because i don't know if i subscribe to that. because juneteenth commemorates the date 18 months after the emancipation proclamation that the former slaves who were still slaves in texas got noticed that they were in fact freed. now the other states are already out enjoying that freedom. in south carolina we were already elected to the state legislature and to the congress.

the majority of the legislature in the general assembly in south carolina in the spirit of time or african-americans. three out of the four congresspeople we had were african-american. so we had gotten word in south carolina and many other states were going on to implement. for some strange reason the war word did not get to texas until the 19th of june the next year. the professor will have to make me understand why there needs to be a national holiday. >> host: before you answer professor joseph why do you necessarily subscribe to a national holiday of juneteenth? >> guest: i'm trying to find out what is national about the word getting to one state late. guess good juneteenth 1865 i think should be a national holiday. the reason why is it the end of slavery nationally.

it's not about the fact that it gets to texas late. it's saying that if we celebrate it as a society every june 19 and the chattel slavery and if we taught our citizens the way in which african-americans and whites contributed and fought and died before the end of slavery both in the civil war and politically because you mention mention congressman that someone mention congressman that someone can bet the film again doesn't have said derek douglas said. frederick douglass met with the present with the president of united states three times. he was as big a part is the emancipation. juneteenth i agree with vern that there should be a national holiday. it's a matter of democracy and citizenship. we live in a country that remembers to forget slavery, that remembers to forget lynching, there remembers to forget all these horrible things that happened to parts of the population. now if you remember on june 19 the end of slavery we could also remember all the americans who died and came together to end

slavery including white americans. juneteenth very important and again as a matter of small d democracy and citizenship were we became in the united states of america by the time all of our citizens realize there was freedom. >> guest: that's something we have to have a great discussion on. we were talking about our universities involving this. i have talked to a lot of people who still don't understand what the 13th amendment is about. i know lincoln wasn't involved in the movie but i had nothing to do with the movement of the present of the united states at that time to get an amendment to the constitution getting rid of slavery. that's something totally different. irrespective of who got him there. that is what the 13th amendment and the movie was all about. there are some other things in

the movie. that vote by connecticut that was absolutely wrong. i don't know why they left that in the movie but that was absolutely wrong and the people of connecticut i think are still angry about that. >> host: james clyburn is currently the assistant democratic leader in the house of representatives. he has been in congress in 1993. the book we are talking about today with him is "blessed experiences." genuinely southern, proudly black. peniel joseph is a history professor at tufts university. here's his most recent book, stokely alive and he's the author of dark days bright nights and waiting until the midnight hour a narrative history of black power in america and jury in fresno california you have about 30 seconds. >> caller: thank you everybody for participating in what you are doing.

[inaudible] i wanted to ask a question about organizing when you talk about organizing with new technology being a young person knowing well about twitter and facebook. the question of what is net neutrality really. maybe you can start the dialogue to talk about the organization and these guys into their lives when they talked about black power. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> host: très apologize, let's hear from our guests.

>> guest: c-span and the founder brian lamb talks about how stokely carmichael was part of inspiration for c-span. he said carr maaco gave a brilliant speech and lecture and he is in person seeing him and later on on the nightly news he saw snippets of the same same speech he is then added he saw the news took the most incendiary parts this well digested new on speech and that's what they broadcast the most incendiary volatile parts. he really vowed that he wanted to create a media platform where people could speak from beginning to end in their entirety and he would let viewers decide what it is they just experience. so yeah and stokely was interviewed by brian lamb near the end of his life. they always had a special relationship. >> host: in fact if you want to see that interview a few months before kwame ture stokely carmichael died you can go to

the c-span video library available at c-span.org. just type in kwame ture and stokely carmichael and you will be able to watch that. gentlemen we are running out of time. mr. clyburn we have referenced ferguson a couple of times here in this conversation. what's going to happen when congress comes back with regard to the hearings, legislative action especially perhaps a lot of the talk was about the militarization of the police force. do you foresee any legislative action on behalf of congress? >> guest: oh yes i do especially regarding the militarization of the police forces. i think to have police officers decked out in camouflage, sit in the top of these mraps many of which are made in my district and i know why they are made. they are there for ieds,

ieds that were really maiming people. they were made for the city streets. these things were made for war and for you to dress as if you are going to war for you to talk to people as if you had war with them. this is the kind of thing that is absolutely incredible. i think that congress is going to seek a response to that. the president really made it clear that he is looking at doing something about it. and i think he can by executive can by executive order since these things are being given to these police officers by the federal government. they are being legislated by congress. >> host: a little bit from james clyburn his book "blessed experiences." tufts professor peniel joseph.

i almost called you stokely carmichael. here's his most recent book, "stokely: a life." gentlemen as always we appreciate you being on c-span. you are watching booktv on c-span2. this is live coverage of the 14th annual national book festival this year being held at the washington convention center because of some issues between the library of congress and the national parks service. up next to her going to hear from luisa lim. she has written a book about tiananmen square. she is introduced by david miao of the library of congress and after that doris kearns goodwin and a call in with that historian. this is booktv on c-span2. >> i was an exchange student studying in china in 1989 so i'm very excited to be able to introduce our next speaker. i think most of us here may not recognize her but we certainly recognize her voice.

i'm here to introduce luisa lim to talk about her book "the people's republic of amnesia." she is the voice as i said from china for "national public radio" and prior to that she worked for bbc. over a decade of reporting she has earned many prestigious prizes and broadcasting awards for her work. during the previous academic year 2013 to 2014 louisa was a mic wallace fellow at the university of michigan and i just learned for the next academic year she will be teaching at the university of michigan in journalism school. for me reading her book brought back to me a flood of memories from my year in china and especially the events that surrounded tiananmen. having been in china around that time i found a reason quote in "the wall street journal" about her book to be especially relevant. in that article benjamin reid said her depictions in and this

is why quote enhancer sense of the human cost of suppressing the past of doling the understanding of the world and capacity for critical thought of severing people from a homeland that they yearn for and of trying to pretend that none of that is happening. what that please join me in welcoming luisa lim. [applause] [applause] >> thank you so much david for that introduction and thank you to the library of congress for this incredible opportunity and this wonderful book festival. i am here to about my book, "the people's republic of amnesia" tianamen revisited. it's really about how the events of 1989 changed china and how china then changed the events of 1989 as it rewrote its own history. it's about amnesia which one famous chinese author called a

state-sponsored support. my book is about those people who refuse to play in the state-sponsored sport, those who refuse to forget what happened. my story started with one woman, a mother and i remember her by chance. i was working in beijing as a correspondent and i was sent to chung on a completely different story. i had just met her by chance and her name is -- and we met in this shiny new apartment block in this brand-new part of the city. she was almost like a throwback from another time. she was in her 60s. she was a very small woman. she was like an old-school dispossessed peasant farmer shuffling around in flip-flops smelling of garlic with an incredibly strong accent.

