>> some of these authors have appeared on booktv and you could watch them on our website booktv.org. >> welcome to the washington

convention center and 18th annual national book festival, live coverage on booktv. we have a full day for you. it includes all the programs with supreme court justice sonia sotomayor, former secretary of state madeleine albright and hamilton biographer ron chernow. you also get the chance to talk with doris kearns goodwin, fox meat,ost brian kill best-selling author tara west over and many others. first of from history about every stage it's a discussion on spy work and british spy novelist. this is live coverage of the 18th annual national book festival in washington.

>> good morning, everybody. 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. [applause] i'm going to turn over to carlos and the program in a second. i do want remind you to turn off electronic, silencer electronic gadgets. tv so it won't be appropriate to i'm going to say one thing about carlos and then turn over to him. as probably most of you know at an event like this carlos is the nonfiction book editor at the "washington post." he was also at one time the

economics editor there and nationalr security editor and outlook section editor. he was just this year a finalist for the pulitzer prize 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. so we who to talk about spies and intelligence and maybe hacking, who knows? but it is quite an honor to introduce this point panel. our moderator is kai bird, the author of the good spike of the life and death of robert in. >> is also the co-author of the pulitzer-winning american prometheus and the like of robert oppenheimer which i must confess is one of the greatest market is i've ever read. this device is also the director

of the senator boxer at the center here should of new york. our panelists "washington post" columnist and novels david ignatius, author of ten novels most recently the quantum spy. spy novels joseph kelly, author of defectors, and adam whose latest book is a biography of and yes it's going to be the proper way to pronounce it. we can have a debate about this later. they will be signing books at 1:00. with that until to hand over to kai bird. [applause] >> good morning. so i i assume we all here becae we love a good spy story but we don't really often admire spies,

but we love a good spy story so that's what we're sort of here to discuss, and we have on stage here, exclude myself, really 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. it's called the leon leavy said for biography, funded by shelby white for the last 11 years, and it's a very special thing. it promotes the art craft a biography in a a very specific way. we hand out four, $72,000 fellowships every year. the deadline is in early january so ifan the art any budding first-time biographers in the audience, think about this fellowship. i want to begin by talking a

little bit about robert ames. when i was 13 my next-door neighbor was robert ames, a spy. i had no idea he was a spy. and then years later he was tragically killed in beirut 1983 and i read a novel by david ignatius called agents of innocence. david is not only "washington post" reporter on the intelligence beat but this was his firstst novel, agents of innocence. if no written i think ten. that book got me interested in trying too figure out who my next-door neighbor was. and david encouraged me to do this book and gave me many sources. the only reason "the good spy"

happen is because of david. i first met joseph cannon in los alamos, and his first spy novel was called los alamos, and had in it a lovely just moving portrait of robert oppenheimer whoho i later wrote a biography on, and had to tell joe that his little portrait of robert, iv as he was called, was the best i had seen. better than my 800 pages, which tells you the power of the novel. finally we have all the way from london adam who was a biographers biographer can literally he wrote a biography of the biography, i.e. possible presumptuous task. and now two years ago i guess, three years ago he came out with this massive biography of john

lecarre, otherwise really known as david cornwell. and he rips off the mask from this very enigmatic man that you will know as john lecarre. anyway, we're going to begin with john lecarre. as some of you may already know. john lecarre himself was a spy for about five and half years, and many of his novels draw upon that life, but adam, you explain, while the cooperate with you, he refused to talk about his five years as a spy,, specifically what is doing in germany. you found out a great deal about what he was doing in germany but why the reticence even so many years later? >> well, his answer and there is my answer.

i mean, a bit of background. when he left oxford where he been reporting on his fellow students including a fellow american student who, mi-5, but he had not come in from the cold as it were, he was schoolmaster with any joint mi-5 anywhere for mi-5 for two years before going over to the dark side and joining mi-6 where 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 too it. he is, i mean, lecarre for a long time pretended that he wasn't involved in secret work

that used to say i'm just a simple civil servant, that's all. and he is gradually come out of the closet as it were. he's very much in control of that part of his story. i find out from other sources what he was doing. essentially hidden in the british embassy in bonn as it then was and what was in west germany, he was what's called undeclared. that means he was posing as an ordinary diplomat, the second secretary but he was, in fact, reporting to and what people are mi-6. his was to keep, it wasn't running agents across the boardg into east germany or you the soviet bloc but keeping an eye on political developments on both extreme left and the extreme right in germany. one of his lesser-known books, in fact, a small that in germany which is i think unrecognized,

is much better than people realize, is a much a portrait of what he wasuc doing. >> joseph kanon, turning to you, joe, you seem, along with john lecarre, to have an obsession in your latest book, one of your characters, frank weeks, is clearly modeled after philby. explain your obsession. [laughing] >> i think is what of the most interesting characters or real-life characters that anybody has run across, and we had the great fortune that he wrote memoirs, which are highly questionable and self-serving, but we also the great good fortune, he had four whites, two of whom wrote memoirs about his time in moscow. so if you're an espionage novel

is was not himself a spy of time i come to d.c. by the way on book tours, they will be a question of money audience about that, you know, the craft that is in your books and it's a coded loaded question how long have you been an espionage agent? i always say to them, i have absolutely no idea really what it's like. i just get it from other books. i've never been approached, never been recruited pick someone said of course you would say that. [laughing] so it's a total no-win situation. this series answer to the philby question, yes characters very much kind of an american philby. in large part that's because the number of details about daily life there come from what we know about philby because there's more documentation about him. i think he's an exemplary of what i think we're all interested in spice which is one of the great questions of all

literature, who are we? who is that of the person? how noble can anyone be to us? when you encounter a spy if someone who is deliberately pretending to be someone else. this this is a crime if an under agent. does have a narrative art like an armed robbery or something bigger committing a crime 24/7 all the time. your whole life you are lying to your colleagues, line often to your spouse. you are living a lie. what could be more interesting to a novelist than to write about someone who not only over trying to peel back layers of it and need to know him like he is resisting at the same time. it's a push-pull that any fiction writer is drawn to come and readers i hope. >> that reminds me, lecarre himself once wrote that writers like a spy, real work is done alone.

and like a spy, writers need secrecy. isn't there a sort of similarity between what we all do and the world >> i think you can convince yourself of that. when iser working with davidid i started to imagine myself as an agent and think of, checking out the window whether that's across the street. it is very seductive. david cornwell, the real name for john lecarre, he plays a kind of teasing game as readers will know. he wrote and i bought a graphical novel which depicts someone whose life is identical to his own or to life and whose father is a portrait of his own father.

when his first wife, his divorced first wife read the manuscript of a perfect spy, she says i always wondered whether david was a double agent. and i thought myself wondering that,ag too. i don't think he was actually but he plays that with his readers and carries on doing so. >> so david ignatius, you are spy novels of course draw on your own experience as a foreign correspondent. i've always suspected that the typical foreign correspondent, you were stationed in beirut at one time, often had better sources than the average cia officer. would you agree that's true? [laughing] >> i think one technique that is used as a journalist for many years was to think about who the

cia likely would have recruited a place, and then take a run at the same people on the theory that they've begun to start talking and once the cake is cut, what's another slice? in the time i got started as a journalist, which oversees was 1980, the united states at the wind at its back in people all overpe the world were eager to work for the united states, works secretly for the cia, work openly and otherwise because it was good for them. they would get this is, make friends. that was the way the world was going. i think we're now heading into the wind rather than having it at our back, and maybe it is easier for journalists to approachna people. i'm just going to say briefly in response to the earlier theme of the way in which being an

intelligence officer is like being a journalist, and that's just obviously true on one level. we are trying to pull people, stories from them, trying to establish rapport, trying to get people to say things that they might not otherwise say. but there's one huge difference that you just have to underline right now, which is that journalists if they're doing their job don't lie. you know, we are about telling the truth and we work for our readers. [applause] it's obvious, obvious where in a moment where that role, that understanding that that's what we do and that we're not in the business of line is being challenged. so i get a little nervous i hear people say, well, it's just like being an intelligence officer. it's a little bitut like it but

ideally there's that fundamental split that makes it very different. >> there's also a dark side to the lecarre statement. yes, it's like being a spy but is also a question of are you betraying people as you doing this as a spy in inevitably does? it was a famous who once said ultimately we are always selling somebody out, which means you are drawing material for them and using them as copy with a basis for whatever your writing. without really going to them to the source, one tries to do that as little as possible but it doesha happen. >> may i? i completely applied what david said. that's absolutely right and unprincipled, but novelists, as both a journalist, they're making things up. often they are betraying people in the sense of using people

that they know, people close to them as models or using the experiences they fed with people may be veryy intimate experiencs to construct the plot of the novel. i don't think the distinction is completely clear-cut in that sense. ii think david's parallel betwen spying and writing novels holds in that sense. corn walls novels arere full of the trail and they're not just spies betraying each other. they are people betraying each other and, of course, philby himself with his wife amongst come and many of the people but he wasn't just betraying people for intelligence reasons. he was betraying people, he was an extraordinary duplicitous character, wasn't he? >> well but as a biographer i

find i'm constantly trying to seduce my sources in the same way sometimes that best buy does i guess to cultivate a source. you weress trying, you are not line but you were trying to get people to talk. you had toyo do this with, i'm sure many of cornwell sprints -- >> i tried to do this with david. i often think i know, i no way to get through his defenses and i arrive and start talking to them and to put the killer question and then i realize that he anticipated the question and had prepared an answer. he's very, very skillful and veryev clever man and a often ft that he was playing me rather than me playing him. [laughing] >> so in a larger sense i've

always wondered whether spies are a little overrated. that's actually one of the themes in some sense of lecarre novels. they are either failures or if it actually uncover valuable, actionable intelligence, and david ignatius, maybe can speak to this in your work as reporter having the intelligence world, even with a good spy comes along and offers valuable intelligence, no one in positions of power wants to hear it. it doesn't fit with the conventional wisdom. it's awkward. in history i see examples again and again of this happening. so again i'm wondering while we all love a a good spy story, ae

they not all a little overrated? >> if you mean they overrate the importance of intelligence that's obtained in the flow of history, i think that's probably right. i think of the story, kai, you and i spent so much time inking about. for me it began on a morning paper 1983 when he went used embassy in beirut and about 1230 thymic i leave, and at 1:05 this enormous car bomb detonates, kills robert ames, one of the great intelligence officers the united states has produced. kills everybody in the cia station who's in beirut that day. its searing memory of me is running back r and seeing the ruins of the embassy, the dead bodies everywhere.

