make it, and a small group of economic elites exploiting the system. and an easy opening that was almost there for the working people to unite and take on those elites. and what the elites did was realize they could use race as the wedge to exploit9 and divide -- exploit and divide. and we are paying a price for that even now, and we're seeing it again. and we have to fight against that. but the way to fight against it is to have empathy for all groups that are facing these stresses and try and find ways for each of them to see why others have pain and look at it through a different prism. so thanks. yeah. >> yes. you spent a lot of time talking about how trump used racism, appeals to racism in his campaign supposedly, although there's really not any proof of

that. but what i wanted to ask, i wanted to ask you kind of the opposite argument that i hear a lot is that -- >> yes. >> -- maybe it's the democrats that are the racists because they're constantly using the race card every year and trying to drum up hatred for white people with the black lives matter and all that stuff. but, and in addition to that, of course, the open borders which i constantly hear democrats and liberals like you say by 2050 whites will be a minority, isn't that great? and you get big applause. it's -- you're the racists. you want to displace the white population by 2050 if we continue these immigration policies. how is that not racism? you are the racists. [inaudible conversations] >> so, first, just one little piece of evidence. when you see marchers in charlottesville, some of them wearing white hoods and chanting racist and anti-semitic slogans and the president says there are a lot of fine people there and

says nothing after a bunch of people are murdered in a church in charleston, i'd view that as evidence, and i think we have a lot more. [applause] when you run a long campaign saying that barack obama was born in kenya and is not a legitimate president, i think the writing is on the wall with that one. now, having said that -- [applause] and i don't celebrate the fact that the country will not be majority white after 2050, i view it as a reality. i will tell you that you can go back to the 1920s and 1930s, and there were all kinds of people who talked about the scourge of those horrible irish and italians coming in and polluting the country. and the same with other ethnic groups that faced a different reality. as my late colleague ben

wattenburg said, people want to come to this country because they want to make better lives for themselves and others and because they celebrate the freedom and prosperity of america. they're the right kinds of people to come here. they have built this country into what it is. whatever their race or creed or national origin or religion. and that doesn't mean you don't have ways of protecting your borders, and yet when you have a party now that's trying to cut legal immigration as well as illegal immigration, i to not find that -- i do not find that as being something that fits either our traditions or our ability to thrive in the future. if we're going to end up like many european countries with aging populations and young people who can't even pay for what will happen to those older people, be we don't have a vibrant -- if we don't have a vibrant young work force that really wants to make it and make their families better, we're not going to survive as a country. and i just do not view that in the same way. now, having said that, i don't

think there is a contradiction between understanding what the black lives matter movement is all about. i cannot imagine -- i get emotional with this stuff, because i lost a son. i can't imagine what it was like, what it is like for a family to send a teenager out for an evening and worry that that kid might be shot by a cop just for driving while black. there is a difference. those things happen in this society. but you can feel that pain and also feel the pain of a family in a small town caught up with an opioid addiction because the jobs aren't there and because the society isn't providing for them. there is nothing that says one is inimical to the other. and what we have to do is make people understand all of that pain. [applause] yes.

>> i appreciate that. tom perez, the new dnc chair, strikes me as an awfully good guy. i love his energy, and i listen to everything he said leading up to the elections and after. it's my sense that he talks about, you know, the tenets quite often, as he should, to keep things pithy, yet every time i watch and listen to him he has never said anything specific about economic growth. and it strikes me that he, by default to a degree if that continues, runs the risk of ceding that issue to the republicans -- >> yeah. >> -- in a period where independents are going to be crucial. any thoughts? >> yeah. and i do think there are two camps, i think, in a party in

the minority. one is you just highlight your opposition to what the majority is doing, and it's almost the sense if somebody's committing suicide, you don't, you know, kill them along the way. but the other is that you offer your own positive agenda. and if you don't do that, you may succeed in the midterm election, but you're not going to be prepared to govern. and if you can't offer people some sense of hope, which is why one chapter in this book that makes a great holiday gift -- [laughter] is an economic agenda. and it's about creating growth and jobs. and by the way, there are many ways in a tax bill to provide incentives for companies to actually do jobs instead of just saying give them more money, and it'll trickle down when it trickles down to the shareholders and the ceos. but what we've seen is an enormous reservoir of money in corporations that they could use to create more jobs that they don't. you need to have incentives to do it. i'd like to see those alternatives. but i also want to see a democratic party that starts to

put resources into state legislative races and into secretary of state races which are the ones that control elections. so there are a lot of things that have to be done. tom perez has a lot of energy. i hope he begins to channel it in a different way, and i hope that the democrats in congress and in the states start to work on their own plans. i have about more minutes. if i could just take the remaining questions, and i'll try to answer them -- take them all and then i'll answer. thank you. >> okay. in january we're going to do a book study of your book at coral gables congregational church for anybody who's interested. particularly focusing on the last part on the sort of positive proposals. i wonder there's any of those proposals that you'd like to particularly highlight this morning. >> sure. >> hello. i wanted to thank you for your shout-out to the legal community for part of the pushback. i work for the american civil

liberties union for the last 40 years, and we were -- [applause] thank you. heavily involved in that. but i want to change the subject and ask youd the's new york times editorial talks about the significance in virginia of the refranchisement of the right to vote for former felons. >> yeah. >> and i want to make a little commercial here. we have the opportunity to change florida, and in changing florida, change the country by the effort here in florida. people here will see petitions outside, and if we could refranchise over a million people here in florida, that's one of the major ways we might be able to accomplish many of the things that you've been talking about. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] yes. >> you mentioned, you mentioned orrin hatch, and he also sponsored the orphan drug act back in 1983. the current tax bill now takes

away the incentive for rare disease drug research. what can we do now to say come back to being your compassionate self, mr. hatch? >> thanks. >> what can we do? >> okay. so just quickly on all of those. in terms of proposals, if we're looking at the structures of government, we need to not just focus on the electoral college, but we need to look at both redistricting reform and what i hope will be one very good change that we could make state by state in our presidential elections which is to allow rank choice voting or preference voting so that you not only vote more your first choice, you do your second and third, and then those votes get allocated as you move further down. and that's because i want to remove the possibility that a jill stein or a ralph nader or a pat buchanan can switch the

outcome of an election. and let people, let them have opportunities. and let people vote for those if they want, but not alter the results of an election because those votes would then be allocated. so there are a lot of proposals in there worth discussing. on the felon reenfranchisement, if you look at some of the videos on youtube of foreman felons in virginia able -- former felons in virginia able to vote for the first time who were productive citizens and wanted back a very precious right and many of them, you know, and it hits, certainly, african-americans more than others, but plenty of others as well. many of them caught up in the drug wave with these mandatory minimum sentences, put away for many years, didn't do anything horrible or violent. the idea that they are forever forbidden from voting, i think, is anathema. and on orrin hatch, who i've worked with in the past and who i would call a friend in the past who's been an enormous

disappointment, and you look at this tax bill with many provisions like the orphan drug one, like taking the scholarship opportunities away, if you're vladimir putin and you want to destroy america's primacy in science and technology, boy, you'd love this particular provision. one of the things that all of us have to do is to go out and get the members of congress and -- because this bill's going to come around again in the house, and we're going to see a vote very soon in the senate. and marco rubio has to be informed about the horrible things in this bill and what they would do to floridians as well as to others in the country. and hold people to account for the votes that they cast. and then orrin hatch is going to be leaving before long. somehow bringing him back to being the problem-solving conservative that he was really has to be a task for people in utah, i'm afraid. and for those of us outside who

are able to hit him on twitter as i do on a fairly regular basis. thank you all very much. i really appreciate it. ms. -- [applause] >> thank you, mr. ornstein. and norman ornstein will be signing his book on this floor on the other side of the elevators. so please make your way there if you'd like to have your book autographed. thank you. [inaudible conversations] please help us by leaving the room as quickly as possible if you're not remaining for the next program. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> and you're watching booktv

on c-span2, live coverage of the miami book fair for the 20th year in a row, we are in miami. it's held on the campus of miami-dade college in the downtown area. we've got a booktv set here as swell as the c-span bus. and if you're in the area, come on down and pick up a book bag from the bus, and you can take a tour as well. in about 15 minutes, walter isakson will be speaking about his new book on leonardo da vinci. joining us now on the booktv set in the center of the festival is journalist and author helen thorpe. her newest book just out is called "the newcomers: finding refuge, friendship and hope in an american class room." now, ms. thorpe, before we get into that book, is there a relationship between your three books or a thread that connects them? >> guest: yeah, absolutely. my first book was about undocumented students growing up

