two republican senators, martha mc sally of arizona and joni against about their new memoirs. find the new schedule online, booktv.org or check your program guide. .. before we jump into tonight event we please ask you to please do three things. first, like this video. second, let us know what you're watching is from an third, hit the subscribe button. undoubtedly you'll have questions during his presentation. please write them in the chat section most if not all them

will be sent said along to ther who answer them at the end of the presentation. also we encourage you to support today's featured author by purchasing her book from independent book seller, politics and prose. finally i big thank you goes out to the featured sponsors. the blair family foundation, downtown crowne, and montgomery college. let's get started. tonight we have got author casey cep to talk about her best-selling book "furious hours: murder, fraud, and the last trial of harper lee." she tells the true story of murder, revenge and courtroom drama. beloved writer harper lee spent years working on telling this story. now casey cep brings the story to life from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama. casey cep is a staff writer at the new yorker.

after graduating from harvard with a degree in english she earned a master philosophy in theology at the university of oxford as a rhodes scholar. in interviewing case tonight is eugene, an award-winning veteran journalist who has an eclectic passion for history, lifestyles, real estate of the chesapeake bay. he has been widely published in several magazines, authored three books and was for many years the lead reporter and editor at the "washington post." since departing the posting 2004 he has gone on and 115 awards for his work and has more than 55 violence in the near times. welcome to the program, casey and gene. >> thanks so much for having us. >> thank you. j.c., it's good to see virtually. >> thanks so much. i know will have a great conversation. >> i love your book and i just

tore through it, it's a page turner. i was fascinated by the research you did and how you put altogether. i guess my first question is, the remarkable story of the five or six alleged murders that occurred allegedly at fans of this minister in mississippi, and then the white motor who successfully defended him and then defended the man who actually killed him, one of the relatives of the deceased. harper lee -- [inaudible] to turn the story into a book. my first question is, how did you find the story and did the story finds you? >> that's a great question, and i always love to talk about the origins of the book. i guess to start off, , it is te this book looks at three very

different lives and people of different genders and different races who have basically one thing in common which is how they met at this intersection, at this courthouse at this particular trial. what about the book is a gave me the chance to think about what brought them all to that place. it's a perfectly fine time i think will be remiss if we didn't they tell us what's happening all around the country and the ways people are starting to think about the lives of others and how important it is to think about the way the black lights are particularly in peril and the kinds of privileged people like you and and i have. for me the book was a fine opportunity to do that, to think about the life of someone like harper lee and the role she played in helping us to think about diversity and discrimination. i think for that reason it might not surprise people learn she was the origin of all of this. i had gone down to the new yorker to alabama to write a

story about her come when the world nor does the second book from harper lee which we can talk about later. it turned out to be the first one should have written. it was a very early draft of mockingbird but i went down to write about her and i found out about this true crime project you undertaken in the '70s and '80s. because she done so much reporting and research, a lot of other writers had not looked into the case and had decided not to write about it because we were afraid of being -- it was this great story waiting to be told and a story she herself was a part of and that would bring it forward from the '70s and '80s all the way to today. i was lucky. i went down at the right time, the near the end of her life. friends and family are willing to talk about it and i -- everything came together. the book, too. there were different lives.

the alleged serial killer in this book is a black man and a vigilante who murdered him is black, too, and he mentioned the white lawyer who defended them both and that voter had also had pretty interesting career in democratic politics before you settle into small-town law. it was the perfect story for me and it got to write about religion and politics. there's lots of work in it but i found my way to the store because of harper lee. >> let me ask you, you write a lot about race and politics in the deep south but you grew up and you live on the eastern shore of maryland which has its own racial history of segregation and racism. but probably know eastern shore legislator -- civil rights law and in 1963 version all these guns were exempted from the law.

there was a statue of the courthouse, a confederate statue more recently of another statue of frederick douglass. how is going up on the eastern shore of maryland affected your worldview and how has it in for him to work in general and prepared you for the world yet entered to report? >> i should just the right away since we are digital and folks unfolding there in gaithersburg, for folks listening there will be a rally tomorrow at the public county courthouse which is the circuit court here. as a gene mention, we're going to gather in george floyd memory and we're going to call for racial justice right under the statute for it is still there. there's still a monument right outside the courthouse and years and just go there's a controversy over honoring frederick douglass and on the

same courthouse green pictures now a beautiful statute of frederick douglass and at the time i should be paying a lot of people that the two statues together told the story and we should keep both. i've lived long enough to regret that and it will help one of the outcomes of the protest nor is finally that monument is taken down because a lot of people go to the courthouse, whether it's to pay a parking ticket would get their marriage license, a lot of people of color to look at that statue every time to enter and wonder if it is still part of the justice system or not. i think a lot about where i grew up and look it's a beautiful part of the country and i grew up fishing and crabbing and it's a wonderful place to live and i grew up on a farm. there's a reason when i went to alabama and spent time in harper lee's hometown felt similar to me, felt a lot like where i grew up in and bad ways. i'm of a generation i hope were a lot of us feel like we don't have to live the way our

grandparents did. we didn't have to maintain the statues are parents fought to maintain and the ways of the future should be here now. i'm glad you asked about and did you think in general the chance to talk about harper lee when i gone on a book tour you talk about her when you're in boston or when you're in new york, and the truth is it's a national problem in this country. doesn't exist in alabama and you're not better produce having been born outside of the deep south. for me i grew up in a religious household size comfortable going to church with sources and to think a lot about the virtues of small test but also devices. there was some hard work for me in this book inking about the way harper lee as a white person wanted to tell the story about the experience of black americans and look, part of my book talks about the experience of black americans in the 20s and 30s all the way up to the '70s. for me i i tried to approach it

