lynching. polly -- polly when she graduated from howard at the top of her class like her male peers had expected to be able to go to harvest. all her male peers had all of those decorated as she. she was not allowed to go because she was female. and she ask -- she didn't really direct eleanor but told her how fair this was and eleanor leaned on franklin who was a graduate of harvard college to inquire. and he did. he wrote that it's not clear to me if you see the letter, and i have this -- i have an excerpt of it in the book that is not clear that

franklin cared about this as much as eleanor did. [laughter] in fact, his letter is almost kind of facetious. i think he said something like the president was like he said ma'am, i don't mean to -- i don't you to think you have to develop, build a new dorm for this young colored lady or something like that but when you get a chance get a dean to write about this situation. well, he was going through the motions because eleanor was leaning on him in pol polly behf so she didn't get to go. she went to the university of california berkeley. but she did -- she did act. you know, she tried to move things where she could. >> okay. there's another case i'll mention of 50 soldiers, still

i'm sorry, seamen who were court-martials and polly field it was unfair. covering the case of the los angeles sentinel and feeding eleanor material about it and eleanor was pressing fdr to do something. >> this -- whether another place where they interacted with one another had to do with crossing between civil rights and human rights. in some way polly are really shape the civil right legally. she was so prop foundly involved in that and eleanor like wise on human right struggle and both of them use others language in other words eleanor often talked about human rights beginning at home here in the united states and in the same way, i think polly was the first person

within the government to ever do assessment of u.s. human rights compliance, domestically and that was like 1947 or something like that. [laughter] yoim, way ahead and the two of them, i wonder just did you find this space where they were both working in between everybody else that gave them a way where they found company? >> i can remember it's -- polly second year of law school. your question makes me think of this. i don't know if this is -- this is an answer. but in 19 -- this is the second year of polly's law school so this is like 1941, the war is going on. there's this international student assembly. this meeting in washington, d.c. there's students coming from all over the world. we have students from allied

nations there. polly and some young radicals from the law school at howard are delegates. and eleanor is determined that the students who were from the allied nations feel welcomed, feel supported. they get special treatment. they get to spend the night in the white house. but polly and her group and it's not just the students from howard. there are other radical and progressive fight students working with them to raise issues about the allies, behavior in other places in the world. polly in her group, they're upset about what's happening in india because of nationalists. they're worried about what the russians are doing. and they want to raise these questions. and it's so interesting to me because they developed and this is in the book. they drop a list of resolutions

that mirror the language mirrors some of the language you see eleanor speak years later. but at this particular moment eleanor is rounding up. she corners polly at a white house picnic to try to convince her not to move forward with these resolutions because it will upset the allies. and polly doesn't back down. the resolutions go forward. they're not approved. but the group stays together. the assembly doesn't because one of the things we're worried about is this will make allies upset and students will leave and it will fracture that doesn't. that's an important moment for polly too because what it says is -- this is another i think important part of the story. this notion of civil dialogue. we need that. the importance of being able to

have difficult die and maintain a relationship whether we're talking on the individual level in terms of friendship or whether we're talking on a country -- on a nation state lfl or whether we're talking institutional. so i begin to see this rehearsal between the two of them about how to deal with differences and in this question, the differences have to do, polly it's the young radical that this group at st. louis yelling human riewghts, human rights. allies are not behaving well and eleanor saying shsh -- one last question. >> before i invite you all to come upstairs and buy this book and us for a reception i want to say not to sound presumptuous

but eleanor wouldn't she be happy about this conversation in her home? thank patricia and mel painter for really enriching discussion. please join us june stairs. u thank you. [applause] ♪ >> when i tune in on the weekends it is authors sharing of their new releases. watching the nonfiction authors on booktv is the best television for serious readers. on c-span they can have a longer conversation and delve into their subject.

booktv weekends. they bring you author after author after author. that spotlight the work the fascinating people. i love booktv and i'm a c-span fan. >> author nick adams if you read your book, i think it's safe to say that you love america more than anybody else in the whole world. >> love america it's the brightest country in the history of the world. the constitution is the best political document ever written in the united states marl is the great greatest evil against evil. when i'm to america i'm taken by boldness, excitement, individualism and that needs to be preserved. there's no place like america -- >> people listening are wonder why somebody? america loves somebody so much. >> a simple question what is good for america is good for the world when america is strong,

world is strong. when america can weak world is didges and that's not a nick adams hypothesis but reality that we're living right now. and that's why every single person no matter what you do, who you are, what color you are, what your sexual orientation is everyone has investment in keeping america as robust and powerful as possible. >> when you did you come to u view point? >> i all of my life was drawn to the united states. i was one of those people you know arnold schwarzenegger whole tradition of people around the world who have this inexplicable design to get to the united states. and it's something i think that the nrpg energy in america, the opt o mism, the feeling that anything is possible. that that is the land where imagining can truly happen and that's really what i kind of

subscribe to and i have to tell you i have never ever been disappointed. this is the country where anything is possible. i think that this is still the land where anybody can rise above the circumstances of their birth and go on to achieve whatever it is that they want to achieve and that is an el implant and beautiful principle and one that we've got to preserve for as much and as long as possible. title of your book is retaking america indicating that we're doing something wrork. >> political correctness is behind every single problem in america today. whether we're talking about open borders, diminished america and police wearing their own handcuffs declining educational standard and inability to defeat the islamism that is rampaging throughout the world right now. all of those things are rooted in political correctness and those solutions to those o problems can't be implemented

because of political correctness so i think there's no greater impairty than crushing this total and intellectual tyranny that is unamerican, anti-american, to the foundation principle of the united states. and i think that right now people are just sick and tired of being accused of microaggressing and trigger warning and not knowing the 77 different genders and being accused of being a racist in chicago -- and i think that people just have had enoughful these moral and intellectual -- these pixies that have slns and one of four forces into conformity. america has always been about confidence, identity and individualism.

and everything that political correctness firmly has in the cross hairs. >> what's one was real life xaferls you use in your book? >> lots of examples. i've lived it. i'm an australian and i've seen what political correctness has done it my country and done to england and in england now it's really nottage exaggeration to say that you can't even look at somebody the wrong way. that is the trend and my book is a portion message to americans to be aware that i have the future and i'm here to tell you that you ain't going to like it. and you need to arrest the problem. you need to really punch this cultural and you can't stop. because if you are done, then we're going to end up in a situation where america will

simply become belgian and become another european country. and that's not what we want. we want america to become the world and become the rainbow in the world cloud. we want america to be the refuge, the people all around the world that want to blaze a trail that want to take a risk. other o countries are are wonderful if you want to characterize. but if you really want to do something different, if you want to take a risk, there's no country on earth like mirk. and initiative, confidence and risk further here in the united states than anywhere else and that's why america has a beautiful idea that transcends geographic identity. >> when you take that to australia what do aussies say? >> grateful for americans ruling the world. i know that we're very proud that we are the only country to

have put along side the united states and every single military conflict. since the beginning of last century and we have that distinction because brits didn't go to vietnam and that's something that we're proud of, and i think there's a lot of connection between america and australia, and i think that there's a lot that -- we can really take from australian example an give to america and i want america to be a very special place that remain the special place in the scene and not let ideology dilute that strength and that power that america has always had. >> nick adams retaking america crushing political correctness is the name of this latest book. if you love america, you have political correctness, this had is the book for you. >> booktv continues now with peter ross range. in his book 1924, he takes a

look at the year that defined adolf hitler ideas and led to his political rise in germany. >> hello and thanks to everybody for coming indoors on a beautiful winter day. you probably had to stop at the girl scouts cookie on the way in. but at least you're in here. thanks a lot for coming. i handed out a timeline before we started to give you a little bit of a sense of why i chose to write about 1924 i don't know if there were enough to go around. you can maybe share them. if you tack a look at that, you see we're talking about the early pured of hitler's political life. not the third, the war and holocaust but first 14 years leading up to his seizure of power 1933 this pored was 14 years long that was coincident with the republic almost and

