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 you.

sponsors, donors. go down to the expo floor and tell them thank you so much for putting this festival on. no amount is too small so if you're willing to contribute, we ask that you do. it takes a lot of money to put this on to give it to you for free. so thank you very much. [cheering and applause] we want to keep doing this. we want to keep giving it to you for free. now, i am sitting next to amy who is the only author, about 115 authors here today who was chosen by pbs's, the great ppamerican bead. [cheering and applause] chosen as a book by the public, by the american public. there will be voting on the 100 books that were chosen. chosen for having written a

book. it was the joy luck club that changed their lives. yeah, thank you, whoever voted. [applause] >> joy luck cloak was followed of course by - - and 100 secret senses. all of her fiction which has been extraordinary. in the nonfiction as well. saving fish from drowning. and now the wonderful memoir that she's wwritten that she's given to us and we will be talking about today. but, i have to say, amy. i will start with this. i am hispanic. when i read your book, joy luck club. i felt a real connection because it is families who come to this country with breaking

their own culture and tradition. coming here with a completely different universe. suddenly, you are american. the generations change. distances grow. tell us about uhow you feel about the >> i thought it was ironic when i was writing that book, i thought no one will get this book. this is going to be so weird. people say nobody had a family like that. a lot of the stories were based at least emotionally, situationally, on my family. and so i was so surprised when chinese-americans, women or men said this book was, they identified with it. as you said, had people from all sorts of backgrounds tell me that. >> the interesting thing to me was that reading it and reading books like yours, maxine kingston.

you realize that there's another way to think as a citizen of this country. as a part of this fantastic american ndexperience. we all come with different heads and history. >> i think we also come with a similar heart and that's where it comes from this connection. if you can get people to feel what you're feeling ein the story, you have more of a chance to have them. this book to be universal. i never intended it to be universal. i never intended for my emotions that were very private to link with that of other people. and it surprised me. i was grateful. that they found that residents. >> i'm sure we have a lot of people in the audience will have been inspired by her fiction. and by what it says to us as a country. but now you've written this wonderful memoir. you don't call it a >> no, it was a book about

writing. that's originally what i thought it was. people tell you what you've actually written after you've written it including my editor said it's a memoir. i said, no. tiit's a book about writing. but because it has so many examples of my writing for my real life, they ended up calling it a memoir. >> your life and your family and your background and your roots have really informed every single thing you've written. >> i try to get away from that. >> but, when you're writing about what has shaped your writing. it's not simply the story. it has to do with the way you think. your whole cosmology of the world. and how things happen. it's what is important to you and morality and family. and consciousness and also what you think about between the

moment you were born and the moment you die but including the moment you die. so i have to talk about what feeds the writing? >> absolutely. you wrote something once that is coming to mind right now which is, you said, i didn't write this all right what i've written to be remembered. in the minds of other people. some writers do. >> i want to become immortal. >> you said that's not why i'm writing. why are you writing? >> moment.to write in the writing is almost to capture, it's like a diary of myself and what i was thinking at the time. if i have in my mind that i'm writing for prosperity or to be in the library that somebody

might look it up a 100 years from now then i would get stuck. i would write for a different reason. in my mind i always have to tell myself this is for the moment. if it's gone next year or 10 years from now, that's fine. my motive and my intention for writing is very clear to me. >> this book, and it really is to me, it seemed a primer for riderswriters. it really goes into your brain. you're talking about the - - supposedly y is held. talking by your own interpretations about the way the true brain works. and where is it coming from and why have it? it's a very candid. >> when people say it's candid,

i think what did i say that's so candid. or you were very brave. then i think, maybe i shouldn't have said that. i was brain damage for a while. i had lyme disease and it went into my brain did and made me foggy and hard to remember anything. then i became curious. i hope you can see ivy-covered. [laughter] [applause] >> so one of the things that happened in thinking about the brain and how it works, i discovered and taking a sort of medication for seizures. that this medication made me too happy. you think what's wrong with that? if you're laughing at what people are saying and it's not supposed to be funny , it can distressing. i found also this had to do with neurologically something going on.

i tied it then to the idea that our brains have these emotions in them. they really are triggered viscerally. my stories have that too. so one of the things i did was to take a visceral emotion, and i have a big memory. and then follow it. as i move forward i would feel this but i would feel nervous. i would be aware that i was shaking or that i would have something going g on in my stomach that felt uncomfortable. i just kept following this story to see where it went. and i feel i uncovered this very traumatic memories. even if it did not ayhappen exactly the waythat i wrote it down . it is in essence, part of my life during that time. so that is part of my writing. i say this, if this doesn't

happen to you when you go into a ptsd moment. that's okay. it's my thought process.and emotional. the emotional memory process i go through in thewriting . >> you say that you started this book by opening boxes. in looking at letters. and as you were looking at the inside and what they collected and the whole lifetime, and other people's lifetimes. i love the expression. he said it was like a force of glaciers. you have this image of like, oh my gosh. life force going on. things had been frozen in time that were suddenly revealed to me.>> these were books of memorabilia from my family. i had 80 boxes and i took it down to seven.

you have to realize i was desperate to finish this book. i was writing a chapter a day which is absolutely insane. it usually takes me years to write about. i was going to finish in four months. it was an experiment in part. so i would take things out of this and it would be a letter for my mother to me. it was a letter when she was really upset and she was hinting she was going to kill herself. and i took that and i wrote something point it might have been her language and something about what she was saying ke underlying these words. i picked something up and i suddenly realized, my parents were illegal immigrants.oh my. and that set into some of the things they said to me. that turned out to be lies. >>one of them was taking an old report card out from an art teacher that said about my art which i loved. i wanted to be an artist.

she has no imagination. which is essential for a deeper creative level. so i gave that dream. thank god he didn't say that about writing. >> i want to point out that she has one of her sketches in the book. at least one. of a bird. with every little feather. it's a wonderful sketch. >> i draw every day now. i'm into nature journaling. part of it was something revealed to me in this book that so much of my life in my uc ochildhood was governed by expectations. and the idea that something would become public. i still feel - - by that slightly. the idea that maybe if i write something, some people will read it. but with the drawing, i did it for myself and i don't have to show it to anybody. or it can be really bad and i don't care because i did it for pure pleasure.

no one's paying for it. that was another thing i discovered in the book. there was one, almost a devastating discovery during the writing of the book. and it was about ink told that i was going to be a doctor. when i was six years old. somebody had tested me and that was my parents but my parents said to me, she said you're going to bbe a doctor. they said, so you can be a concert pianist and the doctor. and then she said, but she said you're not very good with words. your english is not that good but that's okay. you don't need a lot of words to be a doctor. and to play the piano. this prediction, followed me the rest of my life. even to the moment i was writing this book and i realized. every time i felt inadequate or dumb that i have never lived up to this expectation.

>> i hope you still lidon't fee a failure. >> it's not that i'm a failure in comparison to what other people smight perceive. but within my mind, there's always something there. the problem is, there's no clear notion in my mind of what that is supposed to be that i am supposed to regency i fulfilled this potential. because it'sso vague , i'm always not there. i did sort of the race it partially when i came across this line. that i never was supposed to be a doctor. that's the great thing about the internet that this test i took in the first grade. a woman came every year for 20 years for five years. then she stopped which made me think i'd flunked. it was a different kind of

test. i found it on the what? out of 5003 kids, there were 49 who could read early. and i was one of them. in my parents said, you weren't supposed to teach kids to read. there was a prohibition. because you were going to teach the wrong method and your child would be a problem child from then on. a chronic bed wetter or whatever. people followed this to the hilt. at age 2 now, they are reading. >> were your parents terrified

that they had an early leader on their hands? >> tno. she kept asking them, how did she learn to read? she said, her brother is brilliant. he's so smart. he didn't read until first grade. he's doing great. finally, it came fout that i h been copying hits textbooks and i would say, what does this mean? my brother was teaching our cousins who didn't speak idenglish. he had a little classroom. you have to imagine, a little six-year-old boy telling our older cousins. no, wrong. and i was sitting there. so i had learned to read probably from that. >> it's an amazing story. your parents were worried because they thought because they were illegal immigrants, this would compromise them. >> that's what i realized.

i always thought my father was so honest because he was a minister. it was an electrical engineer to make his money but he was by devotion, a baptist minister. i thought how could he have lied. they lied about a number of things. i realized when i found the documentation that they were illegal and there were these letters with the word deportation. that they were among many people before and today who have to live in certain ways.ce not in morality ways but in ways having to do with documents so they don't imperil themselves and their families. so lying and saying we don't know how she learned to read? we followed the rules. they said that like three times. we knew what the rules were. we didn't break them. it was her brother idthat taugh her. send him back to china. [laughter]

>> by the way, speaking of going back to china, i ndwant t ask you this. i was born in peru. i came to this country when i was 10 years old.my mother was american.my father is peruvian. every time i went back to peru after that, it was, you are not really peruvian. you are an american. you are not one of us anymore. did you have this experience? >> i grew up with that but a sense of shame both ways. shame that i was chinese in a school that was primarily white and then shame when i went to, amongst family friends were chinese or in a restaurant or any situation around chinese people that i couldn't speak chinese and i knew nothing about china. i had trepidation about writing the joy luck club because people would say you know

nothing. you got it allwrong. even my mother had said when we hifirst went to china , this is how nacve i was.they said when we go, what if they think i'm one of them and they won't let me come back. she just said, they just look at you and the way you talk and walk and they know you don't belong. later she claimed and a lot of people claimed i was really so chinese. my chinese did improve because i have half-sisters that speak nothing but chinese. it came back so i know i spoke it when i was a child. it was in there, the roots of that and now when i speak chinese, people say you're so good. my chinese is not that good but everybody thinks i'm just so talented at being chinese. en[laughter] >> coincidence there. >> this memoir - - sorry, this

book about writing. was actually an unintended memoir if i can say that. because, tell us how it started. it started with the conversation through emails with your editor. >> yeah. my editor and i are very good friends. he is a dream editor. if you're not yet published, you think you will have an editor like this person who loves everything that's going on in your life you love your husband. once you know what you had for dinner.and we would write these emails. he so much enjoyed the emails and he's often saying, how did you think of that? he decided we should do a book about our emails. he said it will be easy.we just choose a bunch of them,

put them in a book and that's it. i said great. i said this will be a book about egotism. and it's so boring. i told him we can't do this. because i had already signed a contract and something had gone out in the world and said this book is coming. i had to put a book together. the emails were a lot about writing and our relationship. the kinds of things i would talk about. my insecurity as a writer. this was going to be a book about and in that book, there are very rough pages. i wrote them, they are part of the book. i wrote them down and i just put them in. but there are some aemails. i told - - i said okay, you

suggested this book.i'm going to put them in and we will include yours and you tell me which ones. and then he freaked out. i said okay, i will choose the emails. so in the book, there are a number of them that our early relationship as a writer and editor, talking about the book. and i think it's good insight also into the kind of difficulties that writer has been it's not perfect. if anything, people say, can you just write this for me? they don't realize it's far more difficult to write a little piece as a writer than it is for any other person. because you sweat over every word and you think it's horrible and you try doing it again and again. but the emails, they were just off the top of my head just to dan. and i put them in there.you will see how insecure i am as a writer. >> it's a very revealing book.

i think in the process as you're talking about writing. you tell us about your life because you really didn't become a writer until you were in your 30s. you've been a linguist, and educator, a bartender. >> a pizzas linger, car hop. all of you out there that have jobs like that. you can also become a made - - because these are the things that feed you in the process of being who you are. and corporate. you were inwriting corporate material. >> tell us a little bit about your decision to actually sit down and write fiction. and how that came to you and how the impetus for writing the joy luck club actually happened. >> there was no single moment that i said, i'm going to write

fiction. it's almost hard to think if there was a one day revelation. one of the times when i was motivated was after reading love medicine. which is about a community of people and their different voices. i realize i had the stores vbu they were all in different voices. they were primarily my voice but i had different ways i wanted to see my life as a mother, daughter and different situations. there was another moment when i started reading again. and i was writing the corporate business article. i was good at it. i was good at writing the corporate things or employee motivation material. i usually work harder for the same amount of money. tvery good at that. i have a lot of clients as a freelancer.but i was unhappy.

i would go down to my office every day and i said, will i be doing this in 10 years? i was making good money so it's hard to walk away. i said, i hate it. i hate it. i hate it. then i would sit down and start writing. i knew i liked to write. so i thought maybe i will do this other kind of writing. and i started. and i wrote things that were not very genuine. i made myself a german-american girl. rich parents and all that stuff. and it wasn't good. not very authentic. then i gave up on the idea that this would ever be published. i just do it for myself. i started writing things that eventually would become part of the joy luck club. and i went to a writers workshop. it wasn't a very good hastory. had a lot of problems with it

but the questions that were asked of me that i had to ask of myself and what i discovered about myself, made me realize that week that i was going to write fiction the rest of my life. i was not going to get published. i wasn't delusional. i said i will keep at this but it's really important. just the way i'm drawing every day. this is important for me. i don't have to have it out there in the world but it's important. and so i started to write with that notion. and to give me a goal so that i wouldn't give up. i had this - - tendency to start something and drop it. i said i will work to being published when i'm 70. i have a little bit to go. before i reach that goal. when i'm 70, if i get a short story published in a good literary magazine, i will be happy. that's my goal.

>> you're a very adventurous soul. i know this because in this book, you talked about going cave diving. you've had accidents on the - - hotel break-ins. you've been mugged. 1 million things have happened to you. >> that's not adventurous. that's bad luck. [laughter] were good, because i'm alive. >> a lot of subjects to write about. for all of that, bad luck and adventure you've had. the greatest adventure i think is your family. the story, the treasure trove. if you were writing about a german girl with rich parents. the real treasure trove rewas i your family. the stories in your family. f and the extraordinary revelation that came to your

later in life about your grandmother who was a concubine and committed suicide because she hated that life. about your mother who was in an arranged marriage that she hated. and then left her children obehind in china. to come to the united states to be with her father. and kept this a secret. all this was emerging i assume, as you were in this process of doing your corporate newsletters. and barhopping and pizza deliveries. all of this was coming. extraordinary stuff to write about. >> i always thought my life contained nothing that would ever go into a book. it was boring. i read through one thing as an

english major. books only by male writers except for virginia woolf. so i believe you would have had to have gone through war or through the glass like ernest hemingway. rand i didn't have any of them. who would lead about a chinese girl and her crazy family and her mother who had these horrible htraumas in her life? she tried to get you to understand. that's why it was so important for me to realize, i have to write for my own reasons and not to impress anybody else. of ever getting it published, it enabled me to do it. to this day, i keep thinking. i will run cout of family material.

i can move on to something else and then i get another revelation. it just never ends. one of the things that i thought that my grandmother was a very modest woman.and that she was quiet and old-fashioned. that's what was told to me. she was raised and became a concubine by force. and then i found these photos and a book that showed that the exact costume she was wearing was the one worn by - - and i thought, oh my god. the one thing you can say about that. not that she was necessarily a courtesan, she was not old-fashioned. this would be like your grandmother dressed up as britney spears. you would know she was not old-fashioned. that was a thrill to me because i suddenly said, of course she

wasn't! look came out of her. my mother. she's been, she wears nice clothes. she's consumed with having, being respected. and that also came from her mother. she demanded to be respected and wasn't and killed herself. i became my mother's daughter and i have attributes that come from her. where if i'm bothered by something, i cannot stop talking about it. but i'm unlike her because i'm not suicidal. i have my choices. so those revelations where you find out facts about yourself as well. i find myself in these revelations. there's one big revelation to me and doing the research.

when they were sent to this place when the japanese were bombing their cities. they had met years earlier and fallen in love. my mother had a baby. she was always told she was atborn in shanghai. she was born in - - my mother and father were there. i sister did not know who her father was. there was a possibility that her father, my half-sister, that her father was my father. we were in the midst of trying to find out how to get tests done. the dna tests, you cannot see the father's side because as the female, you are xx and not ask why ask. she wanted to know and she knew that was a possibility and she e

died. suddenly in march on a trip to egypt. i still have her dna sample and i think could ever find a way to get some inkling of the paternal side, i will do that. >> more mysteries ahead in other words. your mother loved being in your books. or having being mirrored in books. did she not? >> a lot of people say what did your mother think. thinking she would have been appalled. not that she had any money. and in fact, she loved it. at the very end, my mother was not a big reader. she said it was so easy to read. and i knew that what she meant later is she saw i understood things about her that she no

longer had to explain. what upset her, what irritated her. what made her furious. that that was on the book and i understood that about her. one of the funny things s i discovered in looking through the memorabilia, is that my mother was getting a graduate degree in american literature. that was on her student visa. the only american literature she ever said was my book. [laughter] ... yeah. >> she was precious. she had some sort of -- >> she was going to make american literature. >> you were a teenager when you lost your older brother. brilliant, peter was his name. >> yeah. peter. >> who was a bit older than you, i think a few years older. >> a year-and-a-half. >> and then six months after that, your father died. >> yeah. no both died of brain tumors.

>> bra >> both died of brain tumors, and two quick losses in succession which must have been an extraordinary force of tragical force on your mother. but on you as a teenage girl, how did that -- >> the death of my father and my brotherhe affected me i would sy the most because of the way my mother reacted. she went a little insane and she believed we're all going to die and she became even more suicidal and at one time there was this thought of all was going to heaven together. but i was a daddies girl and i adored my big brother. i don't think i'mm just remember him in a way that comes from greek transformed over time.

he and i did think. he should rethink turkey taught me how to read. he played with me. we read books together later in high school and talked about them. and so as profoundly sad and isolated but it was my mothers reaction. i'll tell you how insane she was during that time. and understandably so. you lose your husband, your connection to the outer world because you don't speak english that well and you lose your son who it turns out i discovered in reading, and also was my fathers favorite, that this is to say what i thought i was the favorite. this made her a little insane and she ended up taking us to

europe and on the basis of the fact that holland was clean. she found a cat of dutch cleanser under the sink and she decided we'd go to holland because maybe my father and brother died because of some kind of germ. that's where we went we ended up in switzerland. every time we tell people he graduated from switzerland, they think i was some rich girl and went to a finishing school, but that wasn't the case. >> that was a phenomenal turn of events. do you speak french? >> the sad thing is that most of the people there, the students, they could speak english fairly well. my french is very bad. i speak better s spanish then french by the way. but i'm learning. i'm autodidact and i read

labahn and i i write letters to people in french who are french. >> which leads me to ask you, who were your models? when you are thinking about actually sitting down and writing this for yourself, even if that take you to 87070 to get it done, who were your models, the people who most inspired you?wh who were those -- >> i would say there with the writers i was reading at the time. that's why i was still people if you really do want to be a writer to just keep reading and reading and reading. not to copy of the people but to be inspired by the fact they have these amazing and unique voices. louise eldrich, definitely, she is one of our greatest writers today. jamaica kincaid, who is a writer you don't hear a lot about today

but her book annie jong, i read that numerous times t seems so simple but has this seething power underneath it, every sentence. and, you and you know, isabella who has the stories come also the secrets of family from the past, ghosts fromm the past. people call it magical realism but youbu say no, no, it's what really happened. i love that part of it that it didn't have to be fantastical. so there were many and again to say they were mostly women, but they were writers, other writers, and maxine kingston was another one. richard ford who i love, and some of these writers i read in college but it had to do with the writers t i was reading at e time and feeling more and more

this urge that i was now older and i had to make sense of the life i had lived. >> all of this is in this book which is really a wonderful book. i couldn't recommend it more i want to take you back to a moment that you talk about in this book. it's 2001, march. you are just published a book that was inspired by your mothers gradual decline into alzheimer's as i recall. and then complicated by your editors out with cancer. so there was this, trying to write thiss book about your mirror on your mothers experience. your editor then falls into this tragic state of affairs, and you

race to finish the book for her sake, as remember, you go to new york to finish at. and then lyme disease comes into this picture somewhere in there, and you in new york, strangely enough, as fate would happen, when the twin towers are struck and you watch from the street? >> i watched the first one fall from the scene in building on 37th. i was, the trivia answer to which segment, who was the person being interviewed who was canceled as a result of 9/11? they said one minute to live and it was 30 30 seconds to life af city on the stool and suddenly the room just broken the chaos and people were cursing at each other. i thought how strange, you know, that they would not temper themselves even if they were

irritated. that i i saw on all of the monitors an image of a building on fire, and having done in interviews over the years i knew whenever there was hard news, like o.j. simpson, a club was found, that i would be canceled. so i just knew that a building on fire, i was canceled and it was going to take this off. then i see there's nothing behind the building. it's just sky. then i heard somebody say a commercial jet, we have witnessed. i realized what it was. and what was happening around me. we saw together in the newsroom at all those newscasters the second tower being hit and somebody saying it's war. i i watched the second tower fal as i was walking back to our house here we had a loft. my husband was there and i just had to get home.

i was walking down the street and the saw it come down and i said, i'm dreaming this, this can't be real. and you don't even remember hearing it. it was so surreal. i just watched this come down. we lived ten blocks from the world trade center. all these people were running up r street covered with this cement dust. many of them looking shellshocked. and there was such an amazing camaraderie of coming together the whole city during that time. but, of course, this is one of those moments you say, i'm going to die. what is my life about? what is important? >> amazing sort of confluence of events. i'm going to ask one more question by whatue you to think about questions that you asked because i will open it up to all of you. there are microphones in the

aisles, and please aske the question of amy tan. my last question to you in the interview is, what to expect from you next? what are you working on? >> expectations. my editor asks me, actually he's fine. we're having dinner. he knows never did ask me that question. [laughing] it's a novel and the title of it is, the memory of desire. >> the memory of desire? >> it's going to be either one of two novels. it's one that i dreamt about three years ago, the entirety of this book i drink on new year's day, like a gift. i wrote down the notes about what i dreamed and a lot of times you dream these things and they turn out to be nonsense. but it made complete sense.

it even had subplots, all the characters locations. the other was a book i started about tenen years ago, and i fod this draft in that pile of memorabilia, and i loved it. and i thought why did i abandon it? when i read that again i thought maybe i'll do this. i have sinned too damn also a while ago and he could not let go. he kept writing about a month back and forth about this, but not wanting me to write about, wanting me to write about this novel we've talked about. it's going to be that or that. i don't know if the title would be the memory of desire, but there you go. it will be a surprise, just like everything in my life is a surprise. >> i can't wait to read it. do we have any questions of people who would like to come up and ask something of amy? , not, don't be shy. this is a good chance to connect with an author.

i have to tell you that there's nothing much in this world that lasts forever, but when you come up and ask a question it gets archived in the library of congress. [laughing] so make it good. your audio file will be in the library of congress, no pressure. >> so thank you so much for all of your books and for being here today. sorry, i couldn't see you up there. i was just struck by the beginning of your conversation when you said one of the things that surprised you most s when u wrote the joy luck club was how universal it was in terms of people telling you, reminded them of their own experts. i'm just thinking of the moment we are in now, crazy rich asians has broken all records in terms of box office receipts. is that also part of what is important to you, to see a sort

of broadening of the popular culture acceptance of all things asian? or is the more humanistic approachac more important for y? >> in terms of film i loved that film and i loved it for two reasons. i thought it was a fun film, but the fact that it was so successful breaking box office, number one at the box office, i felt this is going to give asian-americans the chance to act in movies and they don't have to be asian american movies. they can be anything. the stories can be anything. i don't think that store is universal because it does not represent every chinese person who, we are not crazy rich, all of us. just as pretty woman does not represent all pretty women, but there is that expectation people

have had in the past and i hope that they will get away from that looking at the movie.. it's just a fun romantic comedy and a satire of rich people. >> thank you. next question. >> i heard you say -- i can't see you. i heard you say at one point that you're a linguist, and how do you approach dialect and creating voices indifferent, with accents? what have you thought about that? you do really well so i want to learn from you. >> thank you. >> i do love language and that's why i became a linguist. what i a hear mostly that's more important to me has to do with imagery and that does reflect in the way i look at my mothers speech, which includes a different way of expressing it in chinese. it's a context that has

historical come her history, personal history and a lot of emotion over the years. i looked at the changes in my mothers language from the t time she was a little girl speaking mandarin and chinese and back when she hadin alzheimer's. i don't have to look at what these accents or the dialect is. it's simply whatt i heard. i'm sorry i can't help you and say this is how you do it. but if you were to have a character who had a different way of speaking from the mainstream, i think it would be to go and have conversations with that person. not simply overhearing what they're saying but really getting into an emotional conversation about some ongoing topic and now the express themselves.

not simply the features but how it comes out. >> thank you. next. >> thank you for your presentation. ntation. to have a good reader in china fees to write a good bock. i'm thinking a person who write father book, a different kind of book, talking about fake news and some people maybe would be denied, trying to choose some work, if somebody writing, writing this type of book would be restricted from publishing or get a copyright, do you have any suggestion, you can write another book or something, have you thought?

