and the rest, as assay, is hit. >> host: where detroit go to college? here, ucla. >> host: is this book "acting white question mark" written for a general audience. >> guest: general audience. it's true there are specific theories and laws that are the basis of the book but we try to write it in a prose that is accessible to your average reader and hope that we succeeded in doing so. >> host: acting white question mark is the national of the book, rethinking race in post racial america. you're watching booktv on c-span2. and we are at ucla today. >> every weekend booktv offers programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. keep watching for more here on c-span2, and watch any of our past programs online at booktv.org.

>> we're so glad you're here tonight. we're very happy to have larry goldstone with us, author of more than a dozen books, both fiction and nonfiction. he is currently -- this is the third -- don't know if there's another in your series on industrial innovators. i thunderstorm the drive did did quite well, the one on ford and another one on the bright brother going deep on the development of to the military submarine, john phillip holland. can't speak to marines out of the three, planes, car, and sub marines, subma ripes one you won't find me. in lawrence,

welcome. >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you, kramer books, for hosting and booktv. for those of you who know my work, which is probably not many of you, i've written on any number of things. i've written of history of medicine, rare books, written on constitutional law, written on reading to kids. i've written on innovation. and so i'm usually asked and i know all of you now are dying to know, how do you find topics? and this topic was kind of came in a torturous way, and it all start with my daughter's piano teacher. my daughter's piano teacher was woman named vern nona gomez and she was a strikingly beautiful woman in her 60s who would show up at our house, 9:00 sunday morning, dressed as if she was about to good to a

formal ball, and teach my daughter piano. we were not dressed nearly as nicely. and one day -- she was a little eccentric and one day she said, larry, how do you write a snook and that is general lay long answer itch started to think about how to do it. she said, i've dep interviews with 344 people and did a lot of interviews with my father and i want to turn it into a book. and i said, okay, who is your sister well, her father was vernon gomez, nope at lefty gomez, who is a new york yankee hall of fame baseball pitcher, babe ruth's best friendment joe dimaggio's room matte, and she had done an extraordinary job and lefty was known for in addition to being a hall of fame pitcher and knowing these people, the was known for a number of eccentric stunts and bizarre -- he said things like jimmy fox, a great slugger who

used to him, he said he has muscles in his hair. just lefty was known for this. and one of the things lefty was known for was his love of aviation. of airplanes inch 1937, during the world series game in front of a packed crowd, lefty stops pitching to watch an airplane go over head. the yankees were up 9-2 and it was a big deal. one of the thing its discovered was that lefty had gained his love of aviation in 1915 as a six-year-old boy at the san francisco worlds fair, watching the greatest aviator of the aim, man named lincoln beachy. and i had never heard of lip lip beechy, so i looked him up and discovered not only was he greatest aviator 0 of his aim but with apologies to chuck yeager, almost certainly the greatest aviator who ever lived.

he did things that were so amides nothing one would have believed them except he did them in front of a and a half million people. in a country of 75 million people, 20 million people were estimated to have seen lincoln beechy fly health made more in one day than most americans made in a year. he performed these amazing feats in front of literally half a million people. for example in the great -- first great chicago air fare of 1911 he wanted to brick the altitude record which was 11,200 feet. and this is over lake michigan, chicago, a half a million people and there are pictures. nothing i'm about to tell you about him is made up. then only way he can do it is to use all his fuel on the way up. so thing me good phone man comes down, there's 25,000 people in the crowd, and another 400,000 plus along the lakefront, beechy

takes off, goes up until he is a dot in the sky, and remember remembering these airplanes had no cabins no fuselage. these were open frame. the only way to keep warm is stuff newspaper in their clothes and had no instruments. the engines were behind them. they had no way of knowing that -- the only way he knew he was going to run out of fuel, he ran out of fuel. he had an instrument that kind of measured altitude and he did it. got 11,641 feet, and the little dot in the sky gets bigger and bigger and bigger and these people can see the propeller is frozen because he used all his fuel and he is over lake michigan and they don't call chicago the windy city for nothing hi circles and circles, coming down from 11,600 feet and lands his airplane not 200 feet from where he took off in front of the crowd. now, that is flying.

