at the university of arizona , this is about an hour. othy eagan. this is live coverage of the tucson book festiva [inaudible conversations] good morning. welcome to the 8th annual tucson festival of books. i am going to be moderating this conversation this morning with timothy egan. i want to extend our thanks to book tv. the presentation will last approximately one hour. including questions and answers. please hold your questions until the end of the panel. immediately following the session tim will be autographing books at the u of a bookstore tent. because you're enjoying the festival, sure you all are,

please consider joining the friends of the tucsonoi festival of books. your tax-deductibleyour tax-deductible contribution allows us to offer festival programming free of charge to the public and support critical literacy programs in the community. out of respect for the author, please turn off your cell phones. this morning it is our pleasure to have with us timothy egan, pulitzer prize-winning new york times columnist and author of seven books including the national book award-winning worst hard time. the national bestseller the big burn. tim's current boat just released last week is entitled the immortal irishman, the irish revolutionary you became an american hero and biography

of thomas mark. i would like to begin by asking tim, may not be a household word, but there was a time when his name was a household word, both here and in ireland, but he has sadly been largely forgotten crowd, >> thank you. it is great to be here in this lovely arizona morning, huge crowd, can't believe it. people love books. also, i have been told that is this is the best book festival in the world. [applause] as someone who is interested in getting the truth right, i haven't been to every book festival in the world, so i cannot say for sure my experience is that it passes the test. thank you for working a sin.

i like to think i knowi know our people's history. irish on both sides of the family. one of seven kids, one after the other. i like to think i knew ourul history. i was standing outside, even though i thought i knew our history, someone of a lapsed irish-american, and i was standing outside the montana capitol, then governor of montana brian schweitzer, great guy. there is this enormous equestrians --dash. working toward the rocky mountains at the base of the pedestal, fighting words of 1848 given in dublin at a timea time when a million irish were dying of hunger.mi and i said, who the hell is the guy in the statute? the government looks at me and says, you call yourself and irish-american? [laughter] american and you don't know who

thomas francis mar is. mideast -- most people don't know. one of the most famous irish up until kennedy came along. they were slaves and there was a free australia because of him. he packed, he knew abraham lincoln and daniel oconnel. man who freed catholics in ireland. that's my job is to resurrect the great irishman who was flawed as well as brilliant. >> that is to be irish in ireland was to live in a land not your own and i wonder if you

could comment on that as a way of giving background. >> right, he was born in 1823, previctorian ireland and they're getting into the probably 700th year under boot hill and you have to understand, i saw these parallels later what we now call ethic cleansing and what we now call apartheid and genocide, none of those terms were around, all of those were applied to the irish and for almost 700 years it was a crime to be irish. they outlawed their language, they outlawed their sports, so the first thing the irish did when they moved to the first empire of new england empire, one of the first things is establish a herling club.

they did everything -- they band the harp. round up the harpers and hang them. why why is the harp on the flag during the civil war, it's because it's a martyr instrument. people asked me, why are the irish, most of europe has fallen out of the romean catholocism. every irishman and women fall his new religion founded by a serial killer. sorry.

one thing that happened after brutal and they kicked them off the land and gave land to soldiers and that's 80 other of the irish didn't live on their own land and they say to this day, one of the worst things you can say, they sent 40,000 people or thereabouts into slavery, their descendants of them still. they did everything they could to erase the irish people to take everything that made them a people, their songs, language, to take it away from them. he comes of age just as, you know, they've lifted some of the pencil laws by them but you can't serve in parliament unless you renounce religion and practice self-government. that sets the stage for his --

for his coming. >> that kind of beg it is question, i went to college in the late 60's, early 70's so it's hard for me not to see parallels sometimes. how does a young wealthy irishman whose father is parliament becomes revolutionary? >> the biggest crime in the history of ireland. now i want to put this in context, most people think that it was caused by the potato rot. which it was. you could raise almost your whole family on an acre, you were a farmer and put tubers into the ground, it required almost no cultivation and you have pay they toe and you feed your family for a year. they dug up the potato and what came out black mess, it

