here's our primetime lineup. tonight, start starting at 7:00 p.m. eastern, the top physicists discuss their book "welcome to the universe." and on book tv's "after words" program at 9:00 p.m. eastern, george borjas discusses the impact of immigration on the economy. he is interviewed from the council on foreign relations. then at 10:00, laura provides the history of the gun manufacturers win chester, and her family's connection to that company. we wrap up our sunday primetime lineup at 11:00 with nick the report on the declining employment of men. that all happens tonight on c-span 2's book tv. >> good evening, ladies and gentlemen. welcome to the 52nd season of

theater 80, the seventh year for the museum and american gangster. welcome to the c-span audience. i am extraordinarily happy to have deirdre here to speak about -- deirdre here to speak about this become. one of mitt great interests in organized crime. i was raised in the religious society of friends. what anybody ever says, oh, i don't subscribe to organized religion. i always say issue don't, either, i grew up quaker where organized crime. the only thing we ever did in an organized way, we don't have theology or so -- is break the law from the 1600s when we came about until now with draft resistance, the underground regard, the sanctuary movement. the only thing we do in an older way is break the law. so in our museum, we began to redefine the way people look at

organized crime as a struggle between american moral certainty, the, thou shalt not rules and the liberty where people say, yes but it's our right to and organized crime has come out of they intersection between the two great concept always at war, and define us. and one of the great, great characters in this story, one of the true geniuses come out of this,er is al capone, and it's so wonderful that toe have a new book that really delves into him as something more than the stereotypes and cartoon figures that you see on tv, and so enough from me other, than a little housekeeping. if anything horrible happens, emergency exits are here and here. if you have anything that will make noise during the talk, cell phone, beepersed, small children, dates from new jersey,

please do turn them off now. also, please -- do not take any film or recordings of the talk in progress. very important. without further adieu, with great joy, deidre bair. thank you. [applause] there we bale questions and answer period afterwards. we'll have you step up to the mic in an orderly fashion. >> thank you call for come, at delightful to see everyone here and so many good friends that makes me especially happy. i'm going to begin tonight by reading a few pages from the book that is going give you a brief introduction to al capone. starting with the man himself and then with the legend he became, and then i'm going to talk a little bit about his life

and his legacy to sort of give you a sense of what you're going to find when you read the book yourself. this is how i begin the book. this is the story of a ruthless killer, a scofflaw, a keep over brothels and bordellos, tax cheat, perpetrator of fraud, a convicted felon, and a mindless, blubbering idiot. this is also the story of a loving son, a husband, and a father, who described himself as a businessman, whose job was to serve the people what they wanted. al capone was all of these. he died in 1947, and almost seven decades later it seems that anywhere one travels in the world, people still recognize his name and they have something to say about who he was and what he did. everyone has an opinion. and yet within the deeply

private world of his extended family, there's an ongoing quest to find definitive answers about the family's most famous member. the sagos that -- the saying goes that all family history is often a mystery and all families are closed narratives, difficult to read from the outside. attempting to reconstruct the truth of a family is very much like trying to solve the most complicated puzzle imaginable. and in the case of those who bear a name that is famous, ore as in the case of al capone's relatives and descent dents, infamous, the tax can be heavy in dean. some of his relatives found it easier to change their surname than to deal with the history. they chose to distance themselves and deny the relationship for a number of reasons. some merely wanted to lead

ordinary private lives. some said they feared reprisals from gangland chicago while still others who remained connected, in varying degrees, said they want to make their way in the world unencumbered by the long shadow of al capone, and still, there were those who kept the capone name, but said it was the reason why they had to leave peripatetic lives, some moving as far away that's could get while others only -- moved coshly from wherein town to another throughout northern illinois, never far from the familiar environment of chicago in recenteys the question've who has the right to claim a legitimate place within the family of al capone has resulted in some interesting pieces that may or may not fit into the puzzle of its history. you who only know him from

newspaper stories will never realize the real man he is, said his sister in 1929 when he was in his prime. it's a remark echoed today by his granddaughters, who have only recently become involved in sorting out what they call their amazing family history. one of the questions they ponder repeatedly us how one man could embody so many different personality traits. they talk among themselves about their family history, and they argue, and they debate about whose memory is the most correct and which is the closest to the truth. they strive to assess their grants and parents with honesty, objectivity, distance and detachment, and they admit the difficulty, if not the