i should go on to sub marines but he ties good so i have to tell you one more story. in next chicago air fare in 1912, beechy announces he has trained a woman aviator named clarice, and under his brilliant tutelage this woman can fly as well as any man. and sure enough, the megaphone man announces. clarice comes out, wearing a heavy coat and hat to keep warm. getted in the airplane and taked off and it's immediately apparent cannot only she not fly as well as any man. she cannot philosophy at all. first thing she does is buzz the crowd and everybody ducks. she goes out over lake michigan, coming within seemingly inches of crashing into the water. then rights the plane a little bit and then en -- this is all in the "chicago tribune." not making this up. over michigan avenue, is flying so low the wheels of the

airplane are bouncing on the tops of automobiles and people are just terrified, and then clarice kind of rights the plane and lands the mother and everybody applauds, and clarice gets owl of the airplane and takes off the hot and the wig comes off with and it it was lincoln beechy. he was so good all of these near-death events were things he did because he was so good at flying he could come within inches of the lake and bounce his wheels on the tops of automobiles. so anyway, did a little more reading and i found there's a bunch of other people. they may not have been quite as proficient as beechy but interesting. easterly question flying was an egalitarian exercise and i proposed a book to my editor call the exhibitionisted. lincoln beechy and the romance

of death and early era of flight. the read the proposal and said these are interesting but nobody ever heard of these people. thought that was a selling point but you don't know publishing. so he said, can you work the wright brothers into the title? the exhibitionists, the wright brothers brothers and the romance of -- didn't have the same zip but i agreed to look into it. this was before david mccullough's book. and so i looked -- i thought it's a waste of time. i agreed to look into the wright brothers, and i figured there's nothing new you can write about the wrights. and i discovered that there was lots new, which includes david mccullough's book. a lot of thinks that are sloughed over about the wright brothers story, things avoided. they were fascinating, complex,

human beings, with flaws, with some extremely serious flaws, and a wrote other become called "birdman" about their battles in the air and the aviator named glen kurtis. in doing birdman i also came across the end of the 19th good early 20th century was a time of incredible innovation. we think we're in a time of incredible innovation now, and we are, electronic communication, but at the end of the 19th century, the early 20th century, the automobile, submarine, airplane, einstein's relativity, floyd's thierry of the unconscious mine, wireless communication, refrigeratorration, commercial use of -- society changed in remarkable and stunning ways and i also discovered that a lot of the people involved in the aviation story were involved in some other of these innovations

as well, one of them being automobiles. and i researched henry ford, and realized that henry ford was someone else who in my opinion had not been treated appropriately by most of the becomes wherein about him. henry ford to me was the are erie precursor of steve jobs. there's no component of the automobile that henry ford invent but he was brilliant at hiring people and firing people. brilliant at understanding what the market wanted and creating a product, even when it wasn't the best product. the model-t was never as good an automobile as, say, the buick s10, but he had this ability and he had a toughness, and so i wrote another book called "drive" about early automotive

technology because i fit wilbur wright and henry ford to be contrasting in kind of interesting ways. in doing the automobile book i came across another character and his name was isaac rice and he was fascinating. came here as a boy of six, he was a musicologist, he was head of the political science -- one of the first political science professors at columbia. he was a chessmaster, built -- doesn't found the new york chess club but would play games with the world champions, he founded a magazine called for forum "an el intellectual journal with all of the best write erred of the time. when he was in his late 20s he decide wanted to make money so he went and studied law, and made himself a small fortune in

his early 30s, restructuring railroads, restructuring is the kind of think that's done now. this is a map with in financial training and he could just look at balance sheet and figure out what to do. one of the things that isaacs rice -- also a visionary and one of the things he focused on was electricity, and in the early 1890s, the best battery at the time -- he realized that you could have battery powered street cars and battery powered boats and he focused in on something called the exide battery, a leed -- lead access process, and he bought the patents and then looked around for applications for his battery, and he improved with no engineering training he also improved the design have the battery to make it lighter and have a longer life. one of the things he found was automobiles. and in 1898, isaac rice

introduced the first commercial fleet of vehicles in the world, certainly in the united states, i think in the world, it was a fleet of 12 electric tax sis in new york city. and it was brilliantly done. he had a charging station and just -- i can't go into detail because it's not about submarines which we haven't gotten to i know. but it was just so amazingly done, and in february of 1899, there was a blizzard in new york city that stopped everything, even the horses couldn't get by, except isaac rice's electric taxis. and in both books in drive and in going deep, there's a picture in 1899 of one of these electric tax sunday negotiating the streets after this blizzard. so, the stock price of the electric vehicle company goes from $20 a share to $120 a share.

