interviews. you can find about books on c-span now, our free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪ ♪ >> this weekend brings you to days of book tv. beginning with the library of congress's national book festival, live saturday at 9:00 a.m. eastern. sunday at 2:00 p.m. eastern, coverage of the 2023 roosevelt reading festival in hyde park, new york. at 9:00 p.m., jack cashel shares his book untenable about the white flight from the 1970's and the causes behind it. watch book tv every weekend on c-span two and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at book tv.org. >> the 23rd year in a row,

welcome to book tv's live coverage of the national book festival. some of the authors you will hear from today, and get a chance to talk with historian doug brinkley, rk russell and chest and buttigieg. some of the topics to be discussed, black literary identity, environmental activism and food and culture. it is a full day ahead. we are glad you are here with us on book tv. as i mentioned, this is the 23rd year in a row book tv has partnered with the library of congress to bring you live coverage of the national book festival. librarian of congress carla hayden is here to kick off our coverage. dr. hayden, for those who were not with us 23 years ago, how did this get started? >> it is so exciting to be here. you can hear the buzz behind us as everyone is coming in.

in 2001, first lady laura bush had been successful as a first lady of texas, starting the texas book fair. it was renowned. when she got to washington, d.c., she asked my predecessor, dr. billington, wouldn't it the nice if we had a book festival, a national book festival because i do not think we have one? he said, we do now. in 2001, first lady bush, who was the first librarian to be first lady -- cut the ribbon on the national mall for the book festival. it has been successful ever since. she has been a supporter ever sense. >> is she still active in the book fair at all? dr. hayden: she makes commemorative videos and things like that. we keep her involved. we send her everything. we send her -- we sent her signed posters from every year.

she has been a wonderful supporter. >> when you came on board in 2016, the fair was being held on the national mall. dr. hayden: it had just moved to the convention center, where we are now. that decision led us -- let us not think about the weather and all types of things that happen when you are outdoors. now that it has been in the convention center, it is wonderful. you have restrooms. [laughter] you have a food. you have all of these angst. it cannot rain. -- it can rain and everything and we can still enjoy dozens of authors. >> what is your role in the book fair? dr. hayden: i am the hostess with the mostess in terms of being able to open the book festival on the main stage. i get to read stories to young people in the young people section. i get to interview authors.

just, be the cheerleader and the person going around and thanking people for being interested in books and reading. peter: the library of congress hosts a opening ceremony, which we just aired on book tv. what is that? dr. hayden: that is a chance for the authors, illustrators and sponsors of the book festival to come together to get ready for this full-day. we feature five authors each year who tell their own stories. that is the theme this year, everyone has a story. it is so touching when you hear the different perspectives of the authors. peter: you brought over some books. to talk about some of the authors who do have a story. let's hear about a couple of these authors who are appearing. dr. hayden: it is important for everyone to know the book festival is free and is being streamed, and that people will be able to purchase the books and have them signed by the authors. when you think about a memoir,

that is a chance for people to tell their personal stories. elliott page, his story is so gripping because it is something that everyone can relate to. how do you find your true self? elliott will be here signing and talking about what it takes and what it takes to move forward after you have spoken your own truth. to everyone. dr. hayden: elliott was known as ellen page, the actress, at one point. i just hope people will think about their own stories and their own journeys. peter: another brooke -- book you want to share with us? dr. hayden: i am smiling because rk russell also had a chance in his life to think about what is really true and being courageous. that is with elliott, too. he had to think about the

courage to say -- to heck with everybody. this is who i am. rk russell, the same type of thing. if you are a football fan, you are going to get football history and insider scoop on football. you will also get a chance to really hear someone talk about their own journey. memoirs are something, as you can tell, are one of my favorites. peter: this is another memoir for young adults. dr. hayden: i mentioned the children's section. we have a young adult area, too. chest and buttigieg will be -- chasten buttigieg will be talking about his story for 12 and up. he adapted his memoir for adults to younger readers. you can tell by the cover and everything that it is designed to attract younger people, and to have them think about at the

earliest stages, when they are trying to figure out who they are, have something they can relate to and have a story that really speaks to them. that is going to be great. peter: when your mother, colleen, would take you to a library early on in your life, what were some of the books that impacted you or grabbed your attention? dr. hayden: i loved anything that had to do with fairytales and all of those types of things. also, there was one book someone gave me. that is when i learned about library fines. it was the first book where i saw myself in a book. i loved all these other things, other places, but when i saw another little brown girl with pigtails who was a brownie, -- if we tell young people books are important and they do not see themselves in a book, what kind of message? that is why memoirs are so important, that you see yourself

and relate. peter: i pulled this article out of the wall street journal. it was a little op-ed by brenda cronan who works at the wall street journal. the title of it is, "books resist digital domination." a quote was, "reading is a commitment. there are too many easy alternatives today." dr. hayden: yes. it is a commitment that is important that, though you do not have book gilt built into it. i know you are looking like that. so many people in different generations feel that if they start a book, they have to finish it. no, you do not. there are hundreds and thousands of books. that means you put that one down and get another one. so often, we make the commitment to figure out the text or listen to the words if you are doing books on tape.

that, we say you have to do it. it is not like broccoli. [laughter] or brussels sprouts. you want people to get into it. yes, it is a commitment, but if it is something that engages you or you are interested in, you will make that commitment. peter: in a sense, your bosses are congress, correct? dr. hayden: yes. peter: are they readers? dr. hayden: yes. i think people should be heartened by the fact members of congress as a whole are basically interested in history and their place in history. we find that quite a few members of congress one to read about -- one to read about historical facts and fiction that give them a sense of, ok, we are part of this journey in this country. 250 years, we are part of this. peter: i want to let our viewers know, in a few minutes dr. hayden has to leave because she has to go to mc an event.

but, we want to hear from you this morning before our first event. wh are you reading? we have been talking a lot of books. it is inresting to hear from you, what is on your reading list, what is on your bedside table? start dialing in. 202 is the area code. (202) 748-8000 if you live in the eastern and ctral time zones. (202) 748-8001 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zos. if you cnot get through on the phone lines and still want to make a comnt, use the text line(202) 748-8003. if you send a text, please include your first name, your city and the name of the book that you are reading. back to some books we are going to hear from today on the national book festival. here is this one. dr. hayden: nonfiction, this book is getting a lot of traction especially at this time in our country. poverty by america, matthew desmond.

it is nonfiction. it talks about the issues around poverty. it gives you the historical perspective, but also some things to think about as we look into income inequality. it is very gripping. people are reading it and listening to it and talking about this book. the author will be here. we think the question and answer period's going to be interesting. peter: this is an award-winning book. dr. hayden: she was given the library of congress is prize for american fiction. she is going to not only talk about her novel, but also her life and how they affect what she does. that is going to be really touching. she is one of the people i have on my nightstand. [laughter] peter: dr. hayden, you mentioned the national book festival has

always been free. but, a convention center is not free. all this, bringing in authors, is not free. how do you do this? dr. hayden: we have sponsors. our cochair for the national book festival who has been co-chair for a number of years, mr. david m rubenstein, is a major sponsor. we have sponsorship from corporations, organizations, we have 1000 volunteers, the junior league of washington is right here. there are so many entities. general motors. it is really wonderful. the sponsorship, to make it for. of course, c-span, and you have to show the bag. peter: you are right. dr. hayden: book lovers love ads. each year, there is a different color. as a book lover, i can tell you it is designed to hold a lot of bags -- a lot of arm room there. this one is the 25th

anniversary. definitely, make sure you get a bag. peter: this is book tv's 25th anniversary. we will be talking about that a little bit later. it is the 23rd anniversary of the national book festival, 25th anniversary of book tv. we have 92,000 hours of programs in our archives you can watch, all free, all online, all authors. two more books. dr. hayden: a more tours, the lincoln highway. many of you know him from a gentleman in moscow. he is here and is going to talk about his new fiction book. you can hold it from the side, turn a bit. it is good. with the pages, how many? [laughter] peter: [laughter] i will figure this out. dr. hayden: i will make you a librarian. [laughter] yes, this is a good summer book. on those rainy days and everything, you just dive into it. peter: i grew up in fort wayne,

indiana. the lincoln highway. dr. hayden: starting from michigan, it is about this cross-country trip. if you are doing staycations, the book is for you. rebecca mckay, she has a follow-up to her book, the great believer. i am a true crime person. i moved on fairytales to true crime. this one really gets charging in. if you like true crime -- it is fictionalized, but you can get a sense of her, too. that is on the book stand, too. peter: this is on your book stand, and what else? dr. hayden: well, i have got rk russells book, too. after hearing him speak, i really want to read that one. then, there is another book, afro chique. beautiful houses and homes of

people of color. jason reynolds, who is the youth ambassador for the library of congress and author, his home is featured on the cover. that is one -- it is a dream book. peter: what is the dewey decimal system, and do you still use it today in libraries? dr. hayden: many do. usually, elementary and high schools use it. it is a simplified way to classify your fairytales or fiction or nonfiction. the library of congress classification system is much more involved. the library of congress manages the dewey decimal system, as well. that is just a way to make sure you are thinking about things, it is a search engine in a way. for books, and to get to what you want. peter: does anybody from the states visit the library of

congress? dr. hayden: yes. if you are 16 and older, you can get a readers card and go into one of the 19 reading rooms physically in washington, d.c. anybody, anywhere can visit through what we call our digital front door. llc.gov. that is where you can explore 61 million items that have been digitized. rosa parks collection, it has her pancake recipe. oh, there is a section today about food. i am definitely going to make that. peter: we are covering that live. dr. hayden: you can go online and look at the papers of 23 presidents that have been digitized. all of these wonderful things that are right there. even if you cannot come physically to washington, d.c., you can visit us virtually. peter: $800 million budget, 300 -- 300,000 employees? how many of those are dedicated

to books itself? you have music divisions. you have -- there is a film division. dr. hayden: sound, also when you think about everything that surrounds books and manuscripts and film, we have the national library for the blind and print the sable that includes people with dyslexia. there are books you can download and listen to. all of these people are working to make sure we provide information and not just physical books, but words and images in as many formats as possible. it is a really exciting time to be at the library of congress, but also libraries in general. peter: two final questions. a lot of the news this year about book bands and as a librarian, what is your take? dr. hayden: as a librarian, i have been involved with making sure that as one of our

colleagues says, freed -- free people read freely and everyone has a right to know, get information and a right to read. when you think about the rights of parents and guardians, just about everything in their child's life, they have a right to make sure they are the guardians of that. when it gets a little dicier is when there are things that prevent other parents from saying, i want my child to read this book. that is the balance you have to have. every parent and caregiver can judge what their child should read. peter: what is colleen hayden reading? dr. hayden: oh, my mom is 91. she won't mind me saying this -- when she passed, she said you can say my age. she has a voracious reader. she has a lot of nonfiction, she

loves history but is also a history fan. there is this book by brandon slocum about music. an african american violinist, my dad was an african-american violinist. it is mystery and all of that. his second book is out. i got it for her. she is quite a reader. peter: is she here today? dr. hayden: she is watching you. she told me, i am going to do what i always do. i watch book tv. colleen is watching right now. peter: be sure to bring her the book tv anniversary mug. we are very proud of that. dr. hayden is going to be back later today. we have a special announcement. we are going to save that for later this afternoon. stick with us. dr. hayden is coming back to make that announcement. carla hayden, as always, it is a

pleasure. dr. hayden: i will seem soon. peter: they are going to sneak you offset and i am going to continue to work. we referred to the fact it is book tv's 25th anniversary. i want to give you statistics about that. we have been on the air for 1300 weekends. we have 92,000 hours of programming. we have covered 22,000 authors, 16,000 events have been covered and 871 citie have hosted our progra. we have been to 875 book fairs. including the national book festival for 23 years in a row. here is a look back at the national book festival over the years. [video clip] >> it was here in this library, the great library of congress, while i was employed in the government job as a young man, that i first discovered the pull of history and first discovered

my vocation. found out what i wanted to do. i can never, ever express sufficiently my gratitude to the library of congress. or, to the library system overall. when you think of what we have in this country and our public library system, there is nothing like it in the world. when you walk through the doors of a public library anywhere in the country, little town, big city, does not matter. when you walk through those doors, you are walking through the portals of freedom. >> in 1950 six, was my brothers and sisters and some of my first cousins, we went down to the public library in a little town in alabama, trying to get a library card, trying to check books out. we were told by the library was for whites only and not for colorants. on july 5, 19 98, i went back to

the pike county public library in alabama for a book signing of my book and hundreds of blacks and white citizens showed up and they gave me a library card. [applause] >> i came to believe early on, lincoln was where he possessed unusual talent. yet, it was so hard in that bleak childhood of his to figure out how to learn anything. he later calculated he had only gone to school one year altogether of formal schooling. his father needed him to work on the farm, his father would loan him out to other farmers to whom he owed credit. he scoured the countryside for books and read everything he could lay his hands on. it was said he when he got a copy of the bible or shakespeare's plays, he was so excited he could not eat or sleep. the great poet emily dickinson once said, there is no spigot like a book to take up lands far away. lincoln went with lord byron's

poetry to spain and portugal. literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings. i am amazed eisenhower, nixon got along as well as they did. when you think about it, you have to presidents rumbling around together. a president is going to be someone who is very driven. he has an agenda. he has a vision. he knows where he is going. you have dwight eisenhower and richard nixon who becomes his vice president who already is showing signs he is on his way. the fact they got along so well, as well as they did, i would say -- i think it is a testament to several things, but first of all, eisenhower should be praised. eisenhower made the vice presidency significant. he sat my parents 253 nations around the world as goodwill ambassadors. they were in vietnam in 1953. they were in africa, asia and all over the world. because he believed in person to person diplomacy.

