>> we kickoff weekend with historian andrew roberts with the lightbulb winston churchill. >> my name is michael bishop the director of the library and executive director of the international churchill society. the society was founded 50 years ago and dedicated to preserving and promoting the historical legacy winston churchill through publication and events which is

our upcoming 35th international churchill conference this weekend in colonial williamsburg. to learn more about churchill and the society visit us online at winston churchill.org. the national churchill liger-- library center is the result of a partnership between the university and the society and over the last two years we welcome many students and visitors and cherish access to primary documents and exhibits including a painting by churchill which is the scene over their. for our churchill conversation series we welcome to the library leaders such as investor roger burke, david rubenstein former pakistani-- actor gary altman, historians and many more to discuss not only the particular subject chose life and career, but applications through that present-day challenges for as

churchill himself observed the longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward, but now let's turn to the main events. tonight we will learn about a figure but deleted devoted to history who would his 30s wrote an admiring piracy and was chronicled the history of wars around the world, amid a colossal output of nonfiction he wrote a single novel featuring a protagonists closely after himself and engaged in his struggle against tyranny, a passionate host of political and historical subjects appeared in newspapers and menton-- magazines in britain and around the world. at about drinker of polish's champagne. and honored guest at the white house, he is truly made his mark on history. one of the reasons, many reasons

that andrew roberts may be the perfect biographer winston churchill and so the above description applies equally to them both-- [laughter] >> in his-- that's what churchill said about him. it is memoirs of the second world war churchill reflected on what ultimate power came to him in may, 1940, unconscious of a profound sense of relief. at last i have the authority to give direction over the whole scene i felt as if i were walking against me and all my past had been the preparation for this hour, for this trial. after decades of research, travel in the great man's footsteps and the use of new sources andrew roberts crafted brilliant exploration of churchill's walk with destiny, but it's not the new sources that most distinguished his work, rather it's the calm and

reasoned judgment that andrew applies to the countless triumph, failures and controversy that mark churchill's nine decade life and six decade parliamentary career. if the publication last month in britain churchill walking with destiny has been declared the best single volume life of churchill ever written by both the sunday times and sunday telegraph and in the new issue of "finest hour" reviewer john campbell hailed it as a heroic biography. andrew roberts is from cambridge university, a visiting professor at the war studies department at king's college, london, lehrman industry at the new york historical society and author of 13 books including the storm of war, masters and commanders and napoleon. he's the trustee of the margaret thatcher archive, and most

importantly international churchill society. ladies and gentlemen, it's my great pleasure to introduce, andrew roberts. [applause]. >> it was displayed. also there is something i might draw attention to. >> are mentioned in my introduction that you had used a great many new sources and some might ask how could there possibly be new sources after more than a thousand biographies of churchill, but you found them can you tell us about them. >> there's been 1009 biographies of churchill and why on earth would i include 100-- 1010, over the last decade and

extraordinary cornucopia of new sources have opened up and the queen allowed me to be the first churchill biography to use her father's diary and king george the sixth gave an interview to an audience to winston churchill every tuesday lunchtime during the second world war and then, wonderfully we have huge amounts about his hopes and fears. we also have 41-- the relationship between the king and churchill was fascinating. in the not of been successful. it could have easily gone wrong. churchill supported the king's elder brother during the application crisis and the king had also very much but in favor trying to stop churchill from becoming prime minister, so it could have gone wrong, the relationship.

