sorry. both of the books, steve, dave and corey. we will get a special deal for students. five bucks apiece. now, six bucks a piece or two for 10 bucks. i came up with that idea. anyhow. the books are great. they will be here toe sign the. or maybe i'll over there. anyhow, god bless. you are dismissed. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

.. . i will leave you in the capable handon of our exist author. mr. bhu srinivasan. he talking us through a 400 year long journey through american history of capitalism, highlighting some of our industry's most important inventions. from the arrival m m of the mayflower the inner-workings of the mafia to the early years of silicon valley, mr. he is very

excited to share with you all about capitalism. bhu srinivasan is a publisher, of financial content. he arrived in the u.s. with his family at age of eight. he lived in the south, rust belt, southern california and pacific northwest. his book is available for sale in the bookstore. he will be up here afterwards for a book signing. let me welcome mr. bhu srinivasan. [applause] >> thank you for having me. this is my only second-ever bob event. i'm glad that you nice took a big chance coming out hopefully pavedded on how this goes i get to do other events or never again. i hope you are a good audience. as rachel pointed out i came to the country at the age of eight.

i mother had a phd in physics. shet got a role at rosswell moment merle park institute in buffalo, new york. she got a postdoctorate position, that made the stupendous suman of 14,000. that meant in india we would be very, very rich when we arrived in america. after my mother did six months in america, left us in india, she got us.ic when i was eight years old i was sent to live with my aunt. not too far from here i attended school in richmond, virginia, for a few months. and my own journey in america many ways mirrored the american journey. i didn't quite understand how much it mirrored it until i was fortunate to take a freshman history class, the claim

historian richard white who is now at stanford. his final lesson to weave and connect your family's history into the context of the american narrative. since i was taking the class of 1995, i had been here total of 10 years, 11 years, from '84 to '95, i didn't quite have a device i i could weave a narrate because we had such a short amount of time here. so the major events in american history, obviously i couldn't connect our family's history to that. so i had to ask him to allow me to fully express myself in the context of american history? we stumbled upon the device of economic themes. the rust belt in buffalo, new york. myev family's westward migratio. my mother inned up with a position at, biotech startup in seattle. seattle itself was booming with technology, microsoft, at that time was very large company. still is now but certainly at that time it was, very scorching growth rate. we connected all of that into a

11-year period into this essay, gave me a perspective on american history that i didn't have before. i got this directly from a very notable historian and it did serve me well. going forward however, the gold rush of the internet was this hugely-alluring thing in seattle and san francisco at that time. i had beensa lucky enough to participate in the gold rush at least as early employee at a couple of companies. a founder of venture-backed startup and news agra mitigation. it colored mier is speculative of these next big things are basically transform societies very rapidly. so just as a hammer, everything looks like a nail, to me these economic questions have always driven me to assemble everything i know about american history and put it into this framework. about 10 years k after that i ws thinking about every biography i

would read, every history i would read somehow evade the economic questions that are so essential to the american experience.e when you think about mechanic can americans who come to country, many of them undocumented, many are leaving the rights and privileges of this country to live as stateless non-citizens. why would somebody come here to live as stateless non-citizens. that is not something for american democracy when they leave democratic principles in mexico behind. what is theeg motivation? it might be allure some form of american capitalism, even for the you know class. some allure perspective they might have access to prosperities. prosperity is a relative thing. somebody mightce think new chane of clothes, fresh t-shirts, being able to buy whatever close you want is prosperity. some think access to air-conditioning or new

television iss prosperity. someone night be denied the ability to buy a car which obviously is big luxury item in entire third world as it was india and at that time and still is for hundreds of millions of people, all those things represent prosperity. i still believe the ease which you can access this prosperity is the primary allure for millions and millions of immigrants that have come here. so tracing back from that i wanted to look at, if the prosperity was motivation for my own family and for other immigrants that come here. if indeed that i can make that case, how did, how far does that go back? obviously for the irish that certainly was the case. for italians that certainly was the case, lithuanians, germans. then i tried to trace it back all the way to the mayflower. the mayflower gave rise to a question that, you know, to some

degree, really struck me. i wondered how was it in 1620 persecuted religious separatists would afford a giant ship? how would they afford to charter one? if i tell you 100 people in central america wanting to come to this country wanted to charter a 737, how could that possibly happen? that is a strange set of circumstances. then you start weaving in and actually ask how the mayflower was financed and you start going through a great primary document. william bradford of 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. how the pilgrims had shares. it was a seven-year term. there were provisions in there where the pilgrims would spend four days on the collective venture, twohe days on the, two days for themselves, one day for god. howlv those terms changed to six days for the collective venture

