venezuela where my wife grew up or me in india, our countries are run by gangs. we like to believe it's totally different here. it is different, but it's not totally different. these experiences are eye-opening for me. i think it's given my conservativism a grittier, which is to say a more solid foundation. guys, thank you for your attention. see the movie. it's a secret of movies that the fate of a movie depends on how the movie does in the opening couple of weeks. if a movie does well at the beginning, it spreads out. people say how do i get your movie seen by independents? you want to know how? go see it this week or this coming weekend. because if you see it now, you're putting fuel into our rocket. part of what you should learn to do is use your influence. most of us use very little of our actual influence. you say, well, i only have 300 friends on facebook. yeah, but they've got 300 friends on facebook. so today you're like a little publisher, and if you use influence to get information out, you're actually able to change the way that people think.

the beauty of a movie, you can watch a movie in 90 minutes, and it changes you a little on the inside. movies have the power to do that. and books have a power to change minds by providing information, and information in our era power. so once again i urge you to be not apathetic, but very dangerous americans and go out there and change society and help save your country. thank you very much. [applause] >> and you're watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors every weekend. it's television for serious readers.

here's a look at our prime time lineup for tonight. starting shortly, you'll hear from political cartoonist gary trudeau on the use of donald trump as a character in his comic strip dunes bury. doonesbury. then at 8:30 p.m. eastern time, we sit down with senator jeanne shaheen to talk about books that have influenced her life and career. former attorney general alberto gonzalez sit down for booktv's "after words" program at 9 p.m. he discusses his new book, "true faith and allegiance." it's about his time as attorney general in the george w. bush administration. and at 10 p.m. this evening, john straussbaugh details how new york city was helpful and hurtful to the union during the civil war. and we wrap up with a look at the positive and negative aspects of studying abroad. that all happens next on c-span2's booktv. first up, here's political

cartoonist gary trudeau. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. i had a feeling if we put on an event, even if it was at 4:00 in the afternoon on a monday, a lot of people would turn out, yeah, in august. i'm bradley graham, i'm the co-owner of politics & prose along with my wife, lissa muscatine, and thank you very much for coming. a few quick administrative notes, now would be a good time to turn off your cell phones or anything that might go beep. when we get to the q and a part

of the session, we have one microphone stand there, and we'd ask that if you have a question, please step up to it. c-span, booktv is here, ask we're also recording -- and we're also recording, and we'd like to be able to pick up your question on the tape. and at the end of the session, you know, normally we ask people in the audience to fold up their chairs, but don't do that this time. [laughter] just leave them where they are and just form a line to the right of the table and snake it back there out to the street or wherever. [laughter] you know -- being very hopeful. we here at p and p once ended up in a doonesbury cartoon on a january morning several years ago. we awoke to find the store mentioned in passing as location for a book signing by one of the characters. naturally, we were thrilled. and relatives and friends from around the country congratulated

us on having reached this pinnacle of fame. [laughter] because one hasn't really arrived until one scores at least a reference in doonesbury. by that measure, donald trump habit just arrived -- hasn't just arrived -- [laughter] he's virtually taken up residence in doonesbury dating back to the fall of 1987 when garry trudeau started mocking what turned out to be trump's first presidential trial balloon. it wasn't long before that -- it wasn't long before the unflattering portraits got under trump's thin skin, and he tried as he's wont to do, he tried striking back at garry, calling doonesbury overrated or asserting that most people just don't comprehend the strip. [laughter] for his part, garry just couldn't resist as he says in the preefface of his new book,

to have ignored trump would have been comedy malpractice. [laughter] the book titled "yuge" compiles three decades of strips featuring trump. the drawings make clear that over the past 30 years much about trump hasn't actually changed, but as garry told "the washington post" in a recent interview, what he once regarded as harmless buffoonery is, in fact, now dangerously symptomatic. just a few, brief biographical facts. doonesbury started appearing 46 years ago, growing out of the bold tales strip that garry drew at yale. in 1975 he became the first comic strip artist to win a pulitzer, and he's been a finalist several times since. he's also won numerous other awards, worked in theater and tv and been called the most influential editorial cartoonist of his time. so, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming garry trudeau. [applause]