with humility and honesty and circumspection about what i could understand and what i couldn't and what it been well than in the past and not well done, and more importantly whose voices had already been heard and whose voices have not. i'm grateful for the way i grew up and am grateful for all the ways it's changing, and are plenty of signs around the community already in anticipation of tomorrow that say black lives matter and equality for all. that's always been part of the story. frederick douglass scotty's statue because he is born and raised here, how we might as at our moral genealogy and find the people we can be proud of and make statures of them and tell their stories more than the stories we have in the past. thanks for asking about it. i live not far from where grew up some talking to you from caroline county and east injuries beautiful and wonderful but it's that complicate the place as the deep south. >> i was intrigued by the title of your book, "furious hours"

which i found a bit mysterious first. later on in the book i learned where it came from but could you please explain how you chose it and its significance to the work of harper lee and the work of writers in general? >> that's a a great question, gene. plenty of people who read the book carefully and thoughtfully wonder why the heck that's the title. first of all, when you publish a book so many people helped bring into the world and in my case to a lot of folks, my publisher help with the a copy editing ae cover and the design and layout and her some folks who help you with your titles. the reason my book is such an explanatory subtitle is a fake a worried no one would know what the heck it was about. they added all the nouns unity to know about in order to whether or not the book was for you. murder, fraud, the last row of harper lee. we ought to tell people what this book is about but if you

read the book you know "furious hours" is his phrase accounts one of the only public lectures harper lee gave talk about alabama history and who were talking about black lives. harper lee in the talk lifted up the experience of some of the indigenous tribes who had inhabited alabama before white settlers arrived. in fact, the phrase "furious hours" refers to the last battle of the creek war which is what caused the exodus of creek indians from alabama, and it was when soon-to-be president jackson led a grade of army soldiers against the creeks and is a terrible slaughter. she's talking about that history and what alabamians know about the past and what they don't know. i love that phrase in the last battle, the battle took place very during your were all these murders took place. harper lee for a lot of the time she was intent working on this book with staying at the horse

the -- horseshoe bend motel. it is a long history. it doesn't just go back to slavery when to think about race relations in the south. it does go back to the interactions between the colonists and the indigenous people. it's a bit of an echo and i love it is her words because a lot of this book is about her and her gift as a writer. it's a beautiful provocative phrase. i chose it for the title because it comes from her but also it speaks all three characters. there are no more furious hours in this book than the hours when a man was accused of murdering his wife. i think about the political career of this would be liberal in the deep south and boy, did he spend a lot of time arguing with his colleagues in the alabama state senate and arguing

with people in his -- a lawyer, that lawyer who was a politician in his early days. and, of course, there's harper lee where i'm sure we'll talk more about her but the story of harper lee's life post mockingbird was a lot of furious hours at the typewriter just because she wasn't publishing didn't mean she wasn't trying to write. providers who busied themselves with complicated stories, here it is the right word for when you try to make sense of the world. it spoke about all three of them but also, -- when some essential to call something else i'm open to suggestions. i begin very glad for the subtitle which clarifies it all anyway. >> to you as a writer have any furious hours? >> no. i would say net since that's not my experience as a writer. these characters wall were alld to write about for different reasons but becomes harper lee i

thought she would be the one had the most in common with. but she's a very different writer than i am and she really suffered over her work and she struggled with it. to some extent she voucherize that suffering ephod in order for writing to be good you had to slave over and think about and work hard on it and just be miserable over it, and that's not my experience. i love my work. it was mostly with joy and gratitude for getting paid to do it. a lot of people have harder jobs and they work harder at the don't get to pursue their passion. i have furious hours with a garden and the weeds in it and all kinds of things, the way police treat black people but no, when i sit down to write it is mostly easy and fun and i just feel lucky to get to do it for living. >> which do you prefer, the reporting or writing, if you had to choose? >> i love them, i love getting to do both because when i get

bored with reporting us time to do writing. talking to people who study it, if you get frustrated with the writing or you don't know enough, then you the opportunity to go and learn from other people. i like them both about the same. i'm glad both are a part of my life. i do a lot of book reviews and i feel more consolatory and lonely, and i love with reporting you can pick up the phone to call somebody and see what they think or talk to them about their work. i like to do a little of both. >> you say in your book nothing writes itself, and then you say janet malcolm called the space between reporting and writing an abyss. everyone told harper lee the story she found was destined to be a bestseller but no one could tell how to write it. could you talk about the abyss between the reporting and the writing? i guess that's not something you

so much experienced. >> that's a fine question and it is certainly true, look, the premise of this book is harper lee know about this case right after it happened and she went to town and she did all the same work i did, which is a better writer than i, and i think there's a straightforward question of why finn then coule write a book about it? i do think malcolm is right. it's true the things that happen in the world by chaotic and disparate and they do not necessarily have a narrative even though they happen day after day. other than chronology there's nothing that makes make sense r that tells you who's right and who's wrong in which themes are important. newspapers everyday try make sense of the world and with all keep a diary or you sit down at dinner and you want to talk about your day, you have to start making a plot out of it. that's the abyss she means. top of that there's some question whether he wanted it with artistry, do more than just

pull peoples quotes imitate what the temperature was. if you're going to try to write beautiful sentences or shake the story that has echoes and reverberations, you can start to bring art and craft into it. but even just thinking out what happens in order to tell it in, that's the abyss. and for poor harper lee mentioned in all this reporting and this research and she has her stacks of papers and outer court transcripts and a death certificate there so the question of who was the main character and what were the themes and who were the hero and who was the village and who should we work for? there was just problem after problem that she couldn't quite figure out how to solve. i do have a lot of sympathy for it. i have talked to some writers since a book came out who really struggle with writer's block. i do because they had a successful book and then try to figure out how to do it again, or they're just so it is always one to write the configure how to do it. they tell you the start of the life of the type of store they

want to write about and you just think that's perfect, that's wonderful. i want to read that book and, of course, the question is how to get it down on the page and what quotes to use, and where to make the chapter breaks. i'm sympathetic to it all. it's a lot to decide and it is difficult and it can be done well or poorly. that's what i think poor harper lee was wrestling with. the truth of the matter is if you read go spend a watchman your final illustration of the difference between the two because it's the version of scouts story she wrote first and video going to read "to kill a mockingbird" and you realize everything is a choice. you can choose the chronology, you can choose the narration, you can choose which seems happen and i am of the mindset as you did a better job of it in mockingbird that in watchman. and that are set and help to make better choices than the one should she done and a first draft and if there are writers listening you can go back your first draft