instead it went magnificently right and very quickly the queen was referring to churchill by his christian name, the first time-- the only one of his prime minister's he called vice-- by his christian name and he used the word friendship in the diaries. you also have 41 sets of papers that have been deposited at the churchill archives in cambridge, the last big biography of him including mary's 1940. you have the diaries of the soviet ambassador 1943 who churchill saw a lot of. you have for beta accounts of the war captains and also there's another fascinating new -- i'm trying to find the best way, love letters, pamela

harrington. am very conscious that we are on tv. she led an active romantic life during the second world war. [laughter] so, we have these love letters. i was given access to them. she had love affairs with people all around churchill who knew churchill and wrote backwards and forwards to churchill, so you have these letters from people like jaco whitney, edinburgh, the great broadcaster -- ed murrow. also, you get love letters from bill paley and from of course harrington himself, the head of

the raf. general anderson and someone we know of as jerry. you put all of these together in their something new comes in-- something on the sources. >> you use these sources in your many many years of experience, but this sense of destiny was present in him from a very early age. >> it's absolutely essential to understand him. winston churchill, he was almost totally self educated because-- [inaudible] at the age of 16 he told a friend there would be great to struggles, huge upheavals in the

world and he would be called upon to save london and save the country and the empire and he believed it. he acted out his life very much under that sense of self belief, salts of destiny and as he went through life and especially as he survived incredibly large number of brushes with death, but there was an enormous number and he believed as a result the almighty there were what he called invisible things that were flapping over him and protecting him and when looking at the role of the almighty and churchill, it seems to mainly have been designed to take care winston churchill. [laughter] >> one of the most external things about churchill becoming prime minister in may, 1940, was

that he that he survived long enough in the reach that-- mention a few minutes ago his very scrapes and near misses. can you tell us more about that connect i will try to keep them roughly chronological. he was born two months premature you was stabbed in stomach by a pen knife was he was at prep school, aged 10. age 11 he had very serious pneumoniae, probably the closest he came to death and his doctors administered brandy to him orally and rectally and you would have thought that may have put you off to brandy for life. he had-- he survived a near drowning on lake geneva, house fire. he fought in five wars on four continents. in the first world war he went into the trenches into no man's land 30 times which he did not

need to do, but he did. got so close to the german trenches he could hear the germans speaking. he survived the two plane crashes, three car crashes and this year the reason i brought this year is to show you this scar down the center of his four head which came as a result of his car crash in the fifth avenue in new york, december, 1931. didn't stop with the war, either when the war started, he continued to take risk again and again especially during-- and he also had lifting a window at the white house 1941 and also he got a series of pneumonia later on in his life and in may of 1943 hit a serious bout.

his doctor asked him to provide some blood and churchill said i can give you some from my finger or for my ear and i also have an almost infant dispense. we think of churchill and most of us think of the year's bulldog image on the cover, but one thing you discovered is that churchill was remarkably-- >> he was a profoundly passionate and emotional man, much more than i would expect and it must be offputting to have your leader suddenly burst into tears. if theresa may suddenly burst into tears she would have every right to do. i would put this down to the

fact that he was not a buttons up stiff upper lip aristocrat into which she was born, but much more he was a throat back from earlier area-- era for people who were their hearts on their sleep very much more than the victorians did. >> as long as we're on the subject of churchill's emotions i think we should deal with as you do in your book this perception on the part of many that churchill was depressive or manic depressive or something along those lines. >> i do not believe that is the case at all, certainly some of the books have the said. he got depressed, undoubtedly. the war led to the killing of hundred 60000 allied troops which he supported from the

beginning only to the end. he got depressed at the time of singapore in are-- in 1942 and in june of 1942. these are times when anyone would've gotten depressed and depression is a debilitating illness and could've happened any time and he was able to chair over a thousand meetings of the cabinet or other defense committee at anytime day or night until 3:00 a.m. in the morning, sometimes. that's not the most depressive. neither was he in alcoholic. he did drink an enormous amount. he said he could it be an alcoholic because no alcoholic could've drunk that much and when you look at the amount that he drunk yet remember he-- of the 2174 days of the second

world war there was one day that people around him said he was drunk and on that occasion they ignored everything that had been decided that night and had precisely the same meeting the next morning when he sobered up and said no decisions were taken on the back of his drinking, but i very much came to the conclusion by the end of the book that in his words were correct when he said alcohol-- that he had taken more out of alcohol than alcohol addict out of him. >> you very firmly established in this book that churchill was neither a depressive nor a drunk, but when you look is parents and how they treated him you might not blame him for either of those afflictions. can you tell us about his parents especially his father's treatment of him? >> yes. 's father, lord randolph churchill was a brilliant material painful figure who had