impossibility, of arriving at a definitive conclusion. when they talk about their papa, that's call him, they first put al capone in air quotes, and they ask themselves, what gave rise to the myths and the legend. how did the grandfather they adored fit into all these stories? where was the real person within the grandiose and exaggerated public personality whose exploits continue to grow ever more outrageous, seven decades after this death. it will be 80 years next year that al capone has been dead. what was it that makes the name of a man who died sick, broke, and dim meanted in 1947 -- demented in 1947, so instantly recognize able a decade and a half into a brand new century? are we fascinated with him today because of the so-called roaring 20's, in the colorful time in

which he lived? is it because we now seek to understand the many ethnic histories that formed our country and, therefore, the circumstances of his birth and family life as an italian american, that might shed some light on our own assimilation as americans? or is it simply al capone's larger than life personality, the outsized figure who strutted across our historical stage for such a brief time, that we did not have enough time when he was with us to assess him. after so many intervening years, can we figure him out? and after seven decades, is nothing left but a myth? the members of his family agree with me that the enigma of al capone is a rid toll be solved and now its -- riddle to be solved and now is the time to

try to do it. now i'm going read you a little bit about the legend of al capone as it is today. al capone's brief life was flori and dramatic but his afterlife is even more colorful and outsized. his reign as the king of crime lasted six short jeers ann a he was stripped of power the public still could not get enough of him in the almost seven decades since he died, the frenzy of publicity he inspired during this lifetime has increased exponentially and shows no sign of slowing down. he died in set of 1947, and in 2016, the daily google alert still records anywhere from half a dozen to two dozen new hits every single day. to new books and films appear about him almost every year, and these include novels, byow pics, documentaries, even mock

umentaries. there are memoirs who purr put to tell the real truth long with biographs that including are include young adults and children. one eight-year-old told me he killed bad guys and that was okay because it let him feed poor people. the television series, boardwalk empire, has made him surprisingly not an antihero but a genuine hero and younger viewers can't get enough of him. his name appears on all sorts of lists, including one from the smithsonian magazine that named him one of the 100 most influential americans of all-time in the entire history of our country. web sites are devoted to him and the mob museum in las vegas gets its best crowds when exhibits neat tour him. madame tussaud's max museum in

san francisco capture him after his disease took over and the life-size stat cue of al capone sitting in this alcatraz cell. and gangsterrologists and professors who proclaim themselves capone scholars, debate every speak of this life, and if it can be called as such, his work. law schools study his court case. bar associations re-enact it, and academic institutions from the most august to the most local, offer courses. harvard business school examines the capone outfit as a case study. the kankakee community college in illinois holds a course entitled simply "al capone" and when it was first begin it was so popular it was oversubdescribed and two more

sessions had to be scheduled. restaurants claim he ate there. cocktails and sandwiches are name for him. hotels claimed he slept there and there's even the laughable contention the often sneaked off anonymously to play golf oft scottish courses. one reporter said it best. if kalka opinion frequented even a ten. in the places he is tied have the notorious mobster hardly would have had time to build his chicago crime imempire, let alone run the thing. from musical groups to young adult novembers just his name in the title can demand -- command far more interest than most of them merit. cats and dogs on internet postings, especially the countless pit bulls who bear his name, are sure to be quickly adopted. his name alone can secure a good table as a young woman in san francisco, who bears the capone

surname, finds every time she tries to reserve a table in a posh restaurant. his face is on postage stamps where they even have one of mae, hiding her face behind a fur coat in kyrgyzstan, where his illinois is placed among the notorious gangster mug shots, al capone is at the center. in romania, web sites web sitesp groups proliferate and writers and journalists seek contact with americans who write below al capone's life in crime. in bulgarian, the bulgarian mafia claims they study the outfit to learn how to conduct their business in england in the 1960s the creigh brothers, notorious four murder and extortion, modeled themselves after, quote, that upper class criminal, al capone. and in iceland, the entire town