and realize sometimes that abyss is real wide and hard to bridge. i think malcolm is right that it can be truly sad and it can be burdensome for some people here it's mostly not for me but i'll tell you, again the truth of the matter is harper lee is a better writer than a period artistry people struggle with is i am playing checkers and they're playing chess. they are doing something else. i talked to poets and i mention this in the book. i quote of sonnet robert lowell wrote for elizabeth bishop, those are to poets above and have have comforted an interesting friendship but robert said elizabeth is a casual music that makes everyday perfect. then he says she leaves holes interpose for kenya's onion. she's been stingy fanfic at the right word for something. the poetry sharon is beautiful but she didn't produce very much of it and i think partly that's because of the high standard, to

go back to janet malcolm is word, this abyss between what you would see and what you like to communicate and how you do it with this imperfect material which is a language. that was a long rambling at which to say i'm sympathetic to it and i can bring to life and think about poor harper lee, but i'm just not quite as cerebral. when he said that i do i just think it will always come language is always in perfect and inadequate but we've got to mighty through. >> it seems also she was overwhelmed by all of her material. what you have here is an embarrassment of riches. that was a nice way of saying -- >> it was. and she had an embarrassment of riches of both kinds because i know she had a different problem and it sounds like you and i do. that book did so well, mockingbird was an instant bestseller at an ongoing

bestseller. that meant harper lee did not have to write for a living. she can live offer royalties and i think another thing that just reinforce this dysfunction about her work is she never had deadlines and she never need anything more than the royalty check from mockingbird. that's part of her story and a think that's probably the part people anything about her life has intimated she was partly stymied by success, that the material success of mockingbird meant she was exempt from the normal pressures of writing which is you have to produce an order to earn money with your craft. >> you also say that facts for her were in short supply when she tried to come to grips with the material, yet you are successful in many of the facts that seem to have eluded her. how did you accomplish that? >> that's a charitable thing to say and i think it's not quite true because at the end of the day i had an advantage harper

lee didn't which is i i was willing to make her a character and she never would have. it's very, into crime today, it is one of the dominant in narrative nonfiction about crime, the writer for the podcast or judge all about their dreams of trying to learn who did it and how or why some pieces, just as was ms. character and they are kept in the story. harper lee never would've done that. she was pathologically private she believed in old-fashioned journalism so she only wanted to make characters out of the people who had experienced these monusco would been part of the trial, the lawyers, law enforcement officers and should never have told you what it was like to interview these people of what she thought of them. it was all embedded in the story. i was lucky because a lot of my book is about her life and what made her a ride and what made her interest in case and what was hard for her. i was never complaining about

how so-and-so wouldn't talk. i just told to the person was a difficult person for harper lee. when i said it's hard to reconstruct the life of a black sharecropper because willie maxwell was a black sharecropper who became a preacher in wasn't later like the cues cues of all this, i can tell you about how hard it was for harper lee to understand that and it doesn't sound self-feeding that knee as a writer found that difficult for that i as a researcher found it difficult to find the same amount of newspaper coverage about tom bradley or harper lee. she was never going to bring herself into the stores that made it easier for me. >> were you able to write more about willie maxwell in his career as a minister then she was able to, had she -- >> i was lucky. his military records turned up. this becomes a show your work moment and a happy to do it because the truth is it's not the story of triumph for me.

ancestor of triumph of a lot of libraries and archivists. i was lucky, the military help me find some of his army records. there were extended members of his family who shared things. there were digital newspaper archives of the current harper lee just didn't happen so i could cast a really wide net or any mention of the reverend maxwell and i was able to bootstrap some of that. somebody who knew something told me someone else to did or so to this letter toby solis it might have other letters. in general, i built a little bit of a superstructure for the reverend out of wpa archives, you know, out of general histories. even if i couldn't tell you what his experience on a particular plantation was like, i can look at sharecropper stories from the era and from the place and that time, and start to bring it to life. i probably was a little bolder than she was. it's always built from archive

in history but every so often you see me start to pull back in the light of the referent, like for instance, his military service. i could talk to a story of the army bases where he served until you about the segregated barracks for the way it felt to live there, even if willie maxwell could never tell me personally i get started on materials to situate his world. i think even to harper lee was incredibly conservative and she wouldn't have told you anything more than what she had learned from direct interviews and direct evidence in this era. that's why my book as so many bibliographic entries. i want to know where i am drawing materials from. when i quoted langston hughes and tell you what he thought about segregation in the army at the time that the reverend was serving, you know i'm getting that from langston hughes and its an opinion piece he wrote. i felt like have to bridge out a little bit. if you can't come here to tell readers what they may never know.

>> i thought you provide a lot of context, social context, in a world in which he lived and also the whole geology of the airy we talked about the towns that were flooded in which the story revolves. i thought that was really helpful for a reader to see beyond just the two-dimensional fixings you write about. >> that's the kind of narration i've are directly from harper lee. i love the beginning of mockingbird where scout and jem are tight but what atticus had told them. they basically see can understand some early you go all the way back to the families role in the battle of hastings, which is to say whatever is happening today has not to do with what happened yesterday and all the yesterdays before that. for me it was obvious when i looked, this story come harper lee was born in monroe phil but this story takes place in town called alexander city over near the georgia line.

