biographer john chernow and a chance to talk to pulitzer prize-winning historian doris kearns goodwin, fox news host brian killmeed, tara westover and many others. british spy novelist, this is live coverage of the 18th annual national book festival in washington. .. >> good morning everybody. we try to start right on time. i'm john haskell from the library of congress. we welcome you to the 18th annual national book festival. it is because of contributors

like wells fargo, david rubenstein and many others that this is now officially the best free event in washington. [cheering and applause] i will turn it over to the program and the second but i want to remind you to turn off electronics and find it under in silence your electronic get us. we are on tv and it won't be appropriate. i will say one thing about carlos and then turn it over to him. as most of you probably know an event like this, carlos is a nonfiction book editor at "the washington post" and also at one time the economic editors there and national security editor in the outlook section editor. he was just this year a finalist for the pulitzer prize for criticism and in 2015 was the winner of the national book

critics circle citation for excellence in reviewing. carlos, welcome. [applause] >> good morning. welcome to the national book festival. it's my favorite event in washington bar none. we are here to talk about spice and intelligence and maybe hacking. it is quite an honor to introduce this morning's panel and our moderator is the author of the good spy, life and death of robert ames. he's co-author of the pulitzer-winning american prometheus on the life of robert oppenheimer which i must confess is one of the greatest biographies i have ever read. he's also the director of the center for biography at the university of new york. our panelists are washington post columnist and novelist david ignatius, author of ten novels, most recently quantum spy.

[inaudible] the defectors, and adam whose latest book is a biography and he is explain to me the proper way to pronounce it it is not [inaudible] we can have a debate about it later. in addition to being part of the panel they will be any books at 1:00 o'clock. with that, i'm thrilled to hand it over to kai bird. [applause] >> good morning. i assume we are all here because we love a good spy story. but we don't really often admire spies but we love a good spy story. that is what we are here to discuss. we have on stage here, excluding myself, three of the world's foremost experts on the world of

intelligence. i'm delighted to be here. my name is kai bird and i want to first make a plug for my little biography center at city university, called the leon leavy center for biography by the bite shall be white for the last 11 years. it's a very special thing and promote the art and craft biography in a very specific way. we hand out for 72 thousand dollar scholarships every year and the deadline is in early january so there are any budding first biographers in the audience, think about the fellowship. i want to begin by talking a little bit about robert ames. when i was 13 years old my next labor was robert ames, a spy. i have no idea he was a spy. years later he was tragically

killed in beirut in 1993 and i read a novel by david ignatius called agents of innocence. david is not only "the washington post" reporter on the intelligent beat but this was his first novel. he has now written, i think, t ten. that book got me interested in trying to figure out who my next-door neighbor was david encouraged me to do this book. he gave me many sources and the only reason the good spy happened is because of david. i first met joseph cannon in los alamos and his first spy novel was called los alamos and he had

in it a lovely moving portrait of robert oppenheimer, whom i'm later wrote a biography on. i had to tell joe that his little portrait of robert was the best i have seen and better than my 800 pages. [laughter] it tells you the power of the novel. finally, we have all the way from london adam who is a biographers biographer, literally he wrote a biography of the biography, boswell's sumptuous task and now two years ago i guess three years ago he came out with the massive biography of note on otherwise known as david cornwell. he rips off the map and --

anyway, we began with and as some of you may already know he was himself a spy for about five years and many of his novels draw upon that life but you explain that while he cooperated with you he refused to talk about his five hundred and five years as a spy and what he was doing in germany. you found out a great deal about what he was doing it germany so why the reticence even some years later? >> well, his answer and there is my answer. i mean, a bit of background, when he left oxford where he had, in fact, been reporting on his fellow students, including a

fellow american student who to mi five but had not come into the cold but he was a schoolmaster and joined mi five and he won't worked for for two years before going over to the dark side and joining mi six were he was posted to germany. he says that he made a commitment back then not to talk about his secret work and he wants to keep to it and he john le carré for a long time he pretended he wasn't involved in secret work and used to say i'm just a simple servant, that's all. he has gradually come out of the closet, as it were. he's very much in control of that part of his story.

i found out from other sources what he was doing and essentially hidden in the british embassy in what was then west germany he was, it's what called undeclared. he was posing as an ordinary diplomat to the second secretary but was, in fact, reporting to and working for mi-6. his job really was to keep -- it wasn't running agents across the border into east germany or into the soviet bloc but keeping an eye on political dominance on the both extreme left and extreme right in germany. one of his lesser-known books, in fact, a small town in germany which is, i think, unrecognized but is much better than its people realize is very much portrait of what he was doing. >> joseph, turning to you, so you seem along with john john le

carré to have a obsession with filby and your latest book one of your characters, frank weeks, is clearly modeled after filby. explain your of session? [laughter] >> i think is one of the most interesting characters or real life characters that anyone has ever run across. we have the great fortune that he wrote memoirs, which are highly questionable and self-serving but we also have the great good fortune that he had four wives, two of whom wrote memoirs about his time in moscow. if you are an espionage novelist every time i come to dc on book tour there would be a question in the audience about craft in

your books and it's always a coded or loaded question about how long you have been an espionage agent. i've always said to them i have absolutely no idea really what it's like but i just had other books and never been approached and never been recruited and someone said you would say that. [laughter] it's a total no-win situation but the filby question, an american filby and in large part because the number of details about daily life come from what we know about philly because there's more degradation about him. i think he's an exemplary which is why one of the great questions and all of literature is who are we and who is that other person and how knowable can anyone be to us and when you encounter a spy it is someone who is deliberately pretending to be someone else.

it's a crime that if you are an undercover agent it doesn't have a narrative art like a robbery but you're committing a crime 247, all the time, your whole life. new line two colleagues and your spouse and you are living a lie. what could be more interesting to novelist then to write about someone who, not only are we trying to peel back the layers of the onion but he's resisting at the same time. it's a push pull with any fiction writer is drawn to and reader. >> that reminds me. john le carré wrote himself that writers like a spy his real work is done alone and like a spy, writers need secrecy. isn't there a sort of similarity between what we all do in the world of spies? >> i thank you can convince yourself of that.

when i started working with david i started to imagine myself as an agent and think of assignations and checking out of a window whether that person across the street was not there five minutes go and that sort of thing but it is very seductive. david himself, david cornwell, the real name of sir john le carré he plays a teasing game with as all our readers know that he wrote an autobiographical novel called the prefix by which pics someone early life identical and whose father is a portrait of his own father. when his first wife, divorced first wife read the manuscripts she said i always wondered whether david was a double age agent.