of areberg allegedly obsessed with its week-long al capone festival where all the results are devoted to the scourge of chicago. when the mexican drug lord, "el chapo," escaped from prison the comparison to al capone was immediate, and al are "el chapo" was quickly dubbed in the new public enemy number one. reporters don't stretch their intellects when writing stories about tax dodge, hedge fund managers. they just make the immediate comparison to al capone and the public gets the message. amazing, mused a criminal defense lawyer in chicago, how often his name is used to spice up a story. and without any reference to who he is, was or might have been, al capone's name is the one to grasp when making comparisons

with everything from the current presidential election to the finale of the immensely popular television series series "downton abby." it's so easy for everyone to compare donald trump to al capone, but hillary clinton gets her comparisons as well. trump is al capone on steroids and hillary clinton is al capone in a pant suit. and trump's tax situation and hillary clinton's e-mails get plenty of comparisons, and as for "downton abbey," "new york times," summing thin six season's the serial, wrote that the hapless couple, batess and an inaction changed with separate murder, quote, have

spent more combined time in jail than al capone. people from chicago who travel abroad have a tale or two to tell of what happens to them when they say they're from chicago. the local residents quickly form their hands into a tommy gun and make the ak-ak sound, and as one young man wrote on reddit on the internet a short time ago, i get sick and tine of tourists coming near al capone t-shirts. but one of the more thoughtful replays said the fascination continues because idolizing al capone just gets easier as time goes by, and we get more and more disconnected from what he actually did. and it's precisely this disconnect that has contributed to the unending questions of what was there about this man to turn him into an international culture icon, and why the mere

mention of his name sets up a chain of immediate associations. writers have long pondered the question of why this particular man became the uber-celebrity amongst so many other colorful gangsters and mobsters. and why the legends that have grown up around both sides of his life, the violent and benevolent, have become so shrouded in myth. how did he, of all the other outsized criminal characters of his era, become an internationally recognized cultural reference while into many others go unrecognized today? so, now i'm going to talk a little bit and i'm going to start by telling you he was born in brooklyn, january 17, 1899 and he was a fourth son and the second one born in united

states, to italian immigrant parents, gabriele and teresa capone. her grew up in family that kept to the was of the old country and was deeply steeped in every italian custom and tradition. but all his life he was quick to correct anyone and to become angry every time he was called italian. i'm an american. was born in brock lynn, he would say, i am proud of it. his first home was a crowded tenement on the street that led to maingate of the brooklyn navy yard, he grew up watching the boys in a local gang called the boys of navy street, he watched while they'd hassle and assault the sailors who poured out of the maingate and as soon as he was old enough, which was probably when he was around eight years old, the joined this gang. he was big for his age, and he was a fast runner. so no sailor ever caught him and by the time he was 12 he had

great wade imfrom being the gang's mascot to being one. its most dependable and fearless fighters. he stayed in school through the sixth grade, which he had to repeat, but not because hoe was a bad student, because thrill he was very good student. but because he played hookey so onhe was seldom in the classroom. his parents believed in education, and they wanted all their sons to stay in school as long as possible, but every one of them quit at the first opportunity, and they found work such as it was, in penny ante criminal activity. al liked school and he might have stayed longer if he had not gotten into a brawl with his teacher. he knocked her down, or maybe he even knocked her out. and then he simply walked out of school and he never went back. and after that he followed his two older brothers, ralph and frank, into the criminal world. this was after the oldest

brother, vince, simply walked out of the house one day and disappeared, not to be heard from again for the next 40-some years. and when vince came back, he was known as two-gun hart. a gun-tote, horse-riding, cowboy in full regalia, who had been the lawman in nebraska, dedicated to smashing stills and enforcing the lauds 0 prohibition all of which his brothers had been actively flaunting. frsh can't make that up. al leaving school was a blow to his father. he hoped hysons would lead better lives then his own. he set him up, gabriellee capone as a barber and his wife did piecework sewing to help keep the flame aathroat. the thought he whereas encouraging al to become a

