jack davis look at the gulf of mexico. frances fitzgerald's history of evangelism in america. russian-american journalists report on the generation of russians who came of age during the vladimir putin regime and the art of death. kevin young bunked and roxanne gaze memoir hunger. it has covered several of this year's finalists. >> i think most of us are afraid of death because it means losing people we love, but one of the things i learned from reading the riders, especially the dying riders who are writing about their own death, and even with my parents, oneri of the thingsi realized that dying people want to tell us is to live. live the best life you can, live so you don't have many regrets. >> do we do the living finding that message.

>> think when. [inaudible] most of us are not, we don't want to concentrate on our mortality because it's depressing but one of the things that christopher writes in his book mortality, is that we are, he found that at the and is living dying we because you are constantly aware that you have an expiration date. for dying people they know that every single day is a gift and normally, ideally it would be great if we all lived like that. >> you can watch these programs on full booktv.org. for the complete list of the finalists and all six quarter categories had to book

critics.org. >> in her latest book, dm stillman describes the relationship between the flow bill and sitting bull. [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation]

>> good afternoon. welcome to the historic trinity united methodist church. we are fortunate to be here. my name is roger smith. i am honored to serve as a volunteer for the 11th annual savannah book festival i'm so gladoo you all are participating in the festival. it is presented by georgia power, by david and nancy citroen, the sheehan family foundation and mark and pat. would like to thank our members as well as individual sponsors and donors who have made and continue to make saturday at the book festival a free event. 90% of the revenue comes from donors like you.

we are excited to have a savannah book festival app available this year. please look in your program if you would like information on downloading the app to your telephone. before we get started, a couple housekeeping notes. immediately following this presentation our author will be signing festival purchase copies of her book. if you intend to stay in this venue for the presentation i will follow please move forward in the space so we make room for people who are coming in to the big front door. a couple technology announcements, we ask you take a minute right now to double check your cell phone is turned off or at least on silent mode so we won't have interruptions during the talk. but if you have cell phones that you want to take photographs, please do not use a flash. finally, for the

question-and-answer portion, i will ask that you raise your hand. i will make eye contact and they will bring a microphone to you please. we will try to make as many questions as possible happen. please limit yourself to one question and make sure it's actually question rather than a comment or story. dm stillman is with us courtesy of dave and bobby and christina and jim. she is a widely published critically acclaimed writer. her latest book is blood brothers. a strange friendship between sitting bull and buffalo bill. it also tells the story of any oakley was all friend of both m. the book was named as the best

book of 2017. she is also the author of desert recognizing which is the winner of the spur award in the los angeles press club award for best nonfiction. her book mustang was in l.a. times best book of the year end released an audio. she is also the author of twentynine palms, out in l.a. times best book of the year which hundred thompson called a strange and brilliant story by an important americania writer. please give a warm welcome to dm stillman. >> thank you so much savannah. savannah book festival, c-span,

trinity united, methodist church and my sponsors, it's great to be here. as you know, i am here to talk about my latest book blood brothers which is about the strange friendship between sitting and buffalo bill with kind of a corollary appearance from any oakley and i'm going to read a few excerpts and talk about my journey through the story and then take some questions from you "after words". first i want to talk to a bit about how i came to write this. it's a very strange story about a very strange friendship. some time ago while working on my book mustang, the saga of the

wildhorse in the american west i learned about a strange and heartbreaking moment that had transpired outside sitting bull's cabin while he was being assassinated during an ambush. the horse was tethered to a railing and at the sound of gunfire he started to dance, trained to do such a thing while he was in the wild west, buffalo bill's famous spectacle of which crazy horse was part of. i couldn't shake the image. as i began to look into it, the horse was a gift to sitting bull from buffalo bill. was presented to him b when he left to go home which was standing rock. the fact that buffalo build and

giving him a force upon his departure was significant. this animal transformed the westin was stripped from the tribe to vanquish them. it was a gift that sitting bull treasured along with the hat that was given to him as well. buffalo bill brought the house back from sitting bull's widows and according to some accounts, wrote it in a parade. then horse disappears from the record. it was the legend of the dancing horse that led me into the story of sitting bullrs and buffalo bill. it's like so much. as i thought about the speed outside sitting bull dwelling as his killing was underway, a portal into something else opened up.

