>> hello, everyone. good evening. welcome to politics and prose. i'm heidi lewis, the director of corporate events and sales. you might be wondering what that means so i'll tell you. i arrange private event for

authors and businesses who can work with a lot of law firms, banks, trade associations sending authors out all over the city. i know you did not comeere to listen to my job description. you have definitely come to meet the award-winning "new york times" journalist amy chozick, author of the instant "new york times" bestseller, "chasing amy ten years, two presidential campaigns, and one intact glass ceiling", ," which i have to dos what of the most enjoyable books i have read this year. and i read a lot. i'm so delighted to introduce amy to you and tell you all the better fun and page turning memoir which i literally could not turned on. please make sure cell phones are off. take lots of pictures, tagus and social media what we are at politics and prose. please pick up an event calendar on your way out to get more info about all the wonderful event we host here in the store, at our

new location and coming very soon our union market location. amy will read from a book and talk for a while afterward and then she'll take questions from you, and very important you see these microphones, just this one, right here. please queue up a use the mic. it helps us with the audio quality because as you can see where being recorded, so smile. copies are available for purchase at the register. had that went after her reading at that comebacker to form a line to my left so she can sign your book. lastly, please be kind to my bookselling colleagues and help us strike the scene after the talk. if you're able please fold up your chair and stack them against the sides of the walls. i do feel like a flight attendant right now. if you are still suffering from election fatigue i i can tell u right away this is not another hillary clinton book. "chasing hillary" i think is the palate cleanser we didn't even

know we needed. it is served up in the form of a frothy, fun, moving and meaningful memoir that new york magazine called a bridget jones diary meets what it takes, coming of age rom, set on the campaign trail with the tragic twist at the end, spoiler alert, clinton lost. i'm so delighted to introduce me. i know you all know her from her magnificent work at the "new york times." she is a writer at large and a frequent contributor to the times magazine. prior to that she led the coverage of hillary's presidential campaign. before joining the times in 2011, she spent eight years with the "wall street journal" or she was a foreign correspondent based in tokyo and covered hillary and obama 2008 presidential campaign. i am positive you don't want him to talk any longer so please help me with welcome amy to the podium. [applause]

>> thank you so much. i know there is an event at the other politics and prose so i appreciate you guys coming to mine. tough competition. i wish is quite explain why i chose to write a personal memoir because i think some of the tidbits like other people thought this was a fire and fury book if thiss real personal. i get into whether i should have freeze my eggs until after the election and all kinds of things like professional women have to deal with when you have a big job and also a personal life. i'm a real student of campaign books. i have read all of them at a love them but they are all like great me to show how they can get inside the campaign about the great man. 2016 was this confluence of the first woman with a shot at the presidency and a largely female press corps. some of my girls on the bus are here. i thought it was a real opening to write a book that was much more female, more personal. i sort of thought of it as julie

and julia but with politics instead of cooking. this looming figure and hillary clinton looming over my life which i think a lot of women have a job looming over them. my happen to be a woman who wanted to become the first woman president. i also felt into covering hillary any weird way. the introduction was kind but glossed over how hard it was me to get into journalism. i grew up in san antonio, texas. i moved to york with no jobs. i i had a stack of clips from my college newspaper that i dropped off downstairs in the lobby of like publications i wanted to work at. a nice security guard was like you have to leave. so i struggled for years. i was a camp and it was miserable. i was like from texas i i spent $30 on jeans and had a plastic clip he and my hair and is getting off the elevator once

and the doors were closing and a pack of it and i did something okay, who told her she could wear her hair that way? it was a few years of it forgot this job as a news assistant at the "wall street journal," the foreign news desk. it was after the "wall street journal" newsroom have been bombed out of 9/11 and danny pearl had been kidnapped in pakistan. it was an interesting and wartime to be at the paper. like with sweaty and talking about world events at a thought i found my people in this grimy newsroom. then it would to tokyo and i was a foreign correspondent there. my boss in japan who covered all of asia became washington bureau chief and he said how would you like to go to iowa and covering hillary clinton? sounds great. i'm writing that to the white house. i thought that twice actually. i go to iowa and it do anything about american politics, very little because i can focus on

japan for a couple of years. i heard of this guy barack obama. i didn't know what a caucus was. years later i told atop it'd know what a caucus was needed that's okay we didn't know either. i kind of learned this whole thing and it was kind of ads for to me as japan was. flash forward several yrs, the executive editor of the times at the time type of man hillary bn 2013 to the leader of her covering a running for president. that's a little bit of a back story. since this book is,, i know you can't write about hillary without controversy but it made me see how many open wounds there still are about this campaign and how many questions that are. i just took my decade of covering her in my perspective can help people understand this figure. right now everything is for the prism of trump, it's understandable but but i also e this book with hillary.