when i got to alex nca looked around it was a milltown and a lot of people live and work there, if they don't work for the mill and the parents did for the grandparents did and it was a milltown mechanized by hydroelectric power. it's obvious to me when you start thinking about who has power and what violence has not become part of that story is about the way watershed change and these mills became mechanized by hydroelectric power. you cannot talk about the money and affluence of some parts of the kennedy or the ongoing exploitation of black workers who worked the line in these mills unless you go back and explain how the profit structure work then and what changed life and wiser even towns of the sides are. i have appeased and really do think it's the way we make sense of the world and to some extent harper lee agreed with that. heart of what she is doing in mockingbird is telling you how people in may, related to the because of how repairs related to each other and he was allowed to change or evolve and who

isn't, and he was in control of the way society works. that part i owe entirely to her. the little bit we know about our work on her book, she is going to call her book the reverend. a little bit we know about the reverend is quite a lot of it is about the history of the area. she is going to seek again until you about the river into today and tell you about the early migration to alabama in the carolinas and before irish people who moved there. she was just as interested in history as i am. i like to think even if she hated she was in the book, i like to think she would have soft spot for tenant because it cares about history as much as she did. >> did you empathize with her in any point in your research are writing? >> all, , my gosh. over and over again. empathize and wasn't jealous of and all kinds of feelings. there's a couple of good books i like about biography, and one of them was written by a guy named

james atlas. another great bike i need jeff dyer. jeff dyer was supposed to writing biography of lawrence andy wrote a whole book about how much he hated it and hated dh lawrence and hated biography and how hard it was and how it was -- i love the book called out to share rage. i think even if you're writing a biography of your grandparents at various points your judgmental of the decedent the made our decisions they could've made or how hard to make your life by not writing the memoirs or something. harper lee's in the every so often i thought she so order, why could should just written more of her life down or read a lot of work she is absolute furious that there's an article about her and she says it's riddled with errors but she doesn't bother to itemize what they are. she says she series of so-and-so but she won't get into why to as a marker for your kind to make sense of public life and are moments where you wish they were

a different way. look, over and over again i love harper lee's work and i wish there were 100 more novels like mockingbird. michael often than i judged her or any kind of anger torture i felt sympathy. we were talking about her attitude towards writing. those attitudes are reinforced by pretty serious depression and a pretty serious, like drinking problem. i have a world of sympathy for that and i think her life was very hard and not just because she made it that way. i wish like a lot of people who are close to her that she be able to get help. this was a time when aa was really become a force for good in the world and talk therapy was becoming popular. i wish she had gotten help because i think it would have helped. i think it was nothing going on him or her life that other people haven't found a way through, and so most of what is

working on the book i just felt a lot of sympathy for her life. post mockingbird especially. when she was young and full of ambition and even when she is working on the reverend she was full of enthusiasm and energy and she is and a gregarious person. people divide intercompany because she was a whip and a wonder. i just wish she could've lived the life all the time and that she hadn't collapsed into some of these bad habits. most of the time i just wish things could of been easier for her. the alleged to kill in a book a lot of people feel like he took one from the anti-rest the community and wreak havoc and committed insurance fraud, , but i'll tell you, the reverend who received a medal for valor service in world war ii, i wish when it come home to alabama at the been a good job for him and after dinner opportunity and

that someone as gifted as he was at preaching could've had a full-time parish and for living, and his life could've gone differently. i have a lot of sympathy and there's more than enough of it to go around in this story. harper lee is at the top of this device but the most i'm thinking about her but i think it's true for everybody else in the book. i wish tom radney could've run for office in 1997 instead of 1967. as as a guy who was for integran and wanted albanians to pay the taxes with joy. he ran on a platform and he got run out of town for it. his family was terrorized and threatened, so i've a lot of sympathy for everybody in the book including her. >> but he still loved robert e. lee as i recall reading in your book. >> he is a complicated guy. tom and harper lee both. a couple of people have told me they were so surprised to read about harper lee's politics. one point in the book i say

she's basically an uncivil curmudgeon wiser political persuasion but look, she did not approve of the method of the freedom writers conferences. that's shocking to see people because of this clear moral -- assume shoot out marching with martin luther king or should participate in bus boycotts of something. that was not her life. in fact, becomes public and racial politics of watchmen which is to someone who is anti-lynching but maybe not pro integration is much closer to her perspective on the world. she was much more conservative and manners minded than morally manifesting a lot of people know. i think that's very hard to make sense of self one thing she had in common with tom is they were progressive southerners but progressive by comparison and only comparison to wallace, not if you compare them kicking.

that's probably much more shocking people and are drinking or her depression is a confusion and ongoing tension she felt about racial justice in this country. i think your credit she let her book do a lot of talking for her and her book changed a lot of peoples minds in ways that maybe she would have been able to. that's a comic a part of the book is again when you ask how you feel about harper lee, i expected to find she was secretly funding the marches or she was privately corresponding with king, and that is not who she was. in fact, she was worried the freedom writers were causing more trouble than they were doing good. in fact, when she lived in new york i think part of the reason she came home to alabama was really a retreat from the kind of award of march of history up there. i think she's very complicated person and some people just wish it been written by someone else and were all fraud is really a

much more accurate reflection of her own struggle to make sense of the world and figure out race relations and forgot the way civil society should work. >> you write from a marketing standpoint, difficulty was the maxwell case is not exactly an ideal parable about race injustice. the story of a a black serial killer was what we can reasonably expect the author of the killing a mockingbird, issue try to get published today do you think from the publisher in york she would get a different reception or the same? >> it's an interesting question for her specifically. look, my book was published and tells the story shows interested in telling, but it tells it in a way that confronts major failures of policing and southcom major miscarriages of justice, systematic

discoloration within our criminal justice system. and real scrutiny on the part of white allies in people who were involved in the civil rights movement or who were involved in democratic politics. there's a real question, if anyone would published anything she wanted to publish, but she was told over and over again this is a controversial book from her and that i think in some ways i thought about this,, too, the strange thing about the maxwell case is it tells the story of two black men who everyone knew were guilty of murder but were not convicted. that is a very, , statistical, t representative story about criminal justice in the stuff. look, i love to my people there's another beautiful book about racial justice they came out of monroeville and it has a much more statistically representative story about the fate of black men and our criminal justice system.