legitimate man we hen bought him a shoe shine box set him unon columbus streit never the famous long. instead al became just the opposite. from the ages of 14 to 18, he was a brooklyn punk, who very early showed signs of the street smarts that he later used to run the chicago outfit. now, his father did want al to learn the lessons of capitalism, and in a very real sense he did. when the other boys saw what a good location al had chosen they set up their own boxes near his. well, al didn't want to get his hands dirty, so he sold his box and then he rounded up some other boys,, to intimidate the other enterprising shoe-shiners into paying him protect money of. if they wanted to couldn't on doing best that to pay al capone or else. so what are we going to call

this? are we going to indicate talent? and such talent did nod go unnoticed by the various brooklyn crime bosses who were always on the lookout for young and enterprising hoodlums to join their ranks so that by the time al was 18 he was working for johnnier to torrio, the crime boss responsible for bringing him to chicago, and why the time he was 19, al capone was also a father. several weeks before he became a married man. it was a most unlikely marriage for this woessner in the 20th 20th century when immigrant ethnic groups lived in their own enclaves and tended to stick to their own kind, and mary owho was always called mae was irish. she was two years older than al and very much above him on the social rung of the immigrant groups who were pouring into the

country. mae's family was lace curtain irish, while al's was the poorest of the poor. the coughlins lived in their own house and the capones lived in four small rooms of the upper floor of a tent. walkoff that was jam packed with others just like them. her father went to work in an office every day in a white sirte and tie while his father cut hair in family kitchen until he could save enough to set up his own shop. her mother went directly from her parent's house to her own house and she never worked as so many irish girls did as a household servant. his mother clung to the ways of the old country, and was so frightened of the world outside her building that she never left it except for food, shopping, and she called that, going down to america. the marriage of al and mae was

highly unusual for several other reasons. in those days, irish girls who married italian men were said to have made mixed marriages and the italian partner was commonly referred to as the colored. even more unusual the marriage did not take place until sever weeks after the birth of their only child, albert francis capone, who was always called sonny. a mixed marriage such as this brought almost as much shame to an irish family as did a pregnancy before marriage. but mae stayed throughout the pregnancy, openly, and proudly, in her family home. al stayed in his and had to visit the woman he desperately wanted to marry but only when her mother wasn't there. as generally believed by the capone deden sents that ms. coughlin was responsible for

the delay because mae's pregnancy was a difficult one and her mother thought she would miscarry and therefore there would be no need for a mixed wedding. but sonny was born prematurely after a troubled pregnancy to mae held firm and several weeks after the gave birth she and al were married. before i talk about his life in crime, want to take a moment to talk about the circumstances in which italian immigrants lived in the early years of the 20th 20th century. i'm not a using it to defend the reasons that al capone turned to a career in crime. but i want to you it to explain the world in which he grew up. it was a time when the new york metropolitan area was swelled by 8 on thousand people from southern and eastern europe and when people like john quin, the wealthy manhattan lawyer, who bank rolled writer like t.s.

elliott and james joyce andes a round, despised every one of these newcomer andes this what quin said using one of the many slurs for italians and i quote, there are seven or 800,000degos, a couple hundred thousand slovacs, 50,000 or 60,000 c roe ats and on or 8 throughout pissing german, but new york city officials had a disperspective. we account get along without the italians. we need someone to do our dirty work and the irish won't do it anymore. only jacob reese, who wrote about italian immigrants in his classic book, how the other half lives, saw the italian-american situation for what it was, and this is what he said.

italians have the instinct of cleanliness put it is drowned out by the nastiness of the tenements. gangs of every sort were rampant, and it was almost as if there was no other possibility for an upwardly striving boy to better himself than through a life off crime. now, several things came together just after sonny capone was born, and just after al married mae. and their descend accidents and many of the scholars who study his life and work believe this is why he turned away from legitimate work to a life of crime. just after his was married his father died of a heart attack at a very young age, 59 yield ores and hall was the deposittable one so became the patriarch and the led hoff his family. the older brother disappeared the next two could not be count

it on to support thunder mother, their sauer and to fish sister and three younger brothers and it fell to tool provide for those five people as well is a his own wife and son. his family thinks he might have been the legitimate businessman he always proclaim evidence himself to be if he had not suddenly become the sole support for seven people, and writers who study al capone when he started his life in crime, make remarks such as, if he had been born 30 or 40 years later, he could have been lee iacocca. and the fact that the harvard business school makes a case study sort of supports that possibility. so, i'm not going to go into details now about how he got to chicago, except i'm going to say that he claimed one simple reason for going there. and i quote al capone here: i needed to make a living, and i thought i needed more.