it would be unfortunate to always fever through the prism of trump. she's had it decades a long impact, career her place in the public eye has been incredibly important barometer of how we view powerful women. all kinds of things. it would be unfortunate to always viewer through the prism of this man who defeated her kind of the last chapter of a really public life. the other thing i should tell you before i start reading is hillary's mail press aides, they all serve the same purpose in my life which was to control coverage, particularly. they had physical characteristics like white thirtysomething clean-cut guys. i created this character i called them the guys in the book and they were like this greek chorus that was constantly tragic comic greek chorus that was always yelling at me about coverage. i gave been monikers that i thought readers, thinking of my moms book group in texas, that she know this operative from that operative?

i gave them like jokey monitors but some people said you granted them anonymity but it wasn't about a journalistic choice. it was more of a literary choice. i think they are more identifiable. i was going to read two short chapters and then i'll take whatever questions you have. this is in south africa in 2012, the chapters called bill clinton. bill clinton was holding a glass of chardonnay but not drinking it. the night i walked into a sweet at the hotel in johannesburg. it was after midnight. i had flown to south africa in a great coach cabin with a team of teenage rugby players who were bursting with testosterone and fist pumping during the entire 16 hour flight plus refueling stop in senegal. i checked into my room in the main house, once the private residence of an eccentric millionaire who befriended clinton during his presidency.

as i walked towards clinton's private luxury villa, i passed rohs of photos of the men with the younger plumper clinton. i crossed a wooden bridge over a pond with a set of peacocks and fireflies in the home of cicadas in the distance. i opened the heavy in great doors. the standalone suite at a private bar and a living room decorated in tasteful neutral views with a scattering of african sculptures. a handful of friends of bill sat at a nearby table playing all come hell, clinton's card game of choice. they made small talk about hillary's 2016 prospects. if romney wins the party will have to pave the way for her. clinton stood by a row of neatly arranged beige leather barstools wearing a a beige sheep leukemc kashmir sweater and driving shoes, jeans and friendship bracelet tied around his frail waste. wrist. chelsea set on a something so

for sipping water alongside her chief of staff. i later confessed to one of the foundation donors, and algorithmic trading chicago that i felt guilty for how much the "new york times" have a decision on the clinton foundation trip, a six night swing through mozambique south africa, uganda, rwanda, was a pitstop in cyprus so clinton could deliver a paid speech. believe me, he said, i paid more. it was the summer of 2012 before the spellbinding speech we know many obama at the democratic national convention when no one is paying much attention to bill clinton. i had been in sun valley idaho chasing down media moguls and fascia cocktail party with wendi murdoch. rupert hates "new york times" but i love you she said. when jill abramson prove the africa trip, if my get getting nothing to do with my be as covering media at the time. looking back it's astonishing the guys ever allowed me to cover this philanthropic swing.

we were all so simpatico then that when the times photographer showed up from a stint in yemen with the luggage, clinton loading his razor. i was the only reporter who stayed the entire trip starting with the first night at the saxon when bill clinton talk might be off well into the early morning hours. among about a million of the topics explain nelson mandela but in his memoir on the grounds of the major before became a five-star hotel. where you were staying was his own and that's what i stayed until 2010, clinton said. he looked around at the villa with its high ceilings and spotless marble flos. it's a wonderful place. i love this place, clinton said. he paused for a moment. he visited earlier that day. the next day we would like to rwanda to take a military helicopter to a a red dirt vile to visit a children's hospital. we feel slightly guilty staying here he said. taking a sip of chardonnay. but i get over it.

over the next six days i vacillated between off at clinton's brainpower feeling blessed to be in this brilliant man's present and total exhaustion from the self absorption and dribbling on. after a couple of nights of hotel bar banter, i begin to feel like the lucky passenger upgraded to first class on a transatlantic flight, only to wind up next to someone who never needs a nap and he rambles on because of some internal holes to fill. by the final night at the hotel in uganda, clinton has relayed his own obscure accomplishments. an arkansas we went from 48% to 53% when i was in office. he has summed up how to solve africa's food shortages. we've got to do things americans did literally 80 years ago during the depression. anti-castro what feels like ours extolled the virtues of soybeans. you can grow just a thin layer of topsoil. he starts every of the sentence

with in the 1990s, and when i was president. the guys had a a name for one f his defensive monologues i i gt trapped and after asking clinton about his decision to intervene in somalia in 1993. you got black cocked, they said. it was after one again and all i want to do was go to sleep when clinton told me as if i frau obama could improve his speechmaking. suppose we been friends for years he said, resting upon my shoulder. you can to visit me in and said something pretty and eloquent instancing i'm sorry, this sucks, i wish i could do more about it. it's an insult. so i told the president the eloquence should go at the end of the speeches, never in the middle. i nodded smiling politely and checking to see the red light of my voice recorder was still going. he change outfits three times a day usually reappearing in the hotel gardens for dinner with donors wearing and lenin and tacky cargo pants, africa sheet.

