>> that was author ann marie ackerman, starting in a few minutes hoffman, this is book tv on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] >> this weekend c-span's city tour takes you to selma, alabama with the help of spectrum cable partners we will cross the bridge arriving in a town known for its role in both the civil war and the civil rights movement. today at 5:30 p.m. eastern on book tv, we will visit the home dr. martin luther king, jr., used as selma headquarters as he planned the selma to montgomery march. it's featured in the book the house by the side of the road. >> there was a photographer here, frank who worked for life

magazine at the time who was embedded in the house and he wanted to capture dr. king's emotions as he watched on television president johnson committing to signing, voting right's act. this is the chair that dr. king was sitting that night watching television. president johnson addressed the nation. >> we will meet the first african american fired chief in the city, chief henry alan talking about his book marching through the flame. on sunday at 1:30 p.m. eastern on american history tv, we will look at the voting rights movement that started in 1930's and -- >> you see those movements, -- monuments, symbols do matter, but those symbols sent a strong message and you know why we know they sent a strong message, because they were intended to, after i did quick research and i'm a lawyer by trade, i think i'm a pretty good lawyer, i

found out a lot of stuff that i did not know and i found out about the cult of the lost cause, those are not my words, those are the historian's words and everybody in the south knows this is to be true, this is familiar to you, it's like a story that your mom and daddy use today read to you at night. the civil right was not about slavery, it was a noble cause, e had jim crowe, we had civil rights, it happened, we are past it all. i mean, that's the extent of your history lesson generally about this. that should give me another amen. but essentially what happened after the civil war, now, remember, new orleans was around since 1718, that the people that lost the war, when does this ever happen when the people lost the war get the write to history? has anybody have any other

example where it has happened in america at any time? like when you go to the mall, it's lincoln up there and not king george. [laughter] >> i'm just saying to my great historian friends who were protectors of history. when the monuments were put up was well after the civil war had ended. the united states of america won that war. they didn't lose that war. that war was fought and if it wouldn't have succeeded it would have destroyed the united states of america, torn our country apart. i mean, straight up. and i don't think it's historically deny bli anymore that the civil war was fought over the cause of slavery. you may be able to come up with other reasons that it had to do with economics but essentially without slavery the economics didn't work. it was like the component part of economics that made it worthying about.

and so those individuals who fought in the war and lost loved ones and a lot of people sacrificing, the war ended the way it ended thank god and the united states won and slavery was abolished but that wasn't good enough for them. a lot of people that lived in the south, not all of the people in the south were for confederacy. it was never ever recognized as one. and so they decided that they were going to on the to exercise their financial might and political might and they were going to send a message because they we wanted to create a myth for a lot of different reasons some might have been understandable, they we wanted to feel better of what it is that we did because there were horrific losses, 600,000 people as you know were killed in the war. and they put monuments up and the vice president of confederacy wrote that the cause

was one of white supremacy and put the monuments up not to revere the confederate generals, they put them up to push the cause of white supremacy, that's why they put them up. every one of those men that fought in the war, were complicated men. they fought in the war for cause of destroying the united states. they were put up to send a message to african americans that even though the united states won, you are still less. there were only one of the many legal things that got put up as well as other laws that continued to tell african americans that they didn't belong here. so any reason to think that they should have stayed in the south, no, they left, they got the message and unfortunately they did what everybody does who has a choice, they sought freedom and liberty someplace else, you know who it was worse off, those who stayed. it was a painful thing. the second decade of 21st century to even have an argument

about this. now, there is a way as i say in my speech to remember and then there's a way to revere and reverence and remembrance is not the same thing. putting those monuments up was history and you know what, taking them down was history too. [applause] >> you understand what i'm saying? >> and one of the things that i thought was really important as a city of new orleans and again i'm speaking just about my city to prepare itself for the future was to take note of the past that was important to us but tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. you see, all those people that professed to be the historians, the protectors of history, only wanted to tell like 4 years of our whole history and a very narrow one at that. there are no monuments to