once he got there his rise was spectacular, at one writer put it, and i quote here, capone would would from a daz a week mop boy and occasional lhore beat ore one most power some left where men in the world and did all this in a mere six years. he was 25 when he took over and 31 when it all ended. do expurge these six years his personal fortune was estimated at over $40 million, and by the time he went to jail, he was broke. in the book i wrote that his ascent in mob dom want sensational and his downfall, meteoric. and yet here we are almost 8 a years later and everything about that brief time continues to command worldwide attention, interest, and speculation.

and one reason i think is because early on he learned how to cocoa -- co-opt the media, i credit al capon with spin. while other gangsters stayed out of the limelight he courted it. hi put reporters on hi payroll and win with editor in particular he offered the first crack at scoops in exchange for positive stories being written about him. he even tried to hire one of the earliest and most famous publicists to polish his public image. his was a man ivy league, who was known to all as poiseon ivy lee, he changed the public image of clients such as john d. rock feller and charles lindbergh and he very quickly declined al capone's very lucrative offer. al even tried to hire a writeer to ghost write his auto

bayography, painting him as the saint and savior of everybody in chicago, but this terrified fellow was let off the hook once the government set its sites on al capone and had other things to worry about. again, hesitate to make comparisons to the political climate of the current election year but i can't resist doing it. reporters vied to describe the clothing he wore, the billous yellow or the pea green suits or the diamond pinkey ring that was anything from four to 11-carats, depending on who was writing about it, or the wads of silver dollars he allegedly threw from his especially constructed fleet of bulletproof cars. and when he set up a soon church as a genuine act of kindness in the depression, reporters were quickly say, yeah, sure,

kindness, but he extorted all the photo knead served from small businesses. and even after the went to prison, when there was nothing to report or write about, the invent stories. one headline read, al capone lost 11 pounds. and another one was, al capone read a biographyy of napoleon, and the biggest scoop of all, in 1935, two russian soviet writers were touring the united states and in their book the wrote that al cass sitting in his alcatraz cell, secretly writing anti soviet articles that the hearst up ins were publishing. so i found out lots of surprising things at al capone degree the fourth year i spend eresearching and writing the book. one of nose surprising is how briefly he was on top of the criminal world. he was in a courtroom five and a half year after he ascended to

power, depending -- defending him because not from the several hundred murders he was thought to have ordinary and the several dozen or so he was alleged to have been directly involved in. he was in the courtroom for tax evasion. particularly his income tax. and by 1931, he was in the atlanta federal personality penitentiary, the most punitive prison in the country until alcatraz was set up in 1934 because the government wanted to send a lessan to criminal world that this was going to be a prison whose name would send shivers down the spines of the most hardened criminals and who better to imprison than public enemy number one, al capone. never mind that his brain was already so riddled by syphilis he had the mentality of somewhere between seven and 12 years of age.

his end was a sad one. as he was released early on because the syphilis, which contracted as a very young man and which he gave his wife and son, had so riddled that mentality. he didn't die in prison. he died in his own bed, in his miami house. surrounded by the family that loved him, and the wife who claimed she knew every terrible thing he had ever done, but she still loved him anyway. he was only 48 years old. and as i said here we are, almost 80 years later, with his name so widely known that smithsonian put him on its list of the 100 most influential americans of all-time. what was there, then, about al capone that captured so many different kinds of imagination and i'm going to end by reading just a few preeves again from

the book. a writer indiana. katherine fullerton in 1931 wrote an aural about al capone, and she called him, gorgeously and typically american. and i think she was correct to say that about him, because his rise to fame so parallelled a most unusual moment in mesh history, one -- american history, one that could well fit that same description, and of course i refer to prohibition. it was curious early form of political correctness that was imposed upon the entire country when a small number of fanatics convinced the national government that laws mandateing universal behavior could be enforced. it was a weirdly schizophrenic time when even the former