>> those of you who come here and hear most authors speak are -- >> can't hear. >> is this not, is this not on? >> [inaudible] >> i'll speak a little louder until -- [inaudible conversations] i don't want to -- >> it's on? all right. most of you who are regulars here are accustomed to hearing authors read from their books. i promise you, that would not be a treat in my case. reading comic strips is a pretty hard thing to do. so what i thought i would do instead is i'll read the preface from the book and explain to you how i came to have this peculiar relationship with mr. trump. the book is not my idea, it was my wife's idea. we were having dinner a few months ago, and she said you've done an awful lot on him there,

might be enough over last three decades. and so we scrambled, and my good publisher got the book out very quickly. and anyway, so what i'm going to do is just read you the preface, and after that i'd be happy to have a conversation with you, just answer your questions. so the preface is, begins with one of the quotes on the back. these are selected comments from donald trump. it's a carefully curated collection of insults that he has thrown my way over the years. [laughter] so the one that i begin with, a third rate talent trying to get publicity on my back. [laughter] his message, conveyed through the tabloids, boiled down to this: get off my cloud, loser. which is not, of course, how satire works. the target, having set himself up, doesn't get a say over the incoming.

besides, trump had already become the gold standard for big, honking hubris, and to ignore him would have been comedy malpractice. in new york city he practically owned the '80s, rocketing to the top as the big apple's loudest and most visible asshole -- [laughter] knocking off big league rivals like ed koch, julian naval and steve rue bell. to those of us in the ridicule industry, the man spy dubbed as the short-fingered vulgarian, was a gift beyond imagining. and we made him a permanent part of our business plans. [laughter] the earliest strips mocking trump's first presidential trial balloon began in the fall of 1987. people tell me i should be flattered, trump told "newsweek," but as there was nothing remotely flattering about the betrayal, he soon became confused, irritated. all the more as i was drawing him in a way that suggested i was unacquire of how good --

unaware of how good looking he was. [laughter] by the end of the week, it was game on. trump had someone new to wail on, and i had a new, recurring character. i was one lucky tarbaby and remained so for years. of course, i've had plenty of company. google trump and third rate, and you'll come across the names of most of the country's first rate comedians. [laughter] and no matter how many wise guys wanted a piece of him, there was always more than enough of the big fella to go around. [laughter] an embarrassment of follies. after that first presidential head fake, there was the trump princess, a luxury yacht whose owner's fear of ocean travel kept it moored off his various failing casinos. [laughter] then came the extramarital affairs both real and imagined conducted under colleague lights followed by the high profile bankruptcies, his various

televised spectacles, the most storied of which featured him firing celebrities who are already out of work. [laughter] his creepy sexual fantasies about his own daughter, the truther debacle, his failed product lines and on and on like you wouldn't believe. but the best was yet to come. as trump bore down on his 70th year, he needed a new neighborhood to ruin. so after 30 years of lusting after a certain teardown on 1600 pennsylvania avenue -- [laughter] he made good on his threat and actually ran for president are the. tan, rested and ready? not so much. more like orange, hyperactive and ask breathtakingly unprepared. [laughter] when his physician declared trump would be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency, trump publicly thanked his doctor's father who'd been dead since 2010. [laughter] you can't make this stuff up, so why try? [laughter] some people feel that trump is beyond satire, but we

professionals know he is satire, pure and uncut, free-for-all to use and enjoy. and for that, we are not ungrateful. for our country, though, we can only weep. [applause] so the rest of it is just cartoons which i will spare you the reading of, but i'd be happy to take any of your questions. >> yeah. thank you. this is like a gift to us. [laughter] i just have two quick questions. they're not very deep or well thought out. one is how recent are the door toons, are they up to this -- cartoons, are they up to this, like, crazy time? >> they go up to the end of april. so the most recent half dozen

wouldn't appear in it. >> oh, okay. and i'm not sure i remember -- >> i'll hold onto those for another printing. [laughter] >> thank you. >> okay. >> i wanted to thank you for all your great work and particularly some of the strips that you did that most rez sated with me -- resonated with me were on the importance of voting rights. and given the intersection of the danger of a trump presidency and limitations on voting right ares, i'm wondering if you can comment on whether you have future plans to work in this area. >> i do. and you will come up a sunday coming up about voting rights, and i have a character named jimmy crow who's a big fat crow -- [laughter] and he's ecstatic by the developments in the country over the last four year, but they're being rolled back. and there have been a number of court decisions on the state level that have been rolling back some of these laws and, hopefully, enough of them by november so that it wouldn't be,

there wouldn't be any significant impact. but, no, we can't let that disappear as an issue. .. >> i thought i was comfortable there. [laughter] now it is 80.3. i admire the guy but, the genius behind a 538 but i would like to have to check every half hour