slaveships, i don't think there's a slaveship in america on american soil until next month there won't be any remembrance of all of the lynchings that took place in the south. i don't think there's a block in atlanta or birmingham in new orleans where thousands and men of women were sold away and ripped apart from families and took them without wealth where they were beaten and raped. that's what slavery was. it wasn't just a historical thing, i don't think we can remember like in a fairy book, that's what what it was. i don't know why it's hard for white people in america to say we recognize that that was really bad because you didn't do it, you did not do it, so why is it hard to recognize african american brothers and sisters, 60% of whom occupy my city, the city of new orleans who elected me, why is it so hard so say that the civil war was on the

wrong side of history. >> you can watch this and ore programs online on booktv.org. >> i approached some abandoned huts and when i got to the side of the hut a north vietnamese soldier came from the ground. my guys saw him but it was too late he threw a hand grenade and hit the poles, oak alabama, -- beam, whatever the wood is there, it peppered my -- my jacket, ripped my -- i had entrenching tool and cut the handle off of that and threw me to the ground and my leg -- >> watch 5-week theory with vietnam war veterans starting sunday at 7:00 p.m. eastern on

american history tv on c-span3. >> these are not normal times, believe me in 10 or 15 years from now we will be talking about the trump era and we will know that was not normal. what we are seeing is not normal. it is not normal to have a president who makes racist, sexist and company -- xenophobic remarks. we had a great conversation, at some point they were asking me about trump's remarks and i told them, how would you feel if your prime minister would say that a group in great britain is composed by drug traffickers, criminals and rapists, what would be the reaction, they couldn't imagine that.

well, those are the times, these are the times that we are living right now. and for me, look, i believe -- lived in the country for 35 years, my son and daughter were born here. this country gave me the opportunities that my country of origin couldn't give me. i was -- i was a reporter in méxico, i started very young, i worked in radio and then at some point i did a report on -- on mexican politics which was really a president deciding who was going to be his success or, i wrote it, i was very happy, i used all my sources and then my boss told me, are you crazy, what are you doing, well, i'm just reporting exactly what is happening, the president will choose his successor, forget about democracy, this was 1980's and then he told me, no, you cannot say that. how come i cannot say that? no, you cannot say that. he want node rewrite it.

i didn't, somebody else wrote the report and i didn't, i quit. i quit at 24 i have no possibilities of getting another job, i have no money and the only country that opened the possibilities for me was the united states of america. this country gave me the opportunities to be an uncensored journalist, ucla extension offered me help and then los angeles and the united states and thanks to that possibility, i'm here. and my only goal is that the immigrants who came after me would be treated with the same generosity with which i was treated. so i'm incredibly thankful to this country because of the things that i'm doing. i came -- i still remember ronald reagan was president and when i started working, some of my fellow journalists

colleagues, they were criticizing ronald reagan and, of course, i was expecting the boss to come say, no, you cannot say that, but nothing happened, nothing. that's beautiful. and in that idea of a generous country opened to immigrants giving us opportunities, that's -- that's how i always felt america was going to be. and then came donald trump. and it is not only donald trump because it started -- it started well before. but for me it was when this candidate coming down from the escalators in trump towers, he launched his campaign june 16th, 2015 and then he said openly, mexican immigrants are criminals, drug traffickers and rapists. right there on national tv and i'm saying, of course, that's

not true. i am a mexican immigrant, what he's saying is not true. who is going to stand up and say, mr. trump, what you're saying is a lie? nobody said absolutely anything. so i did what any other journalist would have done, i wrote 100 -- when was the last time you wrote a -- maybe you and i. other than that, nobody -- nobody would have done that. so i wrote 100 letter to donald trump, we put in fedex package and we sent it to trump towers. the next day, i was in my office and somebody came to my office, my phone started ringing, i started getting texts and texts and i thought something was wrong with the phone or with the phone company and somebody told me, trump published your cell phone number on the internet on

instagram. my cell phone number. and many things happened, first i had to change my number, which by the way, i loved my number, ended in 1212, it was so easy and -- and when you're an immigrant like me and when -- you call the phone company or the gas company or the water company or cable company and first you say, it's a problem. if you're a jorge, you're in trouble because nobody can pronounce it. [laughter] >> or worse, so i ended up being george very soon. for the -- after you go through explanation with an operator that doesn't want to hear you that you are jorge, it's always beautiful to end up with 1212. anyway that number i completely lost it. and i got hundreds of texts and

