sap that that would do the trick. then we may consider having a president as a member of faith. >> type the author's name and the word book into the search bar at the top on it page. >> good good evening everyone and welcome to belmont books. thanks for coming in on this rainy evening. before i introduce tonight's speakers let me tell you about a couple of events coming up this week. tomorrow at 7:00 we'll have jeffrey lewis reading from his book, on saturday at 4:00 p.m., lewis miller, the author of the late bloomers club will be here to read from her book and she'll also be here to help us judge our second annual baking

contest. so you may want to come in for treats even though you didn't make a treat. we have quite a robust schedule of events for september. please do check our website regularly or give us a call. tonight, we are happy to have with us antonia felix, an tone you is a "new york times" best-selling author of 20 non-fiction books, a short fiction, a medical thriller and a play. her current book is a elizabeth wearen, her fight, her work, her life. antonia's political biographies include ruth ginsburg, michelle obama -- the and wesley clark, a biaugreef. she has spoken in lectures on women in power and appeared on cnn, msnbc, sky

news, m, npr, pbs's washington journal. cnn international, cbs radio and many others. in addition, because she's really not busy enough, she researches and writes about racial and gender equity and public education. she lives near minneapolis, minnesota. and tonight we are pleased that antonia will be in conversation with carol the senior producer on wbur called here and now. before her tenure at wbur, capen wrote for newspapers including the montreal gazette, the riverside press and the boston herald as well as numerous magazines. please join us in welcoming antonia and karen. thank you. [applause]

>> so it's an absolute pleasure to be doing this tonight. i have to say that i'm going to start with a confession. when i first got this book i thought i pretty much knew everything there was to know about elizabeth warren. i knew she grew up poor, i knew she taught law, i knew she became a senator, so what else is there? so by the end of the first chapter i reallies that the story i put together for "elizabeth warren" was a resume, the story that antonia put together is a portrait. it's not dry, it's riveting, it's human, she uses everything from interview speeches debates commentaries, she describes late-night tv appearances public condemnations, it's a really important book about a important public figure. so we're going to talk a little bit about the book and the things that you

will discover when you read it, and you should read it because it's worth reading. so let's start not at the very beginning. not at "elizabeth warren" beginning which we will go back to. but i want to go to february 2017, during the debate that snoertsdz were having whether jeff sessions should be nominated as attorney general, there have been weeks of arguments, for and against. and inchise elizabeth warren and she has a letter with her from coretta scott kink from 1986, and in that letter is a statement that coretta scott king had written years earlier. saying mr. sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free complurs of black people. elizabeth warren tried to read that sentence -- what happened? >> she was silenced by her

senate colleagues, ultimately by ms. mcconnell, there were quite a few steps that happened in that very dramatic evening, but ultimately it was majority leader mitch mcconnell who insisted that she was violating a very arcane senate rule that you are not supposed to say anything derogatory about any of your senate colleagues. as senator barbara mccullsky told me when i interviewed her for that book. she said that rule was made back in the early 1900s, maybe the late 1800s, when it wasn't uncommon for a gentleman to show up on the senate flower inebriated and making a real raucous mess of the proceedings and they weren't supposed to do that, so they had developed this rule that you can't just come in drunk and start to slander somebody that

you're angry at. but that was the rule that was brought up, because mcconnell and others were saying you are basically slandering senator sessions and you're not allowed to do that. even if you're just quoting from something that is saying something critical of the senator, you can't do that. so, ultimately she kept talking, because there was steps as i said to this rule. 21st you're warned, and so she was warned about this rule, but then she continued to read this letter by coretta scott king, and then she was interrupted again, and mcconnell finally said well she was warned, and i forget what the middle part was she was give an explanation as i just gave you, nevertheless she persisted and then it was time

for another big session about this whole thing. but she was silenced. she went out into the hallway, and used the iphone, and read the rest of the letter and put it on youtube, and it just went viral. nevertheless she persisted began the rallying cry for so many people who supported what she did on the left, progressive, and some more conservatives as well. particularly women. it became a hashtag, it was on t-shirts, it was on coffee mugz. i'm sure belmont books will make a tote bag with it. but it's also a good metaphor for her life. it's almost iranic, because as we're going to discuss, elizabeth warren really persisted so let's go back to her childhood. did you write she didn't have an easy time, her family was poor, they almost lost her home. she was a bright girl who was a debating