been one of the great orators and british politics and he never wanted any part of brilliance in his own son. instead he lambasted him. some of the most moving letters are the letters from churchill "bug in it-- love and affection from his parents. his mother was born in brooklyn and yet she seemed to take on the english victorian attitude of children. when she was-- when winston was a 10 years old she wrote everything she did in her diary in 1884 and she only saw her son six and a half hours out of six months and he said, churchill said that he felt that she was in my early life that he felt

that she was like the evening star and that she shone brilliantly, but at a distance and that had a deep effect on him. the-- she showed no interest in him until he became a security on her trust fund at which point she started to scream out for him, but with regards to the father after his death in 1894 at the age of 45 when churchill was 20 churchill proved his love , almost obsession with his father writing his father's biography and searched out his father's friends, adopted his father's political staff, adopted his father's speaking style putting his hands on his hips, called his son randolph and then when he finally made some money, basically churchill was in the red until his early

70s. when finally he had some cash to spend because he had written his war memoirs he did a regency thing was-- which was to spend it on the first of 37 resources and he put the jockeys of the resources into his-- [inaudible] >> churchill's father time again displayed extraordinary even reckless courage that many contemporaries were amazed that. he said later courage is the first of human quality because quality guarantees of the others. you tell us a great deal about churchill's courage in your book could you discuss that and how that was important to his career and ultimate success? >> yes the physical courage with manifest from early on. he charged at the battle where

his unit was 25 casualties. they were ambushed in the war the most recent casualties and a couple months after that he escaped from a prisoner of war camp and made his way across 300 miles of enemy territory to escape. he was a man-- man compounded of courage and you saw this as preparation for this hour and trial because you saw to get in the second world war when as a prime minister he traveled 110,000 miles outside of the uk in those five years and he went in planes across the atlantic one of which construct by lightning, the instrumentation had died. he went across the atlantic in u-boats in the area changing

direction to avoid the u-boats. he fluid and unpressurized cabin in his late 60s and early 70s in areas-- several planes he had been in got shot down the next day. is a tremendous thing. he was the glue that the big tree together. dolling refused to fight and only left russia once during the world war. fdr did go to several conferences, but it took churchill to go all the way to moscow twice and so on in order to be the glue that cupped the big three together. >> with his walk with destiny entered the 1930s he became one of the first high-level prominent medical leaders in britain to spot the danger of

hitler. why him? what about his background and experience helped him proceed with so many others cannot? >> i think there were three things, first unlike many of his background and age he liked jews. he had grown up with the jews. his father had liked jews and thought they gave that ethics to world civilization and he felt comfortable around jews associated early warning system for hitler and the nazis in a way that a lot of other british upper-class people did not. he was a historian at his own great ancestors. any wrote a four volume biography and who had of course prevented the gem in his asian--

[inaudible] he was able to place hitler in the long continuum of people who needed to be stopped on the continent starting with philip the second in spain going on to louis the 14th then to napoleon and then he was able to see hitler in the historical aspect. he had come up close in his only life in a way that very few of other prime ministers of the 1930s had. he had seen it in the sudan. he had seen in this case atlantic fundamentalist and he spotted it again, the same traits in the nazis and hitler. this was something that of east

others,. >> whence his walk of destiny concluded and he became prime minister in 1941, his rhetoric and famous speeches especially met early part of his premiership which any of us know by heart, tell us about where this rhetorical power came from and the influences that went into it including perhaps william shakespeare. >> i do recommend the shakespeare expedition, churchill shakespeare expedition glad i got that right. it concentrates on the extent to which william shakespeare and his love of shakespeare from an early age his learning of shakespeare affected churchill's oratorical technique, but even at the age of 23 churchill had