messages, some of them criticizing me, some of them offending me, attacking me, telling me to go back my country and others which was funny asking for -- sending me songs and poems and asking for jobs, really all kinds of things. so it was not really that bad, but the fact is that i -- i had to change my number but then we made a plan. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> and now live from the ga

gaitherburg author of the day. two explores when seeking treasure in borneo. his book is called the last wild men of borneo. >> hello, everybody, welcome to the gaithersburg book festival. i'm also the workshop chair -- chair of workshops for giatherburg book festival, as you heard, a city that proudly supports the arts and humanities and we are please today -- pleased to bring you this fabulous event all year, please silence any devices that you have and we hope you're following gbf on facebook, twitter, instagram, snapchat, whatever social media is your preference and use hashtag,

#bgf. services are available on this tent and on website and if you summit a survey you can be submitted for a 100 gift certificate. carl hoffman will be signing books. about buying books here, we do have -- we do partner with politics and prose and we hope that you will support book seller by buying from them. so let me tell you a little bit about carl hoffman. he's a journalist and adventurer and very classic sense of those words. to say that carl has been around is a massive understatement, he's traveled on assignment to 80 countries for writing his book and in the past he's published with the likes of national geographics, smithonian and wired among other journalistic outlets.

now he's concentrating on books. for his book lunatic express he sought out the most her win ways to travel in the treacherous landscapes on purpose. the book was named one of the 10 best -- one of the 10 best books to have year by the wall street journal, for his next book savage harvest, he spent time learning a language bajasa and stayed in remote village in new ginue. this time around, he traced the steps of two very different characters, treasure seekers across borneo. the last wild men of borneo. carl has won five awards and although host been around the world he has come back to local roots and we must point out he is a local from just down the

street in washington, d.c. now, please welcome carl hoffman to the gaitherburg book festival. [applause] >> everybody hear me all right? thank you all for coming on this rainy day. so think for a minute about books, movies, stories, tales, so many of them and the ones that i love the most, the classic idea of quest and epic journey into a new world, a strange world, wild one full of strange people and customs and encounter something happens, those are the stories that i grew up with and i loved the most and this is such a story

but a real one, two men in pursuit of the treasure of the third largest island in the world. epic giant rain forest full of people who hunted with blow pipes and covered their bodies with tattoos and stretched their ear lobes down to shoulders with heavy brass rings, head hunters, artists, wild and yet incredibly cultured people, artists, treasure, it's a story about treasure, two men in pursuit of this treasure, both literal money, riches and media physical spiritual, both go in deep and one vanishes and the other, he's still around.

and it's a story that grew out of really out of my last book, salvage harvest about the disappearance of michael rockefeller in 1961 and for that book in order to understand what happened to michael required living, learning in indonesia and makes to incredibly remote part of new gineau and ultimately had to go live in a village incredibly remote village, 10,000 square miles without roads in a village can no stores, no plumbing, no power whatsoever, you could only get there by boat and it was an incredibly powerful experience for me. it was incredibly difficult in a lot of ways and yet i had this -- this recurring thought when i was there, this idea that just

-- that wouldn't leave me, i wanted to stay forever. what would happen if i did and really that staying and sort i wondered, could i become one of them, would they accept me, and really that's a long western fantasy to leave your world behind, you know, in some ways it's the essence of the old racist standby even the tarzan fantasy, it was dirty and hot and no privacy whatsoever. it was really hard to access the world, the people named the asmad, asmad world, stay forever or go in and out. i think more powerfully i

realized during my time that our depipcións of so many of our depictions of indigenous people is a fantasy and the asmad, i had all the fantasies about them and that living with them i realized they were much more complex than i ever imagined, they were real 3-dimensional complex people and i realized that we tend to and it's not so much about them than it is about us and what we want and what we imagine. and that part of that is a hunger among ourselves for something bigger for something that we imagine that indigenous people process and i was pondering all of this after the completion of the book. when i started thinking about borneo, a place that i had been

to in 1997 briefly and i place i read about and fantasized hunters with full-body tattoos and i thought and a man named bruno mansor, he became incredibly famous in 80's and 90's and bruno had -- bruno was from switzerland and he had gone one day in 1994. he just walked into the deepest remotest parts of the central plateaus of borneo in search of no mads, hunter gathers in the remotest parts and they were -- they were not head hunters, they were people who lived in complete with the land and with each other and shared everything they had and bruno had gone in and he kind of vanished and he

lived for six years and he had become so peno, in that they called him lucky penon, penon man. in a way, i was thinking about bruno and he had sort of done what i imagined of doing in asmad and what i fantasized about. thinking about all of that i was in bali and just by circumstances i met a american man and he was a very different man. he was in his 70's and he had been going in and out of borneo for over 4 years collecting art. the art of the ingij house people -- indigenous people to sell. the more i thought about it was baby boomers, defy militaries and turn back on country to on