strange voices coming through the portal. it's all strange. i told you. where was i. portal. a portal opened up, exactly what, i was not sure of other than the fact that here was my next story and it was calling and at some point i would head on down the trail. this was taken for publicity purpose while they were on to her in montréal. the caption was close in 76, friends and 85. i imagine them sitting, worse, crisscrossing the nation, visiting land that had once belonged to the lakota preparing himself on crowded thoroughfares that would tilt on top of each paths made by animals and people whoan follow them with william f

cody, another mythical figure reenacting wartime scenarios that had one out. the end of the red man and the victory of the white. it led the whole parade in celebration of the wild west that became theof national scripture. what were the forces that brought these two men together i wondered. what was the nature of their alliance. were they each trapped in a persona, a veneer that was somewhat true? behind the myth, projected ideas in which they were preserved, who were they in day-to-day life. theirs was certainly an unlikely partnership, but one thing was obvious on its face. both had names that were forever linked with the buffalo. one man was credited with wiping out the species so that was hardly the casee and the other

was sustained by its very life. they were, in effect, two sides of the same coin. foes and then friend just as the photo caption on the publicity poster said. this image entered my consciousness. here were two american superstars emma icons, not just of their era country for all time and around the world. what story was this telling how is it connected to the dancing horse outside sitting bull's cabin said. a little bit about all of these questions. i can't answer all of them, but there are a few thoughts. first of all, something i do in my book is a recount stories of each men from cradle to the grave, literally, and i track their parallel histories.

both men grew up on the frontier. both came from very rough circumstances, both were quite revered in their own tribe, both became superstars. they were husbands, fathers, b sons, warriors. they shared a bloodied history, they were enemies for quite some time until they hooked up and buffalo bill wild west show. here is a little bit about cody. in europe, he was known as nature's nobleman, a frontier self-sufficient with the sophistication of western civilization. in america he was king of the old west, a title he deserved. he was a hunter, scout, shooter, writer, teller of tall tales and man of adventure.

his experience rendered him sort of a wise man and presidents in general sought his advice. his friends included frederick remington and mark twain, those who could drink him under the table and might have even been better riders. men from foreign land came who needed a job. he was open to all. he had no heirs. what you saw was what you get even if it was sometimes a mirage. he was the simplest of men as any oakley would say at the end of his life, as comfortable with cowboys as with kings. before the term was forever linked to his name, he grew up in the wild wild west. once he was a boy, not a superstar, not named for the animal that he would kill by the

thousands, others, for the record, killed more but just a boy who played with the indians on the great plains, perhaps even members of sitting bull's extended tribe would pass through territory near his homee in kansas as they followed the buffalo. so to buy his own account did he kill an indian in his youth and later others while he was employed as a wagon train hand. of course he wasth not aware tht the curtain would soon fall on their way of life he would participate in that last act as well as try to preserve what came before. once he was just a boy who helped his struggling family make a living on the frontier. how he came to hook up with sitting bull is pretty amazing. after the battle of the little bighorn during which custer was killed, as i hope all of you know, sitting bull was blamed

for killing custer which was not true. he did not pull the trigger, but he was nearby. he was certainly a factor in the battle. in fact his medicine was all over the battlefield as i recounted my book, but because of this very speed for the u.s. cavalry and great victory for the lakotaa and cheyenne, the native americans who were involved inat that battle fled northward into the arms of the grandmother, also known as canada because they were branded as hostels and had to leave their homeland. otherwise they would be arrested. sitting bull took his people to canada and they lived there in exile for a number of years and at some point they were forced to leave by the canadian government which is being

pressured by american authorities and also buffalo were vanishing as well. sitting bull was caught in this squeeze play and he returned to the dakota territory, his homeland and he was quite well known, infamous at that point. they didn't have the term public enemy number one, but i use it in my book. he had become public enemy number one part he was the guy who killed custer, a great civil war hero and pretty notorious for his role in the indian wars. when he turned himself in he had his son surrender his rifle in a very poignant ceremony which i my book and he