and subsequently a cia officer who was determined to find out how that bomb got there that morning. he just made it a passion at a time whenn it is very dangerous for americans to even be in beirut that he went person-to-person, who recruited the shia, hezbollah officer in the south who met the one in beirut, rented the car, et cetera. he gathered all this intelligence thinking people musteo know, all these people died, , all these american heros died. got to find out. and guess what? he finished the reporting and has so far as i know nobody ever did a damn thing about it. that is an example where the truth, you shall seek the truth and the truth doesn't set you free. it doesn't. it's not all that efficacious.

he's a fascinating character. i wish he was here to join our panel because he would be pretty angry about the question. >> and you can't reveal his name. >> well, another time. [laughing] >> no, that's the story, you know, that is still a mystery, who organized and executed this car bomb attack on the first u.s. 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 u.s. government really didn't take any action to try to figure it out. >> for taking your larger point, i think there's room for a lot of skepticism about the value of the intelligence. ipt mean, if you think of many f the most important episodes in recent history from pearl harbor to the attack on the twin towers through the failure that they, the concocted story of weapons

of mass distraction, et cetera, et cetera, again and again these are intelligence failures. they may be failures of the cia or mi-6. i think we should regard intelligence skeptically. and often the intelligence is there. it just hasn't been recognized for properly analyzed. that's really i think as far as i understand the problem is, i think, i mean, the cia has much greater and the nsa has much greater resources than any other intelligence agency. and in a sense they to have too much intelligence, so much that you can't see the wood for the trees. just a vast -- not clear what the shape is. >> that reminds me of a story when i was doing my biography of mcgeorge and william bundy, the two bundy brothers, william

bundy had worked in the cia for a long time in the 1950s can working under a name name william langer who was a harvard professor who would been recruited to become head of the office of national intelligence in 1952. 1952. and when he was recruited he told allen dulles, well, i can't possibly do the job if you give me more, more than 25 analysts. [laughing] he wanted it small and lean, and he recruited bill bundy is one of those 25. of course today we have an intelligence bureaucracy that numbers -- david, how many? >> oh, my gosh, to cut all the agencies, meaning many tens of thousands, it's crazy. when that getting our monies worth. >> a good example of the failure, british intelligence

came in 1940 when british and french intelligence failed to predict where the germans were going to attack and they cut through the allied armies and caused the fall of france, cause the british to fall, leaving he quickly got at it was an disaster natural to an intelligence is analyzed it was shown that the were indications where the germans were going to attack. they should have done. if it is improper analyzed they would have, they should have known that but they just, there were not the t mechanisms in place. >> he was simply told the hitler was going to invade and decided to ignore. >> again and again. >> so maybe our fascination with spy stories comes from the fact that these stories are metaphors for human failure. we are all human. we all fail. we all make mistakes, and spy

stories are a particularly vivid vehicle for showing how this happens. >> ien think it's fair to say, t most spy stores are triumphant. they are about people who succeed. when people say we're all working in the shadow, i think that's true. i think he invented the modern espionage novel as we know it, but one of the great innovations and what makes it a vehicle for exploring character is it essentially, he took it away from those lampposts and trenchcoats and brought into the office. i think all of his novels come when what or another, are about office life this is particularly to a small town in germany. if you notice there's very little violence, very little actual secrets with the plot usually involving intelligence agency discovering each other

and whose betraying whom it and in a sense this is very accurate because he was lucky to be in the cold war which from the fiction writing point of view was a wonderful source of eternal, great subject. because which i'd was a war in which the ground troops with intelligence agencies. your know, combat troops did engage in time to time but all during the cold war it was the intelligence agencies who are really on the front line. you had a wonderful subject all of which we could relate to. very few of us will ever live like james bond but all of us have worked in office with theirs and a a possible person controlling the files, you know, abbas who turns up late and never answered you. all of those things. if remember in spies who came in from the cold, what presumably precipitates his disaffection is a a quarrel over the pension payment made. very bureaucratic.

>> and tinker tailor soldier spy there is a scene in which willem steals a file from the archives and he is carefully, he manufactures a a dummy fell tot in its place. it's described as one of those exciting scenes ever set in the archives. [laughing] it is, in fact, extraordinarily tense and very dramatic, but it's really just a man going into a room of files, taking one file at a putting another in its place. that's what happened .. 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 >> the routine nature of intelligence work at its best and just getting ready for our discussion, i went back to my library and went back to the very firstle john la cray novel published in 1962 "a call for the dead" and the first chapter is called a brief history of george smiley and opens with a description of exactly the character that we'd lived with in so many novels. this is his very first book and he always sees smiley and describes him as breathtakingly ordinary. and in the first paragraph, his wife lady ann runs off with a cuban race car driver.

and she's always betraying him, the tanker, tailor. and he has the espionage to draw on and he had the brilliance and it was drawn from lincoln college and austin and his first boss, mi-5. and it's drawn from real people. there's george smiley, his wife, the sense of betrayal and peter willem is in the first book, and the inspector, if you know the books. they're all there and then he just, he has that deck of cards from the start and then he keeps playing them through his career, right down to the legacy of spies, the most recent book, which i love which has the same people in the first book. amazing. >> i'd like to echo that. i mean, i think that the thing about george smiley is that he is a complete contrast with

james bond. james bond never questions what he's doing is right. james bond is an action man and he has no real inner life. smiley is all the time troubled, anxious that the human damage being caused to all of these little people and ordinary individuals is worth the gain. the gain is that he's troubled all the time ands' even worried about his arch enemy, carla, at the conclusion of smiley's people carla comes across and peter willem says to him, george, you won. he's not sure that he did win. and he is sort of hoping that carla will actually go back because he feels sorry for him. and so, smiley is a man with a conscience and he's not -- he's full of ambiguity. he's not an out and out cold war warrior. >> adam, at that brings us back

to your auto biology, you sort of rip the mask off this guy. he's an enigma. and you get close to him and tell very intimate story about love affairs, mistresses, wives, betrayals of his wives. his troubled childhood. his crazy con man father. it's very revealing and so, i wonder, how did he -- and you had his cooperation. how did he react to the book? and why does he publish his own memoir "the pigeon tunnel" in 2016? i guess he must have been working on that when you were working on your biography, no? . to answer the first part of his question. >> how did he react? >> he reacted with a 22-page

e-mail with 200-something numbered points. as you can imagine when i received this -- i had an agreement na that he would be the first person to read the manuscript, before my editor and anybody else. and a few days later this e-mail came thudding into my inbox and my first reaction was dismay. when i started to go through it, the points were generally points of fact, constructive, thoughtful and we only really locked horns over perhaps a dozen of them and he gave way on half a dozen and i gave way on half a dozen. so, it wasn't really a problem in that sense. on the other hand, i won't pretend that he's entirely happy about my book and he seems to have gotten more grumpy about it as time has gone past. b but, you know, i feel if he had been entirely happy with it,

then, perhaps it wouldn't have been-- i wouldn't have done my job properly. i had to not be too friendly and he recognized that, too, i think. he's a very-- he's a very thoughtful man about biography as well as everything else, very-- he's editor-- not long-term editor, bob gottlieb has dealt with a great many finals and clever people said to me that david is the cleverest man i ever met, bar none. and i would put him up there, too. >> so did your work inspire his memoir? >> well, it's described as a memoir. in fact, it's a collection of pieces most of which have been published before. the longest piece appeared in the new yorker in two parts, back in, i think it was 2000 and 2001. so, it's really not quite a memoir in that sense. there are only, i think, two or

three chapters that are new. he told me that he wanted to publish this quite early on in the process and told me to hurry up because he said, i'm not getting any younger. [laughter] >> and that's fine. i mean, you know, i don't own his life. it's his life. if he wanted to write an autobiography, at that would be fine with me and i would be the first person queueing up to read it. >> the current books, as joseph explained, are the human side, the ordinariness, the little human foibles about him and intelligence, but david ignatius, your final book is called "the quantum spy" and it's about quantum computers and it's a look into this high-tech world that we're

living with today in the ages, social media and such. very timely. and yet, even in this story, the role of human intelligence is central to understanding the plot. can you talk a little bit about your book and your thinking about --. >> i think one challenge for spy novelists is that increasingly spying is about computers and the internet. i mean, covert action is the -- as we've seen with the russians, planting, amplifying of information through computer networks. the classic penetration stories, mole stories that john wrote about it, involving electronic means of contact, compromise. and so, the last five or six years, i've been trying to

figure out as a novelist, how you can be -- i like to write realistic spy novels. you can write faithfully, it's about the intersection of computers, machines, and human beings and also write something that doesn't feel like the extra credit problem that nobody wants to answer. and believe me, if you're writing about quantum computing was right on the borderline. it's really complicated. but, it is-- you know, it's sort of like the manhatt manhattan project. it's a machine if they can build it, will be ever to uncry uncrypt-- unencrypt anything that's been encrypted and you have it, you have an advantage for long while. it's a race between us and

china. the chinese know how important this is and that we're going to capture this technology. you want to write about it and how to make it real. the challenge in this book was inventing interesting chinese intelligence officers. for me, in all of my books of the things i'm proud of, the jordanian intelligence officer in "body of lie", the officer interested in "blood money", in this book the character, i think is an interesting, subtle person. it's hard to make american intelligence officers as subtle as you want. it goes against our grain. you know? so i have fun often with the foreign characters in these books. >> another way to deal with this issue is just going to the test. you know, someone said to me, where do you write historical novels?