he is like lady gaga, an aide said. the other thing i noticed about clinton was how often he talked about dying. he hardly thought he would live to see the 2016 election, nevermind be back in the white house. when the manager of the soybean processing plant asked him to come back next year, clinton said i'm older than you. we will have to make sure i'm still alive. when i asked him about chelsea joining the clinton foundation board, he said were trying to build it up so it will still run if i drop dead tomorrow. we sat down for coffee and i asked what the hell he would run for president in 2016. she points out where not kids anymore that a lot of people want to be president, he responded. i saw things in africa that may be less cynical about the clinton foundation. under cameron and mahogany trees, aid workers said that the station where deaf children from local villages could be fitted with a first hearing aids.

it's hard to care about whether some sleazy for donor wants something from the state department after using a child here for the first time. when the clinton foundation is maligned i think of bill clinton. clinton. we were all standing on the tarmac at the international airport, and i completely run out of topics to ask about. i extended my voice recorder to pick up his a stream of consciousness when a military helicopter emerged on the yellow orange horizon. is that him, chelsea said? moments later a slender 14-year-old ugandan boy in his school uniform stepped out of the helicopter. his name was bill clinton. his mother had named him after clinton visited uganda in 1998. a photograph hangs in their home. clinton is holding the newborn as hillary looks on.

he was born on the day before we got there, clinton told me. it was one of the most memorable days of my presidency. he walked over and pulled little bill into his arms. the boy wrapped his hands about one of clinton's hands and rested his head on that debt we spot on the chest beneath the shoulder. they stayed there like that. after they visited for a while and clinton said he would pay the boys school tuition fees, the staff and those prepared to board our chaered 737. aide todd clinton towards a separate gulfstream but he wasn't done. he called me over and told me that on the same africa trip in 1998, a senegalese farmer had named a goat after him. were going to fly the goat in next, he said. so we're flashing way forward to manchester, november 2015. this is a time during the very difficult democratic primary when hillary and her team are

very mad at me about a story i wrote. so i was going to flash forward and read a little bit from that. this chapter is called spontaneity is embargoed until . this is manchester november 2015. no matter how hard i try, i can only see manchester through the filter of suet that sat on the windowsill of my rented subaru. the city is a dusty, weary, unfussy place split in two by the spiky banks of the river. it's too far from boston where i've learned to earlier that morning to be part of this extra urban sprawl but too close to the charm of rural new england. it was november, you before the general election. i pulled the call of my jacket tight rimming neck and shivered on the short walk up the parking garage rent into the tavern. the sports bar attached to the lobby of the radisson were hillary would soon arrive to share drinks, bar snacks and some strange smalltalk with her

traveling press. in the seven months she been a candidate she had only had one off the record drinking session with her traveling press. i have not been in iowa and missed it but i'd heard a tv journalist the rich mistake of asking how she met bill allowing hillary to so immortalized in memoirs and speeches and popular clinton lara that i i could recite it verbatim. it was 1971 at the yield law library. the interactions i had with hillary since the campaign started out almost all been by accident. in september she stopped in at the union dining car in laconia to shake hands. she met high school french teacher which each to a half-dozen sudol wanted a photo. i stood to her left and when hillary pivoted to make sure she posed with all the students, she looked at me and said she's not in the class. this one i i know. she's not in the class. she may speak french but she's not in the class.

shortly before that encounter had written a story looking had to the fall. i interviewed aids in a brooklyn campaign headquarters about their new efforts to bring spontaneity to a candidacy that sometimes seemed overly cautious. cautious. the campaign brass wanted to put the summer of discontent behind them. they guys came through by providing you with an interview with the campaign manager and the communications director. i had hardly left the building when they hosted a conference call with the entire press corps children exactly what they told me. i always recorded interviews and took handwritten notes starring anything that stood out. that way when i i listen back o the audio i could glance at my scribble and see which quotes i jumped entering the conversation and what it might not have picked up in the moment. on the subway back i plugged in my earphones and listened to my voice recorder, , the one i bout eight years earlier in japan. everything i about i could buia story around seemed stale now

