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 event staff. is just reminder before begin please

silent your cell phone. >> you are also welcome to follow us on social media. but today we are here to talk about economics so don't recount on a finicky guys a lecture. i will leave you in the capable hands of our guest author, mr. bhu srinivasan. in his new book "americana" he takes us to a 400 euros journey to american history of capitalism highlighting some of our industries most important inventions. from the arrival of the mayflower to the inner workings of the mafia to the early days of silicon valley, he presents an exhilarating and eye-opening perspective of an american history of capitalism that i'm sure he's very excited to share with you all today. mr. srinivasan is an accomplished media entrepreneur, digital media, pop culture, technology, publishing and financial content. he arrived in the u.s. with his

family at the age of eight, and as a child has lived in the south, the rust belt, southern california and the pacific northwest. his book is available for sale in the bookstore and he will be up here afterwards for a book signing. so please help me welcome mr. srinivasan, everyone. [applause] >> thanks everyone for having me, this is only my second ever book event. so i am very glad you guys took a big chance on coming out and hopefully based on how this goes i get to do other events, or never again. hope you guys are a good audience. so as rachel had pointed out, i came to this country at the age of eight. my mother was come had a phd in physics and she had gotten the role at roswell park memorial institute which is a cancer institute in buffalo, new york. actually got a postdoctoral position their age is going to make a sum of $14,000 which meant in india that we're going

to be very, very rich when we arrived in america. and after mother had done six months in america, having left us in india, she came back and got as for windows eight i was enough to live with my aunt once i arrived in america not too far from your itunes going richmond, virginia, for a few months and then to buffalo, new york,, , then on to california, the northwest ear my own journey in america in many ways mirrored that of the american journey. and i didn't quite understand how much it mirrored it until i was fortunate to take a freshman history class richard y, the story of university of washington. it was now at stanford, and in this class the final essay was to even connect your families history into the american narrative. since i've taken a class mcmxcv and i've been here for a total of ten years, 11 years of 84-95 i didn't quite have a device to

which i could weave a narrative because we had such a short amount of time here. a major event in american history, couldn't connector families history to that side asking what can we do to allow me to fully express myself in context of american history and we had stumbled upon a device of economic themes. the rust belt in buffalo, new york, my families westward migration, my mother ended up with a position, and biotech startup in seattle. seattle it's up with booming with technology from microsoft at the time was a very large company, still a step in at that time was a very scorching growth rate. we were connecting all that over an 11 year timeframe into this essay, and it gave me a a perspective on american history that i didn't have before. i got this directly from a very notable historian and it didn't serve me well. going forward, however, the gold rush of the internet was this

usually a learning thing in seattle and san francisco at the time, and i've been lucky enough to put his weight in this goldrush at least as an early employee at a a couple of countries and then as a founder of a startup in news aggravation pixel it colored my perspective to be the next big things are, transform society very rapidly. to a hammer everything looks like an effort to meet these economic questions have always driven me to assemble everything i know about american history and put into this framework. so about ten ten years after ti started thinking about every biography i would read, every history i would read, would somewhat evade these economic questions which are so central to the american experience and, in fact, if you think about mexican immigrants come to this country many of them undocumented and undocumented

immigrant is leaving the privileges and citizen rights in mexico to come to this country to live a stateless noncitizen. so why would someone come to live here as a stateless noncitizen? that's not a vote for american democracy. so what is that motivation? you can look at it and say it might be the lower of some form of american capitalism even underclass, these dividends. some of the war or perspective that they might have some access to prosperity and prosperity is a relative thing that somebody might have come so we might think a a new change of clothe, fresh t-shirt and being able to buy whatever close you want is prosperity. others might think access to a condition or a new television is prosperity. someone else might be denied, the ability to buy car which is a big luxury item in the entire third world as it was in india at the time and still is for hundreds of millions of people. all those things represent prosperity, and i still believe