completely disappeared but at the time the crop is failing, people are starting to die but at the same time this is going on, ireland is raising a lot of other food, cereal, pork, they are the leadest exporter and families have found huddling together dead in the poor houses. children are in ditches and sat clawed. the horrible scenes that they would describe when they would poke the conscious of the british empire, the indian nation sent corn, the people passed a hat and so mar comes of age at the time of the greatest crime in ireland's history and joins a group of revolutionary

ies and they were all in their 20's. irish food is being raised by irish hands but it's not going into irish's mouths. to their credit in 1997 british prime minister tony blair apologized and said it was one of the great crimes of england, we are sorry, don't take it so hard. blair's apology had a good effect, what would have been a shameful thing in ireland, you've asked who had been indicated, we couldn't just talk about the famen. a policy of extermination, if a million of them die, they weren't actively killing them,

they were letting it happen and the man who was in charge of the famon, he said this death of a million irish was a hand of god and that was a cure for too many irish. if you go to the university, great hunger museum, there's a portrait, this man who could wealthy families and came back and bought the land, they had the biggest house in waterford. he comes of age and this is completely radicalizing.

they couldn't storm the british barricades. the brits had a larger garrison in ireland than the indian sub continent. the flag of england is flying over one-fourth of the land mass. so it goes nowhere, h e speaks, she doesn't fire shot and urges the hungry masses, let's stop the food from leaving ireland that was -- stop the food and let the irish food stay here. >> i was surprised to see oscar wilde pop up in the book k you talk a little bit about who these people were?

particularly the poets speranza. >> she went onto become the mother of oscar wilde, whatever he toured, i'm better known as the son of esperanza. she wrote powerful a million irish dead and the skeletons call. the crimes you will pay for. he wrote a poem talking about his mouth was and lips and how attractive she was and they were very liberated and ahead of their time, irish progressives who were closer to late 20th century than the mid-early victorian age. all of these people were brilliant, the young ireland revolutioners and they were all hanged to be banned to australia n their later lives they're all

kids in their 20's, so imagine taking on the brit i shall empire, they had the attitudes to bernie sanders supporters, why don't we just take the banks down. [laughter] >> won't people see that our cause is great and mar gave a speech and half of them were starving. when marris vanished, they did to rebels of 1978, victoria, gracious majesty commits ban and

tazmania has the most educated people vanished for life in the jungle of tazmania. he speaks five languages and talks to his dog. i will never make my mark, here i am. you can't describe how far australia is at this time. it's more than half, it takes nine months to get there. i will never see ireland again which he would not, i would never see my family again, he saw lonely and so he -- the brits had thing to political prisoners, if you gave them your gentleman code of conduct that you would not escape, they wouldn't put you in a cage and whack you which is whey they did to petty criminals. he was never supposed to leave, his best friend had a 7 by 7-mile zone radius and they had

lunch every friday. when he moves to his little place, he names his boat esperanza and spent many lonely afternoons sailing speranza. >> he marries twice and two very different women. >> right. there's no other way to say this, he's horny, a young man in mid-20's and he falls in love with this daughter of a man who had been convicted of highway robbery, as they call them the highwayman. she was beautiful and he falls in love with her and eventually has a child and will meet later, i won't tell you how he is escapes from tazmania. takes him 12 days.

my kids have worn me to stop giving parts of this book. [laughter] >> there's pirates, a lot of back and forth,ly just tell you that the way he gave up his pearls. dear, governor general, i notify you that as of noon tomorrow i shall escape from this place. [laughter] >> i remain forever your honorable servant. and that did his gentleman's duty. the government sent troops to get him, he says, he was so flamboyant, catch me if you can. [laughter] >> and he takes off through the tazmanian wild. after 12 days hi does manage to escape, his young wife is going to meet him in america, but there's complications. >> why don't you say a little bit because there's an irony

that later turns out into a tragic consequence for him? >> eventually because of the global irish, which is now, we do breed a lot, 70 million people worldwide. ireland is a country of 6 million right now but 70 million worldwide a lot in australia, most in the states, a lot in canada and a lot in europe. they put the pressure on queen victoria on how can you -- this country that's mostly progressive, they ban slavery ahead of the u.s., they had rights of men were honored, et cetera, but on the irish they had a blind sight. victoria finally, this is years later convinced of all the seven young ireland rebels but because mar had escaped, but now he said