makes a point of saying that the reason they come back as he wanted to make sure his children could see how the white man was living in learn to endure and assimilate into this new culture. he was so famous then that everybody, people, the soldiers would surround him and one his autograph and just kind ofk soak up some of his mojo. he was a celebrity. a lote of people recording him for their wild west shows, there were a numberse of circuses traveling the country including, they featured cowboys and indians and animals and he hooked up with a couple troops and traveled around. the reason native americans join some of the shows is and because

was great that they could appear in the shows, it was a way off the reservation. it was a sanctioned way for them to leave the reservation. he wasn't really treated very wellin the shows. this is one of the great americans of all time and he was known and still is revered around the world. he was not treated with respect in the shows until cody has come along and cody had been after him for a long time. he knew that sitting bull was a big score, to use today's terms. he knew having him and his show would bring in a lot of money and by then cody was this huge superstar as well. after the little bighorn, he had avenged custer's death by scalping and indian and returning to the stage in new york and elsewhere on the east coast and reenacting the

scalping oflo yellow hand and brandishing the scout to the dismay of many, but cody was a showman and he had been acting for some time and he just really cranked it up at this point. he was able to convince sitting bull to join his show because of his stature he promised him, he promised and was paid more than anybody else in the show. sitting bull was kind of, in baseball terms, free agent. he kind of wrote his own ticket at that time. he asked to be able to sell his own autograph which other people in theer show were doing and of course cody agreed to all this. he really wanted sitting bull in his show, but another reason he

agreed to travel with cody was the fact that any oakley was already in the show and he had met her while traveling to st. paul minnesota with an army official a couple years before hooking up with cody and he was impressed with hern, shooting skills and even sent her a note backstage, like he became a fan and they struck upp an immediate friendship and he gave her the nickname little ms. sure shot which actually translates into something else but you'll have to read my book to find that out. like a lot of things at that time, a lot of native american language was mistranslation but it doesn't really matter in terms of her career because when you think about it, who would

any oakley become without that nickname. he really kind of branded her. having found out that he was, she had been hired by cody, that was one other thing that made him join up. there are a couple other things that perhaps the most important of which was the fact that he wanted to get to washington d.c. to meet the grandfather, also known as the president to find out why the american government had betrayed his people. that was really the overriding reason why he wanted to join up with cody. they did get to washington d.c., as well as a number of other places and he and some others did have a meeting with some state department officials and i described this as a strange scene in my book where they are inside a building on capitol

hill and there's all this western art on the wall and apparently some of them started to laugh but sitting bull remained silent. he apparently did not get to meet the president, the grandfather, to his disappointment. his desire to join up with cody was not fulfilled. he did get to see what was going on with the white man and he wanted to understand how this new civilization worked and he admired all this great new technology he acknowledged the firepower but wondered how, as he traveled

he was meeting all these homeless children around the country. there was all these orphans. they were very generous but he couldn't understand how this technologically advanced was failing its people. i think that's quite. interestig in terms of what's going on today. at any rate, after, sitting bull traveled with cody for about four months in 1885. i just want to redo this short paragraph about what that might have been like h for him. imagine being born into a world where your tribe was the most powerful in all the land and within that being born at the climax of the power, imagine that in your lifetime you witnessed a thing that consumed

nearly everything you loved and were nourished by and that nearly everyone you cherished was destroyed, altered, killed orim locked up. imagine being a person who lived through such a thing. it wash celebrated and hated for doing so. and yet, because of an alliance of a natural world, they saw the whole thing coming, even your own end. finally, imagine embracing life with all of your might and force, your generation and joy in trying to contain the sorrow and blood that was flooding your world and drowning it. knowing that a river cannot be stopped but there are many different ways to write it. this was sitting bull's state and condition. here he was, joining up with

buffalo bill for the regions i mentioned. weirdly, their first meeting was in buffalo and i wondered, when i found that out, i was completely stunned. another breathtaking moment as i was working onn my book. i wondered what suitable thought when he was told he was going to buffalo. i'm sure it was translated and he had to have known the entirety and certainly knew that cody's name was buffalo bill, and then i started to think about jokes, reporters follow him around as he traveled. he had an entourage and there were often reporters and ig started to wonder if they were making jokes about, hey chief,