>> thank you. >> thank you. whether or not you write a book and its original or whether it's fake or whether you have copyright, if you write what is truef, to yourself and the way that you think, not just the story context itself, that's always going to be original. i've had people say your characters are not depictions of real chinese people, they are fake. that is their perspective, the reality that they want to see characters in a certain way. just as i said, pretty woman as thought about every single pretty woman. we as writers, and i soon you would like to write a book or you have written a book, that it is authentic to you and to your emotions. >> thank you. over here, please. >> i excited to be here to say this too, high school teacher in

public school. i teach reading and english to students with disabilities, and we're about to start your book, the joy luck club. i never taught t it before and m excited but i just thought is anything i could take back to them that you might say to them? these are tenth graders mostly. >> first of all i don't think that everybody in the world, every student is going to like a book equally. andarhi i think they have to knw that that is fine, absolutely fine. is what you might look at the book differently, not for the story necessarily, not for the characters but perhaps asking if there's one image in the book, one scene that really struck you as interesting, and just to go into what that scene is about and why it appeal to you.

the other is that we often read books because they do resonate with our lives, and to ask the students if they would like to share,ik and he's a very personl wouldons, but if they like to share something about theirng own family that feels similar and i kind of pressure or expectations their parents have had that seem similar like this. and if they feel they were understood. because when i was reading as a kid, what i love were the stories that made me feel that i had a friend, somebody who finally understood me. that., i understand >> thank you. next question. >> thank you very much for being here. you mention after 9/11 you are going through the streets that it was the kind of experience that brings home to you what is meaningful and life and what is

important. what was that for you wax what were thoseev revelations to youn that they? >> and had to do with family, and i was very glad that i live a life that was focused in that direction. when i started writing asked myself the question again, what is the most important thing i should keep in m my mind? and that i reflected back on my life and said the things i wanted to do, meaning how i thought about things, how i treated people. i was content with, that i had not done anything, that i should be feeling shameful love. what you should think about seems to come at that very moment you think you're going to die. i was prepared. i said it's okay, now it going home. i just want to reach lou and be together. if it happens together, that's fine. >> thank you for the question.

another question, please we have time for two more. >> you mention that you had at times the trouble completing things thatrt you started and tt you had to let go, if i understand correctly, of the fact you want it published in order to complete that? is that what you are saying? i'm trying to figure out how you from starting to completion. i started a million and i never complete them. >> what it was i would start different hobbies and then i would let them go. that's true about books as well. i wanted to keep writing and not simply get this interested and the one for jewelry making, for example. but i let go of books that ceased to intrigue me or ceased to be something that i feel and become more mechanical where i'm interested only in how to get to the next chapter without feeling

how the story is going. what happens is you put it aside and oftentimes you'll to get that much later and you see the direction is clear now, or the character is clear and you're going to change itit but it maks sense. what i would say is put those things aside, don't spend months and months agonizing. move on. or simply by ssas you can, don't think about the senses or where it's going. just to stream of consciousness and see if anything comes up after that that works. i say all this and it don't do it and i wish -- [laughing] and i know i should do that and it's in the book. i did in the book and it worked in the book. i have to apply now in this next novel. we'll see. you would get yours done. i will get mine done. [laughing] >> thank you. >> one lastt question. >> for someone to say it is an honor, this iss been interesting unappreciative. i pre-shoot the fact you're a

linguist. an interpreter translator so awesome is awesome to see a colleague up there. my question is this can would have a story to tell and its integral to your story t that yu certain subjects that you can't feel like you leave out of your story but you people, how would you do with that or how have you dealt with it? intention is you don't want to hurt people. you make your peace picky feel good now and everything else but you feel like part of that story and you want to tell it. >> there have been very few stories were i've had that concern and mostly it would have been about my mother, but she gave me full permission. she wanted me to write more about her as a matter of fact. she won be to develop a whole book about a which is the kitchen the godser wife. in this last book i did have some moments about family. over time you have these moments

where family have betrayed you or disciplined you in certain ways. i learned something about betrayal and forgiveness and it's not what you think. what i decided is that forget this has a y lot to do whether u want to continue with the relationship. and so i had to decide because of nature of the rest of the story, that had to include that. what i did was i didn't include the name and i just changed the relationship to a different one. i put p down the good things tht person said ast well. it wasn't just this person was completely vile and vicious and mean as she really was. [laughing] you find a way to do -- never with paid or with discussed. -- never with hate.

there's one chapter i get lisa at every struggle over the was a story about being molested by minister. it was a life-changing experience and it was a letter that i would've written to him. and what it did to me, out of that room andnd now i was chang. i decided not to include it it change the nature of the book so much. it was just like oh, my god, what is this going? there was also a church to consider that it might damage, and they didn't think that this person is long gone from the church now, should affect the church now. but but i did write that lettero the church to say, when you talk about your legacy and all the people you of help and saved, you have to claim this as your legacy as well and you have to

make amends for it. so i say it now and i'm glad i had the opportunity to say it, but i did not include in the book and those are the reasons i considered, what damage would it do? >> thank you so much. >> wonderful advice. ladies and gentlemen, we talked a lot about bad luck but we've been very lucky to have amy tan with us today. [applause] >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> thanks to everybody. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> that of course was author amy tan that you been losing to live at the national book festival.

coming up in about ten minutes is biographer of ron chernow. use office of the book on alexander hamilton but his most recent book is on ulysses s. grant and that's what he'll be talking about live here at the washington convention center. one of the things that booktv is doing is something you and you can have your picture taken on the booktv set. you can see here too young man about to pose in front of a green screen. but wait until you see what this turns out to be. looks like the booktv set. >> good job, guys. >> you can see what it looks like and there is a line all day long people having their picture taken and will show you what the final product looks like in just a minute as doug has it printed out.

.com hasn't has a been fun? >> a lot of fun. a lot of good interaction with our viewers come having a ball. >> at looks like it's beener pretty steady. >> study all day. big crowds. >> it is been a lot of fun to be here, and here are -- you can see them behind thent green scrn and that's what it looks like. that's her actual set back at c-span3 i don't think we really need a set when you see this picture. it looks really terrific. [inaudible] >> did you really? >> just to let you know we have several hours of live coverage here at thes national book festival of the washington convention center. you'll hear from doris kearns goodwin, jon meacham, lawrence wright, all pulitzer prize winners by the way. brian kilby of "fox and friends" will be doing a call then as well terryl westover. her book is called educated. it's been on the bestsellers list since it came out in february.

she did not have any formal education until she was 17. 17. she's now got a phd from cambridge to the learning about her story. a week or so ago we stopped and talk with library of congress carla hayden about what it's like to get the book fair together. >> how much of your year is taken up with this vessel? >> i think i start thinking of the next festival as soon as this one is considered. it 7:30 p.m. because it's exciting to think about who the authors will be the next year and so it's always in the back of our minds about wow, the next year and when it's going to be. it's a joy to think about books, readers, over 100,000 people are just immersed in reading. >> and i know there's a large young adult and children's author area, but new study by

psychology today saying that only one in three high school seniors read a book for pleasure last year, and that our electric, electronics screens are taking away from reading time. >> that's why the book festival is so important and that we make it fun. and when you go to the young adult authors, , and h with grac novels and all of these types of things that appeal to them, it's reading for pleasure. that's the key. if we make reading fine and something that is not judgmental what you're reading, it's not required reading, this is reading that you want to do. >> what is a library today? >> a library today is an opportunity center. i've c been visiting libraries throughout the country thiss pat year. i was in findlay ohio and then the section called eons books

and things you canut check out, sewing machines, usable instruments. traffic cones, teaching and people to drive. so libraries are places that people can go into in their communities, rural areas everywhere, every community has a library that is that place in the community that everyone is welcome. >> who can access the library of congress? can anybody? >> anybody access the library of congress. and with technology the libraries website, you get access and download materials, photographs, you can access the collections electronically or ever you are. and physically if you come into the buildings in washington, d.c. but we are very pleased that you can access us throughout the internet. >> 100% of the material forrn te

library available -- >> not yet. and what we're digitizing of the unique collections. and about a month the collection of president theodore roosevelt will be put up, including his diary where he said on february 14, a light has gone out of my life, because his mother andnd his wife i figure , died on the same day in the same house. so those are the things that we are putting up. >> what role do members of congress have in the administration of the library, being the library of congress? >> the library of congress started to serve congress, and they have quite a bit of a role in terms of making sure that we not only serve members of congress and their staff members, congressional research service that is, i call them the special forces. in the policyli big give objecte information and research to

undergird really the legislative process, and congress makes sure, i mentioned my visits to the country, that people know about our veterans history projects, for instance, oral histories in communities where we make sure that those books are available to libraries and schools. they are also very concerned that we make sure the library of congress serves them but also the communities. >> do you feel supported by this current congress, and did have an interest in the national book festival? >> members of congress, and i think people would be very pleased to know, our readers and they are very interested in making sure that their constituents a are aware of the library services. some members of congress and previous congresses have been very involved and they are very interested i think can trust in history and knowing its place in

history to them. >> that full interview with library of congress carla hayden is available on our website booktv.org as is the schedule for today's live coverage of the 18th annual national book festival. well, , now anticipated ron chernow, the biographer who wrote the book on alexander hamilton his most recent book is on president ulysses s. grant will begin speaking in just a few minutes. after that couple of calling opportunities. brian kilby of "fox and friends," terryl westover, , you have from doris kearns goodwin live, jon meacham and lawrence wright. full schedule @booktv.org. thisai is live coverage. [inaudible conversations] >> welcome everybody. i'm david moskowitz from head of

public relations and very pleased to be here with you today. we are pleased to serve for the eight year to the charter spot of the book festival and even prior to watchmo the book festil grow into the incredibly popular impactful event it has become. p back i wouldn't be surprised -- [applause] wouldn't be surprised to see us move the needle on some bestseller list today. but he seemed more important to keep the book festival of regret that serves the community. the library of congress and the book festival real purpose it is literacy which leads to learning and opportunity which matches ml helping our community succeed. learning to love books and learning to love learning of what the book festival is all about. in this session ron chernow will discuss his biography of ulysses grant. if we're lucky certain of the popular founding fathers -- [laughing] one thing i i learned from the story president grant was how

people can evolve and through persistence and hard work, acknowledge and overcome their imperfections, it's an incredible story reminded me of a person of good book and learn from their mistakes and reach their potential. hope you enjoyed this session. now it's my purpose to get is the deputy director of national international outreach at the library of congress and our session moderator, colleen shogan.di [applause] >> thank you. welcome to the 18th annual national book festival. i'm pleased to be joined on stage today by ron chernow. ron is an award-winning journalist, story and biographer turkey has won the pulitzer prize for biography and the national book award for nonfiction. in 2015 he won the national humanities medal. his book on alexander hamilton was the inspiration for the award-winning musical for which ron worked as historical consultant.

the library of congress is honored to have you join us today at the national book festival. [applause] >> it's worth noting that our culture of the festival, mr. david rubenstein, was supposed to conduct this interview today, but due to scheduling changes because a of senator mccain's feudal he was unable to do so. i have david's questions are today and i just happen to be a big admirer of ulysses s. grant and ron's books also think will have a fantastic time today at the book festival. before we talk about grant we need to ask a question about alexander hamilton. [laughing] how could we not? so when miranda first approached you and said he wanted to create a hip-hop musical based upon your book, what was your reaction, and did you everything would become a cultural

phenomenon? >> very often people say to me, when you writing calyx and hamilton biography did you haven any idea that it would be turned into a hip-hop musical? i always think to myself, i think the question answers itself. [laughing] when i first met lynn mamma mema which is back in the fall of 2008, linda still starring in the first musical in height and he asked me on the spot to be a historical advisor to this yetet nonexistent show so i left and this attempt and you to what we could tell he went something is wrong? he said with great fervor, yes, one historians to take this seriously. which was music to my ears and i was skeptical but i was quite intrigued and i thought that nothing could be more delightful than to watch the evolution of the broadway musical. i was a lifelong theatergoer and the off to be on the other side of the floodlights was

absolutely irresistible and, ofd acquisitive deputy a rocket ride more fervent anything that i could've anticipated. >> move on to grant which you certainly written the definitive biography of grant and had to start with kind of a cute question but has a good story to it. who is buried in grants to? [laughing] >> refers to work on the book which was in 2011, i found that approximately half the people whom i told is working on grant. [shouting] , who was buried in grants to? natural i got interested in the origin of this joke. i trace it back to groucho marx. you can trace the leading back to groucho marx. t [laughing] and crouches in your letter number having in the 1950s called you back to life. grouchoo was dismayed that some of the contestants could not answer a single one of the questions so groucho decided that he would ask every contested a question that every contested could enter and that question is who is buried in

grant's tomb? to crouches astonishment half of the guests got it wrong. [laughing] such is the staying power of a great comedian that the light has become part ofli the popular culture. >> that start at the beginning with greater where was he born, what with the conditions of his upbringing and what was at the maglite. >> was he was born in ohio, grew up in a series of small towns in southwestern ohio, near cincinnati. point pleasant was right on the ohio river. the significance of that was that it separated the free state of five from the slave owning state of kentucky. on winter evenings the ohio would freeze over and refugees, fugitive slaves which sprint to freedom. important terms of think that grant later with appomattox that he grew up straddling the world of both north and south and interested both ofo their cultures. came from fairly well-to-do families, father was mayor of

onee of those three towns. his father was released the vein of his life. his father was very pushy and domineering character, , and thn grant went to west point. point. he didn't want to but his father wanted him to go. his father saw west point as a free form of vocational education. >> how did he do at west point? >> fairly well. i would say his performance was lackluster. he was 21st in the class of 39. there was already considerable attrition before that. he became famous for two things at the academy. one was he was probably the best sportsmen of his generation, if not century at the academy. he established a high jumping record. they set the bar and more than five feet and grant managed to clear.

he was also very good at drawing. this may seem strange and insignificant but, it was important for generals to be able to draw maps during battles. grant was very good at lying. during the civil war, he had an uncanny ability to visualize the battlefield. and it comes from this visual sense he had that was first reflected in his capacity to draw.>> after west point, he eventually ends up as a quartermaster in the mexican war. why is his service as a quartermaster, why does that turn out to be important? >> extremely important because being quartermaster in mexico gave grant a nuts and bolts knowledge of the logistics of an army. looking ahead to the civil war, grant would be in charge of 4-5 different armies stressed the costs 1300 mile front. his mastery of logistics and the railroad and the telegraph

enabled him to supervise these vast armies. it goes back to being quartermaster in mexico and >> after the mexican war he marries julia dent and what we should like and what was her family like? >> grant counts on this abolitionist family and picking berries into a slave owning family in missouri. hisab father-in-law, the colonel becomes the vein of his life and was hard on grant. julia was very outgoing and vivacious and julia always had the vision of his future that sometimes he did not have for himself. during the 1850s he's trying and failing to establish himself asas a farmer in st. louis and t

fails at a real estate venture. during this time julie has a dream one night. she trains that her husband is going to be president of the united states. when she tells her friends in town about this dream come everyone laughs. nothing can see more preposterous. this meant struggling just to support a wife and four children.nd julie can you. >> you spent a fair amount in the book talk about his struggle with alcohol. what did you conclude? did he have a problem with drinking and what evidence did use to draw this conclusion? >> at the bait has always been, was he a drunkard or not? i found the trump drunkard loaded moralistic term because it implies a person who is dissipated and irresponsible and is gleefully indulging this advice. i felt that i tried to approach it through a more in line

attitude. he was an alcoholic. i said because he could never just one drink. i say that because even one glass of alcohol change his personality but this is something that he struggled against his entire life. he was a member of the temperance lodge when is in his 20s. the reason there's been so much difficulty with previousns writs had his drinking is he was a binge drinker. he was a episodic drinker so that he could go for two or three months without touching a glass of alcohol. he would then have two or three day benders that in people who are close to them but would not actually see him. it's a problem he struggled with and by the time he becomes president he is largely conquered it but it's a problem that bedevils him throughout the civil war. >> that causes him told leave te military and precipitates and exit from military. >> in 1854, he was assigned to

lonely leak garrisons in oregon, northern kerala for what he could not afford to bring his wife and children. he was lonely, depressed and he starts drinking. in 1854 he shows up one day drunk and is drunk out of the service. it was significant because the peacetime army was very small. the was a very active rumor mill. all of the stories his history of drinking with all went into the civil war and will very much color how people see him. i think probably were not for that history and all of these stories about grants drinking, abraham lincoln that will have brought grant east much soon in the work to active general in chief. >> now grant is a thing and jeff appointed description of him. he ends up on the streets of sto support his family. how does that happen? >> try making it ass a farmer. julie is wedding gift was to

receive 60 acres which grant work. he was very interested but he could not make a goal that's into taking firewood ten miles into st. louis and the walks beside the wagon. people who saw him in those days selling firewood on the street corners in st. louis said that he was bearded, disheveled, unkempt looking. one of his old army buddies ran into him on the street and was shocked by grants unkempt prepared a species of what he doing? grants response was 40. he said in solving the problem of poverty. he was so poor at that point that one christmas he had to pawn his watch to buy christmas presents for his family. this was circa 1857, the civil war breaks out out in 1861. >> then something happens, fort sumter and you write in the book grant joins the volunteer infantry in illinois and gets a

position union army you write in your book that i change overcomes grant. what was that? >> when the civil war broke out it was a desperate short of office. remember, about one-third of the army officers were from? the south so many of them, most of them defected to the confederacy. there was a crying need for trained people. grant still have all of the war from west point stored in his mind. he had fought with great distinction in the mexican war. had been assigned to different garrisons before the civil war. his efficiency and his military knowledge come to the fore. grant's rise gives new meaning to the term media work. two months after the outbreak of the civil war he's a colonel. four months after it is a brigadier general. 12 but after the outbreak of the civil war he is a major general.

and by the inn of the civil war, dismantled been working as a clerk in his fathers leather goods store in galena, illinois, back in 1860, that may seem like a certifiable failure in life, general in chief of union army with 1 million soldiers under his command far and away the largest military establishment in the country up until that time. >> he had early victories that catches the eye of lincoln. >> absolutely. often the history of the civil war, , there's a disk portion focus on virginia. it seems like the confederacy is one battle after battle. if you look at what's happening in the western theater of war, grant was when he won victory after another. in 1862 he has twin battles against twin force all the way and the northwest corner of tennessee. fortrt henry and donelson. they were significant for the following reason. fort henry was on the tennessee river here fort donelson on the

cumberland river. those two rivers penetrated deep into the confederacy, particularly grant's victory at fort donelson was the first of three times he captured an entire confederate army. it also led to a new nickname for grant because the confederate general inside the fort was simon buckner who wanted to send a message to grant. you wanted commissioners appointed to negotiate a truce and grant wrote back no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender will be accepted. i propose to move upon your wordsgr emily. that unconditional surrender line became instead yource scre, he became unconditional surrender grin. it was the first large-scale victory of the war for the nort north. >> in 1862 the issues general order number 11 which expels the juice from his military district in the south because he believes they are engaged in an illegal

black-market cotton ring. >> that's right. >> was grant at the cement or did regret that decision? >> he regretted it almost as soon as he issued it. as soon as lincoln and secretary stanton sought immunity overrode. print said he did regret it almost instantly. it was an inexcusable thing to do. people know that piece of the story. what they don't know is grant spent the rest of his life atoning for that action. as president he appointat more jews at all the of the 19th century presidents combined turkey became the first president to speak out on human rights abuses abroad and in both because of persecution of the jews. one time in russia, one time in poland. most remarkable of all since washington, in d.c., during the last year of his second term he was invited to the dedication of a synagogue. a very tiny synagogue.

grant went with his son and with a u.s. senator. it was a three hour 71. here he is president of the united states, with the congregation had probably 40 or 50 people per one out into the dedication of this synagogue, the elders of the seneca went over to grant and said mr. president, with every touch you would come to this. you can leave now in good conscience. grant insisted on staying the full three hours, reached into his pocket and gave a donation to the synagogue. he was not, it was one of the pleasurable things writing about it. he was the prejudiced man. he was not a man full of hatred. you could read statements on blacks or native americans, kind of hair-raising ferocious things to you to see that in grant's papers at all. this is something very out of character for him and luckily he apologized and atone for the

rest of his life. >> there's a number of other successes. he is more manpower, more resources, and then he has the victory at vicksburg. why is vicksburg sour impressiv? it was really a daring capture. >> it happened, new orleans, baton rouge and memphis had fallen to junior forces animate that the one great citadel, the one great bastion on the mississippi river left was vicksburg.e vicksburg was located at the time, there was a bend in the mississippi that forced folks to slow down. theree were seven miles a very elaborate fortification. it seems like this impregnable fortress. grant had very daring strategy to take vicksburg under cover of night. he had ironclads and transports come down the river despite heavy shelling from the confederates. he also marched troops down the western bank of the mississippi. they then crossed over vicksburg

to the only high dry land in that area, and then grant has this lightning campaign. he wins five major victories in a three-week timeframe, surrounds vicksburg, lays siege to it and vicksburg surrenders. it was the same time type as te victory at gettysburg. and for a second time grant has captured an entire confederate army of more than 30,000 soldiers. at that point the union not only controlled the mississippi, but it bisected the confederacy because a lot of the supplies, particularly horses and livestock, came from the west of the mississippi. the confederate army was cut off from this major source of supplies west of the mississippi. and that was grant. >> we did president lincoln bring grant east to leave the union army? >> established in figure 1864. thomas passes a bill reinstating

the title of lieutenant. >> translator: we want whatever held that wasin george washington. winfield scott had -- grant becomes that lieutenant jennifer it's a wonderful story because in march 18 safety for he comes to washington although lincoln land grant, he never set eyes on them before. to provide at the same dayco that lincoln was havg a reception at the white house in the blue room. grant goes in. lincoln warmly embraces him. there were such pandemonium in thece room because grant was suh a hero that they urged grant to stand up on a silver so the people could see because he was relatively short period he stands up on the sofa. he isd perspiring profusely, so that people could see. grant was always a little bit socially h awkward. grant later said that hamas campaign he ever fought was standing on the sofa in the white house. [laughing]so