that the top campaign aides if given the same talking points to the rest of the press. towards the middle of the idea we discussed how hillary would try to show voters are softer and more personable side. it was only original reporting i had. that evening i sat in the office, carolyn ryan was a politics editor, watching as she scrunched her forehead and lowered her reading glasses to edit my story. i could tell how rough additions having based on the number of empty diet coke cans and the font size on your screen. she cut and pasted and entire paragraphs plucking the juiciest details out of the mobile a political ease. our favorability aside than any republican. even as reminded myself that i carolyn and always meet even the dullest of stories jump off the page, reading over her shoulder still give me the reticent disembodied feeling of a patient watching the surgeon perform an operation on their vital organs. when she stitched it all back together she shot me a playback, what we called an edited version of the story and send on to the

copy editor who debated me about whether we needed to explain what hillary's bowl off against holland degenerates. the headline said hillary to show more humor at heart, aides say. the backlash was immediate. today's nuke dimestore on hrc read more like the onion, detailed plan to show more authenticity and spontaneity hashtag just do it former obama advisor david axelrod tweeted. the i am with her crowd always assume the campaign dislike i covered because of her e-mails, or my reporting on the clinton foundation. but that wasn't it. it was the georgie and bathroom gate in the day she declared her candidacy i'd written she had not offered a clear rationale for why she was running. hillary hated that i've broken the news of the mysteries diane reynolds in a private state department e-mails had been chosen writing on her preferred pseudonym. but nothing could hillary over the edge quite like the humor

and heart story. donors and top democrats called a campaign to complain. they took most of hillary's wrath but the guys got it, too. for letting into brooklyn in the first place. the fall when hillary was supposed to restart instead became at some democrats started to call spontaneity is embargoed until four. that's the thing about being a candidate reporter. you can't hide. if hillary had to learn to be an inflatable body bags bouncing back whatever the traveling press to her that day, they guys were cement walls, rough and unyielding and enable to block me from receiving basic logistical information or asking a question. ever since the humor and heart piece i been iced out. at an event in new hampshire before driving to hand over and anybody in manchester, hillary displayed a superhuman cold shoulder looking right past my multiple shots of secretary,

secretary. instead hillary answered question of why trump got better ratings than she did on saturday night live. consider the performance. and adding insult to injury she called on fox news twice. obama had this dynamic differently. in 2008 i wrote a feature that presidents and body image and whether an overweight electorate could relate to obama given his intense workout schedule and zero percent body fat. it was an innate identifies widely mocked. the headline to 50 the president and rupert murdoch recently buying the journal did not help matters. later that day the press poll trailed obama to roadside farmers market in florida. he ordered a strawberry milkshake, and as he took a long sip he looked right at me. we locked eyes and as he gulped down the milkshake he said,, this milkshake is delicious.

maybe if i had one of these everyday i wouldn't be such a skinny guy. [laughing] obama the did ordered strawbery milkshak for the entir pss corps. i can safely say hillary didn't want to buy me a milkshake that day in new hampshire. well, thanks. [applause] thanks for listening, and i would love to take your questions. >> or i can keep reading. >> did you choose to cover some extent the dispute over her private e-mails? >> you know, going in this i knew if i wrote a memoir that had to be honest, and if i wrote a memo and i said the press to debiting right in 2016 and like my coverage was perfect, i just think it wouldn't ring true to readers. once you sound like you're being

falls to readers, you have lost it. i thought if i'm going to be honest about the campaigns flaws and her flaws i had to be honest about my own flaws, the media flaws, and there were plenty enjoy 16. i did want to make a conscious effort to address that in the most honest way i could. >> did you find the campaign changed like with twitter, all the journals are on twitter, did they change reporting? >> absolutely. and i i saw the change from 208 to 2016. i'm convinced donald trump would not of been elected without the current media ecosystem of twitter and live streaming. i think during 2016 there was a sense you could cover the election from your cubicle because you are all tweeting at each other and live streaming every speech. we have to get up in the country, like of course went to get out in the country and talk

to voters. at the same time with hillary we had a candidate who is so cautious and probably so overly cautious because everything turns into a story with twitter and instagram. people posted videos that have a timesheet nodded her head at a roundtable and went viral. you had this campaign though so cautious with the press because of this ecosystem where even the tiniest snippet could go viral and create -- one of the sub things of the book is how the media has changed and how, i don't want to say the decline of campaign reporting but the role of being on the bus has changed so much because of twitter. >> thank you for your book. i was just curious, one of the trump leadership people at one time it remark that secretary clinton, if short after the contingent something might take nine hours or 19 hours worth of homework on the decision, and that we just go ahead and live

by night make a decision. i was just wondering if you witnessed some of her diligence in doing her work? >> absolutely. she's nothing if not the consummate student. i wrote a story edits 1/16 when she consulted 200 advisors to try to craft for economic policy. so absolutely. sometimes she had a great line in one of the debates against trump witchy kind made fun of her for being too prepared. she said i'm also prepared to be president and i thought that was a great line. but at the same time i think some of it was a hindrance. i think voters thought some of the things she said were too cautious. i always wonder an alternate universe she probably could've never got away with it but i imagine her coming at the first being the press conference and what she did, look what you did in the '90s, turned up nothing. that makes me smart. and then just they like i'm done talking about this.

