that will define the future and i tell people, i live in new york a boat in new york and that's totally irrelevant.my vote has no count. my parents live in oklahoma their vote has no count either. there will be about five or six states that as i say will determine the future of the country and perhaps the world. and current signs are that wisconsin is one of them. we are done? [applause] thank you. >> in about and a half hour of the wisconsin book festival will continue with maria rana and a history of latin america.

she will be joined in conversation by author and journalist david marinus. for a complete schedule of our live coverage from wisconsin visit booktv.org. in the meantime, here's part of a program that airs tomorrow afternoon with economist robert lawson and benjamin powell talking about their travels to socialist countries. >> it's no surprise to anybody now that socialism is back and popular. a lot of the focus has been on young people and millennial's were attracted to it but of course the presidential debate to see among mainstream democrats now the new york times had a year long and 100th anniversary of the russian revolution a year-long column called red century. i think exactly one, and that year was dedicated to the economic ãof the system. if a handful mention of atrocities instead you got articles like why women had better sex under socialism.

which even if true, i don't know how we witness against 100 million dead bodies. but this is the atmosphere that was taking hold as we were doing the book obviously grown now and we have confusion from politicians like bernie sanders who says countries like denmark, sweden and norway are examples of socialism. it is going to insert a quote from aoc and that was at the placeholder then i decided it was better to leave it like that. the book, the tour we go through we start in sweden go to venezuela, cuba, china, ukraine, georgia and back in the you ssa. let's start briefly with sweden, let's get the definition of socialism correct. socialism is some form of collective ownership or control over the major means of production. this means e polishing private property and the major factors of production replacing it with collective ownership practice and any large society the de facto means state ownership and/or control of the means of

production. if you have large scale production that means you also have some form of central planning in order to do the coordination. a lot of these young socialists like socialism from below and everybody is going to decide cooperatively what to do. your hippie commune will produced ãbneed somebody to coordinate the diverse areas of the economy and when you don't use property rights i give you prices profit and loss has to be replaced with something. that something is essential plan. i will let bob talk more about democratic socialism later. sweden and the other nordic countries are not socialist or highly capitalist. it all for the major factor production of private property, good contract enforcement. they have problems, sweden has a big welfare state and high taxes. this is true of the other nordic countries as well as interventions in the ãbthat's

why when we go to sweden the beer is great, the place is beautiful, it's not socialist. bob is the co-author of economic freedom of the world conduct when we are writing this sweden was ranked ãbmost capitalist lease social. this is true of other nordic countries as well. we can have great barrier, in fact, standing in front of a belgian beer bar the belgian beers even though belgium is really close by cost a ton of money more than washington dc and we drank some in south korea on the other side of the world and they were cheaper there than they are in sweden. the build welfare state has dragged on sweden's growth and they are not wealthy relative to the rest of the world but still a prosperous place because they're mostly capitalist. venezuela is the other end of the spectrum. venezuela is dead lost in bob's economic freedom index.

venezuela is important to remember, this is not a place that was always like that. the earliest year of the index in 1970 venezuela was among those 10 most economically free countries in the world. what we saw is a long period of decline and economic freedom in venezuela they were moving away from capitalism into worse and worse forms of interventionism. they snag dated, but back in 1971 there capitalist they were also wealthy in fact, wealthier per capital in terms than spain. this was a capitalist prosperous economy. it's also commuter have to go back very far to have people pointing to it as successful democratic socialism. chavez unlike the others came to power in a democratic election that international observers rightly said was fair. oil prices were high. as a result, his socialist

policies were cutting up the core of the economy. food production was plummeting in venezuela but they were using revenues from the oil to import food and other things from population. once prices came down, shortly after chavez's death in 2013. in production also went down because the state-owned oil company, state ownership and control of the means of production does give very good incentives for maintaining equipment and pipelines. they no longer have the foreign exchange to end up in necessities. we have the crisis we see today that bob and i saw we were there in january 2017. the picture on the top left corner is of the bridge that's been in the news recently where the hx world stopped from going into columbia. the time we were there people were free to move back and forth across venezuelans by the thousands every day were coming across into columbia to buy basic necessities unavailable

in the venezuelan economy.one striking thing we saw that it was a typical third world property. bob and i have both been to a lot of poor countries. we saw across the border was people middle-class upper middle-class, venezuelans still had some access to money they could use to buy goods when they cross the border. as illustrating what socialist economy does those people who were previously prosperous in a capitalist society it seen them struggling to make ends meet on the border while we were there. i should also say since we have this theme running throughout the book, venezuela ran out of fear. if i were our socialist dictator like toilet paper fear. these are the things like we always have. by the way, that's not election speech. they had polo, which is a privately owned company but the government planning over the company is advocates for exchange and they didn't advocate much foreign exchange to make the beer as a result,

the country ran out of beer. next ãi should say about the democratic socialism with them. this is what i think young democratic socialist often miss. vanessa neri connection and a lack of political freedom. once he abolished private property you have to move toward planning a state patrol if you have any sort of advanced production. people don't like that. it means they will throw you out of power if you let them voluntarily reelected. precisely because you select the power of the economy were able to ãso they can throw you out of office in a democratic election. which is exactly what we see with madero. he was reelected last year by wide margins yet at the same time people on average lost something like 24 pounds. they didn't all sign jenny craig. instead you had state employees being ordered to reelect the person they had food aid stands next to polling places. that's the necessary connection

between socializing your economy and democratic purity. cuba is not starving socialism. it's kind of chugging along. here i will give you a few anecdotes from the travel rather than political economy story. to illustrate some of the dysfunction of a centrally planned system. remember state ownership of means of production. hotels are part of the means of production so you have state owned hotel industry. he could stay at the hotel national five-star diplomat hotel which by all reports is nice. other than that the state owned hotels suck. we stayed at one we were trying to sandbag it this one was supposedly three stars in one of bob's friends recommended place. it's called the hotel trent. it looks okay picture from when it opened in 19 69. see how tall the building was there is exactly 4 elevators and three out of service. that's our bathroom ceiling.

