but i, there's no time to be concerned because we've got to act. >> right. >> and also one needs to have hope. and then as -- i guess what does keep me hopeful is that natural processes want to be healthy. and so many examples that i have found of places where the environment rebounded and was restored quicker than anyone could have imagined. and as one of my sources, someone who runs, like, has a little operation called the soil carbon coalition, and he's been -- peter donovan. he's been going around north america on a bus. he lives in this bus measuring soil carbon levels in the soil at different farms. what he, he talks about that what's missing in all of our

projections is the power of life, the power of the biosphere. so we shouldn't dismiss it, but we need to heed that power and support that power. and now i can close with that quote that i really like. as i mentioned that the friend in texas who gets all their water from dew, she -- what she says is we can be the beavers on the landscape. we can be the restorers of the water cycle and all that that goes with it. so there we are. it's a choice we have, and i know it's really, really hard, and sometimes i think that all of kind of the craziness that is going on right now, you know, politically and in all kinds of

ways, that somehow that's like, it's like a deep concern. it's almost like sparks out of some, like, very profound malaise and not knowing what to do. but i do feel very strongly that, a couple things, that what stands in our way is imagination , and also that it's how we talk about these challenges. and that's why i make a point of let's kind of reframe climate change, okay? we're talking about these cycles. because if it's just climate change like this, you know, kind of big, looming, you know, it like raises fear, and there's nothing we can do about it except be protest against the oil -- except protest against the oil companies which we certainly need to, you know, we need to get off fossil fuels. we know that. but we also know that isn't going to be enough, and that's the distress that's kind of lurking. but if we work on the basis of

these cycles, i think we can, we can -- and by working on ecosystems and restoring landscapes, yeah, i think, i think we can get there. >> does your book end with a lot of hope? >> well -- [laughter] yes. >> there hope -- [inaudible] >> there's hope in every chapter. i'm talking to people who are very hopeful and who have seen tremendous improvements in their land, because that's what i wanted to see. i wanted to see what is possible. because if we don't know what's possible, what can we -- how can -- well, that can spark our imagination of what's possible. so, yes. yes, there's a lot of hope. [applause] thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> again, i want to thank you all for coming, and judith will

be available downstairs to sign books. thanks. >> thank you. thanks. >> and this weekend on booktv op our "after words" programming you'll hear from new york times president and ceo mark thompson talking about the language of politics. he's interviewed by huffington post founder arianna huffington. and we're live this weekend from the brooklyn book festival in new york. you'll hear authors talk about economics, terrorism, politics and much more. and that's on sunday. for a complete schedule of our coverage from brooklyn, visit us at booktv.org. some other programs to watch out for this weekend, we have an interview with the newly-sworn-in librarian of congress, carla hayden, talking about her life and career.

ruth bader ginsburg reflects on her time on the high court in her new book, and pulitzer prize-winning historian alan taylor examines the american revolution. plus, booktv visits grand rapids, michigan, to tour the city's literary sites. now, those are just a few of the programs you'll hear and see this weekend on booktv. for a complete television schedule, go to booktv.org. booktv on c-span2, it's 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors. television for serious readers. >> when we confronted the pakistanis, we were enraged at them, and, of course, their answer -- the whole point was they were going the look the other way, we were going to go take him out. we had to take the body out, and we were not going to talk about it. not for a week or ten days. it was all agreed, the president then would announce we had a drone raid, we do it all the time, in the hindu kush mountains on the pakistani --

not on the pakistan, on the afghan side, making clear it was on the afghan side. and we hit a house with a hellfire missile, and we did an after-a action look and we found the long, tall guy there. bin laden's 6-4, and we did dna, and by god, we got im. and that was just as good. i remember it vividly, because it was a sunday night here in washington. by 7:30 or 8 there were reports all over the media that the president has a special announcement, and by 10:00 there were stories it might have to do with binned laden, but he didn't -- bin laden. what was going on was a fight, because there was pressure on him, political pressure from the political advisors not to wait the seven or ten days. they were very angry at robert gates, the republican secretary of defense whom gates had, if you remember, gates had been reappointed or allowed to stay by -- he'd been appointed -- he replaced rumsfeld by george bush, and he was very close to

the bush family, gates was. and when obama came in, he reappointed him. but two and a half years later, there was tension inside be, a republican doing things, and gates was very much against some of the things that happened in the operate operation. he thought we should just bomb the place and let it go and not jeopardize the seals because if something had gone wrong and they'd be captured, they had no protection. they were basically committing a war crime. he was a prisoner of war, was the point, and they executed a prisoner of war. and they went into a country without any notice to the authorities. that's theoretically what happened. so anyway, here's what the issue was for gates, basically, and for me as a journalist: what's so important about pakistan? why do we have, spend so much time cozying up to the generals who run it? it's because they control more -- right now, when i wrote about it in the new yorker in 2009, it was more than a hundred nuclear weapons. and we worry about their weapons. we worry about their safety. there's a huge muslim

fundamentalist population in pakistan, and and in fact, the reason that the pakistanis had never said anything publicly about having them since '06, the isi found them in '06 which may or may not be correct. it could be early, i think it might be. the pakistanis can kept them secretly because the public would go nets. their public loved -- go nuts. their public loved bin laden. many element 40%, 50% of the country saw him as a hero. so as long as they had bin laden, they could privately tell the al-qaeda groups and the taliban groups in both pakistan and afghanistan we've got your guy. pay more attention to us. keep us informed. they had more control. that was their argument. the second argument they made or extra a nation for keeping them -- explanation for keeping him was the saudis paid them a lot of money. you know, he's a saudi, he came

from an elegant, very wealthy family, bin laden family in saudi arabia. big construction family. not royal family, but they were mayor constructionallists and building, building, very wealthy. and the assumption we make and i make is that nobody wanted an american interrogation team to talk to him. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> booktv brings you 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors every weekend. here are some of our programs this weekend. tonight at 8 p.m. eastern, booktv talks with the new librarian of congress, carla hayden. she's the first woman and african-american to hold the position. then at 10, "after words." new york times' president and ceo mark thompson looks at what he calls the erosion of public language in his book, "enough said: what's gone wrong with the language of politics," which examines the change in language from fdr and churchill to donald trump.

he's interviewed by arianna huffington, founder of the huffington post. >> politics, parisly, has -- firstly, has changed in very substantial ways. and the kind of natural shape of politics based on class and very clear ideology has become more disrupted, and all over the western world you can feel the big, traditional political partieses, the mainstream parties under pressure. >> sunday at 10 a.m. eastern, booktv is live from the brooklyn book festival. the festival is the largest free literary event in new york new y featuring national and international literary stars and emerging authors. featured authors and topics include a discussion on economics with marc lamont hill, politics with sarah jaffe, fred kaplan on digital privacy, terrorism, ralph nader looks at political parties and elections, military and war with molly

crabapple, inflation and ed young -- immigration, and ed young takes a look at viruses. go to booktv.org for the complete weekend schedule. >> next on booktv, an insider's perspective of silicon valley and the tech world with facebook product manager antonio martinez. ..