here we are in buffalo, what you think about that. it just seemed like hee was in a very strange and humiliating position. i want to reiterate that leaving erthe reservation for native americans and joining up with buffalo bill was not like this fantastic thing they could do. they were essentially prisoners of war and this is a way they could continue living the life that was banned within the limited frame. they were allowed to ride horses and reenacting moments in history but the cowboys were engaged in these reenactments which, weirdly enough had pretty much ended as cody's show was touring. here were all these cast

members, americans including white and red men and some women, all these people were locked out and reenacting what has become the national scripture and the way i see it, that's where america lives. we live inside the wild west and it allll comes right out of buffalo bill it's not just any oakley, think about what stories we would tell ourselves about who we are as americans without buffalo bill and his wild west show. what dreams with this country have about itself and of course is a dark side and i talk and write about all of this in my book. >> here is a little bit about the two men together. some friendships form quickly ends they just as fast, others

last for a short time but even they may be deep is the kind that last a lifetime. then there are thoseps in which mysterious forces, hand of the creator perhaps, necessity, desire brings people together even former enemies for an alliance that seems unlikely and in the end nominal. such was the join up of sitting bull and buffalo bill. as the photo captioned set of the pair, each was an icon to himself, together a powerhouse of mythology and might and spark. both men had much in common. both were fathers, husbands, brothers,, sons, surrounded by admirers and those who embodied admiration and jealousy. both were known to everyone and

no one. in the end, trapped in a persona, worn down by their gifts. both were men m of action fearig that a rumble or personal assault. theyce were warriors in dance blessing for sparkles on the ground and sending greyhounds to devour those. there is one thing that made them blood brothers and took them way beyond the alliance and that was buffalo to which they both contribute to their names.

i recount the scene in which they first met. again there was a reporter and sitting bull had paraded down avenue in buffalo with all these people on their way to the field where cooties show was underway and when he got there, apparently he had to wait for sometime for cody to acknowledge him and invite him onto the field, and then when it finally happened, buffalo bills advance man john burke, a very

flamboyant character who looked a lot like cody but was nowhere as charismatic and did a lot of the advance work, he died at sitting bull and he announced chief, i think we've got them and, according to the reporter, cody was a little bit humbled by the, moment. he was a big guy, very handsome, veryou powerful and by that i mn if you've ever been in the circle of somebody who has nothing but charisma and then some, it's very mesmerizing and it can stop you in your tracks but apparently cody was stopped in his tracks by sitting bull

who had that kind of impact on people too. cody even was over 16, he appeared to shrink down a little bit in stature when sitting bull approached in the two men kind of waited or hesitated for a moment and then cody extended his hand and they shook hands and cody made this incredible speech to everybody, describing sitting bull as the napoleon of his people and this great native american figure and he was urging all of the spectators to give sitting bull his due. it was an important speech and it's not that everybody followed cody's commands because as they traveled around the country, sitting bull would sometimes come as often booed during his appearances and sometimes spat on, other times he was

warmly welcomed,, but he was still regarded by a lot of people as public enemy number one it was a big deal for these two people to come together. he was acknowledging their humanity and their achievements in battle which he respected. at the end of this for month. , sitting bull was home sick for standing rock and had not met the grandfather. she wants i'm working go take a

shower then you can go. >> they do not participate in any of the reactants in the. they run around the arena at the beginning of each production and left the ring. he was not hired to perform powwows or any of these other things. cody really treated him with respect. at the end of this four month period, he gave him the horse that he wrote in the show and sitting bull went home from his last performance that year in st. louis. sometimes, during his tenure with cody, he had given buffalo bill a bear

his time was near and he had many dreams which were impressions and had animal guides in his life and he paid attention to them and a lark told him he would be killed by his own people. he knew this was all coming. five years later, in 1890 at the height of the frenzy which was the religious apocalypse movement through the tribes of the great plains calling for the return to the old ways and the idea was that if you dance hard enough and with enough intention, the buffalo would ane

restored and all would be wellin the world. there was this ghost dance frenzy outside sitting bull's cabin and on the reservation and it threatened and frightened a lot of theut authorities and it was hyped up fear and a call went out to assassinate sitting bull and one more thing he was blamed for inan the ghost danci, and it got crazier and crazier and tribal police were hired to do the bidding of the government and they were sent to arrest sitting bull at dawn and december of 1890, shortly before christmas and as this arrest was underway an altercation broke out and sitting bull was killed.

