to agree to control the future of this terrible, terrible force. they were very optimistic that it could still be done but by the time they left moscow, they were less convinced that the russians really wanted to participate in these negotiations. >> afterwards errs on booktv every saturday at 10 p.m. eastern and 70 and 19 eastern and pacific. >> okay, i do double duty. i am welcoming steve villano who is next, and he is a native of brooklyn, new york, and is the former head of governor mari cuomo's new york city press office with decades of experience and public service, public education, of the kelp and is ceo of several national and nonprofit organizations. i'm just going to skip to the

end. he has written quite a bit. there's long list of things that he has written. is authored major pieces on ethics stereotyping in ambassador magazine. he also has talked about, of actors like stanley, john turturro. is a labor journalist for the national education association for a decade. he has one numerous awards, and he has a digital poetry book called -- the list goes on and on. he has won various awards like a digital book publishers of america in 2014 and if there's anything i've left out, steve, please -- [inaudible] >> thank you, joann.

you deserve -- i've never heard a a poet before get the words plutonic and madonna in the same phrase. prices come really priceless. this is common here today, their number of people who are my former colleagues the administration. a number of new friends, fellow writers who i've met here, and representatives of some 50 colleges and universities. sharing the panel with fred is really, this is déjà vu all over again because 20 years ago i was working on an article for ambassador magazine about stereotyping against italian-americans and who did i call but the expert at stony brook, suny stony brook, fred was there the big we chanted a long time. we had never met in person until today. it's pretty awesome for me to be with fred on the same panel.

and so i go right into my reading. let me just grab my water over here. this is my book "tightrope," and after my reading you can get copies of it in the back of the room. my wife carol is manning the table. federal district court uniondale, summer 1988. i sat shoulder to shoulder with my 20-year-old nephew michael. struck by his resemblance to jfk junior, and also to my brother at the same age. jet black hair, large dark eyes, and a dazzling kind smile. michael and i listened to federal prosecutors layout their case against his father and my brother. earlier that morning governor mario cuomo had called me at home. after three years of working nearly round-the-clock with

cuomo at the two world trade center office in new york, even sleeping over during snowstorms, i was now his met at the long island power authority laboring long hours to shut down the nuclear power plant for health and safety reasons. you do good work, steve, the governor said. you have great, great ability and a great future. it's a pleasure working with you. well, you have a pretty good picture yourself, governor, i said. no, i have no future, steve. he joked. but you, he said in a serious almost fatherly tone, you had a wonderful future. 90 minutes later that bright future collided my brothers present. of city in a federal courtroom hearing government prosecutors asking fbi agent if it was true that my brother was a bad man for john gotti you're collecting money from union officials to bite labor peace.

gotti and alana. both name spoken in the same sentence by federal law enforcement officials. my brother link to gotti, i link to cuomo. these are only allegations, i kept telling myself. my brother was not guilty of anything. he could not be. he was my mothers son. mario cuomo detested the bombs in organized crime as much as i did. he was incensed by the mobs innuendos about him or anyone in his family. even the expectation that he had to answer any questions about it outraged him. since he believed that his whole life quote had been a statement against that crap, end quote. what if my family name became the issue? with the kidney on staff? what i have the courage to lead the public service work which i loved? i felt naked.

nothing left to protect me. not my carefully calibrated career, not my conservative clothing, not my law degree, nothing. that was my brother up there. we shared the same blood, the same last name. for years we shared the same bedroom with different dreams at the top of the stairs in my parents house. michael, my brother vinnie, in me. our lives intertwined. i looked around the courtroom and winced as as a hurt our naa go around the room, bouncing off a bench, a chair, judges desk if only had a sponge i would scrub the walls, the seats and make our name vanished from every surface in touch. i wanted everything to disappear but could not keep myself away from the courtroom. i had to find out what i suspected but denied for years. yet there was something more, much more.