and one day for god. how that was a sticking point when they were about to embark on this voyage. so you start looking at economic motivations throughout and question how the financing happened. what happened at the end of that transaction t took 25 years for that transaction to unwind itself. from there i started assembling a series of next big things. when did steel have very big impact on society? what happened with oil? what happened with automobiles? withid food, the with the meatpackers in chicago and all these disparate events and biographies and trends i started to putting it into a mosaic and ultimately came together i thought 400 years off american capitalism, using this back drop of next big things, the internet browser leading ultimately to thema smartphone. obviously you wouldn't have the smartphone if people weren't used to the internet browser. the smartphone allowed us to

access a internet browser. the internet browser created great demand for the computer. even the '80s, pcs were not in majority of households. pc, computer growth took off with the internet. thesee next big things compound that is the connective tissue i tried to identify in this book and many times these connective tissues aren't separate threads all together but they're obviouslyy deeply interwoven wih politics. i wanted to have a couple of examples today with deeper threads where next big things are so connected where you might not necessarily think of them as connected. one is the gold rush. now the gold rush starts with to some degree happenings during the tail end of the mexican-american war. 1848, the final days, in the final days of mexico owning the territory, days before the official surrender, someone finds, discovers, a saw millworker in a river in

california discovers that there are gold flakes are on the ground. this is obviously a zare ren deputes discovery. doesn't take great skill or culture to find gold but they did. it was a great lucky find at tail end, manifest destiny where united comes into possession of california, almost provedential it finds gold. instantaneously the rush happens. the californians are immediately clamoring for statehood. because california is in possession of vast wealth it accelerates the process. by 1850s, the californians want to present themselves as 31st state in the union. at this time there are 15 slave states and 15 free states. it is the one marker of legislative balance that the southerners are still able to hold on to because in terms of representatives, the free states have vastly more representatives

in the house but in the senate they have to senators and free states have 30 senators. to introduced the 31st state would change the balance and change the change the equation very rapidly. compromise of 1850 is the california getting administration and fugitive slave act clause for the constitution. that setst off the idea behind the fugitive slave act it has to enforce this constitutional provision if a slave ventures into a state inn the north, that they can summon local magistrates is this the north to return return to slave to the south. hair create beacher stow finds that owed just, she writes, "uncle tom's cabin." that gets serialized and using a fictional story to humanize the slave experience.

and throughout the 1850s, that starts becoming a major dividing pointt and you start seeing the dred scott decision of 1857, you see slave prices actually went up. so there was quite a bubble in slave prices where at auctions you would have the, what they would call a prime field hand, somebody that is in their 20s, strong, has no history of runningg away because that is seller representation you need to make if a slave had ever run away. so you see the average price of slaves throughout between $700 and $800 on the whole, all four million slaves. you have imputed value of $3 billion to $4 billion for all the slaves in america, 4 billion or so. so to some degree in my book i note this is an irrational valuation because it is, a lot of credit was there to purchase a slave, you could use lots of

collateralize, to collateralize the slave you could borrow two-thirds of value. the value of slaves was decoupled from the price of cotton which many historians, walter johnson, they go into. to connect the gold rush with slavery and some of the sentiments that precipitated this overconfident on the part of the o south triggering a humanizing novel have harriet beecher stowe, those are the connections i where i weave in throughout the book, it is not just a celebration of capitalism or great buying graph fist but synthesizes the democratic forces that clashed with markets manyhr times throughout american history. so that you will find later on as well, a strong theme is the rise of william jennings bryan candidacy in 1896.