here, families that had immigrated from mexico and what happened when people didn't have legal status. my second book was about women veterans serving in iraq and afghanistan and then trying to come back home. and that's a little bit like immigration because you're returning to your home country, but it's hard to come back. so it's a big transition as well. and in this case i'm looking at, you know, refugees, teenagers coming to this country and trying to learn english in an english-language acquisition classroom and struggling to figure out high school in america each as they're struggling to learn english. i think there's a thread there, for sure. yeah. >> host: what is the high school that you chose? >> guest: so i put myself in a classroom at south high school in denver, colorado, and that schools has expertise welcoming refugees and immigrants. the school's about one-third foreign-born, two-thirds american. and it's just an incredible school because they've got

paraprofessionals who speak every language under the sun, and they have a lot of -- they've been doing this for two decades, so they have expertise welcoming refugees and asylum seekers and immigrants, yeah. >> host: what are the demographics of south? is it a magnet school? is it a public school? >> guest: it's a public high school, and it's a neighborhood high school, but it's also dedicated to kids whose schooling has been interrupted. and a lot of the foreign-born kids are coming from war zones, so their schooling's been interrupted by conflicts, and they've had to sometimes flee their home country. the great thing that they do there is they really have integrated the school so that the foreign-born kids and the american-born kids become friends, and they serve on the student senate together. the kids are incredibly well integrated, and they are learning a lot from one another which is great to see. >> host: well, this is not necessarily a book about policy, this is a book about people. >> guest: right. >> host: and the it's 32 -- it's

22 kids. how did you choose them? or did they choose you? >> guest: i put myself in the very beginner level english language classroom, and the 22 kids who arrived that year just turned out to be a perfect map of the global refugee crisis. so if there's a country like the congo that is sending huge numbers of refugees here, that classroom got four kids from the congo. a country like burma also producing a lot of refugees, they sent two students to the room. a country like iraq, another country that we're seeing a lot of ref i few gees from -- refugees from, they sent two students. so it's at an individual level where you could get to know people and really understand the crisis not as a big thing that seems overwhelming, but in a human way at a human scale. and the kids were funny and hilarious and friendly and delighted to be here. they were very thankful. they wanted to, you know, become friends with one another and flirt with one another, but they didn't have a common language.

that was pretty funny to see their attempts. [laughter] >> host: so what was day one like with kids who spoke -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- nearly 2 2k languagings. -- 22 languages. >> guest: the kids were so scared and overwhelmed that the room was just totally silent. but by the end of the year, you know, the trajectory was learning at such a fast curve that by the end of the year the room was filled with sound and noise and happiness, and the kids were flirting with one another and making friends and having sleepovers at each other's homes. the kids were giving each other high-fives, they were, you know, one young man asked another girl to marry him -- [laughter] so they were doing all the things that teenagers do by the end of the year. >> host: what was their integration with the american-born students like? >> guest: so the teacher noticed that the kids were having trouble fit anything and figuring out america -- fitting in and figuring out america. he actually found a mentor from

i've of his students and invited those mentors to come have lunch with his kids. so you saw, you know, a very high-achieving pair of iraqi twins who were in the advanced placement classes come and have lunch with the newly-arrived students from iraq. and you saw kids who spoke swahili and were serving in rotc come and have lunch with the kids who just got there from the congo who spoke swahili. so there was a lot of integration kind of facilitated in this expert way by the teacher and the guidance counselors to help the kids make friends and integrate. amazingly, the newcomers as they're called in the school started serving on the student senate by year two, started playing soccer. one of the kids even in his first year began running on the track team and winning a lot of medals, so he became a hero in the high school. he was from eritrea, so all the students were on snapchat bragging about him and the medals he was winning.

it was exciting to see the kids succeed in this kind of way. >> host: did they spend all day -- it's eddie williams who was the teacher, correct? >> guest: yeah. >> host: did they spend all day with this one classrooming or did they integrate into other classrooms as well? >> guest: because they were newly arrived, they had three class periods with eddie williams teaching them english. then they had science and math and art and gym. but eddie williams was an extraordinary teacher. he, his background, his dad is anglo, but his mom's latina, and he's fluent in english and in spanish, but he knows what it's like to learn a new language. and his mom had been in english-language acquisition classes herself as a child. so he was sensitive to what that experience was like, and he really wanted his kids to feel at home in his room. >> host: helen thorpe, how did you get access to south? >> guest: you know, when i showed up right before school started, the principal said i read your first book, "just like us," i know you're very sensitive and wrote about

undocumented students, you're welcome to spend as much time as you want in any room in this high school. so that was amazing. but i think really the first book paved the way. >> host: did the parents have issues with you being there? >> guest: so i sent letters home to all the parents. they invited me to their homes. i actually quickly began sharing meals. the iraqi family cooked me middle eastern feasts. they like to eat sitting on the floor, so we did that together. the congolese family invited me home, and i had meals with them. they had a habit of you eat out of one bowl. it's a congolese tradition, so they'd put one bowl with three spoons in it, we'd all share from the same bowl. they explained to me this was a way of being hospitable, but also traditionally in their culture it's a way to make sure you're not poisoned, because if you're sharing from one bowl, you can't slip poison in. it's kind of an old-fashioned habit. it sounds sort of funny and outlandish, but i appreciated that they were teaching me about their customs and sharing food

the way that they would at home. >> host: were there cultural problems in the school with all these new students coming in? >> guest: one thing that i saw happen, there are some countries that have a history of conflict, so eritrea and ethiopia can be in conflict, and some of those students had a little bit of an argument when they were supposed to be on stage together during culture fest, and they couldn't agree about that because of some of the conflicts that they were, you know, having in their home country. but, no, for the most part the students actually got along tremendously well k. and they figured out that they were sharing the circumstance of emigrating to this country and what that experience was like. they had more in common than they did that divided them. >> host: who are some of the students, one or two, that you spent a little extra time with or kind of gravitated toward? >> guest: so i immediately was struck by two boys from the congo, solomon and methuselah, because they showed up and their learning curve was so fast. methuselah started coming over to me and putting down his

homework in front of him. he figured out i was this underutilized resource in his classroom -- [laughter] he could get coaching from me, so i was happy to do that. i spent a lot of time with their family, and i ultimately traveled to the congo to understand better the journey theyed that taken, why they had to leave the congo, what refugee settlement they went to which i visitedded and what their journey was like here. so i got to know those two boys really well. >> host: there is a policy aspect. what's the status of these 22 students today? >> guest: so the 22 students, for the most part they're refugees, so they arrived with refugee status. but in all cases they have left friends or family at home in their home countries or the countries where they'd been living. and they are wishing that more people could come to this country as refugees. they're hoping that in the future the united states will admit a greater number of refugees. >> host: how did you end up in

denver? >> guest: oh, well, i moved to denver for love. [laughter] i moved to denver to get married, and denver has been a great home. i got to launch there this week at the tattered cover bookstore. i got a really warm outpouring of support, which was wonderful to see. >> host: and for six years you had a second job. >> guest: i did. i was the first lady of colorado when my then-husband was serving as the governor. he's still the governor -- >> host: john hickenlooper. >> guest: yes. and that was a joy. it was really a joy, yeah. incredible experience. >> host: did that help you get into south high high school, dou think? >> guest: it probably did. it also helped me get use to public life and the public stage, so i'm probably better at public speaking and that kind of thing as a result also. >> host: helen thorpe, when it comes to current immigration policy, current discussions, the national discussion we're having on immigration -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: -- did these students pay attention to that? >> guest: they paid attention a lot. they were confused by our election schedule when we were having primaries, they kept

thinking that the general election had happened, and i had to explain to them, no, we have a long process here. but they were very sophisticated in their understanding of, you know, their own treatment in the media and how refugees were maybe misperceived or misunderstood, and they really wanted to explain their stories. they wanted to say, you know, we're very happy to be here, we have no animosity towards americans in our home country like in iraq, those families had helped americans during the invasion. they really wanted people to know that. >> host: what did they not like about the states? >> guest: the only thing they didn't like, sometimes they were cold. like in denver it was snowing. [laughter] and they weren't used to that. they'd never worn maybe winter coats before if they came from a warm country. that was their number one complaint. >> host: did all 22 graduate? >> guest: well, they're still in high school, but they're thriving, and they're now in mainstream classes. i watched solomon and methuselah start reading "to kill a mockingbird." that was an incredible feat to

see. >> host: do you plan on staying in touch? >> guest: we're friends for life. we bond over the experience of their challenge in learning english. >> host: helen thorpe's newest book is called "the newcomers: finding refuge, friendship and hope in an american classroom." thank you. >> guest: thank you. .. and follow booktv on social media. @booktv is our handle. for our facebook and to graham and twitter. this is live coverage in miami. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. we are about to begin the next session. going to get started. good afternoon to everyone and welcome to miami book fair.