>> so grant was impressive on a tactical level, on an operational level and on a strategic level. how rare was that despite all three qualities in a general, he compare to robert e. lee in that regard? >> shuman had an interesting, where he was comparing grant and lee bertie said grant's strategy embraced a constant. tranan ones strategy embraced estate, virginia. grant has a harder task. lee just had to inflict so much pain on union forces the pendleton public would wear it and decide to give up the worker grant had to capture and destroy robert e lee's army and you really had a strategic vision because the various union armies and different gears of war have been a pretty independently of each other. grant coordinated their movements e so that he turned io a single fighting force and he saw the way to wear down the

confederacy was by having union forces simultaneously attack different confederate armies so they could not switch reinforcement from one to another. he finally pins robert e. lee down in richmond, in petersburg. another wonderful comment from sherman. sherman said about grant, he said robert hale, ulysses is grant would attack the bedroom and the kitchen. i'm not sure what he meant about that. i don't want to go there. but in terms of attacking the kitchen, that again goes back to grant as quartermaster but he did with lee is he began systematically to cut off every railway line and of the canal with supplies to lee's army, started it out and forcing him to h flee west appomattox courthouse where grant and sherman overtakeo lee's army ad forces surrender and that was

then the third confederate army that grant capture the robert e. lee never captured a single union army. >> how does grant conduct himself that appomattox. >> was the most touching part of history because he refuses to allow his soldiers to gloat or celebrate. he's very generous. the confederate soldiers are literally starving the issues rations defeat them. he allows the confederate officers to keep the horses of firearms. the most dutiful passage in grant's memoirs is about the meeting appomattox. grant said he was sad and depressed whend he met lee and you might i felt like anything rather than rejoicing over the downfall of a foe what fought with such valor and suffered such hardship for a cause, although that cause was the worst that in army could have fought for.

i think it's a beautiful statement, take a we had a prolonged discussion about the confederate monuments. grant paved the way. and when it in the passage he pays homage to the bravery of the confederatete soldiers, andn brief,f, extraordinaire. the cause for which it are fighting, the perpetuationso of slavery was as printsus as one f worst causes that people would fight for. i think this unity is also the fairness and balance he brought to the subject i think is really one that should stay with us. >> grant does not accept president lincoln's invitation to attend ford's theater. would history perhaps unfolded differently if grant had been the? >> what history. what happenedha in late march 18 safety for, abraham and grant goes to city quarters where grant has its headquarters. mary lincoln who is shown increasing signs of mental instability, mary lincoln throws

a a jealous fit. she imagines that the young wife of general edward siewert concerning with her husband. she starts to break her who can forget what's going on, and bursts intong tears. julia grant was at their peer julia grantan intervenes to tryo protect young mrs. seward. mary lincoln turned on julia grant and turn on her so angrily that the night that the lincoln's went to ford's theatre, lincoln thought it was important that the public see the victorious president and victorious general at the same time. julia grant laid down the law to husband and said i refuse to go to ford's theatre if mary lincoln is going to be there. so they made their excuses. they went off to burlington new jersey where they had a house. one of the great what it's in

history, if ulysses s. grant had been in that box at ford's theater with lincoln, which it had his security detail? with his military instincts, which it sensed the assassin entering the box? or it's possible that booth would've killed grant as well as lincoln we will never know. >> how did grant managed to k wn the nomination, the republican nomination in 1868? had he to shoot ann aptitude fr politics producing? >> not really. it was a great guessing game that went on in terms of what grant's party affiliation was. came from i week family, whose only vote had been for james buchanan for president. no one knew exactly where he stood. he was in the right place at the right time. since appomattox had a certain symbolic standing in american life as the victor of the war

and also reconciliation between north and south. what happened in 1868 there was a failed attempt. they did impeach andrew johnson which weakened -- not convicted, lost by a single vote which weakened the radical republicans in congress. grant was in a position to straddle both of the wings of the republican party, still has his immense prestige of the war. and he did that campaign openly. grant had a funny kind of way of not campaigning for things and putting him in a position where things just happened to him. >> and in his first term of office the 15th amendment is enacted and ratified and there's a backlash in the south come violence escalates and their strengthening of the ku klux klan. you spent a lot of time in the book and you handle it definitely, what did grant do to

combat the claim, and was a successful. it starts out as as a social cb of confederate veterans and they start wearing their old uniforms and drilling and it becomes militaristic secret organization. and that then of course they st putting on roads and hoods at night on horseback and terrorizing people. you are right, prompted by the 15th amendment. nothing terrified the white south more than the black man come and it was only black men voting. .. was very much directed against black voting or registering to vote. there was no southern sheriff who would arrest a member of the kkk. there was no southern jury that would convict or white that would testify. there were hundreds, maybe thousa

from georgia, ackerman brought 3000 indictments, thousand convictions against the clan and thrust the ku klux klan. it was his greatest achievement as president. the plan that we know is from the resurgence of the clan from the 1920s, the clan that has less to do with us because it borrowed a lot of and ideology of the original clan >> why were there so many corruption -related scandals in grants two terms in office? was he complicit? did he turn a blind eye or was he oblivious to what was going on? >> a story from his childhood that makes the point, unfortunately it didn't get much credit but his father wanted to buy a horse so he

told ulysses to go to this farm and he gave ulysses his instructions. he said offered $20 to the farmer. if he doesn't take it, offer him $22.50 and if he still doesn't take it, offer 25 so grant goes to the father and says i should offer $20 for the horse, if you don't take it, offer 2250 and offer you $25. i wish i could say there was some kind of learning curve in terms of grant and money but unscrupulous people seem to spot grants a mile away. during his second term in office, the scandal, the rulers were evading this tax revenue and one of the people who was involved in it was grants chief of staff, babcock and when babcock is being investigated, grant writes a letter to babcock's

wife saying i have full faith and your husband's integrity's and i've had the most intimate and confidential relations with your husband for 14 years and he says i can't believe that he's not the trustworthy person that i imagine and guess what? he was andhe was kind of like chief of staff . grants office reviewed incoming and outgoing mail. and grant fired him or he assigned him, he became inspector of lighthouses on the floridacoast . >> iafter his office, grant grows around the trip with his wife for 2 and a half years. how was he received? >> it's a residency unlike most any other. he made virtually every head of state in the world, queen victoria, windsor castle, the

prince of bismarck receives him in berlin. the pope at the vatican, alexander ii in st. petersburg and i think to the far east and the crowds are immense. 250,000 people at the time would turn out and even the emperor of japan would never touch people and you saw grants, he stepped forward and shook hands with grant and which was unheard of and grant pioneers a certain post presidential role that would be followed by other presidents that he offered trades a dispute over postwar islands as offshore islands between japan and china. so he comes back with this sort of break dictation of very much enhanced, he's become a statesman on the world stage. it's amazing after trying to get the nomination again in

1880, not winning it, he decides to move to new york city and try his hand in the investment world, how to turn out? >> money, disastrously. the question answers itself. he formed a partnership with a one young man named ferdinand lord who was lionized in berlin finance. they created a partnership called grant and lloyd and it was the only time grant allowed his name to be used in business and grants name attracted a lot of money , alas for those of you who don't know the story, written and lloyd was the bernie made off of his day. it was a ponzi scheme, he was using money investors to pay outrageous rates to the old investors so poor grant with this terrible nacvetc and imagined that he is a multimillionaire and he wakes up one day to find out that instead of a multimillionaire, these were $80 and julia is worth $130. but not only grant fortune

fallen, but all of his children had invested, he had a lot of cousins, had a lot of friends so he hired grants family was engulfed in this catastrophe. >> in 1884grant falls ill. what was wrong with him and what was the prescribed treatment . >> the illness comes and coincides with the exposure of the problem. with ferdinand ward. grant one day, they had a house in longbranch new jersey. julius was, had delicious peaches and he bites into one peach and the says ouch, that peach stung me for some reason and the first time he realized there was a problem with his throat, he finally with some delay consulted his s doctor in new york, found a cancerous mass on his throat and tongue.

it was incurable. and so grant realized that this was a terminal illness and he was petrified that not really when he died, that julia wouldn't be left destitute because they lost e all their money so he decides to do something that he swore he wouldn't do, he wrote his memoirs so during the last year of his life in excruciating pain , and with his mind often farmed my opiates, he managed to write a memoir that is considered the greatest military memoir of theenglish language . >> he wrote 10,000 words a day whenhe had throat cancer . >> 's publisher was mark twain and in one letter mark writes brent wrote 10,000 dawords today. >> he said it kills me to write downsizing words in a day. he couldn't believe grants productivity in his memoir poured out of him and many people imagined that twain wrote the memoirs when the

style is flawless,no man can improve upon. >> why is grant buried in new york city and what was his funeral like . >> the last years of their lives, ulysses grant was living the 66th street in limanhattan.his funeral, i was thinking about his funeral todaybecause of john mccain . the memorial gathering at the national cathedral. when grant was buried in new york and you felt very thgrateful to new york and the city provided this beautiful spot in the new riverside park. grants funeral spoke to the public very much in the way that john mccain's memorial service spoke to the public. that is, at grants funeral, 1,000,000 and a half people what it new york city.the funeral parade went on for five hours but grant and his family madea statement . so and it was a

reconciliation. there were among the honorary pallbearers there were great union generals, william sherman and phil sheridan there were also major confederate generals, joseph johnston and simon buckner. lsagain, it's part of his reconciliation theme. the stonewall jackson brigade staunch virginia came up and st marched in the parade. regiments marched in the parade because grant had been instrumental during the civil war in terms of recruiting and training and equipping black soldiers. so this was really grants statement beyond the grave and i think that grant in many ways remind him that people have been saying about john mccainin terms of his patriotism , his bravery, his dedication to public service. he distinguished himself in civilian service and in

military service and reminds us of whatold-fashioned patriotism should look like . >> last question before we take questions from the audience. as we reconsider grant as you have in this book , what should we learn from grant and his leadership ?e >> people have responded to the book, all the other people i've written about were instant successes in life. they were built from for success. grant and people were responding to the book because his eyes are high as in any story in american historybuffaloes are a lot lower . so this is a story of a lot of light and shadow, it's a story about a man who suffered with failure and setbacks. and in fact, as i was coming into the room, someone said i love your grant book, it's the greatest story about a comeback and therepeated come back in grants life . success was kind of a greasy

pole and he'sslipping that back down the pole and he would have to work his way back up again . >> are there any questions? orron? if you have any to take with you . >>. >> hello. very good book. loved it. what to ask a quick comment on grants relationship with george armstrong custer and how you described that relationship in the book. >> it was a very troubled relationship and grant was very critical of custer, really blamed custer for the massacre at little big horn, felt that he was not following orders and put himself and his men in harm's way. custer had been an outspoken critic of grant as president and that certainly helped to fuel the animosity.

>>. [inaudible] >> i'm going to read two questions by becky. if rand had gone by his first name, would anything be different?t? and secondly, what is happening with the adaptation. i know someone bought the rights . >> grant was born hiram ulysses grant which gave him the unfortunate initials hud or on. and he was mercilessly teased by the other boys so he dropped the hiram and became just playing ulysses. then when local congressman nominated him for west point, he bungle the name and sendit in as ulysses s grant . he found one name, julie stood for his own wife and his own wife didn't know what it stood for and he said he

stands for absolutely nothing. it's not going to be hip-hop musical. >> but it will be a feature film and it's going to be directed by steven spielberg which is very exciting. and produced by leonardo dicaprio which is also exciting. and it looks like i will again be thehistorical consultant . [applause] >> you read you written about washington and hamilton and now grant. is there a big lesson you learned studying that you think is worth sharing? >> it's a very goodquestion. one strange thing that people have asked me about, a common denominator to these lines .

the one thing that every person i've written about, they had to cope from an early age with difficult, even impossible parents. it sounds like a strange response to your question but there was washington with the self centered mother, hamilton with the absentee father, grant and is dominated domineering and overbearing father and there's something about coping with a difficult parent that i guess shapes character and forces people to be self-reliant at an early age. a big frustration with i found with all these books is that all the people i've written about because they had such difficult parents, they never talked about it and sometimes i imagine that i could conjure them tolife and ask them questions, i'd want to zero in on the family dynamics . >>. [inaudible] i'm sorry, i'm

not sure i understood the question. >> did he play any part in catching him. >> in catching him. >> did he help catch him? >> know, would that he had. grant was inexcusably complacent that ferdinand ward put all the securities in the firm in their face which only rand had access to. grant should never have allowed that. ward never put letters signed by grant in front of grant and assign them without po reading the letters. grant because there were a lot of sophisticated wall street people who were investing with ward that he was absolutely certain that ward must be sound. he should have been suspicious because some of the people who were getting 15, 20 percent per month , if that doesn't raise warning flags right there, where should i, i wish i could tell you grant had been part of

exposing ward, but was not. what happened was the bank that was lending ward money went bust and the whole scheme blew up. >> we have time for one more question. >> as someone whose legacy has been tarnished, what is it do for the next location ofgrant? >> when i published the book on grants, i felt that he was suffering from this image that you was this crude, brutal butcher and nithat was why he was successful . and in fact, there were six union generals who fought against robert e lee but for grant was the same example, they could not defeat lee, grant could. i felt that grants residency had been betrayed as a failed presidency and in many ways it was a successful presidency in terms of detecting african american community in the south. to the extent of the book, i

felt there would be more resistance and yet people accepted the portrait of grant more readily than i thought could happen. so i'm happy for that although i wassurprised . >> 20 in thanking rhonda churn out. >>. [applause] - >>. >> you been listening to ron churn out talk about his most recent book on us grant.

he is the author of the alexander hamilton book that has made such waves in the last couple of years. furthermore, howard's wife is or here from the national book festival. find the full schedule on our website at trent booktv.org. the next author you will hear from is here at the convention center is doris kearnsgoodwin talk about her leadership in turbulent times book , joined now by fox and friends closed and author brian kill me. brian's third book is andrew jackson raand the miracle of new orleans or i should say 30 history book is just coming out in paperback. but mister kill me, what was the war of 1812 about? why did we have that war? >> we felt they would be disrespected and traded.

they were taking our families, they were, none of our merchant ships were safe. they were disrespected because the british never really got over the revolutionary war they thought they never lost, they were adhering to the paris agreement, there were radicalizing in america's view a lot of the indian tribes, army men and harassing them, topping america from moving westward so there was a sense in the south that we had to go and light some revenge and getour pride back . the hawks took power, pushed madison into taking on britain. in my view from some of my research, the view was they are so busy fighting napoleon, they couldn't really want to war with us realizing we couldn't have a nt quick end to it, and they want to work with us? they were powerful on the ground usand they were assigned to other fighters and mercenaries and they said

we're going to get these colonies back, send a message to other colonies, you're not your to fight for freedom . so since the war of 1812 ended in 1850, in 1850, right after the new year in the battle of new orleans and they called it to be presumptuous but in school they said the battle didn't have to happen but basically it was a substantial victory for america. let's leave it at that. >> i'm always intrigued by this war. i remember going to the white house and they say were going tobring you a place not many people know by the bowling alley and the archway there , this is where the british burned the white house to the ground and just moved by the fact that how dire do things look, our five foot three president is miles away on his horse watching the white house were burned to the ground, our army has been annihilated. they're dominating us in the waters.

they're brutalizing eastern seaboard and we can't even catch up with the documents that we had. mister madison comes up with mrs. madison and they want it must have looked like america was flat on his back. and i thought how did we do this? how did we end up with a draw, what did we do to prevail? why did we have the whmomentum when this came to an end? and the more i learned, the more i researched, the more fascinated i got. so often we go from the american revolution to the civil war when we talk about this. and i'll just flip right over this, the war of 1812 happened. >> and it's a huge debate and i'm not really sure why because maybe america wants to celebrate substantial victories first . >> your opening question was why did we buy? so we can avoid it, and maybe you'd want to take part.

in fact, the hartford convention that took place in connecticut, they decided, they sign on and they were going to washington to say you're done. we're leaving, they're not into this war but they're breaking in half. the crews were leaving the northern states alone. he was focusing on the south here we are, washington burning to the ground, the northern states are fighting, our army is out of there because we thought we fought off the british there, not a brilliant move. totally naked and we had to do this thing on the fly in the end, the series of wins that galvanized us on the ground, the series of naval victory that happened and the ultimate win in new orleans i felt was great and then when you start spreading the backend of jackson, the unlikely major general without any formal military

training was able to put a battle plan together onthe fly using a conglomerate of troops . he had 1200. he needed 5000. where do you get it in a month, knowing at any moment thebritish who just defeated napoleon are going to go for the ultimate victory . so i wanted to rebuild jackson's journey to that moment. >> we will get into andrew of jackson and the war of 1812 in a second. brian kill meis our guest . if you have a question, 200-2748 401 for those of you in the mountains and the pacific time zone. brian kill need to, what was andrew jackson doing prior? was he had of the army at the point? >> he was a major general and he wanted revenge on the british and there's a good reason why. his brother died in the revolutionary war, his mother died during the revolutionary war, he and his brother were taken prisoner and his brother died after his mom lobbied to get them out as 14

and 15 years old and he took a blow to the head that he had from a soldier accusing a british officer saying clean my shoes, and he ended up saying i'm not going to do that, i'm a prisoner of war. however, he put his hand up. his brother didn't. the story goes his brother never fully recovered from the head blow. he had ends up signing as soon as he got to his house so that one brother died of heatstroke and the other died after being a prisoner of war, the mom died to save young andy jackson as an orphan and who pays for that orphan? the british. not only awarding the country for in his words raising him, he bled red white and blue because the town raised him what he wanted to exact some revenge. he had the leadership ability, not formally trained

to do it. he groomed them, he trained them, and madison finally says send in jackson. munro when he became secretary of war, back jackson and jackson did the same. this is your thirdhistory book and we took a little bit of a twist . george washington's six, misfiring. thomas jefferson and the pirates andnow the war of 1812 . in a sense, is there hidden history here? >> john meacham, you have douglas winchell he. >> i never read one of their books and thought i could do th it better, i just loved it so i tried to do something and that is focus on an area that matters that i believe is not getting enough attention but maybe i like it and decide the fate of presidents and founding fathers so if you pick up this book, you're

going to learn more than andrew jackson, you pick thomas jefferson, you're going to learn about bainbridge . you're going to learn about edward preble and william eady and whether there's a secret six and george washington's inspiring, you'll learn about a bartender, a grocery store owner, james redington and the british journalist was a prisoner was working for a lot because i believe this country as much as welove our founding fathers and they are , that we are both urpeople in this room now. so-called average everyday americans doing extraordinary things who are patriotic at the core. so it doesn't matter, democrat or republican, patriots. >> the subtitle is the battle that shapes america's destiny and from your book, the brilliance of the victory in new orleans overshadowed the dark affiliation of the burning of the public building in washington , in time with the blurring of memory what the nations recollections of war would center on andrew jackson. >> before the fourth civil

war, it was the holiday celebrated the second biggest holiday in the country, but the battle of new orleans, how did he beat the british who just defeated the french and it just found napoleon and whether it was invincible, they were fighting. they were attacking them and it was the brother-in-law of wellington so this group was enough, jackson's guy. but instead, they got stopped in america said what was at stake? what was at stake in the british are going to win, they're going to stop americans in mississippi. they saw us as a threat, not the eventual ally we would be. we would never be a navy again. the rest of the world would know america was not an o experiment, america was for real and i'm paraphrasing what jefferson said was a retired president at the time , not a fan of jackson and he said this was a victory and a message to the rest of the world. n america is not going anywhere

jackson saw literally, he knew it was going to be a superpower. it was where he was and he knew it was going to be a humble superpower. nothing is stopping us now and you'vegot to know we're playing ahead . and obviously it's the midwest and west and the expansion but jackson oversaw it even to president, but it wouldn't have happened without new orleans and when he got into his skin, he said during this war, people have asked you don't have to fight the war, how big a deal was it? it was a big deal and with jackson i think it was a 25 year mark so he said what did you think, did you have to fight this? he said if you think that attacking them and his men, if they had defeated my hodgepodge of an army, if you think we are going to stay and keep us from growing, you don't understand history so you've aggregated the treaty were his exact words and it would have undone the louisiana purchase which we don't learn this but the rest

of the world saw it was a sham but we got it, napoleon had no right to sell it and even though america doubled in size and hurt our economy early, it was a good move. but they were working to undo it and take it back. >> brian kill need is our guest, let's take calls and begin with jackie calling in from wednesday on. you're on the tv with brian kill me. >> thank you. i wanted to say i've read all three of your books and my high school algebra teacher, i wish they had written like this when i was taking college history. he makes alive. it's so relevant to what's going on today. >> he talked about ben david, we all know that david. my question is what is the next project because i'm watching for it. i have loved all three of his other books. >> thank you becky, made my day. i will say this. i'm working on another project but i will say

october 19, 20th and 21st ati'll be doing this america is great from the start. providing examples from normal virginia and nashville and i hope you can join us. the next book i will talk about that i took ayear and a half to get through is on the alamo and how texas got created , how it was invested by andrew jackson and how jackson wanted texas, new he couldn't grab texas because he had another war again. some of the things i tried to unwind and i'mfinding it fascinating so hopefully you will like it . >> john yeager your co-author is working on that book? >> guest: this one will be just me so i'm working on now and texas has been great so far. they kept great records, even back then. >> host: doug is calling in from fort michigan. >> caller: i have a comment

and the question. i've been struck by how tough that sop jackson was, whether you likehim or not, he was a man of his time . he didn't like slavery, didn't like indians too much man who was he ever talk and he had those people, there's a little statichere for some reason . he was shot, he was cut. he was going to be a dude with his cane. that little rascal wastough . >> host: let's get a response from brian kill need. >> guest: he got shot in the shoulder, killed a man, he was shot in the shoulder and he led his men ultimately to the battle of new orleans and as we find out, he was essential in that final battle. he was six foot two inches,

six foot three inches and 140 pounds so on a horse, putting up with that typeof president in january in new orleans, leading his friend, knowing that was staring him in the face , [inaudible] he had all types of digestion problems and had a bullet that never got removed so nobody could say, even an enemy of andrew jackson and john quincy adams was one, no one would say he wasn't a very tough guy. >> host: didn't mind that slavery, didn't care for native americans. does that disqualify him from our history? >> guest: not only because he's been compared to donald trump a lot and 60 million people voted for donald trump that the others didn't, the ones you bring up and jackson got upset and jackson, other people say i'm so glad.