president and later chief justice of the supreme court, william howard taft, observed with regret that the strongest tendency of human nature was the desire to lay down rules on conduct for other people. i don't think we have changed very much, have we, since then. unlike others who had wealth and social station and used them surreptitiously to defy the unpopular law that they were often charged with enforcing, al capone ignored it. and he told the truth about why he did so. he openly admitted that he sold illegal alcohol to the best people, and he said he did it as public service, to supply a demand that was pretty popular for most americans. and in the 1920s, it made him an american hero because he did

publicly what most of them had to do in hiding. al capone de -- capone defied the law and got away with. it's accepted that cultural norms underwent seismic changes at the end of world war 1. women got the vote, shortened their skirts and went to work. jaded and dill illusioned men refused to join the traditional work force, and they took off for foreign climes to create the great american novel, or to revolutionize the art world, and their opting oust what was known as the traditional american way, gave rise to the glamorous myths that have since surrounded european expatriates. the rich, who always got richer, suddenly found they had lots of company as the economy soared and the middle classes found. thes with lots of disposable income elm team was right for

thumbing one's 'noles at what constitute good-nose at what constituted same amendment social conduct and with a flamboyant bootlegger ling the way, many were eager to break constrictions on private lives to disobey the large one forted only them by the 18th 18th amendment. al capone let them on and the public loved him. even though he was largely responsible for washing the streets of chicago in blood. for most americans who did not experience such sights debt directly musician photographs and move strayed portrayed sprawled and bloody dead gamingsters and bullet ridden cars were only bern takenment and far removed from real life. evil was appealing. it was even enticing. as long as it didn't touch them directly.

evil had become entertainment. disconnecting the public, even more, from the violence of the gang wars and al capone's part in them. james odom bennett was one of the first journal wrists who tried to explain in the phenomenon that al capone had become and he described how, and i quote here, with no conscious effort, he emanated menace while saying, please. he was the criminal version of a foppish dandy in his luredly colored but ex-quitly tailored suits with the hand kerchief neatly folded is in his breast pocket, ready to be whipped out to cover the disfiguring facial scars whenever he needed to small for the cameras. everyone knew to beware of that smile for it could turn sinister in a moment.

he was in short the perfect human paradox and the cars point to to political paradox that was prohibit digs. he was so lead wildly charging so blatantly outsizedded in everything he did and so fully in the public eye, that it was hard to believe that such a good fellow and one so highly entertaining, he of the pithy quotation and the catchy phrase, he couldn't be all that bad. some as for prohibition it might have been the law of the land but nobody took it seriously. so why not have that drink? that was how al capone fulfilled the public's imagination. and that was how he was regarded until the market crashed. and once that happened, public opinion reflected the changed new world of the great depression. public opinion is easily diverted and fickle at best, and it turned against him.

not entirely, but just enough for people to feel self-righteous satisfaction to say in one breath that he got what was coming to him, and in the next, that he got that come upance in a shaky trial on trumped up charges, and yet even as they passed righteous. you are. , they remained alert for every scrap of information about al capone's life in prison and his tales of hi mental declined seeped out, they were ghoulish his after individual for news the more bizarre the better. the stories written about him during his lifetime are often flawed in both content and interpretation. so, arriving at the factual certainty of public events is difficult. the consensus is that arriving

at anything approaching a definitive interpretation of the man who was al capone remains elusive. all that we have are speculation, and probability, and they only lead to endless possibility. oscar wilde said of himself, god knows, when he was asked, what posterity going to make of you? his answer, oscar wilde's answer, is something that cal opinion could have said is a well and i quote: somehow or other, i'll be famous. and if not famous, i'll be notorious. wilde envisioned himself as leading, i quote, life of pleasure for a time. and then after that, who knows. perhaps that will at the end of me, too. and for now the only certainty at tike passes and the man who

was al capone recedes into history their legend shows no sign of stopping. thank you. neuer. [applause] >> so ann one of you read a book it's a one-way conversation. after you read -- i know you're going to want to have the opportunity that you're going to have right now. you have a question, please line up on, say, the fourth stair back and we'll have you come forward and ask the question. i'll repeat the question. [inaudible question]