i don't think he was but he played that with his readers and carries on doing so. >> david ignatius, your spy novels draw on your own experience as a foreign correspondent and i have always suspected that the typical foreign correspondent that you were stationed in beirut often has better sources than the average cia officer and wouldn't you agree that that is true? >> i think one technique that i used as a journalist for many years is to think about the free i ate cia would have likely included and take one of those on the theory that they begun to start talking and once the cake

is cut, what's another slice? i think in the time that i have started as a journalist which overseas was 1980 the night states had the wind at its back and people all over the world were eager to work the united states and work secretly and in other ways because it was good for them. they get business and make friends and that was the way the world was going. i think we now had into the wind rather than having it at our back and maybe it is easier for journalist to approach people. i will say briefly in response to the earlier theme of the way in which being an intelligence officer is like being a journalist and that is obviously true on one level. were trying to pull stories from

them and establish rapport or trying to get people to say things that we might not otherwise say but there's one huge difference that you have to underline right now. journalist if they're doing their job don't lie. we are about telling the truth and we work for our readers back we are at a moment when that role and that understanding that what we do is not in the business of wine is being challenged. i get a little nervous about people say well, it's just like being an intelligent officer. it's a little like it but ideally there's that fun a mental split that makes it difficult or different. >> there's also a dark side. yes, it's like being a spy but it's also a question of our uber

train people as you are doing this as a spy inevitably does. there's a famous journalist who said that ultimately were always selling someone out which means that your dry material from them and using them as copy or basis for whatever your writing. without going to them to the source one tries to do that as little as possible but it is and does happen. >> i completely applaud what david said and that is absolutely right and unprincipled but novelist as both a journalist they are making things up. they are and often they are the train people in the sense of using people that they know and people close to them as models or using the experiences they've had with people in intimate experiences to construct a box of their novels. i don't think the distinction is

completely clear-cut in that sense. david cornwell's parallel between spine and writing novels in that sense. cornrows novels are full of betrayal and they're not just spies between each other but people between each other in personal relationships and of course filby, this himself with his wife and many other people but he wasn't just the train people for intelligent reasons but the train people -- extraordinary duplicitous character, was that he? >> as a biographer i find i am constantly trying to seduce my sources in the same way sometimes a spy, as i guess,

will cultivate a source. you're trying and it's not you are not lying but you're trying to get people to talk. you had to do this with, i'm sure, many of cornwell's friends back i tried to do this with david and i also think how do i know and i know a way to get through his defenses and i arrive and stop talking him and put the killer question and then i realized that he'd anticipated the question and prepared an answer and it's very skillful and clever man and i often felt that he was playing me rather than me playing him. [laughter] >> in a larger sense i've always wondered whether spies are little overrated. and this is one of the themes in le carré novels.

they are either failures or if they uncover valuable, actionable intelligence and david, maybe you can speak to this and your work as a reporter recovering the intelligence world but even with a good spy comes along and offers valuable intelligence no one in positions of power wants to hear it. it doesn't sit with the conventional wisdom that is awkward and in history i see examples again again of this happening. again, i'm wondering while we all love a good spy story and are they a little overrated. >> if you mean they overate the importance of the intelligence that is obtained in the flow of history, i think that is probably right.

i think of the story that you and i spent so much time on thinking about. for me it began on the morning of february 1983 when i went to the us embassy in beirut and at 12:30 i leave and at 1:05 the enormous car bomb detonates and kills robert ames and one of the great intelligent officers of the united states that is produced and killed everybody in the cia station who was in beirut that day, it feared memory was running back and seeing the ruins and the dead bodies everywhere. there was subsequently a cia officer who was determined to find out how that bomb got there that morning. he made a passionate where time was of dangerous for americans

to be in beirut but he went person to person who recruited the shiite has below officer and rented the car et cetera and he gathered all this intelligence thinking people must know all these people died got to find out. guess what? he finished that reporting and as far as i know nobody ever did a damn thing about it. there's an example where the truth, you shall seek the truth and the truth does not set you free. it's not all that efficacious. these are fascinating character and wishes during our panel because he be pretty angry about that question. >> you can't reveal his name. >> another time. [laughter] >> no, that's the story that is

still a mystery. who organized and executed this car bomb attack on the first us embassy and it's a story that i try to dig into in the good spy but it remains a mystery and as you say, the us government to not take action to try to figure out. >> there is room for skepticism about the value of the intelligence. i mean, if you think of many of the most important episodes the attack on the twin towers through the failure that they conducted story throughout weapons of mass destruction et cetera et cetera. again and again, these are intelligent failures. they may be failures of the cia and we should regard

intelligence skeptically. often the intelligence has not been recognized or probably analyzed. that is really what i think and i mean, the cia has much greater in the nsa has greater resources than any other intelligence agency in the sense they gather too much and it's a vast of material and it's not clear that the shape is. >> adam, that reminds me of a story when i'm doing my biography of mcgeorge and william bundy, to bundy brothers, william bundy had worked in the cia for a long time in the 1960s and working under a man named william lang langer, who was a harvard professor who been recruited to become head of the office of

national intelligence in 1952. when he was recruited he told [inaudible] i can't possibly do the job if you give me more than 25 analysts. [laughter] he wanted it small and lean and recruited william bundy as one of those 25. but today we have -- david, how many? >> oh my gosh. to count all the agencies there's many tens of thousands. it's crazy. were not getting our money's worth. [laughter] >> a good example of the failure of british intelligence came in 19401 british and french intelligent failed to protect where the germans were going to attack. they cut through the allied armies and caught the fall of

france and had the british withdraw and left their equipment behind it was a disaster. after when the intelligence was analyzed it was shown that there were indications of where the germans were going to attack initiative known and if it had been probably analyzed they would have known that but there weren't the mechanisms in place. >> he was famously told that hitler would've made but decided to ignore it. >> again and again. >> maybe our past nation with five stories comes from the fact that the stories are metaphors for human failure. we are all human and all fail in all make mistakes and spy stories are a particularly vivid vehicle for showing how this happens.

>> i think it is fair to say that better spy stories do that but most are triumphant. they're about daring dudes who succeed at whatever task there succeeding. when people say were working in the shadows of le carré i think it's true because he created the modern espionage novel, as we know it but one of the great innovations, as a vehicle for toy character is that essentially you to get away from those lampposts and brought it into the office. all of the novels, one way or another are about office life particularly true of the small town in germany. if you notice there's very little violence and very little actual secrets but with the plot usually involves is intelligence agency discovering each other and who is the training room. in a sense, it's accurate because were lucky to be at the [inaudible] at the end of the cold war was from a fiction

point is a great subject and writing material but you had a war in which the ground troops were the intelligence agencies. combat troops did not engage from time to time but by the -- it was the intelligence agencies on the front line. the one of subject all of which we could relate to and very few of us will ever live like james bond but all of us have worked in an office where there's an impossible person controlling and a boss who turns up late and never answers you and all those things and if you remember in spite a spy that came in from the what presumably precipitated this affection was a quarrel over the pension payment. it's all very your credit. >> and tinker, tailor, soldier spy there's a scene in which he steals the file from the service archives and carefully manufactures a dummy file put in its place and it describes to me

as one of the most exciting teams ever site in the archives. [laughter] it is tense and dramatic. but it is really just a man going into a room of files and taking one file out and putting another in its place. that's what happened. >> the thing that makes john le carré novels unforgettable that marks all of us in the sense and limited and the creation of the character, george :-). and george :-) embodies the sense of the ambiguity and moral entity that routine nature of intelligence work at his best

and getting ready for our discussion we went back in our library and went back to the very first john le carré novel which is published in 1962 called call for the dead. the first chapter is called a brief history of george smiley and it opens with a description of -- it's a very first book and we already see smiley as a described as breathtakingly ordinary. his wife, lady and, in the first chapter runs off with a cuban racecar driver. lady and in the book saw as the train with someone and bill hayden and tinker tailor but that to me is the genius of le carré. he lived a lot of real life espionage john but he had the brilliance to see this character and said it was drawn from a

rector of lincoln college at oxford and his first boss was at my five swords drawn from real people but there is george smiley and his wife in the sense of the trail and peter is in that first book and the special branch expectorant manville, if you know these books and they are all there and then he has that deck of cards from the start and then he keeps playing through his career right down to the legacy of spies, most recent book, which i loved, which has will hand in mantle and all these people who were in the first book. amazing. >> i'd like to echo that. the thing about george smiley is he's a complete contrast with james bond. james bond never questions what he's doing is right. james bond is an action man and has no real in her life. smiley is all the time troubled and anxious that the human damage being caused to all these

little people or ordinary individuals is worth the game and that he's troubled all the time and even worried about his art of any who, at the conclusion of smiley, he comes across and peter wilhelm says george, you want. he's not sure that he did win. he's hoping that he will go ba back. because he feels sorry for him. smiley is a man with a conscience. and he's not -- she's full of ambiguity and he's not an out and out cold war warrior. >> added, that brings us back to your biography. as i said earlier, you rip the mask of the sky. he is an enigma and you get very close to him and he tells very

intimate stories about love affairs, mistresses, wives, betrayal, his troubled childho childhood, his crazy conman father. it's very revealing. i wonder how did he -- and you had his cooperation. how did he react to the book and why did he publish his own a more, the pigeon tunnel, in 2016? he must have been working on that when you are working on your biography, no? >> john said that -- how did he react -- he reacted with a 22 page e-mail. [laughter] with 200 something numbered points. as you can imagine, when you see this and that's when i -- i had an agreement that he would be the first person to read the management before anybody else.