i'm homeless exile and that's what he was for the rest of his life. >> we can't talk about irish americans without talking about immigration, that's the story. you can describe a little bit what new york city was like in 1852 when he arrived and how the irish were viewed in 19th century america. >> this is why i write about history. i don't believe the past is dead. we have these periodic times in our history where we turn against people, only 1% of us is native americans. the irish were many waves, southern europeans and people from all over, but the irish were the -- most people had

never been more than 30 miles of villages. they raised pigs and pay they toes and they got on cotton ships for 10 pounds and jammed in the corridors and one in five of them died in the passage. there would be seven or eight kids orphaned. but so they washed ashore and remember, there are rural people and come into this extraordinary serious of cities, boston, new york, philadelphia, baltimore and most of them never go more than 4 or 5 blocks from where there ship, they crowd into the awful tents, just awful.

the pigs and lie down together. they are just like they landed on mars. one and four new yorkers is from ireland, one and four. the biggest surge of immigration, a million 5 had left their country and they are clogged. they fill it had jails. they filled what was call it had new york city lunatic asylum. this is awful, misery, how is this going to help our people? he's also encouraged because some of his fellow educating have done very well in this new country, there are lawyers, prosecutors, judges, writers, politicians, they have the year of the president, he speaks to

5,000, 10,000 people a pop, the new york city gives lab rate story of his escape and says this man the unit and he is essentially jesus for the irish. the backlash which you touched on is the no-nothing party. at one point second biggest political party in the united states, its peak in 180's, -- 1850's, founded for antiirish but mostly antiirish, they elect a governor of massachusetts, a governor in new york and push through laws that make it hard for irish to become citizens and push through laws to make it hard to become civil servants and the irish dig the ditches, canals, sewers, take care of other people's children but it's

very hard for them to become citizens, the no-nothing party burns catholic churches in philadelphia and burn an irish fire house, they burn irish neighborhoods, they say, get on the boat and go back, they treat them horribly, they draw pictures of monkeys and tails, they basically dehumanize them and that's what mar runs up against the no-nothing party before the civil war which rescues him and the rescues the irish is biggest opposition, they have to clink from his head and they start spreading rumors that his escape was dishonorable. i mean, how can an escape be dishonorable. that's what he comes up as the no-nothing party. >> yo write that the irish face a dilemma at the outbreak of the civil war and involves slavery, would you like to talk about that a little bit?

>> sure, there's an interesting passage, it's in the book from fredrik douglas, former slave and by the way, terrific novel call that turns on, douglas as a character going through ireland. direct quotes. i find myself treated, he said, they welcomed him and big crowds for speeches. then he said he was appalled. only in american south have i seen anything worse, being slaves, of course, 4 million slaves, have i seen anything worse. they come to america and over about ten years where they are told that these blacks are if they're ever free will take their jobs. what happens to irish, they come

to pick up racist attitudes. they're told by all their newspapers, don't, we won't fight to free the blacks because they'll come and take your terrible jobs. remember, they have the lowest realm. this is always the case f there's someone below you you don't want them to be free because you don't want them to take their job and there's a real split and abraham lincoln who if you haven't come to the conclusion that he was our greatest president, come to that conclusion. this is one of the bits of bril ains hardly known. he names the best irishman a general. so marks the minute the war breaks out, mar said he had said i'm against it but there's

nothing we can do about it, we might as well not break up. he went south, he was treated as a gentleman. they treat us very well. the minute the war breaks out, it changes him. he becomes more progressive than most if not all of the irish. this is the country that gave us refuge. this is the country ta took us in. i myself exile, i'm a fugitive, i'm wanted by the british empire yet i'm a friend of presidents in this country. we have no choice but the fight for the union. because lincoln had named him a general, he then forms the irish bregade. fighting 69, a malacia in new york city. >> before we leave the topic, can you talk about the new york riots, a pif -- pivotal moment.