when she began talking i discovered this was a uniquely determined woman and she was the one who put me on a path towards this book because she told me how she had lost her 17-year-old son on june 6, 1989 in chung. she said he disappeared from his home and he was killed. i said what crack down? she there was a crackdown and chung as well and i hadn't known that. so that was the thing that started me on this trail. i wanted to find out more so i started to look for other accounts. i started to look for eyewitnesses, people who had been there 25 years ago to have taken photos and written diaries and i started to look for chinese propaganda accounts in u.s. diplomatic cables and piece by piece i tried to piece all of these different pieces together and i discovered this completely

forgotten story. there have been a crackdown in chunzhou as well. in 1989 while the demonstrations were going on in beijing they were also going on all over the country. in chunzhou hundreds of thousands of people are taken to the streets and after people died in beijing people also died in chunzhou at the hands of government forces and acknowledged by the government. that brought up the real essential question that i was asking. how is it possible that an event like this that happened 25 years ago within living memory how could it be forgotten and how could it be deleted from the collective memory? that was when i realized one thing. that memory depends on geography. here in the west when we talk about tiananmen in 1989 it invariably brings to mind the

one iconic image and i have brought it along as a visual aid. tiananmen. the skinny man in the white shirt carrying his two plastic bags staring up to the power of the state. this is an image that is so iconic that in fact a plane has recently been written about this image and the playwright lucy kirkwood said this is a picture at the moment when china exchange democracy for an economic miracle for the opportunity to live, work, spend progress. i just wanted to do a quick experiment. raise your hands if you have seen this picture before. that's almost everyone in the room. raise your hand if you haven't seen this picture. i would say that probably 98% of people in this room have seen this picture. it has become such a well-known

image that it's been used in the simpsons. it was even a chick fillet advert that use this image. hard to believe it is true so it's become part of our popular culture. what i wanted to know was how well-known is this image in china when we read an awful lot about the power the internet to break down the control of information. we know china has 642 million internet users and i wanted to know if they also knew about 1989 and could recognize this picture. when i was working in beijing i did this very crude experiment. i went to four universities in beijing and i took this picture around. there were four university students who had been most instrumental in 1989. i asked students there, do you know what this picture is?

they said yes. i said well tell me. i was surprised to find only 15% of chinese students knew what this picture was compared to 90% 8% of people in this room. to me that really shows the success of the state in expunging this whole episode from its history and continuing to block access to information about it. it was a pretty crude experiment but also quite interesting because i discovered really quickly that it was very effective. before i went i thought maybe i wouldn't be able to tell if people are lying to me but i discovered the power of this image is such that those people who knew what it was that almost a visceral physical reaction to the picture. they would see it and they would shy away from it. one man said oh my god but this was only a small proportion of

the students. most of the students, the 85% who had no idea would not shy away from his image. they would lean in to try to look at the details and also there was no flicker of recognition on their faces. they would ask me questions. one student, a ph.d. student from south korea and astronomy major asked me is that kosovo quiet 19 students believed that this was a picture of a military parade. that's more students than those who actually knew what it was. of those students that did recognize it was interesting that quite a lot really defended the government. they said what the government did was necessary. china would be much worse off today if the government had acted any differently. so it's really a retrospective

justification based on china's phenomenal growth rate over the past 30 years. i think that is a very mainstream view even among some of those that went out and protested in 1989. for me personally this experiment was also very interesting because i suddenly realized how nervous i was when i was on those campuses asking those questions. if you bear in mind at this point i was a reporter based in china for 10 years so i had done an awful lot of sneaking around and dressing up as a peasant and trying to sneak into police checkpoints in closed areas in this kind of thing. when i was walking around the university campuses with that picture i became convinced that i was detained and i was

sweating like anything. i suddenly realized this is the extent to which i myself have internalized the censorship. i too am carrying a journalist card which gives me license to be answering these questions makes me so nervous to talk about 1989 what is it like for ordinary chinese people? you may ask why don't people in china know what happened in 1989? one simple answer is it's not taught in schools at all. in university only history majors learn about 1989 and what they learn is very limited. the textbook they use has 529 pages and only four of them, four pages touch on the events of 1989. even that account contains what one french professor called a monumental historical truth, a

lie basically. if you are young chinese kid how would you know your textbooks contained lies? i think we should also remember that even in the west now a quarter century has passed and there's a lot about the events of 1989 that are still unknown or have been forgotten over the years. actually the young man who stood in front of the tank, we don't know who he is. we don't know what happened to him and although this is the iconic image of june the fourth but didn't actually happen on june 4. it happened on june the fifth day after the killings. we also don't know how many people died in beijing as the army moved in. the figures range from the preliminary figures which were just over 200 to estimates in the thousands at the time the red cross put on an estimate of

2600 people had died. we really don't have the numbers. it's also forgotten that most of those killings did not happen in tiananmen square itself but on the approach roads as the army came in. we also don't know what happened during the power struggle in the echelons of the communist party but we do know the loser in a power struggle with the then leader of the communist party who spent the next 15 years until his death under house arrest. the other thing that is forgotten is that the protests were not just in beijing but all over china. they weren't just students. it was a mass movement, not just about freedom and democracy. it was also about wealth and equality calling for action

against corruption and nepotism and profiteering for the communist party to reform itself. of course none of these things were forgotten by china's own leaders. they know that those demands made a quarter-century ago are much more pressing today than they were 25 years ago. that's one of the reasons why the party is still so afraid of tiananmen's legacy, because it leaves it vulnerable. so the government has really tried to cover up what happened. if you go into any bookshop in china and tried to buy a book about 1989 you wouldn't be able to find anything. on line mentions it and china's internet users find all sorts of ways to try to get around this. they may say june the fourth and they may say may the 35th and

they find at may the 35th is -- and this year they started saying april the 65th but then that was senseless. this is really led to this really event which is happen on an individual level but also connected level and there are all kinds of side effects. for example in 2008 a chinese newspaper actually ran a picture of a student protester from 1989, a young man being rushed to a hospital on the back of a flatbed covered with blood. it appeared in a beijing newspaper alongside a profile of the photographer who had taken a picture, a hong kong photographer. interestingly, the reason that it appeared was because nobody working at the newspaper, not the picture editor where the page editor or even the

newspapers censor, none of them recognize this picture so none of them even realized that it was so sensitive that it should be censored. so i see that as a measure of success and the failure of chinese censorship. it's been so successful that the institutional memory of june the fourth has disappeared now the success of that strategy is threatening the ability to continue it. this year we even saw these attempts to muzzle the foreign press as well as the chinese press. for the first time journalists were visited by police in their offices and they were told to not go to tiananmen square on june the fourth or there will be consequences for you. it's not the first time the government has tried to control reporting. in the past all kinds of different measures have been taken and my particular moment was on the 20th anniversary in