[inaudible] but the fact is he had a plan that martin van buren implemented that ended in the trail of tears, that is something. a couple things to ring up. the choctaw indians fought with andrew jacksonand in one of his battles he did adopt an indian child who passed away at the age of 18.i think he's a man of his time . in my, in the paperback i go back to -- >> host: it's just coming out . >> guest: i said what could i add to this? i always try to bring in video with this. when i tried to do is see what the book is about soif you're thinking about it, you go to my website . i say this is part of the reason that andrew jackson is controversial is because on the hermitage , they wouldn't

have had, he would have been a profitable business man. he was a man of his time who said slavery was okay so i think he would have survived the union and altered the civil war? absolutely not. the other one was the american indian. he had many battles with the american indian. the battle with the creek indians, he was at the fort smith massacre and told by monroe go get them and he did so a lot of these were battles at the time, he struck first but that's part of the figures that we look back on in our past. george washington evidently was a kind man but he was a slave owner. thomas jefferson, james madison, andrew jackson. so this is something in our day and age you cannot get your head around. how could men so smart, so intelligent, so ahead of their time be so twisted as to rationalize this behavior?

bei can't but i know they've done enough great that they deserve the statues that a no half but you should talk h about the whole man and that's why andrew jackson was a controversial figure so what i tried to say in the paperback is take me out of it, take trump out of it. i'm going to put in ronald reagan, harry truman, franklin roosevelt and teddy roosevelt. i will tell youwhat they thought of him . they knew about his battle with indians . [inaudible] they said in times of trouble when i'm looking for leadership, i read jackson. morning with lincoln, how do i stop the division of our country. how did fdr get his country ready for war. he went to the hermitage, crippled and insisted on walking up the steps of the hermitage. you wanted to steal jackson so if he's these are great americans on i hope we all see they were great americans. they saw something great in jackson and that's why bring out in the paperback. >> we go to littleton colorado, comments with brian kilmeade. >> caller: i just want to say

i love your book and the brian, do you talk much about the pirates in your book? >> guest: thomas jefferson and the pirates, one of two is actually i talk about the pirates with andrew jackson. there was a key moment where he was as you know with the british, he needed his army to be abandoned but there were good guys and they were like mobsters. he would set up a table in new orleans with the new orleans government so the british said where going to plan a big invasion. we need john on our side. we're going to put you in the british maybe and pay us, fight with us. he went in one end and said i want to fight with the americans and i think jackson says i don't feel abandoned, you guys are pirates, i'm not going to deal with you guys

and the more he thought the people on the ground you realize i need these guys. and the pirates were able to fight and use their weaponry to buy a lot of money and have thatknowledge of the area to allow him to put together a formidable army . john lafitte was fighting in the battle, providing a lot of the artery, a lot of the weapons and a lot of the men. they just had this conglomeration of people. indians, free men of color, and you have regular army, n kentucky rifleman and of course the pirates. so i hope you like it. >> time for a couple calls, this is richard in north carolina, i richard?>> mister kinney, thank you for your work. i love your analysis on history. i'm interested in the battle of horseshoe dens . i understand that the cherokees are aiding jackson

against thegreeks and later on jackson betrayed them . what's your response to that please? >> i think that happened, i'm not expert in this field, i didn't focus on this presidency but a lot of people feel as though he betrayed the indians who were fighting for him. and ultimately, expunged him from the area so the only people who cautioned me on in that day, they met one of the number one issues was how did the americans stand, people are flooding our borders, coming in illegally. if we were attracting people and the american indians were stopping expansion so whoever was targeting them was dealing with the american indian issue and this goes all the way back to one of the top issues for lincoln. >> so we're up to the century and that is true. i have notbecome an american indian , american experts .

in oklahoma for example, people that wouldn't carry around the 20 because they just didn't want any part of jackson because famously, the trail of tears ended with whoever survived with the american indian relocation in oklahoma. >> one more call, johnwesley in california, go ahead . >>. >> caller: last chance. >> brian kilmeade, how did the war of 1812 and up ending the french in new orleans? >> what it this way, they cited and they signed a deal in at 10 and johnson was one of the people that put this deal together. when word came back that the white house bird to the ground, i kind of like where this is going to be found in not knowing the outcome of the battle of new orleans and the americans are thinking we didn't have a television. the americans represented in

this treaty conference, they said we are probably going to learn lose this so after the battle of new orleans, the word comes back about the battle in the treaty and it becomes a national celebration. so jackson didn't buy it. he thought they were going to come back again to tennessee and get another shot at new orleans but jackson kept everybody together and just before a major battle was about to take place, word came back on the british that it's over and they left so it was thefinal battle but the treaty and people , the treaty was signed but the treaty was relayed back to us then. this is, the beach was actually there so that's how it ended.he actually stopped thebattle of new orleans and it was a major battle, stopped at the battle of new orleans . >> host: january 1815 happened. when did he become president, how many years later?

>> he ran for president and lost in the most controversial election of the times. where he got the popular vote and he ends up in a three-way race and john quincy adams and not becoming the president but with jackson i think it's fascinating, he showed up at the inaugural. he shook everybody's hand, talk about america coming together but he kept to strategize, he said in four more years i'm coming back and he came back and it wasn't close. i want to add something else to jackson, jackson was one of the first to leave virginia and washington and campaign. go out, he would be victories of him in battle and he go out and the people outside the so-called beltway where we are today and he would dedicate to the people so there's no worldly victory for him. so he ran for president three times. he won three times what the deal by him, it was behind closed doors, and so taking his rug out from underneath

him. i think that you can learn like al gore did when al gore lost the heartbreaker by 500 votes, he shook his hand and moved over and i i think we can all learn from what jackson and boarded. you fight, it'scontroversial, it's heart-wrenching but it's important to have a succession and it's important not only when nixon moved over from kennedy, despite the controversy from illinois , i thought that you could learn a lesson from the . >> andrew jackson and the miracle of new orleans is the name of the book, the battle that shape america's destiny. there's the subtitle, this is brian kilmeade. third history book . >> we can't let you go without asking you about the mccain funeral, was going on the last few days in america, the fact that the national cathedral today, a couple miles up the street from here, there have been shots taken at president from during the funeral itself. is this something you'll be talking about monday at fox

and friends? >> monday, tuesday, i'll be off monday. i'll be talking about it but i'll mention the news story but he's such a great man. he had opinions about everything but he was a man of action. he never got along with donald trump, megan mccain was really the closest thing to john mccain out there i've met. talk to either one of his sons and she took shots at him and ever since president trump said i like guys who didn't get captured, john mccain never got over it. lindsey graham went out of his way to say president trump has a lot of the same agendas. he understands the need or our troops, he had $1 billion for defense and he couldn't get them together. aretha franklin, during her funeral they took shots and

john mccain, i heard megan mccain say something to the effect of america has always been great which is very different from governor cuomo who said america was never that great so it's a back-and-forth. i've said this before, the president doesn't tweet about it. my hope is that it's a funeral that is a solemn moment. i can't figure out where senator mccain went out of his way to bring people together and i don't judge him, i'm just noting it. i do note that he's been my favoriteinterview because he's so wcandid . before i got a job at fox and i was looking for an interview with him, he still gave me the time of day . a lot of times you won't have a flag, they walk past you and the first time i got a conference, i hosted the first four usc and he's a boxing guy and he said it was too brutal and they said go

find out fromjohn mccain what his problem is? he let me know. he said it's too brutal, there's no rules . no when i got my radio show by myself, he was my first guess and we replayed that interview and he wanted to be. he said. [inaudible] i think you can learn this from john mccain. he's consequential. when you take a position, people are going to be mad at you but when you experience it, you potentially can give a message for tens of thousands of people. he went to syria. he didn't say the russian threat is growing, he actually met latin american and said i see nothing but evil in the sky what he said of edison , he went to afghanistan so we want somebody who sits back and wants to get famous, you want to take action and that's why i'm in all of him that you get a lot of me people that get mad at you. he cares about america more than he does republicans.

more than he hates democrats. i hope we get back to that oubecause i don't think we could be any more fractured than we are right now. >> host: brian kilmeade, thank you for your time. >> guest: i appreciate it. >> host: coming up, another chance for you to talk with an author. here's tara westover with the book educated. it came out in february and it's on the bestseller list since her formal education began at the age of 17. she's a phd from cambridge today, you will meet her in just a bit but first, here's a little more of our interview with carla hayden. >> it's two years since you were named librarian of congress. what have you learned? >> what i've learned will be september 14, when i was supporting two years ago, what i've learned is so much more that can be shared with the public. that the library has no we

are launching a number of programs to make sure people know that we have not only leonard bernstein's collection but we also have the world's largest collection of comic books. and we have a new baseball exhibit, because we have the largest collection of baseball cards. so that's what been really exciting you're holding a folder year with a new logo . >> because we just launched it and we're starting in launching our new strategic plan, that will be user centered and we want people to know the library of congress is for you. and this is our representation of our new visual identity. and has a word library but the bookend. that can contain anything. the collection, videos and the people, all kinds of things can be contained. >> will show that to our

viewers right now, the inside here. you have that wonderful folder that you showed me earlier. >> i had to keep up with the names of all the authors but look at. you nshave an ancient manuscript. you have photographs and you can put video in there but you see this word library is one of the few words in the english language that if you separated, you still know and that we think is very significant . people will be seeing all kinds of things contained in those bookends. >> this past summer you did an interview, you were the interviewer, who did you interview? >> i have much more appreciation for interviewers and as i told you, i had the honor of interviewing ethe first lady michelle obama at the american library association conference in new orleans and of course i was nervous because i admire what you do, being an interviewer

but he shared thoughts on her new book that's coming out and so that's great. >> becoming is coming out in november. >> coming out in november so she was able to talk about theelements of with over 9000 librarians right here in new orleans . >> the national book festival founded by laura bush, and the llamas were always the national cochair for the honorary cochairs when we were in office, one of the trunks? have they become honorary cochairs? i >> not yet and i'm so glad you mentioned mrs. bush. librarians have a strong affinity with her. she's the first lady to be a librarian and she started a book festival in texas when she was the first lady of texas and when she became the first lady of the nation, she started the national book festival and we hope that he will be able to,when we have an anniversary coming up ,

that she will be able to be with us. >> this is 18, are we looking at the 20th? >> it would be wonderful because it meant so much for her to start that right here in washington dc. and the state book festival are being replicated, so the mississippi book festival was modeled after the texas and so different states are having, we have a lot to be grateful for with mrs. bush. >> and tv covers several of those book fairs live throughout the year. doctor carla hayden, what's on your reading list? >> i'm trying to catch up and i have the papers of the different authors that are coming. i have john meacham's book. eadoris kearns goodwin, amy can and some of the other authors that i really want to make sure that i at least touched on so i have a basket of books that i'm reading.

>>. >> and that full interview with carla hayden is available on our website at booktv.org. educated and one more is the name of the book, the author is tara westover and she joins us live now. before we start talking about your book whichcame out in february and has been on the bestseller list since , does this situation here with this crowd watching you and all these people around, does this make you uncomfortable? >> it doesn't make me uncomfortable but it's still very surreal. it doesn't feel completely real. >> i wrote the book and as a writer, you sit in a room and it's a dark room and you're alone . and there's never a moment where you realize other people have read it. i don't see people reading it

and yet they have and it's always a surprise to me. i haven't quite wrap my head around it. >> you have a situation like this in the first 13 years of your life, but this has been odd to you?>> i was raised and we didn't really go to these kinds of things and to find myself on a stage, it's different. it's wonderful, it's great but it's an adjustment and i'm still adjusting. >> when did you first meet formal education? >> i felt it in the classroom the first time when i was 17 and that was because i was raised by parents who didn't believe in it so we were touched on. they also didn't believe in a lot of other things, doctors and hospitals, they didn't believe in anything to do with the government though i didn't even have a birth certificate until i was nine. >> were your friends with otrandy weaver? >> they didn't know him.

they had similar ideological views and how they lived in a somewhat similar way but they didn't know him personally. >> how did your life change of 17. >> 17 is the age that i decided i would try to go to the university and i haven't had a lot of formal education, really any formal education before that . yi had to teach myself math, to kind of take my way through the act and i was admitted to brigham young university. the only issue as i wasn't really qualified.i had done all right on theact but i had no really knowledge . i had never written an essay. one of my first classes at byu, i raised my hand and i had never heard of the civil brights movement. i thought europe was a country, not continent so the book that i wrote is a memoir about my experience of education. it was about that time , so i'm kind of extreme immigrants to getting the opportunity to engage with the world. and learn about things and have access to a whole universe, i had a wonderful

experience but i was able to experience some of the best of what education is and can be in this country and in sother countries , but the way i started was very different. >> host: you get the sense quickly of tara westover's story. were going to phone lines on the screen. 402 08 200 if you live in the eastern standard time zones. 72801 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. there westover, were you happy child? did you have a good time? >> i would say i had a beautiful childhood. there were parts of it were challenging. my father was moving in hospital and if we were into those things, they were never seated in the hospital but there are a lot of beautiful things about it. the junkyard was an exotic

playground. my parents loved us and took care of us the best that we knew how. with their belief sometimes the way they took care of us, it wasn't the way that a lot of other parents would have done that. but our parents cared about us, they loved us. >> host: at that point at 17 when you applied to college, what was their reaction? >> guest: my father was not in favor of me going. the path he lined up for me was more iwould get married, become a midwife like my mother, stay on the farm . be suspicious of government and education, so he didn't want me to go to college. eventually as i became more educated, i would, more into conflict with my parents. they would become more ec extreme and i would become more mainstream. my family because they are so ideologically extreme, that would become difficult and there were hard questions i've asked myself about what

the obligations you are that you owed your family. what do you do? what do you owed to your family? there's been some tension with what you owed your self. >> host: and what's the result of that? >> guest: the result of that is it would come to a head and my parents, i had a brother who was violent and i would confrontmy parents about that and they would refuse to accept that . then i would have a processof trying to accept that . i love my parents and the value my childhood for whatit had . but it was, even while letting go of some of the things that i felt were harmful to me. >> are you still in touch with your parents? >> i email with my mother pretty regularly but my mother refuses to see me and

my father, my mother, i haven't seen her for quite a while. >> host: she is connected to the outside world. >> guest: they discovered the internet when i was a teenager so they did have internet. >> host: what was the biggest surprise about formal education at 17? what were some of the things that you just didn't like get? >> i have friends who went to public school and they never went to mine, i was pretty it's hard to say but i was a adweird kid. i didn't know how to talk to people or interact with people. i think the academic side was pretty daunting. i athad never heard of the holocaust before. i raised my hand and asked what it was in the world is a different place when you know about the holocaust from when you don't. there was a period of lack of

learning about something horrific, something difficult and then there's that sense of coming to terms with the death of young ignorance and orealizing something like that can happen and it's possible that you won't know about it. everything we know about the past and about history comes to us through a filter. but i hadn't had access to that body of knowledge so i been kept away from it. i think learning about the holocaust for me was this horrible thing to learn about and there was also coming to terms with how i had been. >> host: tara westover, often people couldn't hang on to an angerfrom their past . are you angry about those first 17 years? >> i would say there were a couple ways that i was angry at. i think anger is a healthy thing in some cases. it's a self defense mechanism thatyour brain uses to get you out of situations . i had a few days in my life where panger was everything.

i became someone who had no good memories and i feel like once i accepted the decision that i've made to let go of my parents, and i stopped blaming myself for it and i forgave myself, i felt like i didn't need the anger anymore. the anger was about justifying me to myself and once i stopped parading myself to that decision, i felt like didn't need the anger anymore. >> let's hear from some callers, this is bob from illinois. you are on book tv with author tara westover. >> caller: i enjoyed your book. to me, it was a fantastic story of what you went through, but i'm curious. you mentioned a moment ago about your mother and you had email with her but what is the current status between you and your family? >> guest: with my mother, i usually ask and my mother has

a policy where she won't talk to me unless i talked to my dad. they have a similar situation where they decided there's one parent, not who they don't love but they don't think is a positive influence ho in their life and sometimes they are able to maintain it and sometimes they're not and in my case i'm not able to, not by my choice but because of her choice . >> so we're in granville kentucky, hello janine. >> i have two quick questions.ou one is what is your degree in and secondly, how did you pay to get all this advanced education? how did you pay for that? and i'll hang up now and listen to your answer. >> ..

>>host: what does your family think about this and you have a best-selling book? >> my dad for example he is proud of me in some ways in some ways he didn't like it at all but then he also wanted me to stay home but i think a part of him is proud of me.

>>host: has your faith changed? >> i wasn't raised mormon it was a much more radical version band the mainstream mormons. but i don't feel that wasn't quite the right fit for me. but now my concept has changed. that the essence of things of not seen and that bible verse with that definition of faith is keeping education alive anybody that embarks on a e,education to affect change in

their lives. >>host: michigan go ahead. >> caller. >>host: we lost iris. what prompted you to write this book? >> going through thisif difficult process and losing my family and when i was going through that i was aware of the stories that we had and to feel that the narratives that we have about family fall into two categories. other than reconciliation or the messages that families are so difficult or so terrible you never look back.efu

>> and my family but that is a

hard business. you will never do hard labor d somebody. y >>host: [inaudible] >> that could mean so many different things.nt my one brother was homeschooled he is so well-adjusted and so well-informed but for some people that is about education so i feel it is about getting access and many different perspectives. to decide what you think and participate in making of your own mind.

access to education and ideas and knowledge. >>host: could you go back to living that lifestyle? >> working on my project i'm in new york. so far i like it. >>host: her book educated a bestseller since it came out in february. >>host: other books? >> eventually right now there is the s documentary. looking at small town thinking and the family farm.

and i do think that small-town struggle a little bit. it is difficult to get out. >>host: thank you for being on booktv. >> live at the 18th annual fenational book festival. the 20th year with nonfiction books and authors every weekend over the last 20 years. with over 15000 authors we have seven more hours of live coverage of the book festival. tomorrow is part of our special fiction edition we will have t2 she has on the

national book award she will be on for two hours to take your calls with t2 please join us tomorrow or on sunday from noon through 3:00 o'clock p.m. also we will have programming all day long on monday on booktv but first look at what isis available at spee 23 up next is doris kearns goodwin who took calls earlierl today talking about her book leadership and after her john meacham and then the most recent book.

and with the national book festival and now doris kearns goodwin. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [applause]

good afternoon on behalf of the library of congress we will express oure great gratitude to aarp to make this presentation possible who has been a longtime supporter of the library's educational initiative and we are very grateful for that. [applause] that is now my honor to introduce the cochairman of the national book festival the champion of reading and literac literacy, david rubenstein. [applause] >> we are very honored to have one of our country's foremost historians and riders and biographers here, doris kearns goodwin thank you for coming. [applause] how many people here have read team of rivals? bully pulpit? a book on the and and johnson?