>> he performs in all the major battles of the war. the irish couldn't organize a parade without getting into fisting cuffs. [laughter] >> they go down to the first civil run in bull horn, the irish did not run and suddenly all of the stories, where do these irish warriors come from. they get all of this amazing press. the cover of my book, after the battle of bull run, it was a lost for the union but a win for the irish because they proved themselves in battle. they went out and visit it had irish bregade. they fight in the bloodiest

single day in american history. 23,000 casualties in one day. .. and he says, when they find our bodies they will know we got his irishman. they are just destroyed. he leads 1200 men on several charges of the law call it to hundred live. i still get goosebumps when i see the speech. john f. kennedy goes to iron to have ireland a few months before mr. kennedy is assassinated, he gives us peace of the irish parliament and talks about genek

and says, by that blood sacrifice, that is what made do american and then he gives a flag from the battle whd a sunburst. and it hangs in the irish parliament to this day from that battle. now back to the draft riots. 160,000 irish served, and only two of the brigades had high casualty rates. because of this, there is a lot of resentment. itit is not going well. the union is losing. bu you want to talk aboutli inequality, and that draft you could buy your way outway o for $200. so the rich never served the union cause unless they were noble, unless they had a higher calling. for $200 you could get out of the draft, or you could present a live person. so if i brought you in and said, bruce, you're going to take my place, i wouldn't have to serve.

i would have paid you to be my body. this really ticked off the irish. they could not pay for this. and as they rolled the barrel in the first draft in american history, the names that came out were heir began, o'malley, you know, all these irish names. and so they rioted. i will not ever excuse the riot. it was the darkest point in irish-american history. they strung up african-americans, they burned down buildings, they nearly destroyed new york. they would have killed mara because he stuck to the union til the very end had he not been in washington d.c. they went into a home where he was staying, took his portrait and burned it. it was -- there's no way you can excuse it. it was the darkest day, darkest week in irish-american history. but they felt they were unjustly taking the burden of what is to this day our worst war in terms of casualties. i want to talk, touch a little bit on -- i'm a military historian.

it struck me that it's really interesting to see america arr as sort of -- marr as the epitome of a nonprofessional soldier, and his immediate commanding officer, william tecumseh sherman. >> sherman and marr did not get along at all. here's what happened. the irish could fight and did fight, and they quickly became known as one of the best units in the war. robert e. lee on the other side, on is slave holders side said famously here comes those damn green flags again. [laughter] and every time they saw it, they knew they were in for a hell of a fight. they preferred to fight up close, just pure savagery. sometimes it was hand-to-hand combat as opposed to fighting long. but marr called sherman an envenomed martinet. [laughter] he had the gift of gab.

sometimes it got ahead of him. [laughter] and sherman saw this quote in the newspapers and never forgot about it. sherman later wrote: i have the irish brigade, thank god they can fight. but he couldn't stand the irish at all. one of the things was culture. you have to understand that between battles the irish would stage these massive festivals. while they're at war, they would have steeplechase races, they would have theater, they would have -- they would play their pipes and their fiddles til three in the morning. and, of course, they had a little liquor involved. [laughter] and a massive st. patrick's day events that were the toast of the union army. all the other union generals would come to. so marr tried to find some joy -- oh, and they would play hurling too. tried to find some joy in the margins of the slaughter, and all the cultural things which the irish are known for they all practiced in between these battles, and that rubbed the career officers the wrong way as

well. some of them not. i mean, burnside praised them, and he loved going to these festivities. they would actually stage plays while waiting to charge richmond in the peninsula campaign. they were only a couple miles from the confederate capital. you st couldn't keep that spirit down, and that's how they kept their spirits up, was to do all these things. >> marr complained to lincoln about sherman threatening to shoot him. do you remember? >> i don't remember the exact throat, but president lincoln said if general sherman is threatening to shoot you, mr. marr, i would take him at his word. [laugher] >> you kind of assess -- the war obviously took a tremendous emotional toll x he developed a relationship with a young private. >> right. let me talk about the relationship with his second