2009 where the journalists that went to tiananmen square found there was this new security apparatus innovation and every time the cameraman turned on the camera to try to film them they would discover plain clothes policeman with big checkered umbrellas standing in the way, standing between them and the cameraman. it became the focus of a lot of the newspaper reports. people call them the umbrella man of tiananmen square because it was such a bizarre strategy to use men with umbrellas to stop people from talking about tiananmen. so when i started thinking about writing this book i knew that it was an incredibly sensitive topic and i knew that it would be difficult to write a book

like this. so i took all kinds of precautions in order to try to make sure that i had done my research that i needed to do, that i could do the things that i needed to. i set myself all kinds of rules, so i decided never to talk about my book at home and i never talked about it in the office either because i lived in work and a diplomatic compound which was widely believed to be bugged. i also never talked about on the telephone and i never send an e-mail referring to it either. so when i went to interview people i wouldn't even tell them what i was doing. i would say i'm a journalist, a foreign journalist, i meet you? it was only when we were face to face that i would explain what i was doing. i had a brand-new computer that

had never been on line and i typed into this computer. at night i kept it locked and in a safe in my apartment because i was worried about the consequences of writing the book particularly for the people that i was talking to. and i was right to worry because in this kind of environment and the acts of remembrance are a challenge to the dominant narrative and those who refuse to forget are punished. we saw that this year. the 152 people were arrested or detained or placed under house arrest in the crackdown in the run-up to the anniversary. they were even cases, there was one unfortunate factory worker who went to tiananmen square and took a selfie of himself making a v symbol of v for victory in

tenement square. he ended up arrested for that for creating a public disturbance. several other people in my book were also harassed. there's a woman called -- who lost her 19-year-old son to an army bullet in the head and she later went on to cofound a group called tiananmen mothers. she took part in a form in beijing. 15 people were there. it was a commemoration for him in a private apartment where they just got together to talk about 1989. finally the people who attended that were detained again for creating a public disturbance although it was a private apartment. another person i profiled was a young soldier.

in 1989 he was one of the soldiers who were sent to clear tiananmen square and afterwards he became an artist and he was so haunted by what he had seen that day that he used and he uses his art to express and remember what happened. so he cannot show his art in china. but this year he did an installation where he had an empty studio with one wall and he painted dates from 1989 to 2014 on the walls of that studio and then he whitewashed them out. he was detained for more than six weeks for that sample artwork. he said history is like a blank. it has been wiped out. nowhere is that more true than in the city of chunzhou the city

image in the beginning, the city with a forgotten crackdown. there is while there were huge student protests. so many people were out protesting that instead of the normal greeting have you eaten yet people would ask each other have you demonstrated get it? and chunzhou as well they had a hunger strike. they had a big square with a huge statue of chairman mao and under chairman mao's feed they have this hunger strike. it became known as little tiananmen. on june 4, after the killings in beijing people in chunzhou got to hear what happened in chunzhou came out against the streets against the killings. they carried signs saying things

like we are not afraid of death and these big traditional funeral wreaths. it was a big -- on an unarmed protesters in beijing. there was of course the inevitable crackdown in chunzhou as well as in beijing. in chunzhou it was different. it was not the army but the people's armed police, the paramilitary police that were called in, and they used water cannons and they used batons and it was very brutal. they targeted protesters and they targeted their heads. people sent me pictures that were taken inside the hospitals and the showed rows of people with their heads bandaged. you could quite clearly see that

they had been trying to beat people up and do maximum damage. i was even sent a secret report that was written by an elderly communist party member who had been on the streets as the streets's and he had been so appalled and disgusted by what he saw on the streets that day that he smuggled himself into the hospitals and interviewed the injured people to write a report about it. and then have that smuggled out of china but nobody did anything about it. he received a 25 years too late. but the government could not hide what had happened. the geography is such that it was right in the middle of a town where there were so many witnesses. instead of trying to hide what happened they instead try to fill the information space. they release this book called the whole story of the chunzhou rights which was released a month later, 700,000 copies. in this book the government said

eight people had died that day. 1800 people had sought treatment. to me, this was shocking but i was even more shocked to discover this actually wasn't the bloodiest episode that happened in 1989 in chunzhou and i found out about that just there are eyewitnesses and other documents because what happened after the initial crackdown was the people were so angered by the brutality that they began retaliating against building -- buildings that belong to the state they began setting on fire buses and police cars and burning down this huge market which took up an entire city block. and then on the night of june the fifth, a mob of people raided a hotel, the chunzhou

hotel and still exists and is still a very small hotel. at this time the u.s. consulate general was based and not hotel so they were all kinds of accounts of what happened that day. so the police were called and they tried to restore order when this crowd was breaking into this hotel. there were a lot of westerners staying at the hotel and for a while they were sheltering in the residence at the u.s. consulate general. then they were told order is being restored and it's safe to go back to your own rooms. they returned to the front of the hotel and from their windows at the front of the hotel they saw this very shocking scene. they saw protesters lined up in rows kneeling in the courtyard with their hands wired or tied behind their backs in a way which the witnesses said would

have required their arms to have been broken. and they watched out of the window as these plainclothes policeman walked among the kneeling man. they watched as an order was given to them and the policemen went around and one by one they beat the protesters slashing their schools with iron rods. and they watched as two trucks pulled then and the bodies were thrown into the trucks like garbage, like sacks of potatoes, like slabs of meat. like carcasses. those were four different descriptions given to me by four different witnesses none of whom even knew each other and knew that anyone else had same the same things that they saw. one of them actually said to me i don't remember anyone screaming. there was no noise, just the bodies piling on top of each other. there were definitely lifeless

bodies. i i imagined if anyone was alive they would not survive in that pile. so i really wanted to find out more. i went back to the chinese sources and the whole story of the changzhou riots about this whole episode and even gave numbers. it said 17 people were detained at that hotel on that day and the newspapers even acknowledged that police use of violence against protesters there. but what actually happened, what all those people killed, 70 people in the full view of the foreigners? i don't know for sure. i can't say for sure. too many years have passed and there's too much this unknown but what i do know is those eyewitnesses that i spoke to they really believed that they had witnessed an atrocity. and they were very traumatized. many of them were repatriated back to their own countries and many of them went to the press.

they went to the amnesty international and they try to tell the story of what they had seen but what it happened in beijing was so much bigger and so overwhelming that people weren't really listening. so i still have this question, could all these people have died and no one and no one knew? so it brought me back to the woman who had lost her son that day. she told me her story. she told me that fairly early on after her son disappeared she was told by another person who was detained at the same time as her son that he had been beaten to death in police custody. she has devoted the last 25 years trying to find out more about the exact circumstances of her son's death. she has visited beijing five times and each time she was caught and sent back. she was detained.

she was beaten. twice she was locked in an iron cage and she told me she had a police car outside her house for two full years. after 11 years in the year 2000, all of these efforts had this very surprising result. she was actually given by the police a photograph of her son's corpse. it was a black-and-white photograph which showed him lying on the cement floor. you could see quite clearly from this picture that he had been beaten because there was blood around his nostrils and his face was bruised and it was very swollen. in the year 2006 she was even given money. she was given a payment of almost $9000. it was the first payment ever made in connection to a death in june 1989 although it was called a hardship balance, not compensation. so i went to her and i asked her, are there other people

whose relatives have been beaten to death in the same way that your son died? she just looked straight at me. she looked into my eyes and she said even if i knew, i wouldn't say. i then realized that if this woman, this feisty determined fighter of a woman who has been through so much, if she couldn't talk openly about what happened in 1989, then maybe no one could. because forgetting is not something that's been imposed from above. it's something that people have taken part in. they have cooperated and collaborated and polluted with the forgetting because it isn't convenient to remember what happened in 1989. in beijing or changzhou or anywhere in china and there's no benefit to remembering. in fact it's a very large price to pay.