as i look out, i see many of you who have been with us all morning. i am sure there are many who have been with us since last sunday. in my right? who opened the flare with a black sunday? it is truly a pleasure to welcome you to miami book fair 2017. let me say a special welcome as always conveying the gratitude to the circle of friends from miami book fair. we will continue this outstanding cultural or literary event for the community, and visitors came to the book fair in the month of november.

the book fair is year-round. i hope you do visit us all year long but particularly on this 7 day extravaganza of wonderful authors, booksellers, presenters, chefs and many other literary enthusiasts. thank you for being here. i want to ask as always that you silence your devices so we can all enjoy the program. to help introduce the speaker, please help me to welcome the -- xavier, the general counsel. [applause] >> good afternoon. on behalf of south motors miami-dade footage, we are pleased to have you here, 60

years of a commitment. from the very beginning, and events, it is our pleasure to have someone like this here. and his magnitude at knowledge and wealth of experience. my notes are blanking out. the university professor of history at tulane, a former ceo of the aspen institute, chairman of cnn and managing editor of time magazine. he is the author of the innovators, how a group of hackers created the digital revolution. kissinger, a biography. steve jobs. benjamin franklin, and american

life. and brings to life leonardo da vinci for us. without further ado, walter isaacson. [applause] >> thank you for -- from the miami book fest. always a great pleasure to be in this city. one reason it is great to be in miami, like so many other cities of this world, failed to be a mix of creative people with tolerance for all sorts of people, that is what made leonardo da vinci so creative. i have written about a lot of smart people, smart people are a dime a dozen. they don't usually amount to much. it takes being innovative and

creative. one recipe for that is being able to stand at the intersection of arts and sciences, the humanities and engineering, what i remember watching steve jobs give a presentation that would always end with that street sign of the liberal arts technology and say that is where creativity lies. i thought that is what ben franklin did, even einstein, would play out his violin and play mozart when he had trouble with his equations saying music and art helps connect to the spirit of the cosmos and the harmony of the spheres. the ultimate of that, the person i decided to be the capstone of a series of books about creativity and how to achieve it is leonardo da

vinci. leonardo had the great fortune to be born out of wedlock. had he been legitimate born, he would have been a notary like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather. leonardo loved, as he grew up in the tiny village of veggie, to blend fantasy and reality. he loved to think out of the box, he loved to do things different. all the things you do not want in your notary but it did help him become a creative artist and engineer who loved the pattern of nature. also by being bored out of wedlock, said to one of the latin schools, crammed filled with dusty scholasticism of the middle ages. and became a disciple of

experience, meaning he did experiment, always questioned whatever he was told and decided he was going to see if it was right. he wasn't going to accept perceived wisdom. even as a little kid in da vinci, those streams, he put rocks in them to see how the water rippled. the swirl of water becomes one of the many patterns in nature that become his passion and we see it throughout his life. he looked at things you and i saw when we were age 10 and asked questions about, like why is the sky blue. whatever it takes off to its wings go up faster or down faster? leonardo, unlike us, never outgrew his wonder years. he was the most insatiably curious person in history and

that is key number one to his creativity. weird questions he decided to know, why is the sky blue but why does water swirl the way it does in a pond or what is the size of the sun and how would you measure it? my favorite, what does the tongue of a woodpecker look like? i tried to imagine what it would be like one morning to put in your notebook, describe the tongue of a woodpecker. how would you even know, open up a woodpecker? that is leonardo. if it struck his curiosity he put it in his notebook and tried to learn everything. by age 12 his father brings him, like the towns i have been talking about, creative cities,

all sorts of people work together, he was lucky was born the same year guttenberg opened his print shop and spread it to florence. in his notebook he said go down to the station and by the translation, get the anatomy book, all the things he wanted to learn and constantinople fell the year he was born. people from the arab world bringing mathematics, leonardo is quite a misfit. besides being illegitimate he is left-handed, he is gay, he is a vegetarian, he is a bit of a heretic, it was under the meta-g family one of those places where people of diverse backgrounds all fit in, live and let live place. leonardo worked in a workshop. some call it an artist studio

but it was much more than that. that was another secret for leonardo. he loved to do everything. look at the famous duomo on the top of the cathedral. leonardo, when he was a very young apprentice, helps the copper ball, he draws the mechanisms they use to put it on top of the dome, the ultimate connection he makes his whole life between art and science, between beauty and engineering, a number of things they do in the workshop, pageant and play, leonardo loves them. kind of proud of how good-looking he is. we know how good-looking he is. there was a statue of david, a young 12-year-old david and the

younger 12-year-old leonardo is in the center being sketched by somebody else in the workshop posing for david. in the plays they do, the costumes, one of leonardo's first sketches, the warrior, the drawings that he liked, juxtaposed with the angelic young warrior, something we see leonardo doing his whole life but doing it as a set of costumes for the visit of the duke of milan, leonardo did the drawing on the left. you can see how they mix fantasy and reality. and the wings of a bat, scientifically accurate and anywhere in it, the swirls that leonardo liked. he even does it for his

engineering, and the swirls, people say didn't invent the helicopter? this drawing here is a famous drawing, yes except it was done too for a play, bring the angels down for the rapture. one of the plays leonardo produced. sometimes we don't focus on the fact that producing plays and doing pageants was a big job back then. they didn't have tvs and movies so there were pageants of plays each night and it blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. he so much love is blurring the line between fantasy and reality that once he does this with helicopter, maybe i will make a real flying machine, through his life trying to design flying machines and makes a great glider, can never make a man powered flying machine that will take off so

he studies the flight of birds, the weight ratio to their muscles, realizes it is impossible was another small lesson from leonardo. sometimes you should try to do the impossible because at least you will find out why it can't be done. he is a painter, that is one of the things they do in the workshop and he becomes such a good painter that the legend is for rodeo was so odd by him that he decided never to paint again, just have leonardo handle the painting in the studio, this, the baptism of christ, one of the patterns throughout leonardo's life, this is when he was very young, leonardo does that river, the river jordan coming from the ancient eons of time and flowing into the bodies, in this case literally as john the

baptist poured the water over jesus. if you look carefully, i thank simon & schuster for using such high quality paper, that you can see the color reproductions. if you look at the ripples in the ankles of jesus you see how scientifically accurate it is was the kid who loves that rippling water has to turn it into engineering and art. most importantly, in notebooks around this time, leonardo is saying the goal of a painter should also be to express the inner emotions throughout gestures and outward expressions. so the angel on the far left is leonardo's. next to him, look at leonardo's angel, all sorts of deep emotions as we see the twists of the neck and the expression of the face, things he had sketched in his notebook as he walked around town seeing how

people express different forms of our and other emotions. the one next to him, the only expression on that angel's face that you can see is how did i get here next to this far more beautiful angel? we see in his first portrait that ability to show emotions on a face, the wife of a cloth merchant in florence, with a river again coming down and connecting us to nature, connecting from the ancient mountains, the river curving into the blood of humans connecting us to the world. this is not the mona lisa. a cloth merchant's wife and 3 quarter profile. he wouldn't paint the mona alyssa until the end of his

life and only after doing a lot more anatomy and science and geology other art historians say it is a shame he wasted his time doing all this math and geology and fines and anatomy because he could have painted more paintings. that is true, but if he hadn't done all those patterns of nature and been so enriched about being curious about everything i don't think he ever would have gotten to the mona lisa which is the combination of a lifetime spent finding the patterns of nature. he used his theatrical knowledge. the adoration of the magi also done, in florence, we don't just see a scene, we see that swirl he loves, the curving spiral, and it is a drama, stage drama. in perspective as if it were on

a stage with the second kink offering the gift at the bottom, swelling up to the first king, already bowing down and each person in the spiral, expression, is reflective of the person before them. it was very complicated. leonardo doesn't finish the painting. that happens to leonardo often. he puts things aside, flying machines the don't fly, take the don't roll, paintings that he puts aside. he gives it to the family of amerigo vespucci, and i don't think he gave up on paintings but always thought maybe he would learn more to apply another brushstroke, whether was the mona lisa which kept for 16 years or the adoration of the magi which he gives to friends to hold for him, he never fully gets back to it. this notion of always finding