i sent it to him and a few days later this e-mail came flooding into my inbox and my first reaction was just me but when i started to go through it the points where generally points that the fact constructed thoughtful and we only really locked horns over half a dozen of them. he gave way and half a dozen and i gave way on half a dozen. it wasn't really a problem in that sense. on the other hand, i will pretend he's entirely happy about my book and seems to gotten more grumpy about it is time has gone past. but, you know, i feel that if he had been entirely happy with it then perhaps it would not have been i would not have done my job properly. i have to copy to friendly and he recognize that, too, i think.

he's a very thoughtful man and his editor, long-term editor bob gottlieb was done dealt with many fine authors and other people said david is the cleverest man i ever met, bar none. i would put him up there, too. >> so your work didn't inspire his memoir? not no, well, it's described as a memoir. in fact, it's described as a pieces that have been discovered before and it appeared in the new yorker in two parts back in, i think 2000 or 2001, but it's really not quite a memoir, in that sense. there are only, two or three chapters, i think, that are new. he told me that he wanted to publish this white early on in the process and told me to hurry

it up because he said i'm not getting any younger. [laughter] that is fine. i don't all his life. it is his life and he can if you wanted to write a full autobiography that would be fine with me and i'd be the first person to queuing up to read it. >> le carré books as explained are all about the human side and the ordinariness and the little human foibles and about human intelligence but david ignatius, your last spy novel is called, the quantum spy, about quantum computers and the look into this high tech world that we are living with all today in the age of social media and such. very timely. and yet, even in the story, the role of human intelligence is

central to understanding the plot. can you talk a little about your book and thinking -- >> one challenge for spy novelists are the increasingly spine is about computers and the internet. covert action is, as we have seen with the russians, the planting, amplifying information through computer networks in the classic penetration stories, more stories that john le carré wrote about these days involve electronic means of contact, compromise. the last five or six years i've been trying to figure out, as a novel, how you can be faithful. i like to write realistic spy novels. faithful to the reality that it's about the intersection of computers, machines and human

beings but also write something that does not feel like a problem no one wants to answer. believe me, writing about quantum computing was right on the borderline. it's compensated. you know, it's like the manhattan project. it's a machine that if they can build it, they'll be able to encrypt anything ever encrypted. that is the theory. and lay open every secret that anybody has. it's of enormous value and it's like the manhattan project. if you get first, you have a huge advantage for a long time, for a while. it's a race between us in china. the chinese know how important it is and if said we will capture this technology. you want to write about it so how do you make it real? i will say the challenge in this book was in inventing interesting chinese intelligence

officers. for me, and all my books the thing i'm proud of are the jordanian intelligence officers and body of lies that dominates that book, the pakistani head of isi who was interesting in blood money. in this book there's a character named [inaudible] whose, i think, an interesting little person and it's hard to make american intelligence officers as subtle as you want but it goes against our grain. so, i have fun often with the foreign characters in these books. >> another way to deal with this issue is to go to the past. you know, someone said where the right history will novels and i said, i think of it as a recent past. predigital. i find it is so much more interesting to be someone on a park bench and pass a newspape newspaper -- whenever one anyone says upload onto your server i say --

[laughter] it's very hard. >> joe and david, the two novelist on the panel here, why have you ever been tempted to do biography? >> it takes too long and it is too much work. [laughter] [applause] >> that is true. it takes longer to write a biography than a novel, most of the time. >> many similarities between the forms. we talked a lot about le carré and the legacy and the most profound legacy aside from just adding good writing to the genre has been -- to me, one of the great things that literature can do is to operate as an agent or moral inquiry and i think le carré did that. what he explored was possibly the character of these people but how they would deal with

morality and the actions that they were asked to participate in. the fundamental question should always be how do we live and how should we live? i don't mean the writing should be prescriptive and no novel can absolutely answer that but novels need to ask it or otherwise they really are james bond which are fun and nothing against that and god knows we like success and money but i think, you know, what le carré did was open this whole field up to moral questions and i think ultimately that makes the literature. >> so, adam, going back to le carré -- i'm sorry, david. >> no, i was just going to my answer would be just like joe's, too hard to write and too many footnotes. i live in a world of fact twice a week. i have to write i get to write columns for "the washington

post". [laughter] i want to say you have to be there but then you don't have to read them either. i'm immersed in the world of fact and to be able to escape it for this big canvas we don't have to, at the end, say this is precisely what you should think and precisely how you should it turn out and you can let the ambiguities exist in the characters is -- i will write one nonfiction book and that will be my memoirs but until then i don't think so. >> we look forward to the memo memoir. [laughter] adam, finally many of le carré novels are the early ones are critical of the cold war and that's the message you get from them. his later novels become increasingly i think some

critics have said bitter and anti- american. can you explain his politics? >> i'm giving a talk on the subject on wednesday at the woodrow wilson center. most season of ten people in general and this is a generalization become more conservative as they get older but david has gone in the opposite direction. he's become more radical and angry. i personally think to the detriment of his fiction. his best work was in the period when he is writing about joe george smiley when he deals with the ambiguities of the cold war and the fact that neither side was completely right and neither side completely wrong. now his novels appear to me to be much more black-and-white and good and bad. they are more like the james bond book.

i'm afraid all too often the bad are americans. although there are pretty nasty brits, too. i think there's a certain strain and david of wealth, i think it's an old-fashioned to be attitude that some englishmen of an older generation feel about america resentment of america taking over from our role, predominant role, that was not only exemplified in the event of the second world war and the aftermath but also in the minds of the intelligent officers at the time that david went and that was very much in the culture. and also a feeling of bemusement by the fact that they been betrayed by burgess, mclean, filby, et cetera. so yes, i agree his politics have become more

one-dimensional. that is interesting myself. >> i think we have time for five or six minutes of questions. if there are any from the audience. there is one right behind you. >> american spy, oss, based on the playwright filmed by david and hopefully i will be filming kai bird. what i'm realizing is hollywood, which are not part of, i think it contributed to the glamorized vision and violence that what a spies life is like. more detailed work in the intelligent work certainly someone like [inaudible] did in terms of getting intelligent scientists out and they really did him in justice in the feature films that hollywood just made with all these

shootouts that had nothing to do with his career. i'm asking you do you agree, two questions, hollywood has with james bond has contributed to taking away the hard work is by does and second of all, we need to the oss back in terms of the cyber security. i wonder what david thanks? we don't need military parades and we don't need to go to the moon and we need to figure this out come back. >> well, we need the oss back and we need the sorts of presidents who chartered the oss, that would be nice to. [laughter] [applause] aviva, i think and i can't wait for your documentary on moe berg. were talking about john le carée and hollywood has been faithful