started one year later and it breaks marls into two big parts. first part as you can see there's the revolutionary part, first four years up in 1923, and second big part is the 8 year starting in 1925 sort of the long march to power the elect electoral period and referred to as legal pured. the first four years he was trying to gain power e illegally through legal means more or less. not counting the street fighting. between these two periods lies, 1924. in any research i noticed that 1924 to me seemed to be a neglected feared of hitler saga, and on top of that, i noticed that it seemed to be a very important period when hitler ark political ark shifted. it shifted from being a

revolutionary to a patient political player, he had time in prison to reflect only o the arrow of his ways, and on the fact that he was probably not going to be able toe persuade military to join him in acue and had to figure out some other way to gain power and he said to one of his -- friends in prison, outvoting them will take longer than outshooting them but at least the result will be guaranteed by their constitution. he was very clear about using the democratic process to arrive at an undemocratic end. he said another point, we will participate in parliament for the purpose of taking it and destroying it. these things were not secrets and when i began this research, i was surprised by some of the things i came across. i had no idea for instance, that the tempted put in november of 1923 was such a close run thing.

this was not ara event and beer hall they were usedded political meetings especially at that time. but for a few tactical errors hitler might have succeeded a lot more than he did. he might have at least taken bavaria or o taken berlin is uncertain. but a few things went wrong and as you know ended and gunfire on the following day, an hitler was almost killed. another one of the many what ifs along way of hitler biography that could have change haded history but man next to him was killed instead. another surprise to me ftion that hitler had threatened suicide three times. during the night of the push. and another surprise was that he tried suicide even as he was being captured two days later when he got into prison. 38 miles west of munich and luns

burg he went into a suicidal impression and recourse was suicide by starvation. he staged a hunger strike for ten days until he is finally talked out of it. and then a period of reflection and sort of a 40 days night in wilderness period in which he wrote a 60 page document which is is lost to history but we know he did did it. through certain things that came out in his trial which was kind of a runup of to both his trial speeches and to the writing of mine comp and during this feared of two and a half months he regained his mow joe speak and in his case -- it was a savior complex, he believed he could -- he was the only one who could save germany and began to regain confidence which had made him a dictatorial leader of a party in

the first place. i was also surprised to learn at the trial in the fourth month he had been allowed to make a four hour speech that rivetted the courtroom. the judge felt he had to let hitler have a run of the courtroom for a variety of complicated reasons which are saw explained in the book, and then at the end of the trial he made another two and a half hour speech, and in between he was up and down quite a bit in german court procedure then and now that defendants are allowed to question witnesses. and hitler did so to the point of driving one of the most important witnesses right out of the courtroom a lieutenant general. i was also surprised to learn that hittler written and not dictated it but he wrote it on a remington portable typewriter made one month earlier in new york.

and it was given to him by a wealthy patronnist in berlin the wife of a piano manufacturer named next time right. thank you jerry. he had so many patron and patronnists it'shearted to keep up sometimes, and wrote in four and a half months i didn't know until i got into this that there are two volumes though you buy a one volume book and i'll show you one in a few minutes. and that another big surprise was that hitler almost blew his early release from prison which was crucial to his later career because he lusted so much after a new shiny benz car. that was a benz because mercedes and benz had not combined so interesting surprises for me in early stages of research that

convince me as timeline shows you that there was a book to be written here. let's back up for a second and talk about how it came to pass that hitler staged a beer hall butch. 1923 was the honest aribials of the republic in the whole 14-year period no period was worse than that year in january, french and belgium invaded. hyperinflation and followed by actist resis led to french including execution of german. farmers refused to release their stores because of inflation and people couldn't afford food people went on hunger strookes. german haddings going to hell in a ham basket in the soft way and

political turmoil followed from that political instability to the point that bavaria was almost in a state of mutiny you can say certainly and i do in the book that the -- division in bavaria was in a state of mutiny against the head quarters in berlin. they were looking down their gun barrelses at each other by fall of 1923. a complex political forces were in play i'll explain in chapter three and four which led to the point that hitler felt he had to act or he was going to be outflanked that other forces in german plucks particularly in bavaria might stage acue and steal a march on him. he found an unexpected opportunity just when he was decide he had to act and he planned to have a complex plan or for doing it on saturday and

sunday because half of the cops were off and people sleep late, and it would work out great when he heard that on thursday night thrftion a major speech being held in this big beer hall. [inaudible] that east side of munich that held 2,000 people and held bit civilian head of government a dictator at that point. it's complicated but it's explained in the bock. and along with him would be the two military heads was government at the time. the triumph under one roof, at one time, easy to grab and that's what he did. so that's why the beer hall, that's why they started in a beer hall rather than originally planned in the traditional wail of taking over the police station and the radio station and stuff like that in the middle of the night. so hitler marches in. fires his pistol to the ceiling, and takes the place by storm.

convinces after a while these three men that they have to join him in his crew and his plan for a march on berlin. idea for a march on berlin comes from the mussolini model by rome. and connected to the revolutionary style of pasha who staged his revolution in turkey from outside the capitol he declared a new government, and rather than face the existing government, the government head on in noble istanbul and it work sod hitler had that in mind starting revolution outside the capitol was part of his molds and he openly copied in that regard. but in the course of the night, his come rated comrade in arms goofed, and he let the triumph

go. they've been taken hostage by hitler. he let them loose in the middle of the night under words of honor as officers. very much of a word of honor counted for everything but these guys as soon as they got out, of course, they turned code again and hitler cue failed. and the middle the next day he decided they had to play their last card which was to attempt to attract popular support by marching u through the center of munich and they figure if they can get upis rising going that would turn the tide the other way, in fact, as they march through the the city, they did get a lot of support. people were cheering them and they were jeering the police and bavarian state forces which were trying to control them. in the end, however, they came just to the orr side of the center of town to the odeium

square and there was a corner of bavarian state who went into the kneeling position. ordered him and his men to stop and they didn't. police fired, the result was 15 of hitler's men were killed. four policeman and one bystander, and that then led to -- hitler's capture two days later and his time in prison. his time in prison is very interesting. mark mentioned the whole business of prisoners hardening beliefs in prison under hard time, in fact, in this case, hitler hardened belief under soft time. germany had then a form of imprisonment called honorable imprisonment except they call it fortress arrest but that word is confusing, you best forget it. there's a picture in the book which shows you why it was by no means fortress where he was imprisoned but that was the name in german but under this form of arrest prisoners had rooms that

were like dorm roomses or sort of, you know, junior college dorm rooms maybe. they had open doors all day. they had four to six hours of outdoor time every day. they could wear their own clothes, about and they got better food than the rest of the prisoners in the prison which held 500 other regular criminallen mates. it was during this time, however, that hitler had a lot of time to read and talk. and walk around this the garden you'll see a picture of him in the book walking in the garden with one of his pals looking a little porky. in his later hose and shorts welcome and this was because hitler got a lot of visitors more than 350 during his 13 months in prison. many of them women. and many of them, all of them really baring gunfightses and gifts were often not a play for famous sweet tooth, and the famous german or baked goods. pastries, and he put on some say

up to 10 pounds while he was in prison. and any case he it use this time for reflection, and then when he regained his mojo as i said earlier keep in mind this is extremist. crazy what we regard as a crazy guy. and in his case that meant concurring the the world. he had a -- openly declared mission complex, and he just began writing grands thing and making grand speeches. ...