10-year journeys. and what was that something, that something was this treasure, the perceived treasure possessed by the ingenuous people. bruno said it best. he wanted to go to live with pinon because he wanted to be in the belly of the mother, but what does that mean? as i thought about it michael -- the art that michael collected was expression. michael told me that he had met bruno, not just met but paths had crossed one day in borneo and that's when it all came together for me and i realized that there was -- that there was a book in all of this and what a crazy story it is.

you know, bruno and michael having avatars and stories are amazing. bruno was drafted and into the swiss draft and refused to go, it was conscientious objector and came out of prison and when he went to prison he went to high alps to live as pressure trying to live without money, selling his own clothes. and finally after 10 years he wanted more, he we wanted to find the pinon and walk intoed the jungle barefoot and he wandered for 10 days before he found the pinon and he almost starved to death and when he finally found them he insinuated himself, learned to hunt with blow pipe and become fluid in their language, and then michael had -- had been the u.s. army

had come calling and he run away to méxico and then from mexico to europe and around europe for a few years and headed east into kuwait and where he sold his blood for gold waffers and then went further and ended up in india and afghanistan and began -- met a young the same age in kabul, young afghan man who turned out to be the prince, the son of the king and asked him, would you like to make money and michael said, of course, i always want to make money and he said, go bring a mercedes and if you get a mercedes into kabul, this is a long time ago, different time, obviously, he said i can help you sell it and ewe -- you can make some money.

michael bought some goods, i won't say what those goods are exactly, you can imagine u he bought some goods and sowed into the bottom of suitcase and traveled overland all the way from kabul to paris where he sold his goods and went to germany and bought a used mercedes and he drove it all the way back to kabul, sold the mercedes, bought more goods, did it again, did it 7 times overall and then ended up smuggling the crown jewels in afghanistan and after that 10 years had passed and he moved to bali and he heard about borneo and he started to go into borne. at first he was just looking for baskets, the woven baskets that they make. he learned he could sell, they were like backpacks that he learned he could sell in the

flea markets. he was buying them by the hundreds. .. .. >> forms was coming in, and there's a saying that you've all heard probably, the only good indian is a dead indian. and it means exactly what you think it means for people, terrible racist saying, but it also means -- there's also a slightly more nuanced meaning which is that when all the natives are gone, when all the indigenous, when all the indians are gone, we can venerate their

stuff. then suddenly their stuff becomes valuable, their sacred objects become valuable. and as the cultures of borneo were under assault, suddenly the artworks, the sacred artworks were becoming much more valuable, and there was a growing market. and michael began buying those objects. not just baskets, but carvings, and -- beautiful carvings. and meanwhile, after about a year the logging and mostly -- bruno was in malaysian borneo. for those of you don't know, it's divided into three countries. about two-thirds of it is polynesian, then the malaysian states and then the kingdom of brunei, and bruno was inner

cerouac. and the logging came into the traditional grounds of the pynon. and they were shy, and they didn't like the sunshine, and they didn't like confrontation, and bruno did something remarkable which was that he organized the pynon in this series of blockades against the malaysian government. and over the course of a year or so, the blockades -- the pynon, really the least powerful people in all of malaysia, became, brought this -- what became a billion dollar logging industry to a halt. and very quickly word got out in the west, and bruno became, taliban -- began to be an a adept manipulator of public opinion. and along with friends and contacts in switzerland. and bruno's story exploded overnight. i mean, there was a piece,