they are much more likely to be convicted of murders they did that commit that they are to be acquitted of murders they did. so i think that's the sense in which the maxwell case met -- messianic complicated. -- messy and complicated. shouldn't she find another story about moral heroism? is another aspect of that embed in the maxwell case which is on the one hand, the motive for these serial killings was in charge front. the reverend took up policies he was then make use of kelly and he profited from the policies that i try to overcome i give a book talk to point out the obvious which is there again that is that specific representative of what was happening to black americans with the insurance industry. much more, was there i did deny outright or they were price gouged in the policies they could buy or the policies

themselves were much less generous than the policies available to the white neighbors worse than that, when he went to collect on him they were often deny payments they were entitled to. here is the reverend once again one of the only black men who wins this game who profits from this industry which is systematically exploiting his neighbors and his peers and his colleagues. even there it is difficult story to tell because not many black men were profiting off life insurance at this moment. he happened to be one of the only ones who was and that's part of the reason why these insurance companies were so furious and frustrated by the process. he was a grieving widow would go before these civil juries and when judgment after judgment which was just not expected and not common for the time. here's poor harper lee she supposed be telling this one kind of story, and it is muddied by the systematic story that is behind it.

it's an interesting case for her to have chosen and i think there are very straightforward reasons it was hard to tell and what it was not straightforward. >> put aside for a moment she is the author of "to kill a mockingbird" do you think that story would be marketable today or is it too messy, to call but get? >> i mean, a book about it. >> i'm just talking about the narrative of willie maxwell and his speed is yes, absolutely. to the great credit of publishers and finally publishers and movie producers and tv show executives, it's own kind of discrimination to decide you only tell laudatory in simple stories about black lives and i think right around this time us finishing the book i was talking to black writer who asked if i'd gone to see black panther, the marvel comic movie.

that question was about of course there should be black villas as well as like heroes. i think she would've been fine. the real question is did you want to which you wanted to. i think we can in the best version of life of one gets to be as complicated as everyone else, that includes a story like this. i love getting to interview robert burns who's a a vigilane of heart of this story. he came to the book event. robert is aware of the what he did is both villainous and heroic. and that what he did upset about people and please a lot of others, and that it was complicated. he's willing to talk about and is willing to follow through it all but also knows, he can't pretend it never happened. when he starts to somewhat -- when we decide what kind of

stories can or can't be told we have to be careful because it's its own kind discrimination and it finds the complexity of the people's lives. the truth is the maxwell case doesn't just have black serial killer. it is black victims and the reverend was accused of killing two wives, a brother, a nephew and a stepmother. if you decided you couldn't tell his story, you would never tell bears. you would never talk about the way the police investigate those cases versus any other or the way the justice system brought charges of murder in some cases but not others. when you start to say just because they are statistically fewer black serial killers we think them there are white serial killers, i think she would've been fine with this book anything would've been interesting and it could've been well done. i so wish everyday to get to read reader version of the same case. >> i was going to ask you, her

papers are sealed by her estate. i think you got to look at a few papers and tom radney had a briefcase and it was just a little snippet. if you could speculate what were in the sealed papers -- >> that's its own kind of roller coaster. there were a lot of days i woke up nervous that someone is going to call and say we found the reverend and we're going to publish it because to enter different version of your question, i think if harper lee have published her version of this case no one would've read my version. i wouldn't have read my version. i would've wanted hers. i woke up nervous because i think highly of her as a writer. it was clear to me from my interviews she had to -- she would sit on three-quarters of the way through in it seems plausible the was a manuscript. there are people very close to her. i have this paragraph in the book where i kind of roundup ssi can the expert opinions of

france in town of harper lee's, people should talk to when she's working on this version of the events. on the far boundary personally says she wrote the whole thing. her sister of the we spread and told it was better than cold blood. on the other side you have people are closer who to said e was incredibly dysfunctional at this time period was a very dark time, i very hard story to tell. after doing all the reporting and research she could never finished it. those are the two extremes, she wrote it all and she never wrote it. ask me today versus tomorrow, some days i still think we might find a manuscript in sunday's i think we won't. i think with some amount of certainty that archive probably contains more draft pages and that's what you referred to. she made notes, she's an incredibly scruples report and we know with her collaboration with truman capote, should go

home and type up of her notes f ship interviewed århus yet talk to and what they said and her impressions. i think almost certainly she would've kept those and that's the page of notes that tom radney had in a briefcase that was returned to his estate by her estate. it were notes were shoes interviewing the reverence such. there's every reason believe whatever short in the book, whatever she kept come maybe she burned when she will, maybe she recycled a come whatever she did with the manuscript i think what ever recently they will be notes and we can see all the interviews she did and all the people she talk to because i tried as best i could do all that but the truth is some of the people she was able to interview had died by the time i came along, including tom radney. i could interview his widow and his children and his grandchildren and his colleagues but harper lee got to spend hours and hours and hours talking to them. and the reverence would was a lie. the reverend was accused of killing two lies but you completed there was a third woman who married him and that

woman was alive and well in harper lee was investigating this case. i would love to see this reporting notes come whatever the is of the manuscript pages i would love to see those reporting notes. >> did you make much use of the obituaries in your reporting? >> thanks, thanks, gene, you tha softball. i did. i will say that this is a critical moment for local journalism and papers are folding left and right and i hope booklovers who are listening to this maybe think about subscribing to a local paper because i couldn't have written my book without a few of them in alabama. some of that is just the reporting did did to cover the events as happen and some of that is just the way the reported life. they didn't do it fairly or justly but even the imperfect record, those obituaries were how, if someone had that i could go and see their nieces and nephews and contracting down and interview them or you could piece together a life of someone, the jury foreman. you could know what he do for living because you could find

his obituary and i get context to the story. i'm awfully grateful to his local papers us talk about archivists earlier but my gut, the state archives in montgomery are phenomenal at the local archives knew where this all happened are phenomenal and they would just let me read along in the basement decades and decades of local newspaper coverage or scroll through microfilm of what the birmingham news or the alabama journal had covered with this stuff. i love it and you can't write a book like this without. if we lose a it, the people try and write books like this 70 years and now about today will not be able to do. they won't have the context they need. they won't have the historical records the need. it's a moment, by your books from your local bookstore, politics and prose or whatever, curious iguana or review or, buy your books there and subscribe to a local paper because the "new york times" can't cover