written an article called the scaffolding of rhetoric which explains the five things you need to do to capture an audience in a public scene and at that point it was three because he had never given a public speech himself and so he took it from the theory and then traveled tens of thousands of miles up and down the country to give speeches all over the country as a young budding politician and he was able, therefore, to put his area and practice in a brilliant way. he had a problem in that he wasn't a natural speaker. he had to work hard at it. he knew how important it was. he-- in 1940, one of his private sectors asked what the secret is a great wartime speeches and he

said that you need to keep words short, work out your self what you want to say and use total clarity of the message and you need to keep sentences short enough possible use words of old english, which would naturally sort of appeal to the people listening to it and the english language and when you look at the hundred 41 word variation of his fight on the beaches speech which you find with confidence in the air and ends with we shall never surrender. the 141 words, all but to come from old english. of those two words the word confidence comes from latin and surrender comes from the french. [laughter]

>> indeed. [laughter] churchill's rhetoric was of course a formidable weapon, but he was also a war leader who commanded what became ultimately vast war effort. one of the things that marked out from the beginning was his determination to coordinate. can you talk about the lessons he derived from his earlier expenses in the first world war and other conflicts that he brought to 10 downing street as prime minister in 1940? >> i mentioned about the horror of the campaign where 160,000 allied casualties suffered and he ensured that he was never again going to be a position where that would happen because in the second world war he would never overruled the chief of staff the way he had in the great war.

and the whole of the war he never did. he learned lessons from his mistakes and also, of course, he knew he had made endless areas of-- errors are going through his like it in summary things wrong. he got woman's suffrage wrong, he got the gold standard wrong, the application crisis wrong, primarily gallipoli wrong and many others, so he was a genius, but he was a flawed genius and he knew that and he also knew he had to learn from his mistakes. he told his wife, i would have made nothing if i had not made mistakes. >> tell us and she mentioned 17 tell us about 17 churchill. they were married for a very very long time. >> she was central to his existence. she gave him some of the best advice he had in his career.

she told him not to come out of the trenches at the end of the first world war which was a difficult piece of advice to tell him because he was taking this risk and going off into the trenches and she knew that and get she also knew he would never be happy in life if he sought the reputation he had by returning to really and in june 1914 she writes him a letter tell him not to be so beastly to the staff and be nice in the private sector because he was just bullying and rude and difficult and that seems to have worked for the moment. she was-- he always thought of her as his rock and depended on her. the wonderful thing is she was an aristocratic bad list and she could be so rude to his enemies and he certainly didn't want to

get on the wrong side of her when she was in full swing and a marvelous letter she writes to henry asquith's, herbert, the prime minister in 1915 in which she tells him that he needs to reemploy churchill and not let him leave. although, it got her nowhere and he was rather snippy about the letter actually, when you read it today you would be so proud as a man to have a wife that could write a letter like that, absolutely magnificent. i have a wife who could write a letter like that, in effect. >> i suspect we have a large number of questions from the audience, so i think we will turn to that now. if you have a question, please, raise your hand.

we have won over their. we have a microphone. >> lady in red. >> lady in red back of their. there we are. >> hello, thank you. i have a very specific question. so, you know the question, that caucuses was in a way debated between carson and churchill so could you expand on that? you know, churchill having an amine like after the first world war. thank you. >> yes, it was a question really in september and october of 1922 that brought down lord georgia government and it was a really went to the heart of what it british empire was going to be about because the government

lord george churchill and others wanted to ensure that turkey stopped at the provisions of the fair treaty which were very harsh and if people could support it, the government, we would have possibly gone to war with turkey, which no one wanted to do after the end of the great war, so others such as andrew law really brought on the government in order to prevent this from happening, so with a going to be a continually pugnacious power as was put in a letter to the times or were we going to stand back and effectively except the declining power and what we call the

carlton club meeting made it clear it was going to be the latter. >> gentleman in the bow tie. >> high, thank you for coming. thank you for doing this and everyone at the churchill center in christopher andrews book to defend the realm is a history of mi five, one thing that struck me was churchill the impression i have was that churchill was almost fighting a two front war in the run-up to him becoming prime minister that he was concerned with the rise of fascism, but also concerned about the rise of communism and in some circles it seemed like it was either war and i just wondered if your book speaks to him trying to address that and get people to take it seriously.