i'm just going to tell you one last story about an artist that i met a man who was not in tandem and square in 1989. he was very sympathetic to the students and at that time he was in his hometown. when he heard what happened, about the deaths in beijing in 1989 he said it was almost as if he had lost his mind. his senses took leave of him and he did this very very drastic act. he took a meat cleaver and he cut off his own little finger as a protest. and for years he used the image of his mutilated hand in his artwork. he had a whole series of portraits with his hand holding

pictures of a younger more innocent self which he called myself. but now everything has changed. 25 years have passed and he has a child, 12-year-old boy. i asked him, what do you say to your son? what do you tell him about what happened to your finger? and he said well, sometimes i tell him that i left it on the bus. ..

it lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. does that really matter anymore? and i would argue yes it does matter. it matters because history matters. in history matters so much to the communist party, the chinese government ayer willing to spend all this money and manpower would just want to find out what just happened to her farm. so it is not just at the top. the memory, which is the most personal space inside your own head, but it has become a political space and people have allowed that to happen. they've allowed themselves to become party to state-sponsored amnesia.

as one visitor bro, a massive secret has become a massive vacuum. the crimes of the state are slowly being replaced by the cards of silence or not is the crime in which almost everyone is complicit. thank you. [applause] so we have some time for questions if anyone has any questions. we have a microphone that does front, so please come down. >> five. so, i grew up with the same that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. and i was wondering, do you think that the chinese will keep

a history knowing that we have not learned about tiananmen? >> it is a good question because this is not the first time that this has happened in china. there have been cycles of process. there were killings in tiananmen square in 1914. 1919 and the 19 primates. also this event passats in 1987. so these cycles to repeat themselves kenda pablum for the governments that is is that the events of 1989 are forgotten, dead in the last end of 1989 would also be forgotten. if you stop people from talking about what happened to him and they won't realize how the

government put down the process. so this is a major danger, yes. >> i've always enjoyed your reporting on npr. i'm wonderfully leather protest to china after writing this book? >> i don't know. i don't know. i was on fellowship last year, so i didn't try to go back and i haven't tried to go back since. i said i'll be able to go back sometime. >> journalism of this caliber often requires a great deal of courage. i'm most familiar with the philippines that is the most numbers of journalist deaths in the last hundred years or so. how often are your work there that led to this presentation did you fear for your life as opposed to or appear that you would be jailed personally. obviously you were very concerned about the people you're interviewing that they could jailed or worse.

could you describe that in a little more detail? >> i never feared for my life. i was most worried about the people that i was talking to. as a foreign journalist in china, in most cases the worst that happens is you might get deported and china has deported more journalists of the last couple of years or refuse to give them the those that may have been a very long time. so i wasn't concerned for my life, but i was very nervous. you know, once people started talking to me and telling me the stories that haven't really been told before, once i realized also very trusting me to tell their stories. these are stories they would not really able to tell. people who live in china couldn't really tell them or publish themselves. they were trusting me to tell these stories. i really felt that it was my duty to do that and to make sure

that these stories were told. so i was nervous about not being able to do that to the extent that they know today. and i was nervous about the possible consequences for the people that i was talking to a child because you know, it was very difficult to judge because are also, i was talking to people well before the book came out and you couldn't tell what the local climate would be like when the book did come out. and then they fear when the crackdown was so intense it was, you know, much worse than it has been in previous years. it was a matter of great concern for me. but i never worry that much about my own life. for man safety. >> thank you. i was an exchange student in beijing. as they were saying, hindsight

is 2020. looking back, he begged in the last appears to leave the square of the original plan was to leave the square once they got to the statue was made public, but due to some odd decision making a minority wanted to stay and they stayed in the crack that occurred. looking back at tiananmen square demonstrated more or less like a whole commune or buses were running, businesses where open. any government would do before they started cracking down. looking back to the situation, the 11 billion peasants who were basically not aware of the protest was 100 million. the web with 1 billion peasants is how the communists came or

perhaps looking back it could be accomplished with your own personal feelings i'm not? >> i mean, first of all you have to remember they were extremely young. they're 18, 19, 20, no experience whatsoever of political participation. yes, they were naïve. yes, they make mistakes and they have no-frills trust either. as many different factions of students. they really, you know, argued a lot between themselves and they really didn't -- some factions didn't know what each other were doing. so yes, they were naïve and they made mistakes. but i think that does the team that they are necessarily -- the the government passed with delta fit in that kind of way. there were many other kinds of ways of dealing with protests.

the way in which it was dell, sending him 150,000 troops, opening live fire on unarmed protesters was designed to send a very distinct message and not message was found. >> okay. have you ever read the book fragile superpower by season trades? i think it's a very good vote and tells congress leaders think. i don't understand why the communists did what they did come they did, read that book. it's a very good to hear >> yes, a very good. i second that. >> high, when you open, you mentioned he spent the early parts of your research talking to students at universities and i was wondering if there are any studies you know of that are more formal research of people's awareness of tiananmen. i know would be really challenging, but is there anything out there that exist? >> if there's anything out there, i couldn't find it.

it's incredibly difficult to do this kind of research, even for foreign academics if you want to go do research in china, you would be sponsored by some kind of chinese academic institution and they would search you not approve of this kind of research. i think we have seen a move away from covering topics such the chinese government might deem is controversial because a lot of academics to worry about getting blacklisted and it has happened. there was a case a few years ago were 13 academics were not given the events because they had contributed to a book by uighurs in northwestern china. i think it is a very large obstacle to try to carry out a study like this if it has happened, i looked hard. i couldn't find anything. >> hi. i recently read this book, the

man on mal's race. i don't know if you've read that book, but it was really interesting that it was turkmen are and i'm sure i am corrupting names and pronunciations, but what is so interesting to me with you with ivy league educated here in the intensely wanted to go back during the revolution and he did. in the book is so slow to realize the harm that was doing as well as the good until he personally was affected. pms have been the main diplomatic interpreter during the korean war. what was really interesting to me as he ended up in london as a diplomatic came back to visit during tiananmen. his account of that is you know, he got so scared from the mall that he saw violence he really in the book says he sort of went

away from tiananmen and he was sort of villainize back in london. i guess the point i want to make about it is he really had a schism. this i.t. with such that the deputy invasions, their perception of the korean war, so many harm done into the chinese effect that his passion for revolution and i think that all the harm that mao did in this discussion then sort of carried on. nac is the national diplomat that can run away from the problem, i wonder how foreign students today, what about chinese today who are common or educated in this country and learn about tiananmen from the western respect theirs. heavy dell didn't do that is all? do they try to carry the stories back or how did they react to that? >> yeah, it is a good question because there are increasing numbers of chinese students in the u.s.

i think more than 200,000 now and the students they suddenly have access to all this information. it is interesting, some students are really very interested. i taught at a number of universities now. i've talked to chinese study departments and student organizations and it is often the case with chinese students will -- they will want to ask russians to play because of a looking at the other chinese student and they will be nervous. but at the end, they will come up to me and asked a question and i'll be very, very interested. you've also i think it another another -- there is another quite different response from some students because the way history is taught in china would make such great years of the

humiliations, the hundred years of humiliation. it does mean that a student in china has really had this imprinted on their psyche and they're really quite nationalistic. when they hear these other versions of history, which are in the millionaire to them. in some cases they simply don't believe that is true. they think this is, you know, a sort of western of their history that this is all biased. it's impossible. it just could not happen now play in assist another example of the western world and how it is biased towards china. and so, this too is one of the reasons why wanted to write this book because i really wanted the students coming out of china to read something and she read other versions and at least consider the possibility of order to try and break that silence.