isaac rice is approached by two kind of hustlers, one was a man named william collins whitney who had been secretary of the navy under grover cleveland, and was the patriarch of the whitney family fortune, and the other was a strong broke who has one of the great names ever in finance, his real anyway. he was thomas fortune ryan, and ryan and whitney said if you buy out rice and proceed to create this paper company and they're just about to get indicted for fraud and they have to go -- that's the other book. but that's one of the reason wed don't have electric cars now. that's one of the reasons electric vehicle technology stopped dead, was what whitney and thomas ryan did to the car. so isaac rice now has all this money and looking around for places to put it applications

because he still believes in electricity. and he finds -- discovers or told about a man named john phillip holland, who has a contract with the navy to build a submarine, an undersea craft. and he goes to holland, but holland has run out of money for reasons -- well, the navy had just put ridiculous specifics on what he had to do, which we'll get to in a little bit. so, rice approaches holland. he agrees to finance the entire operation. he agrees to deal with the government bureaucrats. in return, holland has to sign over his patents, not to rice personally but to this new corporate entity called the electric boat company. and electric boat, many of you may know, still pi as part of general dynamics, and builds nuclear submarines, and when i found that out, i started looking into john phillip

holland, and he became another one of these fascinating characters. he was born in ireland in the 1840s, in county claire. grew up in a household where the spoke gaelic rather than english. he was a choirmast, study with the christian brothers before he was to take his final vows he decided not to enter the priesthood. he had no mechanical training no mathematical training no engineering training. his brother, one of his brothers, came across to the united states in the wake of the potato famine, which was a big deal in ireland, million people died and another million were forced to leave, many of them dime the united states. it spurred a number of irish nationalist groups that believed

that peaceable -- peaceful transition was not going to happen and the only way to do it was to force britain to do it, and it was the irish brotherhood and the precursor to the irish republican army. the irish brotherhood in great britain and hole -- holland's brother was active with the group and holland came across to the meetings, and athey were an odd group. the gang that couldn't shoot straight before the gang who couldn't shoot straight. they they had weird kind of plans. they had plans to invade canada. they were going do it twice. hired a strategist to help them and turned out to be an agent of the british secret service. going to start an a government exile in guyana for reasons that are totally on, obscure, and thy fought amongst themes and holland goes to the meet

examination said, i'm going to inhaven't a secret weapon. i'm going to design for you a secret weapon that will sink british warships, and he gives them this design, and they're still pictures of it, of a one-man craft which is technically feasible and they look at him -- he's very quiet, soft spoken man. they say, thank you, that's really nice, and we'll call you when we need you. and among -- boot -- bad the same time the affinnans hatched the most bizarre,wardest, mose ridiculous plot yet. six of their colleagues had been sentenced to life in prison in free man tell, australia, on the west coast of australia. it was almost impossible to get to. this was apron that needed no

walls because there was no place to escape to. there was a small town and then the pen y'all colony, and the fin y'alls decide to get a boat, go 0 to some sympathetic sea captain who will give them a ship. they'll sail to australia, they're going convince the commander, the commandant, of the prison, that they are british inspectors, even though they all clearly spoke -- all clearly from ireland. they were british inspectors. as british inspectors they were going to be able to contact the prisoner, tell them what to do, hide a row boat, the prisoners would then -- they're were all trustee -- go and get the row boat, row out to this ship and sail back to america to a hero's welcome. it was a bizarre plan but it worked. the ship was -- it was 1876.

they sailed to the west coast of australia. the british commander of the prison must have been so happy to see anybody that he just said, sure, yes, oh, i would love to give you a tour. and he gives them such a tour, and one of them slipped away, tike six prisoners. they put the row boat in. the prisoners trustees go to work in the up to but -- because there's no place to escape. to instead of going to town they get robot and row out to the ship which is forced to anchor out in the bay for security reasons, and all of a sudden a british patrol boat, the georgette, sees them, starts sail toward them, cannot get to them before they get to the ship but threatens to fire on the ship if the prisoners get onboard. the captain of the ship runs up the stars and stripes and says if you fire on this ship you

fire on the united states of america. the georgette retreats, the six prisoners get in the ship, they have a raucous and wonderful voyage home which must have clued a great deal of drinking. they get knopf new york in 187206 hero welcomes and all of a sudden the fin yans or awash in money because this is such a big deal that everybody thinks, these guys are brilliant. and they give the affinnians and then they start thinking, this brother, this holland fellow, maybe we should give him a little money, and they gave him $15,000. and john holland win off and built the first primitive but effective modern submarine which he tested near patterson, new jersey, which is still to this

day in the -- it sank but was dredged up, decade later and is now in the patterson museum, and advice becomes -- now the affinnians are interested because, ooh, maybe we have something here and give him more money, and in total secrecy, holland is told to go off and build the next generation of real boat. the problem with affinnians they couldn't do anything in total secrecy think talk about so it much that a report from the "new york sun" was there every day watching it being built and writing about it, and he even named it. hi named the bolt boat -- the finnian ram, and holland adopted them name which is also in the patterson museum. so holland tests the finnian ram