i just wonder if she had that kind of radical honesty, what would've happened. she probably would've gotten killed for it but i do wonder. >> since you covered the clinton foundation was there any thought given by the political whiz kids of giving the clinton foundation to save the carter center something like that. >> was interesting. definitely when it look like kill it was going win and the started winding down parts of the foundation, they were thinking about partnering with some like paul farmer or bill gates are some of the group but that was towards the fall when you really thought she was going to win and had to do something about the foundation. [inaudible] you've been reported in japan and a one how you reflect on the interconnectedness -- [inaudible] >> you covered his people for so

long. you travel everywhere they go. you do become friendly. you have to have a cordial relationship. i. i failed at that. we had a toxic relationship but initially when i was at the "wall street journal" and the kid reporter, i did have friendships with these people that we traveled all over the country together with. then it was a change from 2016 within her age traveled on the same bus as the press so it's hard not to establish some friendships. >> can you talk a little bit about how her 2008 campaign, like, her relationship with the press versus 2016 campaign? >> i think she is a very candidate in 2008 but she had a better campaign 2016. when she ran for president in 2008 should been a new york senator and she was involved and always in touch with her upstate constituents and factory towns. i think she is connected to the problems before having particularly in places like pennsylvania and indiana.

but the other aspect of her in 2008 was as a sin to give a press around. she had the new york press corps so is like these tablet guys and they became her traveling press. i joined with them but they been covering her for years. she had a report with their thes corps and she would come back with like a goblet of wine and crack jokes. like on valentine's day she called our significant others because she felt bad for keeping us way. she was much more comfortable with the press. partly because you used to these reporters but i also think she was losing and like whenever she was using she became a better candidate and she let down her guard. bill clinton tells me at one point in nevada after she lost in hampshire like we are always running but as underdog. that was part of it. when we got to 2016 she always thought she was going to win and she was cautious, very cautious. why mess that up by saying something to reporters?

i also think she really liked her state department press corps. she thought they were substantive and asked about foreign affairs, et cetera shared this political press there was yelling at her about e-mails. a lot of other things but in her might we were obsessed with the daily stories. in the white house she had described the political press to a friend diane blair as big egos and no brains. hard feelings with way back. good question. fact check, kind of true. >> i had a question. i know bill clinton obviously had to take a less public role with his wife what when he for president. i'm curious on your thoughts if you think that was a little bit frustrating for him not to be in the limelight as much, and what role did he actually played in some of the strategies and in the campaign itself?

>> i have a lot about this in the book because bill clinton was trying to push hillary's younger aides to reach out to the white working-class voters who he won in 92 and 96, and they were like those voters have left the party. we are good. where focus on these pockets of the country, the obama voters who think we can win. there was a lot of sidelining field who was this great political strategic minds and 20th century and is a lot of not listening to his advice. i have a chapter called bills last stand where he goes on bus tours around the panhandle in wisconsin and ohio and is just like talking to 20 people at these tunnels because he's just like if they won't listen i'm going to do it. the other interesting tension between bill clinton and his generation and the younger operatives were they were so data driven, hillary's new campaign aides, and that a brilliant organization. that operatives and all the right places. they had an organization that was second to none.

bill clinton gets it what's the point of an organization if there's no enthusiasm? if people don't like hillary and don't see the hillary i see, what's the point of the organization? there was always this tension between organization and enthusiasm, and the belief that a great organization, this is what we need. bill clinton saying screw the organization. people are not enthusiastic. >> did you know her at all when she was secretary of state and when she was relaxed and fun and easy to be with? >> i wish, i wish. during the state department years i was covering some other things. i was reporting on bill clinton, and so i did know her that well then. i wish i did. the times i saw that hillary were in 2008 especially when she really felt like should nothing left to lose and she would be very chummy with the press corps but i didn't see the state department -- >> have class of one?