wife. his first wife dies in child birth giving birth to their second sop. she dies at the age of 21, i think, meagher will never see his son, by the way, because he can't go to back to island. but he falls in love with a woman who is everything he is not. she's a protestant, he's a catholic. she's an anglo-saxon, he's a celt. she's this reserved fifth avenue beauty from old line, wasp money, meagher is a fugitive. he writes this beautiful love letter to her where he asks her her hand -- for her hand in marriage, and he goes, i am here alone, i am a homeless exile, i have nobody, i have no family. i'm wanted by the british empire, you know? i'm nothing, but the greatest thing in my life was to find you. and if you will take me as your husband, i will share everything with you. take my past, take my heritage,

let us join our lives together -- it's a beautiful letter. and so she gives up everything to marry this irish rebel. her father promptly disowns her. she ends up living the rest of her life on a $50-a-month civil war widow's pension, but they were like this. she nursed his wound. women, i didn't know this, but women could come down to the camps. he was knocked from his horse twice, he had this horrible abscess on his knee, and also his confidence was shattered. he had lost so many people who were so close to him, people he had personally recruited whose mothers he knew from the old country, whose wives he knew, who he'd danced with two nights before he had to see their dead faces, and it just killed him. he wept after fredericksburg. he just was destroyed by how many men he personally knew who he had lost. so one of those who was close to him was a young private. you mentioned him from pennsylvania, private mccarter, and the lowest point when meagher's suffering all

this loss and this sense of privationing, it's winter -- privation. it's winter. they're in this cold mud. the war is not going well, and it's just a lost cause almost. meagher is seen outside of the campfire, and he's drunk. and he starts to fall into this giant bonfire. and the private goes with his musket and holds it out and saves him, prevents him from going into this fire just at the last minute. drags him into his tent, puts him to sleep. the next day another officer says to meagher, you owe your life to this private. he then does develop a relationship to this boy, and when the kid is wounded at fred ricks burke, he's sent off to washington d.c. they're going to cut off his arm. and this guy's got this giant open wound, he's in philadelphia. suddenly, a team of the best doctors appear at his hospital, and they -- they're taking special care of him. the boy says, am i going to lose the arm? no, you're not going to lose the arm.

they move him up to a private room, they keep him for ten days. meagher had gone behind the scenes to make sure this boy had the best medical care. this kid wrote a memoir that was never published. i read it somewhere, i forget where it was, in one of the archives. he said i never saw general meagher drunk again, and he also said he was the finest, most educated man i ever saw put on a uniform. because meagher was going off on greek or latin, he would go off on these epic poems. the guy was -- he loved romance, he loved language, he love ared history. probably didn't love war, i would say. >> we were talking a little bit on the way over here about what i knew about meagher before reading tim's book, and my vague recollection, i think i may have seen the statue, i think i vaguely knew he was governor of montana. but in light of that, it seems like a real leap to go from irish lev pollution their to civil war soldier to governor of montana territory.

>> not to mention a banishment in tasmania. [laughter] this is why i love this story. i was going to write something about the famine, but there's been all this good scholarship. i'm always looking for a story, really strong story. i guess it's in the irish dna. i was looking for a story on which to hang irish history, i wanted to go deep into my own past. and then i found meagher. you see the whole arc of irish-american history through this one man, or most of it. all the things the irish have gone through, the immigration thing, trying to take away their language, their pride, their dignity, their religion. you see them becoming americans. and what is said about mexicans right now in this current political campaign is the exact same language that they said about the irish. exact same. you can just substitute the word "mexican" for "irish," and it's the exact same. so i wanted to bring that history forth. but then you get the montana part. and i'm a third generation westerner. my family, it turns out, they're montana irish.

they -- my great grandfather came from county waterford where meagher is was from and moved to butte, montana. at one point there was more gaelic spoken in butte than any place outside of dublin, they said. it's because of the mines. so there was a mine operator named daley who was a wealthiest irish industrialist of his day, and he sured at a time -- hired at a time that we were building telephone lines everybody, they needed copper. it was just clogged with irish miners. that's what became new ireland. so suddenly i've got this great western story. and in meagher's image, remember, i talked about the tenements and how he was appalled. had a newspaper, one of the best circulations in new york. he always talked about any one of you in these tenements are better off if you could just get to the west. if you could just get under some open sky, just get out here. the problem is the irish are clannish. they're not lone ranchers doing