this is another upstate hotel the hotel ãin central havana when he stated that later. that's the glass that came out of the cemetery bag in the room with the stain on it. that's the bolt missing from the toilet so that when you're on the seat you can slide right off. same industry providing logic ã ãwe prearranged one to airbnb which itself is a miracle because the internet is not widely available in cuba and your credit cards don't work there but not have relatives in miami that people in miami will put it up on airbnb you make the reservation through them they take the money and call the relative back in cuba until the when you are coming.

this one is in central havana basically the same prices are god-awful hotel rooms. a little kitchen, dinette, two bedrooms that are nice. and it's right downtown and central havana. we stayed another one half that price $25 night in trinidad. it was conveniently located above a bar which is great stuff and had a porch too so i goods chain smoke my cigars. the cuba trip was not fun. from 8:00 a.m. to 12 pm after that i basically drank and chain smoked cigars until 12:00 a.m. and that made everything all right. sort of. other oddity, no incentives in the hotels, incentives under the ãwhat's missing from this picture? it's a commercial district in central havana. science. science art missing because cubans are poor, signs are missing because nobody cares if you come in their store or not. if you do show up with the stores we are confronted with is an utter lack of variety. this is a well-stocked store but you could count approximately two dozen distinct items in the store.

by the way, continuing with the beer metaphor, cuba they have beer they didn't run out while we were there but you got two techs, cristal and buccaneer. both the roughly 5 percent alcohol. and they both taste like a skunk he bud light. that's your variety. favorite restaurants, first of all, state ownership means production. they been given limited freedoms for private restaurants was that they had initially had restrictions on meat and seafood. they have restrictions on how many people could be seated in them but it's kind of widely ignored or worked around. and they are pretty good at first. because they are trying they have the right incentives. they still have to deal with the supply chain. what you find it is the private restaurants have about 12 to 18 items in the menu they all taste basically the same, which is bland. cuban food in cuba socks, cuban

food in miami is delicious. it's because of the ingredients. even when they have the right incentive the supply chain in the economy is there to provide it. so pick a restaurant based on the venue of a rooftop or something like that. the foods can be the same. i will and with on cuba to an illustration everybody knows about the 1950 american cars in cuba people think it's because we have an embargo on cuba that they are still stuck with american cars but we have an embargo not a blockade although we like to call it that. there's nobody stopping key is to going to cuba except for cuban government. as a result they have to keep using popsicle sticks and bubblegum to make the 1950s american cars take. as a result, in a country that's very poor per capita income, something on the order of the $3000 per capita income you got 1950s cars and selling for $15,000 from $16,000 when

treated. that's more like a $30,000 car. because it's better suspension and brakes and might even have ac. it doesn't exist in the united states. regarding the give to your high school kid anymore. if you step down supply hard enough, price, even when income is low, it goes very high. i will stop at that and let bob continue the tour with you. >> under his talk a little bit about north korea. our wives were very generous in letting us travel all over these crazy places but they said you can't die or get arrested. so we didn't go into north korea, we went to the border of north korea and china. the northern north korea border. there's the alou river which separates the two countries. many of you have seen the satellite photo north of the korean peninsula. except for the capital is essentially dark and then you

see china in the northern side. china has developed quite nicely but this is a dark section of north korea and when we arrived in north korea it was dark and we got to the river very excited we were like we are going to see north korea hundred yards away. it's dark there's nothing over there.

that was north korea. and then you hear seery you see the dark picture of the upper left is north korea then you wake up in the morning and you can see there's actually few hundred thousand people living on the north side of korea. as we went up and down the river at one point i remember thinking, there are chinese patrol boats in the navy coast guard and was very happy to see them. which is strange feeling. if our boat our little fairy on the river, if it breaks down and drifts to the north korean side, i really would hope the chinese would come get us before we get to the wrong side of the border.this is typical what you would see broken down homes, anecdotally, and i still feel sorry, we went into some upriver the farming areas and everybody we saw working in the fields were using hand tools and animals to drag plows and

thinks. there was one guy we saw in a field and he had a diesel tractor looked ancient and he could hear the chug of the d sold the child they make. it was a little inclined on the farm field but he just couldn't make it up. and i really felt sorry for the poor guy. eventually gave up on the tractor rolled backwards. very sad situation. meanwhile, you're looking on the chinese side. you're seeing high waves with tractor-trailer trucks whizzing by 60 miles per hour. the contrast between the two you can see in north korea is really ãthe chinese side of the river and ãbwe talk in the book a lot about the tragedy that's gone on there. the irony is if you go back to the end of the korean war. the korean war did create

massive damage to the entire country but if anything the northern side was the prosperous. the northern side was the industrious prosperous part of the peninsula. the south was back farmers and of course it's reverse today. and we cite specifics about the incomes. the income statistics in socialist countries are really almost meaningless in a lot of ways. the best estimates we have are income in north today may be a couple thousand dollars per person. south korea is one of the wishes countries in the world. segueing over to the china side we hit beijing and shanghai and the title of the chapter is called fake socialism. immediately upon landing you realize when you see signs for the gap and gucci and all the western brands and so forth, this is not socialist country these are private firms making profits the people are busy, the beer is good again. it's a fake socialism. we take the time to talk about

the history of chinese socialism. it is in fact sort of a schizophrenic place. today they are trying to have economic freedom for large portions of the country and as a result of the economic freedom china has developed but quite rapidly and people have gotten quite prosperous in general. it's also still trying to be a totalitarian political regime. ben and i attended a conference it was a really weird thing. what we are talking about ã and frederick hayek in beijing which was, how cool is this? talking about iran hiding it in beijing at a conference with locals. chinese academics and journalists. to remind us all that the chinese economist party was still in charge. the very next day the very next morning doug showed up for the government and padlocked the doors with chains and the conference was called off.

china is trying to do the dance where they are giving away the freedom to engage in commerce and better your condition and prosper and have profits but also trying to control their thoughts in their minds and their political freedoms. we suspect this is not a sustainable path. quickly i mentioned russia, ukraine is captive there, us standing in line. the most popular thing to do in the old soviet union. he stopped to stand in line for going to see landon because they don't charge for london's tomb so when prices are too low as they are in socialist countries sometimes get lines. there still soviet art but we called it hung over socialism because not socialism anymore. there's no central plant. there is no private property that's been reestablished for the most part. they haven't really moved the russia and ukraine have it really move toward economic freedom.