everything. and what the "new york times" cover sometimes depends on the ecosystem of the smaller papers signed it's a tough time and a tight time for people but when you do think about spend your money, you've got to spend some of it local and you've got to really support these institutions because without them our world will be totally different. >> if i can bar a question from "new york times" book review section, what books are on your night table? >> oh, yeah, that's a great question. i love to look at that when they do it. i'm working on two pieces for the new yorker. my day do job is writing for the new yorker and i'm working on two pieces, one of them is up marilynne robinson is a a new novel coming out this fall. i'm absolutely embarrassed at the riches of my neck stand which is everything she's ever written, all the essay collections, all the novels. and then the other piece am working on is a nonfiction book about the legacy of william

faulkner. the other towering, looming stack is everything faulkner wrote. on a peak at the trough. i've got lots of good stuff i'm reading. nothing contemporary or new but i will say that people who are looking i'm doing that because of my job at the people who are looking for books that can guide them through this moment, there's a lot of just phenomenal nonfiction out there. i've been looking at a book by william stokley who's an academic at unc and you would a book called hattiesburg. it's a beautiful, beautiful complete book about hattiesburg and the lights of black and white citizens there. that's a book of really admire. if you looking for something that can take you through the long history of how we just badly treated black people in this country, that's a book i would recommend. if not that, then there's a new collection put out of toni

morrison's essays that's a really beautiful collection. there's so much a good content very writing about the moment we are and how to help people take a look at. i would recommend faulkner and robinson but i'm sure it those are probably people, people only read. >> one final question. is there a book in your future, another but? >> oh, gosh, i hope so. i've got an idea about a shipwreck that i've been loosely working on. i get busy with work but i'm hoping the next book is about a slightly more historical story, a shipwreck from the 17th century but it has a contemporary hook because somebody went and found and then there was a big legal fight over who on the treasure. i'm hoping to put the book together and will be a little bit like "furious hours" because it's part about the spanish empire built the ship as it over to the new world and it's partly about the people who work in the

mines recovering the silver and the jewels that were being sent back to spain. and it's about this legal fight. it's a bit of a true crime story because a his huge fight over o owns it, and as far as i'm concerned the story of colonialism in peru and colombia might as well just be a story about theft. that's what a hoping to put together but it will be a little while. >> that's great. we look forward to that. thank you very much. >> sure. >> so in the best version of life and going gets to be us, get as everyone else. that is a quote i love your cow is excellent. this was amazing. we have several questions here but before you get to the questions i wanted to let everyone know that -- brought her out to local skull which you get adequate wi-fi. are you doing okay with your power right now?

[inaudible] >> i was going to switch for different laptop for the question i'm just switching them out for power. >> no problem. you go ahead and do that. i will ask gene in the meantime. when we were talking in the beginning about this fantastic book you had mentioned to me it was more of a book in three parts. as one if you could elaborate on that, why do you think that? >> well, again, we didn't really talk too much about structure. how to structure book, but it was a natural flow. first about the reverent and his fraudulent claims and the woman who died on whose death he collected or the second section was not this remarkable lawyer, tom radney, a white lawyer who

represented the reverend. and after the reverend was fatally shot by one of the survivors, represented the murderer and he was acquitted. and then the third section is about harper lee and her struggles to tell the story and her own personal demons. i thought it was a very well put together, well thought out way to tell the story. >> especially for a first book. it's pretty impressive. >> very impressive, very impressive. >> what are you working on these days? have you got something new on the fire? >> i am working on number of magazine articles. i had a piece in the near guitar and a couple ago about the hudson valley film industry being shattered during the pandemic, and that's fasting. who knew there was a hudson valley film industry lsu up

there? but it was quite thriving and all of a sudden it ended. they're hoping things will get back to where they were. nobody really knows to what extent. then i been working on a more intimately about 50 years in the newspaper business but it's really not so much about things that i covered. the antiwar movement up to the 2000s. casey, welcome back. >> thanks a lot. that was seamless, so thanks so much. just give a shout out to public schools and public libraries because i'm probably not the only author in america was getting by on public wi-fi. i am over on the eastern shore so don't have much in the way of broadband, but i'm telling you to buy your book local and subscribe to local paper. i your local taxes with joy because a lot of people make

these resources but i'm grateful to be able to do it here and thanks for your patience. i hope the folks at home didn't mind the intermission. they probably enjoy hearing from gene more than me anyway. >> thank you. >> as i mentioned we do have several questions. i'm going to start and dive right into those. the first one comes from mary chapman. she says i'm enjoying your book tremendously. which of the three sections with the most interesting for you personally and which was a most difficult to produce? >> that's a great question. for a minute my heart stopped because mary, you're going to learn the are some chapmans in my book. the chapmans, pictures thing about harper lee and as you interested in this case, she had a niece who lived in alexander city where this all took place. that niece had married a guy who owned a motel. the chapmans own the horseshoe bend motel. a government you would be a

long-lost chapman want to ask me something nitty-gritty about alec city but that such a generous question. i feel like all three parts of this book were difficult for different reasons but they were all tremendously interesting for different reasons. i think in some ways harper lee was the easiest person to research. she's a world famous and so people had have interviewed hed her then some effort to preserve her papers. on the other hand, she's pathologically private so it's not as straightforward as sometimes you go to talk to people about a writer they can't stop talking. a reading that marilyn robinson material because i'm working on a profile of her and she's absolutely accommodating and generous in-kind people in her life having wanting to share stories and in case of harper lee she policed what people said about her so much there was this -- people who knew her wouldn't talk about it. the people who knew her best that the lease. that was its own frustration