and has some ideas and the finnians now are back fighting among themselves, and one faction is very upset that the other faction seems to have the ear of this new submarine designer, so they kidnap the boat. they sneak in at night with a formed letter from holland, they hook the bet up to their own ship and tow it to connecticut. in connecticut, they try to operate it themselves and they discover it's not quite as easy to operate this as they thought, so they get in touch with holland, who is of course furious, and say say, excuse me, could you, um, tell us -- teach us how to drive this? and he said, you know, no. and from there holland went off and tried to sell the boat to the navy. took 20 years. before he did that, back up a

little. submarines north like surface vessels. one thing i learned when i did the flying back there are three axis of motions. there's roll, side to side, pitch-front to back, and there's yaw, basically, keeping it straight. on surface ship outside don't have many of those issues because the density of air is much less than the density of water so a ball lasted ship sits in the water and if it tilts it will tilt back. if it pitches forward it will move become. under the water, that is not true because water pressure is equal all around, so, you have to control submarine under the water in the same flee axes that an airplane has to be controlled. this is answer tee norm mousily difficult engineering problem.

if the center of gravity shifts and the boat starts tilting forward and they're using water for ballast because you always need to put weight in a boat, and it's like this, and the water has run to the front of the boat, it goes down and it keeps going down. as many subma reason design erred found out to their peril. many, many people died and some of them identity because they couldn't figure out how to keep the boat steady in the water. how to control the boat. keep it going straight. how -- any change in weight, anywhere in the boat, will change the center -- will tend to change the center of gravity. the other thing was, if the engine -- ifous lose power and the boat is heavier than the water, if it negatively buoyant, it will sink and there's no way to get out unless you can swim to the top.

they didn't go very deep in those days. holland's two brilliant things were to keep boy buoyancy positively point -- the thick center of gravity -- we'll get to that in a second. undersea travel, like air travel, has been a fascination of human kind forever. leonardo, all sorts of people, hypothesized about air travel and in the water. the first reported successful submarine was in 1620, by a man named cornelius dribble, and deb d dronele was a touch inhaven'tor to within to at the court of james i, convinced

james he could bring all these marvels and james put him in a palace near greenwich and supposedly credible invented this machine, this closed wooden structure with oars would that be kept under the water bit the mow men couple of the wars and supposedly he went back and forth from greenwich to london and supposedly james 100 got in the boat but the problem was he was 300-pounds and was notorious ly timid. dribble was a fraud but reports -- if you google dribble submarine there i model inside museums across the world because he was so successful at perpetrating this fraud that people not only didn't know he had never -- almost certainly had never created a submarine,

but the father of modern chemistry started investigating -- edmund haley, did a lot of diving bells -- started investigating the possibility of undersea travel because debbed had done it. it was a man named denny papan, frenchman who created supposedly a submarine and there was a 1747 article in something called "gentleman's magazine" which is widely read and theirs a picture. but papan invented the pressure cooker and if you look at the illustration, it is almost certainly the pressure cooker and not the submarine. but all of this research came to the attention of a man from connecticut, a farmer's son, who went off to yale, named david

bushnell. and at the dawn of the revolutionary war, people at yale -- bushnell kept terrifying them because they would good to bodies of water ask there would be explosions in the night because bushnell was trying to figure out how to set off a charge underwater, and the reason he was doing this is because he also was going to create a secret weapon, he also was going to sink british warships and in this particular case he was aiming at admiral house's flagship the eagle. he put two hollow logs together and bound them up, he had one operator, the ballast would be taken in, little pumps, the -- wait as foot pedal or a hand pedal to move the thing forward, tiller to move it -- it's almost impossible to figure out how one person could have done all the operations, and what the plan was, was to pedal this, good on the surface, go under the water,

go under the eagle, go up to the to top, he had an auger in the top. the dui. >> screw it in, place the charge, the charge would go goh off and the eagle would sing. um fortunately the eagle was metal-clad and the auger did not penetrate, so bushnell's operator -- wasn't bushnell himself -- is furiously trying to get back. eh is spotted. they're shooting at him them charge goes off. the turtle successfully gets back to number they launched it from. they tried two more times and it didn't work. bushnell, after the revolutionary war, is very upset that general washington did not give him the credit he deserved for creating this brilliant weapon, and in a huff, went off to france, and stayed with a painter named benjamin west. benjamin west was a premier

portrait painter who had ingratiated himself into french society. and he stays in paris for a while. eventually leaves, comes back, incognito as dr. bush, go toes georgia and dies in on stewart, and only after he dies they discovery his david bushnell. while he is in paris, either just before he leave's just after he leaves another american shows up, and this american is a brilliant young portrait painter who is acquiring a fabulous reputation in philadelphia, painting people like benjamin franklin. he came to -- he went to britain -- no excuse me. this is in britain. britain first. he -- and he goes to britain, that's where west was, court painter of george iii -- that was horrible. back that up and replace britain with france.