>> she did do that in 2008. yellowtail, really bad wine, which was endearing. >> no offense but you and a lot of people, journalists, seem very hard on her. i didn't get it. she seemed like a nice person. she wanted to do progressive things. she was far from perfect. now who do we have? a criminal, sex abuser, someone who could blow up the world and i'm not being, i'm not exaggerating. what's the big deal with hillary? she was far from perfect but my god, what a difference. >> yeah speedy you had the right to write about it but i don't get. >> it's one of those things with hillary, some people say you're too hard on her educator, then like the same exact quote can be used like you're in the tank and you love hillary gets complicated. but i do think, i see a point

and i feel her supporters genuine anger over how she was covered and how her e-mails were covered. those are legitimate concerns that we should listen to and assess. at the same time i think it's a dangerous proposition for journalists to say, like this candidate is under fbi investigation and that's like a bad thing but the other guys like russian hookers in bankruptcy, he is so beyond the pale, let's use kid gloves on his opponent because the other guy -- it's a dangerous proposition winterville start deciding this candidates opponent is so bad that will be softer on -- then the new puttr hand on the scale in an uncomfortable way. >> i didn't say that. i just don't understand why so many people seem angry at her. >> hillary hate as a large-scale psychic phenomena which is that make sense to me. you make a good point. it's not about her politics. nothing she is proposing is widely offensive to either side.

it's something about her and you can't get away from the idea that has to do with gentry. it has to. i remember, i grew up in texas and had this scene in the book when you first met her when a 16 and like i her talk radio say how scary she was an francisco huskers was. i met her. this is a nice woman. i don't understand. that hatred has continued for 30 years and i just think it has to do with her being one of the most powerful women in the country, and the world. it has to do with gender. there's nothing else that can explain the level of hatred. >> i think that's a big part of it. thank you. >> i listen to audiobooks which is great by the way. >> subject you to eight hours of my voice. >> the thing that really, the question had for you for this, i know this is a memoir but i'm wondering a licensure for future female presidential candidates and what not to do or what to

do. i just wonder what your thoughts are. >> i hope so. it's not so direct as other books like here's how you -- i hope there are takeaways because our things i notice i didn't notice at the time but as i was running i noticed like this is one that stands out. i was at the iowa state fair in 2015 and donald trump landed on his helicopter, and reporters like taking rides and helicopter and he's giving kids a ride. he so connected to the working man. the helicopter was a big kid. this is striking, because in 2008 hillary chartered helicopter in iowa and became like a symbol of how out of touch her campaign was. it was like she's totally out of touch can is supposed to be on a bus and she chartered this helicopter into fly, for years we use the helicopter is a symbol of elitism. donald trump landed in helicopter and what he thought it was great. you have to have a penis tupelo the helicopter? to meet was a starkest example

of the double standard. also he owned the helicopter. she just chartered it. it blew my mind how they were covered in such different ways. the chapter is called a tale of two choppers but i hope that is informative. i don't have some big takeaways for candidates like if you're running to his helicopter. the way recovery candidates, read this and realize like the double standard that existed. i don't know if that answers your question. >> i was curious to know at all if your gender affect the way hillary and her team responded to you in your writing? what it'd been different if you'd been a male reporter covering her campaign? >> i don't really know. it's funny because the right wing has been liked these girls who cover her were in the tank because we are all women. i think her people render thought women would be harder on her in some way. like to prove that were not in the tank, we would be catty or tougher on her to prove something. it's funny because this book

also draws unlike a lot of archival e-mails i've read in speeches and press conferences. a press conference in the white house she had said come she got grilled on like cattle futures and whitewater. she said thank you so much for doing this. she said eleanor roosevelt had a press conference at a week that she had an all-female press corps. she submit it by that i would do a press conference and we, at fast-forward 30 years and she had an all-female press corps who she like mostly ignored. >> i was going to ask a very similar quen. i study politics and gender in relation to that but i guess i'll ask a slightly different side, which is as a female journalist i'm curious if you thought your gender impacted how you interacted with the other journalists, the other reporters

covering the campaign as opposed to just the candidate herself? >> my fellow girls on the bus can attest to that. we had a really great camaraderie. some of the women who are mothers would call, read to the babies at night and we talked about, should we talked -- we definitely had a really tight, i think there was a tightknit family. after the book came out and some of the friends of bus ready, they said i'm so nostalgic for 2016. i'm like, really? the most awful toss the campaign in history? you become a family. you do miss each other and that camaraderie for sure. >> you mentioned that it was, your first chapter was talking

about your trip to south africa. wasn't anything to be learned from your experience in south africa? and did any of the clintons meet a guy called julius -- [inaudible] >> i don't know the answer to the second part of the question, but certainly going to africa was bill clinton's come he is such a popular figure globally. i just think like we got so, myself included, you get so bogged down on the investigative stories about the clinton foundation but you seem in action in africa, he has such a connection to people he coaches, at one point we went to this village with red dirt. he was cocky on the grant in the suit to pet a cow and he was like, we've got the same dairy cows in africa. he was connecting to farmers in africa the same he would farmers in arkansas. the other remarkable thing up

with is within is a lot of people can get, not a lot of people but some politicians are great with a working at and some are great schmoozing with 1%. bill clinton could so seamlessly go from the like six star hotel with a rich donors to like the little village. it was really amazing, really remarkable. >> just an afterthought. julius is a vocal opposition individual in south africa, and he stands up in parliament and start fights in parliament. in some ways he's the alter ego of the president of this country, a real wild man actually. thank you. >> thank you. good question.