thank you. [applause] >> live coverage of the 14th annual national book festival here at the washington convention center in washington d.c. you have been listening to train to talk about her book, "the people's republic of amnesia: tiananmen revisited" and you can see that she is leaving the stage and then about 10 minutes, doris kearns goodwin began her presentation at the national book festival. after that, professor goodwin

will be joining us or we will be joining her up on stage for a live call-in with you. so if you're going to listen to this presentation, think about questions you may have for her and will put those phone numbers as we get closer to that. in the meantime, outside of the history and biography of room, we are set up with their booktv set where we have been all day and we are pleased to be joined now by david treuer. here is a sobering nonfiction book, "rez life." >> mr. treuer, what does it mean to be from the rez? >> great question. even though i grew up on a reservation and i moved back to that preservation for long periods of my life, i didn't have an answer to that. reservations are so complex. i think so crucial both to the rest of the country i didn't

have a good answer. it is an offense lie about the book. >> use the word indian, not native american. >> yeah, this is only me and i'll do myself, but to me, native american indian, i use all three interchangeably just to keep things i see. other people care a great deal, but i don't. >> does it make you more authentic? being from the reservation? >> that's one of the things i put in the boat here there's this perception after native but not for a reservation or if your native from a reservation but didn't grow up really, really hard in poverty, withdrawn and drug abuse, did you or not somehow sensibly made it. that is one of the things i argue against in the boat. i try to show american indian life, reservation life is many things. it might be hired. but it's not just that. reservation lies are simply lies or trauma. reservations are simply basins of suffering, but all sorts of

amazing wings that work and play, politics and language and culture and history and those things need to be noted and remembered. most folks in those conversations focus on what i think of it as a tragedy of our existence. and i can tell you we don't live on a reservation because they thought. we live on them because we love them, we care about them. they are important places, vibrant interesting places in ways that even other native people don't really understand. said this book is really meant to explore a reservations mean for native people and for the country of america. >> host: from your book "rez life: an indian's journey through reservation life," indians make up 2.3% of the land slightly over 2 million up significantly from 240,000 in 1900. first of all, why 240,000?

>> the century, basically after the massacre that wanted me in 1890 -- 1990-91. it happened to look over there, but with large, the turn-of-the-century was the low point for tribes across the country. our numbers were down. our traditional forms of leadership had in many ways been compromised or completely destroyed. culture was under assault through simulation. we had no economic systems in place to replace our travel way of living. it was the low point. it was the worst part of our history i think. since 1900% 1890s and 1900s, we have been climbing out of the whole of history. our numbers have been increasing. we have been consolidating our power, making our government. we've been revitalizing cultural languages and we're on the the rise i have to say.

this is nowhere more keenly felt than an issue of mascots in the discussion of redskins. you know, the team has enjoyed that racial slur in peace for a long time, but now we are powerful enough, our voices are loud enough. we are sad enough to martineau and the days are numbered with the washington red and not is because we continue to exist and we are growing and we are getting stronger. that is counter to the narrative us is disappeared and gone and all that, which is also what i've again. >> you wrote quite a novel. what did you write this? >> i have no ambition to write nonfiction. but after the school shooting on red lake reservation in 2005, sickened by the news coverage of

the shooting, which persisted into train american life as tragic, as necessarily tragic, as inherently tragic. the school shooting really brought that home at ross sort of the story of the tragic indian and made a sort of broadly national and very timely. and i went to morgan, intricate and an grove press and i said i'm sick of that story. i'm sick of that way of telling the story minimize. and they said so my. let's do a book and i was really, really grateful to him and i've tried to write something that's gone beyond tragedy. so i had to do that in nonfiction. it was really -- the shooting of red lake was personally felt by me. i used to work at that high school and i've got family and friends are my reservation. it's just up the road from mine. i wanted our lives to matter

more than the examples of life gone wrong. >> david treuer, what is your heritage? >> i grew up to the reservation. my mother is chippewa. my father is jewish ram austria and he's a holocaust survivor. he fled at age 12 largely on its own and he was reunited with his parents, but the rest of the family except for a few cousins and aunt and uncle were all murdered in austria by the regime. so i suppose there's a lot in my family since. my father is a man of many lives than he did any, many things in many places before he finally moved to stop the reservation canton high school in the reservation in cass lake, minnesota. he told me just recently we've

been around for maybe 45, 50 years. he was only when he moved to leech lake that he finally felt he had a home. he was rejected in oster yet, rejected in american society, rejected everywhere he went on the reservation he finally felt accepted in the people understood him as a refugee, as a holocaust survivor. we set up shop, raised his first three children bear. he and his wife separated, kids grew up. he met my mother. they were working on the same health care program on the reservation. they were coworkers essentially and fell in love and not the troublesome children they have now. my older brother, myself and my younger sister. >> here is the cover of the book. you talk about that life is not so bad on a reservation for an american indian. but then you include this picture. who is there? >> this is my cousin, my uncle's

son. will be getting out very soon. our lives may not be -- and be -- i may argue her legs are tragic, but they are hard for some of us. my cousin jesse, we might be first cousins. we grew up very close to one another, but he's had it much harder than i have had it. and though we've been in one family comedy of a range of experiences, but jesse would be the first person to say his life is in a tragedy and he's getting out of prison than any plans to make a fresh start and i am really hopeful and i'm really proud of him. >> the indian casinos to vote for reservations. >> well, have corporations been good for america? yes and no, right? casinos are good and bad. of course the multinational corporations are good and bad.

they provide tax revenue and jobs and income and may help, right? casinos provide revenue and income and jobs and infrastructure appears to reservations don't collect taxes from citizen. so we need to build roads and hospitals and housing for the elderly and cools comments that her. we casinos to do that. do they contribute to unhealthy lifestyles? absolutely. do they encourage drinking and smoking waxed sure, definitely. like any big business, they are very complicated. not all good, not all bad, but they certainly change the face of reservation on many, but not all without a doubt. >> how much time do you spend away from your home base at the university of southern california, how much time he spent at leech lake? >> it is kind of lately been about -- i am home about three and a half, four months a year

and in los angeles about a month year. i love my job. i love teaching. i love my students at usc is a great place to teach but i get homesick here so homesick. i love being home at leech lake. so at some point in my life there will be balanced is not. he someday. >> david treuer, here is the book. "rez life: an indian's journey through reservation life." thank you for being on booktv. >> thank you for having me. >> one more event live from the book festival the 14th annual at the washington convention center. inside the history room, you can see doris kearns goodwin is getting seeded. outside, there is still a crowd waiting to get in. a lot of people out here. doris kearns goodwin will be in conversation with david rubenstein at the carlyle group

and one of the sponsors of the national book festival. he's festival. he's the same gentleman who paid for the repairs of the washington monument after the europe quake in 2011. so, this presentation will begin in just a few minutes. after, we will be journeying doris kearns goodwin on the stage, taking your phone calls. as you listen to the program, we'll put the numbers up towards the end and you can die a lan or to eat in or make a comment via facebook. live coverage from the 14th annual national book festival. >> invested in our communities to help our nation go stronger. be a part of the book festival is one of many ways we bring back to life. we've had a great day with the help of our wells fargo volunteers, we have had any full conversation with festival attendees about books, reading, financial literacy and wells