the country that has come of the former soviet republic of georgia is really no capitalist company dominant country. ãbgeorgia is now the top 10 highest rate countries in the world. this is me flipping the bird installing drinking some wine. in terms of the alcohol theme. georgia isn't a great wine country in soviet times they made lots of really bad wine. the central planners plowed under massive amounts of acreage they planted french grapes, made fresh dowel winds, cabarets and such and it was terrible but the entire soviet world was supplied from georgia with the wine today all those deals have gone to fallis they just let them go to sea but the georgians are bringing back their own local grapes, their own local varietals and their own old-fashioned non-french style of making wine different style of making one so if your

wine snob, georgia is becoming a meca worldwide mecca for people who want to enjoy unique wines that just literally don't exist in the rest of the world. georgia success of what they call a rose revolution we talk about that. in terms of the signaling of the new country. the new way of doing things in georgia that's a police station. police station's are always ãb a single there signal their transparency. we don't literally mean transparency when we say that were usually but georgians took it literally. last time talk about the chicago conference.we went to the socialism conference in chicago billed itself as the largest gathering of american socialist and when we arrived ben and i stood out not because we were wearing blue blazes but stood out because we were middle-aged no one caught the joke i was really angry no one thought was funny.

we found a lot of confusion. the same confusion that ben talked about with ãwithout hear a lot of kids that were just leftist kids who saw the world they felt injustice in the world in various ways and they wanted to do something about it and somehow or another they thought socialism was that thing. we would even ask them, you think we should get rid of private property and some said yes and the other said why would you do that. so ãbwere unclear on what the definition socialism actually was. i will close on talking about the beer team. a running metaphor for us to talk about back in the usa a capitalist country, there's a brewery in illinois a revolution beer either bar top is a raised fist with a red scar on it and all the labels for their beer they got a couple dozen varieties of wonderful craft beers they're all commie themed marketing but there really the irony is that

we are sitting here in chicago drinking revolution brewery in the company, which is a private for for profit company makes a greater variety than all the socialist countries in the world combined. we thought that was an ironic thing. the kids were just raking it thought, this is great. we are number one new release in the category beer. how about that. there you go. thanks a lot. [applause] >> thank you very much guys. now we will hear from activity the president community organizer that free the people which is an organization educational organization turning the next generation onto the values of liberty. he has an executive producer at glaze pd what he produces the kid beyond liberty podcast as well as deadly-isms and documentary series about the dangers of all flavors of

authoritarianism and 2004 matt can be found at freedom works where he served as president for 11 years he is the author of various books most recently new york times bestseller don't hurt people and don't take their stuff. met at the end of the book there's a discussion with matt about how to interpret the appealed socialism in the united states and matt was very involved with the tea party movement so he's always had his finger on the pulse of political sentiments in this country and that's what he discusses at the end of the book and he can help us understand what is going on in this country. >> is great to be here and i should start by pointing out

that these two economist, they're not just ivory tower guys if you try to slide to some of the academic works you might think so but a serious amount of hands-on empirical work was done and i'm coming this empirical work in the number of years in the number of hangovers. we actually did a podcast about a month ago my podcast ãwhere we did an empirical comparison of american craft beers and we had a north korean beer, which you smuggled back illegally. we had some polar from venezuela, which not ironically is made in florida because they can actually produce it in venezuela anymore. they had north korean ãbwas so undrinkable that even been poured it out. that does not happen. you got to ask yourself with all this empirical evidence about socialism failing in all the slideshow you just saw, it

seems pretty stark it seems visceral, it seems pretty obvious that socialism doesn't work in practice we have a history of the last 100 years of really horrible experiments, you have to have an ideology that is so dysfunctional as to shut down any conceivable market and yet when i post these videos with you guys post these videos someone from socialist of america will say that's not socialism. thanks ãbthere's all sorts of workarounds as to why it was not really socialist or you go chavez and nicholas maduro are not socialist they are doing something else. you get so frustrated. because it seems like logic,

economics empirical evidence, none of these things seem to hold sway as young people as you pointed out in the beginning of your talk are now conflicted. >> robert lawson and benjamin powell's discussion on socialism were air in its entirety tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. eastern. check your program guide for more information. we are back live at the madison public library where the wisconsin book festival in just a moment you will hear from author maria a rama. >> topping the list of the collected schizophrenia's. american singer-songwriter liz fehr recounts her life and career in horror stories. followed by netflix queer eye cast member jonathan vanness's memoir. over the top. after that the book of gutsy women hillary and chelsea clinton share their thoughts on the woman who inspired them. and why bring up our look on some best-selling nonfiction books according to madison wisconsin's a room of one's own bookstore is tara westover's

account of growing up in the idaho mountains. her introduction to formal education at the age of 17. in her book "educated" it's been on the bestseller list for nearly 2 years. some of these authors have appeared on book tv and you can watch them online at booktv.org. ..... [inaudible conversations] >> hello,

>> we're back live to madison public library with the wisconsin book festival. queue'll larry from author marie arana or her history of latin america. >> good afternoon. i'm barbara alvarado some i'm a bilingual educator, interpreter, organizer and work with the madison public library and community engagement with the design and implementation of spanish bilingual story times. aim honored to introduce a conversation between david maraniss, great writer and historian, who works with the "washington post" and maria acran newscast. both david and marie are colleagues at the "washington post." very humbled to introduce marie aanna, author, editor, journalist, literary critic and

member of the scholars council at the library of congress. marie is peruvian american and a work embodies who she is as an historian, novelist, essayist, and a human being in this modern world. her books include american chica, cellophane, the writing life, bolivar, american liberator, and silver, sword and stolen three crucibles. silver, sword and stone is an a history of latin america for over a thousand years, going back, but brings all this history into our present days through the lives of three people. leonard, carlos, and javier. each of these perps are intertwined with the three parts of he history of silver, the