conversation, him talking in monologue. there's a -- later in the 30s and 40s call table talk. that story, there's another reasonable speculation that he needed the money. we know he needed the money. he wrote one letter saying my lawyers build make my hair stand on end. but i think the main reason was the man needed to talk. he had an audience of only 40 other guys. his fellows who are also convicted of their activities in the -- and that's not a big enough audience for a guy like hitler. he wanted to write this book and in addition he wanted to legitimize himself in the eyes of the world. this this is a guy who dropped out of high school, never got any kind of degree or diploma in anything. he was rejected for the arts

academy in vienna. even though he clearly was extremely widely read, very smart, a quicker mind than many people in most rooms, all widely eclectic command of data and information and a famously strong memory. even though he he had all of that, he had no credentialing. so he unloaded it all in this book which he wrote furiously for four and half months. they said i give him tea and tribe in the morning, the reports from him that hitler is banging away. i queried that a little bit with how did the other guys put up with it and the answer i got back was remember, most of these guys were soldiers in world war i. that is a huge shaping element in this that i have left off by the way. world war i, without world war i there is no hitler. i think most historians would tell you.

so they were used to early-morning activity and early-morning noises as soldiers. then he would often work until midnight for which she had to pay a fee to keep the lights turned on since the curfew was at 10:00 p.m. everyone else had to turn the lights off at 10:00 p.m. but he was able to keep his on until 12 if he paid a little fee. from time to time he would report to the book of has that's where the myth arose that he dictated the book the hess. others show that it was impossible for him to have it dictated this and that the whole legend started with one prison guard citing one moment when he heard hitler's voice coming through the closed doors of

hess's cell. maybe it was hitler sell come either way they're both in that room. so he said hitler is dictating to hess and that stuck with us for 65 years before it was knocked out by better research. what he was doing was reading to hess, if you examine the hess letters you find out that hitler made a habit of reading to hess. has became a sounding board. hess was by comparison but most of the guys in the prison was an educated man. he he came from an upper family, raised in egypt, his father was a big merchant. so they had this back-and-forth and then it gets kind of complicated. he and has have a falling out and that's in chapter ten i think. hitler is finish this book by about september, starting in late april. he is looking for a publisher, there is a little bitty war that he ends up going to a nazi publisher who had no money at

the time. it turned out to be a good decision. he turned on the other authors he had. by keeping it in the family so to speak he became a rich man. the book book sold 12 million copies before he died. at the same time hitler had been looking out his window a lot, he was on the second floor. i was there a there year ago this month in fact. the bars of the same, you'll see a pitcher of him standing by the window twice. nothing has changed about the cell that way. the inner wall is all gone. it's just a big open room now. but the outer walls and windows are the same. from this window you can see over the prison wall. because it is on the second floor. he can see cars going back and forth, few hundred yards away there was an important road connecting the next town. he was a sucker for beautiful cars. even though he was anti-modernist in many ways he did have a weakness for technology, in particular cars. he he had his heart set on getting a new car and probably a

chauffeur by the time he got out. he started haggling with the local benz dealer even though he had no money. the local local bands the dealer happen to be on the same street as the nazi newspaper in munich,, it came to visit him in prison in september and they talked about whether he needed the 40-horsepower 50 horsepower, what color and whitewall tires. the. the guy left in hitler quickly wrote him a letter saying please take at this to the top where the headquarters are and see if you can get me a discount. i have lawyer bills and 20,000 marxist too much. all of. all of the stuff. like any one of us, and any dealership on rockdale, here is the future head of the nazi party who is on the same typewriter that has just written and he is haggling for a deal on

a new benz. but, he needs to get this letter and the guys guys hands on monday, they were meeting on saturday, anyway the only way to make it fit was to smuggle the letter out. mail in europe as many of you know auburn was delivered on the same day in those days. so he got it in the mail in munich on monday morning the guy would have it by monday night. that was the only way to catch them before he went to the headquarters. this letter made it but some other things happened that exposed the smuggling. because of of that, hitler's plan release at the end of september was stopped. there ensued a dramatic two and half month court struggle with the prosecutor trying to do everything he could to keep hitler behind bars and another one of the great what if's. the prosecutor as well as the munich police put forward all sorts of arguments about why

hitler should not be released or at the very least you should be deported to austria, which under the law he should have been in any case. for having staged a coup attempt even if he had not been convicted he should've been deported. after about a three month back-and-forth, should i give give it away, yeah, they let him out. that then was one more steppingstone that propelled hitler quickly back into the political stream of things at a critical time when he could then restart the nazi party. he remade in his own image and very much under his own thumb. now, i want to go quickly to one other thing, many of you have heard about the republication of blank -- in germany. about a week ago stories circulated circulated that it had become a bestseller in germany.

this happens to be true. it's a very unexpected bestseller and my dear wife is passing out some documents, they're not enough to go around so it may be other person could keep one which will help you understand what i'm about to explain. the book was published by an academic institution in german germany by the first time in 70 years because the copyright finally ran out. the bavarian government could no longer block the republication of mein kampf. the fact that it has come a bestseller was taken by many of first glance a bad sign. does this mean they're not see -- again? what about the rise of anti-immigrant feelings in the last few months and the backlash against the immigrant wave in the refugee wave? i see just the opposite. i think it is a good thing and i will explain it with a prop here in a second.

bear with me a second. okay. this is mein kampf, this is the two volumes in one book, 782 pages, this is a fairly typical book jacket that was used at the time, although there were more than 1000 printings. the covers changed a lot of things change. this is a very typical looking version of it. this is the one i used in 1943, people's addition. this is what i call now the old mein kampf.

this, is the new mein kampf. remember when ronald reagan did that with the budget? 12 pounds. 6 pounds each. this is volume one. that's volume two. or the other way around. and what this is, it's a totally academically annotated version of mein kampf. this is 1966 pages long. the footnoting and annotations as you can see on the sheet outnumber hitler's words by a long shot. the way it has been organized is compared to the talent. dan mcminn at the museum responded to my attention to your half ago. in fact inside this file and there's a picture of of an old bible. as you see from the highlighted

section, those are hitler's words and then all of the rest is the commentary. that one is not even, that example which they posted online, here's an example that had has even more footnoting, in some cases it goes over to another.. if three have pages of footnotes to go with this much text. if you look at the talma and you look at the front of the book you'll very much see that it is very much like an old bible. just to wrap up quickly hear what this thing has done in my opinion is that they have destroyed mein kampf. now i say this having spent quite a bit of time with this new version. for small you cannot read the damn thing because you're always being interrupted. one small page had seven footnotes which takes 20 minutes just read the footnotes. this is all in german by the way.

english translations will come. in a while. the first two pages, for example of a nation and race, than most notorious chapter in the first volume of my comp has 15 footnotes. the footnotes run up to 100 - 250 words. this is the. this is the real deal. the footnotes have footnotes. i don't want to be overdoing it here but this is scholarly work. the question still remains, will first of all no self respected neo-nazi would buy this thing, right right? why? you can get the real thing, the pure hitler for free on the internet as a download. when you try reading hitler with all these interruptions of footnotes you do not get hitler. you get this broken up thing which is totally deconstructed because they showed the context, they show the lies, half-truths,

and all of these things which make it impossible to get with the flow of hitler. so i think my time on this has run off but i think you for listening and i will take some questions [applause]. so it is showtime, we are on c-span. i hope we have some curious voices. >> i will be first. i was was reading your acknowledgments and i am always amazed on these hitler, world war ii books, just the incredible amount of research that has to go into it. i noticed you mentioned a graduate student who had been your research assistant. could you talk to me about the role of your research assistant, how you found this graduate student, what they actually did for you? >> thank you. i started off by query the institute for contemporary

history for recommendations of an intern. or somebody an assistant who could help me. this one came through because this grad student had already been working for them for a while. she actually was a canadian, not a german, but she is totally fluent in german. she was just finishing her masters in german and turned out to be a great find. the best single thing she did for me was reach out there hurt network to a historian who then told us about a book over here which turned out to be a 500 page, two-volume scrapbook of clippings from hitler's trial. let me just say, it came as a huge stunning surprise to me that nobody has ever written a book about this trial. it's one of the most important trials in history really when you consider the consequences. plenty of people actually said that at the time. no book book in german, no book in english, and you have two main sources for this information. one is the trial transcript