as this killing was happening, the horse danced, as i mentioned so i want to get back to that. a a while ago i called to seek his insight into this matter. he is the keeper for the lakota indian which was given to his people by the woman. he has sacred concerns that standing rock, the united nations and elsewhere. i had met him several years earlier at a wildhorse preservation event in las vegas. at its conclusion, everyone in attendance joined him in aum prayer circle in a ballroom at the south point hotel. they are among the central gathering places of our time.

what was the symbolism of the dancing horse outside sitting bull's cabin? i asked, was he responding to the sound of gunfire as the story goes? there was a long silence and i hesitated to break it. after a few moments, this is what he said. it was the horse taking the bullets. that's what they did. not everyone believes that the horse stands, but i do and that's how i came to write this book and perhaps after reading it you will have your own thoughts about what happened on a winner dawn of 1890 when all of the matters that preceded it. thank you very much for coming. [applause] i will take questions now.

>> if you would remember to raise your hand so they can bring a microphone before you ask your question. right here in the blue shirt. there wes go. >> you did a great job on sitting bull. you also have a vignette in there about another greatf, indn chief whose background is just as>> interesting. i wasve wondering if you ever hd any intention of getting a new book on tecumseh. >> thank you for your comments. i appreciate that suggestion. a few people have asked me about that. i grew up in ohio some somewhat familiar with the story. it certainly deserves the contemporary telling and i will keep it in mind. thank you very much.

>> there is a song by somebody that i admire called sitting bull in venice. did sitting bull ever cross the atlantic with the wild west show. >> no he left in september or october before cody went to england and beyond. he wasn't part of the wild west show but it was because of his time with cody that the show really took off and then it really started to ring overseas. : :

>> i am just wondering how difficult it must be to write a history that is authentic about native americans, when all of the history has been written by white men? how do you get to the racism and all of that to the authentic story. >> that's a really good question. a lot of the accepted histories and some quite well-written have been written by white men. i relied on those but i also relied on a book by ernest grandson, i mean sitting bull's grandson, his book -- i am

thinking on the title. it might just be called sitting bull. i have it in my bibliography. i have it on discrepancies of his accountant other discrepancies of white writers. there couple of major ones. in general that's a good question and an important one. you had me read for my reduction that i did call the chief looking horse to ask about dancing horse. he is a very respected spiritual leader nationally. what he said open up the story for me in a big way.

>> i have a question. i just am by the microphone i think about this era of the 1880s and 1890s as the era of the lecture circuit. how would you characterize the traveling show which is more entertainment oriented with the likes of oscar wilde. >> that's a good question. in a way, cody was such a huge factor in american theater. he was acting on stage in new york and it was in a bar in brooklyn after a show that he had a partner cooked up the idea for the wild west show. he came out of this acting tradition of the front tier and

there are traveling shakespeare groups and theater was huge then. i think people were starved for culture and myths we as americans were just cooking up our own identity. that moved it along. there is still very much involved with british civilization so that when actors from england came here it was a big deal. some of you may be aware there were the shakespeare riots in new york. those in the 1920s involving some sort of feud over who performed hamlet better, very

well-known british actor and there is riding in the streets which led to death. there was tremendous fervor around theater in spectacle, i don't know if that exactly answers your question. there is a real hunger for. >> i look forward to reading your book. one question is the one of cultural cleansing. the issue of never center documented but administration has set out to exterminate the opening of the west by whites. can you address that from your

vantage point of knowing the native americans? >> i get into that in great detail in my book. something to keep in mind is first of all buffalo bill and sitting bull forge this strange alliance across the vast chasm to do so. here were these two superstars coming together and i'm not saying it was a lovefest but symbolically it meant a lot when you consider what happened at standing rock in 2016 not just the protests over the pipeline, that's were sitting bull lived and died. so his spirit is all over the

region. there were descendents of soldiers who served at little big horn, army veterans themselves who came to standing on to apologize for the role of their ancestors in the indian wars. i discuss it in the book as well, to me that's most profound thing that came out of standing rock. one of the most profound things that is happen in terms of the ongoing conflict between the red and white men in this country. it opens the door to reconciling america's original sin. it happened at standing rock may think that means a lot. that's where the story starts and ends.