court painter of george iii and the other american portrait painter shows up. and instead of staying with portrait painting he gets involved in engineering. decided engineering is for him. develop as way to equalize water and candles -- canals without locks and then turns his attention to submarines. now, whether or not, without -- there's no -- he had no -- there was no previous interest that it seemed. now, whether or not bushnell and this american portrait painter's stay overlapped or not, almost certainly it was talk about in the west home. and eventually he designs a boat called the nautilus, the english are not interested. tries to sell it to france. france isn't about. napoleon is supposedly

interested but nothing comes of. the english want him because base they don't want him selling the nautilus to anybody else so the portrait painter goes back to england, there's no interest there. he comes back to america, turns his attention to surface vessels and in 1809 develops a boat called the claremont which is the first steam ship and it is robert fulton. between -- after fulton there's lots more research and the next big stepforward was during civil war, and it was by the confederate states of in other words america were desperate and needed a seek vet weapon. they developed a boat called the david, mass david and goliath, which is powered bay steam engine, and the other one was -- they couldn't power it -- it was

manually powered and it was called the hundredley, and the hunley became the first submarine to sink a warship, another warship, and -- wrote up, placed the charge-charge win out. the ship sank, the hunley sank because they were doing it on the surface. one of the things about innovation is although we tend to remember the winners, we tend to remember the people who actually did it, it is almost always that person among a group of people who are moving everything forward, who are getting close are and closer. gutenberg, printing with moveable type. lots of people getting closer and closer and closer. the wright brothers. there will any number of people. in fact there was someone in 1899 who actually used the

wright brothers' wing warping technique which they pat tend, on a glider. he was an instructor at yale, and it was successful, and there's plenty of witnesses, and he was going to do more with and it he went back to his fellow instructors at yale and said, i'm going to do this. they said, there's no future in this. just give it up. do something else and he went and did something else. so, instate of ed son we now remember the wright brothers, if any of your are saving to send your kids to yale. so we have holland coming along. there are efforts in turkey and greece, they're buying designs. the one place curiously where there was no interest in submarine technology was germany. after the finnian ram is

kidnapped and holland turns his attention to the out. hi eventually persuades or not directly but through reputation, persuades the secretary of the navy at the time, william collins whitney, to fund the competition for the best design and whoever create this best design, get tuesday hundred thousandto build a boat. holland wins. but there are now other people, a man named george baker, eventually a man named simon lake, and the convince whitney, they convince the navy, there's change of administration and they convince the powers that be not to dispense the money but to have a new competition. so they have another competition, and holland wins again. again, they are persuaded not to dispense the money but to have a third competition. they have a third competition and holland wins the third time.

by this time there's a man named seem simon lake who is well known in submarine technology circled mostly because -- he was a brilliant deep signer but his boats went straight down. they just dropped. and he had wheels on the bottom. his interest was salvage and he made a fortune doing it but he was telling everyone his boats are better and he wrote so much afterwards that simon lake's reputation become people think he did what holland did. holland wins the third competition and actually gets the money and he has a couple of business partners at this time. ...

the only way he realized he was running out of money and he realized the only way he could actually satisfy the contract any deal that would work was to build one on his own. privately funded where he could then show the navy and say, okay, this is what it should look like and that's when he came and they did build it. a lot of times it's abbreviated to the holland and it worked and it got better and simon and from there-- i don't want to go into detail because i don't want to ruin that the book, but from there it's an amazing story of-- they were competing on who could buy their own congressman, how

to get influence. simon started stories that isaac writes to josephine was the side of the ahca dalia with congressman being carried out and plied with drink, oysters and loose women in order to vote in these stories were all in the newspapers and there were two major congressional investigations and the cast of characters is hilarious. is the kind of thing that if you tried to do in fiction, a fiction editor would say look, you are either going to do this as a comedy or straight story and ultimately isaac rice and eb frost who was hollowed partner and then became rice since parter forced rice out of his own business.