which think got some but he put together 20 - 30 years ago. the other is the clippings. if i had to go find all these clippings individually, it's very hard. remember germany is at war, a lot of things are lost. somebody had made a scrapbook. so i have about 500 actual clippings, day by day, by day. there is a press corps more than 60 reporters every day, german reporters every day it hitler's trial. the trial it hitler's trial. the trial was over five weeks, 25 trial days. you can imagine the amount of reporting. it was lovely reporting, bubbly, lively writing. it. it gives you everything the trial transcript does not give you. so i give great thanks for that still. >> in anyway did you write this book is a cautionary tale? tale? not to mention any names. >> well, i started two years ago

so i could not first see what would be happening at this stage of the political campaign but i am happy for it to be taken that way. anybody who does any researcher on hitler or any of this. , it's a factor writing of cautionary tale. >> i've read my comp a couple of times over the years, one thing that sticks in my mind is hitler said that no political leader has ever reached the height of his career except for the spoken word. i was wondering, and i had heard him speak years ago and he was a mesmerizing delivery he had. where infected he come up with

that as a concept and also, did he learn any of that? did somebody teach him or how did he come up with that? >> i would say instinctively. that's why he was such a huge success. he did say that, he said no revolution has ever been brought about by writing. he said this in writing. he put it down even as he was doing it. he he did say by the way, i forgot to mention, he called his time in prison, my university education at state expense. this was his dissertation. he had already been making speeches for four years when he was in prison and said that. trying to remember thousand mein kampf are one of his speeches. in my comp he goes on at great length about speaking, and propaganda, propaganda, and it's almost like a handbook for other nazis. he says that over and over again that the spoken word is what makes the difference in the individual personality. he had several rules like that, about the importance of propaganda. they served in paris well for a long time.

>> i want to ask you two questions. first of all, why was the sentence so short? what was the consideration and play their? secondly, do you think of the sentence have been what we would think of as a reasonable length considering what he was trying to do, if he had either been deported or kept in jail for let's say ten years, the hitler we knew would have never materialized? >> first, the the second question is yes. that speculative naturally. most teacher, i'm sorry, the question question is why did he get such a short sentence after he was convicted of treason? the answer to that is he almost did not even get that. the trial was skewed from the beginning by the choice of the judge who was a known right-winger who had already pardoned the guy who

assassinated the former bavarian government who had been sentenced to death and this judge then pardon him and gave him soft time, honorable imprisonment. he had in fact given hitler parole for an earlier crime hitler had committed, basically basically in breach of the peace for bashing the head of an opponent and a beer hall at one time. hitler should have also been convicted of violating his parole but was not. so the pics was in from the beginning by the choice of this judge. at the same time, the bavarian authorities as you will read were bringing their hands about how lenient he was being during the trial. it is a complicated thing, they had a so-called people's court still in operation, this was the next-to-last trial they do before did before they went out of business. it included three late judges,

the judge needed for boats to convict. the lay judges were so taken with hitler and his speeches that they did not want to convict him at all. so the head judge, the right-winger had to convince them that we convince him that we have to do this, you cannot not -- he basically admitted to the deed but he denied the crime. he said yes but it's no crying because those guys are criminals anyway. he called them the november criminals, it was all based on a crime crime in his opinion which was the declaration of or the proclamation of the republic as germany was owing down the tubes in the war. so they agreed to the five-year sentence which was the minimum, five years to life is what he could have gotten. the minimum he was able to get the minimum only by guaranteeing hitler, almost guaranteeing parole in six months.

so hitler lost the trial and won the war. he won the political battle. he lost the lost the legal battle and won the political cattle. the other question was had he gotten ten or 20 years, might he have disappeared from the political landscape? my guess is yes and i base that partly in what others have written. >> mark, can you come up? >> when hitler's anti-semitism became extermination? if you are german in 1934 and bought mein kampf, can you see what was going to happen? >> the answer is no, not the the extermination as part. that is a hugely hotly debated

elements of the hitler saga. no, even after the meeting how much did hitler know, how much did hitler control things? what we can say is if you bought the book it was 1925 when it was published, the first volume in 1926. all six. all you would have seen was a rabid anti-semitism. the line that is often quoted to give a sense of how extreme hitler was, was near the end of the second volume in which he is talking about world war i and what a mess it was, white should not have happened or why it was run wrongly by the existing german government and the kaiser. in course he is blaming it on the stab in the back people and on the jewish proper tears, etc. he says if only 12 - 15,000 of these hebrew, corrupters of these hebrew, corrupters of people had been held under gas

at the beginning, 1,000,000 good german lives would have been saved. well, a lot of people have leapt from that the conclusion that he was going to do gas chambers. but the experts will all tell you they do not believe that. you cannot make that connection. so when he became a extermination is, i don't have the answer to that. it way beyond the time that i studied that's for sure. >> is there a list of books that he read and did he have favorite authors that motivated his thinking? that's a good question thank you. this is another disputed issue in the history. their claims that he read all of these big names, and all sorts

of others in all the classics and their scholars who have not bent down. in their specific ways i address this in several paragraphs in the book, i recommend a book by woman called vienna, hitler's vienna years. then there is a claim by one of hitler sidekicks that hitler had done certain things in prison, that is is also subject to serious scrutiny. hitler claimed for instance to have read every book in a bookshop in vienna, 500 books. so we do not know, we do know that he fudged around a lot and mine come. that and mein kampf. that is one of the things we learned from the annotations. how the convincing sounding stuff was way off for a little off, or they call it in germinal style icing, making it fit to a picture to, but i hate to say

but we do not really have a clear answer to that. on the other hand, through this book in part, this book by the way becomes the footnoted bibliographic version of a mein kampf that hitler never wrote. his book contained zero footnotes, no bibliography, and only three or four, maybe ten attributions in the whole 800 pages the whole 800 pages of where he got an idea. if and when the english version of this becomes available, you will see that a lot of his statements and ideas can be traced back to certain races writers like hk ginter, and the classics like della gard, the middle of the 19th century. so there is, it's a very long way saying there is a small hitler cannon that you can point to but it takes some effort to put it together. >> i have to ask, is the the stretch or are there any

similarities between the extreme things that hitler said and the one that trump is saying now? [laughter] >> i knew i could count on you to bring that up. i'm trying to duck and dodge as much as i can. i'm not covering the campaign so i know about as much as any of the rest of you know. i'm just went to say one thing on this. much has been written, i recommend peter bergen's piece on the cnn website. i was just looking on my file on this topic waiting for you test that question. it's this thick. a month and a half ago there is a flurry of comparisons between comparison of tron to hitler. i have resisted that getting into that because it can be so dangerous to make comparisons to hitler. but the thing thing that strikes me the most about similarities between the two guys is their own self belief. hitler solution to germany was hitler. trumps solution seems to be trump.

then there some other stuff but mainly it is of me, me, me. only. only i can do it, in fact if you look at peter bergen speech you can see more scientific typology of the science on the great man theory. what a messy complex includes and it includes that. anymore? thank you very much. [applause]. thank you we welcome everyone to come to the front. please line up through the last and copies of 1924 are on sale at the back of the register. [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation]

[inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] >> here's a look at some of the current best-selling nonfiction books. according to politics and prose bookstore in washington dc. topping the list, l1 malcolm recalls her creation of the now 3,000,000 member emily's list which works to give a pro-choice democratic women elected to office in, when women win. look for her appearance on author interview program, afterwards in the coming weeks. in 47 days, they provide an account of the deadliest american battle of world war i. up next, president of the brennan center of justice at ny school of law explores the history of voting rights in, the

fight to vote. in the winner of last year's national book award looks at the current state of black america. our look at the best-selling nonfiction books that washington d.c.'s politics and prose bookstores continues with the late neurosurgeon memoir about basing his mortality when breath becomes air. in a a victory, matthew desmond, have a harvard sociologist explores the rising eviction for low-income families. nbc's chief foreign correspondent richard angle reports is 20 years of reporting from the middle east, the major events he is covered during that time in "and then all hell broke loose".