over the years and in some cases it took me three years to convince some family member to talk but eventually to convince them to share their story. she came around in that way and whatever resistance there was mostly faded but i'll tell you in the case of the reverend maxwell, obviously this is a story that for his family is very different than it is from anyone else in alexander city and anyone else in the state of alabama. in fact, for the people this was macabre entertainment and this was a titillating story people in the news and there felt like it was real and, of course, for his family, by family members were murdered and in some instances does have a complete investigation as never any college about what happened. understandably members of the salmon were less eager to talk about it. understandably for some of them just for archival reasons they had less access to the story of his life and say tom radney family did about topic when tom did something the local newspaper covered it. when tom got some award in

school his mother stated and of the insane house so there's a continuous archive of his life. infrastructure reasons it was harder to learn about the reverent and it was either of the other two characters. i think the rise and lows with each of them and something they can easily than others. it's a great question so that's the kind of approach question. when you say did i enjoy one more than others, i probably actually enjoyed getting to write about the reverend moore because there's so much in the way of ambiguity and mystery that it just inescapable. you have no temptation to try and smooth them over or make them less complicated. so it is simply the case that we will never know why he did the things that he did. people in if you do in his asked him that he is either dishonest or inarticulate. in the case of basic fact of his life there are simply things will never know about the

decisions he made. for me i was challenging as asa writer to come up against it and up against it and figure out ways to be honest with readers about what they could ever know but also to revel in the misty of others. people are complex and animal o think you understand them, if you're lucky the remind you you don't understand them at all. so the reverend was a kind of constant reminder of humility about what journalists can never look how much we can ever understand about something. that's probably true. he grew up fishing and he grew up farming and that's very familiar to me. and all the ways our lives totally different i would never understand, that's the most rural counties in alabama and it is still today the most rural. driving around thinking that what it's like to go up there, i got to set the scene of remote and rural childhood. again for all we don't have things in, , i felt like i could understand that part of his

life. for that reason it was a lot of fun to get to write about. >> great. denise writes, what would you like to find it without harper lee's manuscript? >> the whole thing. do i have to choose? i just want to know it all. i mean, i really did, i can speak of it with such enthusiasm now but it really was worried, god bless, i thought in event harper lee's book turns out they would just say this is a nice idea you had but harper lee has already done it. ..

lifelong albanians have that. i would want to read every word of it and the best example was of the river because it was a beautiful thing. a fascinating geological story about how we changed the world and make sense of it but it's also a case that he had an eye for rivers and alabama and red clay, i just loved the way she described the river and the indians and she set the scene and what her geography was but in the archive of harper lee, a couple of people who knew her

insisted to me she kept a diary and the diary of harper lee would be a strange and interesting thing because she was very closed off her own emotions and had a hard time talking about her work, she loved to talk until stories she loved jokes but private about herself. i think a diary would be every bit of interesting. the life of harper lee and day-to-day experiences, i could piece some of it together from all the letters i got but a

diary would be another level of access to her. the archives i've been told were boxes and boxes and i can't wait to see what's in it. >> mary says why do you think watchmen was never published during her lifetime? part two, you think she would've supported the decision to have it published? >> that's a great question. i gave a history and i'm grateful to have a chance because it was my entry points into the life of parker lee and a lot of her friends and family did not approve of the decision to publish and were concerned, the thing to know about her is the book came after the death of her older sister who had been a business manager and had managed her affairs, a lawyer and from there forward and helped with the publishing contrast and different additions and adaptations, the business of

harper lee was run by her sister and when her sister died, that's when a lot of these decisions started to happen. watchmen was published, a broadway and a patient authorized and a lot of people were concerned because these were controversial lucrative decisions. i think what's scrutinizing whether or not it should be published, it was reported she did and she was alive the moment the contract was executed along with the contract adaptations so i think there are people who still have questions and concerns, even if it was strictly legal about her ability to consent and about her mental health at that time and there were allegations of elder abuse and the state investigated them. it's a weird thing to scrutinized.

why it hadn't been made earlier. some people say the portrait of her father was so controversial, maybe the death of her older sister is what changed. she felt the world could learn about this other version of atticus and whatever was upsetting was upsetting to her. that is one possibility and whether or not she wanted it published i still think that could have been a better publication for the benefit of the world. the book was marketed, the 89-year-old harper lee worked on for decades and was proud to deliver it to the world, is a complete misrepresentation. he hadn't touched the draft since then and when it came into the world, i wish i had come in as a slightly more academic project, one that would have had her and her editor and between her and her agent that would've pointed out the publishing house would have published it and she revised to kill a mockingbird.

it's a great book, it's called atticus biography and historian named joseph kristin -- christina, sorry, it took me a minute. he goes back and looks at the history of race relations at the time and his version of the kkk and he goes back and goes over his editorials and looks at a much more realistic trail of the everyday systematic racism that black people in alabama base. this category of somebody who would never have joined a lynch mob and wanted to go to a segregated church, this book is very well done. i wish when it was published instead of just being a noble that got pushed out that

everybody thought was equal, that it had been explained and annotated and made a little more understandable and intelligible to the audience who found it. it's the question of why he did what he did, we may never know with certainty whether or not he didn't want the book published but having published it, i wish it was done a little differently because there's so much more to learn when it's not just pushed out to the world without any history or even an introduction. people think harper lee wrote that book in 2009 and then it came out and when you say she was in her late 20s and living in new york and angry at her

father and confused about immigration and she wrote that draft in 1957 and that's why it's so angry and muddled. you get a bit of this in my book but he wrote a biography but i think he thought a lot about how the story of racism in the country and how many of us are who don't feel we are racist in a racist society. if you're interested, you will look at the because it makes the book more interesting and i think, it makes us all a little more patient of what she was trying to make sense of and how much the world was changing for people like her. if you haven't read watchmen, it's interesting as an example of how editors work magic because you look at watchmen and read mockingbird and you realize how much she was gifted. it's a beautiful book even if it