the ease with which you can access this prosperity is the primary a lower for millions and millions of immigrants that have come here. so tracing back from that i wanted to look at it the prosperity was a motivation for my own family ever of immigrants a khmer, you know, indeed i can make that case, how did, how far did i go back? the irish, italians sort it was the, lithuanians, germans. then i tried to trace back all the way back to the mayflower. the mayflower gave rise to a question that to some degree really struck me. i wondered how was it in 1620 that religious savages separatd afford a giant ship? how would they be able to afford -- if i'll get a 100 people in central america look want to come to this country chartered

at 737, you would think how could that possibly happen? that's a strange set of circumstances. so then you start weaving and ask questions have made far was finance and you start going through a great primary document william bradford a plymouth plantation, and in it much of it documents the financing of the mayflower, how they sold shares to a group called the merchant adventurers. have pilgrims had chairs. i was a seven-year term. how do or provisions with the pilgrims would spend four days of the collective venture, two days on, two days for themselves, one day for god and how those terms changes six days for the collective venture and one day for god and how that was a sticking point when they were about to embark on this voyage. you start look at economic motivations threat and you start questioning how the financing happen, what happened at the end of the transaction. it took 25 years for the

transaction to unwind itself. and from there started assembling a series of next big things. when did steal still have a veg impact on society? what happened with oil? what happened with automobiles? with food, with the meatpackers in chicago? and all these disparate events and biographies and trends, i started putting into a mosaic and ultimately came together what i thought 400 jews of american capitalism, you can set using the backdrop of next big things where you can have something like the internet browser, leading ultimately to the smartphone. you wouldn't have a smart phone if people were an internet browser because that was a big thing that assault, that the smartphone allow you to access internet browser. internet browser created great demand for the computer because even in the '80s, pcs are not in the majority of households really took off for the internet. the next big things compound and

that's the connective tissue that i try to identify in this book, and many times these connective tissues are not separate threads altogether but they are deeply interwoven with politics. i just wanted to have a couple of examples today of deeper threads were several next big things are so connected we might not nesser think of them as connected. what is the goldrush. the goldrush starts with, to some degree still happening but at the tail end of the mexican-american war, 1848 when the final days of mexico owning the territory days before its official surrender, someone finds, discovers in a sawmill worker in a river in california discovers that there are gold flakes on the ground. this is a serendipitous discovery. it doesn't take great skill or altered culture to feingold but they did. it's the great lucky find at the

tail end, at the end of manifest destiny with a u.s. comes in possession of california almost at the exact time almost as it is providential, it finds gold. almost instantaneously the californians, the rush happens and then the californians want, they're clamoring for statehood. because california is in possession of vast wealth, it accelerates the process. by 1850 the californians want to present themselves to become the 31st state of the union. at this time there are 15 slave states and 15 free states, and it's the one marker of legislative balance that the southerners are still able to hold onto because in terms of representatives, the free states ambassador representatives in the house, but in the senate they have 30. so to introduce the 31st state would change that balance and change that equation very dramatically. so you have the compromise of 1850 which is triggered by california wanting admission and

one of that is the fugitive slave act. that sets off the idb in the fugitive slave act is that it has to enforce constitutional provision that if a slave ventures into a state in the north, that they can summon local magistrates in the north to return that slight back to the south. that's something that harriet beecher stowe finds so odious, she start writing "uncle tom's cabin" and uncle -- captures a lot of sentiments able to use fictional story to humanize the slave experience. and throughout 1850s that starts to become a major dividing point, and you start seeing after the dred scott decision you see slight prices actually went up. so there was quite a bubble in slight prices were at auction to

have what they would call a prime field hand, so we would pay, in the twins, strong, has no history of running away, the seller representation you need to make if a slave had ever run away, and so you see the average price of slaves throughout, $700, $800 on the whole, all 4 million slaves. $3 billion to $4 billion for all of the slaves in america, 4 million or so. and so to some degree in my book i note this is an irrational valuation because there was a lot of credit, you could use collateral, borrow two-thirds of the value. much of the sentiment was based on a valuation of slaves that was decoupled from the price of cotton, which many historians,