german geo came and did a story, and that piece went all over the world. double truck spreads of bruno walking through the jungle with his blow pipe. and the malaysian government suddenly looked at bruno and saw in this sort of revival of colonialism, in this white guy in the jungle who was trying to bring hamalation development -- malaysian development to a halt. and bruno became the most wanted man in malaysia overnight. and in the west, he became this incredible hero suddenly. and, you know, bruno fit, bruno got caught up, bruno had the most -- he had the purest motives really, but he got caught up in all of these tropes that people have. the ma alations -- malaysians saw him as this return of the rajas that ruled for tree

generations -- three generations, and the west saw bruno as the white savage who, you know, becomes the other. and then you can sit down and, you know, at a dinner party and talk to him in flawless french and german, swiss-german and english. but even the pynon themselves looked at bruno through this lens in a strange twist of colonialism. the brook regime that had ruled more so long had actually protected the pynon from their neighbors for many years. and the pynon looked upon bruno not just as this sort of benign brother figure, but as a return of the power of the british really who could maybe, who could protect their lands and rescue them from the malaysians. and all this got sort of craze i, and prove -- crazy.

and bruno, after six years, he was arrested twice. he escaped, by the malaysian government. he escaped twice under gun tour. he, toward the end of his six years there, he was bitten by a snake. he loved snakes, he was obsessed with snakes. he would handle them, he would grab them out of trees, and finally he was bitten by a pit viper, and he almost died. he was essentially unconscious for three weeks. he had to perform surgery on himself on his leg when he finally did come, wake up. he couldn't walk for six months. his parents were getting old, and there was a plan hatched. you know, he really couldn't function anymore because he was under so much pressure from the government that he, his family and friends hatched a plan to extract him, which they did with a false passport. after six years, bruno finally

came out. meanwhile, michael is going in and out and bringing out works of art that were, by that time he had bought a 100-foot river boat, probably the only westerner to own a giant full-size -- the sound of a train is the sound of romance, as far as i'm concerned. and it's a good sound. and michael was roaming the rivers in this 100-foot boat, like a semi picking up art, precious art. and bruno escaped. he became even more famous. his friend roger graf who was helping him organize, trying to organize political, you know, an effort to preserve the rain forest against the government said that, you know, when

greenpeace -- after bruno returned when greenpeace wanted to organize an action, all this work had to take place. you know, you had to organize, you had to find the press. he said when we wanted to have an action, all we had to do was produce bruno. bruno was the action. and bruno, people said that brian know, he smelled -- bruno, he smelled like a shepherd. he -- another person told me he was like jesus christ. another person said he would follow bruno anywhere. he was this incredibly charismatic person. and he began to organize all over the world; australia and trying to create a moratorium on logging in cerouac. he spoke to royalty and vice president gore in the u.s., and he spoke to 20,000 people, fans at a grateful dead concert in

wembley stadium. and then he began sneaking back into borneo, going in and out, in and out, which was incredibly dangerous. and hunger strikes, and he chained himself up on the lamp post at the g20 summit. and, but after ten years of this, nothing had changed. bruno had become famous, he had met all these famous people, but he -- but nothing had changed. the logging hadn't slowed down. the art was becoming more valuable, and people began to get worried about bruno. and he, in the year 2000 he went

around to friends and family, and he started saying he was going back into borneo, and he wasn't sure when he'd be back, which was unusual. and he -- everybody had a bad feeling. everybody that bruno talked to. his girlfriend refused to drive him to the airport. and he went in and he vanished. in 2000. he was never seen again. and in 2015 and 2016 while researching the book, i made two trips into borneo. one in the footsteps of bruno, i spent almost a month walking through the forest with the very last pynon, nomadic hunter-gatherers, they are by and large gone. the forest is gone. there are some very small, small sections of it in the highest, steepest elevations. really one family left.