to the essence of what those books are about. they did not screw them up. they did not put a gun in smiley's aunt or even in peter's hands although his job was the scout punter and plus our stuff and that movie that was made of one of mine movies was faithful to the texture of it. i think hollywood gets that there are more realistic accounts of espionage are things that people want to see. >> the movie they made out of my novel is just terrible. [laughter] if they would've added gunplay it would've been better. [laughter] >> thank you for the discussion today. one what are the motivating factors of spy novels is the clash of civilizations. how do, how will the novel genre

emerge over time with a change in class of civilizations from the us and the soviet union to china and two other venues of conflict and how will that change how a spy novel are both written and understood? >> i think that is interesting question. at the moment we are in a state of hiatus. it is obviously the interesting clash of the century we are now in will be chinese. it is a great question of how much to fiction writers know about chinese culture and how much do they know and can access muslim culture and middle eastern culture. it's more difficult because it's a rare knowledge on her part whereas russia is definitely the devil we know the devil we've been writing about for decades. i suppose, one of the things they've done is to give fiction writers a breathing space

because they are insisting on being centerstage yet again. just when you thought russia was going to withdraw from this road, there they are. they will not be shunted aside. at least, in espionage. it's a great advantage they've always had. i think for a while continue to have post-cold war, cold war kind of fiction being written but ultimately people will have to adjust because what is really important is what will be china. >> okay, two minutes left. >> quick question. my name is arnold and i report to the abroad for the associate press internationally and this is for mr. ignatius. his columns indicate you have access considerable access to the intelligence committee and now we have a situation where

the president of the united states is antagonistic towards communities intelligence communities and i'm wondering if you see any pushback from the intelligence committee, a situation that could be quite dangerous? >> there is an argument on the right but the deep state in the intelligent agency is doing just that and pushing back. i don't see that and i have limited visibility and most of the stuff i know about the intelligent agency is nonsense and i wish i did. but, from what little i know it is mostly what i think the richard helms philosophy us get on with it. let's do our job and i think in both in terms of recruiting sources and in terms of liaison relationships and in terms of

the humdrum activities around the world people keep doing them. at the top of the pyramid a white house, as we all no, is unpredictable the my senses the push back your thing about but i thought about every time i asked is not really happening. not just by americans but overseas. >> last question. >> there's a recent novel written by daniel silva in which he talks about kim filby in the novel quite a bit. in that he talks about the tension between espionage and politics and basically damns britain because they allowed politics to get involved in the filby situation. can you address the tension between politics in espionage? [laughter] >> except to say that it always

exists. in filby's case, what, obviously what he's referring to is the fact that the astonishment circled the wagons and decided to protect him and there is a theory that they were having conversations that encodes that asked him to defect and get out of here so we don't have to have a trial and to the public which would be embarrassing in much the same way that [inaudible] is protected. i don't know that. it's one of those wonderful perks that everyone uses in writing novels about that. how can you separate them? the espionage is a function of the politics and we are -- it may be true that at the world second occupation but the kind of espionage were talking about which is a vast government

enterprise is a relatively recent phenomenon. in america we do not have central intelligence agencies until 47 with our times. what we are not facing is how do you marshal these fast bureaucracies and how do you control them? will they be self operating a responsive to government directors? these are interesting questions. >> one other work. it was about politics. the cold war was a political argument between west and east in between, and him in the free world. that is in essence what it was about. i don't think how you can separate the two. >> one final anecdote that i can't resist. in 1964, in the 19 '90s i interviewed a cia analyst who in 1954 wrote the world intelligence report and very controversially he predicted the

soviet union was facing economic collapse and internal ethnic tension and he predicted that sometime in the 1980s it would collapse. he was allowed to -- he put this into the port but no one believed it and no one acted or punished and no one wanted to believe that the major adversary was actually a week paper tiger. i think, that said something about the world of intelligence. the ambiguity that was written all throughout the novels. anyway, thank you very much for coming. [applause]

>> book to be live coverage of the 18 annual national book festival is just starting. we will be live here in washington all day long. you can find the full schedule of events on the website, booktv .org. sibley note that in about a half hours before justice so near the mayor will be in conversation and amy will be speaking. those are some of the events coming up we are pleased right now here at the convention center we are joined by author alfredo coach otto. his most recent book called homelands, four friends, two countries and the fate of the great mexican american migrati

migration. alfredo, you open your book this way. the realization that i would have to be mexico for the us literally started me from a dream. >> it's great to be back. you for having me back. my mother to this day reminds me of how difficult it was for me to decide not to decide because they didn't have a way to choose but i was a five -year-old at the time. i would remember being asleep and my mother was talking to her mother, making plans to make the trip north. it was something i could not fathom, something that in our town most men left for the united states but at that time there was a thing called circular migration. people would go back and forth. i did not even know i had a father or even on his name and i

would call him señor because he was gone for six-nine months out of the year and he would send money back to mexico and we had our own little store and the idyllic life if you will. i would test the toys to make sure they work and to make sure that we could sell them so all of a sudden the idea that we were leaving everything behind and the best thing but i remember crying and crying and threw tantrums and i don't want to leave. >> what was your town? >> [inaudible] northern part of mexico about an hours drive from the [inaudible] it's a region called laguna. that was one of the regions that was one of these big sending states to the united states.

central mexico along with "resurgent gathering". [speaking in spanishn] spee5 what was your impression? >> we had to move to wait for our documents but my father's boss was always so afraid that anytime he would lead to mexico he might have a second thought if they are not going back to the us. he was such a good worker that he wanted him all the time. he made him a deal he cannot refuse. we will legalize your entire family so we spent a year in. [speaking in spanish] working and waiting for the paperwork to arrive. i remember taking that drive from el paso to the california onlooking valley among my father sent us a postcard, state

capital and a dry man and on affectionate but send us a postcard. walking us through california. i was the oldest at the time of four and my brother would say are we there yet, are we there yet? i would look at the postcard and say no, not there. thinking this new america, new country would look like the postcard. imagine my disappointment just downright anger when we arrived in a place that was a trailer house in the middle of a melon field and occasionally you have rats crawling up and so forth. i was really, really bad to come to the lysates and have left mexico and the american dream. my parents, to their credit, that it would get better. things would get better. to this day they have us believe that this country that if you work hard and you do things

right that you will have a chance. sometimes a second chance. >> host: back to your book, the homelands, the more i parents talked about the dream the more we rebelled against the notion. i wanted nothing to do with this american dream, not if we had to go to sleep fearful that rats would jump on us. did your parents talk about an american dream? >> guest: everybody in mexico at the time talked about this so-called american dream where you could go and become something. again, mexico has always been the place with the social, class, lease system where you have to know someone and if you are not rich, it's hard to make ends meet or make it to the next level. ...