champion, but didn't have the money to go to the tournaments that the other children could go to. what was her early life like? >> well she did learn what prince means persincance means. even as a kid in second grade she decided she wanted to be a teacher. she found her passion there was a second-grade teacher who encouraged her, and said you can do something with your life and this is in the early 60s, late 50s, and she came back to school one day and said mrs. lee, i decided i'm going to become a teacher. she made up her mind and she was very excited about it. but her mother was from a generation where she felt that a woman's place is in the home, and that her one daughter should aspire to be a wife and a mother, and nothing else. so, her mother never encouraged that aspect of her. and they really had some

bitter arguments about it. as she grew up and went through, jr. hi and high school. even going through college when she decided she wanted to go to law school, there wasn't that foundational support from her mom. but she persisted through that. that was a very early on -- very personal aspect of that persistence. >> and in fact what you say about her mother, she did internalize it. she did drop out of college at the age of 19 to get married, so there had to be some grain of that that stayed with her. >> right. there was a message coming from home, of course, and also from society from high school, i write quite a bit about the betty crocker homemaker of tomorrow program that was happening in high schools in the mid 1960s which was a quite sophisticated course

about how young women should look towards child raising and be good citizens, and things like that. it really wasn't about how to measure out bread dough, it was about being a good citizen and a wife and mother. so there was a lot of pressure there, because that program did not talk about getting out there and having a career. the women's movement had not hit the ground running yet. it was -- she had those messages coming from this side, and she had her own passions and this inner drive to do something in the world. and they were just at logger heads for so many years. >> it's interesting she does end up going back to college. she finishes her degree at rutgers, and she goes to houston. she joins the houston law center where you write she doubled the number of women on the faculty by arriving there. so that's

pretty remarkable. and back on that theme in being a woman and doubling the number of woman she suffered major sexual harassment there. she was part of the me too movement. what happened to her there, and how did she get beyond that? >> that was at houston law, and there was one particular professor who as some other professors told me had a real crush on her, and knowing very we'll e well she was a mother with small children and everything else. he would at one point when she was alone in his office with him, he tried to grab her, and was chasing her around his office, and frightened her. so she had to live with that type of tension on the job. because of this one particular professor. and she came out and she said in the mee

too movement she recorded that story that went on television and a lot of people, you know one more story about woman who had to take that kind of treatment on the job. >> a pivotal moment in her career also came in texas. it sounds like this is going to be really dry, but it's not. it's actually really dramatic and interesting. in 1978 there was a major bankruptcy law code that changed the code in 40 years. the new code made bankruptcy relief accessible to families in need so that at that point no one had ever studied bankruptcy no one really knew who the people were who were filing for bankruptcy, and a guest lecture were came to a class and he said people who file for breaps are mostly laborer and house made who live on the economic margins and always would. and here

elizabeth warren's family had roughly escaped bankruptcy, and whose family was middle-class, maybe lower middle-class but wurlg really hard, and she asked him a question, and he was intransitant about it, and it changed the trajectory of her r her career. where did she go with that? why did that launch her? >> he assumed that he had some sort of factual basis to back up that sentiment that people who file for breaps are all in this one certain little section of society, and she asked him that, and he said well everybody just knows it. it was the most unscientific, unprofess orial answer that common could give, and that really struck her, so as you said it sparked her interest in that field, and she formed a tight research group

with two other professors there at texas, and they went -- did a long, qualitative studies about who is actually going bankrupt in this country. and turns all of our understanding about it upside down. they found all of these stories about it being the regular middle class, household that either because of a medical crisis or a job loss or a divorce, just sent them right over the edge, and the law is set up where if that happens this is the safety net, and you have a second chance. and of course in commercial bankruptcy, companies have that same chance and it doesn't have the same stigma quite as much as personal bankruptcy, but her decades of research on this really changed that sentiment, that most people had. and that she herself had. she went into it with that same thinking that well it's just

people are trying to game the system, and get out of paying their bills, but then when she really what her political affiliation was. . she just wouldn't stop singing. she was railing about preapproved credit cards be mailed out like candy and screaming that filing -- bankruptcy filings are up over a

million a year and she basically come as you said and people don't really know, i certainly didn't know she started out as a republican and you raise that she felt she couldn't support a party a few regulations. how did that play out? she switched parties? tell us a little bit about that because that was something that was eye-opening for me. >> it's an interesting story because she is the icon of the left, of the progressive party, and the 30 odd years ago i went back further than that when she was starting this researcher was a republican at times when the penance, the more she learned about the reality of the economics of working people in working people in the middle class and particularly people of color as well, this market system that she adored and still