it is against the backdrop again of business interests in this country being very pro-tariff. you didn't have the income tax, because you didn't have the income tax the federal government was financed by the tariff or liquor or tobacco taxes, both fermented and distilled spirits. so because of that reliance on the tariff, business interests often had a friend in the federal government where they could protect industries and when they protect an industry you introduce a tariff, the higher the tariff, the more money the federal government is able tohi collect. at the same time the industry in the united states would find overseas competitors to take market share in in america was protected. one of the men that gave voice is andrew carnegie, in his autobiography, how the steel tariffs were instrumental developing the steel industry in the united states. so untilng the income tax was me

constitutional by the 1 sixth amendment. reliance on tariffs, even if the federal government didn't need it were very pro-tariff. once income tax became institutioned, you could have prohibition, because the federal government was not relying upon income taxes or relying on taxes from alcohol in distilled and fermented spirits and it wasn't relying on the tariff as well. you start seeing the connections. that is how the story came together throughout. so, the, so the next big thing from starts tracing to the automobiles.s. goes through suburbia, goes through roads, how roads gave way to fast-food. there are lots of anecdotal examples and biographies but the main theme of the story, how democracy clashes with interest

of american markets. how american capitalism is the synthesis of social, economic, and democratic forces. so i wanted to open it up to questions and hope you guys have some good ones. >> how does the mafia tie in? >> you know that is, that is during prohibition. this is something that, it is not a major theme in the book. i think that it's a smaller theme but the mafia is one of those things, it is unintended consequences. you seeee lots of unintended consequences with policymakers. one of those consequences was, that you had right after prohibition you had a brand new business because alcohol, beer, especially was the fifth largest business in the united states. some great fortunes were, adolph busch, great fortunes in alcohol. alcohol, ones it became legal you had opportunity for all

kinds of lawless men to be able to take advantage of a whole big market, veryy large consumer market. it had other unintended consequences as well. grain price, for instance, in california boomed. you had the grape grower in southern california, people are able to sell, wine had sacrament exception toex it. you could buy syrup and allow it to turn into wine in the home. you had lots of different economic opportunities. certainly that economic opportunity gave rise to organized crime. >> after that -- capitalism, how do you rate capitalism? do you go into the types of capitalism that americans experimented with? did youme find -- and various types? >> in terms of rating capitalism, like rating democracy, how would you rate something like democracy or rate capitalism? that is one of the things i discussed on npr earlier today,

which is that it doesn't have a moral quality or immoral quality. it's'smo a neutral construct. if you want to sell your kidney you would be able to. nothing in capitalism that says no or says yes, encourages it or disencourages it. it is up to the society to imbue it with values. that is always the case throughout. when you ask me how you rate capitalism, how would you rate democracy,ug for 80 years slavey was tolerated and 80 years segregation was tolerated. would you impune democracy? it's a neutral philosophy, you can have whatever values you want to. it is up to the society to shape its force. i also brought up -- >> [inaudible]. market capitalism or liberal capitalism. >> i do. >> do you go into various stages of u.s. history and talk about them? >> i think it's a constant evolution. it's a constant evolution, for

example, one of the things i use is the rise of schools, the rise of public schools. so if you go into, even a staunch republican community let's say texas, deep blue or deep red state and you were to ask them what is the great thing about your community or your society, many times you will hear that the thing that they love most, that they will brag the most about is their great public schools. here it's a social institution that they would take great pride n one of the first things that makes your community a community. they wouldn't say we have great fences and our neighbors can't get in. that is one of the things that people don't necessarily identify as capitalism and, democracy colliding but it certainly is. youis know, the person that argd for public education and universal education all the way back in -- 1848 was karl marx. he produced a 10-point plan for

developing industrial economies at that time to become more fair. one of the thing he argues for abolition of child labor and institution of universal education. certainly we have that. he also argued for progressive income taxesof as part of that 10-point plan. so even american capitalism is certainly aal hybrid. it is not an extreme, it is not an extreme ideology. what i try to do, i try to separate the idealogical argument from it all together and really think about it as a operating t system rather than n ideology. >> so out of curiosity what was the final return on investment for the may plower investors? >> they lost money. took 25 years. it took 25 years for the debt to be finally repaid. it wasn't debt. it was equity because they were shareholders. after a few years they realized convert at end of the seven-year term they needed to do something

with the equity. at that time you have to have a prorat at that distribution of assets of plymouth. they didn't want to do that. the equity got converted into debt where you see like in private equity and other areas. for a long time the debt couldn't be serviced by the fur trading revenues. ultimately what had happened was a group of men in plymouth, they called themselves the undertakers andt these undertakersy assumed the debt from plymouth colony in exchange for all of the fur trading rights. and so these group of nine men absolved plymouth colony of the debt. finally these nine men negotiated with their investors that still held on, managed to hold on to the stake. it took 25 years. by this time england was in the throes of civil war. so 1620 to 1645 was not an easy time in england. so a lot of the men needed their money back and didn't make it. few descendants had still head