fargo history. speaking of history, we welcome hundreds of people onto our wells fargo stagecoach for a photograph. we also gave away 1000 wells fargo ponies in the heart of why we are here, we read aloud to children and then gave them books to take home. in fact, we gave 2000 books today. [applause] thank you. it is good to get your applause. the kids did seem pretty happy come as a thank you for that. while we are not teaching children to read, we are teaching them to learn to love to read, something all of us in this room likely have in common. dr. seuss said it well. the more you read, the more things he'll know. before you learn, the more places you go. i wells fargo, we say together we will go far. it is now a distinct honor to

introduce, well, it will be affected here, the cofounder and co-ceo of the carlyle group. and the cochairman of the national book festival, board and late there, david rubenstein. [applause] >> we are very honor today to have doris kearns goodwin is our special guest. before i give her background for a moment and start some questions, how many people here have read a book by doris kearns goodwin? okay, all right. how many people have read two books? three books? for? five? six? all of them. okay. how many people are going to buy her book today and get it

autographed? okay. so doris kearns goodwin is obviously a leading presidential scholars. she is a person who has written books on some of the most important president and today we'll talk largely about her new book, "the bully pulpit," which is about teddy roosevelt and william howard taft and a bit about the muckrakers. before we do so, a little more background about her another book she's written. she's of course written works on lincoln, eleanor and franklin roosevelt and a book on lyndon johnson with whom she worked when she was a white house fellow. she is from brooklyn. [cheers and applause] a big fan of the brooklyn dodgers that she wrote a book about them as well. clap back the brook when dodgers don't exist any longer come associate shifted her legions to the boston red sox. [cheers and applause] and she was the first woman to

go into the boston red sox locker room. she is a graduate of colby college, phi beta kappa naturally. later when a white house fellowship and is a white house fellow was assigned to the white house and worked with president indirectly. after she left as a white house fellow, she went to harvard, finished her teaching assignment there. she taught at harvard, got a phd as well and then she began her career after teaching of writing extraordinary books. so i would like to start by asking you this. you have written books about presidency obviously couldn't know. abraham lincoln, teddy roosevelt, franklin roosevelt, john kennedy. if you had a chance to have dinner with on a one of those, you only pick one, who would you want to have dinner with? >> it would have to be abraham lincoln. you know, i keep going people say to you suppose you could have dinner with one of your guys, what would you ask them?

and i know i should ask abraham lincoln, which are done differently about reconstruction had you lived, but i know i wouldn't ask you not. i would just say mr. lincoln, would you tell me the story and if he started telling me a story his whole face would change. his smile would come on. the story might be a funny story. might have been an act, might have a moral, might be a dirty story and i would see him come alive in the idea of this man, abraham lincoln who i thought about every day for 10 years coming alive and soothing his melancholy by telling a story to me would be my favorite dinner i could possibly imagine. >> suppose you had a question to ask one of each of the others. what would you ask of franklin roosevelt? >> i guess of franklin roosevelt it may well be empowered as i just went to the holocaust museum today, i would want to ask you when you think back, is there more you could have done, i understand once world war ii

once world war ii have been, hitler close for a per, but is there more you could've done to bring more jewish refugees to the country before that moment. [applause] >> what would u.s. eleanor roosevelt? >> i think what i would ask eleanor, in fact it happened when i was working on the boat. they were so many times what i felt there what i thought they were such love between eleanor and franklin in as such hurt because he had had an affair so many years before. i would ask her again, just forget that affair. i know he loves you. i would talk to her when i would write the book could just tell her, just remember you are so much better than any other women in his life. just absorbed the fact that you are eleanor and just be closer to him because he was boldly in those years and there was still a present and understandably that separated them from their beds from each other, but made them this incredible part errors. i guess i was trying to tell

her, i know him and i know he wants to be with you more and if you could stay home a little more, i think it would be good. [laughter] >> if you hadn't been a presidential scholar, you would've been a marriage counselor. [laughter] what would u.s. teddy roosevelt? >> wow, these are great questions. i would ask teddy, why couldn't you wait to run for the presidency until 1916? u.n. taft was such great friends. he loves you. you do what you did not dare he not running against him in 1912 that the chances for the republican party would split the democrat would win. why couldn't you wait? i think i know the answer in part he loves being at the center of attraction so much he could bear the knot of power. this is the part of him i leaf like even though i love the fact. his daughter allison said he wanted to be the bride at the

wedding and the court and the corpse at the funeral. had he thought, had he been able to way he would've been president in 1916. he would've been the world war i later and got what he wanted to be the most romantic time, but he couldn't wait. i would say why couldn't you wait? >> how about john kennedy. what would you like to know from him? >> wow, you know i guess this may put me back in the marriage counselor rue because i would say that the presidency is so exciting and it's the greatest job in the world and you've got such talent, why would you ever take a chance by having the them all visit these other women while you were president? it seems to me incomprehensible that it's not an adventure enough to be president. and yet he was an extraordinary fellow. i better stop. i'm about to defend him. >> you obviously would've been a great marriage counselor. so let's talk about lyndon

johnson. how did you actually get a job working for him because most white house fellas don't work for the president of the united states. the usually work in some department. how did you get to work for them? >> there's no question that every part of my career as a presidential historian goes back to lyndon johnson. when i was selected as a white house fellow with the big dance at the white house and he did dance with me. there were only three women out of the 16 white house fellas. but you're right, he could've been assigned anywhere in the white house, but he whispered that i said he wanted me to be assigned directly to him. but then it was not that simple in the months leading to my selection like many other young people i was a graduate student at high harvard. i'd written an article that, the new republic because i was involved in the antiwar movement with the title, how true bill clinton john and from power. [laughter] it came out two days after the dance at the white house so i

was certain he would kick man of the program, but surprisingly he said were her down or per down or for a year enough i can win her over, no one can. i did eventually work for him. not right away. i worked for this fabulous man on the secretary of war in the labor department. once he was on the race who say they should be out of power. i expect to work for me so i ended up staying with him until his presidency was over and accompanied him to his ranch to help an honest memoir. i saw him in the sad last years of his life with nato's legacy had them cut into about he'd been doing such great stocking filler rights in the up and any open up to me and wave he never went up, so we talked and talked and i listened and listened and it was the greatest experience of the world. half of the stories they later discovered were true, but they were great nonetheless. more importantly i developed a certain empathy because i had been so much a judge from the outside on him and i saw what it

was like to be president. i saw what it was like for the joys, i saw the sadness is that it made me forever onward trying to look inside the people that i would be studying for their point of view to understand what they were going through rather than judging them from the outside in and not let them learn from lbj i would like to believe made me the kind of historian i eventually became. >> is it easier to read about people you've never met or easier to read about someone you actually met? >> in some ways it is hard to write lbj having met him because i wanted to be fair to him, but i felt such a tangle of emotions about him. the more you knew him, the more you wanted him to hopefully feel good about what you've read. i still had the antiwar feeling when i was writing the book. i still do there were parts of them. there is a character to be around them at some level i probably loved the person that i got to know. i think there are lots more emotions involved in writing