does, she's a capitalist and believes in and believes the market and believes in mark a comment that she thought the markets were working for everybody. they were really excluding a lot of people and oppressing a lot of people. so she may lay she wanted to be on the side of the platform that believed in regulating those markets and making them fair and work for everybody. that's been her message for a very long time and they created this personal evolution in herself in a new political affiliation, and any person who has got nine that they will learn and evolve from their life experiences. that's a trade of a good leader for one thing. >> and suddenly she's a rock star. you write about how she goes from being prolifically

publishing professor to suddenly she's blogging and writing books she's also a prolific author, very important. but suddenly she's on late-night television. explain that so clearly that the audience burst into applause and set up her husband wasn't backstage iguana make out with her. people have this idea -- tell us a little bit about this meteoric rise she suddenly had. >> when she began writing for the general public with her daughter amelia is also a very accomplished young woman, her message about our finances and a

lot of working americans really got into the public square. she went on with amelia and surprised her by saying we've got three different couples here who have different problems with their financial lives and we want you to advise them. >> she thought they were going on for an interview to talk about what's in the book. it's interesting to go back and look at those old videos. millions of people watch those shows and a lot of people read her book. her trademark ability to be so clear and straightforward about complex issues and also to resume that outrage that a lot of people have had over the recession and how it didn't see many of the people who are

responsible really came out of it without a scratch. people resonated with that message and the intensity behind it that seems genuine and they still do. i believe that such a populist. >> right, so from that, as her star was rising, she finally starts the consumer protection finance agent be a risk if i'm wrong. that was july 2010. did so many things. i'm not going to list them, but it's on page 192. she didn't get to head that agency. you called up one of her biggest life disappointment. she had the agency which she can be a bit, she birthed it and then she seated it over to a man. >> in case some of you don't

know we have a rather polarized washington. it's been that way for a little administration, because of her stance on regulation and especially the stance that became very, very clear when she was overseeing the bailout, that was before she became a senator. conservatives who believed very strongly in deregulation do not like elizabeth warren. they're very clear about it. there's a pretty clear divide they are. the senate did not want her -- none of the conservatives wanted her to be able to run that agency. they didn't want the agency to at all. came into being with dodd-frank, which they are trying to dismantle as there is the bureau they're trying to water down. they would not allow her to become the director. obama was forced to select someone else and they tried some

finagling to make it work, but it didn't work. for some people now say is it's probably the last time that her political enemies could none because she didn't get to become the direct or at the bureau. she's a lot more powerful than the director that agency. >> let's talk about that. >> she still lives on. that gets into the whole campaign to become senator when the incumbent scott brown used the false claim during a debate, and accused her of getting jobs by falsely stating that she was native american. that's been debunked the week before "the boston globe" had a major investigation where they

interviewed every living faculty member from every school that she applied to as a law professor about whether or not she had used the claim that she was of native american descent and every single individual said no she did not. they should put that to rest. >> will it? >> no, because these are very good politics and she is of course up for reelection and that is an easy target that the president has made all the more -- use all of his natural on that one aspect calling her pocahontas. i think it's really going to come up is to get closer to november. that will be pulled out more and more by her opposition.

she came out of february and how she wants to -- she grew up with the stories that her family on her mother's side had some cherokee in delaware blood and that is what she grew up hearing and she said very flatly that she's not going to call her family light years and that is just part of who she is. i do write about this quite a bit in the book about this very complex issue of native american identity in this country and what it means their ethnicity and culture versus just a blood quantum or something like that. they can her a political by using her claim of the native identity is coming up with racial slurs, she's using that

every time the president uses that slur against her, she's going to use that as an opportunity to raise more awareness about issues that are confronting the native american communities around the country and she has been doing that. i think we are going to hear quite a bit more of that. >> can you actually write in the book. you get into little bit more detail about why she does believe her family has native american ancestry that parents have to elope because her father's family didn't want him to marry into a family of native american. that's just a fact that they gave you up and that is just the reason that her mother gave. which is quite convincing. so that story is actually elaborated on in the book.