>> the basic question is how he got away wonderful those murdered. well, he delegated that. he learned that from johnny torrio and johnny toe orri owe deserves a biographyy of his own but home not going to write it. johnny was a great delegator, al didn't get his hands dirty if he shoe shine kit and didn't get his hand dirty if the murders. the st. valentine's day massacre -- one morning i had 12 different books spread out in my office as i was trying arrive at certainty and every single one of them had a different version of who did what to whom. so, i gave up on trying to settle that question once and for all, but the point is, when

the st. valentine's day massacre took place al capone was throwing a party for government officials in his miami house and that's one of the ways he got away with it. no murder was ever pinned on him as everybody seems to know. he went to jail for tax evasion. and even that was very shaky because income tax was so new and so many differences in the laws at the time. another question? yes. [inaudible] -- about the background our you came to right the book. >> that's a very interesting story. all of my books begin -- everything i write begins with either an idea that i have or a question that i want to find an

answer for. in this one in a sense was a whole lot of questions i wanted answers for. but it began when a young man with a surname capone wanted to know his family history. he had heard particular version of his family history that wasn't of his uncles or perhaps even his own grandfather could have been an illegitimate son of al capone and he through a friend of highs contacted the friend's sister who worked in publishing in new york city, and she found me one day and said, what should i tell system shy tell him to get a private detective or tell him to get a ghost writer? and i said, well, don't know because i don't really know what it is that they want to find out. so, she said she'd get back to me and let me know and perhaps i could help her and help him. and i started reading books. went to the library and picked

up two or three books about al capone, and i thought, this is an incredibly fascinating man, and having been a former journalist and investigative reporter, i thought, wow, wouldn't this be the scoop of the century? and so one thing led to another and i started out to write the book. so i went to my agent, and my publisher, and told them i wanted to write about al capone and i'll never forget the shocked expression on their faces. you? al capone? but aim very happy to say they both decided that might be a pretty decent book so why didn't i go ahead and write it. >> well, if you think of a query or two more. just want to remind you that there will be books available in the lobby. yes, come up and use the mic so c-span can hear you.

the microphone right here. >> why do you think people in bulgaria or -- what particular aspect of al capone do you think they admired? his murdering or extortion? >> i just -- it raley boggles the mind, doesn't it? i wish i could give you an answer. think there are probably many, many answers to such a question. but those countries -- i do hate to generalize but they do have a reputation for what should well call it, direputable behavior and perhaps that has something to do with it. a lot of bangs there and a lot of poverty in romania in -- i know remain ya because i rode about saul steinberg itch don't know about bulgaria and other

country but the poverty this ghetto, like ways certain ethnic groups have to live, so many parallels to the immigrant experience in early years of the 20th century, and so i think perhaps that might have something to do with it. they look at this immigrant boy in brooklyn who became a success, and they may think that's the way for them to go. other than they can't answer it. >> i'm don't feel shy. must me more question out there. >> ick add to that? >> yes, please. >> come up to the microphone. >> going along with the different cultures and being attracted to him, there's a lot of, like, myths within, like, mexico, like, mall verde this robin hood type and milwaukee like they have some sort of myth

of their own, that sort of goes along with the lines of kalka opinion. i noticed -- al capone. it noted with different countries that have this robin hood type character and maybe there's what they're sort of like grabbing on to as far as, like, idealizing him. >> sure. excellent observation. >> going once. >> here comes someone. >> i've had the joy and pleasure of reading the book and it is phenomenal, and one of the things i understand that distinguishes this book is because of your talk and work with the family about it, the

man is more human than we've ever known, this side of him that the family man from their point of view. could you say some more about that now? >> sure. as i said, he had -- he and mae had one son, always known as sonny, and perhaps because sonny was a sickly child. sonny did not go to school until he was in i think the seventh grade. he was home-schooled and mae was very protective of sonny. that might have had something to do with why he did not follow his father into a life of crime. but also, i believe that mae was responsible -- and i think al wanted sonny to grow up straight, if we will. sonny went to notre dame. he start at notre dame and the joy that al felt in miss son being a student at notre dame

university, was beyond strat spheric. so sonny had four daughters. he married his high school sweetheart, and -- of the four daughters, one of them died of cancer, and the three 0 others are still alive, and i had the great pleasure of getting to know them as well as so many other family members, and they were young, they were children, very small children, but they were old enough to have strong memories of their grandfather, and their grandmother, and they told me the stories of being -- they grew up in miami and told me the stories of being at the palm island house with their grandparents who, who adored them, and mae lived to be 86. al-died when he was 48. she was 50 then so she lived a very long life after his death.