the kennedys and fitzgeralds? how many people here as one of our foremost riders? [applause] if you don't know her background briefly grew up in brooklyn and ultimately went to colby college got her phd at harvard a white house fellow in the johnson administration helping him with his memoir then ultimately went back to teach at harvard had for the last number of years has been writing extraordinarily well received and terrific viagra fees and histories. winning a pulitzer prize for one of your books as well. you'll be writing a new book coming out september 18 on leadership. it is about a book on the people you have written about like abraham lincoln, teddy roosevelt, franklin roosevelt

the other one is linden johnson. so why did you decide to write aen book about four different people? why not write about somebody new? >> each time i finish writing one of thene books, have to take all of their books out of my study to make room for the next guy i felt like i was betraying him like an old boyfriend. [laughter] so i thought what if i could keep my guys together? but i would have to do that by looking at them in a new way. once upon a time as a graduate student reading plato and aristotle does at times make the man and we also talk about boys and girls with those are the kinds of things and i do

call them my guys it may be disrespectful but what if i just take them so it was a great project for me. and i loved every minute of it. >> and with lyndon johnson knew could relate how you actually came to know him and how you almost lost your job with an article that you wrote. >> as chosen at a white house loi was 24 years old the white house fellowship program we had a big dance and i was selected it wasn't that peculiar there was only three

women but he whispered he wanted me to be the director of the white house. but the month leading up to that i was a graduate student vaat harvard with the vietnam war movement i wrote an article against him and sent it l to the new republic i hadn't heard anything and it came out two days after the dance and it says how do we remove johnson from power? laughmac i was sure they would kick we out but he said bring her down for one year and if i cannot win her over nobody can eventually ended up working for him in the white house. o and with that formidable and interesting care -- colorful character. with the aging line of a man. and i began to feel for him

and then to go to each president after him. and had it not been for lyndonjo johnson? >> so what you have done you have had each of these foursi presidentsac there are three parts to each description. and how they grew up if they were destined for greatness. and what where they thought they weren't going anywhere in life? and then what showed that theyts had great eater ship skills? let's start with abraham lincoln and what was it like to grow up as a son of mr. lincoln? >> with enormous perseverance and determination and he never

went past the age of nine or ten. but somebody would educate them working in the field so to get everything he could lay his hands on and going 60 miles to get a certain book that he wanted when and somehow it became much more important with one of shakespeare's plays he couldn't eat or sleep and there was a part of the book it would carry him to places he could never go. with those alternative thoughts and in those few years he was in school that is where his conscience came from. rather than what he had

learned so much that once he started to read about other people and places maybe i can have another life rather than shucking corn. and then his father would see him h reading he would destroy the book. so he finally leftt and went to where his political career began at he ran after only six months and writes this amazing handbill that he gives out to people explaining why he is running. every man has a peculiar ambition in mind is to be esteemed by myet fellow man and to think that way when you are 23 and unknown. if you don't put me in office i won't be disappointed because i've had so much

disappointment in my life and i will do everything to pay you back. and if i don't win this time i will try it was too humiliated. to see the kindness and humility. and to win that election with extraordinary political career. >> is there a reason to think maybe he's not a great writer looking at the gettysburg address and what about writing so eloquently? >> having a gift for the rhythm of language maybe you are born with that but more importantly he read great books. he was not spending his time

reading horizontal books but shakespeare and poetry and the bible. he said if you read something he really loved he wanted to read it out r loud and would then take his knife and write out the words then transfer them to paper and memorize them almost like vertical learning. >> so he ran for office and was elected to the state legislature. and served two years in congress was a competent lawyer but there were a lot of competent lawyers and also in congress.ho this man is destined for greatness. roosevelt once wrote about the importance of

a crisis making a leader great. if he had not had a war no one would have known his name but he is wrong. all the people that have seen him from the time he was young even if he never became president they knew they were in the presence of somebody special. how much he was trying to learn they wanted to help him. they would lend him books. the village man would keep his fire on at night though lincoln could read that is the only place with light. they saw his sense of humor even as a young kid he learned how to tell stories. he would listen to his father entertain people the one thing his father that he valued was a storyteller and lincoln became a fabulous storyteller with a sense of humor thatase matched his melancholy there was a sadness about him because he had huge ambition and he thought i will never

reach those goals but he reaches that through his humor they knew he was special whether they knew he would ever become president i'm sure they never thought that big but they knew there was something about this guy. >>host: talk about teddy roosevelt his father was veryp wealthy but that doesn't mean he would necessarily be a very smart person or a good athletes. what was it like growing up with teddy roosevelt?dy >> the most important thing is he suffered from an almost life-threatening asthma as a child so he cannot participate in physical activity but it meant he developed his mind and read books like lincoln and every moment but unlike lincoln he just need to pull a book off his shelf or tell his dad he wanted a book it would magically appear one time he wrote in a letter he rode 15

novels that summer and his father would teach him he was like a tutor and eventually that sense of reading became a huge part of that books were being a companion into the best way to learn about human nature is through books. but they create an alternative future he wants to be fearless but he is very timid with his asthma so he reads about soldiers and africa and imagines himself as one of thosems and later becomes courageous because without the body the mind cannot go as far as it should so he's i will make my body so he went into strenuous exercises he becomes

a champion and a very strong person after harvard and into the presidency. >>host: is he well-respected a harvard? >> he is an odd duck at harvard he was to be in or install it just collects dead birds in his room. [laughter]is he doesn't want to make friends with anybody who is not on the social register because he wants to be part of the same class but he's also different he interrupts the professors and those of the times he worked hard and did veryid well but once he gets out of harvard ends up at the age of 23 running for the state legislature again because somebody comes to him to m say maybe you are a good candidate because your father was well known and once he starts going around lead meeting people from the working class or the other part of the district he

began to feel at ease with them and he could talk tol them and he lost that sense of privilege he had before and became a natural politician. >>host: he is in the state legislature so he is full of himself not making as many friends as he wouldayhi like to anybody say he is smart and a good athlete and will be president? >> you areol absolutely right. when he ran for the legislature he had a swelled head he had a great way of language so he would make headlines and pound his desk when he was mad and he became well-known in new york but after a while he couldn't get anything done because he burned so many bridges so he realized this is where humility came in an important quality in all my guys may finally develop that to recognize your limitations and acknowledge her mistakes to

realize you could not fix it alone. he did not say that he's that i cannot do it alone any cooperation of other people and he became a more mature politician. people who he was special whether they could predict he would be a president i don't know but they knew they were in the presence of somebody with charisma and energy and a lot of brilliance. >>host: how is he related to fdr. >> the sixth cousin but more importantly teddy roosevelt's brother brother elliott was the father of eleanor roosevelt that is the real connection so her father had epilepsy as a child became an alcoholic and dead yet -- died young so he became a father to eleanor and franklin loved teddy so they became a circle. >> growing up in a very wealthy setting he is an only

child of his father's marriage with his mother but up in hyde park but if anybody thought the president of the united ldstates? >> certainly not fdr but the difference between him and teddy roosevelt they were the center of their parents love which gave them a certain confidence. with teddy not only the center of his father and mother's love but the other siblings made him the center of their lives because he would tell them stories after he read the books and he would organize their games and fdr was the center of his parents life and teddy wanted to be the center of everybody's life experience that as a child he wanted to be at the baby at the baptism and the bride at the wedding and the corpse at the funeral. [laughter] so fdr has that same sense to be enjoyed as a child and he

had this magnificent library but when he was young he liked to read aloud and listen to his mother read one time his mother was reading he was playing with his stamped one -- stamp collection he love to collect things. she said you not listening and then he recited back the whole package he said i would be ashamed of myself if i couldn't do two things at the same time but he was not a regular student he became a student at harvard and columbia people thought he really was not as smart as he turned out to be actually when oliver wendell holmes says first rate temporal rent but the second rate intellect he went through everything he had to get through in life he was doubted that much smarter than people knew but he is a little

kid now he wanted to know where the countries came from that would issue the stamp he would read about the country than figure out he said i'm halfway through webster's dictionary he studied maps and wanted to know about the terrain and mountains and the environment that became so important leading us into world war ii when he becomes a leader later on he could bring information out. . . . .

>> she had met her husband in state legislator when she interviewed him. he said when he would recite these passages, she was so proud of him that he felt like he was going to be smothered to death. there is a funny story relating to the mother. when i was working with lyndon johnson, everything was going great. i knew he had a womanizing reputation, but i was talking to him about steady boyfriends even when i had no boyfriends at all. everything was going great. one day he wanted to discuss our relationship, which sounded ominous when he took nearby to the lake, called lake lyndon johns johnson. he had wine and cheese. he started out, doris, more than

any other woman than i have ever known, and then he said you remind me of my mother. [laughter] >> it was pretty embarrassing given what was going on in my mind, but somehow i was at harvard, i was an intellectual, here was his mother. the interesting thing is that even though he had those talents when he was young, all he really wanted to be following his father. and after a while, he only wanted to read books. he said is it real? is it about somebody in history? he didn't want to read fiction. he didn't want to expand that mind. he wanted to go with his father on the campaign trail, go with him to the state legislature and politics became his love. and the father and the mother never got along very well. so choosing one over the other was more complicated, but the sad thing is because he never did well in school, because he was too restless to sit, even though he had that extraordinary mind, he always felt like somehow he would never be appreciated by the harvard. his father said to him if you brush up against the grindstone

of life, you will will look more polished than any of those harvard and yale people ever did. he said i wanted to believe him but i never could. even when i was first starting to work for him, and he wanted me to work full time for him, i told him i couldn't, i was going back to harvard. he said you can either come all or nothing. i thought i wasn't going to go. the last day of his presidency, he called me in, he said, you know, it is not so easy to get people to work for him when you are no longer at the height of your power. i won't forget what you are doing for me. then he said, i know you are going back to harvard. don't let those harvards get to you. don't let them make you hate me. always that feeling towards that larger world that he easily could have been a part. he was as smart as any of those guys. >> as a young man, did people think that somebody whose father was a state legislator, not particularly well educated, that he would be president of the united states, was that anybody's dream for lyndon johnson? >> well, yes, once he gets into

politics, he's an absolute natural. and when he was young, he was a real new deal congressman. he wanted to do for people what would help people. and he meets fdr for the first time when fdr is president. he's a real -- i was about to say something i know i can't say on television. anyway he was a natural storyteller. he could make up things, for example, let us say it that way. [laughter] >> you can guess what that word might have been. [laughter] >> so he knows that fdr is going fishing, he knows nothing about fishing, and he tells him how much he loves fishing. anyway they get a lot great. and fdr tells somebody i've just met this amazing young congressman. you know he's the kind of uninhibited pro i would have been if i hadn't gone to harvard. i think some day he may be the president of the united states. >> let's talk about the depression crises that each of

these men experienced relatively earlier in their career, in their lives. abraham lincoln gets to the point where he's almost suicidal. they are so afraid he might commit suicide, they take away the razor blades and so forth. what were the things that caused this enormous depression? >> well, what happened to lincoln is that he broke his word to his constituents and he broke his word to mary when he asked her to undo their engagement, and for him his word meant everything. he had promised his constituents that he would bring infrastructure projects into their area so that they could get their goods to market, dredging the harbors and making the roads. a huge recession hit the state and they had to stop the projects and halfway and the state went into bankruptcy and debt, and he was blamed. he took responsibility for it. and he said he was going to leave the state legislature. at that same time, he broke his engagement with mary, not sure he could support a wife, also not sure as he said that his heart was going with his hands, but he knew what it meant to her to be humiliated, and the fact

that he had hurt these people, that he had hurt his constituents was so painful to him, that he went into this suicidal depression. he stayed in his rooms for weeks sometimes, and the friends came, and as you say, took all knives and razors and scissors from his room. his best friend came to his side and he said lincoln, you must rally or you will die. he said i will know that i just assume die right now but i haven't accomplished anything to make any human being that i have lived. aulss from the beginning -- always from the beginning he had a double ambition, not just for himself, but for doing something larger than that. he finished out the final term in the state legislature and won a seat in congress. loses twice for the senate. and yet instead of it again undoing his ambition, he said we've made a mark on the enduring problem of the age, slavery, because of his debates with douglas, and then he still losing twice is willing to try as a dark horse candidate for the presidency, and the rest as

they say is history. >> so with mary todd lincoln, he was engaged to her and then he broke up the relationship, and why did he decide to go back? you might talk about his earlier girlfriend who died. >> the hardest thing for lincoln is that death surrounded him. his mother died when he was 9 years old. his only sister sarah died in childbirth a few years later. his first love ann rutledge died at the age of 22. when his mother died she didn't say to him we will meet in another world. she simply said abraham i'm going away from you now and i shall never return. that's when he began to be obsessed with what happens to us after we die. when he began to think if i can only accomplish something, maybe somebody will remember me after i die, and they will still be telling the story of me. i will still live on. it was true i think people have studied this more and more, that he did love ann rutledge who died suddenly. when he first met mary, i think

he really did care greatly for her. she loved poetry, drama, came from an educated wealthy family. she was one of the few people at the time who loved politics in that world. she'd come to live with her sister in springfield. her sister was married to the then governor of the state. when he first asked her to dance, she later remembered she said -- he said mary i want to dance with you in the worst way. and after they finished the dance, she said he certainly did. [laughter] >> by the way, by coincidence, who was the other suitor to marry mary todd lincoln? >> steven douglas, so amazing, a very small circle of these politicians. >> she was dating somebody who was 6'4" and somebody who was 4'6". >> right. she had to stretch or go back down, right. >> let's talk about teddy roosevelt. he has an experience in life that nobody wants to go through on one day that really put him into a depression. you might describe what happened. >> yeah, i mean, he's in the state legislature and his wife alice who he dearly loved.

he'd fallen in love with her when she was at harvard. she was a beautiful young woman. was having their first child. he got a telegram saying alice's child is born, and they have cigars. they were all celebrating and then an hour later he gets another telegram saying you must come home immediately. your mother is dying and alice is dying too. the mother had come to take care of alice. she was only 49 years old. and she got typhoid fever and she was dying and then he goes back home immediately. his brother elliot meets him at the door and says there's a curse on this house. he goes inside. his mother is dying. he holds her in his arms. she dies at 3:00 a.m. 12 hours later, alice died in childbirth. they said that he walked around in a daze stunned state. he couldn't stay in the state legislature anymore. he had to get away. so he had gotten a ranch previously just to think he might go every now and then out west in the badlands. and he went for two years, and he became essentially a cowboy, a rancher in the badlands.

he said as long as he could ride his horse, 15 hours a day, physical activity prevented overthought. and he was finally able to sleep at night. but later, he said, this was the best educational asset that he could possibly have developed, because he developed his love of the land, of open spaces, that was permanently associated with his name through the conservation measures. >> now the daughter who was born then, his first daughter, named alice -- >> right. >> why would he not really mention her name ever? why did he kind of ignore her? he had his sister i guess raising her. what was the nature of that relationship? >> he had a very peculiar attitude towards death, which was that once his wife alice died, he couldn't bear to even say the name of the little girl who they called alice. so he only called her baby. and he didn't even want to bring her up somehow because she reminded him too much of the woman who had died. so he did give her to his sister to bring up. but then what happened is he had once been very friendly with a young woman named edith who he

had grown up with and who was in love with him from the time she was young until he lost her by going to alice. when he started to get healthy again, in the badlands, he started corresponding with edith and in the end he had a marriage with her that was a lifelong love of marriage that he possibly could have. a whole bunch of kids. somehow when something hurt him in the past, unlike lincoln who would talk endlessly about the people in the past, who wanted to remember them, he thought if something is gone, you just get it from your mind, that wasn't a healthy part of him in my judgment. >> his wife and mother died in the same day. he wrote a letter saying the light had gone out of his life. >> right. >> he essentially felt his life was over; right? >> right. >> the idea he would ever become president of the united states at that time certainly didn't exist in anybody's mind; right? >> most interesting thing that happened to him, i think that's right is before this all happened to him, he looked at his life, as many people do when they're ambitious as a series of

wrongs that he would like to go up. okay i'm in the state legislature now. i would like to get in the state senate. then i think i would like to go to congress. then i could be a senator. he was ambitious, and then who knows why might happen after that. once this fatalistic thing happened to him, he decided you can't plan your life that way anymore. so i'm just going to take whatever job looks good to me at the time where i can broaden my horizons where i can want to do it, a worthy job. he comes back to new york and becomes a civil service commissioner in washington, a job that his friends think that's way below you. you have huge talents, but he wanted to make the merit system work. then he becomes police commissioner of new york. they say why are you doing that? it turned out to be an extraordinary experience for him. he's walking the streets at night. he made himself when he was in the police department, he would disguise himself so he could go and walk on the beat between midnight and 4:00 a.m. and just to see if the policemen were on the beat, and they didn't recognize him until finally he

would say i'm the police commissioner, why aren't you on your beat? and after a while, these cartoonists had pictures of teddy as policemen terrified at the thought they might encounter him. but those experiences. then he becomes a soldier in the spanish american war, governor, vice president, and then he becomes president. he had the broadest experience. he was the youngest president. he said he learned fellow -- he was not self-conscious anymore going into places that he might never go. one of the things that saddened me in the last election, that political experience was considered a handicap. in his case it broadened him, that from his background he would never have known. >> the problems they had in their life was somewhat psychological. franklin roosevelt had a physical problem.

how did that come about? >> he's up at camp, doesn't feel well one morning, exercises all day. he comes home so tired he can't even take off his bathing suit. he goes to bed. within 48 hours he was paralyzed from the waist down, having gotten polio and years of striving would follow him from that. it changed his life. there's no question. i mean, when he was in a wheelchair, in tehe early days and they told him the only chance he had would be to strengthen his upper body. he would be asked to taken out of the wheelchair, sit on the library floor, so he could crawl on the floor so his back would get stronger. he would crawl up the stairs. he would hoist himself up the stairs one rung at a time, holding on to the banisters. when he made it to the top, they would celebrate as if a mountain had climbed. his wife realized when each one of these small wins was celebrated, he began to get his

joy in life again. he was in terrible depression thinking he might be paralyzed for the rest of his life or his own ambition in politics would be undone. at that point he had not only been in the state senate, assistant secretary of the navy, vice presidential candidate in 20 before he got polio. he thought he was going somewhere. the polio changed that possibility or so it seemed. but then amazingly in 1924, smith was running for the presidency, and they asked if franklin roosevelt -- he hadn't really been in public since the polio would give the nominating speech. he knew he would have to somehow traverse from there to the podium, and the only way he could appear to be walking, he couldn't walk on his own power, was if he had braces locked in place and he could lean on somebody's arm. he could appear to be walking. so he practiced for weeks at home, measuring the steps that he could do, leaning on his son jimmy's arm. when he finally got to the podium that night, the sweat is

pouring down his face, but he delivers an incredible happy warrior speech. he comes home that night, and he said to his family, we made it, we made it. and then much more importantly, still not ready to go into public life, still thinks he can't be a politician or be a president unless he learns how to walk. but he goes to warm springs because he hears that's the place where the hot waters can help you. once he gets there, something much larger happens. he develops it into a rehab center. first real rehab center, not simply to help his fellow polios learn how to use the water, to help their muscles but he wants them to have fun in life again. he wants them to enjoy things. he arranges dances with the wheelchairs. he arranges poker games, soccer games and things in the pool. he learns what it is like to make other people feel better. as his labor secretary said, he emerged different from that whole experience, completely warmhearted with an understanding of other people who had also been dealt an unkind hand, he became a much deeper leader than he had been before. >> it wasn't a secret to most

people in the political world that he had had polio. but most people in the united states probably didn't know it or it wasn't as well advertised, but why was it that the press was willing to go along with the idea of never photographing him in his wheelchair? >> yeah, that's an extraordinary thing; even though people understood that he had polio, they didn't understand that he was a paraplegic. they didn't know that. everybody around him made a code of honor on the part of the press that they would never photograph him, never show him with his braces on. the most amazing moment is in 1936 when he came to give the acceptance speech, he was being helped to walk down the aisle. he reached over to shake the hands of somebody, and he fell. his braces unlocked. he finally said to the secret service, get me together again. they put his braces on, get him up on the podium. he delivers the great speech, but most importantly not a word was said in the press the next day that he had fallen. they simply gave the words of the speech. when i think about where we have come from since then, when

president bush is sick in japan, when president ford falls down a plane step, we can't wait to find them in those embarrassing situations. there was a code of honor as i said. if a new photographer came along not knowing it and tried to take a picture of him, an older one would knock the camera out of his hands. it was a dignity to the president. you wish he didn't feel he had to do that. you would hope nowadays he could be a paraplegic and still be the franklin roosevelt that he was but he made the decision then that was not possible. and if he said that, his political instincts are better than mine looking back, then i believe him. but there was a sense there was a way of treating people with dignity in the way the press handled politicians that i wish we could restore today. >> lyndon johnson setback or depression is something that only johnson would think was quite comparable to the other ones. he lost an election. can you describe why that would be such a terrible thing? >> it does seem crazy; right? i mean 1941, he loses the senate election that he should have won at the last minute he lost. and it did catapult him into

such a depression because for him losing an election was a repudiation of his deepest self. that's what he was. he was a politician. he loved his wife and children, but politics had fulfilled this big hole in him that was too hard to fill without politics being there. and what happened is he went into a decline really. sometimes these kind of adversities can send you backwards rather than forwards. and in his self, he decided that he would pursue wealth instead of just working as he always had in politics. he turned his back on the new deal. he realized if he was going to win another chance at a senate seat, texas was becoming increasely conservative so he would have to become conservative as well. when he wins in 48 and gets into the senate, then he pursues power and he becomes incredibly powerful. he knows how to do it. he becomes majority leader. but then the incredible thing is he has a second big adversity, just six months after he became majority leader, he had a nearly fatal heart attack.

when he was in the hospital, and he began to say to himself the proximity of death is right there, if i died now, what would i be remembered for? all of these people, it is so interesting, they think about that. it is something larger than what maybe ordinary people think about. and then he comes back to the senate, and he becomes once again the progressive person he had once been. and he gets the first civil rights bill through the senate. even though it is not a strong bill, it is the opening of doors to civil rights. and then of course when he gets into the presidency, that becomes the thing he wants to do, to do something he will be remembered for and it becomes civil rights >> and that election, one of the thing, that he could have won the election, he was maybe supposed to win, but he thought the election was stolen from him. did he resolve to not that let happen again? how was it stolen? >> in 1941 and then again in 1948, people knew there were certain counties where you could be put many as many votes you

wanted to, they could add extra votes. if they were your counties, you would wait to say how many votes, and know how many you needed when you knew how close you were to the other guy. he was so sure he won in 1941, he wanted to make it happen earlier. he announced he had x number of votes from one of his counties. he was carried around on the arms of people. the other guy put more votes in his county than lbj had in his, he happens to win. in 48 he reversed the process. [laughter] >> so let's go through the leadership examples you go through this your book. you have cited many. let's talk about in the case of abraham lincoln. obviously a great leader. but you cite principally the emancipation proclamation. why do you think that is an example of great leadership? >> if i may just say something first, which is that in dealing with them as leaders, i realize that all of them lived in turbulent times. and that's the title of the book "leadership in turbulent times". i mean think about it, it's become a little bit more

relevant now than it was when i thought about it five years ago, but each one of them faced an extraordinary situation. in lincoln's case of course he comes into office, and the civil war is about to begin. the country is on fire. it's divided into two. and he says if he'd ever known the terror of what he would face, he didn't think he could live through it. but the big question he has to face, is that when the war starts, it's predominantly being fought to preserve the union, to bring the south and north back together again. he had always hated slavery, and there were some people who were hoping even at the beginning of his presidency that he would do something about liberating the slaves at the same time as preserving the union. but he was stuck by the idea that constitutions protected slavery in those states that wanted to keep slavery. and so and he knew that most of the union army was fighting simply to preserve the union, not to emancipate the slaves. as the war went on, and as the north was doing so badly in the

peninsula campaign, in the summer of 1862, he went to visit the soldiers which he always did in the battle, he wanted to walk amongst the ranks of the soldiers, visit the wounded in the hospital and get a sense of the situation. while he was there, he began to realize more and more that the slaves were helping the confederates in enormous way. they were serving as teamsters, serving as cooks. they're tending the plantations so that the soldiers can be liberated to come to the battlefield. and he realized that he had powers as the commander-in-chief that if something were a military necessity, he could use those powers. he went to the soldiers' home that summer and he was able to think this all through. he came to the cabinet and says i'm going to issue an emancipation proclamation, the south is benefitting from the slaves if we take that benefit away, it will help the north. he finally convinces his cabinet

even though some didn't agree with him. they thought it would make the war go on longer than it would. but somehow he had created a sense of trust in him, that they didn't make their disagreements public and then he had to convince the army, who at the first were upset about the idea of this, but so trusting had the army become in him because he had visited them so many times, that they went along with it. and so finally, in january of 1863, he actually makes the emancipation proclamation real and the question some people thought would he go back on his word because there was a lot of outcry about it even at that point. but when he went to sign the emancipation proclamation, his own hand was numb and shaking because that morning there had been a huge new year's reception and at that reception he had shaken a thousand hands. so when he went to sign the proclamation, his own hand was numb and shaking. he put the pen down. he said if ever my soul were in an act, it is in this act. but if i sign with a shaking hand, posterity will say he

hesitated. so he waited and waited until he could sign with a bold hand. the amazing thing his old friend came to the white house soon after the emancipation proclamation was signed and they both remembered that terrible moment when he was in the near suicidal depression and when he said that i would soon die now but i have not yet done anything yet to make a human being remember that i lived. he said to joshua i hope in this emancipation proclamation that my hope will be realized that this will be something that will be remembered. so it surely has been. >> in the movie "lincoln" made after a book, the movie is only about three or four pages in the book, the movie, a whole separate story. it is about the 13th amendment. why did we need that after we had the emancipation proclamation? >> the thing that was so wonderful about the movie was that even though they chose a smaller subject the 13th

amendment rather than the whole horizontal atmosphere of the war, it still gave everything that i cared about that most importantly that lincoln would have cared about his character, his humor, his mel-- his melancholy, his story telling ability, his political genius, that was important to show. spielberg wanted lewis to play lincoln from the beginning. when lewis said yes, he knew he had gotten his man. the reason the 13th amendment was so important was that lincoln worried once the war came to an end, that then military necessity would no longer be a viable way to have undone the constitution. so he wanted a permanent constitutional amendment that would end slavery forever. >> let's talk now about teddy roosevelt. there are many examples of leadership. you focused on the coal strike. what was the big deal about the coal strike? >> what happens is that the pivotal moment in teddy's

presidency. i tried to choose moments that were pivotal in each one of their presidencies instead of doing the whole presidency, partly because i knew that i didn't want the book to be as fat as some of those other books are. when a woman was reading, she told me she was reading it at home at night and she was reading it in hard back and she said she fell asleep and broke her nose. i figured i'm going to try and make this book on leadership not as fat. if i went through the whole presidency, it would be fatter. i chose the pivotal moment. in teddy's case, there was a six month strike between the miners and the coal, in new england coal was the only way you got fuel. so as winter and fall were coming, hospitals were closing down. schools were closing. it could have been a national emergency. certainly new england emergency. but the problem for teddy roosevelt was that the president had no precedent to intervene in a labor management strike. everything was considered private then. the government had no business being involved in these things.