that is a look at some of the current nonfiction bestsellers according to politics and prose bookstore in washington dc, many of these authors have or will be appearing on book tv. you can watch them on our website, booktv.org. >> on sunday, april 3 book tv is live with author and publisher of forbes magazine steve forbes. on in-depth, are live monthly call in show. this forbes has authored many books which focus on politics and economics. in his most recent book, reviving america, he argues for a replacement of the current tax code and repeal of the affordable care act. other recent titles include power and glory. and it compares great leaders of the agent world with modern business leaders. and how capitalism will save us, why free people and free markets are the best answer in today's economy. in 2014, mr. forbes appeared on book tv discussing his book, money. >> the topic of money is very straightforward and simple. even though it it shrouded a lot of jargon, a lot of equations, the

idea of money is very basic. we have gotten gotten away from it. our policymakers today know less about money, monetary policy than they did 100 years ago. >> since the 1970s even those we had booming decades, overall, overall, our growth rate since we went off the system the old gold standard in 1971, the u.s. average growth rate are less than they were before 1971. if we had maintained the growth rate that we had for 180 years up to 1970, if we maintain those after 1971 on average the u.s. economy today would be 50% larger than it is now. >> steve forbes, live on book tvs in depth. sunday, april 3, new-3:00 p.m. eastern. next on book tv, james walsh

uncovers the world of union organizing in his book, playing against the house. >> now want to tonight's festivities. we. we have james walsh here, of course. he is the author of playing against the house, the two medic were 11 undercover union organizer. in the book, the book, a recently released and it has received some glowing reviews to date. james's work has appeared on the websites of the new yorker, esquire, and global posts, he is on the editorial staff of new york magazine, without further ado, ado, please give james a warm welcome. [applause]. >> hello. thank you, thank you for coming. i remember in the summer of

2007i had one of those great, unpaid editorial internships at a magazine near here. now defunct. national geographic adventure magazine. that was the first time i heard about hacking and i remember being dumbstruck to think that somebody could both be a journalist and own a bar. and here i am. during that same summer, i also got to deliver a package to sebastian unger's house, so those who do not know me is a prolific journalist who also happens to be an owner of this bar another thing that happened this summer is the first time someone handed me an ted -- book. it it was about tens of years

spent as a prison guard in sing sing, that was the first book that really got me interested in experiential journalism. some undercover some knots, i have since read all of his books. a few years later i had a job interview with a historian who at the end of the interview asked me to pitch in a story i had heard about friends who were working at hotels they graduated from pretty good schools that was the first time i heard about so i pitch that story to the historian who then had the gumption to suggest that i go

off and i would learn more about the life of writing and working as an undercover union organizer and writing about it than i would ever learn as his assistant. at the time, i could not have been more angry at him because he sort of set me on this trajectory. in fact if you years later i remember standing in the buffet of the casino watching cnn and see in this historian talking about the gulf oil spill and cursing his name, but i am forever grateful to ted and douglas brinkley, the historian who set me off to do this because now i have this book which i'm very proud of [applause]. so this book, i went down to

miami in 2010 after convincing the union that i could be a good salt. that's the act of getting hired at a nonunion workplace and organizing it from the inside. we work pretty diligently to get hired at the targets which were three casinos and once inside we could start making trouble in unionizing and the crux of our campaign was to get to know our coworkers, that was was the most important thing assault could do. in order to do that we would go on socials because people are never really relaxed enough at work to talk about themselves and talk about what makes them tick. and we wanted to understand what made them tick so we would go on the socials. and so then i would take that information and share with my union organizer, alex.

he would eventually go and convinces presented join the committee, armed with the intelligence that i have provided. so that was the basic premise of salting. we will pick it up there, i was working at the time, while i worked at two casinos, 33 different jobs, i worked in a twin spires tavern which was a high-end restaurants in the casino. i worked in the buffet as a waiter, fetching arnold all polymers and i worked as a bartender in another casino. but we will start there. alex, my organizer continue to push me to make friends in the buffet, on slow nights i would visit the buffet to get to know the servers, this required me to walk through the dish room which connected the tavern to the buffet. the industrial dishwashing machine started like it sounded

like a jet engine. to keep the noise out a hip-hop poet steward i had met at orientation would wear headphones and sing-along while he scrubbed -- when john, mike distefano distefano or stanley donovan, the three managers walk through the dish room he would switch to negro spirituals. he said it was the quickest way to get white managers out. erica had told me that key on had been in trouble with the law a few times but hoped a steady job would keep him on the straight and narrow. ceci, stout woman works works next to key on. her pastel eyeshadow applied liberally said more about her exuberant personality than her all white uniform.

after receiving a st. patrick's day card i center in order to get her address from her, she proceeded to give me cards on easter, my birthday, thanksgiving, and christmas. next was jeanette, she was asian and about the same age as ceci. she had 55 adult children, three married, to college-age. despite the fact that she had lived in the united states result 30 years, she did not speak much english, neither did ceci. they both understood english though. during orientation, haiti was hit by a massive earthquake, months later i asked jeanette about her family and haiti, i know three minute family died she said, two children and one school, one cousin at home.

bad, bad, bad ceci said. ceci and jeanette do not talk to each other much. ceci tell me this is because they did not get along, not the language barrier. but despite personal differences there is a sense of solidarity in the dish room. both the woman wore gloves that did little to prevent their fingers from pruning within the first hour of work. they looked out for each other whenever one snuck a plate of food or sat down while on the job. they helped each other lift heavy pots and laugh together when stanley donovan, the head of the food and beverage department walked through the dish room wearing sneakers with curved platforms meant to exercise and tighten his glutes. alex had told me, alex my organizer had told me to ask any older haitian or latino woman to take me to church. he called it a slamdunk social. so i asked ceci, she understood what i was asking but cannot respond fully in english.

you, write, call. i wrote my name on the phone number on a piece of receipt paper she stuffed it into her bra. later that night as i was getting up my shift, i got a a call from an openly or number. is this james? a young woman asked in perfect english. my name is daniela, my mother tells me that you would like to come to church with us. we arranged to meet that sunday on mother's day mass. slamdunk, indeed. with alex pushing me, i had no choice but to hunt for socials like a college freshman looking for party. alex would check in after my shift, did you get a social? no. why not? because taylor said she was busy this weekend. you know that's not in excuse. these conversations with alex were brutal. i started bombarding my coworkers with request to hang out just to get alex off my back.

throwing of lures in the water and something is going to bite. social started filling my schedule. i i went to dive bars, hooters, and a jamaican jerk joint. i went to the batting cages, bowling, and a baby shower. i had coffee with ivan, a bartender from slovenia who has some point or another had worked at every hotel between miami and fort lauderdale. wanting to avoid the line at the popular's trip club, king of of diamond were strippers were scheduled to box each other, i went to a dingy strip club next-door with a group of cocktail waitresses. we were accompanied by a casino vip who handed out stacks of 1 dollar bills. jean louise, cook taught me to make it real, haitian dish made from pork shoulder. while i was cutting up pepper, thyme, garlic to add to the dish i learned that jean louise had left her drug addicted husband when she was pregnant with her second child.

as well as the only female cook she was not so much offended by the misogyny in the kitchen but she was tired of it. jean louise dreamed of becoming a full-time caterer, but even at $13.75 per hour, one of the highest food and beverage wages at the casino, she was not saving enough to realize that dream. i went to one gay club with a slotted tenant named sam and another with rodney who is a cage cashier. i managed to sashay around the dance floor while prodigiously avoiding close contact. i learned that sam, the slot attendant head lucky you tattooed above his nether region. i also learned that he made $11.50 per hour when he worked at the isle, the unionized casino. at our casino. at our casino, he made a dollars per hour. sia took me to a religious ceremony based on buddhism at a new age reit treat center in a posh suburb. i chanted alongside her.