sword and the stone, referring to the ex-stacks, the violence and religion that if plagued latin america for over 500 years. marie believes we must understand our collective history in the past to understand today. she is an inspiring writer, whose pacing and come. passion gives -- cam passion gives us hope. brings lying to america from the north of canada to tear'a del fig good. she compels us to be compassionate and to hopefully move to change the very structures that are present. maria arana. >> thank you. it's a special pleasure for me to talk with marie arana, we are

colleagues at the "washington post." she was probably the classeestest and most intelligent writer to walk through the doors compared to the rest of us slobs, but this is -- aside from mat barbara said, marie has done so many wonderful things including being central to the national book festival in washington i go to whenever i can as an author, which is one of the premiere events in the country, and the wisconsin book festival is doing a great job of following in that line of wonderful books and authors and appreciating the reading life. so, marie, welcome to madison. >> thank you. so such blue to being here. thank you for having me and what a welcome trip to make this morning to come to madison,-week, i'm very glad to be hero. >> i want to start with

conception. i know that in some sense it was your peruvian aunt who said, explain this, right? >> right. >> so that gets your mind thinking. how did you go about coupling up with what you could call the trinity or what you call the crucible of these three ways to explain this vast place? >> i always reach into my family somehow to get the gears moving, and it was my aunt -- not only my aunt but also new godmother this, father's sister who we were just thatting one day about simone bolivar. i just finished a biography who was the liberator of six republics in latin america and i was saying to her, revolutions, the wars of independence, in the united states of america and in the rest of latin america, were

so different. they were so extraordinarily different in a way. they were prosecuted in different ways. the people fought them in different ways. the issues were so different. i said i think there's fundamentally tiasome which haba, difference in the people, and it showed in those wars of independence and the most dramatic and stark way, and she said, hmm, that's an interesting concept, and she said, if you really think that the two peoples of the united states of america and the rest of latin america are that different, give us a book about it. and it was a challenge. it was a challenge. and so that -- there was that. my father had a game that he used to have us play when we were in the airport as kids, and

we had nothing to due and no toys to play with and no books to read and he would sit me down -- is was the young ands the most unruly and he would sit me down and he would give me a piece of paper and he would do a doodle on it and said make of this doodle a pretty picture. and i would turn it around, and then eventually i would make something out of it. and then he said, okay do the same for me. would do some scratch and -- he was ang inning here and had a draftsman skills would turn into it something gorgeous, and that sort of the way david i write my books. i have a doodle, and then i construct -- i try construct something beautiful out of it. it is almost a parlor game. i would -- with simone bolivar i was trying think of the one person whose life represented an

arc of narrative that told the most about latin america, and her was a man who liberate countries from the caribbean down to bow clave to the andes, and -- bolivia, to the andes, and his family had been in latin america for 300 years, and 300 years of colonial sort of struggle. and so when i was thinking as a parlor game with myself, the doodle with the scratch, what person would most present the biggest geography, the longest history and it was simone bolivar. it was a little more complex because it was so -- if indeed there is something different about the lattin latin american experience, what is it. we could talk all day how warm we are, how much we love our families and we are very family

oriented, how much we look to the past because tradition we -- we carry traditions with us, and how much we love music and art and culture, and how many extraordinary artists and writers have come from latin america but those things don't tell us anything but what has mothed populations, what has created strife, what has kept a countries from progress, what has sort of captured people in poverty, and so i began to think of the thing that had done those things, move populations, kept countries behind, prevent progress and all of that, and it seemed to me that there was a kind of trip tick at work and it all worked together in a way.

the first was the extractive nature of latin america that for really certainly since the conquistadors and probably before that, certainly before that, the business of taking from the earth or taking from the land, and sending it away. whether it was in the colonial times, that spain came and took the silver and everything away, and sent it of -- it was spain who created the global economy by doing that, eventually taking silver from latin america and sending it to europe and to asia to manila to beijing, to pay" pay be king, that business of let them come in here and take what we have. that was one thing.the other

thing was that's culture of violence we have live with all the way back to indigenous times. it's very much a part of who we are. it's very much a part of -- not that we are violent but that violent is imposed on us. violence in latin america is very different from north america, from the united states and that here we hey random violence, people go into a church and shoot people um or people go into a school and shoot people up. it's a random thing. and uncontrollable in a way. in latin america it's organized violence. you have rebellions, you have military crackdowns, you have drug wars, you have -- it's a much more organized sort of violence on the part of people. so that seemed to work hand in hand with the exploitation, the

ex-tracktive nature, the exploitation and the violence and then what it? what watched with the congiusta doors into the cones -- conquistadors into the conquest was the priests and the culture and the government, the faith because imposed, so, to make a very long answer to your question, that was how i got those three things. >> i suppose one could argue that the united states was based on organized violence. the genocide of the native americans. >> of course. >> the point is well-taken. >> i think it's a little different because it was almost as if the native americans here were like part of the landscape you could push back, and as opposed to in latin america where you married them and you

had children with them, and it was a different sort of -- >> so many evocative places in this book. just one after another. the first one that struck me was, from the united states perspective, the stereotypes and the lack of knowledge about south america in particular is pretty bleak. you know but immigration and not much else, and so understand that petoci was at the center of everything at one point is stunning. tell the audience about that. >> the city of popoci which was the mountain, it was this tremendous sort of mother load of silver that cone keys extra doors came across. an indian came across. the was camping out and going from one place to another, and he camped out on the mountain, and he built a fire and the

silver trickled out it and wad loaded with silver. for decade, hundreds of years, it went from being the engravings of the 1500s and it is a peak like this now. you'll see it and it's a hump like this because they have literally taken all of the silver out. at the time that it was at its highest in the 1600s, 1700s, it was the center of the universe. it was bigger than london, bigger than paris, it was -- it had musicians, it had -- who came from abroad to perform there. it had very fancy houses, beautiful cathedrals, and then of course as the silver waned, the people began to leave, and

now you go there and it's a shell of itself. but it was an extraordinary place in its time. >> the other trinity that goes with this silver, sword and stone are the three characters. how did you find them? they seem to fit perfectly but must have been quite a process to find these three characters s and then develop them into the larger story. >> it's a good question because it's a lifetime of collecting. you'll know, as someone who has worked in journalism, you meet people along the way. i had met -- let's tart with the mining. i had met the -- my character in the silver part of the book. i had met her when i had gone up to a place called -- which is a very small mining town.