rice had developed a fast attack submarine, the design, which was tested. the records are bit sketchy, but he had reported to be able to do 22 knots when they were doing eight knots with the boats they had, so it was this-- it you have the situation and to go back to the whole innovation issue you have this issue and wilbur wright's who is utterly brilliant inventor, what of the greatest scientists this country has ever produced who chose and i'm not going to go into bergman , but chose to focus on his business and instead in 1909 took in high-powered investors who are supposed go back to the workshop and improve the right flyer instead he met-- micromanaged and it killed him pick the last letter wilbur wright ever wrote in his life was not while he was dying to a

family member, it was to a patent attorney complaining about the slow progress and how much money it was costing him. you have henry ford who has a reputation as a great inventor, when it's actually not an inveterate all, but a businessman and then you have john philip holland who is a pure inventor, a man who is not suited for business. he was willing to go into business. unlike wilbur wright he was willing to let other people, better people run the business and subsequently he was frozen out, so for me the story of the developments of the submarine parallels the development of the automobile and airplane and they have the lessons, not simply-- when i do a book, i always try to do something with history and is pertinent to the present. these three books, it's likely--

reading about silicon valley startups where someone invents something and is run out of his business and complaints and hear the ceo of uber, more complex situation, but he has changed the way americans travel in higher cars is now out of his own company. now, he had other personal problems, but these issues i am covered in these three books seem to me so pertinent that that's why they were really fun to do. of the summary of the story is the-- i didn't get a chance to do the congressional step in the money and how is dispensed. we don't have time, but it's an absolutely wonderful story. there's 1472 page record of a congressional investigation. ordinarily, when you research this and i don't have researchers, do it myself but i

wouldn't time to read this, but i literally could not put it down. this telegram, this response, this telegraph, this accusation, one is accused of being insane, it was wonderful stories in the last thing i'll give you this, i hope the book with an incident in september 22, 1914, when a german u-boat sinks three british cruisers off the coast of holland. within 90 minutes and 15 to 1700 people died in war at sea on that day, the three boats that were sunk changed the face of modern warfare. of the irony is and i alluded to this earlier, the one country in early 1900s that had no interest

in submarines was germany because the admiral who is the head of their navy but it was a gimmick, but in 1905, president roosevelt went down in a submarine unlike james the first he really did it and he went off oyster bay and it was front page news all over the world. there is no record linking the two, but pleasantly within about 12 to 18 months the company has a contract from the german navy to begin to build a submarines. commission in 1909, 1914 captain lieutenant thinks that three british cruisers. he died six months later in warfare and it's changed forever with that, if any of you have any questions i would be pleased to answer them. someone must have some.

>> with these three different innovative developments, i don't know-- how much of the book was driven by military interest and do you go into there was a scientific interest as well and that that's a good question. simon lake was definitely commercial. exported, ya maybe, but mostly the fact that lake discovered all these ships that had sunk, all the precious cargo and he devised ways to actually get it out. brilliant to guy, but the money lake eventually believed he had to go into an attack submarine because that's where the money was. lake, for all the money he made and he made a fortune ended up-- he was always short of money because it cost so much to do the research, so everyone was

looking as in many innovations, everyone was looking at the military application first and civilian applications followed. because in this case a submarine performing the way we thought a submarine should was very much what holland was working on. it dovetailed into military applications. >> so, you clearly have a knife or good stories and they revolve around intervention and i was just wondering what your personal experience was. you also talk about people that didn't have any formal training, so i'm curious how far into that you have gotten with researching these stories, but also engineering aspect?

>> i have no engineering training. i'm a american historian and scientist by training, but when you-- one of the tricks to writing the kind of books is to take complex concepts and make them explicable to a general reader. what i want is for ordinary readers to be able to go oh, yeah, i get that. i see how that happened. in order to do that i have two simple five, take complexity that would ordinarily be intrinsic to the subject out and figure out if i can figure out how it works in a reasonable way then i can write how it works in a reasonable way. so, while i don't have training, as i read and for example i

wouldn't know boo about aerodynamics, but the basic concepts i have learned enough about that i'm always asked her to speak in front of aerospace and aeronautical engineers and they say well, how do you do that. are a lot of it is how you read the material. there is one other thing i should say, the internet has provided a wealth of material that's absolutely stunning. there is a magazine called robotics that started in 1907, internet archive has the magazine, not just text and articles, but actual magazines to turn the pages and see the ads, all sorts of scientific american was a wealth for all three books. technical world, all these engineering journals, so i'm able to read through the progress of any of these innovations kind of as the