another brushstroke we see in saint jerome around the same time saint jerome in the wilderness and it is unfinished but you can see 20 or 30 years later after he put the painting aside, he does more anatomy experiments, gets the neck muscles exactly right in his anatomy drawings on the far right and goes back to a saint jerome painting and redoes that painting so what you see in leonardo's somebody who procrastinates. it makes him a bad notary. sometimes lets the perfect be the enemy of the good like steve jobs who wouldn't ship the original macintosh because the circuit board inside wasn't pretty so they held it up until they could make a circuit board no one would ever see. likewise, leonardo holds onto his drawings, i will learn

something more, i will be able to make it better. the way i sort of understood that was not just by looking at his paintings which other people have written about so brilliantly but i decided to use as the foundation for this book his notebooks. 20 years ago when i was wandering around, my wife had studied in florence, we saw the paintings, we go to italy, i kept stumbling across in the archives in italy, the notebook pages and that was the clue to how his mind danced around different subjects. take a simple, page like this. marvel technology, paper, for the storage and retrieval of information. 500 years later we can still see it. 50 years from now your facebook

posts and tweets, fortunately, are not going to be retrievable. but paper is really good. the operating system never goes out. the centerleft, you see that warrior. but you see a tree trunk branching into the torso of the warrior. as leonardo's mind is thinking about, the analogy between nature and human and leonardo's law of branching, when there is the branch of a tree or branches the cross-section of the areas of the branch is totaled to the cross-section of the trunk and that is true of rivers and their tributaries, it is true of our honorees so leonardo is making the connections in the top left making connections between swirls of water and curls of hair, he writes about curls of hair, the same spiral form and even -- in these equations, he

is always trying to transform one shape to a different shape with the same area. a problem called squaring the circle, to make a square the same area using only a ruler and the protraction was an ancient mathematical puzzle that is not totally solvable, but it is a very irrational number but leonardo, throughout his life, the square, the circle, you can see it up there. finally on the left, he is writing from right to left, he is a left-hander, doesn't want to smudge the ink. you see the list of things he wants to learn, weird things like inflate the lungs of a pig and whether they expanded

length and width. he is turning 30 when he does this and at the bottom left is a recipe for using the husks of certain nuts and oiling them in oil, in order to make a tiny, in other words hair dye. the guy is human, vain about his appearance, he is worried about going gray. around that time, he finds the companion of his wife, sort of to be a petty thief, has his nickname and throughout his life we can watch his beautiful curly hair and see him in the notebooks as part of leonardo's life but at that period of

turning 30, turning gray, his father, the notary had notarized the contracts, the adoration in the saint jerome. it was time to move on, leaving wonderful -- a delegation, florence is not a great military power, to lose battles is hard to do. what we might call soft power, cultural diplomacy, and architects, an artist to do things like the sistine chapel or building in venice and in 1482 a big delegation that goes from florence to milan to the

duke of milan led by a playwright and a poet, an architect, artist, engineer. of all things, leonardo goes as a musician because he loves peter so invented musical instruments including one -- like a violin. but made it in the shape of a horse and brings it as a gift as part of the cultural delegation but wants to stay there, needs a new horizon and is tired of being a painter, blocked on the last couple of paintings he has done so he writes one of the coolest job application letters in history to the duke of milan. 11 paragraphs long, the first ten paragraphs are all about engineering and science.

he says i can make great weapons of war, something he hadn't done but he sketched out a lot of them. the large crossbow. i can build great buildings, divergent rivers, only in the 11th paragraph almost as an afterthought when he says and i can also paint as any person. he could but he revels in the fact when he gets to milan he eventually earns a position as engineer and painter to the duke of milan. he works on projects collaboratively because i want to emphasize that creativity is a team sport. innovation comes from collaboration. we think of leonardo as going to a castle in milan and doing his great drawing, but in fact he worked with a lot of other

people especially in the court of milan. his close friend the great mathematician, leonardo does his drawings for his math book, leonardo gets a feel for that, useful in art. he also works with architect and engineer's and his first real big thing is work with three or four friends on helping fix up the milan cathedral. like steve jobs, leonardo believed that simplicity was the soul of beauty. if you look at this cathedral you are thinking this is not the soul of beauty. this is a gothic monstrosity. leonardo and his friends are asked to design, i can't quite show it, the lantern tower on top and come up with a simple geometric design and as you can

tell, the authorities in milan don't build it. they build a gothic monstrosity instead. and working on it leonardo has become close friends with other architects and engineers. the cool thing is he painted a picture of the two of them together, there he is on the right, balding, leonardo on the left, short, purple to the next that he loved to wear, the notebook in front of him, going right to left, he was always said to have had a muscular, well hills, well proportioned, athletic body, chiseled face and wonderful curly locks of blonde, or dyed blonde hair. so they go off and decide to do

design. they like a very symmetrical -- how you really should do a building or charge, should be proportional to a human, connecting a human to nature and the renaissance as you know is partly a rebirth of classical knowledge. if you read the swerve, you know the rediscovery of lucretius is part of the renaissance, there was a manuscript that has been rediscovered by the ancient roman architect vitruvius who writes about how buildings, especially churches and temples should reflect proportions, page after page, the exact proportions of the human body.

and the proportion, one thing i discovered, and said his childhood doesn't accept severe wisdom, and page after page of his notebooks, proportions, and sitting, standing, running, dozens and dozens of proportions that he does. with his friends he is peeking out totally obsessive on the issue of squaring the circle, ways to do that, the same area, having done that they go down to a town very close to milan, having their cathedral that is more to their liking, they all

decide to go to the castle, a copy of the manuscript of vitruvius. you know leonardo, and the man in proportion in the circle, in the church design, to the proportion of vitruvius. and the dinner leonardo does his verse.

a totally different thing. if you look at the vitruvian man, it is a work of brilliant science, puts it sideways to the measurement and everything is scientifically proportioned could the measurements and it is exactly accurate but it is also work of great man, vitruvius said the naval should be at the center of the earth but implies the genitals are the center of creation, the circle and he square, use either the circle goes up a little higher, the naval at the center, the circle goes up and squaring the circle making the same area. besides being a work of great

science and great mass, it is a work of unbelievable art. necessary beauty and remember what his friends are doing, stick figures, leonardo with his left-handed cross-sections making it awesomely beautiful. to the fourth floor in venice where they keep it in storage, where it can't be exposed to light, my wife and i and the translator working with the talked them into showing it to us and you look at the dust jacket of my book, there i am leaning over a vitruvian man walking up four flights of stairs in july in venice in a non-air-conditioned building sweating, if i drop some sweat under this picture, 500 years from now people will be saying i wonder what leonardo meant by that blot? i was very careful. he knew exactly what he was

doing. the sketch, the protractor in the center of the naval and you get a chill almost, you're in the presence of the hands of the master and you look at the face. that face staring at you with emotion and intensity. as you stare at your mind should go back, things you have seen about leonardo and look at that picture and realize this to some extent is leonardo drawing himself, naked, spreadeagled, the earth, in the cosmos, the center of creation, asking how do i fit in. this makes it the greatest drying connecting the art, the sciences, humanities and spirit

all in the curious mind saying what am i doing here? he does throughout his time drawings, not just great anatomy, they also combine art and science. the visual display of information. someone thought he could do weaponry. he and machiavelli, his friend, and the warlord cesar borgia spent the winter of 1502 in what would be a great scene in a movie if i may say, as leonardo realizes the greatest weapon of war is understanding what you are and paces off the streets and is able to do an aerial view even though he doesn't have airplanes or balloons or drones and it looks like a current map you would have, a military map.