it's the highest human habitation in the world on the planet. it sits at 18,000 feet. it has about 40-50,000 people in it. all mining in the rock, just underneath a glacier. it's -- they mine gold. and i met her because she was -- i had actually gone up for another purpose completely. had been asked to write a film on -- write part of a film on education and poverty and girls and how educated girls could actually change communities, and in the process of doing this film issue went up to see a little girl whom i had chosen out of 40 videos send to mitch chose this girl for the film and i was fascinated by her mother.

so even though i was writing about the little girl for the film, i followed the mother for years, really, for six or seven years, and she was an extraordinary figure to me. she was at the age of 45 she looked 80. she -- her skin was completely damaged by the sun. she had no teeth. she was extraordinarily strong spiritually woman and she had lost her husband in a mining accident. he -- his mind -- his mind collapsed and the had to raise these children on her own. it didn't occur to her to go down the mountain and go somewhere that was safer. the city is one of the most lawless places in all of peru. there is no government. there are no police. there is murder is rampant,

aids. ant, prostitution rampant. white slavery. ant. there's no water no way to get food, really, unless you bring it up yourself. it's the most primitive standards and it just occurred to me that this woman, when i was thinking of these things i want tote write about, this woman represented a life that was almost exactly the life that her ancestors would have lived 500 years ago. so that was leonore. carlos, i had been following for years because i had written a piece for the "washington post" more than 20 years ago, and it was for the anniversary of the release of the marell boat people who left -- who fidel castro thrust out of the country 1980 and these people came without shoes, just with stuff on their become.

this particular person came from jail because castro opened the jails and said go, go, get out of the island and good do your mischief elsewhere. so i met. carlos in washington. he land in key west with no shoes. had been sent out to kansas for indoctrine nation -- not -- thank you -- and he -- then eventually came to washington, dc, and i was able to write about him as one of the people who -- what had become of their lives. a lot of maryell boat people became very successful in the united states, eventually owned restaurants or became bankers and lawyers and carlos went on to become a criminal. and i followed his life until he

actually was caught in a drug raid and sent to lordon prison and it from a "washington post" piece and i followed him for years and he seemed to me because of that trajectory of life that he had led, he had fought in the war in angola, and had been brutalized really by the experience, and that brutalization had made him very comfortable with violence. so he became very much the arch representation of violence. the third one was harder and i actually had to hunt for javier because i was looking for a priest or a nun or somebody who could represent the faith for me in latin america who would be large enough that this person could actually take in all the aspects, and it was recommended

to me by a friend of mine who is a professor, you should really good down to bolivia and meet this man. so i did and i didn't look any farther than that because this was an extraordinary man. he was a priest who came from spain. he arrived in bolivia at the age of 17. very, very young, very innocent in the sense that he thought he was coming -- to evangelies the indigenous and he end up being evangeliesed himself in the sense he fell in love with the bolivian people and he learned their languages and he decided that he was going to do was promote their cultures, not his own. >> which not all priests did.

>> which not all pre-s did. >> fund him more likeable and empathetic. >> absolutely but his life -- he is now almost 90. went through all the peereds of liberation of theology and that sort-thing that represented -- and what he said that really capture he mid attention was he said i'm paying back for the conquest. am a big paying back for all the priest weather supported the conquistadors and kept the power hold. >> getting back to carlos. the phrase that i found imposing but fascinating was transgenerational engine it inic enheritages. >> you said that very well. >> i had to practice it. i tripped over itself in my office several times. in any case, it's sort of -- i would say it's a little tricky social science concept but i can see you applying it now carlos. tell the audience what that --

>> it's a mouthful, transgenerational -- it's a new science, and it's not even quite yet a science. think there is being followed by some very important researches and scientists so see if it is indeed true. it's based on the fact -- the way to describe it best, i think, i is through example. if a person has lived through the holocaust, say, and has suffered enormously, and has been broken psychologically, by the experience of the holocaust, that experience will have biological implications on the next generation. and so by sort of logic you

would think, okay, if is goes from generation to generation, goes down, down, down, are we still in a way the inheritors of an american experience, i think you know are we living as -- this would be an example of tran generational inheritance. i you lived through the vietnam war and the civil unrest and through that whole generation that lived through that, does that do something to your children? n real ways and psychology is as real as biology, as we all know, so these things can be inherited. and i posed the question, if you have lived this extraordinarily difficult and fraught history that latin america has lived through, are we carrying that burden in a way?

i asked the question. have no answers. >> having lived in texas for eight years, i tend to believe part of it, from the cowboys down to the gun toting of today and why generation after generation on the back of the trucks. there's a brilliant paragraph at the end of your book i'd like to read. we cannot turn back time. we cannot undo the world we have made but until we understand the ghosts in the machinery, the victims of our collective am emotion ya, we cannot hope to under the region also it is now. to look it's squarely a long list of inequities lies at the heart of the latin american narrative. >> thank you. >> that captures what you're trying to do there. you come to that at the end of the book, and sort of explain how you got that point of understanding. >> well, i feel very strongly that history makes us who we

are; that we are the product of the history of our families, of our people, of our ancestors, our countries, of our faiths in many cases, and i think that we are the product of that history. i believe that strongly. it dismays me sometimes that we don't pay enough attention to history. we don't pay enough attention to the things that have really shaped the cultures we live in, and i -- that sort of amnesia worries me because i think in particular when you look at national characters, the -- there's deep things you need to understand about what history does. let me give you an example. in the united states of america, we believe that we are exceptional people. we believe that we have a great

nation, that we are great people, that we have created a great country, and that we can export that greatness, and we do. right? we think we're pretty special. we are. and we have that whole attitude. in latin america nobody thinks they're exceptional. nobody thinks they're special. nobody has ever thought they would export. i think in the only example i can think of someone who thought he could export anything is when castro sent warriors to angola, trying to say i can do this the way that great countries send warriors to other places. >> i argue dominican and pork puerto rican baseball players. >> okay. very exceptional. you're right, you're right. >> i'm sorry. >> you're absolutely right. but at any rate, it's that business out history shaping us,