quite convincingly. i want to talk a little bit about some of the things, some missteps that elizabeth warren has made. the book i should say is just pretty positive. i don't think it's one-sided. that is pretty factual. he also talk about the missteps in the senate. the occupied wall street movement and backtracked and regretted that she created the intellectual foundation for what they do appear to die by back and said it was a misstatement. they paid a one point to server and the congressional oversight panel and why she had made that mistake calculating one year versus the totality. it's interesting the criticism

bleep has nothing to do with performance whatsoever. even people who we could say on the left of our progress is by billionaire warren buffett complained that she would be so angry and we've got to go back to the fact that this is because she's a woman. talk a little bit about that. what she still has to overcome even with this laundry list of accomplishments that any man would be, you know, that would be all you have to see. why are we still talking about whether her voice is too loud? >> at the double standard for women leaders. there is quite a bit in the book about women in the senate and the house and have it come

across the same double standard and they find it every day in their work and what they do for the quality is so confident and straightforwardness and steadfastness and earnestness and knowing your stuff being very clear about where you stand in the mail that those qualities are seen as very strong and just great qualities of leadership whereas he said, when he won and exert that kind of authority with that kind of energy and intensity, she's been as they said, people who admire her and she decided she wasn't so shrill. it's a double standard and we are so far behind other industrialized nations and how

we look at women as leaders. we are so far behind. we haven't had a president yet. we are very far behind. and why is it that we linger with that double standard in this country? it's a fascinating question and people have different answers for it. is it because that sort of the judeo-christian upbringing that women are supposed to be the helpmates? is that so deeply embedded that it's just always part of our nature are where does that start. but as we see more and more women getting elected at every level, local, state, national, federal level, we will start to become more comfortable with the idea that women are capable leaders and that we shouldn't be looking at gender at all. we should be looking at their ethics in their qualities, their strengths, their intelligence, all of that. >> i mean, you write about it

and when you read about all the different people and all the different things they said, it takes you back even though you sort of know that goes on. >> we think we've come far. we've seen a lot. >> so elizabeth warren is serving on committees including health and education, pension, armed services committee. she's got all of her ducks in a row. issue coming up for a 2020 around? do you think shall be on that roster presidential candidate? >> you know, she did something just this past month that makes me think yes. of course she's always denied that i'm working for the state of massachusetts. i mean, you know a lot about elizabeth warren. but last month, two weeks in a row she brought up the sweeping bills.

the first one was the accountable capitalism that, to make capitalism accountable. this is something rubber brush has been writing about, something other people have been writing about their capitalist system, and needs to be more humane and need more of a voice in them. she's a very interesting bill and followed that up with an anticorruption bill. people who work in the government or congress should not own stock. the too much of a conflict of interest. several of the points she made about that. those are big statement that this is what i believe about the country. i think the timing for that was intentional. that really sounded presidential to me. i would not be surprised. >> interesting. >> one last question. this book is so incredibly

detailed. you were interviewed in this book. i know that none of you knew elizabeth warren. i wonder, did it occur to you or did you have an interest in interviewing her for the booker was that some name she was an interesting -- like i was curious when i read it. >> you know, i met her briefly many years ago. this book has been a long-time coming because when she was doing her first campaign and people started to really perk up their years can especially you didn't do this alone speech, none of us got rich on the ground or something like that, that thing that went viral really got my attention i thought. here is somebody who believed in capitalism, the police and the social contract, something that so many things have been eroded pretty drastically. i started looking at her and started a file and then i wrote a book and i thought, if i'm

this interstate i have a feeling people are disinterested and mowing them out more about her, too. i give it to my agent at the time of the timing wasn't right for her. i kept researching her and following her and last year i revamped the proposal with my agent. she said this is early last year. she said, would who do you want to write about next? i said well, just tapenade and i pulled out a bag as full-fledged journal for this book. i could tell this kid i know i can sell this. that was a lovely lunch and it was great to finally be able to dive into it. long story short -- i'll answer your question. we contacted her. what i wanted to do was shadow her for a few days and just be

there to observe rather than nasa direct questions. it's hard to assess questions until you've gotten into the material and no willie which you'd like to ask. it didn't work out schedule wise and things like that. she writes her own material of course and i can completely understand that she didn't want to give me time. she put out a notice that she wasn't doing any one person interviews. but it's fine because the other people i've interviewed are telling things she's never going to even remember a talk about. we get a real picture of that throw these other lenses. >> there is no lack of information. but it works. >> thank you. >> thank you. that is super interesting and i recommend the book.

i have to say kennametal antonia this on a mac heard that i did pick up her economic and legal acts her teeth was so expensive in my economic and legal expertise is a diminutive but i thought this was a book i was going to really wrestle with. that's good for me because i should learn this stuff. it wasn't like that at all. it read like a novel with enough of the economic theory sort of scattered where it needs to that i really feel like i do wonders and without having to take an s.a.t. on it. >> i appreciate that. thank you. [applause] >> does anyone have any questions not for me?