>> absolutely. the chapter does from the revolution on words he was anti-communist, but by the late 1930s especially by 1939 he believed it was essential to get the soviet union into to stop hitler, which had many problems that were essential to this, but they quite likely the yard and despite the germans, so it was a really complicated decision that churchill took to embrace the soviet union which he had been denouncing for the previous decade. he did it partly with the help of ivan my ski, the master, so we now have new information about the extent to which he was doing this and there is a chance

-- you mentioned christopher andrew book, which is the biography in the chance he was speaking-- they obviously needed to know what was said between him and my ski. it's a pretty great area. like if nelson the intelligence world, but nothing came of it alternately because the nazi soviet pact in august 1939 managed to leapfrog anything the national government was able to. >> with this much material to choose from i'm curious how you decided what not to include and is there anything you didn't include in your book you could share with us? >> the lady standing in the back in the blue is my editor and she

knows better than anyone in the world what we did and didn't include. basically could have been 10 times bigger, couldn't it have joy? ya. [laughter] you have to do that because there is so much to say about churchill, but the real problem i found in writing this book was to cut out. it was whole time when had to convince and sometimes go to an archive and found a nugget you are proud of and then you just don't have space for it. it's a horrible feeling. you just got to do it because otherwise you are either forcing two volumes that doesn't sell

anything likely well or you have something that is you'd drop it on your tell you would break your leg, but i think with this one although, and has about a hundred and 50 pages of poverty and index they don't have to worry about, the actual bit that is the meaty part is under a thousand of pages, 18 pages under thousand pages back-- [laughter] >> could you talk about the modern case against churchill and how you consider it a feather on the scale of history? >> it's important especially since internet. the attacks on churchill have become ever more-- some are frankly weird.

i saw the other day about your astronaut scott kelly, the un ambassador to space. only give the united nations would send an ambassador to space, but nonetheless he said that he quoted churchill saying in victory magnanimity in a tweet and he got an enormous number of twitter trolls saying churchill was a racist and war criminal and all kind of this thing and it came up of the casting of the iraqi tribesmen which let me point out ladies and gentlemen we got the original documents he was talking about teargas, not mustard gas and he made that clear in the letter. again and again with these things you just need to go back

to the original sources. what mr. kelly should have done was educated sub about churchill , instead he brought out a tweet saying he was very sorry that he should have said anything in favor of this evil racist warmonger and then he got all the protests from people tweeting him. i do think the space mr. kelly should have concentrated on was the one between his ears. [laughter] [inaudible] >> more and more the book started to put out the shameful franklin roosevelt treated churchill. that's my personal opinion. i guess, do you have any sense of how he personally felt about

the way he was treated? >> yes, i think it's too harsh, very much too harsh to say it was a shameful. fdr put the americans interest first. use american president, so i think because they didn't go to war against russia which he would have had to done in order to impose the agreement, fdr can be accused of that. towards trying to make sure there was a long-term arrangement with the russians, which, of course, what happened was a the integrity and independence and he still had over a million russian-- russians on-- [inaudible]

it seems difficult to work out how anything could amend out about that, so it was a terrible moment when by march, 1946, and iron curtain, churchill was the first person just as great as anything he said in the 1930s came out and said soviet communism was going to be a scourge and so of course by that stage fdr was dead, but you are correct in saying where i think you're correct is saying from automotive 1944, onward the close friendly relaxed working relationship between the two men had broken down and there are over 300 more letters from winston churchill to franklin roosevelt then there are replies from roosevelt to churchill, so maybe that is what you are referring to when you use the

word shameful. >> yes ma'am? just wait for one second and we will bring the microphone to your. >> can you explain churchill's relationship with our presidents post-world war ii? i was under the impression that they shared our national intelligence information with him because he returned back as a minister, so i'm pretty sure truman and eisenhower belt and probably kennedy both sent him our national security-- >> not kennedy. >> not kennedy, but truman and eisenhower and i want to point out in the imperial war museum we only have one broke on general montgomery comparing him with rommel and could you expand upon his relationship with general montgomery. >> the imperial war museum has