and also the fact i don't think -- here in the united states of america, we know enough about latin america, we know enough about the history of the hispanics who live among us, and now we hispanics are 22% of the population, very soon to be a third, which is sort of just by math i think we need to know at bit of the history. so that -- my whole mission has been to focus on that. >> this is another way of asking a couple of the questions i've already asked. how did your history shape your writing of this book? >> my goodness. i come from two cultures. i am what i call a mutt of two -- >> a mutt like me, as obama said. >> yes. i love that when he said that. my father is peruvian and my

mother is american. she whereas born in kansas, and my father was born in lima, peru, and during the second world war, when all the classrooms, al the universities were met emptied out of men what's they went to war, the state department started to bring latin american bright young latin american men up to fill the classrooms, and my father was one of those people. he was brought up -- he was actually offered this twice, the first time he turned it down because he had a girlfriend he was interested in, and didn't want to leave her side. this second time he thought, m.i.t. is a pretty smart place, maybe i'll go, and so he went and he went to boston and he did his university work, graduate work, in m.i.t. and it was there he met my mother who was studying music, a violinist, and so i have these two sides of my

culture, my mind, my family life. my father immediately took my mother down to peru and she was the only american i knew. we had dish was raised in this very warm bosom of a very loving peruvian family and i was peruvian and i was completely convinced that my mother was sort of a strange bird and the landscape. and then of course when i was 10, we moved to the united states, and i tried to convince myself i was american and i pretty much have, and my father was the odd bird in the landscape. so, i have seen it from both sides. there were two people who adored each other, but they couldn't agree on anything. >> we all know that.

>> but deep things, like the way that you greet a person, the way that you bury a person, the way you eat at the dinner table, the way that you receive friends, the way that you practice your faith. they were very different, and there would we arguments and i would be the one to negotiate. they would say -- my mother would say would you please tell your father that we're in this country now, and that you -- this is the way you do things and my father would say, my god, would you please tell your mother you can't run barefoot through the grass? that's just unacceptable. >> what was your sister doing? >> she was so much older. i i wasn't paying attention. >> there's one question that i actually hate when someones me so i'll ask you bit a different way. what surprised you in the book? everything surprises you in a

book. so where did your research take you weren't expecting to go? >> oh, boy. if guess i didn't expect these three people >> experiencing technical difficulties with our live coverage of the wisconsin book stifle. we'll be back as soon as possible.

>> here's the portion of tonight's author interview program "after words" with fox news legal and political analyst greg jarrett, who weighs in on the mueller report and the investigation of russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. >> the folks you chronicle in the book, it's the fbi, predominantly but mr. brennan, and folks in the intelligence community, switch then and go on offense. at some point in the process, they decide that to quote peter strzok we have to stop him or going stop him, meaning trump. they take extraordinary measures to try to dig up dirt, overseas can specifically with russia, to kind of push it towards the

clinton campaign to make the idea of voting for donald trump a repugnant thing for voters. how did that possibly happen? >> well, there were two parts the plan. part number one was to exploit the dossier, which had been penned by christopher steele. the fbi was unable to verify. they tried mightily budget couldn't. you can't verify something that doesn't exist. that is simply a lie. pernicious lie. but part a of the plan was to leak it to the media, and they assumed that the media would run crazy with this story, it would damage trump politically and ensure hillary clinton's election in november of 2016. and while it is true that many members of the media did pick up on the story, it didn't quite gain traction and resonate with american voters and trump was

elected. but the insurance policy was plan b. the insurance policy famous from the peter strzok-lisa page text message, we have an insurance policy. the insurance policy was the fbi's investigation that if donald trump won, we would kick it into overdrive and really go after him, and make our investigation of him as potential or alleged russian asset public, and they did. in fact they did it in january of 2017, before he was even sworn into office, comey, clapper, brennan, concocted a plan to ambushing trump at trump tower, selective live give him information but the dossier, gauge his reaction, and use that meeting as a pretext to leak it to the media and that is how the

dossier was published and once it was published, the media was -- >> we're back live from the wisconsin book festival in madison. there has been a point in fact there has been so much bloodshed in latin america and the wars of independence alone in venezuela there were more deaths during the wars of independence than in the civil war and the american revolution combined, and that's just in venezuela. so you can imagine the sort of ravages of wars so when garcia marquez in one of his novels said theboro blood trickled down and turned the corner until it reached her house inch latin america it's -- or heads rolled out from under the bush. you think, yes, they did, and

it's very close to real that it is -- you almost can't imagine it. so when people say you can't imagine what i just saw, and that's what magical realism us but a lot of other tryings in latern mrs. literature that are really interesting. one changes stripes every time he writes. >> do you know him. >> he's a friend. >> tell me about him. >> he is an extraordinary -- this is mario vargas, who was a nobel prize winner, the only nobel prize winner from peru, and he -- extraordinary story of -- if i may just tell it because it says something about who he is and what he became.

his -- he was raised as a child thinking -- well, told his father was dead. his father had died. he had a heart attack and died and was gone, and he was raise net hi house as-mother and grandparents from her side. and in a town south of lima, and he eventually his mother said now we're going lima. this was at the age of eight or nine. and as time wore on, there was a knock on the door, and the door opened, and a man said i'm your father. and who was not dead at all. he was quite alive and he was now having a love affair with his mother. so, this father was a very, very authoritative, authoritarian man, and sent him to military school. that experience really made mario who he is because i think

it -- everything he writes is about loathing dictatorship, loathing that militaristic view of life, the authoritarianism. you can see it in his writing, the reaction to that shock of suddenly having a patriarch who not only is a patriarch but is sending him out of the house to get rough when all he wanted to do is write and read poetry. >> the other aspect of peru you deal of -- many aspects is the violence of the shining path and how that was created and how it infected the country you love. >> it was terrible to watch. it was something that i watched in my own lifetime. you could see the terrorists had such a hold on the country they