>> apologies, i arrived late so you may address this before i got here. i'm very curious why hillary didn't take donald trump on, on the daily talk shows. i got almost nauseated at times watching, well, the show i watched the most was "morning joe." joe scarborough and mika zezinski now, they have done a pretty good job of critiquing this administration of really taking them apart, but during the campaign they were literally playing footsie with the men. they were talking, the camera demotic little early a couple times and it was sort of telling what they're going to tell, what they're going to ask and stuff like that, sitting around the table. and if he wasn't there alive he would call in. they would always take his calls.

hillary never, never was on that show. maybe speedy they asked. they asked a million times. >> that's what he wanted to know. she just didn't do it? >> she said no to everything. >> why? >> i counted 47. we asked her for interviews about a work with women and girls, like they said no to 47 interview requests from me and i know that the cable shows had also offered her the chance to call and do this. look, i think she was had. i think she didn't think you need to go to toe to do with him like that but i know after the election she's complaining he got so much free cable time. but like she did say no to a lot of those interviews. >> he got a lot more than he should have but she didn't take advantage of what she could, correct? >> i think she had, a lot of my thinking about billy goes back to the '90s and she has a lot of scar tissue by the media and i think a lot fairly what the

media has put her through. by the time she got to 2016 the was a lot of scar tissu buildup and a real protective layer that just didn't, she didn't want to do that. >> so what response unbegotten from hillary's side about this book and what did you think of her book? >> i thought her book was good. i actually like living history better. i thought her book was what happened was good and like the voice of it, but it wasn't, did you read it? it was like writing speed like conversation? >> right. hard choices, it wasn't hard to have -- but unlike what happened but it also like living history

actually even better. >> have you gotten any feedback recs i know chelsea clinton had a few things to say. >> if you read the book, like i was anticipating blowback. i got blowback from even sympathetic stories i wrote. it was a little frustrated because i feel like it was a reflex to reject it without kind reading it. i am pretty self reflective. i think of her supporters have been craving self reflection from the media, and i tried to offer that and there's sort of a knee-jerk reaction of attacking it, and so that's been, i wish people would give it more of a chance. >> what about your own colleagues, because you were very honest. >> i have heard no complaints my colleagues. a lot of them came to my book party the night before last. i think it's good, i know there

are debates in the newsroom about like how we handled the russian e-mails, the podesta hacks and his different opinions but i think it's good. part of why i wanted that to be the excerpt that ran in the new york times in the new times is a wanted to start there should be debates, like the russians are going to be staging, interfering in our democracy in 2018 and 2020, and the meeting is very much part of that strategy into in the submg the information sought think newsrooms should take a hard look at how we handle those. >> i go to school right down the street, and went on reading about your city we only learn about min. men. do you think he'll will go down in history? someone tweeted after the election, a man, after all that hillary as just a footnote to history. i really disagree. i really think we're going to study her career as of this barometer of how we view powerful women in this era of our life. back to win she said in the

'90s, she said, was asked which had a career and she said i suppose i could've stayed at home and baked cookies, i was like, had to apologize for that for 20 years. she was ahead of her time. she was a woman defending her choice to have a career. i think her career will be incredibly important. the historian of talked about how losing candidates can sentence of a a greater than en a greater impact. when goldwater lost everly like laid the foundation for the conservative movement, conservatives were mobilized. i think hillary's lost big enough for women. like use all of these women running after her loss and a think that maybe will look back in history and her defeat, not just her defeat, , but for her o listen and who brag about sexual assault, and i think that spurred a lot of women to run and maybe we'll look back on history like this was the moment that she did ignite the feminist movement just by losing.

>> who would you want to run in 2020? >> i don't know. there's a lot of light, funny, people keep saying that person, they are not electable. really, we're still going to do that? guess who is electable? i stay away from guessing on that. >> you seem to be in observing your own presentation very vibrant in your description of bill clinton, and very animated. i don't see that quality when you talk about hillary. are you able to describe her personalities so we can really understand more, you spend so much time with her? >> for one, bill clinton gave me some had that amazing access in

africa. i did have that insight into him but there are the part of the book for sure that it's winter. with hillary it was like i didn't get to number because we like sipping chardonnay and hotel suite. i got to know her to her friends. i got to know her, i had sources from her college roommate to her friends in arkansas and like studied every chapter of her life from when she was a working mom in little rock. i talked to her classmates on the debate team at the park ridge high school to see how she held her debate skills. i would say the way i got to know hillary and the way a communicative in the book is largely through these chapters of life that i did a lot of deep reporting on. for instance, when she looked at the children's defense fund and she would undercover to investigate school segregation. it was hard to find things but found the chapter that had not been explored and went to alabama and talk to people, children's defense fund back then, so i got to know her like through the secondary sources almost more so than one on one.