i thought that my mother sitting in the living room of her small apartment in california watching her afternoon story, as the world turns come in search of tomorrow, seeing how everything would somehow take place in the courtroom. i saw her big round glasses, eyes open as white as her heart, watching in disbelief. i imagined her fingering her rosary beads quietly praying, conducting her own trial, prosecuting herself and defending, forever defending her son. i was my mothers eyes and ears in the courtroom, and i could not leave. real mobsters and friends of mobsters flooded around her family as long as i could remember. unlike the characters played in the movies or on television, there was nothing funny or romantic about them. they use everyone around us as

props. they mocked working stiffs like my father who for decades toiled in the beaten-down boiler room in the bowels of building 100 east 42nd street to heat or cool the offices of the wealthy accountants and lawyers on the floors above. on sunday's life of us his anger and shame with a chaser whiskey or beer when you learn that his oldest son michael spent afternoons with gambino family members, who married into our family and would serve as john gotti's real-life godfather into the mob as well as my brother's. carmine, or uncle charlie as we called him, was not the romanticized picture of a swap godfather, as popularized in film. that was a caricature that would be modeled after another monster by marriage into our family, emily was brother-in-law alfred

m my mothers first cousin starred in the first godfather movie as the villainous the turk. in stark contrast to the devon or emily, pat pictured cary grant or carmine pacheco picture peter lawrie. that should give you a good visual of the two. in stark contrast who was a rising star in the genevieve crime family and a favorite of lucky luciani, carmine was short and squat, a local gang member who grew up in east. section of brooklyn, always meticulously dressed. he fit that tough guy street image of the gambino crime family. uncle charlie rose to the post of capital in 1957 and others were executed and carlo gambino became the new leader of the organization. he earned his name charlie

wagons from hijacking trucks loaded with good today because easily fence. dottie, a 17-year-old high school dropout at the time and a local hood from brooklyn became a member of the crew that year. hired by uncle charlie. my brother michael nine years older than i was of a different world than the one others were fashioning. going i idolized him for his gentleness and his exalted spot as my mothers first and favorite child. he was common ways with me that my father frequently was not. he had endless patience for all types of people, but particularly for his little brother whose wide eyes revealed every emotion. michael was my first glimpse of a renaissance man, and for years i denied his drift away from the person i thought he was toward a darker, unrecognizable version

of someone i once worshiped. two faces foul abilities was to peer down into an abyss, just waiting for me to slip. between 1955 -- 1985-1988 as god he rose 88 as gotti rosen celebrity and power, law enforcement officials looked for anything or anyone to leverage against the nuking of new york's crime family and my brother's friendship with gotti was attempting a toxic squeeze, and federal court was the perfect place to apply that pressure. i studied the smooth, sweet lines of my nephews face as he sat next to me in court to see if the turmoil in the use attention took a physical toll on him. he listened as intently as i did to prosecutors talking about a prison term for his father, my brother. linking our last name tightly, ever so tightly to john gotti's.

years later even john gotti junior writing with great emotion in a few passages of his book shadow of my father, , his own self publish memoir, understood that care of being trapped by family history. this is the son of john gotti, this is a quote from is on the mark, self published three years ago. death and jail had consumed many fellows. we were really selfish. wives with no husband present. they were the innocent sufferers of our guilt. with increased media attention of mobsters, their children of men in the life would be teased and ostracized. still more revealing the net was a conversation between john gotti, jr. and his best friend john rogerio which was recorded

at ray brook near lake placid on october 5, 2003. and again this was john gotti, jr. we used to go with our fathers. our fathers never really spent time with us when you did they drove us by the club, the fish and hunt club which was founded by my uncle charlie. dropped us off at the club and that was it. we were ten, 11, 12 years old and a club full of men. you almost forced to emulate these people. okay, you're almost forced to emulate them. there are some guys are genuinely loved. danny, danny wagons, carmine. i loved these guys but it just seems most of the people out there today, talking to his friend johnny, most of the people are real garbage pails. john rogerio says yes. here's john gotti again. if we're stupid enough, if we are stupid enough to raise our

children near this, then we deserve to die in jail. i'm sorry, but we do. my suggestion, john, to salvage our children you got to get away from this. you've got to move away. he got to move away, john. you've got to stay away from these people. you've got to stay away from these people. and john rogerio says i just had to get out of here, get away. you're smart. and john gotti, jr. says yeah, i'm real smart. smart would've been running away a long time ago. smart, i got trapped. all of my father had in this one was me and i was the only one who would go and see him, and he had before the lawyers running event for the lawyers and so on and so forth. i got trapped. i couldn't come and listen, dad, i don't want to live in new york. i want to leave, i want to. i couldn't disappoint the guy. i had to stay. john gotti, jr. i did not care who i disappointed. i knew i had to sleep, to build a new life and reject the easy