about him though they were about these other people. in a certain sense once they spent 10 years of abraham lincoln for seven years of teddy and taft or six years with franklin and eleanor, i feel like i am living with them. i'm thinking about them. so that same sense of i feel it to missy and yet i have to withdraw myself so i can understand them and i want to be fair again i want to like them. i think the tables have been there the whole time that nasa makes it so exciting. >> we got an anonymous amount of tension because it's a bestseller, well-written of course it made into a movie. the story a understand is when you told steven spielberg you're writing a book about lincoln county said i won an option you haven't read the book yet. how long did it take to get the book finished? >> that is correct. he was doing a documentary on the millennium of the century in 1999 and i met him a lot with

other historian said he always wanted to make a movie about lincoln. when he found out he started on lincoln, he said she can't all have the first chance and there'll be 20 people lined up to make a movie on lincoln. so while i was finishing chapters, he put to he put to script writers on they did a really good job, but he wanted daniel day-lewis to be a fluke and i did know didn't accept either one of those until finally after i had finished the book, tony kushner came on a murder script and did nothing guess i'll be abraham lincoln. as soon as that happened comest even called me and asked me to take daniel to springfield, illinois to go to the sites. he was coming incognito because they didn't want to announce he was lincoln yet because he wanted time to become lincoln. he becomes the person. who were supposed to even the hotel. he was under an assumed name, but he wanted to go to a bar. we went to a bar and immediately

someone came up to us and offered us drinks. i thought i got a 30 overpeer but they didn't recognize him. it was me they recognize. so we laughed and laughed and laughed. so anyway, we got through it and for an entire year he had me send them looks about clay and webster in the revolution and finally went to hinchman, virginia to see the filming, but he was no longer my friend into which he had been for a year. he was mr. lincoln. you couldn't talk to them as if he was daniel. i didn't get to see daniel again until the awards ceremony started in the premieres so the first one in new york the premier said we had to go to a bar to celebrate, to remember that night before when he was just becoming lincoln. the way of a couple drinks, old cubans, his favorite drink and i only had to yet more than me which is an important part of the story. a few weeks later he won his first award in stephen kamen gave him the award.

incomprehensibly he talked about he rejected the role so long and he finally said yes and it was so great. cedeno gets up and said i don't reject everything. when doris goodwin afscme to go been a streaky weather, i accepted out once. [laughter] was a "wall street journal" reporter there was in the paper next day, so as a, so it's a great adventure. i saw this man walked away like and want only because someone told us he walked like a labor coming off the end of a hard day. he talked with a high-pitched voice we knew because someone told. he had the sense of humor. he told the stories. he was melancholy and i truly felt the lincoln i knew had come to life. >> or book covers much of lincoln's life. were you surprised the movie only covers about four pages of the book on the 13th amendment. we disappointed a small knot was covered or you thought that was

appropriate? >> on the contrary, when he started he had 600 pages and it covered more of the book and then it got down to 500 pages. but they sound and this is not something i could've found. it shows a visual person is different from the wording person i am. they found a story within a story in the story of his political genius in the 13th amendment passed with the larger story i told about his local genius. the person i knew was there. that was what i cared about that lincoln came to life. it didn't matter with this. i could never thought of making it. that was the genius of tony kushner. >> is that there's more books britain. what made you think you could write a book about lincoln would say some and somebody else didn't say in the team of rivals

concept when did that come to? >> to be honest, when i started it was terrified because of the question you're asking. 14 of the books have been written about him and i knew they were lincoln scholars who i'd net who had spent their whole life on lincoln and i was a rookie going back to the 19th century. so it was just because i want to limit them. because it takes me so long i have to want to like the person. i could never write about stalin or hitler. i would want to wake up in a newer wanted to know abraham lincoln but i couldn't figure out how to have my own ankle. at first i thought i'd write about mary and a period so many books about him, but their partnership during world war ii became the team. as they started sending the first couple years i realized she couldn't carry the public side of the story the way eleanor did. somehow luckily it went up to stewart's house, his secretary of state earlier the research

that it's a wonderful museum that is preserved everything about secretary of state's life. ibm to get interested and i read his letters and his wife is away from washington for a year so he wrote her letter after letter and then i got interested in the other guys in the cabinet. changes since antenna while the male cat diaries or letters. so it's probably three or four years into it i realized this is the story i can tell. his relationship with all these guys because they talk about them in a way not everybody else has to they tell me what they felt about each other in a team of rivals became the subject of the book. >> to president obama call you and say i have an idea about a secretary of state. did he say your book influenced him? >> what did happen was when he was running against hillary clinton away behind her i got a

cell phone call and he said hello this is barack obama. i just read team of rivals that we have to talk. he wasn't talking about putting her in the cabinet. he was fascinated a link in the emotional intelligence. how was he able to forgive stanton who humiliated him when he was a lawyer and bring them into his cabinet? i would be able to not let reset bit faster? so we talked about that and he had read the book and then he read it again at what happened he finally won the nomination reporter said would you really be want to put in your inner circle a chief rival even if his or her spouse for an occasional pain in the and he then quoted lincoln and fed lake and said this is a type of pero i need to start with the most able people to country. when he put hillary clinton in the cabinet, the luck was this is years after the book has come out that the term team of rivals became a term for what he had done and she teased me when i

saw hillary right before the nine duration. she came up and came up in figure was possible possible for my being secretary of state. [laughter] >> so when you write a book, do you do all your research and then write it later or do you do little research and write research and how do you do this? was the process for you? >> it is research and write, research and write. i remember in college i read arbor top guns of august. for me as a woman to read that incredible account of world war i by a female historian, she became a mentor she became my mentor and away. she once wrote an essay i took to heart when i started writing. she said you have to be careful when you're researching not to research too much or go get paralyzed. you will have all the stuff and you have to start writing when you've begun researching and she also said technology is the spine of time the story and i

believe that. academics a lot of times can read a story, but then they know so much that they stuff stuff into it that they only knew later. what she said his only tell the story from the point of view of what the people at the time knew. because everything i write is chronological, i really can research the beginning and write the beginning and then research more and keep going until their going until her life comes again. >> said you read in the daytime or night? what do you do to relax after you write? how many pages can you write a day? >> i wish i knew. it's the research that takes most of the time. say 10 years of work, probably would've been six or seven research compared to the writing. i wake up early. i love early mornings. i've always been a morning person. i was a night person a single, but once you have kids you can't be a morning person and a person. my husband doesn't wake up until