people who are learning about them are reading and some of them you read and a some of the articles in scientific american and some of the most prestigious journals, they are relate-- ridiculous in the face of other -- a later knowledge, but that's what they know at the. one of the things i can do because of the internet and all of these science is to work my way through the development of one of these innovations kind of as the people who are either doing it or monitoring it or investing in it, so it's an amazing-- it's fun, just leafing through these journals. there are pictures and aeronautics and automobiles particularly, pictures that are never been reproduced. wilbur wright had his teeth knocked out when he was young playing a hockey like game and there are pictures of him smiling and there's a picture of him in one and he smiled like that without opening his mouth,

so you learn about people and i learned about john philip holland, which he gave a lot quotes kirk you learn about people from their contemporaries and from the people writing about them, so it's a really cool and fun exercise. yes, sir? >> the me ask you something. i grew up in the caribbean and i have been told a story. that island i was boarding, aruba,. [inaudible question] [inaudible question]

>> do you believe the submarines during the horrific cold war era when is greater than the netherlands was playing a role from keeping things from exploding to say you hear it played-- [inaudible question] [inaudible question] [inaudible question] >> that the difficult question for me particularly because we have two gentlemen in the audience who know what they are talking about, so i will be really really careful here. my first job out of graduate school was a think tank and they did these kinds of war studies and the notion of assured mutual

destruction, which everyone hates, when you're dealing with people who deal with this stuff all the time you may hate it, but they believe it has kept the peace. so, weaponry the more sophisticated and more destructive weaponry becomes the riskier to his, but also the more of a deterrent it is generally to war. now, not going to take the position on this because the question is how do you balance the risk of this immense power against the deterrence because lesser weapons throughout history have been used much more frequently. sticks into spears and and we work our way up. poison gas for example, has been used almost not at all and it nuclear weapons have not been used in a 60, 70 years.

the answer is i don't know. in terms of whether a submarine technology will become more sophisticated. yes. i have a chapter in one of my books which i titled-- [inaudible] >> we as a species is simply move afford and we have not demonstrated as a species the ability to control our movement through technology via to cloning or we have often tried to control it after the fact, so if you are asking me do i think submarine technology may become more sophisticated, less human -based, sure. why would nick? why wouldn't it cracks is that a more dangerous situation?

probably, but these are issues-- none of these issues are simple. these are not-- this is never something way you can say oh, that's obvious. it may be obvious that in that we should not use nuclear weapons again, but how do you not develop nuclear weapons when you think your enemies may be doing it? there's a level of complexity with us living together, greater and greater populations, closer proximity, more sophisticated technology that we has a species had to deal with for much of this amazing progress we have made. people will have to come to grips with those questions. will they? i don't know. i hope so. anyone else? >> you talked about how they kept running out of money, the

people trying to push this forward and it made me think, do you think that the business side of this might be essential if we do next and make these inventions available to a wider audience or does the knowledge play a bigger role or--? >> i remember a man ran for president and he said democrats love employment, but hate employers. also, in one of my other many existences i worked on wall street for a while. there is like everything else there are aspects to the world of a finance that have been absolutely essential to whom in -- to human progress. there are also aspects that have been anathema to human progress, so if you are asking is business essential, it is essential that

someone who knows how to translate an idea even a prototype into a commercial military application, we need those people because with the wilbur wright, john philip holland and the people of-- that henry ford employed you see if it is left to them things dead and a lot. do we need similar to this question, do we need in some way to control or manage how we deal with those financial interests, the answer to that is of course yes. again, comes down to this choice how much of one or you willing to accept to get some of the other, but if you are asking me do i think the business side is essential as necessary to move

things forward, it always has been and i suspect it always will be. one other thing i'm going to say is that things are initiated often with the best of intentions because of need and then there is a level of-- i don't mean necessarily corruption with bribery, but there is a level of stalled vacation or corruption that comes with anything as it matures, so the trick is to keep things vibrant. in silicon valley now one of the things that was so great that that things were just one thing after another and things were to vibrance and people were investing in things failed and succeeded, but then he reached maturity where you kind of reading the last dollar or little bit of utility out of an innovation and that goes the other way, but thanks.

yes? >> the navy asking for specifications and holland saying you have rocks in your head and it made me think of the current situation with the australian airport, which because every innovation if the plane is going to catch on fire or the pilot is denied oxygen and it's way over budget and seems somehow or another-- i'm just interested with the inventor had some control it might have been a success and i'm just wondering with the studies you have done with land, sea and air if this particular exercise to see if there are

parallels with such differences that you could say that we have learned from previous experience >> i don't know there is a particular-- yes, as you are talking i did my own surf and turf, but i will say this. there are examples when an inventor has been frozen out of his own company and the company has suffered there are examples when the inventor has maintain control. wilbur reich demanded control of his own company and ruined it. there wasn't a single innovation with the right brothers, not a single aspect to modern airplane and their rights, wilbur particularly insisted on maintaining this wing technology which was dead and, so you have an example of an inventor who was utterly brilliant too should have stepped out of the way, but did not.