if you read machiavelli, one of his great weapons was surprise, he always knew where he was and where the enemy was and what the terrain was better than any adversary and all of this, leonardo and machiavelli cooked up a scheme leonardo loved, water and its flow since he was a little boy, diverging the river so it -- florence would go right to the sea. this is right after the 1490s. after amerigo vespucci and christopher columbus have become important, could be a seaport, part of the age of exploration and if you can't do it militarily, you can diverge the river and starve them out. one of his other great things. all of the science, the art and engineering and the theater come together in his paintings. in milan, he does the last

supper in a monastery. and one of the things that is very noticeable is it is the work of a theater designer. like jesus is saying all right, everybody, get on the side of the table if you want to be in the picture, the way you would on stage. also the perspective lines are mathematically in an accelerated perspective. imagine. look on stage, look at the scenery you imagine leonardo would have done, the scenery comes in that way to make it look deeper. not just a moment in time. some art critics said it is eerie because it seems like a frozen moment, feels like a sequential drama and now it is a drama, coming from the right,

jesus saying one of you shall betray me and you see it rippling out, the soundwaves, he thought sound waves were like waterways, they rippled out some of the first group of apostles on either side are already reacting but the next part of the narrative, is it me, lord, is it i who will betray you, it ripples further out, almost seems to bounce back the way ripples do, jesus says he that dips his hand and you see judas on the left dipping his hand and finally the narrative goes on as jesus reaches for the bread and the wine in the institution of the eucharist. even in a still painting you get a dramatic narrative. a few curious things about it like the windows on the way

back and as you look at the light on the right wall or the part of the table, shadows on the table are not coming from the back window, you think did he get it wrong? how could he mess that up? then you visit the monastery and milan, go into the room where it is and marvel at the picture and look up to your left and there in the real room is the only window and you realize it is light coming in midday that window that leonardo is using to light the right wall of the painting and the shadows from it directly. that science of art and engineering came together very famously a few days ago with half $1 billion almost, i write about this in my book, i did not know it was going to go on

sale but i was mesmerized by this painting, went to see it in london and it went on sale at christie's. it is called salvador monday. i was mesmerized by it because it shows how leonardo bears -- blurs lines know if he studied optics that we don't see at a distance like that because we have two eyes, our retinas see different points so there's nothing sharp about the lines but as things get closer and sharper look at the curls, the spiral leonardo loved, gets to his chest, take it clear and there is that right-hand blessing us and it is sharply delineated. something leonardo didn't usually do. he didn't paint the whole thing, he wouldn't have painted a hand that sharp but as i look at his notebooks, he is writing a treatise on perspective and

talks about perspective like the last supper and how distance perspective works and how you do artificial perspective in a painting like the last supper but then he has a section called acuity perception were sharp perspective and he writes about something at a distance, is not perfectly easy to see. the lines are blurred but there is a focal point of our eyes, lines are very sharp. and doing it that way with the sharpness he is making it look like the hand is coming out to bless us. he is doing one of his great contributions to art which is making something look 3-dimensional on a 2-dimensional pattern. very scientifically accurate with the inclusion on the bottom right but there is

something strange about it. if you think of a lens or solid crystal, even a bottle of water and think of your hand behind it like this or whatever, you can imagine you can see it is distorted a bit like any lens and yet if you look in my book because it is a high-quality reproduction, see it and look carefully, there is not the tiniest bit of distortion in jesus's robes. it could be he didn't know. that is ridiculous. even as a kid he was doing that copper ball, showing -- then he is studying for isabella, we know he knows. it could be he knows it but thinks it will be too

distracting, the worlds are a bit off and people will be distracted so he doesn't do it. maybe. the other thing is salvador monday, showing the miraculous quality, a miracle that much in -- nothing he touches his ever distorted. the good thing about leonardo is you can be your own thinker of the mysteries to figure out what was in his hat. he was not very close to michelangelo. the statue of davidson, leonardo is on the committee to figure out where to do it and leonardo under the arches. you can see in his notebook that he draws the statute, look carefully, a decent -- a sig lease covering of the genitals. this is odd because he was -- we have enough nude pictures and sketches of his but there's

something about michelangelo, the first 40 years david is displayed, it is a brass fig leaf ornaments covering it up because leonardo wanted it that way. one of the things leonardo does is see the patterns of nature and this is from his heart drawings. he dissected the human heart and then other hearts that were still beating because his dissections had begun to figure out things like saint jerome's, but being leonardo it devolves into curiosity for curiosity's steak. he is dissecting the heart and discovers a major discovery in science, people thought the blood pumps from the heart into the aorta, pushes the valve open with pressure on top, on

this page on the left leonardo is saying no, that would crumple it. what happens is when fluid moves from a size chamber to a smaller one and hits the wall it creates spirals, swirls of water and by the swirling water it spreads out the membrane and that is why the heart valve membrane swells out and he has a glass device he has shown you can use to prove this and indeed he is right, that is how our artificial heart felt now work, because of this. the thing about leonardo's every now and then your reminded he is human, he gets the last page doing another cross-section on the bottom and gets distracted as he often does. his mind wanders, and he draws

a hard inside. kind of sweet, reminds us yet again how human the guy is. in all of his anatomy, always the connection of art and science, always the beauty of how we fit into the creation and it always has from the earliest drawings to the end this wonderful pattern of nature like the water flowing into the bowl, to the pond, causing swirls, water going past an obstacle in becoming swirls, diverting the river or trying to, as an old man, looking at swirls and patterns of water. it all comes together, the greatest picture ever done. on the left you see him dissecting the human eye to discover the center of the retina because of - they see black and white detail. he did his own experience, the

edges color and shadows better. he dissects the human face, he knows every muscle that touches the human left and every nerve that controls every muscle. the muscles of the lips and even ones that you and i could have discovered had we retained our wonder years and being observant like the bottom left is a muscle all on its own. it is not a separate muscle. you can't tout it alone because it is connected with other muscles. i see people trying it. if you are on c-span you are now looking ridiculous. wait until you get home, do it in front of a mirror when you get home.

all of that anatomical knowledge, despite what was said about it being a waste of time, culminates in the greatest smile ever painted. the mona lisa, you see the river connecting to the rose of civilization and us as humans. how the tiniest brushstrokes, oil, pigments in it because the light goes down the back and he knows he can make it look interaction, muscles and movement and shadow exactly right. he makes it, the tiny black and

white details, goes straight. on the corner of the lips close-up, the smiles were lucid and it disappears on you. if your eyes go to her for head or chest or cheeks suddenly the smile lights up again because you're seeing it with a different part of your i. she is somebody with an emotional reaction, as the emotion changes she seems to interact as if an augmented reality, a deep mystery, and facial and other gestures and changing interactively. that is why among many other things there is great connection to art and science and a great masterpiece. he brings it with him after 16 years to france when he is

dying. his patronage matches the first, giving him a manor house, and three or four paintings including the mona lisa, st. john the baptist and is still perfecting them. when i did einstein i looked at his last notebook page. in princeton, and a page of equations. even though he is dying, a step closer from the unified theory that will collect electromagnetism to gravity, he is still going to do it. on his last notebook page that we know of leonardo was trying to square the circle. euclid of a right triangle with different length legs, and make a shape to make a square and another truck showing how to do

it. it pauses and then he writes, the soup is getting cold. up there in the bedroom with the rest of the entourage, still struggling to get us one step closer to the spirit manifest in the laws of the universe but soup is getting cold, thank you. [applause] >> thank you, appreciate it. >> thank you, thank you so much, walter isaacson. audience, if you would like your book autographed, and do so on the other side of the

elevator. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv live coverage of the miami book fair continues which you've been listening to walter isaacson talk about his to most recent best-selling biography on leonardo da vinci. coming up, chris matthews taking calls, salman rushdie, a gold star father will also be speaking. it is a beautiful day in south

florida. we have booktv set in the middle of the festival. as we do a couple times when we have been down here, we had -- we invite mitch kaplan, the cofounder of the miami book fair and he owns the books and books book chain in south florida. have you already read walter isaacson's "leonardo da vinci"? >> we have been selling it by the bushel. i haven't read it because i can't keep it in stock to grab one for myself. every time i take one home i have to take it back for another customer. it is a phenomenon. struck a chord, is going to open up, and educational tool for so many people who don't know the story of leonardo. >> host: with walter isaacson, could you just walter isaacson has a new book, would it sell?

>> guest: that is beginning to happen. so much come to admire him, very few writers like that. david mccullough is one. certainly walter isaacson is now developing a touch with his readership that he puts out there. >> we checked out the books and books bestsellers list prior to sitting down with you here. some of the books that are on their, walter isaacson's "leonardo da vinci," chris matthews's book on rfk is a bestseller. did you read what happened? >> you are embarrassing me but i did not. i didn't want to relive what happened personally. i felt i knew what happened. it is -- i have read excerpts

from it. it is an honest portrayal in terms of what happened during the election. >> host: another bestseller has been donna brazile's book hacked. >> she was here a few weeks ago, she was in conversation, quite an interesting -- >> host: and obama administration official. >> guest: a republican, she is an anti-trump cnn reporter, not reportable commentator, very outspoken and they became friends on the set of cnn and clearly donna is telling her side of the story and has a lot of raw emotion that is still there.