so he had to begin to see the idea that there were three parties to this strike. there's labor. there's management. there's the public. and he represents the public. so he started to go around -- he loved to go around on a train to talk to people and create public sentiment to tell people that perhaps the president did have some power to get involved in this because the public was involved. and these train trips that he took were such an important way of creating public sentiment. he loved to go sometimes six weeks in the spring, six weeks in the fall, and he would stop at little stations along the way. then he would continue to go and wave to people who would be standing on the tracks in these small places when the train wasn't stopping. there's a great story that he's waving frantically at a group of people and they are not responding, rather coldly, until he's told because of his nearsightedness that he's waving frantically at a herd of cows, little wonder they weren't responding. [laughter] >> he starts telling people i think the president has a

stewardship role to this office. he decides finally to invite both sides to the white house. never had labor management come to the white house before. this is so different from what we imagine now. they come and have this unproductive meeting because the coal won't even talk to the miners. they say we're not talking to these guys. they are outlaws. we can't have a conversation with them. the lucky thing teddy does though he had a stenographer at the beginning take notes, he asked them if he could do that. the miner guys happened to be open. they suggested arbitration. if you put into arbitration whatever you decide, we will go with you. and the coal barrons said we're not listening to these guys. they are outlaws. he publishes the whole meeting. it sounds terrible on the part of the miners -- on the part of the coal owners so they finally decide that they will go to arbitration, but they won't go as teddy suggested. they won't go as the miners suggested. he gets jp morgan to suggest it, that's safe for them.

they get together, they settle it. it's settled on the matter of both sides. it was the symbol of the deal, which was the program that symbolized his entire presidency, square deal for the rich, and the poor, the capitalist and the wage worker. that's how he made his mark. >> fdr may be associated with the leadership of helping us win world war ii, maybe most remember it for that, but you focus on your book on something that happened when he just took office. we were in a depression. hoover had not been able to solve the depression. what does fdr do in your book that is a good example of leadership? >> well, what happens is the real thing he has to face when he comes in to the office is there's a terrible banking crisis, that in the weeks before he was inaugurated, banks were collapsing all over the country because people were going to -- they had heard that banks were collapsing, so they started going to their own banks to try and take their money out. long lines would be coming and the banks didn't have enough

deposits on hand to give the money back. so it was becoming violent. so once he gets into office, he decides the very first day that he's going to call what he calls a bank holiday, ironically named, close the banks for a week until he can get congress into session and get congress to shore up the weaker banks with currency that needed the money, almost like a bailout of the banks so they get the law through the congress that week, they do it, they know which banks are strong, which ones aren't, but then he has to persuade the public that what he's done will make it safe to bring their money back again. so he decides to give the first of his fire side chats on the radio which will become a symbol of his entire presidency. and in very simple terms, he explains to people how banks work. he said you put your money in a bank. they don't put it in a vault. they invest it. they invest it into mortgages. they invest it in businesses to keep the economy going. he says what's happened in this situation is some of those banks invested their money in the stock market, the stock market failed, so they didn't have the cash on hand. others were strong enough that

they don't have the assets the do it at the moment. so we're going to help those banks. we're going to figure out which are strong. i promise you if you bring your money back to the bank, the next monday when the banks are going to open, it is safer than keeping it under your mattress. but they still worried. would they bring it back? that monday long lines across the country and they worry, but they're bringing their money back. they bring satchells in because they trusted his word. the fire side chats become the most important way he communicates with the people. the first one was followed by 29 more. 35 fire side chats in his 12 years in office. and his voice was so reassuring. people felt he was coming into their living rooms. there's a great memory of being in chicago on a hot summer night, and he's walking down the street, and he looks inside, and everybody is sitting with their radio on, and they're watching the radio, and they're listening to his voice. and his voice came out the window. and he said you could still walk down the street and not miss a

word of what he said. there's a story of a construction worker going home one night, his partner said where are you going? he said my president is coming into my living room to talk to me. it is only right i be there to greet him when he comes. what a difference it was in that time when we could trust the word of the president. [applause] >> president kennedy had a very ambitious legislative program but many of the things he wanted didn't get very far. when johnson becomes president, he decides i'm going to push kennedy's agenda and do a better job than him. one thing you write about he particularly pushed the civil rights legislation. why was it so important for him? how could he be being from a southern state that wasn't interested in integration and his best friends in the senate

were not integrationists let's say how did he manage to pull it off? >> he knew when he first came into office, that he had to do something he showed that he grabbed the reins of power. there was a real vacuum of kennedy. a lot of people didn't know who johnson was. he decided he would make his first priority passing the civil rights bill which had been stuck in the congress, indeed none of kennedy's domestic initiatives had gotten through. congress was as broken then as it seems now. surprisingly. i hadn't fully realized that until i went back to look at this. somebody was writing about this. the republic was not going to live anymore if the congress couldn't figure out how to get something done together. his friends warned him if you do this, your own election is 11 months away, a filibuster will materialize. it will probably paralyze this bill. you won't get any other bill through. you will be expending all your power and all the coin of the presidency on this one thing. and he said to that person, well, what's the president -- what the hell is the presidency for then? i'm like a poker player, i'm

going to put all my chips on this one thing. i think if he believed if he could get the south to de -- desegregate, it would be better for them. he knew something had to be done, violence or problems would arise and he wanted to do it. he took that risk. it was one of the great moments of his presidency. and, you know, despite the fact that he did so much more in next 18 months, medicare, medicaid, it is extraordinary, npr, pbs, immigration reform, and voting rights and fair housing, the war in vietnam obviously cut that legacy in two. when i knew him in those last days at the ranch, there was such a sadness as he talked about the early 18 months and how extraordinary it was because he got congress to do things. that bill would never have passed in my judgment without him. he understood that he needed the republicans in order to bring republicans support to break the democratic fill buster from the

south. -- filibuster from the south. he has drinks with the minority leader with him every night. he's telling him what do you want in illinois? these were the days the earmarks were fine. anything you want, anything, i'm going to give you all the credit. i will grive the republicans th credit. he says you know, everett, if you come with me on this bill and you bring your republicans to break the filibuster and we get this bill passed, 200 years from now, schoolchildren will know only two names abraham lincoln and everett dirks. [laughter] >> let's suppose you say i admire your books but i don't have time to read this book. can you give me the essence of leadership? what would you say these four individuals had in common and what can other leaders of our country learn from these four people?

>> i did feel that after exploring this, that there were certain family resemblances. there's no master key to leadership. they are all very different in their style of leaderships but they do share certain qualities. they share an empathy towards other kinds of people so that they can bring them together and unite the country rather than dividing the country. they had a humility that a lowed them -- allowed them to acknowledge their errors and learn from their mistakes. they had an ability to communicate to the public in their own technology at the time. i mean, lincoln as i said because he was such a good writer, his speeches would be written in full. and people would read them aloud in their places. teddy roosevelt had the perfect language, that punchy language with his phrases, speak softly and carry a big stick. even gave maxwell house the slogan good to the very last drop. he was perfect for the newspaper age, the turn of the 20th century. fdr had the perfect voice for radio. when you think about, jfk and ronald reagan, they had the

perfect ability to talk on television in the time of the three television networks. and then obama becomes a master of the internet world. and then mr. trump masters the social media at the time when he's running for campaigns. there's a problem in there's a difference in campaigning and governing which we have discovered is that the instant comments can become more troubling. when lincoln was president, he couch debated with anybody -- he could have debated with anybody. he was the best debater. he could have spoken whenever he wanted to. when people would go after him, people would say you are two faced he immediately responded if i were two faced do you think i would be wearing this face? [laughter] >> as president he only wanted to be prepared. he knew that words matter and they have consequences, and he knew that. [applause] >> that was one skill they

shared. but the other skill that i think is too often unheralded, they all knew how to relax and replenish their energies to find time to think. something that we in our 24/7 world think we can never do because we're so busy. well, they were pretty busy, but they somehow figured it out. lincoln went to the theater more than 100 times during the civil war. he said when a shakespeare play came on, he could imagine himself back in the war of roses and he could forget the war that was raging. he said people may think my theater going peculiar, if i didn't do it, the terrible anxiety would kill me. he had his sense of humor. when things were tough, he would come up with a funny story and entertain the cabinet meeting and they would have to relax for a few moments. when he couldn't sleep at night, he would wake up his two aides and he would read them comic passages from shakespeare so he could go to bed at night thinking of the comic passages instead of thinking about the war which meant he could survive. teddy roosevelt not surprisingly

given his asthma and his need to build up his body was able to exercise two hours every afternoon in the white house. we think we don't have time to go to the gym for 30 minutes. he's doing something pretty important while he's doing this. he would have a boxing match, a wrestling match, or his favorite exercise was to walk in the wooded cliffs of a park, where he had a very simple rule, that you had to go point to point. you couldn't go around any obstacle. if you came to a rock, you had to climb it. if you came to a precipice, you had to go down it. these companions on these walks with him are falling by the wayside all along the way. [laughter] >> the best story was told by an ambassador, from france, so excited for his first walk with the president. he had his outfit on. he found himself in the woods. he was dying. he couldn't wait till it was over. they finally come to the big stream, and he says thank god we're going home. so he said from my horrors, i saw the president unbutton his clothes and said it's an

obstacle, we can't go around it. we don't want to get our clothes wet. he said so i too for the honor of france took off my clothes. [laughter] >> however i left on my lavender gloves. why? it would be most embarrassing if we meet ladies on the other side and i didn't have my gloves on. [laughter] >> the most interesting person though is fdr. so he had a cocktail party every night during world war ii. where the rule was that you couldn't talk about the war. you could talk about books you read, movies you had seen, gossip that was going on. after a while, this cocktail party was so important to him that he wanted the people who would be at the cocktail party to live in the white house to be ready for the cocktail party. his foreign policy advisor harry hopkins came for dinner one night, slept over never left until the war came to an end. princess martha from norway lives with the family over the weekends. a friend of eleanor had a bedroom next to her.

his secretary lives with the family in the white house. and the great winston churchill came weeks a at time spent at the white house with roosevelt. i became obsessed with all these people in their bathrobes at night in the corridor and what amazing conversations they must have had. and wishing when i was 24 years old, with johnson, i should have thought of asking where did churchill sleep, where was roosevelt? of course i wasn't thinking of that then. hilary clinton invited me to sleep over in the white house. she said we can wander in the corridor together and figure out where everyone has slept years earlier. she followed one a dinner. after which midnight and 2:00 a.m., the president, mrs. clinton my husband and i figured out chelsea is sleeping where hopkins slept. the clintons were sleeping where fdr was. the room they gave us was

churchill's bedroom. there was no way i could sleep. i was certain he was sitting in the corner, drinking his brandy, smoking his cigar. that bedroom is the scene of my favorite story, when churchill came there, after pearl harbor, he and roosevelt were set to sign a document, that put the associated nations against the axis powers nobody liked the word associated nations. the morning he woke with the new idea of calling them the united nations. so excited he was that he wheeled himself into church hill's bedroom, our bedroom to tell him the news. it so happens churchill was coming out of the bathtub. roosevelt said i'm so sorry. ly come back in a few moments -- i will come back in a few moments. churchill has the presence of mind oh no please stay the prime minister of great britain has nothing to hide from the president of the united [laughter] [applause] >> now that's a guy you can love. [applause] >> you mentioned your husband and unfortunately your husband passed away recently.

in his honor you are working on another book. you might describe that book. >> yes, indeed. my husband had cancer this last year of his life. but he had started five years earlier a book that meant a lot to him. it was really a biography of his mind in a way. public service was something he valued so much in his life. despite graduating first in his class at harvard law school and clerking, he really never cared about going in and making money and turning money around from one place to another. he wanted to do something in public. so he went to do the investigation -- he then was a writer for jfk and with lbj and wrote all of his great civil rights speeches, that incredible we shall overcome speech, the great society speech, the howard university speech, the ripples of hope speech, al gore's concession speech, but more important than the speeches is that he devoted his life to public service. he was 86 years old when he died. he was watching he said what was

going on right now, and he realized that through his long life, he had seen the turns and the twists in american history. and like me too, he believed -- he said that the end of america has loomed many times before, america is not as fragile as we think. he wanted to write a book that would show people that politics and public service can be an honorable vocation, wanting to make young people believe once again that they could enter public life and have a fulfilling time. and he hadn't quite finished the book. he got cancer this last year, but the book kept him going. it was so incredible to watch that he wanted to live, not just for the book, but because he was happy and there was nothing i could care about more than knowing that this man who i have known for 45 years, married for 42 years, wanted to go through everything he could. he went through surgery, and they thought they got it, the cancer. he went through radiation for seven weeks. they told them they got it. we came and had champagne with the doctors. and then he came home and he got -- two months before he died, in may, it came back again.

this time the only thing they could do is immunotherapy and he finally got pneumonia and came home to hospice. i have never seen death the way i saw it with him. my parents died when i was young. they had heart attacks. so it was over in a minute. but he knew -- i don't know that he knew he was dying, but he would wake up from his pain medicine and was like an irish wake, all our friends would come in day after day, and he would talk to them, and say something to them. the last thing he said to me is you are a wonder, something i will never forget. [applause] >> thank you very much, doris. congratulations. thank you. [applause]

>> that was doris goodwin in conversation. one of the sponsors of the book festival, as is the washington post, mr. lazad is joining us now -- mr. lazada is joining us now. i want to talk to you about a book by bob woodward coming out next week or so. >> that's right. this book will be his 19th book.

it is about donald trump and the white house. the title comes from an interview that woodward did with trump during the 2016, when trump suggested that the real essence of power was fear. you know it will have themes of contentious meetings and it will have documents. i have not had a chance to see this book yet. i'm looking forward to it. but the president has been tweeting lately about fake news that appears in books. so some people are wondering if there are some sort of initial jitters in the white house about what woodward may come up with. >> all of bob woodward's books are usually highly anticipated; correct? now would you have reviewed this book if you had gotten hold of it? >> well, i cannot review books

by washington post colleagues because of the inherent conflicts of interest. this is a case where i really wish that rule didn't apply because i definitely intend to read it. i would have loved to have reviewed it. in particular, i'm just interested in how it fit in the art of woodward who has covered presidents since nixon. >> lots of political books coming out. first of all, is the trump administration publishing industry at this point? is it good for publishers? >> i think it is a remarkable irony of the trump era that a president who very forthrightly admits that he doesn't read books, doesn't have time to read books, even as he watches hours on end of cable news, has generated an absolute boom in publishing. there's new trump-related books coming out all the time, many of

which are supportive of the president, and he will plug those and promote those. others are sharply critical, not just from reps, but from long time conservatives. of course a lot of journalistic accounts of the trump white house even though it is still so early in the administration. >> well, some of the political books that are coming out, long time white house correspondent has a new book coming out "uncovering the white house". anthony scaramucci who worked for the president for a little while. steve scalise probably not related to president trump, but another politician who has a book coming out. bernie sanders, end of november has a new book coming out as well. >> it's a huge political season. and it's nice that some of these books are not actually sort of -- [inaudible] -- ryan's become will be her experience covering the trump white house and what has become a contentious relationship.

but steve scalise's book, for instance, is looking back on the shooting that he was a victim of and really the heroism of the capital police officers who protected him and so many others and averted a much larger tragedy. it's remarkable that it's been 14 months since that event, and he not only is recovering but has been able to be part of, you know, writing this book. >> carlos, how do you choose out of those books that we just named, anthony scaramucci, bernie sanders, steve scalise, will you review any of them? >> i might. i might. it's tricky to -- the trickiest part of this job actually is to figure out what makes the most sense for me to review and what sort of books i need to be focusing on. my reviews are a small part of the overall output of book criticism and book reviews that the post does even in nonfiction. we have a lot of freelancers who review books for us.

so i suspect we will cover all those books in some form. whether or not i end up being the one to review them. >> what do you look for in a new book? what excites you? >> a story that hasn't been told, you know, is interesting or an insight that hasn't been developed in some other way. you know, and i think that right now when america is sort of, you know, debating a lot of principles, it is interesting to look at books that explore it will history and ideas, you know, animating our national conversation as it were in ways that are -- that feel different. >> one of the books coming out this month in september is "rising out of hatred". >> yes. one of the most gifted writers, and a couple of years ago, he wrote a profile in the post of a

young man who basically grew up in the white nationalist movement. his godfather was david duke. his father was a creator of storm front, the white national platform. instead he went to college and in college he met different people. he was exposed to different ideas. he met people who didn't dismiss or condemn him right out, but actually engaged with him. and he turned away from the white nationalist movement. and i read eli's story back then. and now he' telling the much fuller tale of the man in this book. this is one i'm absolutely -- again, i can't review it because it is a washington post colleague, but i'm absolutely going to read. >> "on the other side of freedom". >> yes, part of the new generation of young civil rights activists forged in ferguson in

the black lives matter movement. he is also a popular pod caster and co founder of campaign zero which aims to end police violence. his book is part activist guide book, part memoir, part manifesto, it is interesting to me, these young generation of civil rights activists who are writing books are telling and thinking through this story, how is activism different today from the civil rights movement that so many people here, you know, remember from history books or grew up with. >> carlos, probably the most expensive coming out this fall? >> yes, i'm sure the book itself will just cost, you know, $28 or something at the bookstore. but the book deal behind this book was monumental. michelle obama and her husband,

they very i think intelligently got a joint book deal for reportedly around 60 million dollars. and her become is coming out in november. his book isn't coming out till early next year, i believe. and hers is not just a white house memoir, but supposedly it is a story of her life, growing up in chicago, her experience of mother hood, of the working world before she reached the white house. >> now, a conservative philosopher -- >> i think he was associated with the neoconservative movement for a while but then sort of disowned it. in the book he wrote maybe some 15 years ago i think, and he is best known for his end of history thesis and for his books on political order. but his book that is coming out

in a couple of weeks is about identity politics. and he is very sympathetic to the idea of identity politics as in the quest for individual dignity, but more concerned and worried about identity politics in the extent in his view dividing us into smaller groups making it difficult to form the collective sense of nation hood that he feels is necessary to maintain democracy. he thinks nationalism and white nationalism in particular is a form of politics and political islam as well. it's a much shorter book. you can see how books like the end of history, some of his earlier books kind of feed into

this work. the great thing about him is his books are part of a long-running conversation with himself, with america, with huntington and other thinkers throughout the decade. >> how does one become the nonfiction book critic of the washington post? >> i worked at the post for about a decade before getting that job, and i was a news editor, opinion editor, and then our long-time and much beloved book critic jonathan yeardley retired, and it happened in a moment when i realized i was ready to try something new. i just thought that would be really interesting and fun and a job that i could dig into and try to put my own imprint on. so i basically begged the editors of the washington post to let me try, and so far so good. >> and of course jonathan yeardley was married to maria who is part of the book fair, she's been doing some of the

interviews here. >> yes, marie is a long-time washington post book review editor as well. she's an acute part of this festival >> what's currently on your bedside table or on your desk that you are reading for review? >> you know, i usually don't admit what i'm going to be reviewing. i'm reading fukayama's book, i'm very interested in that book. i'm interested in a new book by ben fountain. ben fountain, a few years ago wrote a book, a novel, about an iraq war veteran returning to the united states just for a few days for like a heroism, you know, tour and how he sort of struck by the commercialism associated with the war effort and veterans, and i believe it

was a finalist for national book award. very touching and affecting novel. now he's writing a nonfiction book, looking at america during 2016 in particular. he feels we're in the midst of a third existential crisis, the first two being the civil war and the great depression. i'm reading the billy lynn book right now. i'm really curious to see how he translates into nonfiction. >> does he make a convincing argument? >> i've not had a :: chance but people why respect who have had a chance to see the book praise it very highly. given how compelling his novel is, i look for to explore him in the nonfiction realm. >> - - just arrived on my desk. one volume.

the history of the united states - - >> but she's the one to do it. as a new yorker. it's the perfect title for this book because she looked at the declaration of independe >> and that we holdnc these truths as a political sovereignty and equality how the united states has failed to live up to or affirmed these over time but with these kinds of books that is

defective but yet it talks about these ideas. [inaudible] and over the last decade there is that experience with online dating maybe even covering those trends that have been around for a long time. so i am excited and with those

ideas with the notion of america first watches much more gala terry and one -- a gala terry in march more interwoven in our political life. and the presidency has us affirm certain principles that the self perception is very valuable right now. >>host: and talking about some of the upcoming books.

>>host: up next you will hear the author and pulitzer prize winner john meacham with his book soul of america. this is continuing coverage on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. i am the nonfiction book critic for the new york times. we have partnered with the national book festival and library of congress we like to thankes everyone for this event

not only a celebration but also an opportunity to think about the role of books in our culture.e.ur at a time when the news cycle has gotten faster and faster with the seemingly endless supply reading books can enrich our lives with that understanding with the life of others in the role of which we live so to that and it is my great pleasure to introduce john meacham.n [applause] before he comes up to the stage many of you know him already from the presidential biographies he has written books about george hw bush, thomas jefferson as well as fdr and the special relationship with churchill.

in addition to all of these he has also written a realtor prize winning biography of andrew jackson a complicated figure who considered himself the embodiment of the peoples will although his definition of the people was ruthlessly exclusionary. his 2008 book of jackson doesn't flinch from the full record with the background as a journalist. a longtime staffer at newsweek eventually becoming its editor in fact the trajectory of his career shows that gradual deliberate history is not as disconnected as it may seem. and oftenls startling relevance

to a the foundation of how we got to where we are now. while john's books are erudite and carefully researched with that historical archives with accessibility and although it would not say his books are h short he clearly makes a point to keep the storytelling sharp. he wrote a call and call the long view that back to the current moment. for instance after hillary clinton published her book what happened john examined other presidential candidates that did not have triumphant stories of winning elections but more candid reflections about losing.

his new book the soul of america may seem like a departure that is day biography follow me the life and times of particular president but rather but then it makes sense if someone like john who writes about the complicated individuals chronicling their achievements would now take on the complicated soul of the country the soul of america is the hope for her as we make clear it is not the famous complacency. but don't take it from me please join me in welcoming john meacham. [applause]

>> while jennifer was talking i was reminded while running through the dead man that i have written about and well of us finishingou jefferson i came in the kitchen one day my sexual that the time said how is that book about george jefferson going? [laughter] i said sherman helmsley is an importantt figure but i'm not sure we need a full biography. thank you. i love being at the national book festival and i will tell you a story i told when i had the honor of hisan taking at a funeral a few months ago because this is a scene of what st. augustine had in mind when he talked about humility. ten years ago i was here to talk about interjects in on my way outdoors to give a talk like this and a woman ran up

to me which doesn't happen enough. [laughter] or ever actually. and she said oh my god it's you. i said yes. [laughter] existentially speaking. you've got a lever room on labor day weekend we you can speak to use existential as an adverb. [applause] way to go and i admire your work so much will you wait right here i want you to sign your new book i said yes ma'am thinking this is exactly the way the world is supposed to work women are supposed to run up to you and admire you perfect. hand to god she brought back john grisham's latestat novel. [laughter] totally a true story. so i signed it.