driving to and from the retreat center lucy a talked about her ex-husband who had gambled away their savings playing pool. she also told me that in addition to the $9 per hour she was making at the casino, she got by with $600 per week she made cleaning the mansion of a cookware tycoon in evan chiro. but when the pay was cut to $360 she cannot manage her home loan modification payment, her credit card debt, and the money she needed to send to her sick father in uruguay. lucille was considered taking another job as a maid in west palm beach. in order to tutor a cocktail waitress, i spent an hour refreshing my math. i went gambling, i spent an afternoon doing situps and push-ups with chris, slot

attendant an amateur boxer. i was sore for weeks. ceci, the, the peruvian dishwasher took me to mother's day mass with her. it was in spanish, when the priest asked all of the mothers to stand, i also stood up. [laughter] everyone in our pew laughed at me. afterward we ate skirt steak at ceci's friends house. i got to know ceci's diabetic daughter, daniela. she was only 13 but talk to me with to meet with honesty and thoughtfulness of someone much older. i want to be a dr. she told me, while while driving from church to lunch. my father died one year ago and since i have diabetes come i want to learn to help people. even when coworkers did not open up and-about their personal lives, socialist fostered comfort and idence. i realized realized just how much ceci trusted me when she called

me a she was leaving work one day. she was hysterical, gasping to use the little english she knew. you, come get me. she was waiting for me when i pulled up alongside the loading dock. she was crying, she gave me an address in south miami next line that we needed to go get daniela. forty-five minutes later, later, we pulled up to the house. ceci went inside, a minute later a man exited the house caring daniela and arranged her in the backseat of the car. ceci followed, yelling at the man who had carried daniela out. danielle's eyes were rolling into the back of her head, she was heaving and shaking. when asked daniela what was wrong, she did not respond to me. ceci got in the car. go, hospital. i drove one block, pulled, pulled over and called an ambulance. daniela had going gone into

diabetic shock. when the paramedics arrived they restaurant to the back of the ambulance and ceci went to the hospital with her. daniela was in hospital for days, i still i still don't know exactly what happened that afternoon. why the people inside the house had not called an ambulance themselves, i visited daniela and ceci in the hospital. daniela translated for her mother. my mother wants to thank you for saving my life. even if daniela had been on the brink, i did not save her life. when ceci called me i did not know the gravity of the situation. i almost told her that i was busy when in fact, i was lying on my couch reading a book. enjoying my day off. the enjoying my day off. the only reason i had an is because i knew that her family had welcomed me and we created bond strong enough first ceci to

trust me in a dire situation. some might argue that our relationship was built on a falsehood. i knew early on that ceci's vote would not mean much. she was much. she was not a leader in the dishwashing room. though the origins of our friendship may have been calculated, it was an honest friendship. at some point i switched to from one casino to another and started salting at a new casino. called mardi gras. it was a strategic decision but i am going to read a quick excerpt here from the first day at mardi gras casino. give you you a sense of the casino life. my first shift at mardi gras was on tuesday, september 6, 2011. guess that day could get their picture taken with the tiger in the lobby. lying, zebra and monkeys were all scheduled to make appearances in the coming weeks. the casino's concept was it

refreshing. in the spirit i was given a glittery, pumpkin orange vest to wear over a black uniform. i looked like like a magician at an 80s bar mitzvah. i arrived ten minutes early for every shift at mardi gras. i would enter through the employee entrance, clocking, and get a walkie-talkie get a walkie-talkie from bobby. a geriatric security guard with the christmas white beard. he usually listen listen to an oldies station that played songs with harmonies. i would press the blue exit button to the right of the door and proceed onto the casino floor immediately i would feel the machines around me exploding, quaking, blinking. bling bling, after a few seconds, the commotion receded into my subconscious like traffic on a new york street. they're the same machine that cluttered the floor, the last

casino i worked at. the customers were the same two. some came to mardi gras because they were tired of the other other bounced around from one casino to the other. they had the same foggy stairs. on weekends, the female saba dancers adorned with a preponderance of plumage, prayed through the casino, some guessing to like the entertainment, but most never looked way from the slot machine. the walk to the money room was short. i would sweat my badge and enter the first of two man traps. there was always a moment of claustrophobia as i could not open the next-door in the sequence until the door behind me had box. sometimes, someone in surveillance would chirp, one second summons coming through. that meant i had to wait for someone on the other side of the door. i was always under surveillance. it only took a couple of shifts to get over that, i have nothing to hide.

inside the money room, and attended wearing a pocket list jumpsuit would hand me a clear plastic bag through a window. it had $300 in its. the cashier tellers were given much bigger bags containing at least 20,000 dollars. they would flip their hands periodically to show the cameras that they were not hiding any money. the quick just to galatian look like something my pop would do to describe good but not great spaghetti. after coming my day bag i would radio surveillance. this is james walsh going from mr one to the main bar. because i was the newest bartender, is given a lot of afternoon shifts that rarely had much of business. those were great opportunity to talk to cocktail waitresses. i'm not sure if the job may be tougher to people were attracted to the joppa the cocktail waitresses were always the greediest, savviest people in the building. i may have griped about life in the buffet but after one shift of the cocktail waitress i would have begged for crab night and

arnold palmer refills. their entire shift, six, six-eight hours were spent walking, but brutal for the older waitresses. they also endured some of the most degrading treatment from customers. there were regular jo's who believe the cox tail waitress uniforms was an invitation to complement her appearance. or worse, there are people who snapped their fingers for service or clapped their hands or whistle, they were drunks, creeps, and men too sick to know when to shut up. there were loads some customers who call the waitresses bitches and -- most of the time women just took it on the chin. it it was all part of the hustle. during one of my first shift, i worked alongside to cocktail waitresses, alisa and lena. alisa cannot have been older than 25. petite, blonde cuban-american who lived near magic city casino in little havana.

lena was 40 and that she liked to say, she looked good for her age. she had dark black hair that she pulled into a ponytail, toned by biceps. she was finishing a debt regiment degree in interior design. i asked lena how she could afford it, she dances at scarlet, that's a popular strip club nearby. shut shut up she said. she's joking, i don't actually dance at scarlet's, i just keep working. lena use the floor like a cat. she walked with her shoulders back stiff and upright. her her ponytail swinging with each long strike she took. it was as if she knew she was better than the customer she served. and that's that's probably why they tipped her so well. lena came to the united states when she was 24. she earned a masters degree in physical education in poland. but she did but she did not speak a word of english. she got her first job as a

waitress at hooters on long island by recognizing interview questions and memorizing answers. eventually she moved and her and her boyfriend opened a dirt bike track. after her boyfriend was in an accident she had to nurse him back to health and close the course. it was really bad she told me. i had to had to clean him when he himself. then, when they got the strength back this is how you treat me, no way. now she is with her brother, shut up, she's joking. no i'm not, i'm single and i'm happy. after a few shifts that started asking lena about the job. often workers would brush off my questions by saying this job was a temporary stop between the past and future. lena believed interior design

was her future, she was ready to quit mardi gras as soon as she could support herself as a four full-time interior decorator which made it hard to talk to her about her current situation. when i asked her about the head of the food and beverage department, sally, lena lit up. i had not met sally up but i heard she was feisty. customer had complained about lena service, most managers are reasonable people who understand that complaints often come from irritable guess, waitresses negligence or of bartender's inefficiency. she called me to the office and she points her finger at me and she says, you will not talk until i tell you to talk. if i did not need this job i would have told her off and walked out. it wasn't much but i made a note, lena hates sally. i asked her about insurance, scheduling and seniority. was a work issue carwash and then i asked about her paid time