and i walked with that family for about 35 miles. and it was an incredibly difficult and moving experience. and all those pieces that michael brought out are now in museums all over the world, in the yale museum of art, for sale to private collectors. and then i made a trip with michael who's still alive and in his 70s through borneo looking for art. he found nothing, there's nothing really left to find. you fly over borneo and you see mile after mile after mile after mile of palm oil plantations, this green monoculture. the trees, those great, epic

forests are largely gone. i thought i'd just read two short, two short readings. and i walked with the pynon, as i said, and we walked to a village that had an airstrip. and for the whole three weeks, we just hunted. they hunted for food and built little houses, and in 30 minutes they could whip together a house. and i walked with a man and his wife and his two children and his nephew. and this is about after after we got to the town. i took a room, a room with walls and a door can you could shut and a real bed and no bugs in my hair, and i booked another room for the family. the guesthouse was simple, but it seemed like a temple of excess. and when i got the gang there, they stood in that shiny room armed with their spear-tipped

blow pipes and poisoned arrow quivers, giant bare feet and mullet, the boys in jeans that i now saw were filthy, ragged, fill of tears and holes. they were all muscle and dirt. none of them had their -- none -- hello? we've lost sound. anyway, none of themed had their upper two front teeth. they looked feral. they were feral, pure hunters. the last wild men and women of borneo. the real thing, the last most valuable treasures of all. hello? check, check, check. the real thing, the last, most valuable treasures of all. i had walked 35 miles in a straight line, perhaps many more on the ground, covered thousands of vertical feet over 18 days. as promised, i had been brought

into and out of the forest. we'd probably exchanged no more than 500 words in almost three weeks. i had for hours and hours and hours just sat with them and walked with them and listened to them, and i felt like i knew them at least a little. ulan with his constant joking and laughing, dewey, the consummate older coiz -- cousin. the wife who always made sure i had a hot cup of coffee or tea or just hot water. we sat down under bright fluorescent lights on chairs at a plastic table with serving trays piled high with fried fish and rice, and i suddenly wasn't the clumsy one, the klutz anymore. now everything was upside down, and i moved with sureness while this family who had seemed like supermen to me a few hours earlier were painfully shy, barely looked up, barely touched their food. everything they knew, every

skill they possessedded, everything they stood for was useless in my world, the world that was taking over everything everywhere. the malaysians looked like overdressed dandies with their bright clothes and hip haircuts and motorcycles, a world of excess and artifice. the family had beds, but that night the family slept on floor. and then after my trips to borneo i went to paris, the largest, most important tribal art gathering held every september in paris. dealers from all over the world come to sell their wares. and in a gallery, one of the -- tom murray is a well known, prestigious american travel art dealer, and in one of -- in his

gallery there were a bunch of i statues but two in particular of interest to me. both had been collected by michael many years before, and one was for sale for $125,000, and one was $65,000. george's words about growing old and not losing faith came to me while gauzing at the statues in tom -- gazing at the i statues in tom murray's gallery imagining bruno and how he'd reached so deeply for the greatest of wen fantasies, how he'd gotten it, achieved it, held it in his hand far more than any of us in that gallery. i thought of all those people with their yoga mats in bali, and i thought of michael and how the best pieces of tribal art exuded the most power to their buyers and observers even here in paris, so far removed from the place and the time and people who had created it.

standing there looking at michael's former carving glowing under hall general beam, murray said, "this was carved when there was no question about whether god exists." "we have the benefit of day cart and scientific reasoning, but the power of the sun, the moon, the tree of life, storms, lightning, the bamboo that sprouts 18 inches in one night, well, we still have a yearning for that time of seamless belief." 9 missionaries went to all these places trying to save souls, but the irony is that it is the art of these tribal people that saves our souls now. i'm going to stop there, leave you with those thoughts really. you know, think about tom's, tom murray's quote and the idea that the only good indian is a dead indian. they're pretty powerful images. and, you know, the book is a, i'd like to think it's a

ripping, page-turning adventure yarn, and if that's what you like, then, you know, hopefully it'll satisfy you. but it also asks a lot of serious questions ab about how we -- about how we view indigenous people and all those stereotypes. thank you, and i'm happy to answer questions. thank you very much. [applause] >> hi. i'm actually a native, a borneo native from the state of faba, and i know when bruno was there -- [inaudible] the cheese minister -- >> uh-huh.