7:00, 7:30. i wake about by the clock and i've got to an hours before breakfast is called and he is a writer, too. my husband, richard goodwin who just had an e-book come out from his book or member america is now finally an e-book and it's fabulous about his experiences with kennedy, johnson, solar rights movement, said he's writing one part of the house and i write another and work until 1:00 or so and then we go to lunch. we go in the town we live in, bring the newspapers which i try not to read in the morning because then i come home and writes more until dinner and every night of relaxation for not going to ball game, with season tickets to the red sox. if i'm not going to a ballgame is to go to dinner where we have a couple local bars in concord reference welcome all of whose kids are grown go together we've made so many good friends there with it are in totally relaxed

and go home and go to bed and do it all over again. >> let's talk about this book. >> i got a terrible letter from a women who said she was loving the book were greeted before she went to sleep that fell on her nose and broke her nose. [laughter] >> you know, 200 pages or so. excellent book of course. well researched, well written. you don't really want to put it down. it's a terrific book. what made you think the world needed another book on teddy roosevelt? why did you think you needed to write one about him and what was the idea -- where the idea come from between past and roosevelt, not relationship? >> i think what happens is it's not when you start to get in the world might need another book about teddy because i couldn't have answered that question again at the start. but i knew i wanted to live with

him. given a seminar at harvard and i was young about the progressive era in that time had always interested me, the wonderful era where you've got the robber barons at the turn of the 20th century in the industrial revolution and all his inventions happening, telephone and telegraph is an exciting era and yet also a difficult area because the gap between the rich and the poor were so great and you so great and you had people in in slums of little being done for worker's compensation and then teddy roosevelt comes along as a republican and understands he needs to get the government involved in softening the affects of the industrial order. so i taught him that way 20, 30, 40 years ago when i knew what a great character he was. i knew the air was the one i wanted to go back to. when you go back to a person is not just that you are living with him or her, but you live in that era and i wanted to live in that era. once again, it'd just been a great trilogy by admin or is on

teddy roosevelt so i couldn't just do a biography. i was searching for why can my new angle b. i found early on this 400 letters between teddy antagonized on the run against each other in 1912, but i idea how close friendship has developed an early 30s. i guess i love human relationships. the idea these two men had in such a has friends and eventually ran against each other and felt betrayed and eventually came back. that story intrigued me. >> cincinnati roosevelt crew up in his father died young and then he married someone yet in college who is in kind of didn't marry someone he had known much longer. then his wife more or less after childbirth dies in the same time his mother dies so he goes into a bit of a depression. and then he moves out why sydney

abandons his daughter. how did he abandon his daughter and then he made his famous speech that nixon later used in a light has gone out when my wife died, but yet he never again mentioned that wife to anybody his entire life and he didn't take his daughter back a few years. how do you explain that? >> is a really complicated relationship to the roosevelt had to sadness and death. when his father died when he was a sophomore at harper, he felt then that he couldn't go for it. this is the man who said i was closer to than anybody else in my life and his only way of dealing was direction. he immediately got involved in ames said he would not to think about it. unlike lincoln who said when he lost his 10-year-old son, willie, felt the best way to honor his life was to keep his scrapbooks and every time somebody came in he which of the

palm's willie had. we would share stories because he believed he keep the data lives by talking about them. somehow teddy roosevelt different philosophy webzine got to keep moving forward with something that happens. when his father died he just got involved in activities. when his wife died in the life is gone out, he died he would never marry again, he goes to the badlands and is just on a horse for 10 hours a day. he said finally bit that night because constant activity prevented over thought and then he did come back and eventually marry and have a fulfilling marriage with edith,'s girlfriend and monitor as much as they could've loved anybody. the little girl who was born when his wife died i think represented the dead wife he couldn't remember and didn't want to remember because he had to move forward. it's a terrible thing in some ways. so we did give ally to his

sister for a while but edith, the new wife in old friend brought her into the family. in his memoir he never mentioned the name. and comprehensible and just the opposite of somebody who wants to believe the more you talk about the people you loved, the more you keep them alive, he just had to keep moving forward. when he was ready to go for the roughriders experience of the spanish-american war, he loved edith know much now come of it if she were on her deathbed, you would have to go because that was his mission in life. so there is a hardness in msl is a sentimental side i could never quite figure out. >> explain this. he was a civilian in the spanish-american war goes forward any volunteers to go down there and lead a troop of civilians. how'd that happen? would have no civilians doing that today. did he kind of exaggerate what he did down there and that led to his becoming governor because

of the reputation he developed. without a well-deserved reputation? what was he doing leading a similar group of the mountains? >> in those days you really did volunteer for the army and the lady i was so much less a part of our lives. similarly the civil war. general started out being politicians and then they became generals. so he offered to raise a regiment, which he did. he was under a general at the beginning but eventually when he went up the hill, he did show courage. there is no doubt about that. when he was a child he said he was afraid of everything and the only way to get away from the fear was to do the things you're afraid of. so they are marching up the hill the spanish on the top of the hill being mowed down by bullets because they are going to slow. so he gets on his horse. he's got a red indiana and he moves the true story. he could've been the best target for the bullet and the

journalists there writing about him and eventually they do overtake the spanish. so there was rock urged there. there's no question. but also the fact that what touched the country if you are roughriders and they're both cowboys and add guys in the west and then there's harvard and yale elites. he brought together this motley group and it captured the imagination of the country. >> he gets elected governor, but is targeting seems a little bit to settle on business so they promote him to maybe being vice president under mckinley and then he becomes vice president, but then he didn't enjoy being vice president? what happens to mckinley? >> is being vice president. he was going back to study law. he was so bored. he said at the time you got your being put into a dead end as the vice president was not the stamping point towards the presidency later become.

of course mckinley was shot on september 6 of 1901 and it changes the whole treasure hurry of teddy's life and he becomes the thing he would've always wanted to be, the youngest president of the united states. >> he becomes president at the age of 42. after that time was appointed by mckinley and he was doing a great job fair. but they admit before and had bonded even though they were different. how did they develop a close relationship with roosevelt was president of what did he do with cast in terms of bringing about iraq's >> what happened when they were both in their 30s for the past was solicitor general and teddy with civil service commissioner, they moved near each other. their children were the same age and the use to walk to work together all the time. it's a wonderful thought of the pictures somebody described teddy walk it with all this energy, taft even then listening to teddy who is much shorter and

much more energetic, but they developed in part because they saw in each other the things they didn't have. past telling teddy the fighting spirit might not have had. teddy saw a teddy saw it pass the person everybody loves. he was so kind and so gentle and so good and when he did become governor general the philippines, the very job he wanted, he definitely would've given up the vice presidency in two seconds to become general of the philippines. taft did a good job. they kept writing letters and he finally brings him back to his cabinet as secretary of war as his most important counselor and he becomes really the closest person to him during his president the and when the time comes yesterday about the presidency because he had promised in 1904 after becoming the first term of mckinley then he wins a second term which would've been two full terms almost that he won't write again in 19 away.

he would have cut out his tongue to not make that promise because he wanted to stay in the job. instead he has a successor, taft, he thinks groomed for the job and he's given them all sorts of advice. don't play golf. it doesn't look good to the working class. don't get on a horse. you weigh 350 pounds. it's not good for the horrors. [laughter] incredibly the song at the time which makes no sense was get on a raft with taft. it would be a rather dubious proposition to get on a raft with taft. he was so happy when he won, thinking this is my guy. he will carry up and make us see. then he goes to africa, comes back and begins to question whether taft was the right person to follow him. >> so he goes for about a year. he left his family to go to africa and what did he do in africa? >> you shooting game. a game hunting -- yet all these hobbits of the time he was done partly because he was asthmatic so he became a birder. he later became a hunter.

he wrote books. yet more energy and vitality than anyone i've ever written about. so he is collecting things for the smithsonian, but mostly he went away because he knew he had to do some to take away the loss of the presidency. he loved that job every moment of every day and he had to somehow have excitement and that is what africa matters than it. >> the muckrakers you write about were very influential with roosevelt in a talk to them, listen to them for advice, responded. they supported him, but they turned on taft debate. do you think they're turning on taft is why he turned on taft? >> what happened when teddy was president, what he understood, the one in taft didn't understand, which is the president the past had he defined the word, a bully pulpit to educate the country in the most power in a way the