he used his vice president. i think my father liked that. that's say eisenhower led the way on that relationship. >> i have spoken to a lot of my grandfathers colleagues over the years, and one in particular was lynn the hall, a former national chairman. i interviewed him in oyster bay, new york, very close to the teddy roosevelt homestead some years ago. i asked him that very question. i think he would have agreed with your response entirely, that dwight eisenhower was not somebody who enjoyed campaigning, but he said the two greatest natural politicians, the two greatest natural politicians he had seen in his entire life were al smith and dwight eisenhower. >> the one thing i love my job, it is the best and hardest job i have ever had. it has kept me going through

four cancer rounds, instead of concentrating on my aches and pains, i know i have to read the --, the draft opinion, so i have to somehow let whatever is going on in my body and concentrate on the courts work. >> when you think about a one-day festival, the national book festival, and you have over 100 authors from children's authors, illustrators, graphic novelists, all of these different authors, over 100,000 people come in and celebrate books and reading. you can't have a better time, i think. i am a little prejudice, because i am a librarian. i have to tell you, if anybody wants to get inspired, the book

festival is the perfect place. >> the late eudora welty whose recent death all lovers of literature morning said this about her first library experience in her autobiography, one writer's beginning. she said, my mother wished me to have my own library card to check out books for myself. she took me in to introduce me to the librarian, and she said, eudora is nine years old. she has my permission to read any book she once -- wants from these shells. the young ms. welty devoured books. she wrote, 2 x 2, i read library books as fast as i could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. from the minute i reached our house, i started to read. i this was bliss. -- i knew this was bliss. peter: that was a look at the

national book festival over the past 23 years. we were talking with the librarian of congress, carla hayden, earlier today. not only can you see your favorite author here today, you can go and buy the book at the book sale shop. politics and prose, a local store here in washington, d.c., is selling the books. we wanted to find out what you are reading. lamarr in the reno valley, california, you are on book tv. what are you reading? >> good morning, how are you doing this morning? peter: go ahead. caller: in reading -- by martha p johnson. how they wrote the gettysburg address over and over again. i enjoy. peter: who was the author again? caller: martin johnson.

peter: thank you for calling in. ray in glendale, arizona. caller: hi, peter. what i am reading right now is able all troubled refuge, about the struggles for newly freed -- in the civil war. i just finished master slave the husband and wife, which is an excellent book about the same subject. peter: right, which we covered on book tv. can you tell me how often you read books, how many you have going at once? do you get through a book a week, or what? caller: i go to the library often. it is just down the block from my house. i look at all the new books first, then besides that one, i

have rebel yell, which is a biography of stonewall jackson. i read the latest simon novel. i am all over the map. peter: thanks for spending a few minutes with us. let's work in caroline in raleigh, north carolina. caroline, good morning. what are you reading? caller: good morning. a pleasure to speak with you. i wish i was there at the book festival. i am currently reading my book club in rally, we are reading toni morrison's bluest sky. peter: and? what do you think? caller: well, we are just getting into it. i cannot believe i have never had a chance to read it before. so far, it has been so profound. just very interesting to the forward of the book, where she

mentions that she is not sure that the book did what she intended it to do in the sense that she wanted people to be jan touched. she wanted people to be moved. i think, literally a call to action with that book. so far, so good. peter: caroline, thanks for being with us. as a reminder, raleigh is only four hours from washington. you can come up to the national book fair any year you want. we are going to go now to the first author discussion of the day. this is a group of authors talking about accidental spies. it is moderated by jeff gaetz of cbs. here it is. >> thank you for being here. [applause] >> of the library of congress and it is truly a pleasure for me to welcome all of you here today. at this time, let's have you

silence your electronic devices, cell phones and everything else. and, enjoy the program. we want to notify this event is being recorded. your entry and presence here to this program constitutes your consent to be filmed or otherwise recorded. enjoy the program. i am going to pass to the director of the center to introduce the session. thank you for being here. [applause] >> welcome to the library of congress national book festival. i am kevin butterfield, the director of the john include the center of the library of congress. the kludgy center works to bring scholars into residents who work

at the collections of the library of congress for up to a year to write books like these and be a part of a national dialogue. welcome to everyone joining us live on c-span today. we are proud to partner with c-span again this year. you will encounter a range of intriguing conversations on the range of the american spy craft to an event about how our eating choices define who we are. we will be hearing about climate change, the practice of interior design in black homes, what it means to be a latino in america. we hope you engage in the conversation, ask questions and joint writers for their signs. our first panel today, accidental spies features john lyle, janet wallick and jeff gaetz. the debut book he will talk about today is the dirty tricks department. janet is the author of 10 books, her latest is flirting with danger. our moderator, jeff of cbs news,

the host of the cbs news podcast, america changed forever. let's welcome them to the stage. [applause] >> hello, hello, hello. i am not perky like you this morning. [laughter] >> i do not know how you do it. i wake up this morning for teatime. this is a little different. forgive me if, you know, my mind starts wandering toward the golf course and i asked some ridiculous questions. that is when you come in. we want you to participate. obviously, you are not going to get the opportunity to often to speak to the authors of these incredible books. i think the library of congress has done a great job of matching moderators with authors, because

when i picked up the book, i was like, ok. cia, i like that. this is write down my alley. it does not golf, but. [laughter] thanks for coming, janet and john. appreciate your time. i loved your books. it reminded me of college, where i had to cram to study up, but i am ready. i am ready. let's talk about the books. we are going to start with flirting with danger. i love the title. i love the book. in part because it talks about maryland and it talks about baltimore. [laughter] so, it was interesting to me. you have this heroin, right, this woman who decided when it wasn't the same for women to be

spies, she wanted to be a spy and she was a pretty good spy. tell us about marguerite harrison. janet: she was from maryland. in fact, she was an ace -- eighth generation american from a very prominent family in maryland. she was part of -- well, she was the daughter of the gilded age. her father was a shipping tycoon. her mother was a socialite hostess who wanted her daughter to marry for money and title. jeff: i want that for my daughters. [laughter] nothing wrong with that. janet: [laughter] well, marguerite was a rebel. she was not so keen on what her mother wanted. she did have a romance with a turkish bay. she did have very dual dinners with winston churchill -- dull

dinners with winston churchill, who stepped on her toes when they went dancing. she did marry a handsome stockbroker from maryland, but he had more charm than money. she was madly in love with him, he her. she had one of the most lavish weddings ever held in maryland. this was -- i forgot to say -- she was born not long after the civil war in 1878. so, right after the wedding -- well, nine months after the wedding, they had a son. [laughter] i kept count. jeff: [laughter] janet: they made it. [laughter] and, they had a wonderful society kind of life. you know, the country club dinners and the charity luncheons and the special dances

and all of that. jeff: all right, so why did she want to be a spy? she seems to have a perfect life and existence. why do that dangerous work? janet: she did. but, in 1915, her husband died very young. she was a widow at 37. she was very interested in world affairs. she had traveled as a child to europe every summer. she spoke five languages fluently. at the age of 10, she was the family translator in germany and france. that is pretty impressive. she has not traveled at all with her husband, she was at home taking care of the family. when her husband died, instead of going back to the family to live with her father or in-laws, she went out on her own, not a likely thing for society woman

-- a society woman to do. she got a job at the baltimore -- as a assistant society editor. when the war broke out as a reporter -- when america joined the war as a reporter, she wanted to go to the front. no women were allowed at the front. so. she applied for a job as a spy. what else? [laughter] and, she applied first to naval intelligence because that is where the intelligence department was at the time. and they said, a woman? not a chance. so, she applied to the army that was just setting up intelligence. there had not been a cia, and oss, none of that. the army sent an interviewer who talked to her and her german was

so good that he was worried. >> [laughter] janet: he said, how long did you live in germany? she said, i am in eighth generation american. i have always lived here. he thought -- jeff: he thought she might be sympathetic to the nazi cause. janet: exactly, kaiser, we were in world war i. he wasn't sure she was synthetic. no, was not true. the head of military intelligence was a wonderful name of marlborough churchill, love it. said, you are hired. she was the first american woman sent overseas. she was a spy in germany, and russia and the far east. and, hugely successful in her work. jeff: i kept thinking, james

bond. somebody needs to make a movie about marguerite harrison, unless there is already one out there. is there? janet: no, no. [laughter] jeff: once hollywood comes back from strike, we can make a proposal. janet: that is right. i have to say, the new york times review which i think comes out tomorrow in the papers, called her george smiley in a mink trail coat. [laughter] jeff: [laughter] so, you mentioned oss, which brings me to john's book. for those of you who do not know , oss was one of the precursors to the cia. there were several different versions of that agency. your book is the dirty tricks --

it caught my attention. flirting with danger and dirty tricks. tell me about, stanley level? tell us about him. he is the driving character. john: stanley is a chemist from around boston. he worked for much of his early life in a shoe and leather factory, nothing that would indicate he would get involved in intelligence agencies. when world war ii happened, especially after pearl harbor, he felt a patriotic fervor. he happened to run into carl compton, who at the time was the president of m.i.t.. carl compton knew stanley level and said, we need someone like you in washington, d.c. to help out. lovell quit his job after that. in his papers in the archives,

you can see his stated reason for leaving his job says war. he left his job, goes to washington, d.c. and becomes an aide first to benin for bush. if anyone has seen the recent movie often hyper -- oppenheimer , he makes a few appearances in there. bush is from the northeast. he has a similar attitude of lovell. he recommends him to join the oss. the head of the oss at the time is william donovan. donovan is this war hero from world war i, the head of this organization now in charge of conducting espionage, conducting information campaigns and sabotaging the enemy abroad during world war ii. that is the main thing the oss is doing. bush recommends lovell to donovan, donovan recruits lovell , we need you here. here is how it happened. stanley lovell gets a letter saying, meet me at this one building in bc

he does not know who the letter is from. he shows up to this building, does not know why he is there or who he has meeting. he is led into this room that is barren. he waits for a couple of hours. all of a sudden, william donovan comes in the room and has got a medal of honor on his lapel and says, stanley lovell, i need you to be the professor moriarty of the oss. lovell is thinking to himself, moriarty is the bad guy. [laughter] lovell talks donovan through and donovan says, we need a scientist to create the disguises for our undercover agents. he recruits lovell to be that person. lovell heads the research and development branch of the oss and does throughout the war, creating gadgets and disguises. jeff: what is interesting to is how he had to reorient his mind

from doing good to being as people as possible. john: that is one of the main arcs of the book. stanley lovell is reluctant to get involved in this work in the first place. after donovan recruits him, a few weeks later, he goes to donovan's house and says, i do not know if i'm cut out for this. i am a scientist. he felt this hippocratic obligation, science has created good things, agriculture and medicines. now, i am going to use the knowledge i have gained in order to create weapons that are going to kill people. donovan basically says, suck it up, we need someone to do this. this war is important, you are going to help us. throughout this book, we see a level of development and arc in a character from someone who is reluctant to engage in this behavior to at the end of the work, stanley lovell is advocating for the united states to use things like chemical

weapons in the pacific, biological weapons. it is a strange turn how he goes from reluctance he too advocating for the use of weapons for mass destruction. jeff: it is a dilemma, i think, for anyone who chooses that type of work. of course, most people will not choose that type of work. but, what is coursing through both books is a sense of patriotism. from the characters in your book to characters in your book, and so, i am wondering as i listen to you describe the book, the research in both of these books is, to me, meticulous. how much time, janet, did that take? janet: well, it took me 30 years to find her. jeff: 30 years? janet: yes.

i was doing research in 1993 in newcastle, england at the university library for a book about gertrude bell, who was the chief creator of the rack after world war i for the british. all her papers were there. thousands of letters and diaries and journals and so on. i came across a letter that she had written home to her father in 1924, saying that this extraordinary american woman had come through town and she had invited her to dinner and had never had heard such tales from a woman and how this american had everybody under her spell. she invited her not once, but twice to two dinners. it was the same thing. i read this and i thought, an american woman in baghdad in

1924, what was she doing there? she must have been a spy. this is the first thing that came to my mind. it stayed with me. i tried to find information about her. i could not. i worked -- wrote five books. each time i finished a book, i looked for the next subject and i could not find anything. i hired a professional researcher. she found nothing. finally, i was determined after the last book. i said, she can hide for me for just so long. i am going to find her. i wound up filing a request for information. sure enough, her papers were in the national archives right here in washington, in college park, maryland.

that was fabulous, tedious, frustrating experience. you are constantly filling out forms and getting permissions and waiting hours and hours for papers to arrive. but, what i found in there was like gold. jeff: indeed. janet: it was classified papers. jeff: where did you find those classified papers -- just kidding. janet: [laughter] i did take home copies. jeff: i do not know where that came from. [laughter] do we name a special counsel? just kidding. did you go into that process thinking, ok, i want to look for a female spy, early 1900s, or did you know marguerite was the

one you wanted to profile? janet: the little bit i read about her told me she was the one. her whole viewpoint was as an internationalist. she really cared about world affairs. that is something that has always interested me. she was really smart. she was beautiful. she was charming because her governess told her, you can be intellectual if you want, but you will get much further being charming. jeff: [laughter] janet: which, there is a lot of truth in that, i guess. and where she went and what she did, how she inserted herself into every level of society was fascinating. jeff: it really is, it really is. stanley lovell is another one. he came essentially orphaned and

found his way to cornell -- was at dartmouth then cornell? john: yes. jeff: he really rose through modest means. and, he is not a household name. how did you find him? john: yeah, he was orphaned from a young age. both of his parents died young. he was raised essentially by his older sister, who put him through school. i found him through researching my dissertation. i went to school at the university of texas. i was working on scientists within the intelligence community. through reading about that, i would come across this name, stanley lovell, he is the guy during world war ii who invented the kinds of things like glowing foxes and cyanide pills and all kinds of stuff. i was intrigued, but i was

focusing on my dissertation. every time i would go to the archives and we were talking backstage, we spent a lot of time in the national archives -- every time i would go, do not tell my professors, but half the time i would work on my dissertation. the other half, in the back of my mind, i knew i was going to talk about lovell lovell stanley. i would pull out documents for my dissertation but also stanley lovell and do that on the side. i did that throughout grad school. eventually, i finished school and decided, i am going to put the dissertation away and focus on another thing. jeff: i am going to hang out in the national archives full-time. [laughter] john: for some people, it can be fun. that is the origin of how i found stanley lovell, i knew his name through researching scientists through the community. the story was almost too good for me not to follow up on. it kind of became most and

obsessive thing. i just wanted to know more about who he was. i spent a lot of my time doing that. jeff: the book talks about -- there was one quote, when you work in tv, you hear things in soundbites. i have been in tv for 35 years now. one good sound bite in your book is when someone is talking about, oh, all you really need are seven properly trained men to do these dirty tricks. they can cripple a city, which is good information for a special report on. [laughter] who said that? and, was that the thinking at the time as they tried to get the oss up and running? john: that was kind of the thinking, especially for stanley

lovell's branch within the oss. when stanley lovell was appointed to head this branch, he did not know what to do because the united states did not have the same pedigree and various warfare as someone like the british. the first thing lovell is go to -- does is go to england. how can we take some of those ideas and use them ourselves? for instance, one of the things stanley lovell re-creates is something called a lipid mind, a minute you can put on the bottom of a ship so after a while, it will detonate and sink the ship. he got that from the british. when he is in england, that is when one of his british counterparts says this thing about, oh, you need seven well-trained men are able to destroy a city if you know the right places to attack. that is how stanley lovell got his ideas from the british. when he gets back to the united states, a lot of what he is doing is brainstorming. he does not have any direction.