came interest lima and set up storefronts where they operated out of it and was a terrible time. bombs going off all the time. you couldn't send your children to school. couldn't go down the street really for fear of a bomb being there. people were plastering things then windows so they wouldn't rattle and fall. it was a really -- and tanks in the streets all the time because eventually when the president came interest power who wiped -- into power who wiped out the terrorism there was that other side, the military side came -- so i saw this sort of rebellion and repression cycle in my own lifetime several times, and it was a pretty terrifying thing to be living in the middle of a city that was held by the

terrorists. so it was a very happy day when they were driven out. of course the president turn out to be not as good as we thought he was and was in fact very corrupt and had blood on his hands as well. so long story. >> one thing that struck me about it, which i wasn't -- i wasn't a student of it but the unwitting consequences of somewhat good intentions. in other words, the setting up of a university and bringing people who couldn't go to college before, into this place, and then radicalized there and -- >> one professor. the whole -- cost 70,000 lives and this professor had -- was part of a boom in an andean university in the mountains, and the he had gone to china, studied maoism, was sure the way

forward was for the grassroots to rise up and to do exactly what mao did, which was -- mao was to wipe out the intellectual class, kill everybody who had anything and start from scratch. and so that's what he set out to do. >> let me ask you a couple of personal questions. for those who don't to, she's married to jonathan yardley, great book credit frk of modern times. -- critic of modern time. hoe does that senator does he read your stiff, critique it, encourage it or swim intimidate you. >> our house us full of books. we pull our hair because there are always too many books and the trauma of getting rid of books so there's this thing we have, and it is a wonderful life actually. the ability to talk beaut -- talk about books with my husband.

we have very different tastes heavily loves country music. don't get it. i love mombo and rumba and the didn't get it. >> it's a little waspy. >> he's quite whoopsie, -- waspy and we argue but books all the time. i will read something and say you have to read this, and then he would read it and say what was so good about that and then make me angry and we have a very heated conversation, and this is our life. >> and so just personally how do you go organize your writing process? what is your room look like? a room of one zone is what the book store here, you have your room of your own, i'm sure, and how do you put together the material and then go about writing. what's your day or week or month lying. >> i'm a strong believer in that you can put off the writing too

long and i guess this comes from journalism. you can research something -- in other words, i give myself a year, solid year, of reading and research, when i'm starting a booking and i do nothing but that. and then i make myself sit down and start writing because even though i'm going to research for all those years i'm writing, i need to be writing at that point because it helps organize the thinking process. so, i'm somebody who is researching all the time as i'm writing, and filling in things. mario vargas once said i create when i write this magma, which is like slop, and then eventually he says -- i'm not a writer, i'm an editor. i feel the same way.

you create this slop it and doesn't make sense and tchen you go back and slap into it shape and you whittle it and work on it and polish it and burnish it and then it becomes something. but you're basically -- people are afraid to write or have writers block because they wanted to by perfect from the get-go. it never is and i think we know that from juniorism. there's no time to -- journalism. there's no time to put something off. you have to do it and then it becomes what it is. my room where i write is -- i blight my pajamas. you can imagine what my room is like. it's very comfortable. i i have a lot of places to sit and then i actually have -- have been known to write a book on a very hard chair with no upholstery to it. >> because? >> because it makes sort of -- >> you have to do it. >> yeah.

makes you sit there and do it. >> i'll ask one more question and then time for a couple of questions from the audience and this is the only political question i'm asking. you don't have to ain't politically. the question is, is latin america becoming more like the united states or the united states becoming more like latin america. >> that is such a good question. such a good question. i have -- having grownup latin america, having immersed myself really since i left book row, when i was in book criticism the world was my oyster. very large landscape to cover. and then i left it to get to focus on latin america, and you see this -- what i try to describe in the book, these cycles that latin america goes through and they are of a kind of rebellion and then a repression, as i've said, and it

happens again and again and again. and it's because the revolution never really actually was won. what happened was that one colonial structure took over which is the white elites took over, spain's role, and i look at the united states and i think, we have in this country cycles, of course, of rebound -- rebellion and then we have wars and there is a rhythm here as well, but i have actually -- i find it remarkable how the present day, where you have almost a fear of leaving your party or leaving -- actually being more candid or more able to reach across the table and talk to somebody in candid ways and constructive ways, which is

the way things are in latin america. find that surprising in this country and i live in washington, dc so i see it all the time. senators are really afraid to be seen with each other if they're from the different parties because they feel like they're sullying each other's message, and this is disturbing. i've never seen it quite this way. i had to read joanne freeman's book to be reminded that back in the civil war days, back abraham lincoln's time there were -- there was great partisanship and great actually people were slapping each other up physically in. >> caning each other. >> but we haven't seen that in present times but it's disturbing to see that inability to communicate and to have more tolerance really of one another. >> there's a microphone over

here. take a few questions. >> this is a related question. building off that one. going forward, what are a couple significant events happening now that -- do you see things evolving now that build out of the three you identified from the past or new forces latin america that are slipping in ways, personalities or mentally or exploitation by different economies? i guess what do you see going forward for the next 25 or 50 years, what's shaping things now. >> maybe attempts to win the heart and soul of latin america, starting from -- as you say the certainly there was a communist wave and that was rejected. there was a democratic -- wave of democracy and that is now being sort of rejected. we have presidents who are elected. for instance, morales in bolivia who is elected by the people,

actually did some very good work in his first tenure. the way hall yugo chavez was elected democratically and did some good work. then there was this, i own this position and will never leave this position, and we will subvert the constitution. we will disband congress so i can keep this position. that is something that is a real wound in the side of latin america and we need to sort of watch that and try to overcome it. on the other hand, mexico, for instance, is for such a long period of time now have had regular elections in mexico, which was unheard of in the past, and people, very organized fashion, go to the polls and they elect their president, and

the president before them leaves town and the democratic process goes on. there are a lot of other problems but that is an advance. that's a huge advance. i see uruguay doing very well, costa rica doing very well so there are glimmers of hope, people changing the gears and changing the way that things go. but then you see argentina which has just fallen back into disarray. you see venezuela which is in chaos. there's a exodus of venezuelans throughout latin america, creating problem nets way are being created here in the texan border because they're taking jobs, they're -- some of them are breaking the law and these things -- these things infect