what a man's got to do what a man's got to do. they like to be together. so is they came to butte finally because it was a community. they wanted a place where they could do their rituals, share their stories, dance and tell poems, a place where they could feast and tell stories. so meagher sees montana x this is the word they used, as new ireland. so there was a new england, there's a new jersey, there might as well be a new ireland. [laughter] and this was actually the idea of the american ambassador to great britain who had written to the president saying could we possibly establish montana territory as something we might call new ireland and name general mere meagher as its governor? he is named the secretary, which is the number two person. he comes out, it takes him almost six months to get to virginia city, montana, which is this deadwood-level city sitting at 6,000 feet with a corpse hanging over by one side and, you know, manure all over the main street, drunks rolling around.

i mean, just this god awful, your worst image of a broken, you know, hard western town. meagher arrives -- this is also the capital of the new territory. and there's this well-dressed gentleman waiting with his sheaf of papers, and he greets general meagher, and he says you are now governor, i'm out of here. [laughter] and this governor gets on the very stage that took meagher to montana territory, and i swear to god, and is never seen again. [laughter] so now meagher has gone from secretary to governor of a place that's five times as big as ireland. so you've got this irish fugitive with a price on his head is now governor of our largest territory. >> you know, this -- with tim's permission, this bookends with a mystery, and i'd kind of like to leave it that way. meagher dies, but there's still a long controversy -- >> right.

i'm just -- by way of context, there's -- meagher dies at age 43. he disappears. his body's never found. he supposedly fell from this steamer at anchor in fort benton, montana. and it is going to any place in montana and suggests that meagher's death was one thing or the other, and you'll start an argument. what he was up against was the vigilantes. it turned out what he had run up against, this is -- the constitution still applies in the territory of montana. but they had murdered these vigilantes. forty people by the time meagher's governor without a trial. they'd picked them up and hanged them because they had decided in their vigilante secret committee that they were unworthy men, and they should die. these vigilantes were the right-thinking citizen of the territory. they were free masons, they were protestants, they did not like the irish, they hated this idea of new ireland, so most of the victims tended to be democrats or irish. and meagher had pardoned one of the people they were going to

hang. a picture of him. they then strung him up that night with meagher's pardon in his back pocket. so he went up against the vigilantes, i'm just going to say -- and thank you for giving me the intro to do this -- they're the lead suspect. but also, one more thing, as one of meagher's patriots had said, the sun never sets on the british empires detectives. there were two men from scotland yard in fort benton, montana, on the night of his death where meagher spent his last day. he was still a fugitive. remember, he still had a price on his head. they could grab the governor of montana, take him back to ireland, throw him in jail. so these two scotland yard detectives are floating around this very little town, meagher also is a fine january. the brotherhood was something that came about the civil wartime, they were irish-american, mostly soldiers, who took the vow that they would later go back to ireland after

they were done with the slaveholders, they'd sail across the atlantic and liberate their country from the british. and that was the pledge. they actually did invade canada in 1867, but it was ill-fated. [laughter] and the idea was that these feenias led by meagher -- i was surprised to see this, i mean, he really was a neenian, but he wasn't organizing. so the brits thought here's this guy we can't beat, now he's reorganizing in montana, and they thought they would cross the montana border into what is now alberta but the whole country then was called british north america. so the suspects -- and please read it for the ending, too -- are the vigilantes or scotland yard. or, as was reported by the vigilantes, he was drunk and fell off a boat. [laughter] you know. >> well, that should be enough of a temptation for you all to rush out after the session and

get the week. [laughter] but right now i'd like to entertain some questions, so if you'd like to come down and speak to either one of the mics. >> so in the movie "gods and generals," the charge of mary's heights is depicted, and it's very good. but at the top of mary's heights behind the stone wall is a confederate flag with a harp on it. and they can't believe that their cousins are wearing blue. and i was just wondering if that was of substance, or was that just hollywood? >> well, this is probably an inapt comparison, but i had an interview with bill o'reilly on fox the other night, and sometimes there's irish-on-irish fighting -- [laughter] thousands of people did join the confederates, thousands of irish