>> host: the book is pretty raw. it lays it right out there. >> guest: really does. she feels she should be able to tell her story and obviously there has been some pushback. that is how to create a dialogue in town square. >> host: if you watched coverage, mitch kaplan, founder of the miami book fair, taken advantage, invited him on to talk about books and what he is reading and what is selling. what makes the segment so much fun is when you call in and talk about the books you are reading, why you are reading them, etc.. numbers are up on the screen. we would hear from you,

202-748-8200 in the central time zone, 748-8201 in the mountain and pacific time zone. we are asking our viewers. what are you reading? >> guest: a number of books resonated with me recently, some that i have gone back to read. in terms of this marvelous novel i read, exit west, tells the story of immigrants basically. it is a novel. it is about a young man and a young woman fleeing the middle east and they are educated. a very interesting technique used in the novel where you go through doors. instead of going on the road of travel you go through, find the door, the magic door and end about of your country and you

may be in london or australia and find out what is happening in those countries to an immigrant. in essence you get a 360 ° view of immigration in all these countries. really well done. >> host: that is how mead? >> the second book was reluctant fundamentalist and it was well done. >> host: edwina? >> guest: one of miami have treasured possessions, remarkable writer. science fiction, memoirs. this book is a little bit of both. not fiction but a little bit of literary history as well as memoir. she takes off, the art of death, published by gray wolf, she takes off from the point where a mother got very sick and ended up dying.

she writes about her own personal experience with death but also death in literature. she takes you through the greatest scenes of people dying in literature. a very slim book but something that really -- >> host: it is part of the art of series. >> guest: a series gray wolf does. the art of a number of different things. the art of death is the most recent. .. >> guest: that subtitle itself tells you what the book is about. but he wrote that book almost 30 years ago when he was really, he was decrying the fact that there

was a cnn, that that was diluting, you know, the serious discord. and if he were only alive now, i mean, he would have his head spinning, basically. and i just feel that i needed to revisit it to begin to understand a little bit more about what's happening in the media today given our political climate. >> host: mitch kaplan, the fact that you live in the area and you're at your bookstore every day, does that make a difference this what you stock and what you -- >> guest: oh, sure. i mean, we're a general bookstore. we're not -- you know, we believe, i always believed and independent booksellers anywhere around the country, what they do is they serve their community. so what we try to do is make sure that we're carrying books that reflect the interests of our community. and there isn't a book that we wouldn't carry. and we have books in spanish, we have books in french for the

creole community, we have lots of different kinds of books that are there. but we do specialize in things, art books, design books, photography books, because at the time we opened in 1982 before the internet, you couldn't find those books anywhere. and, you know, you couldn't just look them up and google something. so people would come into our store to look to see what the latest architecture book was or art book or that sort of thing. >> host: now, you've said this before on the air, but jeb bush is one of your regular customers. >> guest: yeah, jeb bush was one of our early customers before he moved to tallahassee. he's an awfully nice guy. and, in fact, one of his -- i think either his chief of staff or someone very close to him just opened a bookstore in tallahassee, actually. a marvelous bookstore in tallahassee. so, you know, he comes from a very book you should family. and one of our -- bookish

families. and one of our early guests at the book fair was barbara bush. and, certainly, laura bush has gone on to do some great things with the national book festival, texas book fair -- >> host: and the bush sisters, the bush daughters were here this week. >> guest: very charming. their interplay, you can tell -- i have twins, and i hope my twins will be as close as they are. my twins are fraternal as well. >> host: mitch kaplan, with the national conversation and issue that we're having with sexual assault or sexual, you know, however you want to phrase it, does that reflect in sales at a bookstore necessarily? >> guest: well, you know, it happened so quickly, you know, in terms of the way it exploded into our consciousness that i think that there will be books written that we haven't seen yet that will help explore probably

a little bit more just about what has gone on. certainly, there have been books that have been written about that sort of thing, there have been memoirs and other sorts of things. but this moment of time seems is unique to me, you know, in my life that it seems like there's a sea change going on. and i think the book is yet to be written that really captures what that is. it doesn't depress book sales. but i just don't know that there is that kind of seminal book yet about all of in that's been written. >> host: well, let's hear from our viewers, and let's begin with vincent calling in from orange county, california, in irvine. vincent, you're on booktv with mitch kaplan. >> caller: hi, peter. i used to love c-span, but it seems to me that c-span has really terroristed very -- drifted very far to the left. even your programming very

rarely now do i see programs coming from the right on c-span. it just seems like virtually every guest now on c-span is from the left, and it's very disappointing. i used to really, really love c-span because of its evenhandedness, and i've got to tell you -- >> host: well, i appreciate that, vincent. tell us what you're reading. >> caller: what i'm reading, i'm reading a new book called "american ulysses" about u.s. grant and his life, and it's very, very good. >> host: is that robert mary's new book? >> caller: i knew you were going to ask me -- i knew you were going to ask me, and i can't remember who the author is. but it's called "american ulysses" about u.s. grant, and it basically takes you through his whole life. >> host: vince sent, thank you for your comments, and thank you for sharing that book with us. mitch kaplan, there's been a couple of books out on ulysses

s. grant. >> guest: the one we're selling a lot is ron chernow's book. he's another one like walter, that ron chernow -- >> host: put his name and topic -- >> guest: yeah, people want to read anything that ron writes because he's such a good writer. and that's what's really heartening, is that readers really do respond to really good writing. and particularly when they're learning something at the same time. it's like the perfect storm. if you get a really fine writer who's chosen a really interesting topic, and maybe it's a topic that people don't know a lot about. it's guaranteed to be something that would be a big seller. but i just want to defend c-span a little bit. i watch c-span booktv all the time, and i can say that you guys have done a very, very good job of presenting people from all spectrums. in fact, the other night i remember watching the anniversary of regnery.

you did an anniversary there. and certainly, there's no more publisher from the right than regularrer regnery. so, you know, it really depends on when you watch. if you happen to watch it periodly and you're -- periodically and you just happen to be unlucky and get one particular perspective, but i know you guys work very hard to have a very broad spectrum. and that's what we love about, that's what i love about c-span booktv. >> host: do you sell titles by regnery in your bookstore? >> guest: oh, of course. >> host: to they sell in coral gables? >> guest: moderately. it's not -- you know, i have to admit that south florida is a blue, was a blue part of the state. even though the state went red, south florida's a fairly liberal place. and we do carry them. and when there's one that really hits a chord, people will buy it. >> host: scott's calling in from

westminster, california. scott, thanks for holding. what are you reading? i don't think we have scott, and so we're going to have to say good-bye. and let's try julia in shawnee, oklahoma. julia, good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. i want to tell you -- >> host: what are you reading? >> caller: i'm reading a book that -- well, i just got it yesterday, and the title is "dear fahrenheit 451," it's a library of love letters and break-up notes to the books in her life by annie spends. i'm a retired librarian, so this one was of interest to me. here's a short sample. dear grey, from 50 shades of grey, you made me say erotica to an old lady. i'm going to hate you forever for that. that's a lie brain's --

librarian's slant. [laughter] i'm also reading to sang murder and the burt of the fbi, that's set in osage county in oklahoma which is close to where i live, so i'm very interested in this one. >> host: david grant is actually at the fair, actually. and that was a national book award finalist. >> guest: it was, indeed. and he also writes system remarkable -- some remarkable nonfiction. >> host: hey, before we -- do we still have julia on the line? >> caller: yes. >> host: oh, good. tell us about your career as a librarian and, also, where do you get your books from? do you do it online, or do you go to a bookstore? >> caller: i was a public librarian for 30 years. i was a small branch manager, a large branch manager, i also was in an area called the center for readers' services, and we did

the selection of the books that were purchased for our library system. and i get my books from all different places. i, of course, use the library, i buy from independent bookstores when i can, and my friends and i are interested in doing a book tour and going to as many as we can across the country. but whenever i'm out and about, i make it a point if i'm in a place where there's an independent bookstore, i try to stop there. >> host: thank you, ma'am. >> guest: well, come on down. we'd love to have you. come visit the book fair one year, you would love it. >> host: ask for mitchell kaplan, can she have a cup of that soup there? >> guest: absolutely. that's a deal. >> host: josh is in rochester, new york. good afternoon. >> caller: how you doing, peter?

>> host: i'm well. what are you reading, josh? >> caller: i'm actually reading here is what happened by hillary clinton. she's one of the most charismatic characters i've ever seen, and it's definitely an interesting book. i know a lot of people have had some reviews on it. i'm only about halfway through, and there wasn't enough pictures. i actually had a question for mitch. i was curious to know if, what your thoughts were on the digital books as opposed to, like, with kindle. i like the feel of paper books a hot better. you know, i go down to the bookstore or the library. they're getting to be fewer and far between, and it's difficult. and, you know, to me it's just a different, it's a different mode. i've never had a problem, you know, dropping, you know, the kindle i've dropped in the bathtub. never dropped a book in the bathtub before.