his idea is, we will throw stuff against the wall, see what sticks and what the soldiers and undercover saboteurs need abroad. they started creating devious inventions. jeff: your account takes place in the early 1900s world war i. yours is really 1945, 1940 timeframe with the nazis, they spread across europe. the japanese bombed pearl harbor and roosevelt was looking for, well, they were looking for as much information as they could get on the enemy because the enemy -- well, britain is not an enemy, but they had their intelligence apparatus in place. the u.s. did not. the fbi had been created, but in terms of intelligence gathering, which is, yeah, it is law enforcement, but a different kind of law enforcement. as nefarious as it sounds,

sabotage and dirty tricks, that is the way things work. in the intelligence game. i wanted to ask you, janet, and do not forget -- i need you to ask questions, too. ok? i'm going to be asking for questions in the next couple of minutes. we want people to take away -- what do you want people to take away from the book? janet: how extraordinary a woman she was and how women can do extraordinary things. nobody expected a woman to be able to do what marguerite did. in fact, from the time the war started and we were thinking about getting involved in it and we were worried about the -- the public was worried, who is going to earn a living for our families if our men are

overseas? she went out and did jobs men only did, like at the ship building plants, streetcar conductors, and showed how women would just take over their husbands or fathers jobs and the world life would go on. then, of course, she was one of the most important intelligence agents in world war i. so, yeah. we can do a lot. [laughter] jeff: it was almost like the enemy did not see her coming. they were not expecting someone like her in that kind of job. all right, who has a question? right there. can you stand up? oh, there is a mic. that was my fault. i should have told you there was a mic. [laughter] >> i am just curious. was it as difficult to find out about marguerite's personal life

as it was her professional life? did she have to leave her son behind? were you able to find out that information, as well? it is just harrowing. janet: it was harder in a way to find out the personal information, because her daughter in law destroyed all of her letters home. that tells you a little bit about her relationship with her daughter in law. [laughter] and, with her son, which was a loving but very -- which was loving but very distant. that was distant physically and emotionally. so, that created a lot of problems. jeff: are you sure the daughter in law did not want to destroy the correspondence?

did they know she was a spy? janet: yes. this is much later. this is second marriage and much, much later in her life. she had told her family about what she was doing. i was very lucky she has two granddaughters who are around who were very interested in this book. and, in helping to tell her story. they were wonderful. i did get good information from them. jeff: i see. right over here. >> two questions, if i may. lovell seems like an odd choice, a random chemist at a leather factory. what was it about him that led him -- lead them to think of him for this position? can you give examples he had a few main things that work to his advantage.

he was from new england and a lot of the people who were in washington dc and scientific positions were from new england so he knew these people. like mrs. bush was not in charge with coordinating manhattan project, fuses. this worked in his favor to get the job. as for the second one of the question, i mentioned batch bonds and glowing process? it was this idea that instead of dropping incendiary bombs on tokyo and they may not hit a target. what if we had bats, invent this incendiary, attaches to the back and put it in hibernation, fly

them to japan release the ballots they will wake up and they will go into roost and warehouses, buildings, incentive wasting bombs they will go where we want them to they'll blow up some fires in cities and we would have to use as many resources. and never got put into use in japan, obviously. it works because during one test one of the bats got away and flew into a military barrick into a control tower and blew them. that's one example of one of these gadgets. silent pistols, cyanide pills, forged documents, disguises, how to artificially age, turning

them into of long shore fisherman. this is what they would do. jeff: i think it was still lowell -- stanley lowell if you had to do this to the enemy how would you operate? alone, on the sole mission and what he say? john: when level was v.a. to bush. she gave a couple of his aides a test and he said if you were stranded on an enemy beach and there were guards he needed to take out. what weapon would you want to have with you? he walks around washington dc thinking about the weapon and he submits an answer which is

silence, fleshless pistol and they thought that's what you would need. that is one of the weapons that they create and it turned out to be useful. this pistol created during world war ii the messiah used it for several seconds. jeff where their silencers on weapons? john: yeah, the early months. 0 this is for janet and john. does your protagonist continue after the war and if not, how do they adapt going to civilian life? janet: after marguerite went to

russia where she was in prison 10 months. she went on to the far east and she was in japan where the japanese wanted her to spy on the chinese. the chinese wanted her to spy on the russians and the americans wanted her to spy on the japanese. in 1924, she was in persia where she made one of the first, silent film documentaries of the nomadic tribe and it was a death-defying trip across the highest mountains of persia and through goatskin barges, rapids. she continued for a while and like so many spies she just faded away. jeff a question over here?

>> thank you for your amazing stories. at home, i just finished my binge of the americas. it led me to think about, do either of these individuals, it seems like they were hiding in plain sight. were they ever exposed for what they were doing by the enemy? john: not so much. he worked under william donovan as head of the oss. the germans put out an article on donovan saying he is the spymaster. he knows all the stuff, unlimited funds.

he thought there spreading misinformation i don't have any of that. after lovell, he was not a well-known figure. not many people suspect what he was doing and if they did, he was working in the united states. he did not deploy abroad. he created people abroad with gadgets and disguises. if i can follow up on the last question about what happened to him after the work, he did continued this work in the way. he was a consultant to the cia after the oss. he was a consultant and recommended to allen dulles that they create a branch similar to the r&d branch in the ss.

he creates a technical services staff and that's the branch for cia to create gadgets. there is an interesting parallel at work. one of the scientists who had stopped branch is called sending gottlieb. end of heard of mk ultra, he ran that. our write his papers and was hoping to make a connection but they're doing similar things at different times is there a connection? in the archives, taking pictures of documents and take as many as i could before i had to leave so i didn't have time to sit there and focus on the documents. i was looking at these depositions of stanley gottlieb and then i saw his name stanley lovell. i was so excited i know

he is connected and i found what the connection was between world war ii veteran and mk ultra side to you have to find the book to find out. jeff: that is what we call a tease. look at this crowd. all of these people are up in the morning to talk about spy craft. >> question for the first woman spy. she was not acknowledged at all when she had approached the navy. the army took a risk on her. what were some of the early challenges that she had within the spy community in terms of the navy? it was all men, no women. then you have her becoming a spy

for another branch of the army. john: she was a part of society that was patrician, well bred, well educated northeast. she actually attended radcliffe and many of the men and intelligence went to harvard. she was at the same class and that gave her acceptance within the intelligence community. in all of the classes and papers

are read and it was a lot of gossip, i guess remarks going back and forth about her work and where she was what she was doing. how risky it was. how courageous it was or was too dangerous. nobody actually referred to agency in terms of her being a female. she was accepted but her work use her ability to engage with people from the highest echelons of society as well as hanging out of the bar and drinking beers. when she was in germany, her job

was to find out what was going on. no american's have been there during the war because it wasn't ranson belgium. we need to know if we find a peace agreement. how big was our military, economy, infrastructure that was her job to find out. she could be very close friends with the former german army officer and she could be friends with the average working person and that's how she got her information. it so happens that she also had to be joined secret societies on the right and left with socialist and within that group, somebody had a contact of the state department was a double agent.

and that is how she ended up in in lubyanca. jeff: there are similar plot twist that a lot of the hires within the oss were from wealthy families, millionaires, they could have been doing other things are nothing at all. john: one of the jokes about the oss is that it was composed of people who were pale, male, yell. there was a similar pedigree to a lot of these people. there were a lot of acquisitions against the oss who did not like the electorate but they felt it

was infringing on their turf so one of the jokes was that it stood for oh, so, social. another was that it handed out cellophane permission so you didn't get deployed and it kept the draft off. there was this social aspect to it as especially people made fun of donovan. he resented this and when they said that to him there was an admiral in the navy who mentioned this is a social club of people you're not doing anything so because of his friends and he tells them, break into his office and bring the documents. so they break into his office and safe plant dynamite and rushed to where he is on this dinner party. he walks to the admirable as it says here are the contacts and

there are some dynamite in your office. jeff: those are dirty tricks for you. >> i was hoping you read each other's books. i was wondering what you thought these two people who involved in the same adventure shared in common? john: even the topic of this panel is accidental spies. they were not the first person you would think of. a scientist in the dirty tricks department. in a female journalist towards the end of world war i but the more i thought about it i think there are similarities in that these are two people who you might suspect would go into this kind of thing. journalists, spies tend to use

journalism as a cover. journalists ask a lot of question. if your baker ask you about what lionel you're using for a missile it seems suspicious. a journalist is just asking questions. it's easier to use it as a cover for espionage and similar was scientists as well. this is prevalent around 1950 cia that was trying to recruit scientists and service spies because that's all they want to do is ask questions. is not weird if a scientist is asking you about an alloy it's expected. the problem they ran into is that they wanted to talk about their work so much they would get information and they're liable to give it away. jeff: reporters do that too. i have to be honest. janet: they were both patriotic.

they put their lives at risk to do this work. they believed in their country. and i think that's something. jeff: especially today. >> how large was the context of spies? how many were out there and how many individuals were in the oss at the time? janet: i don't know how many spies there were not a lot. we used attaches around the world. they were feeding information in

this dimension, marguerite was the only woman sent overseas. this is a small community. john: the oss became a large organization over time. there were thousands of personnel. not many of them were in this branch. the main component of the branches a dozen scientists at the congressional country club in the basement of the clubhouse. there were not that many scientists involved with the but one thing that he pioneered in a way it was to creating contracts to develop weapons. he would contract things to deliver to different

universities. it wasn't just the oss are being question. >> what captures the american fascination with spies so what got you interested in the idea? janet: i don't think there alone. think about the british. with the spies stories and novels. i think every country has his particular fascination. the russians were way ahead of the americans during world war i and developing secret ways of spying. they were the ones who invented using urine to write in

secret. john: there's a fascination with espionage, not particular to the united states. it is almost a detective story. i'm looking at archives, documents, make connections and find letters in the story of how the story is made itself is interesting. it's a similar thing to what's happening with espionage. it suspends, what is gonna happen? inherent in the plot of any spy book or novel is suspense, the thrill of the hunt. thus how you feel when you're doing research. it's more of a broader sense of people like being in suspense in

the story. it's exciting. >> you talked about her dull dinner with wasn't turtle? how do you have a dull dinner with winston churchill? was not part of spy craft or socio-station? janet: she married the right man and she knew winston churchill's american mother. he wanted to talk serious talk at dinner and she was a debutante and this was the point in her life where she wanted to have a good time. he had come back from the war, destroying parliament, he was interested in europe. it's just offer her. despite oxley's stepping on her

toes. -- despite actually stepping on her toe. >> i'm trying to process a dull dinner with churchill. what were the one or two threads that you just couldn't follow up on. what wakes up at night and you think, i would love to hear that. john: one of the chapters in the book is called the document division about the part of the r&d branch that was in charge of forging passports, tickets. there is a part of it the talks about secret writing with year-end, lemon juice. a lot of famous chemists working on this including linus pauling a two-time nobel prize winner. i could not find that many

documents on the creation of a secret writing technique so if i found the document to audits of the book it would be on secret writing because it's intriguing. we could only tell of the sources tell us and if i did not have the source i couldn't talk about it. janet: one of the things that i was inspired by his there's two kinds of intelligence, positive where you report on what's happening wherever you are. she was reporting on political, social, economical situation in germany. there is also negative intelligence which is counterintelligence and that is reporting on people who are trying to undermine our country.

that was a lot of what marguerite did in germany and russia. she was involved in trying to get an american cartoonist, one of the most popular at the time, into american hands. he was a socialist and she was told to track them down and pretend to be, do whatever she had to do because she had to get instructions. she had to pretend to be a radical supporter of bolshevism. it did not work out. she found information about him that they cannot use but the government let him go because his father a fraud.

she said that situation caused her great sorrow is for many years to come. that is where the double agent was involved. i would've loved to have had the specifics. it's very hard to find specific statements. they did not write them down. they had to be careful. jeff: one my question? >> a question related to something someone asked earlier about spies coming out. the code breakers and stories of women and world war ii are there more stories of women that did spy craft work in world war i? janet: i think there are

wonderful stories about world war i that will come out. if they come out about women it will be women working here and not overseas. but i'm sure they're great stories to be told. >> this is a question that's more about intelligence overall. i want to hear your take the consequences in the long run of intelligence? postsecond world war the u.s. was involved in a lot of coups, iran, hunters. which of the time were thought to be positive results but over the long run, we see the relationship with iran, nicaragua is doing that.

a lot of it has dirty tricks. we want to think about your ideas of the value of intelligence in general in the long run? john: intelligence is very helpful. and typically, there is an analysis portion of that. intelligence gathering and analysis. that's very useful to know about what her potential enemies doing. how many choose to they have, where are their initial stations? there are two aspects to the intelligence community and the second one developed very early in the history of the cia. the cia was created as an intelligence gathering mechanism.

it's a way to inform the president on what's going on in the world. very soon after 1947 the cia expanded its edits mo beyond that not just to be a intelligence gathering but covert operations. not just finding out what's going on but trying to influence what's going on. there are a lot more negative things to say about this operation. the intelligence gathering side is a necessary thing in the modern world. they're not just nefarious because they have bad results abroad but one of the things that they do if they're exposed and have seen immoral or unethical as devalue trust in the government. the fact we would do something like this, it leads us down the slippery slope. if they did not and of course they would still be doing that.

when i studied mk ultra. one of the typical things and people who are conspiracy theorist is why would the government perform this experience on people? they're obviously still doing them today. it's easy to use that as an example that if that happened eventually it's going on? it undermines trust in the government which is the worst things that these covert operations adept doing. >> i have a follow-up question. you set unethical covert operations. jeff: in the name of defending the country, is there a limit to what you should be doing? john: this is one of the central

question and thought i'm playing out in this book. it is focusing on dirty tricks. these are documents of perpetrators. what were you thinking when you did this? didn't you know the consequences would lead people to suffer? you can see the gears spending in people's minds thinking about why did we do that? they had justifications. is not that there unethical people because they want to see people suffer. that's really the case. very few people are just nefarious people. sidney gottlieb was a patriot in his mind if the soviets does our water with lsd should we know what the effects are going to be?

how will we find out what the effects are? why don't we do it on a small scale and see how people react. that if the city gets dosed with that we will know how to respond. in his mind he's doing something patriotic. i'm trying to prevent a catastrophe. there's a lot of rational justification so it's hard to walk the line between what is ethical and unethical? he thought what he was doing was ethical. he thought in the cold war, we are in a war. i'm just as justified doing it in the cold war. jeff: we have about five minutes left, one must question. >> do you expect her career in the stacks and you were recently with ai coming along how will that impact research? it's a one minute question.