i think of it as the recent past and it's predigital. i find it much more interesting to meet someone on a park bench and passing a newspaper to me. whenever anyone says upload on your server, i think it's very hard. >> so, joe and david, two novelists on the panel here, why have you never been tempted to do biography? >> it takes too long and there's too much work. [laughte [laughter]. [applause] >> well, that's true, it is -- it takes longer to write a biography than at that novel, most of the time. but i think there are many similarities between the forms, and look, you know, we have been talking about a lot the legacy and et cetera, and i think the most profound legacy, i side from adding good writing to the genre hats been, you know, to me one of the great

things that literature can do, is operate as an agent for moral enquery. and i think that he did that. what he was exploring was not simply the people with these people but how they were going to deal with morality of the actions that they were asked to participate in. it's the fundamental question should always be how do we live and how should we live? i don't mean that writing should should be prescripted and no novel can answer that. novels need to ask that other than they're just james bond, which are perfectly fun and god knows we'd like his success and his money. but i think what he did was open the whole field up to moral questions and i think ultimately, that makes good literature. >> so, adam, going back to lecarre-- >> david? >> no, my answer would be just

like joe's, it's too hard to write n write-- too many footnotes. >> and i live in the world of fact twice a week and i have to write-- i get to write columns for "the washington post." you have to read them, but then you don't have to read them either. so, i'm immersed in the world of fact and to be able to escape it for this big canvass where you don't have to at the end say, this is precisely what you should think. this is precisely how it turned out. you can let all the ambiguities exist. i'll write one nonfiction book and that will be my memoirs. until then, i don't think so. >> okay. we look forward to the memoir. so, adam, finally, sm--

many of the lecarre's novels of critical of the cold war. that's the message you get from them and his later novels become increasingly, i think some critics have said bitter and anti-american. can you explain his politics? . i'm actually giving a talk on this subjecten wednesday for the woodrow wilson center. i mean, his -- most people in general, i think this is a generallization, become more conservative as they get older, but david has gone in the opposite direction. he's become more radical and more angry. and i personally think to the detriment of his fiction. i think his best work was in the period when he was writing about george smiley, when he deals with the ambiguities of the cold war and the fact that neither side was completely right and neither side was

completely wrong. now his novels appear to me to be much more black and white. and there are goody and baddies. and more james bond and i'm afraid the baddies are american and the brits, too. i think there's a certain strain in david of -- well, i think it's a slightly old-fashioned chippy attitudes of some englishmen feel about america, resentment of america taking over from our predominant role, which is not only exemplified in the events of the second world war, but also in the minds of intelligence officers in mi-5 and mi-6 and that was very much in the culture and also a

feeling of bee musement by the fact that they'd been betrayed by mclane and et cetera. so, yes, i agree, his politics have become more one-dimensional and less interesting, myself. so, i think we have time for five or section minutes of questions, if there are any from the audience. there's one right behind you, i think. think. >> american spy, baseball player, writing film "david" and hopefully filming, kai. hollywood which i'm not a part of, it's glamourization of what

a spy's life is like, more detailed work than intelligence work. certainly in terms of getting italian scientists out and they really did him injustice in the feature film that hollywood just made with all of these shootouts that had nothing to do with his career. so, i'm just asking you, do you agree, two questions, that hollywood, i think, james bond -- i like the early james bond, contributed away the hard work a spy does? and second of all, i think we need in terms of the cybersecurity, i wonder what david thinks. because we don't need military parades. we don't need to go to the moon, we've got to figure this out. [applaus [applause]. >> well, we need the iss back, we need the president that--

i think, i can't wait for your documentary on moe burke. hollywood has been faithful to the essence of what those books are about. they didn't screw them up. they didn't put a gun in smiley's hand or even peter rowen's, even though his guy was a scalp hunter and tough guy stuff. a movie was made of one of my novels, "body of lies", and it was faithful to it. and i think that hollywood doesn't want to get out of-- >> the movie of my novel was terrible. and if they added some guns, it might have helped. [laughter] >> good morning and thank you for the discussion today.

one of the motivating factors of spy novels as i see it is the class of civilizations. how will the novel genre emerge over time with a change in clashes of civilizations between the u.s. and the soviet union to the u.s. and china, to other venues of conflict? and how is that going to change how spy novels are both written and understood? >>. >> i think that's really an interesting question and at the moment in a memory of hiatus. >> it's an interesting clash of the century we're in is going to be chinese. there's a great question, how much do fiction writers know about chinese culture and how much can they access muslim culture and middle eastern

culture? it's a rarer knowledge on our part whereas russia is the devil we know and the devil we've been writing about for decades and i suppose to be frivolous, one of the things they've done is give fiction writers a kind of space, because they insist on being center again. and just when you thought that russia with withdraw from this role, there they are. they will not be shouldn'ted aside at least in espionage. the great advantage that they've had. for a while i think we'll continue to have post-cold war kinds of fiction being written, but ultimately people are going to have to adjust because what's really important is what going to be china. >> okay, we have two minutes left. >> quick question. i'm arnold and i reported abroad for the associated press and united press international and this is sort of,

mr. ignatius, who's columns indicate you have access, considerable access to the intelligence community. now, we have a situation where, the president of the united states is very antagonistic to the intelligence community. i wonder if you see a pushback from the intelligence community, a situation that could be quite dangerous? >> though there is this argument on the right, the deep state, the intelligence agencies is doing just that, is pushing back, i don't see that. you know, i have limited visibility. all i need to say, most of the stuff how much i know about the intelligence agencies is nonsense. i wish i did. but from what little i know it's mostly what i think of

that richard helms philosophy, let's get on with it, let's do our jobs. and he think, both in terms of recruiting sources, in terms of liaison relationship, in terms of all of the humdrum activities around the world, people just keep doing them. they have at the top of the pyramid, a white house that as we all know is unpredictable. the pushback that you're thinking about, every time i'm asked, i'm told, not really happening and not just by americans, but by people overseas. >> thank you. >> the last question here. >> there's a recent novel written by daniel desilva "the other woman", in that he talks about the tension between espionage and politics, and basically damns britain because they allowed politics to get involved in the sillby

situation. can you address the tension between politics and espionage? [laughte [laughter]. >> except to say that it always exists. in this case, i think obviously what he's referring to is the fact that the establishment circled the wagons and decided to protect him. there is a theory that they were coding -- they were having conversatio conversations that in code, for god's sake get out of here so we don't have to have a trial and we'd have to expose everything, much the way that emily blunt was protected, et cetera, et cetera. i don't know that for a fact. i think it's one of the wonderful things that people use in writing novels of that period. how can you separate them though? i mean, the espionage is a function of the politics, and we are--

you know, it may be true that it's the world's second oldest occupation as everybody likes to say, but the kind of espionage which we're talking about, which is a vast government bureaucratic enterprise is a relatively recent phenomenon. in america we didn't have a central intelligence agency until 47 and within our lifetimes that's really short. how do you marshal these vast bureaucracies? are they going to be self governmented. >> the cold war was about politics, wasn't it? a political argument between west and east, between communism and the free world, that's in essence what it was supposed to be about. so, i don't see how you can separate the two. >> okay, one final anecdote i can't resist. in 1964 i--

in the 1990's i interviewed a cia analyst who in 1964 wrote the world intelligence report and very controversially, he predicted that the soviet union was facing economic collapse and internal ethic tensions, and he pr predicted sometime in the 1980's, it would collapse. he was allowed to put this into the report. no one believed it, no one acted upon it and no one wanted to believe that the major adversary was actually a weak paper tiger. and that, i think, says something about the world of intelligence, the ambiguity, which carret wrote about throughout his novels. anyway, thank you very much for

coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> and book tv's life coverage of the 18th 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 our website, booktv.org. simply note in a half hour, supreme court justice sonya sotomayor, and doris kearns goodwin will be speaking and

those are some events coming up. right here at the convention center we're joined by the author of "homelands, four friends, the great mexican-american migration", you open the book this way. the realizization i would have to leave mexico for the u.s. startled me from a dream. >> first of all, peter, great to be back. thank you for having me back. my mother, to this day, reminds me of how difficult it was for mae to decide-- not to decide because really didn't have a way to choose. i was a five-year-old at the time, but i remember being asleep and my mother was talking to her mother, making plans to make the trip north and it was something that i just couldn't fathom. something that -- in our town,