>> guest: because i love our little grocery store so much. so there budget much of an opportunity to -- there wasn't much of an opportunity to really dream big. and they felt in order to reinvent ourselves, we had to cross the rio grande and go north. >> host: and you crossed legally, as you said. >> guest: i crossed legally. >> host: how did we get from 700,000 or so mexican-americans in this country in the 1970s to, what is it, 35 million today? >> guest: 35 million americans who trace their roots back to mexico. we cross are ared legally -- we crossed legally, but the demand for workers never ended. and i remember, peter, in california being so homesick, missing my family so much. and we were, my father was part

of a program, a guest worker program, and so were some of his brothers. so for those immediate families, we were able to get legal documents. when that program ended -- and it ended because there was the allegations of a lot of civil rights abuses and so forth. wages were low, etc. but when that ended, the demand did not end. and i remember as a kid vividly when employers would come to the house and say, listen, do you know of more people back in mexico? we need more workers. and suddenly, the second phase, the undocumented began arriving. to the point where one day my mom said, you know, don't be sad anymore. everyone's here now. to us that were not undocumented, there wasn't this whole thing about illegal, it

was -- there were people who were going back and forth who were doing their jobs, they were doing their duty and then they would go home for the holidays and then come back. the smugglers were not these members controlled by organized crime. it wasn't dangerous. i mean, these people were our neighbors who would come up north as a gesture of gratitude, you know, we would invite them to lunch, dinner and so forth. and then we'd talk about, well, who else needs to come. and it was very employer, the worker and then connecting them back to mexico. that's really how the system worked. so you asked me how did we get from that number to that number? i mean, the demand never ended. >> host: alfredo corchado's book is called "homelands." he is the mexico border correspondent for the "dallas morning news". he is our guest. phone numbers are on the screen. we're talking about u.s./mexico

border policy. 202 is the area code, 748-8200 in the east and central time zones, 748-8201 mountain and pacific time zones. we'll begin taking those calls in just a few minutes. you talked about the smugglers as your neighbors, as your friends, people you knew. so how did we get into the organized crime business? did you feel welcome at the time? do you think people do not feel welcome today? >> guest: right. well, two things have happened. the drug war in mexico. more than 200,000 people have died since, just since 2006 -- >> host: in mexico alone. >> guest: in mexico. you have the drug trafficking organizations that now really control anything that's sort of illicit in the country, they control. so they are the ones who now control the routes into mexico. you want to come to the united states, you have to go through them. they're not the people from the

same neighborhoods. these are people whose only care is money. i mean, it's all around, it's about greed. so that makes it a lot more dangerous. if you're coming with your family and you're having a hard time crossing the desert, they're not going to care about you, you know? they're not as humane, if you will. the second thing that we have to understand about mexican migration today is that it's not an invasion coming from mexico anymore. in the heyday you were looking at 106 million apprehensions per year, and this was back in the 1990s. today we're looking at less than 175,000 people apprehended. there are more people going back to mexico than people coming back to the united states, so the great mexican migration is pretty much over. we're now dependent a lot more on central americans, we're seeing a lot more central

americans, and we're seeing a lot more refugees who are the ones taking jobs. and so you have a kind of a mishmash in places like meat-packing companies and so forth. central americans, refugees, mexican-american immigrants. so when they say, you know, we need to stop the mexicans from coming in illegally, we need to put a wall, that kind of stuff, if you live on the border, it just doesn't feel real. it feels like maybe that was ten years ago, maybe that was twenty years ago, but that's not the case today. >> host: alfredo corchado, is it because of the demand up here in el norte, or is it because of the policies of the countries that the refugees are coming from that create this mismatch? >> guest: i think both. i think in mexico you have families who had seven children. that was the average. and now it's two. so, obviously, you have a lot less. but you also have, i mean,

again, the demand -- whether it's for refugees or central americans -- someone has to do those jobs. and so i travel places like nebraska, places like iowa, and i see, you know, i talked to one worker who's in the book "homelands" where he said i never thought we would run out of mexicans, and we did. and this person is now working alongside refugees from the middle east, from africa and from central america. >> host: well, let's hear from our viewers. let's hear first from eric in virginia beach. hi, eric, you're on booktv with alfredo corchado, go ahead. >> caller: yes, thank you. the topic i would like to bring up is the separation between so-called hispanics mexicans, cubans. ted cruz is a cuban, marco rubio is a cuban. neither one of these people are

fighting for immigration reform, you know? but they are continually voting in, and texas which has a large hispanic population which i also voted for trump and florida which also has a large hispanic population which voted for trump. why is it not that more hispanics are standing up for other hispanics? and this is my last point right quick. why don't you all bring up people who are coming in from europe and these different countries? russia should have special vetting which is brought up about other people, but russia should -- actually, if i was the president, russia would actually have, i would bar people from russia from actually coming into the country. there's a lot of russians here. so this is why -- >> host: all right, eric, i think we got your point. we appreciate your calling in. alfredo corchado, what would you hike to address? >> guest: the hispanic population is not monolith aric. you do have very -- monolithic.

you do have very different viewpoints. senator cruz, senator rubio, cuban-americans, and they tend to be much more -- at least historically they tend to be much more conservative. you are seeing a change in the cuban-american population. not to the degree that, you know, that i think a lot of mexican-americans would like to see, but he brings up a good point. there is a lot of civic engagement when it comes to the cuban-american population, and think that's really big challenge for mexican-americans, central americans. south america, i mean, just the latinos in general, they need to step up to the plate and stop being bears in hibernation and actually get much more involved in today's political drama that we're seeing. whether you vote for a republican, democrat or independent, i mean, hispanics have to get much, much more involved.

>> host: is there a difference politically between mexican-americans who have been here two, three generations or are here legally toward the undocumented? >> guest: yes, there is. there is generally. i mean, and there are exceptions. but i think sometimes the more assimilated you become, there's this -- and, i mean, i'm not, i'm not a first generation. i'm still an immigrant myself because i came here, but i've seen when you get too comfortable in this country, you turn, you tend to sort of chose the door on the next wave and say good luck to you. but i think that's something that we've seen in other immigrants whether it's italians, whether it's the irish, whether it's the germans. it's part of being, you know, an immigrant in this country. you made it, you've done your thing, you know? let them, let them -- good luck

to them, if you will. >> host: have you had that feeling personally? >> guest: not towards other people, i haven't. because, again, i feel very much an immigrant, but i have felt that done to me, and i've seen it, i've seen even friends do that to other people. but i try to gently remind them that, you know, we're in this together. >> host: and our next call comes from jimmy in santa cruz, california. you're on with author.alfredo corchado. go ahead, jimmy. >> caller: how you doing? >> host: please go ahead, we're listening. >> caller: oh, anyway, i was calling about all of the misinformation that we're getting and this and that. it goes back and forth. it's just, it's a good idea, you know, for the immigrants but let

me ask this sir here when he first came here, where dud they make you go to the live at while they were doing these piss-ass jobs or these pity jobs, you know? they're not making any money, and they say americans don't want to do it, they're doing jobs americans don't want to do. of course they don't want to do it because they don't pay enough money because it costs too much to live, so how are they survive. >> host: jimmy, thank you so much. >> guest: help me out. >> host: what happens when somebody first crosses the border? what's the experience like trying to get that first job? where do they live? >> guest: well, in my family and the people i know before you even cross the border there's a pretty good possibility that you already have a job waiting for you. it's a job waiting for you whether it's agriculture, whether it's construction, whether it's the service

industry, but it's all, much of it is all word of mouth. i mean, one of the things we see, and historically this has been the case, again, historically for immigration you have networks. there's a reason why if you go to the a place like -- to a place like chicago you're going to find a lot of people from durango. if you go to dallas, you're going to find a lot of people from -- [inaudible] it's all network, family networks. so when that family reaches out to my family back in durango, the conversation goes something like this: hey, our employer is looking for more pickers. or our employer's looking for more, for people to help construction. so when you come to the united states, there's a pretty good chance you already have a job. and there's a pretty good chance that maybe your family will help you fund that trip through the

smuggler. and then you have an arrangement with the smuggler where after so many paychecks you pay this person off. a lot of times they live with relatives. they may live in man camps, if you will. but again, it's all very family-concentrated, family-focused. >> host: bob is in carson city, arizona. hi, bob, you're on the air. >> guest: hi, bob. >> caller: over here in carson city, it's arizona. [laughter] anyway, the question i have is for, is about -- >> host: bob, we are listening. please go ahead and talk. >> caller: oh, okay. >> host: turn down your television. >> caller: no, it's down, i just didn't hear what you said. i saw your lips moving but didn't hear what you said.

the question i have is -- well, there's two questions. one is do you think that the government of mexico is under the control of the organized crime? and the other question would be, well, since mexico, i think, is a pretty big melting pot, i would frankly love to see mexico become part of the united states. that's probably not a popular idea. but i think we need the mexican people, and, you know, i think it's important to both of our countries that we could be able to travel back and forth without the constraints, and then the wage laws would be different, and we would all be having a similar sort of prosperity the. do you see what i'm saying? that's all i have. thank you. >> host: bob, we'll get an answer in two seconds, but how close are you to the border there in carson city, arizona? >> caller: i'm not in carson city. i'm in tucson, arizona.