undertaken a terrible disbursement of the books. they sold their library, basically. it's one of the great social tragedies and that's why they only have one book. if you had asked that question five years ago, there would have been well over 300 books in the imperial war museum on mont, if relationship with montgomery was subject to fluctuation. he admired him very much at the beginning, made him a marshall early on in the 1944 to the theory of bradley and various other people who wanted to be five-star generals at the time. he then thought he got too big for his boots which he definitely had. he then in the postwar period and then to a great degree when

monty went round had lunch at 78 times in the course of the postwar and then he fell out with monty again, so that as he said of his relationship they were like two old birds pecking each other, but they ultimately there was a great deal of respect and admiration. was the first part of your question? yes. like everyone else he actually wanted stephenson to win the election. and he was nerve-racking because he thought eisenhower wasn't going to pursue the policy, basically policy of nuclear appeasement that he wanted after

the russians exploded their nuclear bomb in 18-- in 1949. after that the anti-communist and anti-soviet then went pro again because he saw the british interests were not benefited by having nuclear eyes to soviet union and he thought eisenhower would not address that wears the democrats might. >> we have a microphone. >> thank you, also, for coming here. it's been a real treat and having read your book on halifax many many years ago and i cannot

wait to read your book on churchill you probably get this question a lot since the darkest hour came out and movie and now being an expert, obviously, on both of the leading characters in that what is your take on the movie? do you think that the artistic license they took was necessary to get the story out to a wider audit-- audience? i'm curious as to your thoughts. >> thank you very much for reading my first book. eroded 30 years ago and since then i've written a five other books with churchill and the subtitle and i feel as though i was walking with the destiny and it was in preparation for this hour in this trial. i love the film. i thought it was great. i love gary altman. i love the glint in the eye and i thought he played it brilliantly. the problem i had with it was

that it actually detracted from the true leadership that was shown by winston churchill and may, 1948 and that piece of where he did not want to the subway entry and ask a focus group what they wanted him to do, what he should do it neither was he visited by the king in his bedroom at midnight. [laughter] that did not happen either, so as a result you actually have a detraction from the extraordinary leadership he did show. he decided he would outmaneuver lord halifax. he put forward-- chapter 21 of my book was a campaign to ensure especially once we have 250,000 troops backed by the 28th of may.

these peace negotiations were never going to go anywhere and it's one of those moments in history that it halifax had been prime minister and he supported halifax we could've gone down a very very dangerous path if we had made peace with hitler then because he would've been enabled instead of using the attack on russia on the 22nd of may 41, he would have been-- when you think he got-- in the north to subject leningrad to a grueling siege and in the center he got to the subway stations of moscow and in the south he actually captured stalingrad and. it's terrifying to consider especially without america being in the world the time. >> right back there.

this young fella, yes. >> i was wondering if you could talk about churchill's role in the attack on the french. >> very good question. yes. it was something that almost broke his heart. he loved france, always had, but when it became clear-- actually nothing was terribly clear. nothing was terribly clear because although we were intercepted french naval signals , they were not always mean done in real time and also not completely successfully, so churchill believed that the french fleet was not going to scuttle itself, this is of course the fleet that was in the algerian waters, but was

actually going to try to fight it out and take on admiral sommerville's force so churchill had to take this grindingly painful decision especially this was on the third of july, 1940, only two weeks before the germans marched into paris, of not just sitting back any hope for the french cooperation, but also killing 3000 as it turned out-- nearly 1300, 1299 french soldiers and so he took that decision. it was one that he never regretted and one of the reasons was that it sent the message to the world and especially to the