most men left for the united states, but at that time there was a they think called circular migration, people would go back and forth. i didn't even know that i had a father. i didn't even know his name. i would call him senor because he was gone six, seven, eight, nine months of the year. he would send money back to mexico. we had our own little store. we had the idyllic life, if you will. i would test the toys to make sure they worked, to make sure we could sell them. all of a sudden the idea that we were leaving everything behind and going to a new country that everyone says was the best thing that could happen to us, but i remember, i cried and cried and cried. and threw tantrums, saying, i don't want to leave. >> what was your town? >> san louise durango, northern part of mexico, an hour's drive

from the biggest town there, near torione, laguna, and that's one of of the regions, one of the big sending states to the united states. leguna, central mexico, along with others, et cetera. and alberto, at age five, what was your thoughts of el norte? >> i didn't cross until i was six, we had to wait for our documents. my father's boss was so afraid anytime he leaves to mexico, that he might have a second thought and say, i'm not going back to the u.s. he was such a good worker that he wanted him all the time. so, he made him a deal that he couldn't refuse, you know. we will realize your entire family. so we spent a year in juarez waiting for the paper work to arrive, rit cross --

right across el paso, texas. i remember taking that drive from el paso, to the california san joaquin valley and my father sent us a postcard of the state capitol. very dry man, unaffectionate man, but sent us a postcard. i'm the oldest at the time. oldest of four and my brothers would say, are we there yet? are we there yet? and i'd look at the postcard, and i'd say no, thinking this new america would look like that postcard. imagine my disappointment, just downright anger, when we arrived at a place which was really a trailer house in the middle of melon fields. occasionally you'd have rats, you know, crawling up and so forth. i was really, really sad i left mexico to come to the united states and that this was, you

know, this american dream. my parents, to their credit kept saying, it's going to get better. things are going to get better. they have to this day, this belief that this country, that if you work hard, you do things right, that you will have a chance and sometimes a second chance. >> back to your book, "homelands", the more my parents talked about the american 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? >> i think everybody in mexico at the time talked about this so-called american dream where you can go and really become something. i mean, again, mexico has always been the place with the social, the class, the elite system, where you have to know

something and if you're not rich, it's pretty hard to make ends meet or make it to the next level. my parents are rural people, very little education. they went up to the third grade. so, they didn't see much of a future for us. they-- the more they thought that we could maybe do, i could own a merchant store somewhere because i loved our little grocery store so much. so, there wasn't much of an opportunity to really dream big and they felt that in order to do that, in order to reinvent ourselves, we had to cross the rio grande and go north. >> and alfredo corchado, you crossed legally. >> i crossed legally. >> how did we get to 100,000 or so mexican-americans in the country to 35 million? >> 35 million americans who trace their roots back to

mexico. 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, et cetera, 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 one day, my mom said, don't be sad anymore, everyone's here now. and they weren't undocumented, there wasn't a whole thing about illegal, there were people going back and forth, doing their jobs and 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 and as a show, as a gesture of gratitude, we would envite them to lunch and dinner and talk about 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 do we get from that number to that

number? the demand never ended. >> alfredo corchado's book, "the homelands", a correspondent for the dallas news. and the number on the grescreen the number is on the screen. for central and mountain and pacific time zones, we'll begin taking 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 weem-- people do not feel welcome today? >> two things happened, the drug war in mexico. more than 200,000 people have died just since 2006. >> in mexico alone. >> in mexico. you have the drug trafficking

organizations that now really control anything that so sort of illicit in the country, they control. 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 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 in the 1990 a he is -- 1990's, today less than 175,000

apprehend apprehended. there are more people going back to mexico than people coming to the united states. so, the great mexican migration is pretty much over. we're now dependent a lot more on central americans, seeing a lot more central americans, and seeing a lot more refugees who are the ones taking jobs and so, you have a kind of a mish-mash in places like meat packing companies and so forth. central american refugees, mexican immigrants. so when they say, you know, we need to stop the mexicans from coming in illegal and we need to put up a wall. if you live on the border, it doesn't feel real. it feels like maybe that was ten years ago, maybe that was 20 years ago, but that's not the case today. >> alfredo corchado, is it because of the demand up here in el norte or the policies of the countries that the refugees

are coming from that create this mismatch? >> i think both, in mexico, you had the families that had seven children and now it's two so you have a lot less. but you also have, the demand, whether for refugees or central americans, someone has to do those jobs. and so i travel places like nebraska and iowa, and i see-- you know, i talk to one worker who in the book "homelands" he said i never thought we'd 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. >> well, let's hear from our viewers. let's hear first from eric in virginia beach. hi, eric, you're on book tv with alfredo corchado. go ahead. >> caller: yes, thank you.

the topic i'd like to bring up is the separation between so-called hispanics employees, mexican and cuban. ted cruz is a cuban. marco rubio is a cuban. neither one of these people are fighting for immigration reform, but they are continually voted in and texas which has a large hispanic population, which i also voted for trump, and florida which 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, quick. why don't you all bring up the 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 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. and thank you for calling in. and what would you like to address. >> guest: the hispanic population is not monolithic. you have different viewpoints. senator cruz, senator rubio, cuban-americans, and they tend to be much more, at least historically at least much more conservative. you are seeing a change in the cub cuban-american population not to the degree that that i think a lot of mexican-americans would like to see, but it brings up a good point. there is a lot of civic engagement when it comes to the cuban-american population and i think that's really the big challenge for mexican-americans, central-americans. south america, just latinos in general, i think they need to step up to the plate and it --

it's better than hibernation and get involved in today's political drama that we're seeing. whether you vote for a republican, democrat or independent, 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 here legally, toward the undocumented? >> yes, there is. and there is generally, i mean, there are exceptions, but i think sometimes the more assimilated you become, there's -- 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 tend to sort of close the door on the next wave and say, good luck to you. but as i think that's something that we've seen in other

immigrants, whether it's italians, the irish, the germans. it's just, it's part of being an immigrant in this country. you've made it, you've done your thing, you know, and let them, let them-- good luck to them, if you will. >> host: have you had that feeling personally? >> not toward other people. i haven't. because, again, i feel very much an immigrant, but i have felt it done to me and 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 corc h corchado. go ahead. >> caller: how are you doing? how are you doing? anyway, i was calling about all

the misinformation we're getting this and that, and it goes back and forth. and it's just -- it's a good idea, you know, for the immigrants let me ask, when he first came, where did the mexicans go to live at while they're doing these jobs, these jobs, you know, they're not making any money, and they say that americans don't want to do it. they're doing jobs americans don't want to do it of course they don't want to do it because it costs too much to live, and to survive and that. >> host: thank you very much. >> guest: help me out. >> host: i think his question is more, what happens when somebody first crosses the border? what is the experience like trying to get that first job? where do they live? >> 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 and one of the things that we see and historically, this has been the case again. historically for immigration. and you have networks. there's a reason why, if you go to a place like chicago, you're not going to find people from durango. and if you go to dallas, california a lot of people, it's all networks and 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 is 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 a smuggler after so many paychecks, you pay this person up. where they live, a lot of times they live with relatives. they may live in man camps, if you will. but, again, it's all very family, family concentrated, family focused. >> host: bob is in carson city, arizona. hi, bob, you're on the air, hi, bob. >> caller: carson city, it's arizona. anyway, the question i have is for -- is about--

>> bob, at least go ahead and talk. >> caller: oh, okay. >> host: you're on 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. anyway, the question i have is, there's two questions, one is do you think that the government of the mexico is under the control of organized crime? and the other question would be, well, since mexico, i think, is a pretty big melting pot, mexico to 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, 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? >> 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 the cartels control the government. i would say there are regions of mexico are heavily influenced and some would argue controlled by cartels. i wouldn't say that's the case with the central government. you know, it's -- mexico's going through another big challenge right now, which a lot of central americans who are treeing 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 tell you a quick story. i was just walking around mexico city recently and i kept hearing english and these were real mexicans who could not speak a word of spanish. turns out these were people who were being deported. the numbers are greater all the time. and these are people who i think are now trying to build opportunities throughout mexico. 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 create opportunities for themselves so they won't leave again. >> host: how great are those

numbers of people being deported? >> 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 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, barber shops, et cetera, 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 ga guadalajara and all over mexico and they will increase. >> host: and this process began under george hw or obama? >> there was some under president bush, but the big spike 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? i mean, we already are seeing big labor shortages in big

parts of the country. >> host: brian, oscoda, michigan. go ahead. >> caller: yeah, 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've looked at mexico's gdp and looked at your natural resources, access to the oceans, all the things that are reliable. you have a lot of potential. well, do you tap into that potential and solve your own problems? and the united states has far more problems than mexico. look at our national debt so when you say we need this, we need that. why don't we just fix our own problems, get off this globalism kick and that'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've got a lot more problems. we're 21 trillion dollars 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. >> guest: well, brian, the president elect takes office november 1st and what he promised to do fix mexico and fix the country so mexicans don't have to leave for the united states anymore. this is the first time in over a hundred years you don't have a ruling party candidate or a loyal opposition party in office so he's promised to really change things up, focus a lot more on the people