>> while you are in georgia you may want to take a look at the cherokee better capital in our state, they want us date decision that said they could keep their land and we took it all away from the. >> i do think back to the ceremony and standing rock in 16 i think the doors are now open and we are all "blood brothers" in terms of the shared history that we have. >> i was struck by the fact that once the native americans were put on the reservations they

were not allowed to hunt in the had no food were given very limited portions. how could anyone expect them to survive and thrive? do you have any idea what the rationale was? >> was slow and elimination that's another reason why they joined up with cody another shows. they were well fed at least in cody's, but cody made a point that his indian cast members were treated the same as his white cast members. even though some people came after him. there were religious groups and others that came after him i wanted to try to shut down the shows. it's not as simple as it sounds.

some groups wanted to convert them to christianity and wipe out their own spiritual beliefs. >> there any parallels south immigration issues? more and more people tackle immigration and also way the indians are treated right now. anything where the federal government can do to help the indian people out the month are doing now? >> honor the treaties. there people who spend their lifetime trying to get the u.s. government to honor native american treaties. it starts there that again back to the ceremony at standing rock i think there needs to be an

official apology from the american government to the tribes for what happened. >> i write about the ceremony in my book. it was really moving. there is some footage of it on youtube there were a number of veterans who came to standing rock to support the tribes in their efforts to stop the pipeline. that was a big deal because in the old days when the calvary showed up there is a lot of trouble for native americans. they were there to support the tribes. there is a ceremony in which general wesley's clark's son have his name in my book he led this prayer circle or ceremony

of apology to some lakota elders asking for forgiveness and the role of other ancestors in the wars, is very moving ceremony. the words are quite profound. >> one think the lakota elder for whom they apologize to set at the end of the ceremony was the land belongs to no one, no one owns the land. that's important thing to keep in mind as this assault on land, sea, and air cranks up. that's this endgame.

>> have a few more questions. i have you given your talk to any audiences that were entirely are predominantly native american and if so what was the response? >> i haven't. >> any official responses to those who exist on reservation. >> there is one nice review and i wonder if we could finish up by you telling about either a book you have written before what you have in my next. >> i never talk about works in progress but i will talk about some of my previous books and c-span has covered other talks of mine. you can see those online as

well. my books are all related in a big way. they're all narrative non- fiction about the frontier modern west and have to do better wars against each other against other people the land and animals. i like to take a look at how it can be resolved. the land is the main character in many of my books. i see it as an essential player. my last book was called desert reckoning based on a "rolling stone" piece is about a hermit who lived in the desert outside of los angeles think of the popular sheriff there in 2003 and then he took off into the

desert what i get into in the story is that there were two men again, "blood brothers" who love the desert our enemies and never resolve their differences at all. this theme of reconciliation and how can these wounds be healed is something i try to take a look at and all of my work. >> thank you. [applause] we are happy joined us. please come back again. enjoy your day. their buckets into a chicken put your dollars if you believe saturday should stay free at the

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>> i was against sony, life of the savannah book festival. in a few minutes as the final author of the day and he reports on an army ranger who participated in an armed robbery before he was said to deploy from iraq. >> is a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country. on march 10 and 11th will be live from the university of arizona for the tucson festival

books with other talks and collins. this year's festival features katie and charles, military historian investigative journalists and other authors. later the virginia festival of the book and the national black writers conference in april were headed to texas for the san antonio book festival will be live at the san antonio festival of books. for more information or to watch previous coverage click the book fairs tab on the website. >> who is eric gardner? the reason i wrote the book is because on the day that the grand jury decided not to indict the police officer responsible

for the killing i went over to staten island and started talking this people asking what was he like. i immediately found everybody had a story about the guy he was interesting, funny, complicated and flawed. i thought he was a person who story would be powerful. everyone had this emotional reaction to the video but i found out he had a narrative that led up to that moment and the people knew it there would be more invested in his life, they would reexperience the video in a way that would be more meaningful he was an interesting guy.