>> guest: that's right. >> caller: just curious to know what your thoughts were on that. >> guest: well, i feel as you do. i think that the book, the book is a perfect entity. i mean, it's perfect for what it is. you know, when you bring on a new technology, you have to ask yourself what problem is that new technology solving. and i think you can't -- the book is so good that you don't need a new technology to take its place. and so what's actually happening is the idea of the electronic books has actually been losing some steam. so in the last couple years, electronic book sales have gone down. and i like you, i'm very old school, i'm very analog. i love the feel of a book. i love to look at the beautiful object of a book. you know, when i read on a screen, it's too much like work. so i really, you know, when i can just sit there with a book, i feel like i can finally take a

deep breath and know that i'm going to enter a new world. as long as i'm around, we will always be selling books. you can, believe it or not, on our web site you can buy electronic books. but it's not something that we have a lot of takers on. and still the book is, you know, the book is paramount in our stores. >> host: did e-books hurt your sales? >> guest: i think originally they did. i think originally e-books did. i think now what's happening is publishers don't have that same kind of revenue that they had from e-books, so it's hurting them as well. very similar to in film what happened with, very similar in film what happened with the dvd and the lack of the dvd. because, you know, a film studio could then sell the dvd after the film came out, but that doesn't happen as much anymore.

>> host: and peter's in corona, new york. peter, what are you reading? >> caller: good afternoon. thanks for taking the call. at the present, i'm reading principles by ray -- [inaudible] and bankers in power by professor james hudson. >> host: you seem to be on an agenda with those two books. what is it? >> caller: hello? repeat the question, please? >> host: you seem to have an agenda or a purpose with those two books. [laughter] what is it? >> guest: well, i don't know if, i don't knowit's a matter of having an agenda, i just am curious, and i have always followed mr. call the owe, and i like what he has done with his hedge fund. and i you know, some of the principles that he expose are very, very strong, and the bankers -- [inaudible] i am from the caribbean originally, is so he is exposing how wall street colonized the caribbean. so that is, that is where i'm, that's where my focus is in

terms of reading the second book. the first book is because i'm just curious about how mr. dalio has developed his hedge fund and the types of techniques he has used. >> host: and i think we have talked to the author of that second book here on booktv. >> caller: yes, yes. >> host: do business books do well, mitch kaplan? >> guest: they do, actually. and it's people like the caller who fuel that. you know, people are looking for books in which they can learn something about how somebody achieved something. and, you know, someone writing about a successful hedge fund is right up the alley of a lot of people. we have books on buying real estate that do well, you know, that sort of thing. so, yeah, people are looking for aspirational kinds of books where they can learn something and then maybe move their own lives forward too. >> host: and as we continue to take calls, roger's in colorado

springs. and, roger, you're on booktv from miami. tell us what you're reading. >> caller: hi. i'm reading a book called auschwitz, number 34207, the joel rubenstein story. >> host: why did you pick that up? >> caller: well, i was a fellow presenter at history camp colorado a couple of months ago, and that nancy geiss was the presenter, and it's a wonderful story about this gentleman that has survived that camp and then three others and then came back to colorado and is still alive and, i guess, one of the most wonderful men that you ever want to meet. >> host: and once again, what was his name, roger? >> guest: it's joe rubenstein. >> host: thank you very much.

>> guest: peter, isn't it lovely and wonderful at the variety of interests that people have? i mean, it's pretty amazing. i'm hearing about books that i don't really know very much about, and we sell hundreds of thousands of books. but the variety of interests, you know, there are over a couple hundred thousand books published every year. no no one bookstore can carry all of them. and that's the beauty and the democracy of selling books through a lot of different independent stores, because each store will have its own sensibility. and hearing all of your callers, i'm just, i'm thrilled that there's just such a variety of interests. >> host: and when you bring in self-pub books, it goes over to -- >> guest: oh, it goes -- it's huge. >> host: has anyone brought a self-published book that you said, yeah, i'm going to put that in my bookstore? >> guest: oh, yeah. we've actually published a book that was sort of self-published. it's a marvelous book called the

book lover's guide to wine, and it was written by someone i know in miami. and he wrote it and said, mitchell, i've written this book, and we have a press called books and books press that's connected to mango media. and i said, patrick, this is phenomenal. and, actually, it's been getting these very serious reviews. and timeout new york just called its one of its best gift books for the christmas -- the book lover's guide to wine, ap amazing book -- an amazing book. funny . you're a book lover, you want to read it. he pairs, you know, like proost with certain wines that you should be drinking while reading proost. really, really great. >> host: well, you publish books, you sell books, you find book festivals. you're also doing something else. >> guest: i'm doing movies now. i have a film production company that i've probably talked to you about on camera. my partner is paula mazar.

director of creative writing at fiu, and les wrote this book many years ago. and it's the origin story of "a christmas carol" that was written by charles dickens, of course. so what happens in this book, the film is directed by barrett -- [inaudible] and barrett and the screenwriter, susan coyne, created this wonderful world in which you see dickens writing "a christmas carol." he's got six weeks to do it. he funded it all himself. he was having financial issues, so he knew he had to get this thing done. so the pressure was on him. and as the characters, as he developed the characters and writes about them, they become a alive to him. so christopher columbus -- i

mean, christopher plumber appears as soon as he discovers he's going to write about scrooge. and so there's this wonderful, funny interplay between scrooge and dick pes. -- dickens. so i have brought you a t-shirt. [laughter] there's a line in the film that i love. it's, the line is -- >> host: let me hold it up to my camera, you can read it that way. >> guest: no one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another, which talks all about generous the city, generosity of spirit, pulling people up, helping people. all of those things that we need today in our climate that's going on where we seem so at odds with one another. so i made, i made a pin, and i have a bumper strip -- [laughter] the biggest bumper strip in the world. [laughter] and the movie, the film is coming out in theaters across the country, 500 theaters across the country, and it'll be out on

november 22nd in a theater near you. >> host: the man who invented christmas, produced by mitch kaplan. >> guest: and a bunch of other people including paula and robert mickelson and a bunch of others. so -- >> host: carrie, riverside, california. please tell us what you're reading. >> caller: oh, gosh, i am enjoying this so much. i wish i was there. the book is "the forgotten room." it's a his for call novel -- historical novel, and it's got three authors, which makes it interesting. i just love this book. >> host: and it's historical fiction you said, right? >> guest: yes. three time periods, one of which is world war ii, and it's sort of a family intertwine, and it's a mystery too. you don't find out until the end

what's really happening. >> guest: does it actually take place during the war? >> caller: well, kind of. part of it does. like i said, it's three different time periods. it's, like -- >> guest: that's fascinating. >> caller: it is. >> guest: thank you for sharing that. >> caller: i couldn't put it down. >> host: for those of you in the east and central time zones. 202-748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. mitch kaplan, historical fiction. i'm going to go to my go-to which is ken follow let with his trilogy -- >> guest: yeah. you know, we sell a lot of architecture books in the store, so a lot of that is, talks about building of churches and all of that. i mean, that spurred all kinds of interest in what we do.

and i found architects coming and buying it. it's, you know, he -- i mean, it's kind of remarkable, the fact that he was able to do what he did with that trilogy. there's hillary mentel as well. historical fiction is just -- when it's well done, you're just transported back. >> host: national book awards recently, masha guessen, nonfiction, and jasmine ward for fiction. when that happens, do you see an uptick in interest in those books? >> guest: i do, very much so. the difference with these two winners is that both of them were selling really, really well even before they won. so this just added another little supercharge to it all. but they're both fine, fine, remarkable books. >> host: as always, we appreciate your coming over and chatting and talking with our viewers and talking books.

and movies this year, so -- >> guest: yes. peter, thank you for being here. keep up what you do. it just, it's keeping books alive. >> host: mitch kaplan, books and books and the co-founder of the miami book fair. well, we're going to get him out of the chair here, we're going to give him the bum's rush and -- [inaudible] >> host: thank you for one of the promotions there. chris matthews is coming out to take your calls. it's a new biography on robert kennedy. so let's give mitch the bum's rush, and we'll get mr. matthews seated here shortly. but want to continue hearing from you what you're reading, and margaret is calling in from rockville, maryland. hi, margaret. i guess we do not have margaret. >> caller: yes, you do. you have me. >> host: oh, wonderful! hi, margaret. please go ahead. tell us what you're reading.