themselves. focus 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? >> i'm a u.s. citizen. >> host: you came over at age five? >> i crossed the border at age six and my first editor thought i should be a u.s. citizen if i was a correspondent. >> host: do you lose your mexican citizenship? >> no, it's a big deal. in the 1990's, the president there said you don't have to say goodbye to your mexican citizenship. i think that opened the door to a lot of mexicans who felt that they were betraying their own country. so now you have a lot of bi-national resident citizens in both countries with the

hope, on the mexican side and on the u.s. side, that come day you can create sort of bridges of understanding, or voices of moderation, between both sides, so had a when you have harsh u.s. policies, you're from mexico, over from mexico to the united states, truly people on both sides who can try to moderate that. >> host: and noreen, in acampo, california. we have 30 seconds, 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 of 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 would say to you that 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 a hold of you, it's over. my parents have been here over 50 years, they still speak spanish. so, it's really heartbreaking not to see them, not being able to communicate with the younger generation. the kids. i wanted to be a songwriter and when i started strumming my guitar all i could think about is the eagles or "the partridge family" or ben and that's a sign that assimilation had taken over me. give it time. >> host: "homelands" the fate of the great mexican-american

migration. the first book was "midnight in mexico" focused on the mexican drug war. he's been our guest at the national book festival. >> guest: thank you, peter. >> host: our live coverage of 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 justin sonya sotomayor, interviewed by the library of congress carla haden. justice sotomayor will be talking about the children's version of her books, "turning pages" and the beloved world of sonya sotomayor. this is live coverage of book tv on c-span2.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] . [applause]

. [applause] >> wow! this is so exciting, isn't it? >> isn't it? >> 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 i'm kerpluked, but i am carla haden, library of congress. 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 we talk about a person who needs no introduction, 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. >> 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 jd, oh, a little applause, a little applause. and a jd from yale law school. and in 1991 president george h.w. bush nom nighted --

nominated here to the u.s. district court. in 1997 president bill clinton nominated here to the u.s. court of appeals for the 2nd circuit and then president barack obama nominated her to the supreme court. [applause] ... 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 remar however, justice, you've done something remarkable, first for the book festival. how many years hass this been going on? >> eighteen 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. >> but it took you[l to get us n the main stage. that really intrigued me because i'm ari former children's librarian and know about the power of books but what motivated you with all of the things you could do and people asking you to write other books? why would you write for young people? what was it? >> with respect to the middle school book, the beloved world of sonya sotomayor, kids, you're going to meet my cousin miriam. she's six months younger than i

am and i tortured are always told her i was older. now we are older and she tortures me telling me i'm younger. [laughing] but she's a middle school bilingualer education teacher ad when i wrote my parents book, my beloved world, she asked me immediately to start writing a middle school book. but you know i have a day job. [laughing] and sometimes i'm very, very busy and took me a number of years to try to make the time to write this pics i decide to write this as i'm thinking of writing it, i thought but really, how about young readers? this may not be appropriate for them yet so if i'm going to do one i should do the other, should i? and then i thought it's a real

challenge. how do i tell my story to young readers in a way that they can understand in i the words but tt they could see as well? so i i thought about it and i said, it was a strange book. and then i had the pure for 280 to find an illustrator who could turn my story into pictures, and beautiful pictures. and so "turning pages" was born. and that's me walking up the steps of the supreme court -- >> i understand she is here. >> that's me with a high heels. not today but i have worn high heels. i like them.

and there's a symbol of puerto rico. [applause] and in my hand there is a key. and that's what this book is about,bo the key to success in y life. it's the secret that i i want o 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. [laughing] i hope you will anyway, but what i know is that i am here as a supreme court justice only because of books. because reading books -- [applause]

-- opened the world to me. so that's what this is about. >> and justice, and i'm going to everybody, i don't get to endorse books much now or anything like that, but let's just say i love this book. [laughing] i got an advance copy, one of the ferc's. and they couldn't come it was just so provocative what the power of reading can do. you started with your grandmother. i i had a grandmother who read o me. >> well, i'm going to start by telling you that probably the most important person inn my lie was my grandmother. when i started writing my parents book, it was because one day during the c confirmation

process my mother turned to me and said, sonya, they have forgotten about your grandmother. i said i know, mom, because, thankfully you were here me angevin so important in my life, but i will find the way so everybody will know about her. and my weight was to put her into 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's her. and the first scene that you see in "turning pages" is me walking with her 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 the stage for who i became. >> and then you talked about, sorry, but i know this book by heart now. and librarians and teachers and anyone that believes in about a books and readingib and literacy is going to get so much because you talk about seeing yourself, or not seen yourself in books. books were a lifeline for you and so you got to see yourself. >> you know, most of us, not all of us but most of us, especially those of us who come from modest backgrounds. we don't get to see much of the world we were growing up. we all anyway tend to live within a few blocks of our home. that's what usually play.

most of her friends either,, unless you live in big cities like new york, and everybody has to travel when they are in new york, but for most people, your world is very small, release the world -- the figure bigger with something at the exposed in time and age often. and so books did you chance to do that in a way nothing else does. you see, television and mary's 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 television or movies or real pictures telling you whatld 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 faraway places. and now i do it, but it was that wish to do it, that last to meet other people in the world, came from reading about what other people lived and wanting to see them. >> what about, thinking about a legal profession of law and reading help to get into that? >> well, mothers and fathers are not going to like this. 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. 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 andai it was very painl 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. [laughing] [applause] and he showed me that lawyers could help people. and so my first child at understanding of lawyers and law

was that they helped people. and that seemed like a 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, loss help our relationships with one another. the laws help us certain limits of what we can do with into and for each other. laws are not morality. they are 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 you can't borrow your brother or sisters toys without asking them

for permission, that's the first seed of teaching you what laws do. you can't steal other peoples 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 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's done in society. i was born on may 25, 1954, 1 month before a very important supreme court case was decided, brown v. board of education. [applause]

in this room, one collection of people of all races, of all background, of both genders because of brown. before this our society was segregated. and segregated by two in the nation's capital. when i was born i had fancy tell me stories of traveling south to florida, getting on the train and stopping in washington, d.c., and having to go into -- go into a 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 are 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 that the law can't get it right all of the time. some very good laws are passed and as the society changes they have to be amended or altered because they are not doing what people thought they would do. and sometimes the society it's back and says, there are some things that are not constitutional, like segregation. and 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 and you wanted to be a superhero. >> oh, , yeah. >> that's in there,he too.

>> can i show them that picture? >> show the net picture. nancy drew. shout out to nancy drew. [applause] >> hold on. that's me when i was diagnosed with diabetes. >> can i read that passage to? >> show. the beauties of the words. >> when i was seven i get sick and was diagnosed with diabetes. i was so afraid of the big needle used to take my blood for testing at the hospital that i ran outside and hid under a a parked car. that's me under the car. [laughing] i would have tots get shots evey 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 imagine 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 supergirl. [applause] >> lula did is such an incredible job on every scene, yes, even comic books. and i think she's here, lula is here. would you please stand up? [applause]

>> and for nancy drew fans you really were provocative of nancy drew. there were no no and next in my life back in. i live in a project and then in a big building complex later in life. i've i live in the house once, and that house creaked all the time and it came from the roof, not the roof but the ceiling of the house, and i really thought that my friend was keeping someone prisoner in the attic. [laughing] it took ages before i admitted this to her, but she took me up there and said, no, sonia, there's no people up their tickets only because it is a an roof and it sounds like there are footsteps up there. t 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 encyclopedias. >> the most beautiful thing in the world. now, , the encyclopedias today e online. they are not selling them as books anymore. and i actually know there's some value sometimes to online reading. those encyclopedias, if you click on them, on something they're describing, they do a sort of 3-d image and move it around. and that's pretty interesting i think. i kind of like it, but i love the encyclopedias. can feel in my hands and turn the pages. i actually believed that if i read every book that i would be the smartest person in the world. [laughing] 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 get c to college and i ws taking courses on things that were new to me, i might have read something about it in an encyclopedia and that made me feel a little more comfortable that i could i learn more in college. >> do you get the chance to read anything for pleasure now? >> 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?? [laughing] anyway, o they told me that the former chief justice of the canadianca supreme court had written a crime thriller, so i read that. [laughing] >> and escape. >> it was an escape. >> when you mentioned you were

reading about puerto rico and -- >> i do. >> but not seen people that looked like you in the books. i remember when i first saw myself in the book and 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 ing was exposed to. and because of that i didn't have the opportunity to read about people who were like me.

i know now because i know that are so many a books about people from soo many different backgrounds for kids that they could see themselves like you do. but we were a new migration to the united states. that you because we've been apart of the united states since 1898, but coming over in significant numbers, puerto ricans didn't start until the 1950s. answer 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 -- this book. >> in my translation. [applause] [speaking spanish] is very important to me that everything i write a translated into spanish.