>> what have you learned about her personalities from these resources? >> the story about her going undercover, basically this is after obviously school segregation was illegal and these private academies sprung up in the south, they call the segregation academies and hillary clinton, hillary rodham went to alabama and she, she pretended to be a mother who wanted to enroll her son in this school and she would do all the questions and she said can you promise me that it's going to be in white on the school. they said absolute. she busted them and she went back and filed a report said they would lose their tax-exempt status. this is under the nixon administration. but to me that was the best example of how hillary believed that most changes made. bernie sanders release a lot of pictures of him out in front with a banner in civil rights marches. hillard was not a front with the band. she's doing homework and research and going back and

filed reports to change policy, like basically the broadest way to impact millions of people would be to change policy, to make the schools lose their tax-exempt status. that exemplified her activism to me. it wasn't like i'm upfront what the banner but it was how to implement policy. like her friend diane blair whose letters i study allies that hillary would be happy an office somewhere crafting policy. i always thought that was why she wanted to become president as the best way to change peoples lives was through policy. so thanks. >> thank you. thank you everyone for your insightful questions. thank you, amy, for being here. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at some books being published this week.

>> my favorite researcher, and my son would tell you that shows what a dork and because have a favorite researcher, is a guy named nicolas eppley. he has been researching these intangibles of human nature for years, and just recently a few months ago he did a very long study, not just nicolas but whole crew of people. what he found was when we read anything we disagree with in any form, it doesn't matter if it is printed in newspaper, a book, an e-mail, facebook, if we read it we're much more likely to think we disagree because the person is stupid and ignorant of the real issues. if we hear someone telling us the same opinion, whether it's reported in the podcast, doesn't matter, if we hear the voice telling us that opinion where much more likely to think a disagree with us because they have different experience and

perspective. and what that means is that the human voice is literally humanizing. it is the voice itself, some quality of the human voice that helps us to recognize each other as human beings, deserving o respect. and we do deserve respect. every person deserves respect. not every opinion, that every person. and it also means that this process that we are going through right now of transferring all of argumentation to the digital world is dehumanizing us. of course we hate each other. we don't see each other as human beings deserving of respect. and this is not a partisan issue, if you're thinking absolutely, those liberals are always jerks, or the other way. doesn't matter what you were thinking.

it's not partisan. every single person is equally prone to do this to the other side. every person is equally prone to confirmation bias. do you guys do what confirmation bias is? it's where you believe something and then someone gives you evidence proving that belief is wrong and it makes you believe it harder. we are the only species that suffers from confirmation bias. and that is because confirmation bias is not helpful. well, it's not really helpful. if you have a cat and the cat truly believes there is no cats in the next room. i mean, a mouse, sorry. if you have a mouse and the mouse totally pleased there are no cats in the next room and you shhe evidence of cats in the next room, lots of cats, and that makes the mouse believe harder there are no cats in the next room, mice would basically

be wiped off the face of the planet. so you have to ask yourself why do we have confirmation bias, why do all of us have confirmation bias, and how does it help us? because frankly, why would it survive through all of millennia and evolution if it did not in some way help? and i'll tell you what i believe, even though we fully don't understand it yet here i think confirmation bias is actually a strength. i think what it does is prove to us constantly that we need each other. that we need to talk to each other. because we are our own checks and balances. i need you guys to tell me when i said something nutballs, and i need to believe you. we need each other, all of us.

there is no virtue in saying i don't talk to people like that. it's not a a virtue. i don't care how violent you think their opinion is. that's not something to brag about. you can talk to everybody. and i'll just give you two examples that one of them is george's own. does anyone know who zone a claim is? one person. there's a a street named aftern atlanta. she was a good friend of dr. king and his wife, coretta. when they decided to create a great neighbors initiatives, great society initiative to strengthen neighborhoods, here in atlanta she was appointed as the head of the program and she had a whole bunch of different neighborhood captains. the mayor came to her and said listen, i have 21 you because she was an african-american, still is, an african-american woman, that hasn't changed. she said have to warn you one of

your captains as a grand dragon in the kkk, just so you know. she described that very first meeting where all the captains came in and one of them refused to touch or shake her hand and e was like that's the one. .. but you can be a human being and respectful. they would talk to each other, she ended up coming two times a week and sat down at one point she asked them why do you keep coming here? you don't even like me. he says i know, but i like to talk to you.