off. you know they they only pay $5 for vacation pay. what, like your earning tips on vacation pay to? i said. i i had a similar problem with my vacation pay at the other casino. vacation time was doled out an eight hour increments and i was paid as a tipped employee and set a minimum wage. i told my manager about it and i got the full minimum wage, $7.725 per hour. the next time i use my paid time off. and leaders case it could have been an honest mistake by mardi gras but in an industry that requires people to flip their hand to show that you're not hiding money, anything is possible. so i want to open it up to q&a. but before i do, that was just a taste of the employee side of the story. the other side's management and

we saw quite a bit of resistance from the casino. that we were organizing itself or later. right right now, the private industry for those that don't know, over 6% of the workforce is unionize. what i learned from observing the management side was that the problem isn't that the employees i worked with didn't want to join the union, it was simply that they do not have a chance to join the union. management had a toolbox of tactics to delay and inhibit my coworkers, or prohibit my coworkers really from joining the union. i hope that this book is a reflection of the reality, which is we need to reconsider what it takes to join a union in america

not necessarily what the union represents. that was sort of the conclusion i came up. as someone who did not grow up knowing a lot about unions, i didn't grow grow up in a union family. i hope you enjoy. it's a story about people, not about unions or casinos. it's really story about people. i hope you enjoy. we we can open up to questions. [applause]. >> fascinating story. the question is, did the union know that you are undercover writing a book when they sent you undercover? where where you like a deep cover? >> yeah that's another element to the story here, that i also write about, the fact that i do not tell the union that i plan to write this book.

so the union was in the dark about the book, the casino was in the dark about the union and the book. that proposal out of challenges, day one of journalism school is don't do something like this. i set off day one out of journalism school trying to do it. there were a lot of challenges and i'm not necessarily sure i would do it again, it is stressful personally as well. >> did the union augment your pay when they sent you an. >> to answer your question, salting there's a very long history of salting and the the practice of going into nonunion workshop. it's been as round as long as organized labor in the us. a lot of of different unions to it. management knows about it. >> ..

did you differentiate between documented and undocumented workers? that would be an interesting project in south florida. as faras i know i didn't work with anyone who is undocumented. i think there are ways around that, but there's even when were talking about workers who were documented, that were hesitant to draw attention to their family and talk to the union. >> the question is what i get

out of it personally? >> like i said, i didn't know anything about unions or labor movement owing into this, really, and like i said, the challenge is not necessarily convincing my coworkers that the union is a good thing, the challenge challenge is much bigger than that. for example, i don't know if you're familiar with the term right to work. it means unions represent the workplace whether or not the worker are paying dues. unions like to say right to freeload and it sounds nice, right to work. it's more about destroying

unions, is what i found. i have a conversation with a coworker who said to me, listen james, she was this great waitress who love to look after me. she said, listen james, as soon as she found out the union was knocking on doors, the union is a good thing but don't join because you don't have to. you don't have to pay dues. you can't blame somebody, i think she was a tipped employee so she was making $4.25 per hour plus tips. she had a bunch of kids. you can't blame somebody for not wanting to pay dues when you're making that little. it's the difference between a tank of gas but it's so important. this is somebody who's flat-out telling me the union is something she would want but didn't want to join. the fight is just as much in the

supreme court as it is on the casino floor. >> thank you. it's incredible work. a lot of what you read seems to be about the misogyny of women you were working with. i'm sure, you mention the guys in the waiter and the others, but how much of this time in casinos and your time, and unions is there this sort of, it seems like there are women needing way more money to take care of their family and their sick children. how were you able to gain, explain how how you were able to gain their trust. you're not them. you're not from their background

so how were you able to do that, number one and number two, what can we think more deeply about women alone in this position how important is that, how much of it is women dominated? what you read tonight was very much about the woman experience. you don't even know how relevant you are, maybe you do because women are much more likely, they are one of the number one factors in whether or not a union campaign is successful. women are much more likely, particularly women women of color. i saw that the second casino week worked at. we organized a leadership committee of 15 workers and 12 of the 15 leaders were women in

all of them were women of color. i think a lot of organizers would say these attacks on unions right now are attacks on women of color. as far as me personally, yes, i don't know, the first social that i went on was a white college kid. i hung out with this guy because we could talk about baseball. i learned different ways to approach these women. >> so you try to ask. >> if it was more like my organizers knew that was how it would end up. they wanted me to talk to as many people as possible.

i remember one organizer said to me, we are going to win the housekeeping department because the housekeeping department was 98% haitian. he said these people have been through so much to get here and left so much behind that they are not scared of management. i think all 12 people on the union committee were haitian. >> when you are talking to people, entry-level people, you're making a case for the union is at a left right political discussion or dollars and cents? >> that's another something that i learned. there is no way to know someone is pro union based on left, right, gender, anything. it's not even dollars and cents. of course, when you're making $7

or $10 an hour it will be about dollars and cents to some extent but it's about value in the work place. they want some measure of power in the workplace because they are sick and tired of feeling like any day could be their last day of work. that was part of the pitch, that we we would give on house visits. workers were scared and rightly so, as i learned, that they would get fired if they were part of this union organizing committee. management would fire them. our pitch was, okay, they might fire you. that is definitely a risk you have to take, but who's to say they're not going to fire you tomorrow when you accidentally take your break because it ran two minutes long or for any other reason. so white, black, republican,

republican, democrat there is no way to know. organizers really understand that when they knock on somebody's door. even going so far as to say whether they are prounion or not, that doesn't matter because often times they didn't know anything about the union. >> i had one coworker asked me if they were gonna organize the union for us. i had another asked if we were already in the union. there is no baseline. it's all a blank sheet as far as organizers are concerned. >> i will answer that but you can also buy the book. the first casino i worked at was unionized but that was after i left. the second casino i worked at had not been unionized.

we had no shot of being unionized because it was such a brutal antiunion campaign. what union was it? >> the union was called unite here. they are hotel and casino unions what did you learn negative about the unions and their tactics about this? >> did you see anything on the other side smart that's a very good question. as far as what i witnessed firsthand, there were a lot of difficult decisions to be made. it has to do with how much you need to put the workers at risk. if i know this is an action that might get them fired, am i going to back down? or am i going to have the

workers there this risk? when workers were fired, the union did their best to try to find them jobs and counsel them. one thing that really left a bad taste in my mouth, so i'll give away a little bit, there were eventually a lot of workers that were fired and we went to the national labour relations board. we filed charges against the casino. i was shocked when two prominent unions filed notices on behalf of management saying we've worked with this manager, the president of the casino at different casinos around the country and have never witnessed any kind of antiunion tactic. there were two union leaders

blindly writing letters on behalf of management without contacting or hearing the worker side of the story. i thought that was kind of shocking. i don't know if that happened in days of old, but it was shocking to me. >> did you learn about different tactics used to prevent unionization? >> yes, the, it's kind of a tiered process and how far will management go. on the first basic level, they will host these group meetings. we had management come to the buffet and have all the workers

come together and just act like it was a normal meeting. how do you like what's going on here, are are you taking advantage of the 4o1k that we offer. no, nobody nobody was taking advantage of the 4o1k because they didn't have enough money to take advantage of the 4o1k. i think there was one meeting at which one manager raised his hand for the 4o1k question. then that we do a few things. they would say, we hear the union is knocking on your door. unions, as you might know have an important place in american history. it it was all about history. child labor child labor laws, minimum wage and they just list all these things the unions have done. aren't you glad we are ready have all those things. aren't you glad the federal government takes care of us workers. they would say, the union is driving a wedge.