[applause] >> and published simultaneously. >> yes. now, a middle school book, we are a little behind on adult and a couple of months we will have the spanish version. >> but two of the picture book come out in both languages at thee same time. >> very important. i could keep a secret for those of you who are teaching yourself and your kids spanish, by both versions. they can read in side-by-side. [laughing] >> carla, i get -- >> you might be a library in hiding. >> i get very tired of sitting down. >> well, we have a treat and i had the wonderfulie experience f 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. i guess i can say security people that accompany you kind of blanche when b she starts th. [laughing] but that's whatt she's going to do. >> that's what i'm going to do. >> we are going to start with question-and-answer period i forgot to say that at the beginning because i was kind of excited. but we've question from the audience that you have filled out, and i'm going to read them, and justice, i think you wanted me to ask and say the names. and the first one is maria who is a nine-year-old girl. >> okay. i say one thing, carla? i will walk around. it's 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. [laughing] they are here to protect me from me. [laughing] they don't like me doing this. i dowa it anyway. >> she does it. >> but if you jump up unexpectedly, they get scared. >> no sudden moves. >> and if too many of youou do , they will put me back on the stage.e. i don't want that, so stay seated, please. but i'm going to walk, and whoever asks the question, would you raise your hand, and if you were little, jumphe up and downr come to the middle so they can see where you are, okay? >> okay. we're going to start with maria who is a nine-year-old girl and wants to be president. >> all,. [laughing] [applause] -- wow.

[applause] >> and maria wants to know, what is your advice about what i should do now? thank you, maria, at nine years old. so maria, where are you, maria? there she is. [applause] >> i'm coming down. >> i'm going to stay here and the jessica is going to see you. maria, you were you are so smak this now. [laughing] at nine, because that's never too early. >> will you give me a hug? thank you. [applause] >> well, who are you here with? >> my mom and dad. >> can we go back to so i can meet them? all right, let's go take a walk. now, maria, i walk and talk.

[laughing] 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 to be requires hard work and a lot of study. nothing in life that you do where your successful can you do without hard work. even athletes, and a lot of people think, oh, they just get up and throw that basketball. they don't do that. they practice and practice and practice until they get really good.

that's their study, practice, 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's what it will be like in your l life, so you have to reaa lot about at lot of things, especially if you are president. because you have to know -- [laughing] [applause] [cheers and applause] >> you tell me what your mom and dad are, okay? you know, the president does not own have to know american history, he has to know -- all right. [laughing] hello. i'm so proud of you. >> it's a pleasure to meet you. >> hello, hello. >> tell me your name.

>> ginny gordon. >> i'm anthony. >> anyway, he has to know about the world. he has to know about politics but he also has to know about the economy. [shouting] >> what? >> she. >> you're right, thank you. [applause] >> she has to know about everything but you know something? the most interesting people i know in the whole world are curious people. [applause] people who 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? [laughing] [applause] >> wow. >> thank you. okay, carla -- >> well, justice, you are so tiny of their. >> this is wonderful because i feel like a talkshow person because we have more advice. the next question -- >> yes. >> from a feminist dad. >> wow. [applause] >> my 14-year-old son is currently not identifying with feminism and female empowerment. can you help?

[laughing] where is the feminist dad, and is the sign here? [laughing] here's the feminist dad. >> which weight way is the? i'm coming this way. >> and is the 14-year-old son here? good. [laughing] live streaming tv, teenager, oxymoron. >> which way? over here? >> you have an older sister, do you? and if you do, she didn't beat you up enough when you were a kid. [laughing] >> dad, you're going to get advice. how can you help? does he have a sister? [inaudible] >> there's the sister.

>> all right. >> good. >> you are the younger sister? >> maybe you need to go straight to the justice. you canau all help. >> no, i was just joking about that. not a lot because i spent a lot of time beating at my brother when he was little.ti [laughing] how are you? >> i'm good. >> is a pleasure to meet you. now, with my brother, i figured out, at a certain point when we were growing into our teenage years that he stayed little only so long. and he is going to be bigger than me at some point. that's when he went to him and said, we have to stop fighting. [laughing] we are too big to fight anymore. we have to argue. and we have to show how our minds can beat each other.

he said to this day he's to regrets. he was waiting top beat be up y and i stopped the game. [laughing] it is hard, isn't it? because there are so many cultural influences, even when kids are small, about what toys they should like. the boy toys versus the girl toys, all of those things. but i think feminism, rightly defined, is respect for women. [applause] that requires your insistence. it requires making sure that when women talk or men talk your child learns how not to interrupt. it means teaching him that

listening to peoples ideas requiring letting them talk those ideas out. it requires teaching him by exampleex and otherwise that won do powerful things. and you can show him a supreme court with three women. [applause] and i can say something that i'm going to be chided for, probably have my hand slapped but i'm going to do anyway. there's a movie called rbg. [cheers and applause] it's about my friend, and unprivileged to call her my friend, but she was an advocate for women's rights.

and i don't o know that in of te movie i have ever seen might teach your son why equality of women is so important. [applause] don't give up on him. they all grow up. >> thank you. i teach government inn high schoolov in barely which has 70% aspanic population and it's great to have your picture up on my wall and a look to what you can do, to. >> thank you. [applause] >> be very proud. all right, let's take a picture with them. where is my -- >> all right,al you guys. i think he has an orange speedy

one y of you have to get the picture of them, okay? that's your job. >> thank you so much. [applause] >> wow, and he has a baltimore orioles cap. justice, not this question is from a fourth grade teacher, and i think it's something that all of those would like to hear you talk about. when you felt discouraged, what has helped you powers to that feeling? and this is a teacher, dorothy copeland, who's asking for a fourth grade student. and teachers are so important in terms of being able to help outside of the home. >> who is that teacher? >> this is the teacher. dorothy, why don't you go and -- >> come on down so i can keep

walking in the back. thank you. >> that you would -- >> you know, i think wrongly now, but i when i was thinking about what i would be when i grew up i didn't think i had the patience to be a teacher. i still don't know if i could have that patients. >> thanks a lot. >> but i know one thing, which is the strength of our country is in our teachers. [applause] i for one really thank you from the bottom of my heart to every teacher whose patience seems

endless, and who sacrificed san all of rbf is so great. you are never paid enough and you are never admired enough, so thank you. [applause] it took me a very, very long time to figure out that the best way for me to become less discouraged was to talk to people about how i felt. you know, for a lot of my life i would haveav self-doubt. i would be afraid. i would be sort of anxiety ridden about something, and i would try to power through it and almost ignore it. it really eats you.

it's like your stomach is constantly churning, and in the end when you're discouraged, you can't find the good in things because you're discouraged. and so it took me a long time to realize i have to share what i'm feeling with other people. now, that's not so easy because sometimes you look at your parents and they may be unhappy about something and you didn't want to make them more unhappy, right? so maybe they are not the best person to share it with at that moment. although i learned, it took me a long, long, long time in my life that when a should things with my mom, she b made such a big difference in helping me deal with what i was dealing with. but if that doesn't or can't work for you, there's always a

teacher. sometimess apparent of a neighbr of one of your best friends are sometimes it's someone in your sunday or saturday school religious experience, and sometimes it's just another friend. and if you're a good friend and somebody comes to you who's a friend and says, i'm in trouble, you have to help them find an adult to help you. that's what being a good friend is when you were little. but in the end i think it's important for every child to know that they are not alone, that what they feel are things that other children have felt. even children like me. when i was little, and so to me that's the first lesson, learn how to share what's bothering you. good luck to you.

>> thank you. [applause] >> and, justice, i i think this isth another question. well, this is a three part. first, do youou anticipate writg another book in the future? you rock. [laughing] >> what a greatla question. my gosh. how are you? it's good to see you. >> thank you. >> a long time. >> it has been too long. >> i have another children's book coming out next september. >> great. [applause] >> good. >> and who asked that question? over there? okay, come on back over here with me. >> come on back because, it's

also what book or books have been important to you personally? >> what was the second part of that question? >> what book or books have been important to you? >> you have to read the children's book, because every vignette tells you about a book that was important to me at a different stage in my life. and even now i read books that always come every book brings you a different insight. they bring you a different way of looking at things. i find virtually, can't say all, but a lot of books do that for me. that's why i read. so i learned a lot about the canadian legal system from that thriller, you know? more than i knew because i knew a lot about their appellate practice, because that's what i do now, but i did know that much about their trial practice and how similar it was two hours.

but the next children's book is about kids life challenges, and it starts with me as a little girl being diagnosed with diabetes and the fact that a lot of people seem to be getting myself an injection, and they never asked me why i'm doing that. so this book was born from an incident that happened to me when i was younger. i was in a restaurant. i gave myself a a shot before i begin to eat. and at the end of the mill i was walking out andlk they overheard some woman saying, turned out to be her companion, she's a drug addict. and i walked back and i looked at her and i said, i'm a

diabetic, that's why took a shot. you shouldn't assume bad things about people. [applause] and the working title, it may have another tablet before we finish, is just that. i want people to know that kids who look different or maybe doing things in a different way, that they are not strange. they are just like you and me, and they have a condition that they have to take medicine for or accommodate for, but they are just as important as anybody else. and that difference in riches l our lives. and so i have kids who are blind and i have kids in wheelchairs. i have kids with attention

deficit and tourette syndrome and down syndrome. each of them hase' a vignette where they describe their condition and they describe have that condition has made them stronger. and it's set in a garden, and in that garden scene i point out to kids some trees need shade, some need light. some plants need water and some plants need very little. and yet together all of those plants and trees create a beautiful garden. and together all of us who are different create a better world. [applause] thank you. thank you for asking me that question. >> thank you.