janet: i don't think you could substitute human intelligence. the kind of work that marguerite allison did engaged in a personal relationship with people who have information that otherwise would not be gained. for example, the german former officers were plotting to go against any treaty that was signed and to create monarchy states, right wing states and prussia and in eastern after world war i. she saw on the streets people marching, army officers and uniforms, poison grade jackets and caps, next hi, nice hi

goose-stepping to stomp out the jews. this is what you need people to see and know about and know ai is going to do that. [applause] john: ai will play a role in what historians do with documents and more are digitized. until there digitized they have to go to the archive. when they are digitized it will enable ai or search algorithms define specific phrases, events and collate a bunch of information together from a bunch of different sources and archives that historians would never been able to go to on their own. hopefully it could be used to

aid historians and not try to write history themselves. i would like future where historians can talk about what happened in the past. it will be a big deal especially when documents get digitized. the fact i'll be able to be searched and until that day, someone needs to conduct an interview which is where we come in. [applause] jeff: the most perfect way we can end. this standing room only crowd. there is a lot of interest in your books. dirty tricks department and flirting with danger. thank you for your time. [applause]

>> you are watching for tv's live coverage of the 23rd annual national book festival in washington dc. there are book bags being passed out by book tv if you'd like to come down. grab a book bag. it's our 25th anniversary and we are glad you are with us. a full day of coverage ahead. that schedule is available on book tv.org. we went to introduce you to author our king russell. here is his book the arts between us. mr. russell, when and where did you play professional football? rk: i was drafted to the cowboys and went to the buccaneers. >> did you enjoy being out

football player? rk: help me overcome odds as a black man from a single home. >> birds to play college ball? rk: for the university. he was the first person in the football world you came out to. >> my college teammate. we met at purdue and were out all us with each other. i quickly realized he was the type of men i wanted to see. people who treated people kindly. he always open his heart and i was comfortable sharing my

identity with. he was gracious of his time. something normally who assumes would not be accepting of lgbtq people he was. >> will happened to joe? rk: he was diagnosed with stage iv cancer. i was with them when he found out any bout of this cancel -- cancer per year and then he passed. what has been your journey out of football? rk: it's been filled with ups and downs, hills and valleys. depression and grief from losing my best friend, anxiety and howdy my dignified -- identifying me in football.

from outside looking in there were times where i was playing against quarterbacks to play games and roy combs was not someone i wanted to see in the mirror. rk: the scariest part about hiding her identity and being in the closet and stop presenting truth. you not only battle things alone you put a wall up between you and people who committed to supporting you, loving you, going on this ride with you.

everything feels inconsistent because you're not being genuine. you cannot allow other people to love you if you're not first loving yourself. it creates a wall and block and block i did not realize that then but i do now. at the end of the day we can only control us. i go to sleep with myself every day and wake up with myself in the morning. i was a great team e and i need to be a great tea to myself. >> one thing you talk about in the book, you came out to espn before you told your mother. how did that happen? rk:. i get a little flock about that for my mom. i'm not come alive. writing has always mom truth. the most honest part of my representation of thought process. writing an essay was something i had to see first, put in my own

words and come to my own realizations. and then, i told my mom after i sent that emotion. i knew she would be gracious so he would get to the place we are now. her reaction was initially not that. there was a lot of shock and she felt surprised by it. not only that i was bisexual above that the world was going to know. i love the part of our story because anyone who reads my book filled know me and my mother are best friends. even though we have faltered any parent, any person can grow, learn, even if the first reaction is not perfect you could be the partner that supports a loved one and it's a journey. no one gets a perfectly right the first time. very few of us do. i'm glad my moments able to rebound and grow -- mom was able

to rebound and grow. >> this scene where you called your mother involves you in your kitchen in l.a. and a bottle of tequila. rk: there were dark moments in that journey. at the point i'd also met my partner cory o'brien was experiencing such highs that i never thought i would experience away from football. i was injured at the time and playing away from my best friend. there was a mix of joy and liberation but also guilt, these loans, these depressive moments. i remember hurting myself and moments in my kitchen and using alcohol to numb my pain. linkages have become a pivotal place for me and my journey and emotions. that was also the point where i

was no longer willing to struggle alone. i was no longer to hide my joy and happiness from other people. i was still not willing to commute my life to fit the stereotype of being a black man in america, football player or a man. i was going to support me and allow those to do the same. >> where and how were you raised? rk: i was raised in dallas. i was born in buffalo, new york. let there for six years. until my stepfather passed away my mother relocated us to dallas, texas. for me i consider dallas home because that is where i found football. that's where i found friendship, kinship and where i have a lot of the struggles that made me who i am today. encountering racism in a southern state. encountering football above the redo due to a person, going

through high school figuring out who i was as a person. i give buffalo credit because that is where i was born but dallas is where i grew up. >> in your book you talk about growing up and hiding part of yourself. the creative part, the poet part. rk: a lot of people, growing up you pick and choose the things you share based on validation and reaction and what people believe your value to be in that for me was never in writing. it was also very personal. the first letter i ever wrote was a letter to god about the passing of my stepfather. to help understand the young

people who are confused with being in living through grief. moving it's a black man in a southern state and realizing that a lot of times a defendant, be not a threat, intelligent. i broke stereotypes of what it meant to be black or from the single-family home. you pick and choose what you show people in writing was never one of those things i thought people would value for me and therefore, i love the perception to be viewed but it never went away. >> once you are identified as someone with a talent for football, do you get a signal attracted an early age? rk: in the states we love to specialize our kids early. football because it's physically demanding it becomes a lifestyle. that's the first thing i heard about a football player that you need to eat, breathe sleep football.

all decisions will you contribute or hurt you on the field. that is how you then view life. you view your own identity. my friendship, interest causes and costly cause. will a tough time to contribute to my team. a lot of people don't choose majors because they are prioritizing sport and it's a deadly balancing game because there is a different from sacrificing for what you love and who you are. >> there a story in the book. you are at purdue and friending people on facebook.

all of a sudden, what happens? rk: college is frustrating. it was the first time i was away from my mother and we were best friends. i was going through the ups and downs of a turbulent season that purdue. i struggled with injury and trying to gain weight and all the while realizing i had attractions. i was not just straight. i didn't know about bisexuality if i'm honest. it was presented to me as a transition or a gay individual who was afraid to say they were gay. there is so much misinformation. one day i think the loneliness and the ups and downs of the season. a call need to come back to someone in a way that was different than just about football. in a way that wasn't serving me

just on the field or win games or run faster. facebook and the internet felt like a safe place back then to have conversations and make connections outside of the public eye. >> let's hear from a couple of callers. you are on with author rk russell. caller: i'm a big fan of c-span listing for years before begin i just want to mention. i tried to get the 25th anniversary mug and had problems finding it on the website. i'm gonna drive up there because i'm such a fan. i've visited the library of congress. i have an id card in 2000 eight.

anyway, i listen to rk russell. i listen to his presentation, love the presentation. i loved him. i had a sister of with us. but lucille, she was gay. she was my best friend. she was somebody who is a huge influence in my life and i am just glad that he is speaking up and out about his life and his lifestyle and i was happy to hear what he had to say. and again, i'm glad the c-span is still with us and i hope to come in this year. i would love to come in d.c.. really glad to see you c-span. >> we will let him respond in a

second. the right people heard you about the mug and we will make sure that they get online a little more available and easily and if you want to even less we will send you a bag. book tv at c-span.org. rk russell, he talked about his sister. rk: thank you for sharing that story. i am so sorry for your loss. there is a need for representation for all plus people and representation of bipoc people. there is a need for representation for all of us because in secret, shaman mining these controversies they are connected to realize and protect real people that a lot of us are just trying to live in love and be happy and create joy in our lives and thus not up for discernment it's not a talking

point. thus on up to people who don't understand us. i just want to think your sister for letting me be who you are and letting love to be the principal factor in your life when talking about people. >> here is the book, the yards between us: a memoir. rk russell is the author. you think your publisher in this book as well. this is the first book by this publisher. rk: i am on the first lead of imprints. >> you will see a little more of him a little later live at the national book festival but right now, here is an author discussion on environmental activism. doug brinkley and david lenski.

i am delighted to see you here today. were so glad you're here to see her wonderful presentation this morning. i would ask you to turn off your cell phones we also want notify you that it will be recording it constitutes your consent to be

recorded. thank you very much. i am kevin butterfield. i'm one of the sponsors of this year's conference. the quinn be association helps us do our work. waukomis live on c-span. history is heating up climate change denial. his most recent book is silent spring revolution. david is the author of two new york times bestseller and our

moderator jen white is supposed of one in from w amu please join me in welcoming them. >> good morning everyone and thank you for coming out for this conversation. as you're listening i hope you will form your own questions because we will have time at the end of the panel you can step up to the mike and i will tell you and start the process. it's always exciting to speak to people as accomplished as david and douglas but more exciting when you get on phone call plan this conversation and their fans of each other's work. they were absolutely delighted to speak to one another. i wanted start this discussion by giving us a brief overview.

minus silent spring revolution. as the great environmental awakening and i previously had written about theater roosevelt and conservation called the wilderness warrior about the 200 million acres that were saved through national lands, parks, reserves -- reservations, the forest service. i consider that the first year -- first wave of environmentalists that i wrote about fdr's error who he was the tree planter. when he filled out a form he wrote tree farmer as a job. he was a scientific farmer. eleanor roosevelt said he knows

every flower, note, create any hudson river valley. and i can rattle off national parks. he created big bend on dd. the normandy invasion was going on. he created 800 state parks and planted the civilian conservation corps trees. the first two waves, the third wave is this book. it's about three presidents, no roosevelt. it happened after 1945, the atomic age. we started blowing up nuclear weapons in nevada. we detonated 1054 nuclear

weapons between 1946-1991. there became an anti-nuclear testing movement which rachel carson was a part of and many others. khairat asked scott king, norman cousins, albert schweitzer. under kennedy we stopped testing with nuclear weapons and made a deal with khrushchev in britain so we don't test those weapons. in my book i ended with kennedy who loved cape cod. point raise in california, padre island texas. he was trying to save shorelines before he was killed.

i deal with things like the first big clean air act of 1963. lyndon and lady bird johnson had a rancher's of conservations. lady bird was about beautification and anti-billboards and help save places like redford national forest. there is much more i can tell you about the job and the books in the mix and environmentalists. what is your walden pond? kennedy was hyannis, atlantic seaboard. johnson and the hill country of texas. nixon did not have one. it was not his thing, the environment.

but the public demanded clean air, clean water to the point that nixon was forced into his credit to create the national environmental act. which gave us like clean air act. he didn't want to but got it done. created the epa in 1970 and put a great woman, in charge of it who busted polluters. we are all meeting here at the book festival. it was 50 years ago that the endangered species act passed. we sent the bald ego, manatees, california condors, whooping cranes, alligators. alligators came back with a vengeance. 50 years ago we were successful

but without passed in 1973 92-0. it was that bipartisan because after silent spring came out and walt disney was showing how to protect wildlife and their movies and ralph nader and others were talking about consumer advocacy and had a group of environmental senators. linden johnson side the wilderness act because that we have millions of acres of protected land that roads will not penetrate to give species a place where they can replenish and survive with all of this helter-skelter of the industrial law that we seem to be helping out are propagating in north

america and destroying our scenic places. jennifer: explain the title. when you mention endangered species as a celebration of books it makes me anxious as a reader. one of the things that douglas was saying is should fdr been focusing on national parks on d-day? jennifer: he was the birdwatcher and fdr went to charlottesville and they did not want to give the media clue. so when he was out birdwatching that was the military approach. he kept whatever his days agenda was.

if you canceled it they would think something big was happening. he happened to have booked that day an appointment with eamon carter who grew sated in texas to save big band park and roosevelt wanted a park between mexico and the united states with the rio grande creating one big bio along the border. he said he was going through with his meetings to not give anyone an idea that there is something going on. david: my books are soft nixon comes in. when we were talking on the phone and it seem like you can think of our books as godfather one and godfather two. [laughter]

he is a fascinating purpose of love what doug was saying about what the environmental protection act showed that how our action as voters and people take polls. nixon did not care about the environment at all. the famous thing is when he went to the beach she wore a dress shoes. he would think i was showing too much skin if i was on the beach. he was forced to because everyone in the country really wanted their environment cleaned up. the year that he signed it as one of the bright moments in an otherwise dismal year. that same year, president nixon told executives from four that environmentalists what they want to do is go back and live leg dam, dirty animals. they wanted to destroy the system. since we want a air and water and sky he had to sign in as

president nixon's coast calling in today. but because we demanded it, he was known to improve more environmental legislation than any president in history. my book is about ironies like that. the quickest way to describe it is to say with the title is. in 1956, american climate scientists began speaking with american reporters and said we have been tracking an issue about carbon dioxide. there is a good chance it will begin to heat our atmosphere. one of the most prominent climate scientists gave it a year. he said around 50 years from 1956. it could have a violent reaction to the earth's climate.

this was covered in the times. the times said, in the far future, if carbon dioxide warming effect, the polar regions will change to tropical jungles where tyler -- tigers will run through the underbrush and paris will squat from the trees. we had an astonishing head start which is one of the stories i wanted to tell. in 2010, after the work of tremendously effective move musicians, people who decide what mood they want your opinions to play and find a way to make sure of that in your head. in 2010, one of the great senators built an igloo on the mall and see because there had been heavy snowfall. he put a sign on top that said

al gore's new home and "honk if you love global warming." the story my book tells is how we went from the parent to the say glue -- two that igloo. >> one of the things i am always curious about is when we look at history, what lessons can we take? david, give us a brief look at an example. david: listen to scientists. [applause] in 1977, the most famous warning came in the 70's and it is because -- pure get most famous

warning since the 70's, in 1979, the academy of national sciences did the first big report. it was 270 pages. around half the length of this. they said we have to start acting now and cannot wait until we are sure. because it takes a whole generation to change energy sources. for all practical purposes the die will be passed be cast -- will be cast. >> to your point, in the 1960's, they chose it. there was a motion that we

listen to the experts. there was a warning about pesticides being detrimental to your health. there was a warning about effects on animals and humans. kennedy was asked, what about rachel carson's article in the new yorker. he set i will put in an advisory panel. he came up with a pretty quick report that proved carson's research was accurate. yet, it took a decade to ban ddt . it was not until 1970 two. rachel carson dies of breast cancer in 19 60 four. there was a silent spring revolution. the big turning point was to convert the environmental wall in the 60's.

even as late as 1960 five and 1966, it was called conservation. environment started kicking in due to commoners and scientists using the term environments which took hold and ddt got banned by nixon in 1972. it is the people. we have to speak up. these reports are all there. i deal with them in my book like david. ravel in the 50's and the kennedy administration had a loose document going on around climate change. johnson in 1965 try to give a speech about it. he had medicaid and medicare and vietnam and civil rights so it got buried in the media.