>> and he is a tycoon for lumbering activities not just there, but i'm pretty sure he also ventured into faba. >> yes. >> what i wonder is do you think he did anything in terms of -- i mean, what is, do you know if ty mahmoud had an involvement with bruno -- >> yeah, i mean, you know, taib was bruno's chief antagonist really. of all the people -- there was also james wong. the way things worked, james wong was the minister of environment. but he was also the largest timber barons in malaysia. and all of these people, the taib, and james wong, billions of dollars of timber was taken out by their families. and the arguments, i mean,

there's so much that i haven't are talked about that's in the book, and it's part of the story. but, you know, they made the arguments, i mean, a 92-year-old who just became the new prime minister of malaysia this week, actually, in fact, bruno had this long -- bruno was like an innocent. not like an innocent, he was an innocent in a way. and he constantly was writing notes and trying to communicate with both taib -- he actually met majatir at the rio summit in 1992. they sat down together in private for an hour, and bruno be emerged saying he doesn't see things like i see them. but i think he just -- we need to talk more. and and taib, though, never really responded. and in the end, bruno went kind of mad, and he had this idea that he wanted to give a lamb to taib. and first it was a real lamb, and he had this idea that he was

going to just bring the lamb. and then he had this idea that he was going to paraglide with this lamb into taib's compound on, you know, for the malaysian holidays which also corresponded with taib's birthday. and as a gesture. and, you know, all these things just went nowhere. and then he decided he would do it -- because it was too hard to do it with a real lamb, that he would do it with, like, a plush toy lamb. and he ultimately, you know, he did paraglield into and he was going to land in taib's compound, but at the very last minute he -- this was in 1999 -- he landed right outside where there were a bunch of pynon waiting for him. and they were all going to, you know, the idea was that bruno would land, and they'd be ushered into taib's compound where they could talk. and bruno landed, and he was instantly arrested and taken and

deported from the country. and that was one of the last straws for bruno, because i think he wanted to be, you know, either he would meet with taib or he would be arrested and tortured, and he would go on a hunger strike. but it's like government took him so unseriously that he was just kicked out. and that was the last straw for bruno, you know? he'd gotten nowhere. and, you know, to this day, you know, there's no -- the forest is, there are parks, some small parks, but the frost is gone really. -- forest is gone really. this letter was written to bruno, who are you from the whitest, richest country on earth to the stand in the way of development of the pynon people. which on its face is sort of a legit, would seem like a legit

argument and hits a lot of salient points. but the reality is, you know, if you go to pynon today and you're in those areas, i mean, there's still no roads and no schools, and, you know, villages where there's no running water and, you know, billions of dollars were taken out but people have nothing. but taib and maja were incredibly wealthy. [speaking in native tongue] >> hi. i look forward to reading your new book. if i may ask a question about salve aage harvest? >> uh-huh. >> hofs the reception, you kind of come to a conclusion of what you think happened to michael rockefeller at the end. how has the reception been to that? have people largely agreed, been opposed to it? how has that gone? >> what kind of people? [laughter] do you mean readers? >> readers. >> or do you mean rockefellers? >> i'd be curious about both.

>> well, i think my case is pretty, you know, there's not -- it's not -- i guess without physical, specific physical evidence, you know, you can, there's some conjecture about what happened and some mystery about what happened to michael. in my opinion, there really isn't any, and i think the book presents a pretty strong case for it. is so, and i think most people, i would hope most people would agree. but in the book i don't really, i sort of leave it up to you, i think, a little bit to decide what you want. and i know there are people, you know, you look on the amazon reviews and people are like, i don't believe this. so there are people who don't believe it, but, i mean, i think if you look at the evidence and you look -- ultimately, you know, to me it was very difficult to talk to the asmat

about what happened to michael and particularly the village that killed and ate him. ultimately, the way i found, you know, everything chained when i went -- changed when i went toly in the village and started talking about other things and just listening and talking about the village history and social structure. and all those things point to michael's death very, very clearly, even though they don't say, you know, even though the villagers themselves will say, oh, we know that story, but we don't know anything about it. the rockefellers are, like to, they like to stay with the idea that he drowned at sea or they'll say, you know, we prefer to talk about how he lived and not how he died. anyone else? here's your chance. please do buy some books, appreciate it. and i'll be signing them afterwards.

>> carl will be in 10a, line four if you're interested in getting a book signed, and if you haven't done so already, grab a survey. we appreciate you attending despite the weather, and we want to continue to have festivals. thank you for attending. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> and that wraps up booktv's live coverage of the gaithersburg book festival in maryland. now, if you missed any of our coverage today, watch a reair of all of our programs beginning at midnight tonight. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies, and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> president obama did not want to be perceived as political,