is politically complicated. >> one of the unusual things about the book is its structure. what was your inspiration for structuring the story this way? >> i've learned to love structure. you find this great story and you can't figure out how to tell it and i knew how the book was going to work from the get-go, when i first learned about it, is obvious maxwell was every bit as interesting as his lawyer and the two of them were interesting just as much as harper lee. what they needed was a book that put their life in the context of other albanians. the context of other aspects,

classes, races, genders and it's clear to me it needed to be three parts and it might not be obvious to read it but it allowed me to work through the story so the book opens in 1925 the reverend is born and he's gunned down in 1977 and with his lawyer and went the trial concluded in 1977, it went up with harper lee. there's a lot of meandering and i should own up to the fact that i didn't like the way i talked which was an overly patient sort of way and i love a good story from always trying to walk on every side street and go to the end of every cul-de-sac before you come back so at the bottom of the structure is 1925, 22016 when harper lee died. the reverend was born when she died. i did read a bunch of other

books, john mcphee, a colleague of mine at the new yorker without a book a couple of years ago john is obsessed with structure and that as these illustrations of these ornamental and geographic and geometric shapes of tracing a story, all kinds of complexities and if you're interested, it's a book worth reading but in my case, two books, eric's book about a serial killer in chicago and the book which is beautiful, has a structure like mine but it goes back and forth between the serial killer and the landscape designer.

it's the same kind of structure but he alternates. same thing with the other book i like a lot and david chooses to ping-pong between perspectives. i set mine in three parts so they are not quite similar enough and i didn't want to pretend harper lee had everything in common with a sharecropper which she obviously doesn't. david's book is about an amazon explorer who went missing and that's the plot and the d plot is david and the reporter who goes exploring the amazon rain forest looking for that story and he goes between the two. in the past and in the future and learning about exploration and literary and archival exploration. those are two books i looked at a lot and they are very well done. they handle crime well. you don't want to look at bad models disrespectful crime books. in both cases, they are looking at suspense and violence in

responsible serious ways. i could tell those are two i looked at a lot at and admired a lot. >> all right. last question. this is from alyssa mcdonald. what you think harper lee would say about your book? [laughter] >> that is a fine question. i try to be honest so i'll be honest, i don't think she would like it. or rather, i think she liked the first two thirds and then she would scold me that her story is more inc. and it's about anyone who tried to pry into her life which is a lot of what i'm doing. i think she would have admired it but it's a historical book and it doesn't take for granted the ways history acts on our

lives today and i think she would like that. she was vague about facts and nonfiction and the difference between the two. there is discontent and she had objections to some of the choices he made and the way he structured his book and represented it. i do think she would have admired my attempt to get to the bottom including her life, do not repeat rumor or rely on gossip, to be as scrupulous as i could but at the end of the day, she probably would have said i get it, the reverend and lawyer, you did a good job but i couldn't have that. the got to be honest, i don't think she would have been happy about the last third period it's probably worth asking about a good scrutiny to apply to anything you read, how the people represented feel about it

because people ask me about harper lee and i try but thinking about the reference family feeling about this book because all too often, we can think about the most powerful or the people who have the most recourse but when you are reading, think about how everyone involved feels. how do the protesters feel? is it doing justice to everyone's perspective? i did think, how would i feel if someone were writing about my grandfather or aunts because you don't let it hold you back from telling the truth but you always want to be fair and respectful and i think in that sense, i tried to think about how everyone in the books would feel about it.

when i did the event in new york city, i mentioned robert burns came but the truth is, one of the reverend daughter came and jim bernhardt which is one of the reporters, in case you didn't think this was nonfiction, everyone still alive was in the room listening to me read and answer questions and talk about it and i'd like to think even if none of them were happy that they felt like i tried to be fair to them all so it's great to ask about harper lee and i know she's probably the person who brings the most people in but i stand by this structure of the book which is these other people are just as interesting and have just as much to teach and i think biography looks at the lives of famous and powerful people but i love the way this goes beyond that so it's a great question but it's important to think what this lawyer think about what

she's done and what he think it's fair? so thank you for asking that. >> thank you, casey. this was extraordinary. i enjoyed every second of this. i think all of our viewers did as well. >> thank you for having me. >> i'd like to thank all of you for joining us this evening. we know he would love to have your very own copy, you can do that right now, right here by clicking our description box below and it will take you right over to our partner where you can place your order. food lovers, join us tomorrow night 7:00 p.m. for a lively and

informative interview about father george, he discusses his new book strange chemistry of what we put on. on sunday morning 11:00 a.m., will feature a live presentation by award-winning best-selling young adult author, she is talking to us about her book. please feel free to look around the youtube channel and festival website. discovered the amazing programs we have coming your way. thank you for being here, have a terrific friday evening and we will see you tomorrow night. keep reading. >> other weekly program "afterwards", zimmerman looked at white collar drug addiction. as a portion. >> i came to the idea of addiction with my own biases. i did not think someone struggling with addiction looked like peter, is earning two advanced degrees, highly successful partner and prestigious.

to me, someone struggling with addiction was also struggling with bleak conditions in the life. maybe they were homeless and struggling with a mental illness untreated. i was very wrong. addiction in the community, the people at the top of socioeconomic ladder struggling as well. what i didn't know then was i hadn't really educated myself with drug addiction. i hadn't thought it would affect me or my family so when peter was suffering, i attributed it to everything else. maybe he was psychotic, maybe he had an eating disorder. he had an illness he didn't know about like cancer. i had people ask me if he had

aids. nobody said you think he had a drug addiction? i never considered it that he did have all the symptoms. i just thought he's working too hard, not getting enough sleep, all of those things. >> to watch this and other episodes, visit our website, booktv.org. click on the "afterwards" tab near the top of the page. >> now on book tv, programs about u.s. president, first, february, she discussed her biography of george washington and offered her thoughts on why her book is different than other biographies of america's first president. she spoke with jamal in politics and broke bookstore in washington d.c. >> i want presidential history because presidency and the person who established and it was built around everyone pressured into it, it is important that everyone understands