of then you have other examples where inventors are shunted away prematurely john holland is the other side. if john holland was allowed to stay the company, isaac rice and his partners did not want to deal with more innovation because they had spent enough money they had the product. the product was going to sell and why invest more of the status attack submarine when you have a summary no one else has, so you had the opposite. the problem is when dealing with these issues and from my business aside i can tell you there's no rules. there is no-- nothing where you can say it's that always. it is a case-by-case situation almost always and dependent on the quality of the people on the innovation side, on the purchasing side and the financial side how good, what

kind of foresight do they have, it all depends. so, we all want rules. there is a brilliant book called the drunkard's walk. he used to work with stephen hawking and it's about the role of chance and how much people want hard and fast. they want to know, they want certainty, but it simply doesn't work like that. anyone else? yes? >> you have a huge enthusiasm and curiosity and in my brief experience with meeting you and knowing your books they are about inventors and ideas and you seem to be very interested in that. is that something you always go for? are you really drawn to thinkers and creative actors?

>> first of all, thank you. no, actually. i got involved-- birdman and drive are both involved patent lawsuits took the third one doesn't, but i write about constitutional law by training and again, historically, always from the political side. are not a lawyer. starting constitutional convention and through the end of the 19th century, but what i'm drawn to our as a historian there are people who ignore the lessons of history and that's so true, people say yes, we should all study history and then they proceed to ignore it. i like shining a light on the present by using the past, so if i'm writing about constitutional

law, i might eat-- about issues. if i'm writing about the kinds of people who were involved now, so i'm drawn to examples in american history where i look and i say yes, this is essentially now. immediately to your left is a book and for a narrative story and she is like god because she's a brilliant writer. she had-- she could in capsule-- encapsulates the entire concept in one line and she was right there. one of her books came out during the vietnam era, so that's what i'm always looking for. i'm trying to find ways to use the past to enlighten the present. >> and asked one more real

quick? is your methodology always the same following a similar pattern how do you die then on day one when you decide i'm going to write about the first attack submarine? what you do on monday morning when you get up? is there a pattern was every book different? >> every book is different, but this one, one leads to another. sometimes people will just tell me things. one woman reminded me of a supreme court case, which when a young woman was sterilized against her will and oliver wendell holmes wrote a notorious decision that said three generations of imbeciles is enough. that got me interested in homes and then i went out back and then another case, 1903, voting rights case in alabama where homes recently on the court and wrote another parable-- rode a decision justifying

disenfranchising black people from voting rolls in alabama and i said after-- i have to write about this. sometimes their dead ends. this offends me off in the other direction, so is that process. you are always looking and you are attuned, you know when you do this for a living things quick and you go there's a supreme court decision now and as soon as i-- this notion of corporations suing people for example started in 1886 supreme court decision and it wasn't even in the decision. it was a side by chief justice who said we believe 14th amendment guarantees the right of corporations after dudes-- disenfranchising african-american's. so i think i have to write about that, too.

that's kind of how it works. [inaudible] >> now with the internet you would be buried in vapor but now with the internet down when the server is down, no. >> so, good old-fashioned-- >> yes, following trails. you are like a detective and you see something, a clue and you go i want to follow that and you do it sometimes it leads someplace and sometimes it doesn't. sometimes you spend a lot of time researching and you go bomber. that's the word, bomber. that's a term historians use a lot. [laughter] >> anyone else? thank you very much. thank you all for coming,.

[applause]. >> big thank you to lawrence. if you could lean your chairs up against the side, so we could all walk around. lawrence will be signing some books at the register. [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around country. saturday september 2, we are lie from the nation's capital for the national book festival with author presentation zen viewer comments admits featuring the likes of pulitzer prize winning historian david, jd vance and former secretary of state condoleezza rice. sunday september 17, look first at the brooklyn book festival

with all the discussions on the supreme court, immigrants, big data and more. later in the month it's the baltimore book festival taking place at the city's inner harbor and in october, over 200 authors will speak at the southern festival of books in nashville. for more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals and to watch previous festival coverage click the book fairs tab on a website, book tv.org. >> hello, everyone. can everyone hear me? awesome. so, welcome tonight. hello. by name is matthew and i work on the event staff for the stork and on behalf of the store owners i would like to thank you and welcome our speakers tonight. so, a few notes of housekeeping