>> host: okay, so about 70 miles from the border. thank you for calling in. alfredo corchado. >> guest: i would not say that cartels control the mexico or the mexican government. i would say that there are regions across mexico that are heavily influenced, and some people would even argue controlled by cartels. but i wouldn't say that's the case with the central government. it's, you know, it's -- mexico's also going through another big challenge right now which is a lot of central americans who are trying to come to the united states and are not being able to cross, you're seeing many, many more seeking asylum and staying in shelters throughout mexico. you're also seeing a high number of mexicans who are now deported from the united states, and these are people who left when they were children or are coming back to mexico. i'll the tell you a quick story. i was just walking around mexico

city recently, and i kept hearing english, and i looked around and these were, you know, real mexicans that could not speak a word of spanish. turns out that these were people who were being deported. the numbers are greater all the time. so these are people who i think are now trying to build opportunity the throughout mexico. i mean, i think this new government coming in is going to be tested not just by trying to stop mexicans from going north as he's promised president trump and promised his own people, but i think the biggest challenge is what do you do with the people who are actually being deported back to mexico. i mean, how do you make them great opportunities for them so that they won't leave again. >> host: how great are those numbers of people being deported? >> >> guest: hundreds of thousands. and i don't have the exact numbers right now, but there are communities throughout mexico -- for example, the community that i focused on in mexico city, the neighborhood is called little

l.a. and it's people from chicago, people from dallas, people from colorado, but they're coming in, and, i mean, you love mexico city, but there's an area called -- [speaking spanish] the monument to the revolution. very historic place. but now you're seeing more and more mexican-americans even if they're undocumented who are now building their own, you know, little shops, restaurants, barbershops, etc. and it's interesting that they believe that they can bring the american dream to mexico. you know? and so they're really testing the tolerance and the generosity of the mexican people themselves. who, ironically, will look at them and say, wait a minute, you're not really mexican. you don't even speak the language. i don't think you have a document. i think you're here illegally. you should be kicked out. so it's the irony of the

anti-immigrant spirit on both sides of the border. but i've heard that these little communities, little neighborhoods are also in guadalajara, i mean, they're all over mexico. and i think those numbers will continue to increase. >> host: this deportation process begin under george w., under obama? >> guest: there were some under president bush, but the big spike came under president obama. the fear now is that the numbers are going to surpass president obama at some point. and, you know, the other question is can this country do without so many mexicans or so many immigrants. we already are seeing big labor shortages in parts of the country. >> host: brian from michigan, go ahead. >> caller: yeah, hi. i hear a lot of the same things as far as labor shortages go with capitalism, that helps our wage go up. so you can understand where i'm

coming from. you know, i looked at mexico's gdp, look at your natural resources, i look at a lot of things, your access to the oceans, all the things that are viable. you have a lot of potential. why don't you tap into that potential and solve your own problems? the united states has far more problems than mexico. just look at our national debt. so when you keep saying we need this or we need that, why don't we just fix our own problems, get off this globalism kick -- and that's what's going on right now -- and just fix and reach our own potential? there's no one here that's anti-immigrant about anything. what we wish for is a healthy, lawful immigration plan, and that's going to be about a million a year, and that's going to be about it. you guys are smart. you have the natural resources. solve your problems and, guess what? we have got a lot more problems. we're $21 trillion in debt.

we have the biggest credit card in the world, and it's going to end one day. so we need to fix our own problems. thank you. >> host: that was brian in michigan. alfredo corchado. >> guest: well, brian, president-elect lopez obrador take the office december 1st, and that's precisely what he's promised to do, fix mexico, fix the country so that mexicans don't have to leave for the united states anymore. i mean, it's a tall order, but there is a sense of this is the first time in over a hundred years when you don't have a ruling party candidate or a loyal opposition party many office. and -- in office. and so he's promised to really change things up, focus a lot more on the people themselves, focus a lot more on creating opportunity by using the natural resources throughout mexico. he's got six years to do that. i'm a reporter, and i will be there in the front seat to see what he does. >> host: alfredo corchado, are

you a u.s. citizen? >> guest: i'm a u.s. citizen. >> host: and you came over at age 5? 6? >> guest: i crossed the border at age 6, and one of my editors, the my first editor at "the wall street journal" thought that i should become a u.s. citizen if i was ever going to become a foreign correspondent. a really, really smart decision. >> host: do you lose your mexican citizenship with that? >> guest: no, which was a big, big deal in the 1990s when president sedillo said you don't have to, you know, say good-bye to your mexican citizenship. i think that opened the doors to a lot of mexicans who felt they were betrying their own country. so -- betrying their own country. so that when you have harsh u.s. policies, it's really the people

on both sides who can try to moderate that. >> host: and noreen in acampo, california, we have 30 secs. please go ahead. >> caller: oh, my question is real quick. i would like to see more assimilation into our country. right now our schools, i'm from california, our school system has went down in the quality, and it's really hard to take all these immigrants in and educate them, get the families assimilated into this country. and so that's why i'm for controlled migration. thank you. >> guest: i, i would say to you give it a little time. in my family i can't find a kid who will speak spanish.

i mean, i think the power of american assimilation is so great that once it takes ahold of you, it's really over. i mean, my parents have been here over 50 years. they still speak spanish. so it's really heartbreaking to not -- to see them not being able to communicate with the younger generation of the kids. i wanted to be a song writer, and i wanted to be juan gabriel, but when i started strumming my guitar, all i could think about was the eagles or the partridge family or "ben," and that was a sign that assimilation had taken over me. so give it a little time. >> host: "homelands" is the name of the book. alfredo corchado's second book. his first one was "midnight in mexico," focused on the mexican drug war. he's been our guest here at the national book festival. >> guest: thank you, peter. >> host: well, our live coverage of the national book festival, the 18th national book festival,

continues. we are going to now go to a room here at the washington convention center. you're going to see justice sonia sotomayor interviewed by the librarian of congress can, carla hayden. she will be talking about the children's versions of her books. this is live coverage on booktv on c-span2. knox [inaudible conversations]

[applause] [cheers and applause] >> wow.

this is so exciting, isn't it. [laughter] i wish every kid in this room could come up to the stage and see what i'm seeing. and i want to remind every kid in this stage that when you grow up, you can do this too. [cheers and applause] >> well, i just -- i'm kerplumped -- [laughter] i am carla hayden, the librarian of congress. [applause] and as you can imagine, justice, this is one of my favorite times of the year, to be at the festival. >> this is amazing. >> and to have you. and i have a bio. i think when they talk about a person who needs no introduction -- [laughter] you might be that person.