>> caller: i'm about to read james mcbride's the five-carat soul. and i've read most of his other books beginning with the color of water and ending with the good lord -- [inaudible] and i'd just like to know whether he's going to be at the miami book fair and, well, mr. kaplan has left, but i wondered whether he sold a lot of his books because i've enjoyed every one. >> host: well, do you know what? i -- mitch kaplan is standing right here, and i was going to ask him, but he is currently in conversation with kaiser khan who just taped an interview at booktv in washington who's also speaking, you'll hear from him a little bit later. mitch kaplan, a caller just asked if james mcbride? he was just here on wednesday night, margaret. >> caller: oh, i'm sorry i missed.

>> host: margaret, mitch kaplan says if you ever get a chance to hear him speak, jump on it. >> caller: i did. and he's wonderful, and he also played his saxophone, which was great. >> host: okay. we're going to take one more call and then chris matthews is going to be joining us to talk about his new biography. martha, charleston, south carolina. martha, how are you? >> caller: i'm fine. how are you, peter? >> host: i'm fine. what are you reading today, martha? >> caller: well, i always have five or ten books going at once, but i wanted to comment on walter isakson. one of the books that he wrote, "the innovators," was so wonderful a few years ago about women. he gives, really, women the credit for the beginning of computers. [laughter] so walter always has -- >> host: yes, he does. >> caller: yeah, walter's just

wonderful. i've tried to read everything he's written. and his presentation today -- >> host: martha? it's good to hear from you. i know you spend half the year in charleston and half the year in maine, so we're glad you called in. well, we're going to switch gears a little bit, and chris matthews is joining us. his newest book is called "bobby kennedy: a raging spirit." mr. matthews, you refer the mr. kennedy as a misfit. >> guest: yeah. >> host: why? >> guest: well, he was -- imagine growing up the younger brother of two big, strapping older brothers, both six-footers, healthy, confident, elegant, popular, and he's this little guy -- his father called him a runt, ignored him. he was sort of the irish kid that wasn't going to get the land. he was not going to inherit anything. and i think what happened was that helped him develop empathy which is i think the great thing he had. he could empathize with people in trouble, with poor whites in

appalachia, he could empathize with the mississippi delta, blacks who were living on molasses with distended stomachs like they were living somewhere in africa. he really was interested that in places that had no votes for him like native americans on reservations, and even joe mccarthy when he was killing himself with booze, bobby cared about him. he cared about the p.o.w.s that castro grabbed during the bay of pigs, the overlooked people. and i think a lot of it had to do with the fact that he was overlooked. >> host: what was the relationship between bobby and joe mccarthy? >> guest: i think it was love. i think he was led the wrong way by roy cohn, and he got him into tremendous trouble with his dishonesty and demagoguery. but they were both anti-communist, both irish-cath he can, and even after bobby condemned him for the democrats,

there's a sad story where he went to the -- actually, the best story kathleen sort of told me, he was at the national airport, now reagan airport, and he got the word over the car radio that joe mccarthy had finally drank himself to death. and he was so distraught that he drove around the airport three times. both his brothers, jack and teddy, both said when they were asked about their brother, say said that's the thing that made him different than anybody else. mccarthy was pariah, a villain in the world. no one liked him or cared about him. bobby stuck with him. he went to the funeral, sat in the car where nobody would see him just to show respect to his old to boss. he had character, kennedy. you don't have to agree with him, but he had character. >> host: chris matthews was on earlier at the miami book fair talking about this book, so we want to hear from you, 202-748-8200 in the east and central time zones, 8201 for

those of you in the mountain and pacific times. he used a phrase in his 1968 campaign looking for the national soul of the usa. what was he looking for? >> guest: yeah. well, i think, again back to empathy and unity, i think he wanted to unite working class white and blacks. bill clinton could do a bit of it. he said i'm not going to give away the white working class so we can have minorities. i want both. so he would go to cities like gary indiana with rip ard hatch on -- richard hatch on one side of him and tony zale, the old white middleweight champion, he wanted to establish a democratic party that was political home to both striving blacks and striving and overlooked white americans, the poor people. in fact, i think the best emblem of that is the pictures on the book. i made a point of -- this is one of the reasons i wrote this

book, was that back picture. that very poor white family saluting him. that is, to me, affection and patriotism. that guy's obviously been in the military. these people were dirt poor. and then, of course, the pictures on the cover of the african-american kids that he was campaigning for, african-americans singing "ballot hymn of the republic." that kind of bringing people together is so different than what we see in politics today which is all about division and taking your portion of the electorate and basically attacking the other portion. today i think he tried to bring people together. >> host: would he have won the nomination? >> guest: he had a shot. and i mean that because i'm not -- i don't believe in my kind of predictions. i think i could have predicted that, like i do elections, a week before. he would have had a challenge in new york. the west side -- >> host: even though he was the senator from new york. >> guest: i know. i think he had a hard time convincing the old political

types like jim tate, the mayor of philly, hubert humphrey had the team behind him. how horrible the convention with the students and police rye identitying. if bobby had walked into that convention, something would have been different. like he did in the '64 convention. magic could have occurred. and those delegates in those days were not bound by primaries. they could have just erupted. so it's very hard to say. i think he would have beaten richard nixon. i think nixon was spooked by him. there's a great scene in my book where nixon's announcing for the nomination, and he starts going forces will be up leashed we cannot imagine. we don't know where this is going to end. i mean, it's really -- he was spooked. >> host: mid march, 1968, rfk announces. march 30th, 1968, lbj --

>> guest: right, pulls out. >> host: -- declares out. any relationship? >> guest: it wasn't the -- [laughter] well, if you want to get into causality, larry o'brien, who was an old kennedy hand, was still with the president, still with president johnson. and he gave him the poll numbers that showed he was going to get beaten 2 or 3 to 1 in wisconsin that tuesday. two days before that, he nonessed. all the experts on johnson -- and i'm not one -- like robert caro will tell you he feared most humiliation. he didn't want to look like a loser. and he feared the kennedys would make him look like a kennedy sandwich; kennedy before him, ken after him, knocks him off. i think he was afraid of that, yeah. >> host: did bobby kennedy switch, flip-flop his beings on the vietnam war? -- his position on the vietnam war? >> guest: yeah. february 1966 he came out and said i oppose johnson's

policies. march '67 he said i'm one of those responsible for those policies, i believed in them, i was a hawk. he said we're not going to win. he called for negotiations with the political wing of the viet cong, and he said we've got to put together a government. and you know what? he was right because the deal that nixon struck in 1972 and '3 was far softer on the communists. that gave them the countriful we're leaving. which back then, they could have -- we could have insisted on some kind of coalition. we would have had a better chance of keeping a western foothold over there. >> host: june 6, 1968, where were you? >> guest: whoa. i was in montreal. i was with a friend of mine, we were -- he was up there looking for a job. this was a guy that was going to leave the country. there was a lot of people like that. and i was up here, because i'd never been out of the cup on my

own like that, and we wanted to watch the mccarthy/kennedy debate. and the canadian guys at the bar was very nationalistic, and he said, no, you guys come in here and you're telling us what the watch, he was watching lawrence welk, it wasn't like he was watching some canadian show. but that morning when i woke up around three in the morning and i turned on the radio, and i started to listen, and i said -- and the guy i'm staying with, he's got, like, twin beds. i woke him up thinking, you know, you've got to watch this thing, listen to this thing. it's like they were playing the kennedy assassination. and then in a few minutes, i realize this is it, this is the second killing of a kennedy. so i fly back to chapel hill where i'm going to grad school, north carolina, and i waited like everybody else til it's over. and i remember watching the funeral train that monday, that friday or whatever, it was two days later.

it was a monday, that's right. and i'm watching it, and i'm going this is just a loss. this is not like the terrible beauty of the kennedy funeral which was gorgeous and crisp day, beautiful jacqueline, beautiful kennedys, the horseless writer, all that wonderful power and beauty. this is just a loss. we're losing bobby kennedy. >> host: you say in your book, chris matthews, that you were in montreal and you were seriously considering staying up there -- >> guest: no, i never said that. >> host: your student deferment was running out. >> guest: no, i never said that. >> host: did i misread? >> guest: i never said that, first of all. >> host: okay, i thought i read that. >> guest: no, no. i never would have done that. i had -- at that time i did not want to put on a uniform because so many people were putting on uniforms who were not serving in combat. there were a lot of billets in the military, a lot o