on to on to -- held on to the original investment. >> given our current political climate, the current administration, how do you think capitalism will evolve from where it is now? or do you see it changing? >> that is a very interesting question. well 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 were going to go to trump or even become red, especially michigan, i think obviously tells you there is something, something in the air. especially i think that some of the, the bannon argument for protectionism, that is something you wouldn't have expected to see in republican dogma but free trade is very much a big utestion as to what the republican platform will seek to do with free trade because it is not clear-cut at all that they're, that the swing states for them now are on board with

unlimited free trade. so i think that is going to have substantial implications for 2020 as t well. anymore questions? no. okay. i think we'll wrap. thank you so much. [applause] >> this weekend c-span's cities tour takes to you springfield, missouri. while in springfield, we're working with mediacom to explore the literary scene and history of the birthplace of route 66 in southwestern missouri. saturday at noon eastern, on booktv. author jeremy neely talks about

the conflict occurring along the kansas-missouri border in the struggle over slavery, in his book, the border between them. >> in 1858 john brand having left kansas comes back to the territory and he begins a series of raids into western missouri during which his men will liberate enslaved people from missouri help them escape to freedom. in the course of this they will kill a number of slaveholders. and so the legend or the note right of john brown really grows as part of this struggle that people look -- locally understand the beginning of the civil war. >> on c-span booktv at 2:00 p.m. we. >> teddy roosevelt the first thing he did when he left office was go on a very large hunting

safari to africa. this particular rifle was prepared specifically for roosevelt. it has the presidential seal engraved on the breach, and of course roosevelt was famous for the bull moose party and there is a bull moose engraved on the side plate of this gun. >> watch c-span's cities tour, springfield, missouri, saturday at noon eastern, on c-span2's booktv on sunday at 2:00 p.m. on american history tv, on c-span3, working with our cable affiliates as we explore america. >> here is a look at the best nonfiction books in 2017 according to "the christian science monitor." retired ad mir james stravidis talks about sea power. a former editor of

"national geographic" magazine recalls the life of robert smalls a former slave, became the first african-american captain of an army ship and went on to serve five terms in congress. mark bowden in the turning point of the vietnam war in hue in 1968. walter starr explores life of lincoln's secretary of war in, stanton. a team of female code breakers in world war two, by former washington post reporter, liza monday. 10,000 women who were breaking the codes of german naval codes, u-boats, the japanese naval codes, the japanese army, they were reading signals all over the world, including some coming out of north africa. it was a massive effort to recruit college-educated women secretly. so women at the seven sisters schools were tapped secretly. they were called into private

interviews with math professors and astronomy professors. they were asked two questions. do you like crossword puzzles and are you engaged to be married. [laughter]. and a number of them actually lied at the second question, said they were not. because whatever they were being invited to do, quite a bit more interesting than waiting around while their fiance was fighting and was risking his life in the war. so the women came to washington. those women joined the navy. ultimately would be joined by enlisted women as well. women who had not had the benefit of college education who came from california, oklahoma, all over the country. if they had the aptitude they were routed into these giant code-breaking compounds in washington. meanwhile the army was recruiting for code breakers of their own. they hit upon a strategy to send handsome young army officers throughout the midwest to recruit school teachers. they wanted women who were adept

at languages and math. as a woman in the 1940s, if you had a great liberal arts degree, pretty much the only job you could expect was teaching school. and again, they were, marriage was sort of the theme. they were trying to lure the women to washington with expectation of making a marriage to a hand some young officer like the one who was recruiting them but in fact a lot of these women were interested in getting out of hasty engagements that they felt a little bit pressured into when the war started. so those women packed up their suitcases and came to washington as well. and the reason this story has been untold for so long is because the women were told that they would be shot if they talked when they were in washington. it was wartime. the work was top secret. they all had security clearances. and to talk about their work would be treason. so they were told to tell people that they sharp penned pencils. that they emptied waste baskets, filled ink wells, that they were secretaries are. that is what they did an continued doing after the war.

because they were women being people believed them. in some ways they were ideal intelligence officers. because people believed whatever they were doing couldn't possibly be important. >> all these authors appeared on booktv. watch them on our website, booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> welcome, everybody. welcome, if you would please make your way it your seats. we are ready to begin. so hello, everybody and welcome to temple emanuel of beverly hills, to our second conversation of the year. i am rabbi sarah bassin we are delighted to be partnering with ib