i print, almost verbatim, a memo. does anyone remember daniel patrick moynihan? brilliant. he writes john ehrlichman, the domestic advisor for nixon, that he has done an investigation and scientists are saying we are in big trouble to admissions. in the letter, it says, what does this mean? it means goodbye. verdict unknown. in the white house. then, jimmy carter trying to put solar panels on the white house and get glory warts 40 -- get gl obal reports. the truth is, we failed. there is no climate hero president for the reasons david marks in his book.

the oil and gas petroleum industry started in 1973 with the arab oil embargo. gas prices went up and they had their own groups to start attacking environmentalists. in the famous powell memo, they said it would take 30 years to undo all the wind from environmentalists in the early 60's and 70's. if you are a mining company, you do not want to be regulated. you don't want the federal government. this movement in the 60's, as david brower said, not only did they win, they had fun. they put dams in the grand canyon and the environment national monument. william douglas, supreme court justice, hides 106 -- 156 miles to stop a highway from coming in.

win after win after win. but in 1973 and certainly by 1980, the revolution kicks in. now if you are an environmentalist, you are seen as a democrat and vilified by republicans. republicans are seen as captains of the oil and gas industry, and new foundations that were born like the federalist society, cato institute, and heritage foundation, whose goal it was to undo rachel carsonism. >> it makes the wonder what you discovered about how the american public viewed the government's role in addressing global warming. whether our protection of the role the government should play changed? david: it did not which i find

reassuring. it is a story that is all irony. i always left it to doug. how odd that republicans are seeing this way. what a terrible ministry they would be seen as working with the also fuel industry and help continue to make profits. [laughter] it is mystifying. the game has been to make us change our minds like what doug was saying. was it was clear as the people demand that we get environmental regulations so even, then governor reagan, who have such a room effect. hope i am not -- offending anybody who that report. in 1967 or 1968, he said if you

have seen one redwood, you have seen them all. but then, we had a motherhood issue, the idea being, who is against motherhood? as governor reagan was saying, we need an all out war to stop the debunking -- the debauchery of the american government. when his administration saw this , those human beings who resemble a ir saying, here is the best way to see it -- do it -- who resemble ai were saying, here is the best way to do it. then in 1997 after a first international climate warning protocol, when they said, it is not fair. china will have -- will not have to kick in.

russia will not have to kick in. it is not global, it will not work. they pulled americans and 65% said we want to control our carbon dioxide a matter what other nations do. then after and other tenures of the fight when the ipcc says, just like scientist told you in 1956 and 1979, this is what is happening. across the board, republicans and democrats all wanted action to be taken, because everyone have to go outside, even if it is just to get in your car. it is something that unites everybody. the astonishing action done by people and their fossil fuels was just a stand in the way of our opinion. douglas: sometimes environmental

and natural disasters wake people up. as we are here this afternoon, our hearts go out to maui, hawaii and 80 dead. it is the largest disaster in history and we can almost feel more of these coming. you can just feel it. the reason we had an epa in 1970 was the santa barbara oil spill. in color, in your living rooms, for the first time, you were seeing in paradise. tar and goo. nixon first minimize it. his first instinct was it was not that big a deal that he listened to his interior secretary, went to the ground in -- who went to the ground in santa barbara and said, do not minimize it. it is bad.

plus, we have only been in office for seven days. plan -- blame it on johnson. [laughter] but then the rivers were on fire and then gaylord nelson, a senator from wisconsin who saved 22 beautiful islands in wisconsin, and did so much work, came up with the idea on the first day. then nixon started planning out earth day. but he was suspicious because at every college campus, there is an earth day office. nixon asked the important question, who is paying for this? how did he spring up on every college campus? where is the money coming from? he got a big bill. april 22, richard, from united automobile workers because there was a green labor alliance.

his view was working people may not be able to go to yosemite or yellowstone. they will be living in flint, michigan or somewhere and need clean areas, clean fish, clean picnic areas. that is why he was talking about environmental justice issues. in american history, we take our industrial debris or toxins or poisons and dump them into neighborhoods of color. you get cancerous clusters and spikes. in the 1960's, you start seeing the birth of the environmental justice movements with people like cesar chavez and where to -- and huertta -- huerta. mexican american children walking -- working in field. dr. king getting killed. drinking said what good does it

do to integrate a lunch counter like greensboro, north carolina if the book we are drinking has something bad in it. the environment has to grow to become seen as a civil-rights issue. andy said he looked at the montgomery bus boycott as an environmental issue. the black diesel of the buses in hot day in alabama was coming through the back. that is not where you want to sit because of the air. so there was a linkage to it. john lewis, one of the leaders in the environmental justice movement in the 60's also in the 80's, pushed through this issue to clinton. he started addressing, how do we do mediation -- remediation and cleanup and help, not poison

lower income people, whether they are latino, native american , living around uranium mines, or black americans in urban centers where local neighborhoods are becoming dump stones. jenn: i am a detroit native and was in flint, michigan during the water crisis. i lived through and watched the results of the industrial dumping. years and decades after the automotive industry have left flint, the effects still remain. when we look at the overarching history of environmental movements, have there been missed opportunities? have there been people who were left behind or had we had parties come together, we might have been able to maintain policies? david: i just had a memory.

hearing him speak. [laughter] -- [applause] there were huge missed opportunities. one funny when i forgot when i was researching was in 1977, there was a huge fight to try to get the first global treaty where europe, australia, and the u.s. would all regulate their carbon dioxide. it took so long to get people to that meeting at the rio summit in 1991 and 1992. it would be the center piece that president clinton and president gore would run on. president clinton, after it passed at the 11th hour, the delegates were out at tables. it was right down to the last minute. when it was forwarded for

adoption, these hardened diplomats were applied in curing it came. -- were applauding. then it came down to america because america wanted to take the lead on things. so president clinton was giving interviews to the times, saying it would take a huge amount of presidential energy and focus but we can get this done. then 17 or 18 days later, there was a report about an error president clinton had been making for a long amount of time with monica lewin ski -- lewinsky. that became a very different use of presidential energy. keeping moments like that throughout -- there cap to being moments like this throughout. in 1979, the national academy of

scientist was asked, give us robust opinion, will this happen? they only needed five days. they said the jury will bring back a quick verdict. they said this will be comforting to scientists but disturbing to policymakers. if the carbon dioxide release continues, this panel finds the reason to believe climate changes will not occur and will not be inevitable. when scientists went to brief lawmakers about this -- and this is how this city works and is a weakness in a way we have as people, as lawmakers asked scientists, when will these changes occur? these scientists said, give or take 40 years. the policymaker said, get back to us in 39. jenn: it makes me wonder,

douglas, what are the conditions under which presidents are more likely to include major environmental change in their agenda? or conditions that makes the back off that? douglas: that is a great question. some of you maybe remember the great naturalist e.o. wilson, brilliant. he talked about biophilic people. people that love nature and the natural world. people who need a cat or dog or wildlife around them, or they are not fully complete. he said others do not care about this issue. we have had only 1 -- igor roosevelt said, we would put natural resource management protection of america, the beautiful, as the top national

priority. that is how we got so much done because he prioritized it. presidents often only get one or two things they can be really big on. he thankfully did that and fdr elevated that. no one mentions those two had a love of the natural world and wanted to know everything about it, like those. president obama, who did the affordable care act, was he got that big, significant thing, there was no gas left in the tank for climate. as your book pointed out. david: what he said was, i think the dolphins will be ok for another year. douglas: it is how you

prioritize. most people would like to see beautiful water. but the politicized nation is frightening. jenn: what about the economy because we are talking about inflation and interest rates. how does this feel in the political agenda? >> one of the affirmations people in the environmental movement have is no important environmental legislation has ever been passed during bad economic times. it is just like if you have a downturn at kitchen table, you will get rid of netflix or get hulu with ads. [laughter] one of the things we do is, the dolphins will be ok for another year. we can make fun of the government for making that choice but that is the choice we tend to make too. one of the things about this issue is, in 1977 and 1979, when

the signs deadwood tour was during a terrible industry -- energy -- when the signs did mature was during a terrible energy crisis. rachel carson, who is a big figure in my book, worked for u.s. fish and wildlife. she wrote three extraordinary books about the cd. if you have not read rachel carson on the oceans, you must. her home is in silver spring, maryland. they are turning it into a park. she started getting information about ddt and pesticides that got relit. no one ever regulated it. they were spraying crops with chemicals. for example, jimmy carter, who is on hospice right now, and whose birthday is october 1 and

he will be 99, everyone in his family died of pancreatic cancer. his mother, father, sister gloria, sister ruth, rather billy. he had left to go to the navy but in that part of the county, they were spraying that. so a cluster belt of people that died from pancreatic cancer. so rachel carson enters the battle because of a woman named marjorie spock. does anyone remember dr. benjamin spock? the baby doctor? this was his sister and she owned a piece of land. the usda were blanket spraying all the crops but she was an organic farmer. she was ahead of her time. she said, i want organic produce . she sues and it went all the way to the supreme court.

that my rights were being taken away from me. she loses but in the supreme court, william douglas writes a dissent that gets published. douglas started to push what he called a wilderness bill of rights that we all have a god-given right cleaned built -- air and water. and that should be built into our system. for a while, in the 1960's, it looked like it would happen. but then the opportunity missed and we now live in a country where there are pockets are poisoned and others that are not, instead of it being a guaranteed fundamental birth right. jenn: in our early conversations, we were planning this panel, i was surprised to hear from you david about

polling of where americans are right now when it comes to global warming and the effectiveness of this information. you shared it is not that people do not believe global warming is not real, but there is another element at play in how we are processing this. david: there was a great editorial. you guys read paul krugman? you guys did me to tell you a noble waiting -- nobel-winning columnist needs to be worth reading? [laughter] he said even people who know, they say the other side cares about the climate, so i hope it gets hotter. and i do not like snow anyway. one of the fascinating things about denialism's it was never

designed to win the argument. the people who became climate deniers were trained by tobacco to learn how to attack scientific studies. it was the same for tobacco. they knew they would lose, if they could delay this for 10 or 20 years, they knew they had 10 or 20 years to continue to make money. for this issue, you did have people that believe the deniers. that is gone now. you control people 16 times or 32 times but when you get to 33 or 34 and we have a summer like the last couple, they will say, scientists were right. but then they will say, i still don't want to do anything. we are on the phone, one of the ways climate deniers would apply the issue and turn it around was a guy like patrick michaels who

would complain to cn and you do not put enough skeptics on the air. finally, cnn said who is the scientist we have most often talking about climate change on here? it was patrick michaels. he would go to small towns like in maine and try to get people to not actually care about the climate. he would say, forget all the science. they really want to take money you earned and give it to people who don't aren't it. douglas: this was incredible in david's book and why you need to read it. america, i was worried the climate denying pastors are not going to pay for it -- denying bastards were not going to pay

for it in history. his book nails them. when you read his book, there is no way of escaping the idiocy. the lying and being corporate captives. it is a bunch of buffoons that gave birth to this climate denial movement. i think david is right. you cannot deny it anymore, but now they say, so what? what can we do? the age of denial is over. but his book keeps it so people will realize used to have such bad faith citizens and politicians that were willing to go build the igloo. jenn: what do we do about the "what about it-ism?"

people say, there is nothing i can do about it individually to make a difference. to pause and say, do you have questions for our panel, we have 15 minutes left. so please make your way to the microphones. but what do we do about that? >> i don't want to say anything else because it can just lower you and your estimation. anything i say will just make me sound less smart. i really expect a climate scientist named katherine heigl. the question is, what do we do? i thought i would read her prescription. she says, "when it comes to climate action, individual changes matter but systemic change is key. the most successful thing we can do is advocate for change where we work, live.

" do i have time for a story? do you remember the "keep america beautiful" add with the first people? is walking in buckskin beside a highway and people are throwing fast food out the window? maybe they did not get the right order in the drive-thru but they are just tossing garbage out the window and it falls at the feet of an indian, as they referred to him in the 1970's. people have done studies that this was the most famous tier visibly. it has been seen something like five or 6 billion times. it made my generation conscious

of environment and letter. the actual thing it was being paid for was "keep america beautiful," which was funded by the beverage and packing industry. funded by the people who make the bottles for pepsi and cans for coke. they were anxious in the early 70's about recycling which would cost them money. the slogan of that ad, which seems very thrilling to us was, people can stop this. but what they were really saying is, you have to do it, we will not do any rank. an ever they say we need to take independent action, it is a way for them to dodge action. [applause] and to be actor was sicilian. he was just a hired actor.

jenn: i want to make sure we can get to as many questions as possible so we will ping-pong back and forth. >> thank you so much for this amazing conversation. you are brilliant and i look forward to reading your work. what are your thoughts on the montana youth that try to sue over climate change, and you think that approach is a worthwhile one? >> professor james hampson, who i think is a great hero. it was an honor to tell his story. he thinks that is one great way. when democrats came back into power and until president biden, they did not make lasting change. he began to think the only way to be effective on this issue was through the courts. so yes, absolutely. jenn: next question. >> you talked about the economy

and climate being seen as separate issues for a lot of politicians, especially with the obama example and idea that the dolphins can wait, but first we need to help people with health care. how about this focus on conservation and saving nature, and now i feel like a lot of climate movements as a shift to focus on people's lives and how we are all in peril because of it? especially with climate change in the culture wars. i was wondering, do you think that, going forward, there will be a suit for politicians and getting policy done in shifting toward talking about economic issues also as climate issues? and if the health care costs that come with climate issues and reviewed -- rebuilding a city after natural disasters.

do you think there is a pathway forward where it is not just seen as a liberal "save the trees" thing but also as economic equality? douglas: was a great question. the best question you could have asked. in the sense that a lot of our solutions will come through innovation, finding new technologies. up in rhode island with the biggest offshore wind farm, and what we are doing with solar, and new experiments with hydrogen fuel cells. it is a very robust way and we will have to be as environmentalist -- climate activists argue the money imperative. that we cannot keep going the way we are going. that we have to keep rebuilding city after city. burning, dislocation and global costs. it is always good to make the

leap and connect it. i think that is the hope for california. but when you are 20 or 30, you will not be able to get fossil fuel fill up in that country. what does this mean? it means ford and gm are starting to amp up. that is a big market in california. they don't have to sell electric cars. they are not wedded to the natural world. i find hopeful things going on. reminding people of economics of the smart business, the future, and american leadership. also, very quickly, i tell young people to not get depressed. it is pretty hard.

do not become a climate activists. we do not need moody, sour, dark young people will. talk about how we can save the planet. join groups, have fun saving earth. you don't have the time to get into major environmental science or environmental -- if you don't have the time to get into major environmental science, great. but trying to get better air quality standards in their state. there is so much to do. if you join something and get engaged, we are going to grow. there will be so many citizens and there will be a moment that i am calling the fourth wave. it will kick in. the one thing of baby boomers have done well -- we deserve to be criticized, but we did get the terms ecology, and environmental science, and

environmental law going. i don't know a university that is not prioritizing the environment and looking at green building standards. we are getting there. but as americans, we like things quickly, particularly with our iphones. we are eager to get out of the industrial revolution and moved to the green. it is taking time. you have to be in it for the long haul. to just love the planet and earned so much and fight for it in exciting ways. be excited. no depression, no psychological meltdowns. i know it gets horrible. i get watching hawaii. i do. but i do not want to be a teacher saying, we are doomed, the plant is disappearing, the book of revelations is true. what good will that do? jenn: a couple more questions.