walter johnson, spin backward, they go into. so connected the goldrush with slave and some of the sentiments that precipitated this overconfidence on the part of the south triggering a humanizing novel from harriet beecher stowe. those are the types of connections i try to weave weag throughout the book works not just a celebration of capitalism or great biographies, but synthesizes the democratic forces that clashed with markets many times throughout american history. and so that you will find later as on as well as a strong theme as rights-of-way and jennings bryant candidacy in 1896, and it's against the backdrop again of business interest in this country being very pro-tariff pic at the the time did have income tax and because you do have income tax the federal government was financed by either that tariff or liquor and tobacco taxes, both fermented

and distilled spirits. so because of that reliant on the tariff, business interests often had to print in the federal government when they could protect industries, and when they protected industries you would institute, introduce a tariff. the higher the tariff the more money the federal government is able to collect. the same kind industry in the united states that would fight overseas competitors to take market share in america is protected. one of the men that gave voice,, this was andrew carnegie in his autobiography talks about how the steel tariffs were instrumental for developing steel industry in the united states. so until the income tax was made constitutional by the 16th amendment, you had this reliant on tariffs were businesses often times, even if the federal government didn't quite needed, were very pro-tariff. and once income tax became instituted that's when you could

both have prohibition because a federal criminal was no longer relied upon income taxes, or relied upon taxes from alcohol, both distilled and fermented spirits, and it wasn't relied on the tariff as well. you start seeing these connection and that's how the story came together throughout. the next big thing from that point starts tracing to the automobiles, goes to sobriety, to roads in our roads gave way to fast food and there's lots of examples obviously and biographies, but the main theme of the story is how democracy clashes with the interests of markets and how american capitalism is this synthesis of social, , cultural, economic and democratic forces. so i wanted to open it up to questions and hope you guys have some good ones.

[inaudible] >> you know, that's during prohibition. this is something that come it's not a major theme in the book. i think that it's a small thing but the mafias one of the sayings where you have and attended consequences coming to see lots of unintended consequences with policymakers but one of those catholics was you had right after prohibition you have a brand-new business, because alcohol, beer, the fifth-largest visit and the united states, some great fortunes were -- these great big fortunes in alcohol and all of a sudden right when it became legal you had a brand-new opportunity for all kinds of wallace men -- lawless men to take avenge of a large consumer market but it had other unintended consequences as well. prices in california boom said the great grower in northern

california where your people able to sell, because wine had a sacrament except to and you could also buy syrup and then allow it to turn into wine in the hope except lots of different economic opportunities answering that economic opportunity gave rise to organized crime. >> how do you rate a capitalism? [inaudible] >> it's like rating democracy, how would you rate something like democracy or capitalism? that's one of the things i discussed on npr earlier today, which is it doesn't have a more quality or in more quality. it's a neutral construct, if you want to sell your kidneys would be able to. there's nothing in capitalism that intrinsically says no or

suggest or encourages it or discourages it. it's up to society to ultimately view it with values. that's always been the case throughout. just like when you're asking me how you rate capitalism, how would you rate democracy, for 80 years slavery was tolerated. would that mean you would then impugn democracy? i think it's a neutral philosophy, that you can have whatever values you want to and it's up to your society to shape its force. i also brought up -- [inaudible] >> i do. [inaudible] >> i do and it's a constant evolution. one example i use is the rise of schools, the rise of public schools. so if you going to, even a staunch republican community in, let's say texas, or deep red state and you would ask them what is the great thing about your community or your society,

many times you will hear that the thing they love most in that they will brag the most about is that great public schools. and here it is a social institution that they would take great pride in, it's one of the first things that make sure committed a committee. they wouldn't say their great fences and our neighbors can't get in. that's one of of the things pee don't necessarily identify as capitalism and democracy colliding but it certainly is. a person who argue for public education and universal education would back in 1848 was karl marx. in the calmest manifesto talks about how he produces a plan for developed economies or developing economies, and daschle economies at that time to become more fair. one of the things he argues for is abolition of child labor and institution of universal education and certainly have it. he also argued for progressive income taxes as a part of that plan.