did join the confederate cause. now, meagher's argument was the confederates were trying to get recognized by the brits. there's no bigger enemy than england. so one of his claims to get people to fight on the union side was the brits were cozying up with the confederacy. if they ever did that, they may have been able to last a little longer. he's the interesting thing -- here's the interesting thing. one of meagher's best friends in life was a man named john mitchell. first, he was sent to the caribbean, and then he was sent to tasmania, and he had terrible asthma. meagher was the great orator during the rebel times, mitchell was the great writer. so it was a one-two punch. mitchell would write in the newspaper, meagher would give speeches in front of thousands of people. they were very close. mitchell finally comes to america as well, but he like slavery. something happens in him that he sees slavery as not a bad thing. he writes in his own newspaper

that if you irishmen are coming to america looking for a start, get yourself a couple of slaves and come south. and so meagher and he, his other people, break with mitchell. mitchell has three boys. two of them were on the other side of that wall when the irish stormed mary's heights. so there was not a technical irish brigade in the confederacy, but there certainly were irish who fought on the other side, including the very people who were the kids of his best friends. also i have a scene in the book where they fight -- the irish couldn't get into new york, philadelphia, baltimore, would continue going, and they came in through new orleans. new orleans was one of the main ports, later for italian-americans as well, but one of the main ports for irish entry. they had a little unit called the fighting tigers which wasn't formally an irish brigade, but an irish confederate unit. it's just hand-on-hand combat of the irish brigade fighting the

irish tigers and meagher wondering why the hell aren't we directing all this energy against england. >> anyone else? any questions -- >> i think we have a gentleman coming down the way here. >> there we go. >> timothy, i want to ask about you. how does a person make the transition from a very good local newspaper reporter into a pulitzer prize-winning author? and what made you think you would make a living at it? [laughter] >> the last part is the best part of the question. [laughter] yeah. boy, you know, my mother loved literature. she had seven kids, and she loved storytelling. and when i was a little kid, my mom -- i think i was 7 years old, my mom gave me this book and said read this, and it'll

change your life. it was huck finn. it was, like, he was the bart simpson of his day. he was smarter than all the adults. it was so magical to see kid power. and that brought me into literature. and so i've always loved writing and storytelling. and i got it from my family, i think. as to the, you know, how -- what made you think you could make a living from this, you know, people raise this question every time there's a new take call device. steve jobs said at one point that the iphone would be the death of literature, because -- depth of reading because he said -- death of reading because he said people don't want to read anymore. certainly, it's changed our attention span. there was a story saying that the average attention span is now eight seconds, which is less than a goldfish. [laughter] according to the study. [laughter] but, i mean, i wrote this as i was reading the second volume of william churchill's biography

which is nothing more enjoyable that going really deep into a fantastic book. so the making the living part, look, no matter what the technology is, we're a storytelling people. we're not going to lose our love of story, our love of knowledge, our love of literature, our love of new information. and i don't with care if it's on a screen or a pixel or appears, you know, on a thing in front of our eyes. i say this to all young writers, if you feel you have a story to tell, don't worry about where it appears, just work on the story itself. also i have one more thing in that regard, and this is something that most of us -- we do have a disproportionate amount of irish writers. and i've always heard the saying that the best stories happen to those who can tell them. so -- [laughter] >> is there another question? >> yeah. >> i was curious, like, how long did it take you to compile all this his historical background, you know, for this story? and what kind of sources did you

use? >> so i used mostly firsthand sources, and the information on meagher happens to be in some of the greatest places in the world. so you start in ireland, and you go spend time in the wonderful national library of ireland, dublin, where all the papers are from the young island rebels. they're notes they wrote when they were in captivity, poems, the newspaper that was the paper for the rebels and contemporaneous accounts of what it was like while they were giving their speeches and people were dying in the streets. i used some of the illustrations from those papers in my book of the starving. they also had their houses torn down during the famine as well pause they couldn't pay the rent. -- because they couldn't pay the rent. then you go to waterford, which is a beautiful town on the river, i recommend it. you can go into meagher's house, climb the hills where he climbed. they just named the longest suspension bridge in ireland for

thomas francis meagher. he wants to start the revolution, but his father's like, no, you'll hang. and he's sort of torn. and the masses of waterford say we won't let them cross the bridge, and you feel that power. then you go to tasmania which, by the way, is one of the prettiest places on earthment it really is beautiful. it's too bad the brits tried to make a penitentiary out of a continent. to this day, by the way, if you live in australia or tasmania, you can trace your ancestry to -- the convict stain is a badge of honor. you know that? yes, i find that too. so then you come to new york, and there's this fabulous research at the american-irish historical society, at the new york city tenement museum which you can understand what it was like to be in one of those tenements. a lot of papers there. then you walk the civil war battlefields which, as an american, i think every person should do. i had never done it. it's so so profoundly moving.