>> i don't know how brilliant is, but i'm struck by her passion and i'm curious, at what age and window to get interested in the environment? douglas: my father just died a couple months ago, but my mother and father were teachers. we have the luxury of having a trailer and got to visit national parks and state parks and go camping around our beautiful country. i fell in love with the badlands of north dakota and the redwood forests and the mojave desert. my whole life became american preservation and conservation. it is what i love. i/o it to my mother and father in those travels. i did one of those things to the new york times where they asked, who would i like to go to dinner with?

that is a daunting question. what writers would you most like to have a dinner with? i thought hard and by first choice is henry david thoreau. i just loved his book and cape cod and the woods. then i added rachel carson, who i have loved her thinking so much and charles goldwyn -- charles darwin, to show good writing can be messed with exploration. jenn: david, your background? david: i thought you were going to ask about the dinner. [laughter] i don't know. have lost relatives recently so the first thing i would do is just be with people who passed. i father passed during covid so i would probably have dinner with him. but i would like to sit down with roger ravel and say, you are exactly right. 50 years and it was 50 years.

what got me into the environment? i cannot believe we got this screwed up. i wanted to tell the story so nothing like this would happen again. we had an incredible history and we did not act. that seemed like a story worth telling because there is so many great things we do as a people, that sometimes we do not always pay the bills we do not like paying on time. this was a great way to remind people. jenn: time for one more question. >> you talk about the political battle between republicans and democrats, but there is also the context of the urban/rural divide. a lot of rural communities to rely on natural resources and fossil fuels to keep the going. how can we have conversations are productive that lead to

fundamental lasting change? jenn: i would like to hear from both of you and we have a couple minutes left. douglas: if i go to toledo, ohio and talk to an audience of largely donald trump supporters and avoid using the word environment, and instead say, don't we all want lake erie clean? yes. that we all want to fish the river again? yes. but if i say the word environment, they think you are stalking horse for liberalism. they might want -- what you say it once. but you can feel their rigidness. if you start saying climate change or environment, they are out. i see it as a big democrat on the side. some of it is the way we talk to each other. sorry, i keep thinking and wanting to mention writers but

read wendell berry. a librarian. his vision was, you go back to a small town. you see intellectuals in new york and los angeles go back to ohio and indiana. work in the community and build trust on environmental issues. so what sustainable farming is like. it is hard to do what barry is suggesting, but it is beautiful to read his thinking. he is one of my favorite writers alive. jenn: david, quickly. david: sure. just because douglas was talking about writers, it was so well known by mid century. you know the novel "alita," that came out in 1950 five but was

written in the 1940's? he sent them to the arctic to research climate change. that is how long the science has been with us. writers have always been a great way to chart the progress. the three of us had a great conversation about environmental justice. i would flip your question and look at it from the point of view of people in the cities. one thing that made me really anxious is this divide we have seen already. doug wrote about it beautifully in "silent spring revolution." people with money will be able to, if we continue down the road of painfully heating landscapes, people will be able to leave. money will offer comfort from the immediate discomfort of

climate change. that will be something that. jenn: david, author of "the parent and the a clue.". douglas, "silent spring revolution." new [applause]

>> thank you for joining book tv for our live coverage of the 23rd annual national book festival will. it is at a convention center in downtown d.c.. people can attend sessions and get their books signed by authors attending. a little under 100 authors are here today for this festival. it is the 25th anniversary of book tv. we are proud to have partnered with the library of congress. the next author discussion will begin in about 15 minutes. in the meantime, charles is joining us on our set. with his book "road prosecutors -- "rogue prosecutors," so how

do you do find that? charles: not just those we disagree with but someone separately funded by political action committees, by george soros or others, in that orbit. there is around 75 around the country. i mean 60% or 70% or 80% of the money they have came directly from those pacs. >> a couple things you look at in your book include larry krasner, philadelphia, kim fox in chicago. if voters did not want them in office, they would not be in office, when they? >> that is right. this is a movement that began in 2016 to convince people they

needed to reimagine the criminal justice system. the voters bought into that. i think we are all for criminal justice reform. but what happened is voters in these mainly blue cities have voted people into office. you win the primary, you pretty much win the general election. you see voters in san francisco reject there is a year ago because of his pro-criminal policies. you see kim gardner in st. louis and others resign in disgrace. you see marilyn mosby in baltimore lose her primary. what is the common thread? crime exploded in their cities. the people who voted for these people decided this is a mistake because we all deserve our public safety privilege. that is how these people get voted out of office. peter: i'm curious with your

view of a road prosecutor -- o ogue prosecutor. charles: they refused to investigate almost all up -- specific levels of crime. they don't send any juveniles, especially violent juveniles, to court. let people out the day they are arrested. they will not allow you to charge multiple crimes. they are linked to focus on one charge only, even though they may have committed multiple crimes. the list goes on and on. we detail them excruciatingly carefully in the book. when you extend the signal to people in your city that we will not prosecute these crimes, people will commit more crimes. that is what is happening. peter: what do you think the motives are of george soros prosecuting this? charles: i don't know if george

soros those what is happening but the movement knows. they are bold and brave about telling people exactly what they believe. they believe the entire criminal justice system is systematically racist and the only way to change this is to dismantle and reverse engineer the criminal justice system as we know it. i have been a judge, defense attorney and prosecutor. you want to harm charge an ethical prosecutor against a hard charge greater defense attorney and neutral judge try in front of a jury of peers. but they are replacing prosecutors with pro criminal people. peter: when you hear the term systemic racism, what does that mean? charles: it means they believe, as it is a sincere belief -- a lot of people on the left believe a pro-criminal soros

-backed thing. they believe because we had sin of slavery in our country that we still live under the negative impacts of that, and that prisons today are modern-day slavery limitations. those are their words, not mine. they believe if you sentence a criminal, especially an african-american, that you are resentencing them to slavery. mind you, there is the criminal justice system in the country. there is 18,000 police departments, and many jails. you will see differences in different counties in the same state. so there are systems. peter: in your view, is there any legitimacy to their argument?

charles: i think there is if it was 50 years ago or 40 years ago by two not think there is any legitimacy at all. if there racist? yes, black, white, brown. is there issues in the justice system? yes, but it is people and the system itself is not racist. peter: one of the things you big -- bring out in your book as more people are killed in chicago in one or two years they were killed in afghanistan in 20 years. charles: it is sad. if you look at certain subsections of the city, it is more dangerous to be on the streets of chicago at any given weekend then it was at the height of the war in afghanistan. it is literally a war zone. it did not have to happen because crime rates have been going down for 30 years and

incarcerations down since 2008. the negative impact of these programmer policies are killing black and brown people by the score. they are telling the very people they claim to care most about. peter: that is one of the things you argue. that these rogue prosecutors are victimizing minorities. charles: and that is why they have been voted out of office in san francisco. i think that is the reason kim fox announced she will not run for reelection because chicago is a war zone. philadelphia. one of the things we trace in this book is we looked at the five-year average of crimes before these prosecutors were elected in 2016, 2017 and 2018, before the pandemic. then we look at their time in office.

crimes have exploded. murderers, carjackings, board. they did not go up infinite simile, they quadrupled -- infinitesimally, they quadrupled. peter: can carjackings affect the amount of murders? charles: absolutely. the ingenious is they realize it is the d.a.. the da's the criminal justice keeper. not the mayor or the city council. not the governor. she and she alone decides who gets prosecuted and who does not. who has held accountable and who does not. before larry krasner came to office, people were being held accountable for crimes. before he came to office, people who were felons and caught with guns -- a big problem in a lot of cities, were held accountable

and prosecuted. larry krasner stated publicly that if you are caught as a felon with a gun, it is not a crime. peter: charles stimson, a tweet. "is there a place to go that lists these prosecutors? or what is the best way to go -- place to go to find these prosecutors before voting for them?" this is not a left or right they are red versus blue thing. it is a democrat versus the -- it is a person thing. i hope he and others buy the book because we identify them in our book. we also identified the language

and the pull test and phrases this movement uses. to explain how if you want to figure out who to vote for, to make sure you get a line order prosecutor, because we do not care if they are democrat or republican. there are terrific democratic prosecutors. read their statements. peter: charles stimson served as a navy jack officer for 30 years and served for the district of columbia during the george bush administration. charles: the george w. bush administration. peter: and is currently with the heritage foundation. in farmington, ohio. diane. caller: i am a 70-year-old white woman and i see prejudice every day still.

even as you were saying in the legal field. it is prominent still. in the state of ohio, we have a lots of white supremacists and no one is working on that. they are working more on the carjackings. yes, that is not good. but this white supremacy is even worse. thank you. peter: what is your response? charles: i agree that white supremacy or any ethics supremacy is despicable. but it is fortunately a very small minority of people. my point throughout the book is if you look at the criminal rules and procedures and look at the supreme court and state supreme court decisions, which have eradicated the illegal use of race and past practices that

were despicable, especially in the software they punished black people often times for no reason, that is not still exist around the country. that is why i said there are racists. but fortunately, it is not big into the criminal justice system. a lot of discussion about cash bonds, what -- peter: a lot of discussion about cash bonds. why does it matter? charles: when someone commits a violent crime, you have to have some way of not allowing them to go back into the community without some safety precaution. cash bail or cash bond is a way of saying, if you have committed a violent crime, and you do not have a past criminal record, but we want to ensure you show up for your next court date, you have to put 10% of $50,000 or

$100,000. if you cannot, you will have to remain in jail until trial. some states have eliminated cash bond or send you cannot even take into account the past dangers or criminal record of past felons. new york has done that. cash bail where bond is a good idea. a long time ago, cash bond was used in a discriminatory way based on a persons color of their skin which is very wrong. that is why we have built schedules, it says if you are charged with this crime, regardless of your race, you would get this cash bail if you get charged this, you get this cash bail you have to post 10% of the bond next call is thomas in houston, good afternoon, welcome to book tv. caller: listen, i believe in

argon deaths -- for gun deaths in our children, we are part of the minor crimes, and we are keeping them in jail, like you said with a cash bond, they cannot afford the money, they stay in jail for months, overcrowded jails are ready, and they lose their jobs. then what? peter: people use guns for crimes. charles: easiest way to get way of gun crimes is to prosecute them when they use a gun or prosecute felons in position of a handgun, we have a violent crime problem in this country. we had more murders last year than all of western europe and japan combined. most do not serve a day in

prison, 90% of rapists and assaulters do not serve a day in prison. peter: he is the author of this book, rogue prosecutors, how radical lawyers are destroying america's communities, we appreciate you spending a few minutes on book tv. our coverage of the national book festival continues, is a short interview with a former pro football player, here is a longer session with him, live. ♪ ♪ >> good afternoon and welcome to the national book festival, a

place where everyone has a story. i am beatrice, i am the author of the library of congress, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you here today. at this time i ask you to turn off or assign off of your devices or cell phones. if you need to lead the presence -- if you need to leave, the entrance is behind you. this event is recorded, your presence is consent to be recorded. enjoy the program. ♪ [applause] >> i am the director of the library of congress, my great pleasure to introduce today's speakers. one of the sponsor this year's festival, we are proud to bring america's writers here to join us.

we have individuals who study extensively and produce great works at the international book festival. welcome to everyone joining us live on c-span, we are part to partner with c-span for today's event. our next program figures -- features rk russell, he made history by coming out, the first nfl player to a dinner bisexual, his book is a memoir of life, love, and football. dean is the chief communications officer in the library of congress. join me in welcoming them. [applause] >> thank you. i finished your book this week and it is such a beautiful man memoir. it is a love letter to the relationships in your life, your mother, i think especially the men in your life.

her stepfather, your biological father, -- your stepfather, your biological father, and all of your teammates. how did your relationships with these men impact you? rk: my identity here on this earth, it is very much a culmination of all of these people, my stepfather for example, i lost about a young age but his messages rang true to me today, the character of a man is not how big you are or how strong you are, or how intimidating you are, of your work -- is that it is your work out your character, being dependable and accountable. my childhood friend who i consider a brother now, he has tommy resilience and he has

survived a been -- survived being abandoned. he has tommy me about morality and seeking out to be a change in people, to be a light and something that people can lean on, by biological father was not in my life, example of things may be not to do, the false steps we can all take as you've met and the heartache and the importance of healing from that, so you do not continue those cycles. all of these men, teammates as well have taught me about the things that it truly means to be a man and those things have nothing to do with sexuality or how much money you make or how big you are being a football player and being that, it is how you affect people, show's up in people's's lives -- show up in people's lives. roswell: you talk about the. struggles you had when you were a young man. how did you get through that?

who did you lean on to make sure you could get through it? r.k.: my mother, first and foremost, it is funny because i do talk a lot about the men in my life but. the one constant is my mother. she is my best friend. there are no limits of what you can do as a person in this world, she had me at a young age, my mother got pregnant and 19 and had me at 20, as a single, black mother in america. she heard about all of the things she could not do, the statistics we fell into and she exceeded all of them. she was never too woman for something, she got her masters while raising me, it was always my life to even when i was drafted, the first thing i did

was move my mother in with me, she would be the foundation, she would be that rock for me. the most about being a man also from a woman, and i think that is pivotal because also as men we exist with the multiplicity of people, women and nondairy people and we need to understand how we fit into these molds, break these molds, and how to uplift each other. roswell: you mentioned that e-sports has given me a lifeline, do you mind if i read? a part from your book? football was how i found space and peace in high school, how i obtained a scholarship to a top university, attracted most of my love interests, football and so i made friendships that became brotherhoods and when no one else wanted me, football was home. r.k.: there is so much of my identity from football, a lot of it to my benefit, some to my detriment, growing up in texas,

it is a pivotal part of culture there. i was in his family, faith, and football. my family did not look like other people's, i did not attend church regularly like others did, football was something that proceeded all of those things when they saw me in something that, as the outside world forgets about you, i was beginning to do the same, i've tried to tell young athletes at all people in general that of course it is ok to sacrifice to achieve your dreams and succeed in the profession and interests and the creative hobbies or activities that you love but it was it is never ok to sacrifice yourself. that is the line but your walking with football, it has become so obsessive in your life, as much as i love football, with mentors and the male figures and coaches and family and purpose and education, i let it take things

from me. my love for self, my individuality, capability to challenge the things i was told about being a man or being a black man in america, i let it encompass all of me. it is ok for it to be a huge part but football is not all that i am and it took me a long time to unlearn that. roswell: he received a scholarship for do, you in their football team, if you do not know what redshirts are, could you explain what they are and what did it teach you? what life lessons did it teach you? r.k.: it is when you commit to a college or go to a college to play on their team but for whatever reason you have to sit out, for me it was because i was undersized, i was tall and athletic and i was small to be a defensive end. it is a coach telling me that i needed to go work out and eat and get bigger if i wanted to play in the league. which i agreed, i did do!