>> and, justice, the third part -- >> they promised you a picture. >> thank you. >> this was a three-part question. >> oh, my gosh. >> with you rock after each one. [laughing] okay. >> how do you maintain your hopeful outlook in these challenging times? [applause] you rock. [laughing] >> all right, who is the three-part question? who asked it? and wrote youhat rock? nobody -- >> this is three-part. >> okay. we don't haveo a choice, do we? we don't. we have to make the world

better. i started by saying to you we are not bystanders in life. we can't be. we can't let things happen to us. our responsibility is to make a better world, and when the time gets tough, t that's when the tough have to stand up. that's when we have to get up and do something. and that's the whole mission of my being a supreme court justice and what i go speaking to audiences all the time. i believe in civic participation. [applause] and i believe that that's a job not just for people interested in politics. it is a job for every person that wants to live in the kind of world that they think is a fair and just world.

and so for me when it gets hard, i know i have a job to do. it's your job and my job. i can do mine this way because i'm a justice and i can't get involved in politics, but you can. so get out there and make a better world, please. [applause] carla, i have to come up whenever, like ten minutes before, so you have to tell me. >> well, kelly wants to know, our last question, andur there e more questions that are about advice, but here's the last one. kelly. what is your biggest piece of advice for our next generation of the girls? with a a smiley face.

next generation of girls. kelly? where is kelly? there is kelly. justice, could you go -- kelly, could you go to the justice? >> where is kelly? >> kelly is coming. >> hello. how are you? >> what advice would you give the young women who aspire to be supreme court justices? >> don't ever let someone tell you you can't do it. >> kelly wanted -- biggest piece of advice. >> we can become anything we want to through hard work, getting yourself educated. and as i said before, practice. but there's lot of naysayers who will pop up in your world. people who will tell you you're a a woman, you can't do that. or you can't do that because, are you latina?

no. you look very mediterranean, you do. >> thank you. >> if they will tell you can't do it because you are black. people told me i couldn't do it because i'm lucky enough. you know, there were some writers who said when i was nominated to the supreme court, you're not smart enough. those things hurt. when people show a lack of confidence in you, it sometimes scare you away from trying, but you can't. because you know you, and you know how strong you can be and you know how hard you can work. you just have to look at people who say that to you and say, that's what you think. it's not what i think. good luck. [applause] >> at such an honor to the under presence. i'm a teacher. i'm going to tell all my girls.

>> thank you.ha [applause] >> one of them had her get you the picture. >> justice? >> yes? >> i know that we've run out of time. >> i have to go up there. hold on i'm going to walk around. >> i know you want to talk and shake hands and come back this way. would you mind if i read a little bit from the last part of your book as you come up? >> i'm going to come up. i will promise you. i will get around. [laughing] [applause] >> hi you guys up there. you are too far up, i'm sorry. hello. hello. thank you. thank you. >> i'm going to read the book. [laughing] because this is the very last

part. >> all right. why don't you read while i i wk up? >> i'm reading because, and lulu, your beautiful illustration at the last is a puzzle piece, and it's gorgeous. and the words are flame, electricity, magic m potions, friends, boats, snorkel, time machine, launchpad, linz, teacher, life preserver, mirror, map, key. the written word has been all of these things to me, and more, for as long as i can remember. like flagstones on a path, every book i ever read took me a next step i need to go in school and in life, even if i didn't know exactly where the trail would lead. piece by piece the puzzle came

together. where will your journey lead you? and there's a timeline of your life and people can follow your life through reading and books as they look at the wonderful, wonderful illustrations. now, i have to say that one of my favorite pages was describing the fact that i was lucky to have a library that was in my neighborhood. [applause] walking distance from the home, from my home. four hours i would sail away to the wondrous lands and the stories i which used from the stacks the library was my harbor and books were little boats that helped me escape the sadness at home. you can see -- >> carla, could you hold up that

page with the little boat? >> the one about the library? >> the one about the library. >> yes. >> a library card is stuck in the boat. lulu did research and found an example of the library card i had as a child. >> she has a library card. and it's interesting because in this illustration -- >> and assume every child in this room has a library card? [applause] >> in this illustration the dark colors represent time in your life. when you were nine years old. [speaking spanish] >> and you felt sad and confused, and you needed to find a place where you could find comfort. and that was the library. that wasas the harbor. >> and that's still a place, not just with quiet but with a sense

of peace. because there you have the key i found to life, the key of books. [applause] >> and for booklovers everywhere she said books were my loyal friends. they made it so i never felt lonely. and, justice, thank you for -- >> thank you. [applause] >> for everything. >> thank you. [applause] >> and sharing your journey with us. [cheers andnd applause] >> thank you so much.

[applause] >> well, i think that we have had truly an honor and a living testament to the power of words and books and reading. thank all of you for waiting in being here. [applause] >> thank you, everybody. thank you.

[cheers and applause] [applause] >> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> and you've been watching justice sonu sotomayor and library of congress carla hayden having quite the conversation with a very large audience you at the national book festival, the 18th annual national book festival. by the way, 20 years of booktv this month celebrating and for 20 years we've been covering the women on your screen right now and that is doris kearns goodwin. doris kearns goodwin, , you've been very gracious to booktv over 20 years we appreciate you taking calls with the audience right now. let's tell the audience right away, this your chance to talk with doris kearns goodwin. 202-748-8200 is the eastern/central time zones. 202-748-8201 for those of you in the mountains and pacific time zones. you've read the work, you know

what you want to ask her. here's your chance. ms. goodwin, your most recent book focusing on president lincoln, teddync roosevelt, fdr and lyndon johnson. why did you pick those? >> guest: those with those i felt closest to. i spent the most time studying and each one of those lived in a very turbulent time in a time of crisis. often makes leadership more necessary and more possible. when i chose the title five years ago i didn't expect it to be as it was today. but in certain sense of the we can give reassurance because sometimes we think were living in the worst of times and yet if you look back at what a sweet we first came into office, a civil war with 6000 people who are going to die just on the horizon. he said if it ever known how difficult it would be to get

through the first months he didn't think he could've lived through it. teddy was a concern as industrial revolution when there was a pair of evolution, of war between labor and measure manaw briquette, fdr at the height of the depression and lbj with the session object and they were all dating for the time especially lbj for civil rights, if not for the war in vietnam. i wanted people remember that so they could feel we done this before, we can do it again, they all suffered personal or political disputes prior to then coming of age. >> guest: we argue resilience that one of the most important qualities in the growth of a leader. each one of my guys can i do call them like i sometimes did i know that may sound disrespectful but i'm socially with them having lived with them so long come to each of suffered really bad reversals and grandson. lincoln had a near suicidal depression when he felt had not

theater was that lost his wife and mother in the saint denis a mouse but that made him grow by being out in that country. fdr of course had polio which to accuse of fighting to be able to walk and be in a wheelchair and lbj in a different way that suffered a sense of loss which should not compare to the terrible reversals but was like a repudiation of himself .. r he. that brought him back to the person he had been before. he had looked for wealth and power. >> host: that was in 1955 he had his heart attack? >> guest: correct. he lost the first race in '41. trying to win the second race he became more conservative, eschewed wealth and power. when he had the heart attack

>> that led to great achievements in civil rights. >> you consider all sorts of presidents to be - -? >> with every fiber of their being. outside of politics, every one of them would have been very hard. william james said there comes a time in everyone's life when you find that voice within that says this is the real me. they all found that on the campaign trail for the first time. they knew this is what i wanted to do. >> leadership in turbulent times is the title of the book. who would you have included if you had a chance? >> probably george washington. everything he did set a precedent for the country. i just didn't know him well enough. i have to know my guys in order to look at them in a new way. >> living today, how would you

come here today to some of the times we've experienced in the past?>> i do think there were harder times for the majority of the people. in terms of their everyday life. when you think of the civil war, people in the depression in not knowing how they would eat or sleep. but i think we file lack of etnorm because we don't feel th sense of leaders working together to solve our broken political system which has been broken for a while. so it increases that sense of anxiety we feel. that's what's interesting about each one of these, not every leader is fitted for the moment but each one was fitted for that moment. >> you knew lbj personally. what was your connection? >> i was a white house fellow when i was 24 years old. what happened is we had a big dance at the white house. he said he wanted me to work there before him in the white

house but it turned out in the w week prior to my selection while i was a graduate student at harvard, i'd written an article against him because i was against the war movement. so i thought he would kick me out of the program. but to my surprise, he said bring her down here for a emyea. if i can't win her over, no one can. so i ended up working for him in the white house. and that i worked on his memoir the last years of his life. it was the most whimsical, come the gated character i ever met. >> to go . [indiscernible] collects his father once told him, if you brush up against the grindstone of life, you will have no power than anyone that goes to harvard and yale but he said i wanted to believe him but i never did. he was as smart as anybody you could possibly know. he had been restless in college and high school so he didn't read the same way that maybe lincoln did. it was thought people with

academic pedigree is looked down upon him. li've mother when he wanted me to move to the rental time and i wanted to go back to harvard to start teaching. he said, don't let those harvard people change your feeling about me. i know how they feel about me. somehow the mcnamara's, the fundies, the kennedy people.st he never thought he quite lived up to. and on domestic politics, he did more than any of them. >> - - is our guest. stephen is on the air. >> good day to you. thank you for taking my call. i recall i think it was madison said, we will have good people. we will have good times in our republic but we won't always have good people. i think that comes back to the

structure of the government. the checks and balances. really the people and how we come together. we have a system where were not being brought together by our politics. we are being separated even more. and i hope that mr. madison and mr. jefferson and all the people now construct our government, that their imperfect invention will somehow kick and people will realize that my worst enemy isn't my neighbor.it isn't the lefties of the righties. it's the people who would destroy our republic and our union. >> i understand what you're saying. i think you're right. one of the things that teddy roosevelt said was the way democracy was founded was that

people in different sections and parts of the country's and classes couldn't understand the other people's points of view.o that's when you need leadership to go across party lines to bring us together and unify us. and we've had so many divisions in this last year. in congress, it's not just republicans and democrats. it's tribalism as if the other side has nothing you want to listen to. and the citizens have a responsibility right now. when you think about the big changes in our country, it's from the bottom up. we have the progressive movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the gay rights movement. now is the time we have to band together and decide who do we want as our leaders? how will we fix our broken political system. what will we do about congressional district in. campaign financing.any problem that was created by mane can be solved by man we can do this. we just have to have the confidence to believe we can. >> identity politics and

tribalism, have we ever had. s where we weren't playing identity politics? >> i think we have when we come together. even teddy roosevelt was able to bring the west and the east together because he had rational reform for the capitalist and the wage workers and the rich. t obviously by the second inaugural of abraham lincoln, the whole theme was that - - by both sides. both sides - - [indiscernible]. so we've had divisions always in the country. but we seemed to have ways to bring us together. look at the way the civil rights struggle played out in the 50s and 60s. eventually we get the civil rights act.