united states that we were going to fight on. if you think the french fleet and they were your allies to weeks beforehand it is clear you are not about to give up his. very good question. >> in you discussed the reaction >> the house of commons cheered churchill and he cried as he so often did as i mentioned earlier he hated doing it and said so, but nonetheless it was the first victory we had had for some time and actually get the thing is the navy itself split between the officers who knew other french officers and had been on each other's chips and trade week-- with each other and like each other who were devastated by having to kill some a frenchman and then there able seaman who just thought they were something and nelson and

didn't mind in the slightest. >> we have a couple more questions. this man right here in the front >> i just want to say thank you for being here. my question is, what are your thoughts as to why he was not reelected right after the war? do you think maybe because when the war ended people saw him as a symbol of the old order, and imperialist and wanted to basically start a new? >> that is one aspect of it. it came as a terrible shock when he lost the 1945 general election on the 26, of july. he expected to win because he had been on one of the other of these elections where he had been shared especially in the

northern and middletown, but his name was only on one ballot whereas a lot of conservatives their names were on the others and people wanted after six years of devastating war went to to have-- well, they wanted nationalization, national health service, they wanted the welfare state and the beverage report put into operation. they knew it was going to be labour party that would do that with gusto whereas churchill did offer to do most of that, he would not do it with anything like the same conviction and that-- i mean, incredibly stupid remark during the election where he attempted to equate active labor party with the gestapo

would probably also lost in a few seats. >> i think we have time for one more question. sir? >> obama churchill biographers-- of all those churchill biographers out there how were you able to convince the queen to give you unfettered access? >> i would love to pretend it was anything other than serendipity. i didn't take no for an answer and kept asking. also, it's been 70 plus years since the event, so i think it was pretty much time. of course, that is the decision to be taken between her and her private secretary, so luckily they came to this decision to give a guess rather than another no.

archival genius. >> ladies and gentlemen, i would like to invite all of you to join us here on monday, november 26 when we welcome sir anthony beaver who will discuss the history of the battle of the barn of november 26, at noon and now i hope that you will take your own personal walk over to the book table and ensure the education in the future of andrew's children by buying books and remembering the holidays are just around the corner and please allow andrew to make a quick trip to the signing table where he will be happy to get his autograph. take you for being here tonight and injure roberts, thank you. [applause]. [applause].

>> cures a look at some of the authors recently featured on book tv afterwards, our weekly author interview program that features best-selling nonfiction books and guest interviewers former tribe administration strategist sebastian croquette offer thoughts on how the us can strengthen its national security. journalist stephanie land reported on living in poverty and chris christie discussed his political career and offered insight into the trump administration. and the coming weeks on afterwards the "washington post" jason resign discusses the 544 days he was held in an iranian prison. jill abramson, executive editor of the "new york times" weighs in on the state in the news business and this weekend we look at the growing business of collecting and selling consumer data. >> the matter is that

centralizing now the harm that-- the corruption of the systems that are centralized is now a corruption and in the hybrid model that affects every single one of us. it's not just the corruption on the computer, it's the corruption on the global system that can shift elections and a transform the sanctity of democratic elections, so i think that we are well past the argument for centralization and i also think that just from a technical point of view we have many more pools-- fools who are treating material in a decentered bide atmosphere than we did 20 years ago at the beginning of the story. >> afterwards airs at saturday at 10:00 p.m., sundays at 9:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on book tv on c-span2 all previous

afterwards are available to watch on my netbook tv.org and you can see behind the scene pictures and videos from these interviews on our social media site at book tv. >> over the past 20 years the tv is covered thousands of author events and book festivals. here's a portion of a recent program. >> the stark contrast between rwanda and congo and the border because almost really from one side of the street to another just becomes a completely different reality once you enter congo if these roads, they are sort of symbolic of a road of hardship and i remember we were trying to get from point a to point b and it was extremely difficult and someone in the car

said if you want to keep people from rising up, don't pave the roads and it was just this constant reminder of the congolese sort of reality. .. dave zirin is author of many name, fool? sports and resistance in the united states," "game over: how politics has turned the sports world upside-down," and most recently, "jim brown: last man standing". >> "in depth," thanks for joining us.