but i would like to just read just a little bit, if you don't mind. >> i don't mind. they might mind. >> how about it? [laughter] well, justice sotomayor is an associate justice of the u.s. supreme court, and she was born in the bronx. new york. [applause] she earned a b.a. from princeton university and a j.d -- oh, little applause. [laughter] and a j.d. from yale law school. [applause] and in 1991 president george h.w. bush nominated her to the u.s. district court, southern district of new york. in 1997 president bill clinton nominated her to the u.s. court of appeals for the second circuit, and then president barack obama nominated her to the supreme court -- [cheers and applause]

on may 26, 2009, and she was confirmed on august the 8th, 2009. becoming the first latina on the high court. [cheers and applause] and she's a best selling author, "my beloved world," among others. [applause] however, justice, you have done something remarkable, a first for the book festival. >> and how many years has this been going on now? >> 18 years. >> that's a long time. >> in 18 years we've never had on the main stage books that were written for young people. but because of you -- [applause]

and -- >> carla, kids are powerful. [applause] they are. >> i know. but it took you to get us on the main stage. [laughter] and so that that really intrigued me because i'm a former children's librarian, and we know about the power of books, but what motivated you -- with all of the things that you could do and people asking you to write other books, why would you write for young people? what was it? .. now we're older, and she tortures me, telling me i'm younger. but she's a middle school

bilingual education teacher and when i wrote my parent group, my beloved world, she asked me immediately, to start writing a middle school book. but you know i have a day job. [laughter]. and sometimes i'm very, very busy. it took me a number of years to try to make the time to write this. so i decided to write this, as i was thinking about writing it, i thought, but really how about young readers? this may not be quite appropriate for them yet. if i do one i should do the other, shouldn't i? i thought it was a real challenge, how do i tell my story to young readers in a way they could understand in words but that they could see as well. and so i thought about it and i

said, ah, an illustrated book and then i had the pure fortuity to find an illustrated, illustrator, who could turn my story into pictures and beautiful pictures. and so turning pages was born. and that's me. [applause] walking up the steps of the supreme court. >> i understand she's here? >> that's me, with the high heels, not today. but i have worn high heels. i like them. and there's the littling from which is a symbol of puerto rico. [applause]

and in my hand there's a key and that's what this book is about, the key to success in my life. it's the secret that i want to share with kids. it tells and explains this book how i became successful and what's the answer? i could tell you to read the book. [laughter]. i hope you will anyway but what i know is that i'm here as a supreme court justice only because of books. because read books -- [applause] opened the world to me. so that's what this is about. >> and justice, and i'm going to tell everybody, i don't get to endorse books much now, right,

or anything like that but let's just say i love this book. i got an advanced copy. that is one of the perks, and i couldn't, it was just so evocative of what the power of reading can do. you started with your grandmother. i had a grandmother that read to me, the words until -- >> well, i'm going to start by telling you that probably the most important person in my life was my grandmother. when i started writing my parent book, it was because one day during the confirmation process my mother turned to me and said, sonya, they have forgotten about. that was my grandmother's name,

thankfully you have been here with me, you are so important in my life. i will find a way to everybody will know about her. my way was to put her in my adult book. so i then created this children's book and i include a picture of her at my high school graduation. so that is my oblinita the first scene that you see turning pages is me walking with her, and going on saturday morning to buy a chicken for dinner saturday night. so she's very much a part of this book and in fact, i dedicated this book to her, my mother, and all the role model women in my life because they have really set the stage for who i became. >> and then you talked about, sorry, but i know this book by

heart now. and librarians and anyone that believes in the power of books and literacy will get so much because you talk about seeing yourself, or not seeing yourself in books. books were a lifeline for you, and but you see yourself. >> you know, most of us, not all of us, but most of us, and especially those of us who come from modest backgrounds, we don't get see much of the world as growing up as kids. we all anyway tend to live within a few blocks of our home. that is where we usually play. most of our friends are there. unless you live in big cities like new york and everybody has to travel when they're in new york but for most people your world is very small, or at least the world that you would have it.

the bigger world is something you have to explore with time and age often and so books give you a chance to do that in a way nothing else does. you see television and movies, and even the internet, they present you with pictures, but what they don't let you do is imagine. the power of words is in creating pictures in your mind and when you can do that without telling, television or movies or real pictures telling you what you should imagine, it can become more special and so for me i explored the world as a child with books, and i saw the possibilities of things that i never could have imagined without reading. i could never have imagined traveling to far away places,

and now i do it, but it was, that wish to do it, that lust to meet other people in the world came from reading about where other people lived and wanting to see it. >> what about the, thinking about a legal profession or law and reading helped you get into that? >> well, mothers and fathers are not going to like this. >> uh-oh. >> look, in my life there were no lawyers. i grew up in a housing project which is a place where people without resources, the government helps them find housing and so there were no lawyers in the projects and there were no lawyers anywhere in my life and so i had no opportunities to know about really the law, except in a bad way.

a lot of my cousins and a lot of people i knew got arrested by the police and i knew they went to court and it was very painful for our families and friends but that's not a good sort of image of what law is all about. however, through television i found the tv lawyer, the first one, perry mason. [laughter]. [applause] and showed me that lawyers could help people. and so my first childhood understanding of lawyers and law was that they helped people. and that seemed like the really good thing for me to do. but it took a lot longer, my getting a little older, going to

college and doing other things to realize that what law helps people do is live together. you see laws help our relationships with one another. the laws tell us certain limits what we can with and do and for each other. laws are not morality. they're not right and wrong. they are a way of regulating our relationships so we can manage our competing interests, you know? when your mother tells you can't borrow your brother or sister's toys without asking them for permission? that's the first seed of teaching you what laws do. you can't steal other people's property. you can't take that without them saying it's okay. that is regulating our competing

interests and telling us how we can live better together. and i wanted to be a part of that. i wanted to be a part of or a voice in how we live with each other and that became my reality , by reading about what law did and does, and the good it has done in society. you know, i was born on may 25th, 1954, one month before a very important supreme court case was decided, brown versus board of education. [applause] we are sitting in this room, one collection of people of all races, of all backgrounds, of all, of both genders because of brown. before this our society was

segregated. and segregated right here in the nation's capitol. when i was born i had friends who tell me stories of traveling south to florida, getting on the train and stopping in washington, d.c., and having to go into a segregated car. brown changed my life and all of our lives for the better. now there are some laws that are not very good. they're not good because you don't like them, right? you can find one i'm sure but laws are made by people, and we can change laws that we don't like. [applause] and we can work hard to do that. the point is the law can't get it right all oftime. some very good laws are passed and as the society changes they

have to be amended or altered because they're not doing what the people thought they would do and sometimes the society sits back and says, there are some things that are not constitutional like segregation. we have to change that. and so for me books, again, were the key to my deciding to become what i am today. >> now you also know like comic books. >> yeah. >> you wanted to be a superhero. >> oh, yeah. >> that is in there too. >> can i show them that picture? >> show them that picture. >> all right. >> nancy drew. shoutout to nancy drew. [applause] >> that's me.

when i was diagnosed with diabetes. can i read that passage to them? >> sure. it is the beauty of the words. >> when i was seven i got sick and was diagnosed with diabetes. i was so afraid of the big need did he used to take my blood for testing at the hospital that i ran outside and hid under a parked car. that's me under the car. i would have to get shots every day to stay alive. all those needles were scary. i found my courage in an unlikely place, comic books. after reading stories of regular people who had secret superpowers that could save the world i imagined being as brave and powerful as they were. then i learned how to give myself the shots. and in time i got used to it.