we get voting rights, fair housing. we do something together. we will again. we just have to fix it somehow. >> why do you think the lbj civil-rights leadership perhaps didn't carry over? >> it certainly carried over to the great society. it certainly carried over to domestic politics. but foreign-policy was foreign to him. he thought somehow he would be able to persuade people it was better to have whereas on domestic things, he told everybody everything. he loved it. and that makes a difference. >> can you see similarities between lyndon johnson and president trump?

>> i think they're both larger-than-life characters. their emotions are close to the surface. i think with lbj, when he came into office even the night he died, he already knew the person to which he wanted his presidency to be devoted. it's that i want voting rights, medicare, education and the civil rights bill. he drove that congress. but the congress and the presidency had nowhere near the relationship that they had in lbj. he would call them at seven in the morning and 10:00 in the morning. he once called a senator, he said, i hope i didn't wake you up. the senator said i was just lying here, hoping my phone would go off. >> you refer back to your book - - you said one of abraham

lincoln's signs of leadership was - - >> he understood that he did have experience so the very night he won the presidency, he made the decision that i will put - - each position in my cabinet. so his secretary of state had been his main rival. the governor of ohio thought he should have been present president. thought they were better, more educated and more celebrated. within months, he realized he was the greatest leader of them onall. having those - - in there, meant they could govern the country. if he could convince them, he could convince the country. >> ryan is calling in from stanford, connecticut. >> thank you for taking my question.

it's pretty simple. how important is creativity to the issues you studied and their success? specifically, do you have any techniques or tricks they used to generate innovative ideas? thank you. >> very interesting question. i would say creativity is essential.it's not something you can detect easily. i think the most important thing they were able to do is to get out of washington and find time to think. i will give you an example of that. when fdr was in washington in 1940 and was no way we could give aid to england. he knew he had to do something to help churchill was being bombed by germany. he took a 10 day fishing trip to get away from the bureaucratic struggles in washington.on that trip, he created himself, came up with the idea that we would lend our weapons to britain and then they'd give them back at the

end of the war. which made no sense but it worked. he said if your neighbor's house is on fire you lend them your hose and then you get it back when the fire is over. but he said he couldn't have thought of that had he not gone away from washington. - - it was there he thought through the whole process of why he could use military necessity for the emancipation proclamation. i think especially in our 24-7 world, that's a problem for all of us. not having a time to think. we bring our email and internet everywhere. creativity often depends on the solitude and that ability to come up with different problem-solving solutions for the problems you face. >> - - for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. that caller mentioned creativity. what about intuition?

>> intuition is huge. i think one of the things all of these people had was when they were talking with somebody, they could feel something about what that other person was feeling. what would move them? what would change them, intuition and a certain sense is a personal sense of what a group of people are feeling. i think the more people they looked into, the more ea experience they had. teddy roosevelt once said he started in politics not really thinking he would change and make people's lives better. but once he started as a politician going into the that houses and police commissioner work. he could feel what other people were feeling and developed an intuition about what might help those people.i think the more people you listen to, the more you get out of washington, sometimes it's an internal wquality. johnson could walk in a room and he would know exactly what that senator wanted.

it's not something tangible that he would know. he wants to be remembered overtime just like i do. you can come with me on the civil rights act. bring some republicans to break the filibuster. - - [indiscernible] >> roosevelt was a pulitzer prize winner when it came out. a team of rivals, 2005. several other books in between these. you kind of disappear when you're writing a book, don't you? >> it takes me so long. it took me longer to write about world war ii than a war we thought. it took me five years to write this. seven years to write - -. i'm

not just writing. i'm reading, researching. i'm going to places where i'm reading their lettersand diaries. i love the process . >> do you love the book tour? it's been a rough year. >> it has been rough because my husband died.in a certain sense, it gives me something to do. something to think about and i do love meeting people and giving talks. once you've written these things, in a certain sense never have i believed history is more important than now. i really do feel unless we can imagine another political system than the one we have right now, unless we can imagine the relationship between our citizens differently. history allows veus to know we' had these times before. once you imagine rsomething, yo can make it happen. remember when fdr said at the beginning of world war ii that we would build 65,000 fighter

planes a year. we were building 4000 at the time. he said people have to imagine a target. that's what i'm hoping this book would do. i really care about it emotionally. to know we've been through these ups and downs before. america is not as fragile as we think it is. that's what my husband was saying. he was working on his book love e he died about his of your with america. all of his experiences with lbj and bobby kennedy. he was watching what was happening now and he really believed he had seen the ups and downs. he said the end of america - - and that america is not as fragile as we think it is. >> - - and i will finish the book. that's the next project we are working on. >> stephen from four stills, new york. >> i have a question for ms. goodwin.

i would like to ask her about the impeachment of andrew johnson. i was a history major in college but i didn't read much about his impeachment. i was just curious if she could enlighten me regarding that situation. >> i think what's the content for the impeachment was there was a big split in the cabin and the country between the radicals and the more conservatives and how to handle the south. lincoln had hoped before he died that there would be a gentleness toward the south. that we should allow people to come and come back into the union so long as the rights for free black were respected. secretary edward stanton was on the radical side that he loved lincoln but he was probably willing to push the south more to give more possibilities to the blacks and make sure the southerners didn't override them.

and so he was actually fired from the cabinet and there was a tenure of office act that supposedly didn't allow you to do that. it was a big fight between congress and the presidency over the filing of this guy. but much more importantly, it had to do with different ways of handling - - he said that lincoln's - - would have been the difficult task he would face. he had won the war but had the patience, he had the humility and persistence and i believe he could have handled it better and maybe we'd be better off now than we were. andrew johnson just wasn't qualified for that. he probably didn't deserve the impeachment. in the end, it did not stand up in the senate. he did win that part of the battle by a very small margin. by one vote i believe. >> april 1865, lincoln is killed. when does andrew johnson get

impeached. >> the problem began really right away. on the day of lincoln's inauguration, which was march 4 of 1865, andrew johnson was making a speech before lincoln gave the famous second inaugural.the speech was a terrible speech. he started saying how he came from the people and he looked at - - and went against them. he seemed like it too much to drink and people were putting their hands over their - - i remember feeling lincoln had worried from that moment on. the trouble began pretty soon. it was clear even though it was governor of tennessee and had been a unioner, that he wasn't up for the job. >> - - talked about the four months between lincoln's first election in his first inaugural

in march and what happened in the country.so that's all in leadership in turbulent times. joe from idaho, we have 30 seconds left. >> i was calling to see if mrs. goodwin rswould be interested i george washington because of the great leadership he showed, with the constitution. i think that would be one of the best examples of leadership. >> i couldn't agree with you more. i wish i knew more about george washington. the most important thing is not only how he led us during the revolution, became the first president. setting precedents along the way but this amazing letter he writes when he's on the way to

his inauguration. he worries about whether he has the strength to take our country through this but he said, i have integrity and firmness and i have character uc and that's what i can depend upon. we were very lucky to have him as our first president. he's the guy i'd love to know more about. if i had more time i will study george. >> tathat's what i was going to ask you. who's the next president you want to take on? is it george washington? >> i wdon't know. i will work on movies were a little while because that's, a great journalist - - studying teddy roosevelt. i got involved with the lincoln movie. i love working with steven spielberg and i was a a consultant on all the way about lbj. a friendof mine who worked with me , said you're forming a movie company. i think we will make documentaries. they don't take 10 years hopefully. >> is the most recent book,

leadership in turbulent times. >> thank you so much as always. >> booktv is celebrating 20 years on the air this month. the book festival here in washington is in its 18th year. we have covered it all 18 years and our coverage goes all day from the washington convention center. coming up next, author amy - - and autobiography she's written. she will be speaking to the audience in just a few minutes. you can find our full schedule for the day at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations]

ladies o, good afternoon and gentlemen. wonderful to see you all here. i name is marie and i am the literary director of this festival. very happy to welcome you here. [applause] >> thank you for coming out. sitting next to me, i want to announce is not secretary madeleine albright. [laughter] i will be talking about fascism later. before we start, i just want to take a moment to say a very big thank you to our sponsors and donors. this festival would not happen without the funding from people like