there are benefits, you get to learn the game and get around the college athletes and teammates and the in those practices going against big ten starters, all american, things of that major. -- nature. you get to prepare and compete and you still get four years to play after that which is amazing. it also comes with hardships, i moved from texas to west lafayette, indiana to play football and for a year i was told to be in the building but not on the field and that is not good for your confidence. you know the sacrifices are made to be there and it comes with its own unique challenges. roswell: my favorite part of the book is when your mother surprised you for your birthday, you drove around and landed at where the cowboys played, it was your first nfl game. r.k.: the dallas cowboys versus the philadelphia eagles! i'm not sure if they are cowboys

fans or eagles fans! it went full-circle, a few years later you get a call from jerry jones when you are drafted to the nfl. roswell: what was going through your mind? r.k.: they better call soon! i was stressing! [laughter] it is amazing, baffle soaker moment -- that full circle moment. a mother was with me on my journey, although i played football there was such a disconnect from me out of the nfl, these are people who are larger-than-life, playing on the tv screens and i assumed everything that they did was something that i could not achieve are not aspire, it was not in my realm of thinking, but going to see that game and seeing the huge men were still playing on the 100 garfield i was going on, the tame -- the same kind of field i was playing on, the same kind of ball i was playing with.

i hear jerry jones with his thick country accent see my name, it is validating. i sacrificed so much to be a football player and achieved the dream by being drafted than most people never achieve in their life. -- that most people never achieve and their life. by then it is time to go to work, time to capitalize on all of the things you have done to this point. college was where i was starting to understand i was not straight, my sexuality whether it was gay or bisexual, i did not have a lot of information about my sexuality at the time, whatever it was, i was not straight and that was another thing i put under the box sacrifices. in getting drafted, invalidated that, i'm glad i did not have a boyfriend or become open about my sexuality because i made it to this point. what people do not realize is once -- roswell: when people do not realize is there is a lot of

work, aside from physically, mental work that needs to happen too because you never know if you are going to get re-signed, if you are staying with the team, if you get injured. how is it going from the cowboys to the buccaneers? r.k.: at first it was devastating, the cowboys were my hometown team, they drafted me, there is pride you want to fulfill that. we all want to be like jason witten and play there forever and retire there. he ended up going somewhere else! you want to be that figure to be on your team, you want to exceed those expectations and getting cut from the dallas cowboys was my moment of physically -- basically, i messed up. i went to try out for the jazz, the patriots, and each trial i

thought a bit of myself being chipped away, to go to tampa bay and have in my opinion the least best workout, to be in humidity and drenched in sweat, they say we will give you a chance, it was a glimmer of hope i needed to get into second gear, i also remember that there is no more funny business to my life, i'm not hanging out with friends as much, i'm not going to be the hometown hero anymore, i'm not going to date, i'm going to focus on football. life is a funny way of saying as soon as you should all of these doors, they will show you the broader picture. what happened to me. roswell: when you were in tampa, something really big happened in football, this is one: cap her neck kneeled during the national anthem, the nation notice what was happening with the nfl. tell me what was happening behind the scene, how are players deciding if they needed to kneel?

it seemed like an easy decision to do it, but what were the factors of being weighed on? r.k.: in the nfl people have a perception of what it is, but honestly, we really do talk football or talk sports in general most of the time, guys share that they have more moments but we are there, some of us are almost there 12 hours a day's prickly for football, we went into a discussion any such a large scale something so much more. -- in such a large scale on something so much more. there was executive and coaches who do not understand, the first time that owners of the buccaneers came to speak with all of the teams, to come up with what i or they believed to be solutions or to address the problems but also to figure out how we could get all of the players to stand for the anthem and support the game of football

in what was presented. it was a bit of a massive, i have to be honest. roswell: you struggled a bit too? r.k.: it means so much to so many people, the anthem. police brutality and social injustice were things that affected everyone that i know, it affects all of us whether we are people of color or not. i have family in the military, my brother is in the army, my dad was in the air force, i was in the navy and my grandfather was in the air force, there are so many things that represent so many people in the anthem. i think it was an opportunity for the nfl to jump in on the discussion and i do not think at that time they did that. roswell: let us talk about that, they jumped in and made some changes, what do you think of them? do you think it is enough?

i know there is a major culture change in the league, is the lead on the right path when it comes to this? r.k.: they are on a good path, i think as we navigate there is always missteps or better paths to make. you have younger people who are watching football, how do we get the message to them? in a way that is both digestible but also meaningful? doing things like putting end racism in the end zone is something that a lot of the audience think are cute but what are we actually doing? funding changes, funding women owned businesses, black-owned witnesses, social initiatives, trying to be more reactive, proactive instead of reactive. they are making an effort, i think the nfl has a huge organization, there will always be more but they are open to that discussion and listening to people who come to the table and

challenge them in what they do and what they think. roswell: in other subject matter, as you all heard, this year's theme is everyone has a story and your story is a very trailblazing store that we believe everyone needs to hear. -- stories that we believe everyone needs to hear. we get to see other people's stories and this is where your story comes in very importantly. in her book mentioned how you struggled with your sexuality and your happiness, versus your career. that is football, the league, you said that the questions in my head grew louder, self-doubt about my sexuality and my identity overflowed into worries about the future. there was a bitter irony in how i was drinking away from a dream even as my heart worked and brought it within reach, the nfl wanted me but because they did not know the real me.

that must have been something really hard to wrestle with. you work hard your entire life for this moment and then what do i do? r.k.: football is one of those things, those unique things that though it is a job at that level, it is one of the few jobs where calls to your manliness or your character, who you are as a person, there is something that we focus a lot on the nfl players and when you pick up a football at a young age, people tell you what type of person you need to be to play this game. some of it is correct, you need to be a little crazy to hit other people at full speed and do it again and again, there is rhetoric, misogynistic rhetoric of do not throw like a girl, there is being tough which is important, but not walking all of your emotions, rub some dirt on it, it works in effect to

some effect, but it does not work for all of your life obstacles. when you focus on the type of people that can play football, you are saying what type of people cannot play football. i grew up with all of this, most of the players in the league did as well, when i realized did not fit the type i was told was a football player, the strong, masculine, straight, hard-nosed, nonemotional person, i thought i'm not a football player, do i not belong here? roswell: that was the hardest part of what i was reading, you struggled with depression, and maybe binge drinking, how are you today? r.k.: not drinking! [laughter] [applause] thank you, yes, i'm four years sober in september. (202) 748-8000 we wish you well --roswell: we wish you well.

this is a four year anniversary when you wrote the essay that was published on espn. i will be a quick excerpt i will talk about. you wrote i want to live my dream of playing the game, i worked my whole life to play and being open about the person i have always been. those two objectives should not be in conflict, but judging from the fact that there is not a single openly lgbtq player in the nfl, nba, major league baseball, or the nhl brings me pause. i want to change that, for me, and other athlete who share these common goals, for the generation of athletes who will come next. when you were in college, someone came out and was recently kronos he came out, the only nfl player who is a free agent -- recently a player came out, the only nfl layer that is a free agent. what will it take for a professional male athlete to come out? does it start with the league? or teammates?

or the owners? it is a major undertaking and i know that you have taken this task, what you think needs to change for more players to feel more comfortable? r.k.: it has to come from both sides, i think we have heard a little bit more about how the league feels about his own inclusion and diversity, players have come forward to talk about accepting a player for the merit of their game and their heart and hard work. i do not think we have had that ownership positive robert kraft, i do not think we have had the same messaging when it comes to the marketing and promotion when you show and see on tv or commercials or in the stadiums of what type of people are allowed to be announced, let alone allowed to be players. ingrain inclusion into the base of your foundation. to the base organization, the higher lgbtq+ people even if they are not players and coaches, executives, all of

these things, referees, the game in and of itself to be more inclusive for people to feel comfortable. you cannot ask someone what makes them feel comfortable if you do not understand their experience. you are treating a wound instead of actually the problem and the cause of it. i actually work closely with the nfl and professional players, in the sports culture, i believe that the most shame comes with the youth, a lot of that is in the culture we here at a young age. losing athletes growing up because they do not feel included in sports, they do not feel supported and sports and i think once we fix that problem, more people are going to play at the public school level, the city league level, even at the collegiate level. roswell: i should start from the beginning was to mark when kids are playing touch football or in the little league baseball games? r.k.: i think that is important,

my goal is not to have every professional player that is lgbtq come out, it is to have players get into sport young and state in sport and goat professionally -- and go professional already out, being allowed to play the game that they love as themselves. roswell: wen yu published -- when you published your article with espn added to the interview, or was it like was to ? r.k.: it was like coming up for air, and so part of this book being one of the top, being drafted, going to college after graduating and coming out is still probably my number one because it was not about football or other people or what they thought of me, it was not

to make a statement even, it was for me, me choosing my own life, me choosing to live whatever i had, every time i had on my earth for me and prioritizing myself first and it is something i think everyone can do for themselves, it is something i think, that sentiment everyone should have because this life is ours and regardless of the things we like to do or the activities or the sports we play, we have to live with ourselves. [applause] roswell: since 2019 you have seen a lot of fans reading your book, a kind of reaction are you getting? from fellow athletes or people on the street? r.k.: any reaction i have gotten has been positive which i am thankful for. honestly, it is the broad sweeping kind of if i had to pick from a similar sentiment in all of the infractions i have is thank you for telling the story, thank you for having this

discussion in male sports, it has not and it is still showing only from the subject, regardless of whether we like to admit it or not, we all know that we are probably all related to someone who is lgbtq plus. if you do not have that connection or no once a comes to mind -- no one comes to mind, someone in your life is charted in shame or secret does not feel safe enough or for a multiplicity of reasons, and a living a full and loving life as they should be and that is what this book is about. that is the message i'm trying to convey. we need to love people, we need to allow people to be themselves. we need to not judge people before we know them. we talk about things as if they are just topics, as if they are just things on a sheet. these are really connected to true people's lives.

these are points people are agonizing about it in and day out. roswell: you opened the book by talking about your new opponent which is hate, let me read this quick excerpt. i'm no longer stopping on shoulder pads to clash with other individuals, my opponent is hate, the idea of hate, how we teach it to younger generations, how we find it with our dollars, under the systems that uphold it, hate is the two opponent of all of us. the idea that someone of a different color, or sexuality is lesser than anyone else. that is the opponent. there is a lot of that going on whether it is from book banning to everything around the country, how do you want to play a part in fighting that? r.k.: any way that i can, honestly, i think we all have a different piece to play in this battle against tate. hate. we have all been told we could not do something or could not be something or something in our

lives was incorrect because of who we are, where we were born, what we look like, i do not think we should limit human beings by things that are beyond our control. my color being one of them, intersectionality of being a person of color and a bisexual person, i see that this idea forms a different rhetoric about a multiplicity of topics, i will stand with anyone who feels as if they are being a, silenced, pushed down into the foreground because i'd has happened to me in so many ways and if i allow it to happen to you, i am allowing it to happen to me, others, i am ok with that idea, i think that is what we all need to be on the same page about. we will have different points of view. at the end of the day when someone tells you they are hurting or someone is under attack, when they feel unsafe or

they feel like they are not meant to be here by an outside force, that is when you need to listen. that is when the discussion needs to stop and the listening needs to start. roswell: we are taking some questions, there are two microphones on the aisle, feel free to lineup. i will let you in if you have a question. let's talk about coming out, how hard it is for men or professional athletes to come out. it is not seem the same on the female side? there were about 86 women who were out among all of the soccer players around the country. why do you think it is more easier for women to come out? r.k.: multiple reasons, i also believe that women are constantly at the foreground of change in our country, women are constantly challenging the

status quo. [applause] yes, women lead our society in many ways, as a woman, unfortunately here in the state you are told from birth of the things you cannot do and i believe women have built up resilience to automatically say no, you do not define me. that attributes to women's sports. also the problematic sector of things, that sports, the misogyny of sports, that these young women that are in sports have been told that in some way they are less women for being in sports. once you can take that shackles of what their sexual -- is assumed to be, we talk about women being in the forefront and onto the lgbtq+ and diverse and inclusion but also in social change, is in

their voice and platform, that is a league run by women. roswell: i think when young girls are playing, it is a culture that is there. our first question? >> i am proud to hear your story and see that you are true to yourself. i was curious, what was the reactions of your teammates and management after you came out? r.k.: my teammates whether it be from high school or college or professional were supportive of me, everyone who knew me personally had very nice things to say, if anyone outside of that sphere even other players in the league felt negatively or indifferent about it, they did not tell me which i appreciated! i received so much love and acceptance in the sport. roswell: that is great! >> thank you. >> congratulations on your book,

i am interested in the process, did you just say i'm going to write it? did you do a little every day, the whole process? r.k.: this was the culmination of almost three years, it started with the coming out in 2019, sharing my story and feeling how it affected other people but how liberating it was for me in wanting to do that at large. the process was something i was hand held, fortunately, had an agent very early on, and they wanted to expand that. to make that dream come true, i wrote in flurries through three years, there were two months my boyfriend and say that i did not do anything! there was a month where i was in a dark room in a haze, writing was challenging, therapeutic, i cried, i screamed, i hated it, and loved it. it was everything, i stayed until this day including playing

in national football league and this book was one of the most fulfilling, had great editors, i needed a lot of editing! we finally got to something that felt good for me and my story. roswell: i forgot to ask this earlier, is it how it had saved you as well, you have wrote poetry, how did writing help you internalize and really help you maybe act--like therapy for you? r.k.: we talk about social issues here in the constructs, even the norm, the societal agreements we all adhere to whether we know it or not just by being complicit in this world and in certain things but there is none of that in writing for me. it was such a judgment free zone, i do not have to be anyone i was not, at could be someone else if i wanted to, i could jump into a book and experience something so far removed from