books it seemed were magic potions that could fuel me with the bravery of superheroes. so, me as super girl. [applause] lulu did such an incredible job on every scene, yes, even comic books. i think she is here. lulu is here in the audience. oh, would you please stand up. [applause] and nor nancy drew fans you were really evocative of nancy drew. >> there were in at ticks in my life and i lived in a project

and big building complex later in life. i have only lived in a house once. and that house crooked -- creaked all the time. it came not from the roof but ceiling of the house. i thought my friend was keeping someone prisoner in the attic. it took ages before i admitted it to her. she took me up there, no, sonia, no people up there, it is only because it is a tin roof and sounds like footsteps up there. but lulu put me in a staircase which was much more familiar to me. >> she also showed you being delighted with the delivery of a box of inencyclopedias. >> now the most beautiful thing in the world. now the encyclopedias today are online. they're not selling them as books anymore. i know there is some value

sometimes to online reading. those encyclopedias, if you click on them, on something they're describing, they do a sort of 3d image and move it around. and that's rhett interesting i think. i kind of like it. but i loved the encyclopedias, things i could feel in my hand, turn the pages. i actually believed that if i read every book, that i would be the smartest person in the world. [laughter]. well, it didn't quite work that way. but i did try to read every book and i got through most of them. i didn't understand a lot of them but i tried. and they introduced me to things that were very important later. when i got to college and i was taking courses on things that were new to me i might have read something about it in an

encyclopedia. it made me feel a little more comfortable that i could learn more in college. >> do you get a chance to read anything for pleasure now? i know -- >> hardly not. i get to a little bit. so, i was in canada on vacation for a week. and, oh, some nice canadians in here, right? [laughter]. anyway, they told me that the former chief justice of the canadian supreme court had written a crime thriller. so i read that. [laughter]. >> an escape. >> yeah. it was an escape. >> when you also mentioned you were reading about puerto rico -- >> i do. >> but not seeing people that looked like you in books. i remember when i first saw myself in a book, what it meant to me. >> when i was little, first of

all, my family had come from puerto rico during world war ii. i was born in 1954. many of them, my father, and my grandmother and most of my aunts included an uncle, didn't yet speak english. so i didn't have guidance on what i should be reading in english and because of that there may have been books on biographies or biographies but it wasn't something i was exposed to and because of that i didn't have the opportunity to read about people who were like me. i have known now, i know there are some books about people from so many different backgrounds for kids, that they could see themselves like you did. but we were a new migration to

the united states. not new because we had been a the past the united states answer 1898 but coming over in significant numbers. puerto ricans didn't start until the 1950s. so as a result of that there weren't a lot of books about people like me with curly hair and who spoke spanish. now there are, and you can meet one of them -- >> in this book. >> in my translation. [applause] [speaking spanish] it is very important to me that everything i write be translated into spanish. [applause] >> and published simultaneously. >> yes. now the middle school book, we're a little behind but i'm told in a couple months we'll have the spanish version.

>> but do have the picture book come out in both languages at the same time. >> very important. >> it is important. >> i can give you a secret for those teaching yourselves or your kids spanish. buy both versions. they can read them side by side. [laughter] >> you might be a librarian in hiding. >> i get very tired of sitting down. >> well, we have a treat. i had the wonderful experience of being part of your first book tour when i was in baltimore and you said, you know, i get a little feisty. i want to be out with people. and, i guess i can say security people that accompany you kind of blanch when she does that.

that is what she is going to do. >> that is what i'm going to. >> we'll start with question and answer. i forgot to say that at beginning because i was kind of excited. but we have questions from the audience that you have filled out. i am going to read them. justice, i think you wanted me to ask and say the names. first one is maria. who is a nine-year-old girl. >> okay. can i say one thing, carla? >> i will walk around. it is not fair to all those people back there that they can't see me. [applause] so i'm going to go say hello to people. you will see a lot of people with little things in their ears. a lot. >> a lot of them. [laughter] >> they're here to protect me from me. [laughter] they don't like me doing this i do it anyway.

>> she does it. >> but if you jump up unexpectedly they get scared. >> yeah, no sudden moves. >> if too many of you do it, they will pull me back on to the stage. i don't want that. stay seated please. but i'm going to walk, and whoever asks the question, would you raise your hand, and if you're little, jump up and down or come to the middle so we can see where you are, okay? >> okay. we're going to start with maria. who is a 9-year-old girl and wants to be president. >> oh, wow. [applause] >> and maria wants to know what is your advice what i should do now? thank you, maria. at nine years old. so, maria, where are you, maria.

there she is. oh. >> i'm coming down. >> i'm going to stay here. and the justice is going to see you. maria, you were so smart to ask this now, at nine. [laughter]. because that is never too early. >> hola. will you give me a hug? thank you. [applause] well, who are you here with? >> my mom and dad? >> can we go back there and meet them? let's take a walk. now, maria, i walk and talk. [laughter] i'm so proud of you, for having big dreams. that is so important, because you see, if you don't dream big,

you can't become something big. you have to dream big to want to work hard to get there. and you have to start by studying, because, anything you want want to be requires hard work and a lot of study. nothing in life that you do where you're successful can you do without hard work. even athletes, and a lot of people think, oh, they just get up and throw that wasket ball. they -- basketball. they don't do that they practice and practice and practice until they get really good. that is their study, practicing but they also have to read about basketball. they have to know how to play it and so they have to read all these things that tell them how do i form this line? how do i protect against

somebody getting past me. that is what it will be like in your life. you have to read a lot about a lot of things, especially if you're president, because you have to know -- [laughter]. tell me where your mom and dad are. [applause] you know the president is not only has to know american history, he has to know -- all right. oh, you're here. hello. i'm so proud of you. >> pleasure to meet thank you. >> hello. >> thank you. >> tell me your name. >> general -- jenny gordon. >> i'm anthony. >> he has to know about the world. he has to know about economy. has to know about politics.

what? you're right, thank you thank you. she. she has to know about something. interesting things in the whole world, are curious people. [applause] people want to learn about things just because learning is fun. because you see, the people that are most anxious to learn are the people who tend to do the most in life. so that's my answer to how you become president. [applause] you're welcome. now, i'm not supposed to do this, and people are going to tell me i'm very forward for doing it, but if you become president, will you ask me to be

there, please? [laughter] [applause] wow. thank you. thank you. >> okay, carla. well, justice -- >> you look so tiny up there. >> this is wonderful because i feel like a talk show person because we have more advice. the next question. >> yes. >> from a feminist dad. >> wow. [applause] >> which dad is that? >> 14-year-old son currently not identifying with feminism and female empowerment. can you help? [laughter]. where is the feminist dad and is the son here? [laughter]. here's the feminist dad. feminist dad.

>> which way is he? i'm coming this way. >> oh. is the 14-year-old son here? good. [laughter]. live streaming tv. teenager. oxymoron. >> where is he? >> over here. >> you don't have an older sister, do you? if you do, she didn't beat you up enough when you were a kid. [laughter] >> dad, you're going to get advice. how can you help? does he have a sister? [inaudible]. >> there is the sister. okay, good. >> oh, you're the younger sister, huh? >> maybe you need to go straight to the justice. [laughter]. you can all help.

>> no, i was just joking about that. not a lot. i spent a lot of time beating up my brother when he was little. how are you? >> i'm good. >> it's a pleasure to meet you. now, with my brother, i figured it out, the a certain point when we were growing into our teenage years, that he stayed little only so long. he was going to be bigger than me at some point. that is when i went to him, i said, we have to stop fighting. [laughter]. we're too big to fight anymore. we have to argue. we have to show how our minds can beat each other. to this day he still regrets. he was waiting to beat me up some day and i stopped the game. [laughter]. it is hard, isn't it? because there are some cultural