[laughter] so whenever i hear something i said about me i realized somewhere in america there is a woman with a copy of the runawayrg jury. that was a saturday i left the book festival got on a plane and writing might be august 3 of george hw bush it was almost unheard of because george bush life was one long reunion mixer with the oak ridge boys and the pope you would be more interested in the oak ridge boys. so how do you think for john grisham would feel? [laughter] he is a very handsome f man.

it was not a good weekend for me. but i am thrilled to be here so i will try it one more time.ic you are citizens of the republic of letters and to teach the republic so thank you. so because of what i do for a living. isn't he like jackson. let's see if we can do that. is he like jackson? i like and your jackson he was a friend of mine. [laughter] not really.

a quick story. in 2017 the incumbent was coming down to nashville to be in on -- to see jackson's to so i was thinking we should do something. and it is really interesting to keep track because presidency as they are wishing to be scenes with your president talking about someone but that in the psychological test. since thomas jefferson dined alone at the nobel prize dinner what he was saying is and he didn't think to invite all of you here.

he saw the struggle between the jacksonian democrats and the tyrants it is a fun game to play but president trump so i had to do that it is key to the story i promise. hehe comes down on sitting at home so i write an open letter to the president for the local newspaper. basically to say if you're going to embrace andrew jackson don't just embrace the crazy parts. there are plenty of crazy parts to embrace andrew jackson said he did not harm henry clay or shot his own vice president john c calhoun. as off today the other person who felt that way about their running mate was in fact john mccain. [laughter]

i clear that with mccain years ago i've been telling that for years. don't worry. you're going to embrace jackson he did believe we were one gray family and would fight under the same roof but we needed to remain a continental nation was also a great negotiator and a more formidable figure of lawyer and prosecutor and judge to win the popular vote and then running for president and establish constitutional orders this as an open letter. the next day i'm walking into lunch and my phone rings and lu george hw bush he spent a lot of time in the hospital that winter so his dad was giving him stuff to read.

he said how you doing? the key to doing george hw bush by the way dana carvey said mr. rogers trying to be john wayne. how you doing? i'm fine. i read your letter to jackson he thinks i'm writing letters to dead people i should do something so i said i'm glad you're doing better actually it was a letter to trump about jackson and he says yeah but jackson will pay more attention. [laughter] [applause] so he's fine marking off your worry list. so now it is either parallels but i want to talk today into

parts how i do things at this moment to represent a manifestation and extreme with perennial american forces. it is not cultural zoloft it is not a bedtime story but it is absolutely essential to have perspective and proportion because if we don't know what has come before and not as we come to remember that but those that were living the challenges of that time if we don't have that we could do things that are worth avoiding to do a disservice to the people who built the nation we want to protect if progress was inevitable tell that to john lewis or rosa parks or martin luther king

were elizabeth cady stanton or frederick douglass or harriet tubman told them this will all work out. we need to remember history to honor those who gave the ultimate price that we would have something worth defending.o the other is if we act as if everything worked out in a land far far away, then we foreclose the possibility to learn from that because it feels remote and thick. but they were just like us i write history and biography not because the past was perfect but it was so imperfect but they got through it and made progress with

those protection and ambition and greed and sexism if for all of that to create a more perfect union all of us driven by those forces to learn from the past is to embrace complexity not airbrush it or simplify it it isn't always about good diversity but that is the exception of the rule. a nation is defined best i i think when we think of augustinian terms to write about the city of god a multitude of rational beings united by the common objects of their love. a multitude of rational being

united by the common objects of their love. so what do we love in common? standing here on the anniversary on the day we buried a great american hero when just over one third of the country approved for the president of the united states is doing and when the great postwar achievement with social mobility and middle-class is under grave assault. and that we don't love enough in common. see a fascinating statistic the other day when eisenhower was president to have an approval rating among democrat

guess what president obama's' was with republicans? 14%. this was a divided and tribal time what i will talkme about not in blue of addressing the problems of fear but it is done with clear utilitarian hope if that was difficult with the courage and sacrifice to overcome and to create a sustainable vision and reality then we can do it too. hope is not complacency. so relax we have come through before so figure out how the hell we did it and do it again.n.

it requires resistance and protest to step into the arena that is the passion and action of our times theater roosevelt said the first duty of the american citizen is to do aid in the arena this is no time to let other people fight your battles. because they are all our battles. so a few moments that i felt like this and to the end talk about the characteristics that i think are necessary for leaders because remember, a republic is only as good as the sum of its parts. this moral disposition -- disposition and of that collective life. it is an ancient idea with aristotle.

truman in the end they get the government they deserve. politicians are far more often mirrors of who we are. we dislike and resist political leaders instead of pointing ahead for all of us at the same time to examine ourselves and that kind of character it is the way american history has been t built. so where have we been like this before? with my own sense with growing

up on missionary ridge and there may be one or two of you and you don't know it. [laughter] it is downton abbey meet deliverance. so the past is never dead it's not even past until i think faulkner ever said that i can understand. no youop don't. you thank you are supposed to say that over your latte.d so who here understands joy? an ominous group.

it is across ruth of our being. it is the great crucible of who we are. and for our purposes to begin not at center but the story of the confederacy ultimately begins and immortality began so when the handed his sword to grant the emergence of a lostnd cause mythology continues to shape us to this day the term itself was coined 1856 was coined by a journalist from richmond and tell me if this sounds familiar.

the idea that because the board itself over slavery had been lost but it should reengage in a battle of ideas that the forces of centralization to be centered in washington. i have seen this uncertain cable news channels. it was an animating narrative those that harbored a deep belief of white supremacy to give them hope to continue to fight that is unmistakable in my view without verdict on -- verdict rendered it is not ideological. he voted for democrats or republicans and i plan to continue but i do believe if

we don't call them as we see them then we are not living up to the best of the american tradition more to the promise and possibilities of the life of the mind. and with my own view of this. and to say that as a tennessee end. and stage ii. [laughter] coming soon. to a cable network near you. to basically argue in a state paper that is called the most

racist meant ever written by the american president that and to be incapable of self-government to do everything we could stop the forces of reconstruction to veto the civil rights bill the construction bill to oppose the 14th 15th amendment to the constitution doing everything he could as her ticket related to carry on the battle by other means. the clan terrorizes a south general grantor president grant does the right thing early on to break the first plan but then in 1877 rutherford b hayes ran for president and we never talk about the election of 1876 is

one of the most important in american history because as part of the price of that victory, the republican rutherford b hayes agreed to withdraw all federal troops florida alabama and louisiana to end reconstruction to secure the presidency with the incrediblyur close race. i don't know what it is down there about florida. [laughter] maybe it's the humidity. but that inaugurated 90 years of functional apartheid. it would take lyndon johnson in the 1960s to undo the work of that. so when people say it's never been worse there might be one in the next few minutes with each week to keep an eye out, it is not as awful that it

could ever be any worse. not a lot of african-americans say that. sometimes when women say that to me i say women haven't voted in this country for 100 years yet. it has been 98. marriage equality has only been up for three years. things do change. but perspective and proportion judge the present to some extent and to some degree by what has gone before. i think the soul of the countryf is an amalgam in hebrew and greek soul means breath or life. i like when they say some party i disagree with has captured the soul of the country that's not quite right american soul has proven

itself capable of accommodating the kkk and martin luther king. and every era is fine by the degree to which our better angels win out over our worst instincts. it is true again and again and again. we are the sum of our parts. and i don't know about you, but if i listen to my better angels 50% of the time that is one hell of a good day.l . . . .

slavery was abolished, but what did we do? reaction immediately sets in. segregation prevails. we still deal with racial injustices that grow out of that almost unimaginable american drama. we stand on land. i live on land that belongs more properly to thecherokee nation. the twin original sins of american life are native american removal and african-american slavery , without doubt . [applause] so our goal has to be to make it right. and how do we do that? seems to me we do that by for all its faults, expending more generously as best we can the implications of what thomas jefferson meant when

he said all men were created equal. the generations that we honor, the generation that we wish to emulate, are not those who shrunk the definition. it's those who expanded it. the nation was fixated this morning on the funeral of a man whose political life was largely about hope. largely about opening our arms, not holding them across ourchest . the most important sentence ever written in english language is that we are all created equal. i am very careful when i say that because when i mentioned the english language like that , i remember there's a story about a school board candidate in texas who was against creating a bible in spanish, who said this the english language is good

enough for us in english, it's goodenough in texas . as a tennessean always say thank god for texas . it's a total parenthetical, i have a list of two stupid things i said to sitting governors. one was when george w. bush was running for president, i went down to the office with a journalistic delegation and i said you know, governors, because of the mexican war, if it weren't for these people, you'd all be part of spain. he said that's funny, asking. eight years of on it. the other was when i was out talking about thomas jefferson five or six years ago, i get a call chris

christie just before hebecame patty hearst . and christie is good company, very funny and he said i want to talk to you about jefferson so we went to lunch in trenton and we were sitting there and he said i'm really more of a hamiltonian which means you're more of an investmentbanker. i said that's great governor, at least my god didn't get shot in jersey . the damnedest thing happened. i couldn't get back into the city. all the bridges -- [laughter] okay, back to the soul of america. how do we expand the definition that jefferson laid out. that's the mark of the american settler. the civil war, yes. reconstruction, no. the 1920s, 1915, birth of a nation is released, virulently racist movie.

revive the ku klux klan. don't melt in georgia, the second ku klux klan is founded in an attempt to recover the great white empire of the south but it wasn't just the south.it became a national phenomenon. see if any of this sounds familiar. why did the ku klux klan get 3 to 5 million members from 1915 to 1926 or so? how was it there were six governors, maybe 17 senators and 75 congressmen who were members of the ku klux klan? how was it there were 130 ballots at the democratic convention driven by the fact that there were 347 clan delegates who would not vote for housenext, an irish catholic ? how was it that 50,000 klansmen marched down pennsylvania avenue in the

summer of 1925? fear of immigration, anxiety about crime, anxiety about a shifting economy from a largely agrarian and understandably industrial one to a more complicated one. the introduction of a national culture as opposed to a local one with the spread of radio starting in 1921. think about it. if you are a householder in what we think of as a red state, you totally control the media, the information, theexperiences your family had until about 1922 . and then you bought this box have the world coming to your home and suddenly people you didn't know and didn't know anything about where programming things in new york and some place called hollywood. it was disorienting. and a reaction to that disorientation was fear. and here is what drives

arrows like our own. aristotle said that the year is the anxiety produced by the loss of what we love. the loss of what we love. and what happened from 1915 to 1925 is largely what's happening today. there's a fear among an extraordinary number of people who look a lot like me and who, states like mine that the demography of the country is changing. the economy of the country is leaving them behind and they don't want to live doin barack obama's america, they want to live in donald trump's. and let me tell you something from the bottom of my heart, when two years from now we will be living in barack obama's america, not donald trump's . [applause] and it's okay for

people like me to say that and i think that's kind of my job. that's why i'm in the arena but it's going torequire a heck of a lot more than that . it's going to require the institutions of democracy to do what they uidid in the 1920 . how did that break, how did that theater break in 1925 or so? 3 to 5 million members of the supreme court. governors of oregon, indiana, colorado, texas. the governor of georgia lost an election when he wasn't a member of the clan, joined the clan, runs, wins, gave a speech saying he wants to build awall of steel as high as having to keep immigrants out . as mark wayne said, history may notrepeat itself but it does rhyme .

so what happened? the pressdid its job. joseph pulitzer's newspaper in new york ran expose after expose and here's a sentence you don't hear much . arty and coolidge did the right thing. i love coolidge, my favorite story is a woman who came up to him and said i have a bet with my husband i could make you say three words and he said you lose. love that guy. they spoke out somewhat subtly but theytook a stand against the clan . the supreme court, into critical decisions ruled against the clan. one was an oregon case that had a clan them dominated legislature, and pass the law saying every child of school age had to go to a public school, could not go to a private school. what do you think that was about? the nuns. they were going to break the catholic church because the catholic church was german, irish, it was aforeign entity .

the supreme court threw it out. in new york, because there was so much violence, the new york legislature passed a law name the clan had to publish a list of its members. the clan covered by saying they were like the one islam, they shouldn't have to do that. the supreme court threw it out. they said if you're going to act in political ways and terroristic ways, you've got to publish the names . it waned. and thank god for all kinds of reasons it did but it takes us to our next moment which is 1932, 33. franklin roosevelt said in the summer of 1932 the two most dangerous men in america were a few we long and douglas mccarthy because you long to lead a populist role on the left and douglas macarthur from the right. 1943, when he gave his

inaugural address, the line we all remember from the east front of the capital is that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. the line that got the biggest applause and kind of a bloodthirsty cheer according to eleanor roosevelt who wrote about it that night was when fdr said the prices are such that i may require wartime like executive powers and they roared and it killed her, she said. because she realized they were ready as the europeans had proven themselves ready for a strong man or a dictator. it terrified her. that night, fdr is having a drink before he goes to bed and welcomes to him and says rather pretentiously, mister president, if you succeed in saving capitalism you will go down as our greatest president but if you fail, you will go down as our worst

and fdr looked at him and said rex, if i fail, i willgo down as our last . so don't tell me we haven't been here before.so 1930s were a decade where we did not know if democracy would succeed against dictatorship . churchill saw it. churchill saw roosevelt as a hero later on, wrote a piece in the 30s, he said fdr represented a bright light between the baleful flames of soviet bolshevism and the lurid flames of nordic self assertion. only winston churchill could write the phrase lurid flames of assertion. fdr was the whole, but he was the hope because he had a country that responded to him. he couldn't do it by himself. he appealed to those better angels.

he understood that we were stronger together. he understood that america will require an elevation and that if in fact we were going to live to fight another day, if democracy was going to live to fight another day, it would require a breadth of vision and an understanding that the country was bigger than any angle interest group and that's not to lionize, not to overly lionize franklin roosevelt but imagine what it was like to be 39 years old, to be the most popular democrat in the country, and to wake up on an august morning, 1921 with the most famous name in american politics, nothing but a future ahead and not be able to walk . churchill again said not one man in 1000 could have ever

left his house again. not one man in 1 million could have run for office and not one in 10 million could have arisen to pinnacle in the hurly-burly of the great republic. i am absolutely convinced that the greeks were right when they said character is destiny and i am convinced that democratic capitalism survived the 1930s and socialism or communism or some god-awful mix of the two from either father kaufman and his anti-semitism or you we long and his populism. i'm convinced that franklin roosevelt and eleanor roosevelt, america one because he knew what it was like to be knocked down and yet to come back. the new york times wrote on the day he died, published on 1813 1945 that men will thank god on their knees 100 years from now franklin roosevelt

was in the white house when the crisis came . but he always knew that he was an instrument of all of us. he also knew that heshouldn't be in our faces all ldthe time . i must say whenever i talk about roosevelt, he certainly obama, i feel as though much of the current moment does disprove darwin. but, i stole that line from henry adams but if you're going to steal, steal from henry adams. write that down. he wrote a letter in 1935, someone had said you need to get on tv, you need to get on the radio more, you have to talk more, you have to be

more present and he said there's something in the human psyche that will not stand the highest note in the scale being played at the highest constant level. if you can fit that into 140 characters, that out for me. he understood how to husband's capital. how to lead in a democracy and it was incredibly frustrating. mrs. roosevelt who was the conscience of the white house, one of the greatest people who ever drewbreath , represented our better angels in every sphere of life. and also i think endured what i must think of as whenever i'm in domestic trouble which is often, i will say at least i never, fdr didn't tell ms. miss roosevelt that winston churchill and 35 of his aides y were coming to stay in the white house for a week and come to stay until christmas afternoon.

it's amazing she didn't just kill him). the other amazing thing, but that we are not all speaking german is fdr drive these odd martinis that work reporters removed, one quarter gin. it's amazing we won. t churchill and he would pour them out and kill the plant during one summit. believe me, or winston churchill for our address, it was bad. he wasn't perfect, franklin roosevelt because if you ask anybody what's the greatest american moment, you will say world war ii. that's absolutely right, but remember the soul, the clan. here we are, projecting power to defeat tyranny around the world and what is the reality

home? a segregated america, a segregated military, franklin roosevelt signing executive order 9066 and interning japanese americans. simply because he thoughtthey might be a security threat, no evidence . a couple steps forward, step back. what george elliott called dim lights and tangled circumstance. that our story. pushing on, pushing on last example . is joe mccarthy. i don't know if this will all resonate. i'll wait. so rudy giuliani as roy cohen. it's kind of funny. sometimes you don't even have to work this stuff. so joe mccarthy back then in

wisconsin, not a particularly interesting senator is looking for a national issue in 1950. there were communists in the government in the 40s but harry truman got rid of most of them. in a program the civil liberty folks hated but still got rid of them. mccarthy comes along, code his lawyer later wrote he bought anti-communism in a way other people might buy a car. it was an issue, it was something to ride. he says he has in his pocket 235 communist, the number wandered down to 57 and he never really found any. arena tenor of four years. think about that, for years from lincoln's birthday 1950, february until late 1954. parenthetically as well, june 17, 1972 to august 9 1974. people want these things to

move more quickly that's not the way history actually unfolds. w for almost 48 months, joe mccarthy terrorized the united states of america and he did it through the manipulation of the media, through an appeal to broad popular here at a time of transition . he did it by promising to make america on pink again. he understood the means of communication of his time. the afternoon papers used the close at noon so mccarthy would call for press conferences at 11:30 in the morning and say i am being a communist in demoing. deadlines all around the country, senators seeks read in demoing. he did it so they didn't have time to mcheck . and he waited because the papers closed at midnight and he said the red in des moines is eluding me but i'm redoubling my efforts. craft flashes across america, redoubling his efforts radio helped him .

when he took the stump in wheeling in 1950 there were 3.1 million televisions in american household. when he was censured in1954, there were 3.6 . immense seachange and thegood news about that , if you believe that the truth will out and that leaders who are not appealing to our better angels are in fact trafficking in fear is exposure killed him. people watched him long enough n to think this is not who we want to be. but let me tell you you definitely want to have been and i thought about it all morning . you want to be margaret chase smith. the republican senator from maine who within a month of the speech in wheeling gave a speech called the declaration of con conscience.

in which she laid out the case against mccarthy. i urge you to go read it. was no further intellectual or moral movement by my 1954 when the century both happened from what senator smith laid out. she only got six senators to sign it with her. mccarthy dismissed them as snow white and the sixth war but here weare in 2018 , talking about her. we're not talking about the senators who took a dive or who wanted to wait to see the next poll. or wanted to wait it out a little bit. we're talking about the one who stood and said this is wrong . and that's what we need more of an whenever i talk to folks, who actually have power, one of the things i tried to say is what do you want us to think when we look at your oil portrait?

and it works because they can't imagine a world where we are not gazing adoringly at their oilportrait so it's kind of a passive-aggressive thing, it works . and i was thinking all morning, sitting outside the cathedral and all those senators sitting there and what do they think people are going to be saying about them? you're afraid of a guy with a twitter finger and a 36 percent approval rating? anyway. [applause] so do you want to be margaret chase smith? you want to urge people not to agree, we also have to agree all the time, we never have . from loyalists to patriots to interventionists to

globalists versus protectionists, we are always going to fight. the country was built to fight. the country was built to have guardrails so we would stay basically on the road but here are the three characteristics that i think we need and i think that presidents need and public officials need in order to win that battle within the soul. the first is curiosity. absolutely essential. the greatest presidents are ones who are intellectually curious. thomas jefferson was able to write that sentence not simply because he was a rising politician of virginia in the third week of june 1976 but because he was in a broad conversation that the european enlightenment, the scientific revolution, protestant reparation, introduction of gutenberg, and entire reorientation of the world from being seen as being run by kings, popes, prelates, princes, people who

either by an accident of birth or an incident of election weregiven power over all of us . a vertical understanding. what was happening with the american revolution is it was becoming more horizontal. that we were all born with the capacity to determine our own destiny and it wouldn't lie in the hands of a pope or of a prince . jefferson was able to set in motion. become incomplete as it was, because he was voraciously curious about what was going on in the rest of the world and i think that the baseline of citizenship always, but particularly today is realizing that the american revolution was the political manifestation of the idea that reason has to have a chance in the arena against passion.that we've been given a brain, we've been given the capacity to way

different arguments and come to a reasoned conclusion and if we don't reflect anduse reason , and if we fall prey to reflexive partisanship, then we are not being true to the reality of the revolution . partisanship is fine. partisanship is the air we breathe. the price of free government. but we have to, we have to make it reflective, not reflexive. and curiosity is one of them. the second is humility, we've got to figure out how to invest mistakes. we wouldn't be here at jack kennedy and been able to admit a mistake, from the bay of pigs to the cuban missile crisis. after the bay of pigs he said how could i have been so stupid and in a parliamentary system i would have resigned. he he was called the last man

on earth for with who he would wish to appear in tutelage and that was dwight eisenhower, asked him to come to camp david and he said you have to have everybody in a room, weigh the pros and cons, you can't run these things out of your back pocket. october 1962, , casualty estimates of a possible hemispheric exchange of nuclear weapons in the cuban missile crisis range between 70 and 100 million americans. they could've gotten to the city in 20 minutes. many of the people in this room would not have been here, the whole structure of life might have ended. if kennedy had not had the humility to admit he made a mistake and he needed to learn. one of the many tragedies of dallas is that jack kennedy is one of the few presidents, lincoln is another who were self-evident evidently learning as they held that office. it's so hard to learn at that level .the pressures are such that they were able to do it and we are better off. the last is empathy and i want to leave you with this.