and the national park service, let's give them credit. they do a great job of keeping those american markers intact. so i walked the wall up to mary's heights. and you see, my god, these guys were totally exposed. there was no way for them to go. there's formations just getting mowed down by industrial strength or artillery and musketly. and then you go to antithem and this awful, awful place where 23,000 people died, and the library of congress has all the civil war correspondence. most of it's on line now so you can read meagher's battle reports in that. finally, you end up in virginia city, montana, which isn't quite a ghost town yet. you can get a bison burger and a beer -- [laughter] and there's a great library, and they were very helpful, and there's a handful of folks that lead tours. in the summer it comes to life as a tourism place. and the montana historical society, thank god for them. because meagher was their governor. they have this wonderful research. so my research is -- i like to go to the places so i can understand the texture.

>> [inaudible] >> i mean, that took a couple years. once i have the material, i'm a fairly quick writer. but i, i do all my own research because i think you find these great discoveries by going down by going down these little warrants.>> i want to thank you all for coming. one of my favorite nonfiction writers, richard flanagan, so it all comes full circle.na but i want to thank you for attending, thanked him for a terrific -- [applause] [applause] and -- [applause] [applause] i hope you all become friends of the festival and, please, i'll ask you to vacate the room because there is another panel coming in here. you can meet timothy out at the book signing area. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> tomorrow on book tv in prime time, a focus on recently released biographies with books about doctor louis sullivan, eleanor roosevelt, and the civil rights movement, general george armstrong custer as well as a radio personality. >> book tv is 48 hours of nonfiction authors on c-span2 every single weekend. it covers a wide array of things: nonfiction, books on history, science topics. >> it is one of the few places, if not the only place where you can see and hear a lot of different voices and perspectives on a lot of different topics. we bring in authors that are well-known but also authors

you might not know so well, but they have a story to tell, something to say. we bring that opportunity to our viewers to hear those different voices. .. that's the ability for the audience to interact with the

author and answer the questions or share their comments with the authors. >> we know there are so many people around the country that are really leaders and interested in things like history and fee. it's not just about having an author get up on the screen and tell you what to think or telling you the history as they are saying it is. it's about viewers actually asking questions and it's about that conversation. >> if you want to find out more information go to our web site booktv.org. we have our schedule for the weekend always available on the side of our web site page and you can see all the different programs whatever including "in depth" and "after words". they will find it there on booktv.org. >> former cia in an i say director michael hayden provides

an inside look at national security. he's interviewed by james woolsey former cia director in the clinton administration. this is an hour. >> general hayden, mike first of all a very fine book. i enjoyed it a lot. let's start right off with a couple of interesting chapters in the middle, one about pittsburgh and your history of growing up there in the same neighborhood and the other about your family and what it's like to have family in espionage. i thought you might want to say a word about those before we jump into things like metadata. >> guest: first of all thank you. i didn't have a chapter on me in a book. i had the manuscript printed by penguin publishers. what about you? so i went ahead and put one together and they suggested i

put it near the end. it all began on a dark and stormy night. it's tied to a speech i gave in 2007 after i was director of the cia to the graduating class. duquesne is my alma mater and i use that to pivot off of my pittsburgh experience and how i brought that with me to the cia. i mentioned in the book i was in america's air force before his m.a. question they didn't have a crucifix in it. wonderful, broad, culturally-based historically-based education, kind of values based from the parochial school to the catholic high school to duquesne university and of course my parents and then it was in pittsburgh which is a blue-collar town and even though it has a white-collar economy now it still has a blue-collar