us. on the other hand, there are some signs of progress. the economy in peru is booming, even though we're having a constitutional crisis there at the moment. the economy in colombia was booming at the biggest time of violence so how do you explain that? it's quite extraordinary. irony is everywhere. >> i'd like you expand on what you said about the venezuelan influence on -- sound like it was all negative in terms of immigration. when you think of latin american immigration to the united states it's largely positive, and -- >> i don't mean to say that venezuelan immigration to the rest of south america has been totally negative. in fact there has been people have really -- they have sacrificed a lot. venezuelans have walked to ecuador. imagine that. of walked to peru, and they may

be professors, may be musicians and they're taking jobs as menial jobs as construction workers or grocery market workers, and they're making do. they're sending money back to those who haven't left venezuela. but they're also taking culture and their owed indicated people, a lot of the people who left venezuela are the most educated people, teachers and musicians and the like. so, it is as immigration can be, an infusion of good along with everything -- all the problems that arise from it and the indignation that comes from it. >> miami questions out there? -- anymore questions. >> i have a sense that after the

nazis were defeated in europe that there was significant migration of low-level germans and others in europe. my father was born in norway and there was a significant fifth column in norway of nazis. that found homes in south america. so is that -- was that because there was already white elites there because of the strong man kind of tradition, because -- did they have -- have they had significant intellectual and political and cultural influence or is my notion simply wrong in its scope, that there's not that much influence of this particular migration of ideas and people? >> thank you. argentina and chile profited greatly from european migration

and it was because the governments said in the way that our president said, why don't we have more migration from norway they said why won't dehave more migration from europe. get more white people here and in fact they invited with open arms -- i talked to a friend of minimum in buenos aires and she said when her parents came during this time, they were given homes. they were actually given jobs. they had people to welcome them, and to actually make their lives comfortable, it was the usual migration that, actually a very easy migration and they took all of the top jobs in argentina and chile and then you go to argentina and it's largely italian, germans, and you good to chile and it's the same. coming from a country that is

largely indigenous, like peru, to go to travel to chile or argue it's like going to madrid or paris. it's a completely different world. >> you have written two novels at least, right? are you going back to that next or what is next for you? >> this is a point between me and my husband. he wants me to go back to fiction. i think it's because i dedicated two books to him. and he sees himself as one of the characters in my novel and he actually is. so, i think he'd like to go -- me to go back to fiction. >> is hey likeable character in the novel. >> oh, yes. oh, yes, handsome. sort of brave and -- yeah, and accomplished. and wonderfully whacky.

>> i usually go over. if there are no more questions -- yes, sir. >> finale. >> i'll pea it. >> another latin american i would like to -- the way you asked but -- [inaudible] were colonialized by spain and portugal and then later england, and -- [inaudible] -- then the united states took the place of these powers. what do you see most -- where you want to go, history, present, future of the relation between latin america and the united states? >> okay. if you didn't hear it, the gentleman said -- there have been period of colonialism, really, in the -- after the spanish came, spain and portal and latin america and then the

european colonialization in terms of commerce and then the united states actually putting into effect the monroe doctrine, and the monroe doctrine says clearly if anything happens in this hemisphere that looks like a foreign invasion of any kind or an invasion of any -- a foreign ideology, we have the right of the united states of america to step in anywhere and do what we need to do to clean it up and to reject whatever that influence is, and so there's this fence and we have felt it in many countries in latin america when the united states has come in, either commercially or even politically, and certainly militarily, and has influenced a whole course of nations. so it is -- and i feel, i think, as you seem to feel as well,

that this is a colonialism of sorts and its has been, and it's something that is very rick to shake, frankly, because if somebody comes down and builds factories and starts commerce and creates jobs, my own father worked for an american company in peru. there is the sense of well-being in the end, though, what is happening is that the country itself is not developing. and the people themselves are not coming to full realization because they're being governs by an outside force. >> thank you. think -- because of c-span we have to -- one more question. >> i wanted to ask you a quick followup to that question inch hi household my husband and i often ponder how really for all the violence that america has perpetrated on latin america and for all the violence that exists in many of those countries, i

think america gets off pretty easily without getting anything back in terms of violence personally and so we talk about -- it's a colonial relationship where we as a country, as a whole, suffer very little violence and i think it's -- i don't know. when you talk about national character issue just wonder if you had any thoughts about that, because it really feels like we have been pretty immune from the repercussions of that. ... what has occurred down there that's important because it does have repercussions eventually, whether the children who are in school with your children or whether it's people coming across the border. and creating tremendous human

rights situation problems. we don't know the history of the united states and other countries of latin america. we don't know that it was virtually ãbthe history of the united states and cuba, for instance, that created fidel castro. the situation of the united states and nicaragua that has created really virtually the problematic nature of nicaragua today. or guatemala, or honduras, or chile. when nixon and kissinger decided that they didn't want the proper american copper companies and corporations to be nationalized because that's what salvador oriented committed president ãwanted to do they immediately created

this force to oust president ã to the extent that the military in chile was inspired to bomb the presidential palace. this was all the impetus was coming from washington dc. thank you for that question. >> thank you all for coming today. thank you marie for eliminating another part of the world. [applause] [inaudible background conversations] >> we will be back with more from the wisconsin book festival shortly. coming up you will hear from former olympic figure skater adam while we wait, here is a portion of a program that airs tomorrow afternoon. this is investigative journalist james stewart on the mueller report. >> i was working at the wall

street journal reporter, in about 1985, i was covering a merger and acquisitions b. omitted from trump's resume as he went through a brief and very unsuccessful period as a corporate raider. this is when he bought the trump shuttle airline he was making threats at other airlines and how to cover m&a and a routine part of my job i called him up and said can i interview you. he said definitely. come see me but it must be completely off the record. no one must know you are meeting me. i said all right. i went to trump tower and went up to the marble lobby and i was shown into his office and we were chatting briefly when his secretary came in and interrupted and said, mr. trump, mrs. so-and-so is here. he said show her in. i said so much for the completely secret meeting with me. she came in and he said, james, i want you to meet, i