and she would often visit these grandchildren, and she would tell them her stories, and as one of them said to me, it was mama me a's -- they call her mama mae, and they said is was ma a.m. mama mae's reality and of course it was a reality with rose colored glasses. we understood that. we knew it. but we loved her so we let her tell us these stories. so, that was how a lot of family background came in. then something very interesting. when i first started talking to the granddaughters and i had met a couple of other family members in the chicago area, who were the descendents of one of his brothers and then someone phoned me and said, you know, i'm living in the midwest, and i know a whole big capone family here, and maybe you'd like to talk to them. they have another name. they were all deeply closeted. all the brothers, except ralph,

changed their name from capone and they did this during al's lifetime, they want teed get away from under his shadow, and i joke about this but this is true. i'm responsible for so many capone family reunions i can't tell you because i introduced the cousins on the west coast to the midwest cousins to the chicago area cousins, to the eastern cousins, and they've all met each other. i have been able to see some of these reunions, the great emotion that takes place when they see each other. so i had lots of stories from lots of different family members, and friends. there was a 96-year-old woman still alive who knew many people in al capone's immediate personal world, and my job was to take all of these stories and

to factor them into what -- the most objective, the most real, the most probable, possible, version of his life, and so that's what i tried to do. and it's really interesting to me. the reviews and comments are starting to come out. the internet is a great thing. we all let loose and say what we think on it. and there are people good-there was one man the other day who wrote, yeah, sure, he was a good family map but hitler loved his dog, too. so, there's going to be that kind of response to the book. and it's probably appropriate and it's probably necessary. because he was so -- he had so many different facets of his personality. every time i talk to the family members, particularly the granddaughters, we would use words like enigma, conundrum, riddle, and we-they all read the

book and i'm happy to say they have very positive things to say about it but we all agreed that my book is the first step. it's not the final word. i hold the view that no biography is ever definitive. every generation needs its own. we don't know the questions the next generation is going to want to get answers for. we can only take care or our own time, and offer possibilities for further research, further writing and thinks, further understanding, and that's how i see this book. i see this book as the tool that other writers are going to need to explore different facets of al capone's life and again i'll use the word, his work. [applause] >> let me end with a very short story from our museum, which by

the way is open every day from 1:00 to 5:00 and we have -- >> you want to use this? >> oh,ey. we have the forensic evidence, the bullet from the st. valentine's day massacre, lots of interesting things and we give you a tour of all of this place but we also have remarkable oral histories, and i'm -- i'm going to butcher the last name but a little new york companion was -- one of capone's lieutenants granddaughter came to museum and told us a wonderful story about ralph capone, which is so sad and it's i would books like this are so important. she said she would go and visit her grandfather in the old people's home where he was in the same home as ralph capone, who would sit in a wheelchair with a large fedora and she would notice him all the time, and instead of asking her grandfather who it was she asked one of the nurses and she said, oh, that's ralph capone.

he still thinks that he is somebody. and books like this that so remind us of the importance of everybody's life, and that these old treasures of memories need to be found and talked about and written about and thank you so much, and again, please join us in the front lobby and meet professor deidre bair. thank you. >> thank you all. you're a great audience. deidre deeder. >> poock tv attaches -- here's a

look at events we will cover this yankee. on monday, at the national constitution center in philadelphia, harvard university law professor, michael clark will recount the drafterring of the u.s. constitutionment from its tenuous start to the many internal debates. tuesday, as part of the kickoff to this year's miami book fair, "new york times" columnist, maureen dodd, will look back at the 20 receive presidential election -- 2016 presidential election. then on wednesday, it's the 67th annual national book awards in new york city and awards will be presented for nonfiction, fission, poetry, and young people's let tour. on friday, at the hoover institution in washington, dc, a discussion of the social and political impact of william f. buck lee's television program, for identifying are line toy which premiamid in 1966 and nexts and saws we'll be live from the anymore book fair if author talks, interviewed and