what my own experience was. or see a vision that i wanted to cultivate in my life and that was something i constantly look for in righting, i could -- writing. i could create my own image of who i am, the life i want to live, it draws me to things like this, to be honored to be a part of such an amazing program with so many authors who have challenged the status quo, who have wrote their own stories and should light on so many things that i even as a person in the space was unaware of, writing was one of the truest forms of communication, something i value so much. roswell: i saw your book is being turned into a television show? i was wondering how through that process, how is that going for you? are you involved in the hands-on writing and how does it feel

they are life is being adopted into something be made for a larger audience? r.k.: there is a strike happening right now in hollywood, and i very much support that and it is important that everyone feels as though they have fair wage. their compensation. that is first and foremost in terms of this book out of the series i have been honored to have the option come from gabrielle union, to have sony pictures take that aren't in development, -- to have sony pictures take part in that development. also it is a chance to tell other stories, it is supposed to be a comedy, hopefully i am funny! [laughter] we can make that happen, for that part, to laugh, and to know that you will sit down and have a good time, and makes talking about things really a lot easier, nobody wants to watch an hour long rating or lecture --

berating or lecture, we will have a good laugh and love each other and hopefully at the end of it understand each other a little bit more. the process was great, it is a dream, hollywood is crazy [applause] in good ways and in not good ways. i am honored to be able to tell stories. >> congratulations again on your sobriety, i would love to hear more about how getting sober might have been connected with the other happenings in 2019 and in life? r.k.: it was, i came out in late august of 2019 and after a long weekend of kind of looking at my life and being like what have i done, for the better, or they difference, i realized alcohol was no longer serving me in my life. a lot of the times when i could have been seeking healing or understanding or reflection i look for alcohol instead, i

might not have had when people would classify as an addictive personality or alcoholism, i knew that alcohol had a negative relationship and it never made anything better, my partner was also sober, and year sober as well, seeing someone live a life of sobriety and live a life of connection and still be in entertainment and doing what they wanted and achieving their dreams, having that guiding light was huge in my own journey. >> congratulations on your book and your ability to be your authentic self. i am wondering whether or not as you move from one professional team to another team, alastair tampa bay and so on, the teams -- from tampa bay and so on, did you feel like you were discriminated against because of your sexuality? that you may have been able to

hang with some of those teams if you had not -- if there had not been an indication that you might have been bisexual? r.k.: i can say that i am not sure about that experience, i was not out at the time, and there were multitudes of reasons why teams turned me down that will also make sense to me, even being the pro football player i am, understand that. after coming out, i was getting calls prior to after coming out, i do not receive any more calls from leagues. i can also say that i think that there is only one out active player right now in the league is evidence not of discrimination, but there is not enough being had to make layers feel comfortable and included. i talked about in this book which is about the choices in my life dr. chase conspiracy or wonder about the things that could have or should have for

me, because my life is so full and i believe i have been in my purpose but i want those people coming up in the league to not have the fear of being discriminate against, no regardless of how they identify, there will be judged purely off of their ability to help a team win. that is my goal today. roswell: with the festival of books and t-shirts from l.a.! >> i am also bisexual and i was wondering about your journey between a finding that out because i know a lot of people like struggle between my gay, bisexual, i just want to know what the journey is for you? r.k.: i knew in college i was not straight but bisexual i did not feel like an option, it felt like i was told that bisexuality was for individuals who were afraid to say that they were gay and holding onto a bit of masculinity, even if that is the case, i understand that as well, it is scary being lgbtq+ in the world, that a lot of the times

we do what we can to survive or to blend or to be accepted. for me, it was kind of a lack of representation or story were accessible information -- or accessible information about bisexuality, and made it more challenging, unfortunately i answered a lot of relationships to learn about myself, i think that is what we do, but when i look at it, i shouldn't have done that. it was, i think drawn out, i would say because a lot of the times i was having genuine relationships and feelings with both genders and i just did not see bisexuality as a landing spot, i had to say to myself that this is who i am and i did not know anyone else who was bisexual, after coming out there are so many people who are bisexual! why are we hearing -- why are we not hearing those stories? that is what this is about too, thank you for sharing as well, i

appreciate that. >> thank you for creating a resource. >> thank you for writing this book, my question has to do with more specifically with what would you say to an african-american male boy who likes football or like sports, felt like i do not think i am straight? they lived in an environment where there is hate, bullying, would you say to them to give them hope? r.k.: with any lgbtq+ person, especially my priorities about safeties, and yourself or being bothered in any way is a direct conflict to your safety, i would say to prioritize your safety first and foremost overall, i am not of a rose colored glass perception to be yourself and everything will be great. there are a lot of true challenges and systems i would

tell them at point them to the people, myself or the people in their own communities doing the work to make sure that lgbtq youth are protected. out point them to a resource that they have, if not within their communities, online that they could access and talk about because every situation is also different. there are people out there just like you that you being who you are is what makes you special and beautiful and bright and it is your superpower whether you are ashamed for it or bully for it or not. that is regardless of where you are now, you can find the communities, the love, the joy, the happiness. you do not need to change, the world needs to change. roswell: we only have time for one more question. >> you just answered my question, i am a marching band mother and i want to say thank you because you are the first football player who ever had anything i needed to hear! [applause] r.k.: thank you!

roswell: we will take one question for you. r.k.: thank you for sharing your experience, truly, truly wonderful, my question was intersectionality with other sports, what you think the nfl can do better, and mlb has pie nights and certain other -- pride nights, where do you think the nfl can improve? you think there is some intersectionality between mlb athletes, and nfl athletes? r.k.: i think every major sports league either has a lesson to learn or a precautionary tale of were not to do, i think looking at mlb and nba, they have ambassadors that are also players, i can also see not being done, intentionally, we are building on the lgbtq plus, we are open to the division and equity, look at the most portly, listening to the players and having them lead social change,

be the forefront of that, it is very important as well, the list goes on and the possibilities are really endless. at the forefront it is about building it into your foundation and make sure that the people making the decisions are of the communities that are making decisions about. roswell: i cannot end this without asking a question! [laughter] >> as a prince and a bisexual boy, i have been having a little bit of trouble with my identity. what would you say about finding yourself? what would you say about that? r.k.: oh my gosh! it is a journey, even at the age of 301i know i do not know everything about myself. -- at the age of 31, i

know i do not know everything about myself. i hope people are helping you to challenge her own concepts and the concerts around you, of you should be or who you are, i think that as time goes on you will feel more yourself, i think you will find people who see you for you and love you and accept you as who you are and that is ok to challenge the world around you. world is not perfect, it is ideas made up by other people. it is ok to challenge ideas. and i love you, and i appreciate you being here. >> thank you! roswell: that is such a perfect way to end this, rk russell everyone, on behalf of the library of congress, if you are for coming to the national book festival! we hope to see you through the rest of the day! [laughter] [applause]

>> thank you for 20 book tv for the 23rd annual national book festival, held at the washington convention center. we are pleased to partner with the library of congress in bringing this to your living room and your tablets. are your phones, or author discussions -- more author discussions are coming up, he can find a schedule on my comment joining us now is the cochair of this year's national book festival, david rubenstein, how did you get involved with the national book festival? >> i got involved with the madison council which is a support arm of the library of congress, it gets most of its money from the federal government but it does not get all of its money from the federal government, there are support people around the country who support the library of congress. i have been involved for a while and i share the madison counsel

as it is cold and part of the effort is to help with the national book festival. for the last 10 or 12 years or so i have cochaired this with the library of congress, first with tim billington and with carla hayden. >> is there money that you give to work this effort? >> i do. i have given. money every year for quite a while and i enjoy it very it is a great free, effort to let people know more about authors and books. we get a couple or maybe 100,000 people or more every year coming here and the importance of it is i want people to learn how to read more and united states are roughly 120 fit in the world in literacy, 125th, that is not great, we have a large number of people in this country who are functionally illiterate and a large number of people who do not read books at all. 46% of adults, they did not read a single book during the year. why do you want people to read?

and makes the brain better and focuses the brain and it helps you with other aspects of life. >> apple this article out of the wall street journal yesterday by brendan cronan who works for the wall street journal. books resist digital domination. one quote from this article is reading is a commitment and far too many easy alternatives today. >> reading is essential part of civilization but reading books is more important than reading tweets or reading other types of things on social media, it has a purpose. when you read a book you have to focus for hours and hours on the subject matter and the focus of your brain is a very important thing. unfortunately, a lot of people cannot read at all, about 21% of our country, this population of adults especially illiterate, it cannot be at the fourth grade level, if you cannot read past the fourth grade level, we have a good chance of being in a federal prison system. many who are in too loudly when

the who are -- two thirds of individuals in the prison system are functionally illiterate. if they cannot read, there is an 80% chance of them being unemployed, in our society or any society if you cannot read, you cannot be productive and you are not going to have a good of a life in my view. >> for an author, philanthropist, successful businessman, prior to the start of this interview you and i were talking about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happyness. have you achieved those three things? >> happiness is hard to achieve and i think it is the most elusive thing in life. there are roughly 6 billion people on the face of the earth and i do not know how many of them are happy. my experience is the wealthiest people are not the happiest people, and the people who are often the most accomplished as measured by certain standards are not the happiest. my mother was not a high school educated person, she did not

have any money but she was a pretty happy person. some of the happiest people are people who are not educated or are not wealthy. all does not buy you happiness -- wealth is not buy you happiness. i'm happy but i want to achieve more, until i do not achieve more, i will not be happy. >> what makes you happy? watching c-span? >> is what i like to do! beyond that, i like engaging with people, i do a lot of interviews on my own shows, i like writing books, to invest, and to mentor younger people. the greatest pleasure is giving scholarship money, need a scholarship to get through college and law school. the bulk of my money probably goes to scholarships and universities were high schools around the country. i enjoy seeing people who otherwise would not go to the schools go to the schools. >> most of your books your

most recent is a masters of the craft, or have you been successful investing and or have you not? >> i started a firm in 1987 which became one of the largest urban equity firms, we have been pretty successful over many years, we have made some mistakes and i made some mistakes when mark zuckerberg was at the harvard and sorting and i said i will never see i get anywhere and i turned that down. when jeff bezos i had a chance to get some stock and i turned it down. i have made a lot of mistakes. i tried to learn by them. >> let us look at your history books, a friend of mine described this period of history that we are in as the great realignment. how would you describe the last 10 years of our lives? >> in the last 10 years you are seeing an effort by people who have had power, largely white anglo-saxon people, see some of

the power shift away as we have been a majority white country for most of our history, that is changing. people who are losing the power are not happy about it, i think that reflects why some of the people who support donald trump or other people like donald trump are supporting them. they see a power shifting away from economic chipping away, people like to have power and wealth on when they see it going away they are not happy. some of the angst in this country is between the people who have been rising up, minorities and women and those who are not rising up and there is attention, the inevitable tension. >> the american story, conversations with master historians, with who did you sit down? >> i thought back up program eight years ago to interview a great historian in front of only members of congress, and once a month. if people are making our laws, they should know our history, i tried to educate the members of

congress by doing an interview and i host a dinner for them once a month. i took people like david mccullough, great american historians and i took the interviews and i edited them a little bit and it gave my view of the interview and i put them together and put an interview of american history as seen by the great authors in american history. >> let us take a couple of calls, let us start with a in new haven, connecticut. you are on book tv with david rubenstein. caller: good afternoon and thank you so much for this. thank you for rk russell, what a great forum! we have several upcoming writers on amazon, will you have a festival for these authors who are coming over their ideas and instructional

booklets, would you do the same type of form for up-and-coming writers? >> i will answer it and have a follow-up. your concept, it is fantastic, and unwieldy. it does not mean we cannot do something, i agree with you, i want to take a step further, the way that we publish books, the way that we educate today is in transition, is traditional college, digital publishing, can we do things in different ways. roswell: the publishing world has changed. -- david: the publishing world has changed, there are still viable, one of the largest

publishers which is sold for 1.6 billion dollars. more and more people are self-publishing or publishing without the use of a major publisher. there is room for both, the most important thing is people like to read. people want to see good books coming out from publishing houses that are well known and people want to see new authors who are self-publishing, there is room for both. >> if your grandchild came to you and that i want to go to harvard and study for four years and do this, all would be your advice to that person? david: he is only three years old, i'm not sure that he knows about harvard, but the most important thing for a child who wants to go to college is go to the college that you want to go to, not the one your parents want you to go to, study something you are interested in, and also me know hope you get a job, you will do better in college and life studying something you are interested in. nobody has ever won a nobel

prize hating what they do, point to me that you love and life, if you go to college, go to the best college and get into, but one that you want to go to, on the ones that your parents when you to go to. >> how did you discover your interest in history? david: i am a lawyer, but i was not a great lawyer, i left law and started investing and i think it worked out well. worked as a young man and when you work in the white house, you live among history. our history is younger than the history of england but for our country, we have a long history in washington dc and i appreciated the history because of the heavy work in the white house and the capitol hill and living among the memorials that we have here. >> philip from florida, good afternoon to you. caller: hello. >> please go ahead, philip. caller: i have a question, i am a published author and i have a

lot of people who call and say in best with us, spent all of this money, being a school bus driver, that is not feasible a lot of times. there are over here, we will take care of you and we will take care of you, how can you tell the difference between somebody who is actually going to help you and not charge you $30,000 that you do not have, this type of thing? >> that goes to the question we have before, we are in a new, self published author can be successful. david: self published authors are hard to get on the bestseller list, you have a publisher. some publishers will take new authors, you never know what new author is going to be successful. i interviewed david graham, he was a person who wrote a book, it turned out to be very successful. you just do not know who has the

talent. who knew the hemingway would be a great author? the new fitzgerald would be a great author? you do not know who will be a great author. with respect to the average person, the most important thing to do is not lose what you have. secondly, the best way to not lose what you have is to go into uc index fund of some type, going to a low fee index fund or equity or fixed income and that is the safest thing to do. >> did you think about buying simon & schuster? david: i could not interest my partners in it. another from did it. >> we appreciate your time on book tv. david: thank you, my pleasure. >> more live coverage of the national book festival continues now, coming up is a panel on escaping genocide and human trafficking with live coverage at the national book festival.

>> this is a place where everyone has a story. this is a collections authors of the ivory of congress and this is a real pleasure to welcome all of you here today. at this time, i ask you to turn off or silence your electronic devices or cell phones. if you need to leave the room during the presentation, the doors are behind the pillars. we want to we want to notify you that this event will be recorded and your entrant to this program constitutes your consent to be filled or recorded. thank you and enjoy the program.