all they do right now is drive a wedge between workers and management because they don't have anything to sell. the federal government already provides all these things so they're just business people trying to get your money. then they would go so far, one human resources employee recommended that we call the police if a union organizer comes because these people are just like stalkers. they would say the words doctors. i remember talking to one coworker after that and she would say yeah, this is florida, florida, you never know if someone's knocking on their door coming to kill you. given its florida, it's not a great leap of imagination. that would be the start of it. a lot of these supposedly ideas total line line of legality. whether or not they're going to offer incentives or

disincentives to join the union and then to go as far as firing employees. finding a reason to fire employees is pretty easy. you can hide behind that. it's illegal to fire someone for union activity but it's not illegal to fire a cocktail waitress for loitering, which i believe is the job description of a waitress. [laughter] there is a hostess of ways to hide behind. >> i wondered about your strategy going undercover as a reporter to do this story, did you think that worked out for you and would you do that again? >> so yes, i kind kind of look at undercover reporting, it's a privilege. you can't, you still have to try to bring some objectivity.

there's nothing that happened in the book that i feel it's on here because it would make a great story. i don't want to beat people into would good quotes. that's basic journalism, whether or not you're undercover or not. i want these folks to be genuine reflections of the people in the book. i certainly think, yes i was successful in writing the story that hasn't been rhett written about and writing the story of service workers trying to organize from the inside. whether or not i would do it again, i just don't know. it's difficult because in some ways it's like reporting because you're getting to know people and getting them to talk and that's great, but getting to

know people without them knowing that you're going to write about them doesn't feel great at the other end. that's something i'm still unpacking and dealing with. >> so the first person to call it that was the president of the electrical workers in the late 1800s. he borrowed the phrase from the term salting a mind which is a way of making a mine looking more valuable by spring going gold around before you sell the mine. that goes even further back because it comes from salting wells and fresh water wells were more common than salt wells which i didn't even know there

was such thing as assault well as you move further west. how that connects to the practice of salting, you would have to ask henry miller and i believe the electrical workers say to the day he died he was working in nonunion workplaces. >> did you need to get people's permission to write about them? how did did that work out? >> we changed names and identifying characteristics so it is not required, which of course goes hand-in-hand with why it's a difficult task.

>> went there be consequences? you're being very specific about your what you're working and characteristics of the department, wouldn't there be consequences for those individuals? >> we made sure, one thing that plays in my favor is the turnover rate in the service industry. many of these workers are long gone what to the people you work with think about the government and how it might've protected them or not protected them? what is the attitude toward government. would any of these people be voting for donald trump today? >> that's another really good question. in terms of the government, that was sort of a roller coaster because as coworkers were fired and the cases were filed with

the national labor relations board, there was this sense of were out and were gonna go get justice. were going to go get them to hire us back and get back pay. just a few months after people were fired, the court case happened in june 2012. just a just a few months later the judge ruled they had been wrongfully fired and be put back to work with back pay. you think that's great, that's swift justice. these people can go back to work. still, today, that case is being appealed. some people were offered their jobs back and others want. are so many delays. i watched my coworkers, anytime anytime there was news about the case at first they had believed there had been justice and it just waned. it just faded. relying on the government to carry that out, that that just faded.

whether or not some of them would vote for donald trump. that's interesting, it varies so much from union to union. i think donald trump has found some support among union members and i think there have been a few polls that show strong support but look at the union endorsements. they are for burning anders i don't think many of my coworkers would have been on the donald trump ragan wagon. many of them were women of color and people donald doesn't really pull well with. it would be an anomaly, i think. what was your overall impression you took away of future labor?

you talk about funding efforts to break unions, what do you think what's your impression of the future? >> you set it. as a coke brother or whatever dark money funding campaigns to change the right to work and various other insidious ways that case has gone before the supreme court, that affects the workplace that i worked out in the really effective. if you look at the numbers, they are not good. if somebody told you ten years ago that michigan would've gone right to work you would've been

blown away. if somebody told you that west virginia, home of coal miners in the labor movement had gone right to work it would've been hard to believe. and that's happening right now. were down to 6% and losing ground every year. >> with that being said the organizers i met were extremely good at what they did. they were doing it for the right reasons, i can tell you. they were passionate they were working at all hours and they were doing it in a smart way. the local in south florida has more members now than it did five years ago and i know that's because of the progress of those organizers are making and i think that for a long time the service industry out like a square peg in a round hole because of the turnover and the consultant nature of the work

and i think that maybe people are realizing, look at the fight for 15, to change to the minimum wage. that's been a union funded campaign. if there's any other information to come, i think unions are still successful and what they do. i know that's not a great yes or no answer or that's not may be satisfying, but there's so much in the air. >> do you advise any of the people who are in the book? did you advise any of the people that you were doing this book? >> yes, i did. i got a a mixed response. the union was not thrilled about the fact that i'm writing about salting and it's despite the fact that every major company not only knows about salting,

but has ways to look for salt and spend a lot of money to do that, but i understand they didn't want, the union was at the point where they really want to take care of their messaging and this was not vetted by the union in any way. other people were excited about it in the union. they were excited to have the story told. it was a mixed response. it's a lot harder than you think to find the leader that you want to join your committee. too often you get caught up in

this person has a lot of people congregated around him all the time but that's because they're funny or because their leader. or this person is really nurturing but maybe it's because he's a great dad and not because he's a leader. i knew khalil was a leader because she is somebody who, her father was a drug dealer who was killed and her mother was a drug addict and she had grown up taking care of her little brother, moving him around the country and so she was tough. and one day at work she had a lot of people around her who looked up to her and we had to do the buffet and cleaned down the tables and have management come over and sign off and say yes this table is clean. i never did that and as the one white guy i just got away with saying yet my tables clean but

they had to have people sign off on it. the manager gave her a hard time about cleaning off the table and she said you know what randy, why are you giving me a hard time right now and randy, the manager just shriveled and said if you want to push back, come to my office and we can have this conversation and she said nope i'm in a do it right here i have witnesses and randy just walked away and that was the last time he ever pushed her around. when i left the first casino that i worked at, she was the first person on our committee and the hardest to say goodbye with. she was disappointed because i think she saw me as this can patriot in the buffet despite the fact that she didn't know i was working with the union. i heard that yes she was eventually fired because she approved too many small little

writeups which is another way to get workers and get this turnover. i heard she was fired, but i think it's time i send her a copy of the book. >> on a personal note, it strikes me, how long were you there? >> that must've been a lonely two years where there's no one around you that could know what you are doing and why you are doing it and who he represented. when you talk wet doing it again, is that on a personal level? is that not a huge personal fact? is it worth it for you? >> i wouldn't describe it as lonely. it's more like having a secret because i wasn't undercover in the sense that i was always myself.

i didn't have some other identity. 99.9% of .9% of my conversations weren't about the union. a were just hanging out with friends and getting to know friends. so of course carrying that secret is exhausting and can take a toll, but there's no part of me that felt lonely. plus it was in miami so there were people visiting all the time. i had friends there were always coming to visit. i genuinely liked my coworkers and the other organizers i was working with and i could be myself in front of them in just about every way except for the whole journalism thing. >> thank you so much for coming everybody. i really appreciate it. [applause].

the books are available in the corner here's a look at some authors recently featured on book tv "after words". former bush administration official argued that executive power has gone beyond its constitutional limits under president obama. michael eric dyson explored how race has impacted the obama administration. washington post columnist ej argued that the republican party adoption of barry goldwater's conservative conservative principle is driving away moderate voters. in the coming weeks on "after words", professor and former chairwoman of the u.s. civil rights commission will explore the history of voter fraud and suppression.

former congressman jc watts will talk about the guiding principles he follows in his professional and personal life. also coming up, ellen welcome will recall her creation of emily's list, a political action committee which works to elect pro-choice democratic women to office. this weekend, nancy cohen weekend, nancy cohen will discuss the challenges women face in politics and the potential of a female president. >> there something really surprising and it surprised me as much as anyone when i was doing the research. voters are not making their decisions based on gender bias. there thinking about ideology and political party and issues and questions of temperament when they decide who to vote for. they care much more about those things than they care about gender. although we still have a lot of sexism in the general culture, it's not