even americans capitalism is a hybrid. it's not an extreme ideology. what i try to get as i try to separate the ideological argument from it altogether in blue really think about it as an operating system rather than an ideology. >> just out of curiosity what was the final return of investment on the mayflower investors? >> they lost money. it took 25 years for the debt to finally be repaid. it wasn't that come it was equity first because their shareholders. after a few years they realized that they wanted to convert himt the end of the seven-year term they needed to do something with equity the cassette that the he would have to have a pro rata distribution of the assets of plymouth. they did want to do that so the equity got converted in to debt, not a transaction see very often in private equity and others like that. and for a long time that that

couldn't be repaid, couldn't be serviced by the frederick in revenues and ultimately what it happened was these government implement -- the for traders. these undertakers assume a debt for plymouth colony in exchange for all of the for trading rights. so this group of nine men absolving plymouth colony of the debt and finally these nine men negotiate with investors that still held on and manage, editor 25 years years and by this time, it was not easy time in england either, so a lot of men needed the money back and didn't make it and few descendents still held on to the original investments. >> given our current political climate, how do you think capitalism will evolve from where it is now?

>> that's a very interesting question. obviously, the fact that these rust belt states like michigan, wisconsin, ohio ended up being the swing states where you would not have predicted that they're going to go to trump or even become red, especially michigan, i think obviously tells you that there's something in the air. especially, the band an argument for protectionism, that something you would never expected to see in republican dogma, but free trade is very much of the question as to what the republican platform will seek to do with free trade because it's not clear cut at all that, the swing states or the now are on board with unlimited free trade pics i think that's going to have substantial implications for 2020 as well.

>> any more questions? no, okay. thank you so much. [applause] >> here's a look at some of the best books of the year according to publishers weekly.

>> today, those homes sell for 300, $400,000. the african-american families who are prohibited from moving into those homes and rented apartments in the city did not gain 200, $300,000 in equity thousand dollars in equity over the next two generations. white families gained that equity from comment today those homes are unaffordable to working-class people.

$100,000 in 1940, in our terms, in 1940, was twice the national median income. working family could afford those homes. today those homes self or seven times national median income, working-class families can't even afford to move to the suburbs that were created in segregated in the '40s and 50s. so today nationwide we have a ratio of income,, african-american income on average is about 60% of white income. african-american wealth is five to 7% white well. most of us in this country gain their wealth through housing equity. this enormous difference between 60% income ratio and 5% wealth ratio is almost entirely attributable to unconstitutional federal housing policy that was practiced in the 1930s, '40s

and into the 50s. so the wealth gap is attributable to the segregation. >> some of these authors have will be appearing on booktv. you can watch them on our website tv.org. >> today live on "in depth" professors corner west and robert george will be our guests. >> anytime i get a chance to be in dialogue with professor george, my dear brother robert, we go back 13 years. we share a fundamental commitment to the mind and the world of ideas. we had a chance to teach and lecture around the country. and so when i see them i don't see them first and foremost as a conservative thinker, catholic philosopher, one of the major political figures of our data i see it as my brother. i see him as my friend and so on who has a right to be wrong.

[laughing] >> if you're going to work together in conversation, even the fate, to get at the truth, the people involved in the conversation first have to recognize that they are fallible, frail, fallen human beings. they have to recognize that they could be wrong. each one has to recognize, even about my most cherished beliefs i could be wrong. and if, in fact, one has that attitude and understanding, , nt in merely a notional way, but in a deeply appropriated way, then one will begin to develop a virtue that is indispensable over truth seeking. >> among the books mr. wesson is written are "race matters" and "brother west." mr. george's books include "making men moral" and "conscience and the enemies." during our live three-hour