seduction of accepting the old one. my driving desire to get out overrode any concern about whether or not my families mob related connections would be bad for mario cuomo's future. if i i ever had the opportunito work for him. they were not me, i kept telling myself. carmine, no matter how much my brother and john gotti, jr. loved him, was not me. that, no matter how much confidence in your my mother and my brother found him to be, was not me. even my brother michael him as much as i worshiped him as a child, still want to believe the best about him as an adult despite mounting evidence to the contrary, was not me. i was at the son of a third son, destined for special things. i was my fathers hope, his ambition, and the small slice of

himself that he allowed to dream. forget about trying to get to mario cuomo, i was overheard one of my brother's associates say to him. he's unreachable. that was precisely why i could not forget about mario cuomo. i was drawn by the power of cuomo's intellect, his integrity, his compassion and his persona as a bold contradiction to the destructive stereotypes of italian-americans as uneducated buffoons, members of neighborhood gangs. cuomo's visions and values were compelling to me, offering a clear pathway away from my past, chance to contribute to the greater world out there and still retain my families love. if mario cuomo could do it, faced with a set of different challenges like not speak english until he was eight years old, then so can i. how then could i i tell mario

cuomo that a story would appear and the press the next day linking my brother, our name, to john gotti? how do i talk about organized crime in my family with the one account in american elected official who personified the complete opposite? i pictured myself on the 57th floor in the press conference room at the world trade center tower number two telling reporters that any notion of mario cuomo having mob connections was bullshit because the mob was in my family, and the inside word about cuomo was that he was unreachable. in my imagined press conference i resigned, and as an eyewitness condemned the mob rumors. then i condemned myself for not protecting mario cuomo and my family and for being unable to resist the pull to work for him in the first place. looking at my work for cuomo as

penance for the sins of my brother and mobsters who marred our lives. i would do good to public service. i would clean up the family name. i got up and paste around my office. finally, i sat down and wrote out a script that i would read to the governor. this is the script. governor, i have some very unpleasant news which i feel obligated to share with you. my brother was sentenced to three months in prison for tax evasion today in federal court in uniondale. the judge in his decision also expressed the belief that my brother had some association with organized crime. two news reporters were present, one of whom i had new. i i anticipate a be a story in tomorrow's paper side that what you you to learn of this secondhand. i read over my little speech, hands trembling. there was no escaping now.

no neat rationalizations. i could not pretend that everything would be as it was. the phone on my desk rain. it was the governor. i placed the script in front of me, clinging to it like a life preserver hello, governor. what's going on, steve? he said as he usually did. i read my script word for word. the governor was silent as i read it. i finished, close my eyes and waited for mario cuomo's response. my heart pounding. this is mario cuomo. i don't see how it should affect you, he said without hesitation. i certainly feel for you, but i don't see how it affects you. you are a superb public official, and i don't think it should have any effect on you. stunned, i think mario cuomo.

i looked at the photo on my office wall, a large brained color photograph of the world trade center, a self-contained world where i escaped each days for 12 to 14 hours, a world of public service. in doing good with a brilliant at how america with highest integrity, a world of my own sealed off from my family which no one could take away from me. i got up and focused closely on the twin towers, tracing my finger across the void between the north tower and the south. where more than a decade earlier philippe ricky walked back and forth eight times across the cable strung between them. he made it look easy and graceful, but he spent months practicing at repairing for his quarter-mile high balancing act. visiting the world trade center 200 times, he precisely planned

every detail, counting for factors like the wind that he could not control. i stepped back a a bit, takingn the entire landscape. my mind jumping from tower to tower. my eyes stopped and i know there was a shaft of light between the tower, taller than both, beckoning me forward. my high wire ballet was just beginning. iq. [applause] >> you're you are watching bookn c-span2 atop nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> hi, , guys. how is anybody doing today? welcome to kramerbooks. i name is rachel come on the part of