i could give a million examples. >> i read about the cases but i didn't know he had a new baby at the time of his death about a week old. >> six weeks, born three months early 2 pounds 1 ounce and all the parents johnson uncles will know that if you have that at home you are stressed. so he was trying to take care of his new family even if your not -- that stresses you out. i can see why that could push them over the edge. he was also arrested several times. talk about all the things going on that made him finally say stop, i'm tired of you messing with me.

>> eric was not that person for his entire life. he had a different attitude towards how to deal with the police for most of his life. he thought of himself as a businessman and the police as a cost of doing business. he got out of prison he started doing crack. he found out about this new business of cigarettes and he immediately saw the possibilities of it. something kicked in and he started a crew he had been an incompetent drug dealer but when it came to doing the cigarette thing he was good at it.

here people driving back and forth to virginia to get cigarettes he had an expression for how great the business was. it was felony money and misdemeanor time. you made real money but if you're doing it correctly it wasn't even a misdemeanor. >> you could make a dollar pack or $2 on -- >> he had a lot of customers. he was probably making three or $400 a day in profits at one point it is a great business. he saw the police as a cost of doing business. as he could keep his money he would put up with the punishment because the law says this is all

they can do to me what happened was the police became frustrated with the limitations of the law. for once with this they couldn't really do anything so they wanted to get at him another ways. they would search his car and take his money and say if you can prove you made this legally come down to the station and pick it up. there were doing that over and over again. suddenly the veil was and $50 anymore it was a thousand dollars. so the costs were going up, he got robbed on the street and he

had to borrow money to re- up twice he felt the police were not playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. their signaling democracy was an easy target. >> you can watch this on booktv.org. >> here's a look at events this week. monday will be a politics and prose bookstore to hear lanny davis and share his thoughts on the outcome of the election. tuesday we had to roosevelt's house were former white house official in cabinet secretary will examine our democracy.

later that night at new york university for the presentation of the pen america literary awards. given annually since 1963 which recognizes books in a range of categories. on wednesday at the green light bookstore brooklyn investigative journalist reports on white nationalism in america. thursday daniel thompson will so moderates might be less likely to run for congress. later will be at philadelphia where bikers professor will examine the power of eloquent rage. then labor secretary robert rice will be at the first parish church in cambridge massachusetts.

that's a look at some of the events book tv will cover this week. >> visions and values, offering a complete pathway away from my past. if mario cuomo could do it, the face a different set of challenges like not speaking english until he was eight years old and so could i. the story in the price press links my brother, arnie two john. how do i talk about organized crime and the family with an official who personified the complete official. i pictured myself on the 57th

floor on the world trade center telling reporters that any notion of him having mob connections was -- because it was in my family and the inside word was that he was unreachable. in my imaginary press conference i resigned as an eyewitness and instead i condemned myself for not protecting mary over my family. looking at my work this penance for the since my brother in the month marred our lives. i would do good through public service i clean up the family name. i paced 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 efficient today the judge in his decision also expressed the belief that my brother had some association with organized crime. i anticipate there'll be a story in tomorrow's paper so i do not want you to learn of the secondhand. i read over my speech with hands trembling. there is no escaping now, no rationalization. i cannot pretend that everything would be as it was. the phone on my desk rang and it was the governor. i place the script in front of me clinging to it like a life preserver. hello governor i said what's

going on i read my script word for word and the governor was silent as i read. i finished close my eyes and waiting for the response. my heart pounding. i don't see how it should affect to he said i certainly feel for you but i don't see how it affects you. you are superb official and i don't think it should have any effect on you. stunned, i thanked him. i looked on the photo on my office wall. a self-contained world where ice gave each day for 12 - 14 hours and doing good within