>> you for the outrageous intensity and we have learned to live with her in the date and the fact, having seen her in person at the very large audience, her demeanor was very different. her demeanor was serious, but she tempered herself. have you see that coming across in other places for her? >> that was a very interesting thing for me to hear from her former students in professor she's worked with that said when you are one-on-one with her in her office, talking about a class or something, she is so soft okay and and personable and calm and just a very open person that seems so different from what they see on tv. put in here, you know, when she's doing a 60 or 92nd it on

msnbc or something she has a point to make and she just takes to that of course. as i said, it seems as if the clock is always taking for elizabeth warren. i've been talking to people about this. they she made to try to slow down a little bit and show more about other side of her, which of course is the vickers died but we don't get to usually see comment that when she's on-air, expose more of that and slow down a little bit. heard racers will tell her that as this campaign goes on because it's not just people say she's shrill, but she's more dimensional than that. people know this. a lot of people who talk to me, and they all said the same thing that is not all of her that most

people see on television and at a senate hearing that there is much more to her than not. i hope that we get to see that during the campaign. whether people are going to vote for her or not, we deserve to see the well-rounded person that any of our candidates are. it's an important point. i'm glad you brought that up. [inaudible] but women's voices are high here and when they do the same thing, and it is heard as a shrill as opposed to somebody speaking shrilly. it's just because i think that we may not just that she's the one in but women's voices come across to the ear is more shrill. that was the heart lays.

the rock being that if she does this more stopping than it falls into the category that the cultural she's a soft woman who will never be able to get the job done. she is able somehow to find that middle ground, which i don't think has been forged yet. i think that would be really good. >> yeah, that's an interesting point about a woman's voice didn't sound of a more medium pitch to their voice heard they could be just as intense but it would not come off with that same effect as you're saying. >> she should do what i understand where the call would do which raised to god and to the desert and screamed until she had this nice voice. [inaudible] >> is true. it's just what i heard.

>> thank you. that's really interesting. >> i'm curious. i haven't had the pleasure yet everything about, but do you think that she thought about going to politics years ago where do you think this is the kind of, to some extent i feel like her story is she was driving by the stier economic coming in now, this crisis and she understood it and was able to explain it away that nobody else was or not it's kind of a letter to politics of the way she might just be a law professor still teaching here in cambridge. i'm just wondering what your impression is of her project during having looked through all this material. >> welcome when she first got a taste of what it's like for your work as an academic to be out there making a direct impact in

the world, and the way things were coming that was the switching point. that was the turning point for her. as he mentioned she got on this bankruptcy review commission to spearhead a real good close analysis. but having the ability to bring all of her knowledge and research over a decade of academic study. there's a solid nine between academia and the rest of the world. she crossed that line there and when harry reid invited her to direct the bailout and put into the real world part is was

important. it gave her the bug that if i really want to make a difference tremendous academia is a country has made a difference, had made a difference already. there's so much more that a person could do. so she got her feet wet with the bankruptcy commission and then the t.a.r.p. oversight group, direct and not really showed her that she was good at it and that she had a lot to offer. so it's not public-service thing. i don't think she would have realized that something she would enjoy doing if she had not first scotsman to government by people biting her because of her acts are teased to contribute. >> thank you.

>> well come a thank you for being here. it's been a real pleasure. thank you, belmont folks. [applause]

>> we've got 700 families in america enabled to receive remains coming back after painstaking efforts by american military personnel which they still do to this day. i went to visit john mccain two months, maybe 60 before he died and we talked about this experience of trying to make peace here at home and importantly we talked about the process of these guys dig deep into the polls polls to find some fragment, some component of the rings in hebron at risk of life sometimes. but john and i were proudest of the fact that we put together with the military and at the george h. debbie bush administration and the clinton administration the most

extensive, most far-reaching accountable transparent system ever designed by any nation in a time of four in order to account for missing potential pow or mia. an extraordinary process. >> doris kearns goodwin can you been very gracious over the years. that'so how the audience right away. pulitzer prize winning his taurean doris kearns goodwin. (202)748-8200.