if i don't care about you, and if you don't at least nominally care about me, democracy doesn't really work because why should you pay taxes to help me and vice versa if we don't have a sense of sociability, gordon would calls sociability, neighborliness. if we don't understand that we are in this together or what doctor king called a mutual garment ofdestiny. that requires empathy. i don't have to love you to death, we don't have to spend a lot of time talking , but we have to have a fundamental empathy with each other and i think most empathetic man ever held the presidency of the united states is george herbert walker bush and i want to you quickly thanks from another planet, basically. this is the kind of person

who was elected to the presidency 30 years ago this year. this is a letter that president bush wrote to his mother in the late 1950s after the loss of the bushes daughter robin to leukemia in 1953. they had the four boys, their last child had not yet been born, she would be born in 59 and this is the voice of a son writing his mother about the loss of his own daughter and i share it with you not least because it is unique in the literature of the presidency, but i often think that if i could be five ou percent of the man who wrote this letter, i'd be ahead of the game . this is the voice of georgehw bush . there is about our house on the, a running, pulsating

restlessness of the boys need to counterpart. we need some start stock to go with all our torn blue jeans and helmets. we need soft blonde hair to offset those crew cuts . we need a dollhouse to stand firm against our courts and rackets and thousand baseball cards . we need a legitimate christmas angel, one who doesn't have cups beneath the dress. we need someone who's afraid of frogs w. we need someone to crywhen i get mad, not argue . we need a little one who can this without leaving egg or jam or gum. we need a girl. we had one once, she fight and cry and play and make your way just likeall the rest , but there was about her a certain softness. she was patient. her hugs were just a little less wiggly.

she'd stand beside our bed e until i felt her there, quietly uncomfortable, she put such precious frequent locks against my chest and fall asleep. herpes made me feel strongand so very important . my daddy had a caress, a certainownership . that i love even more than the high dad that means so much . as she is still with us, we need her and yet we have her. we can't her and yet we can feel her. and in the course of writing a book about the president i asked him to read that letter allowed to me and when we were in his office in houston and long before he finished, he broke down at an extraordinary level of physical stop this, so much so that his chief of staff came in and saw what we were doing and said why didn't you ask me, he said why do you want president bush to read that and i said well, if you

want to know someone in his heart, and before i could finish, the president jumped in and said you have to know what breaks it. that is the best part of the soul of america. thank you. [applause]

>> you could have kept clapping. i just wanted to say thank you john meacham you are the perfect person to close the main stage today. you are what we needed and i also want to bring up another person . this is mister david rubenstein who is -- [applause] the person who brings this testable to us, who is the major sponsor who believes inliteracy and learning and the power of words. thank you, we appreciate you so much . [applause] and i feel like we should just keep clapping and gnstanding. i want to thank all of you for your patience today. i know there were long lines

for the signings and everything but we can't thank you enough for making this one of the premier events and i have just news in that the next day or next year will be on saturday, august 31, labor day weekend again. we just got the confirmation so thank you all and keep reading. [applause] >> now back to the history and biography state to join an event in progress, this is author lawrence wright is talking about his book on texas story and the politics. >> the money that was there was from cotton and timber andcattle . spindle top changed all that.

wheel wells according to the state, is anybody here from houston, by the way? it's a, at the very beginning of houston they adopted the motto houston, gateway to beaumont. it was already a bit too much city pride to endure so they captured the oil business and took it to houston and made houston the energy capital of the world. and texas as we know it was born. now, also born was a pattern. with the boom comes a bus. prices crashed and in many places, oil was cheaper than water. that was the first well. that was the beginning of texas . there was another well i'll tell you about that was in east texas on the daisy bradford being the widow who

own the land. there was a con man, columbus marion joyner, fondly known as dad and he been drilling on the tv bradford or several years, to dry wells. he was broke and so what did he do? he got some phony geological reports that he went around showing these reports that said they were going to tap in to the greatest oil field ever known 3500 feet . once again, a total lie that turned out to be absolutely true . on october 3, 1930, there was a gurgling at 30,456 feet. thousands gathered, they'd heard about spindle top. farmers in bib overalls and ladies in dresses they had sewn out of sears catalog

patterns and they were waiting for what would happen next. no doubt they were thinking ou that soon they would be rich, soon they would be walking down the sean seeley's day, buying furs and jewelry and considering their investments and this actually happened for many of them. the gusher comes, children danced in the black rain as it began to be called, children danced in the rain and painted their faces. nine months later there were 1000 wells in east texas. half the total us demand. in one e. texas town there were 44 wells in a single city block. you could walk through downtown the kilgore from derek to derek without your feet ever touching the ground and of course , prices went from a dollar general barrel 213 and the governor had to shut down the well production.

the last well i'm going to talk to you about is more pertinent to your life right now. by the 1990s, people were talking about t peak oil. the oil is that moment when half of all petroleum resources have been discovered and exploited and from then on, it's just a long downhill slide and that's where people thought we were in the 90s. and into this period, there's a man named george mitchell, ilprobably the greatest wildcat or texas has ever known. he was the son of greek immigrants. his father had been a shepherd in greece and he moved to galveston and opened and shoe sign stand george mitchell was a prodigy , acting on a tip from a bookie in chicago the least some land north of dallas , and he believed in

by 1980 that america only had 35 years remaining of recoverable conventional sources of petroleum. and the only alternative that he could see was cold. now, mitchell was an environmentalist. and a very progressive conservationist. there's a peers and you all know about, in the woodlands, they built it. a planned community outside of houston that exemplifies these qualities of environmental preservation peand conservation.

and he looked down the road at what was going tohappen to america and the anworld if we turned to coal, even we would have to sacrifice the energy of our civilization or we would destroy our planet with pollution. in his opinion, the only thing that could rescue the planet was natural gas . it burns far cleaner and as it happened, he had 300,000 acres under lease and he also had a contract with the city of chicago to provide 10 percent of thatcity's natural gas needs . it was a terrific deal when he signed it but his resources were continually diminishing he was facing bankruptcy. now, a mile and a half low this area he had under lease, 70 miles north of dallas is the geological strata called the barnum shale. it's 5000 square miles in dimension, it covers thinking ascounties in texas and it was estimated and known to have the largest gas reserves of any on shore field in the entire united erstates everybody knew gas was there,

that wasn't a problem. there were other wells i told you about in the limestone versus sandstone and petroleum molecules move fairly easily through that porous rock shale is high stock. in other words, it's like a prism. so how do you liberate those gases and oil molecules? well, they tried that. but as you can? machine guns. in 1967, the atomic energy commission exploded a 29 kiloton nuclear bomb in northern new mexico 3000 feet below the surface and that was the first of 30 such nuclear devices use to try to free up the gas that people knew was down there and that actually did work, but the gas was radioactive which, surprise, right? so the technique had been developed using fluid,

hydraulic fluid to more precisely shattered hathree little fractures in this rock but it was too expensive to work in shale. now, mitchell had a problem. he had the contract with chicago, he had his quest to save civilization and he had a lot of gas that he had to get, so in 1981, he drilled his first hydraulically tracked well, fracking comes from fracture into barnum shale, it was the cw number one and it lost money area and so did the next 300 wells that he drag. it cost them $250 million to his company. it was in 1998, 17 years after cw flay number one that the etch hs griffin was

drilled and through refinements in the hydraulic fluid, was finally profitable. and that's the day that the revolution began. it was the third time in texas history the state has transformed the energy business. the us industry was in a long decline, from 1970 which was the peak of our oil production when 10 million barrels a day were produced in the united states. production had been declining and declining and in that period, many of the oil was marked by oil embargoes, wars with the middle east, gas lines and the fear that the world economy was being held hostage by regimes that were intensely anti-western, anti-american . so us production touched

bottom in 2008 when only 5 million barrels of oil were made in a year. barrels per day. the oil prices hit $145 a barrel, but the fracking revolution was already underway. by 2010, 14,000 wells in barnett shalealone . us oil and gas production rsdoubled in five years, the most remarkable thing if you look at a chart, what you see is this long line like that and now we are producing more oil and gas than we ever have and we're exporting. it's higher than ever. of course, we all know as george mitchell did not understand at the time that fracking comes along with its own environmental costs and a lot of it has to do with the methane gases that escape from fully controlled wells. mitchell warned that this industry needs to beintensely regulated but it is not .

comes the crash of course in january 2016 and oil was under $40 a barrel and athouston alone lost 70,000 energy-related jobs but something didn't happen. the texas economy did not crash as it had always done when oil prices had crashed in the past. it had become a much more diverse state economically which accounts for this amazing growth we are selling now. texas is often compared with california. in fact, it works both ways. it's fascinating to live in a country that has to such dynamic but opposing models. our governor greg is constantly warning about the dangers of california's asian . he'd been in austin where i live, he's seen as the kind of fungus on california that's destroying the texas way of life and the examples he cites are plastic bag

bands and burdensome tree ordinances and lately it's plastic straws that have been banned, these are all no doubt a serious threat to our democracy . but this all idea california is the enemy has taken root and i'm in a band and our drummer as a sticker on his says stop california dictation of texas music. i have no idea, i don't know what it means but it's in his mind that texas music is under attack. the gross domestic product of texas is $1.6 trillion. if it were a country it would be the 10th largest economy in the world, just ahead of canada. california has 40 percent more people than the gdp of $6.2 trillion, the same as the united kingdom but texas has been closing the gap.

exports from texas nearly outright those of california and new york combined right now and texas already outranks california in the export of technology. from 2000 to 2016, job growth in dallas and houston grew 31 percent, three times the rate in los angeles and in austin, outpost of liberalism, it's 50 percent during the same period . take that, governor. 2017, the fourth quarter growth in texas grew 5.4 percent, there wasn't a single other state in the country that was above for t except for idaho . there must have been a run on potatoes but idaho did very well. california grew 3.2 percent during that same time . these are two states that are so polite and yet sodifferent

, they are both a majority minority. prefiguring the country that america will someday be. there kind of mirror imagesof each other . california is an entirely democratic state at the state level and texas hasn't elected a democrat to state office since 1994, more than 20 years. they couldn't have been more different and yet when i wasa young man , when i was your age, it was blue in california was red. texas produced lyndon johnson and the great society and california produced ronald reagan and the modern conservative regulation so these things are constantly in flux of the ways in which california and texas revolve, kind of like the double helix or something, they revolve around each other, always opposing in akind of dynamic

conversation . it naturally brings up the question and i've been atthis 1 million times , will texas turned blue or even purple? and the answer is yes. it will. when is only the question. the growth is in the cities. the, even the suburbs which have been such a stronghold for republican sparties, new immigrants are coming in different, all this growth brings in people who are a part of the texas political culture and they have their own histories andin fact , working the opposite way, for my family, we moved to texas in 1950 six, my dad was a returning war veteran and

like many people who had fought under general eisenhower, he was an eisenhower republican so he moved to abilene and then to dallas because of the jobs. people don't move to texas because of the scenery, but au it's a great job producer and it offered my father, as it offered millions of people a chance to succeed, a chance to become the kind of person he always wanted to be but he was an eisenhower republican and it was dallas, the city that we moved to that became the first city in texas to collect a republican congressman. the first sense reconstruction after the civil war. so i remember theturn . now, texas is already far more liberal or progressive

than our elected representatives would lead you to believe. the demography and the politics are at odds with each other. there was a figure of the people who really count in texas politics are the primary voters in the republican party. up until recently and it may change but we will see, it's been a republican primary voter has determined the outcome of the elections. now, wendy davis, who was the previous candidate for governor against greg abbott who was crossed, he beat her by 20 points. she made the observation that texas is not a red state, it's a nonvoting blue state and she's absolutely right about it. texas has always been at the very bottom or near the bottom in voter turnout.

now, why is that? people often blame the hispanics in texas for not voting and it's true. they tend not to but why would that be true? in my opinion, where in california they do tend to turn out, it's because they've never had a candidate who spoke to their need, especially the disenfranchised texans, there's never been that charismatic figure who spoke in a language they ein understood. it's going to be an interesting test this november, an interesting test between rockdale cruise who is hispanic but born in canada, as no texan can forget. who anglicized his name to ted and who speaks rather halting spanish. and robert francis o'rourke,

who since childhood has been known by the spanish communicative bento. who speaks very fluent spanish and has been in every single one of texas at 254 counties including all that order area where he speaks to people in spanish. whether texas is red or blue or purple, the decisions we make in texas are going to determine the future of america. right now, 10 percent of all schoolchildren in america are texans . and texas bands $2500 less thanthe national average per student . it's 49 out of 50, unfortunately not 50. its original state, it's shameful. the nation's report card just pointed out that in the fourth grade, texan schoolchildren are 45th in the nation in achievement.

children are our future, it's just pathetic to have to point that out. but the legislature has been cutting back on his contribution to public education, there's a war on public schools. a it's projected to double in 30 years, the challenges to infrastructure are overwhelming. we are not nearly beginning oto meet that challenge and i'm thinking especially of our coastal areas just a year ago this week, harvey hit and i was in houston right after that and it's a question about the survival not only of our coastal cities but the oil refineries and storage tanks and ports that are so essential not just that the texas economy but to the american economy. when we were led by time changetactics , this displaces our state in a certain peril.

i think texas is a wonderful place. it's bold, it's creative, it seems as if they have a mandate to lead and as texans, we need to make sure we are up to the challenge. to do less would be on texan. i'll be happy to take your questions . [applause] >> thank you for your remarks. yai know you didn't go to school here but since you live in austin, i wanted to ask if you have any comments about today's texas maryland football game. >> we were on a plane with a lot of them but unfortunately i was not watching the game. i actually came by and watched when i came yesterday and we went to the library of congress and i looked out and there were thousands of people and they were waiting

to say goodbye to john mccain. it was really touching to me so we watched the funeral this afternoon. it was a moving moment. it could be, who knows, a small turn of the screw in improving our democracy . >> would you be kind enough to share with us your prediction of the outcome of the cruise over contest this november and then would you please give us a date when texas will become purple and the date when it will become a blue? >> i can make up a figure about the odds but because i still think it's a climb for beto. not only is he a democrat, but he's from el paso and for whatever reason we've never elected anybody from el paso, i don't know what it is about

that place but i met him only one time, and a fox station in dallasand i was promoting my book and at seven in the morning , we were in hair and makeup. and he has kind of a jimmy stewart quality, he's a very ingenuous guy but he's on first so we walked into the studio and the anchor comes over and i don't know if beto had said anything but the weanchor says well, you're really handsome. and you're kind of tall, [l argue and you've got that charisma thing going . i thought maybe i'm underestimating this guy. this is a foxstation in dallas . i think it's tyou know, people would say that he had hano chance and right now, he is within single digits. he doesn't have any support on the ticket and that's a problem. so i would say 6040 but now

maybe 5540? i don't know. it's just aguess . if he is elected, texas is purple. you can mark that down on your calendar. >> what about when it becomes blue? >> i can't gothat far, my crystal ball is all clouded . >> i grew up near kilborn so i'm familiar with the history you gave. this, did it come about after you wrote your longform article last summer? was that the genesis to that article and then write this book? >> i write for the new yorker and my editor david renick asked me in and he said larry, i want you to explain texas . and, because it is a little mysterious people up there imwhy i live in texas and i

reminded him i get paid by the word. that's a very big question you ask and so i started writing and i couldn't stop. i use to work for texas monthly and i said i'll never write about texas again, i don't want to be a regional writer but i couldn't stop. >> .. i kind of right to try, i want

to write the book i'd like to read about something. in this case, i had, i know instinctively what people think about texas, sometimes it's been stated very much my face, but i wanted to address those things and also, years ago i wrote a memoir about growing up in dallas during the kennedy assassination. texas i has a rather impoverished too. reporter: archive and there wasn't much that about what it wass like to be from texas or from dallas at that time. your life is so enriched when, so you grow up in brooklyn or paris, there's always literature and help to tderstand the culture you live in. part of my goal was to enlarge that archive and also i just

really had a lot of fun doing this. it helped me understand the place i live in and myself better. >> have question about your book the looming tower that talks about the extremists fighting the soviets in the 80s and then the americans in the '90s. nthaven't gotten a grasp on how they could become so hostile and aggressive toward a country that was providing them arms and helping them achieve a major political goal. could you speak to that. >> the turn against america, if you just go back and think abou about, back then there was a delegation that came to the white house one tried to convert ronald reagan to islam. just think about how the world would be different.

[laughter] on that time we were on good terms with people who became the alabama in many respects, but once the soviets left there was really no reason, no geopolitical reason for us to be in so we left the country and it was in chaos and it turned into civil war and then it turned into a jihad. i don't think we would've paid any attention to it really were not for 911 steve cole was speaking earlier, the taliban and work on our radar but 911 changed all that because they were hosting bin laden.

they were participating in the war on america but because they created a sanctuary that made it possible for al qaeda to train its soldiers. they had the opportunity to return him when they failed to take that opportunity so the hammer came down. this is the longest running war we've ever been in. i wish i had a better answer for you. >> i'm from new jersey but my yirst exposure to texas was when i was six years old and i met sandy cheeks from spongebob. people from my generation will probably understand where that comes from, but my question is, you talked a little bit about how california and texas were mirrors of each other and i think that also kind of exists in the way they handled their approaches to raise in iagher education. california can't use race as a consideration for the uc

system whereas in texas it was kind of upheld that reese could be used. >> at the university of texas at kind of an ingenious idea about how to handle race h admissions. they decided to take, to admit the top 10% of all public school students who applied. the assumption was that the schools themselves were also segregated so they were going to be a large number of minority to coming out of minority schools and it didn't work. the minority population, the african american minority population in university of texas is very, very small and the hispanic population has increased but it has not been

effective. both of these school systems are circumscribed by laws that make it very difficult to entice or recruit minority students into those systems. i don't know exactly how were going to go about fixing it. the court is and the rules are really unclear. i think that's true in c california as well. >> thank you. >> my question is about that texas economy and i guess that would be the case of the state economy continues to grow at the rate that has and people come there for the job they have. i'm just wondering how much, in your view, how much of the state's economic growth is due to the low tax, low regulation policies that defined texas approach versus just the good luck of having oil and natural gas in the ground.

>> texas would be texas without the oil, and yet i do think businesses have migrated to texas and so they are liberated from taxes and because most industries are not social welfare organizations, they don't care that much about the bonsequences of their behavior in texas is very stingy in terms of its social net, and if you subtract money from public schools, which is almost the primary obligation, then it's cheaper. your failure children and you're not providing for the future, the workers of the future so it's a conundrum. texas can afford to be more generous and more farsighted and that's what i'm constantly harping on.

there may be some trauma left over but texas was never rich in the way they think of being rich but there's more millionaires. capita in connecticut and maryland and south dakota, i think, some places that you think really, but everybody, when good times are in texas you would see these oversized dollars for sale in the airport until everybody knows the oils really flowing but it never really flowed down to the peopl people. but that doesn't mean there wasn't money gushing through the state. think we been in provident in our state government. california, they left their government with an $8 billion surplus, excuse me, 6 billion-dollar surplus and

texas has an $8 billion deficit. you wonder where the fiscal conservatives really are. can i just finish with these three because we are the last beakers. >> you make a point of comparing texas and california. being from new york and living a lot of my recent time in florida, i'm wondering what texans think of new yorkers are flirty and in contrast to what they might think of california. >> florida is sort of equally crazy. [laughter]s so there's a kind of affection and tolerance and it's seen as we are sunshine state and there's a confidence in our politics although florida seems to be a little more influx in terms of politics right now.

new york, i adore new york but for longtime new york was seen as the embodiment of all the things were fighting against and yet our country wouldn't be the same if it weren't for all these different entities we've managed to create. >> my son graduated from rice in may. he's a native washington. aduring the four years he was that rice, we enjoyed learning about texas but i'm fat we will have a reason to go back there anytime soon, but i'm wondering, since you said you felt as a f texan that maybe there wasn't a literary legacy for you, is there a book you would recommend, aside from your own, novel, history, anything that you would recommend to folks who want to learn a little more about

texas. >> in my book i write about steven harrigan who i think is the best writer texas ever produced. he hass a novel, gates of the alamo that isl. just wonderful. i just finished reading a manuscript his history of texas which is magisterial and it will come out in the fall next year. the tentative title is big wonderful thing inn the world but his book is a big wonderful thing. >> you mention that texas used to be much more blue gorgeous blue overall. assuming that people doesn't move out in droves, does that mean the older generation is also morene productive or. >> well, no, the primary

voters, the republican primary voters have been determining the politics of the state for decades. i read a figure that there are more of them over the age of 65 then under the age of 50. now that tells you a lot. there is a kind of dinosaur era that's moving in to the past and who will come in the wake of them, it's hard to say. i think the kind of reactionary politics that we've seen in the state for a while, people are tired of it. this attack on public schools at the same time we were having this argument about bathrooms and whether transgender people can migrate from one bathroom to another,

that was the sole discussion about public education at this past legislative session. that's shameful. that's an avoidance of the responsibility these people have. i'm hopeful in the next session will have a more sober minded group of people, but if not, believe me, i will be on the case. >> i grew up in california and more recently spent ten years in houston. actually, i loved it as well and was there when they electeded a lesbian, i was wondering if you could comment on a part of the economy related to energy and that's the wind energy growth.

>> oh yes, thank you for bringing that up. texas drives more power from wind than any other state, currently 15% of the power in texas comes from wind and solar is coming along, not as quickly, i don't know why, we have plenty of sun, but there is one very conservative town, georgetown, just north of austin which gets all of his energy from renewable sources, and, in dallas and some other places in texas, you can choose an energy plan you can choose to have renewable only sources, and if you choose that, the energy at night is free. thfree. the wind blows more at night and they have to unload it, and so it's hard to beat free in terms of pricing.

i have to give credit to rick perry. he instituted that and i wish you would remember some of the legacy left behind in texas. >> last question. >> thank you for coming to this event. my mother recently moved to houston, i'm from california so i'm interested in this comparison that your drawing between the two states. when i went to visit her in th houston, the thing i noticed about texas is they are the only thing i know that wears earrings of their state. i don't notice people from ohio wearing ohio earrings, but at any rate, that aside, the first thing you mentioned about houston is that they don't have a zoning policy. can you elaborate because when

i visit her,te i noticed that and about how weird, how unique, offset that way makes houston. why doesn't it? you know the history. >> yes, it was to keep the out. the communist out. it was a zoning was a communist plot. in the 50s, you know this, in the 50s it was assumed this was one to be a real threat so they decided there would be no zoning and the liberals thought maybe that's not such a bad thing because it'll make it easier to integrate our housing, and it

did. houston is constantly, it's like a schoolteacher erasing the blackboard and doing this again. constantly erasing and creating but has affordable housing. compare that to the cities like los angeles and it's very difficult to find a formal housing there. i'm kind of forgiving about, it's an experiment but it has its upside, it can be kind of crazy, but if you're gonna spend time in houston have to get over that. >> i don't need to get over it, which is unique and i can't think of any other city and was wondering what the history was. >> thank you. it's been great talking to