i only knew that hi to look at it that way or else i couldn't bear to think of it at all. thank you so much, i look forward to your questions. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you. so that you will be a good audience.

out is that the germans at salerno used experimental glider bombers, remote control glider bombers and that almost caused the operation to be a failure for the united states. >> yeah. >> and so did the german -- do you know if the germans used those same tactics in any other phase of the war? >> the germans were fiendish in coming up with new gadgets and one that they used against us for the first time was a glide bomb called the fritz x. and it was a bomb that was dropped from an airplane and then it was guided by the pilot with a little joy stick. and he could guide the bomb very

similar to the way bombs -- some bombs are guided today, actually guided before the new technologies allowed you to use gps systems. but in the persian gulf war for example, very similar. you use a little joy stick and you guide the bomb. it has little rockets on the back to cause it go this way or that way. guide it down to the target it. had first been used against the italian battleship roma when it was trying to get away and the italians switched sides and the fritz x nailed had roma. a thousand died or something like that. at salemo a fritz x was used and hit the u.s.s. savannah, a big warship firing at german positions. it caused a fire. it went right through one of the

gun tourettes. it caused a fire that caused a catastrophic detonation. sea fire put the fire out nevertheless there are score of sailors killed on the savannah. there was such anxiety to this new weapon because we had no counter to it. we knew that radio waves were used to control the bomb by the pilot but how do you disrupt those waves? sailors were asked to turn on electr electric razors in hopes of the disrupting that. very quickly we were able to use jamming. something used today, much more sophisticated today, used jamming to block those waves and it turns out german-guided bombs

were less influential in guiding those bombs. and used less in normandy as it turned out. your question? >> in your book you seem to have concluded that there was no alternative to italy despite the fact that your book also shows that italy was a horrendous mistake. now, both seem contradictory but you said there was no alternative. would an invasion of france, southern france, marseille, have been possible? >> good question. and those questions have been asked at the time and been since for 70 years since then. and these with questions being con plated. the problem allied procedures have is once you have committed yourselves to the mediterranean.

once you have agreed to the british plan to invade north framework, then as george marshall puts it the mediterranean becomes a sump and sucks in men and material. and as i mentioned a minute ago there is no real alternative to getting them out of the mediterranean in terms of shipping. you just don't have the ship pig and it requires a enormous amount of material to move the ships at large. they did invade southern france in august 1944. the plan was to launch that invasion as the same time as normandy as it turned out in june 4, 1944 so the germans were caught at normandy and the germans through the cote deinjury in the south.

they turn right, they go through the vogue mountains in the late fall of 1944, and they are on the rhine, they capture strasbourg, thanksgiving 1944. they're on the rhine four months before that other force coming from normandy. the problem with looking at southern france initially, and this is the right strategic decision that they make. first of all, you got shipping problems again. you could have planted a force there because there aren't that many germans comparatively. but then it's a very, very long way to berlin from there, as we find out when we actually do it beginning in august 1944. so my feeling is, yes, there is a contradiction to it. i am not saying that there is no alternative. i'm saying that the alternatives are not very palatable. and that, in fact, when you really look at the options that are available come late spring, early summer of 1943, they do what is kind of left on the

table as a legitimate thing. now, the last thing i'll say about it, does it make sense after you have captured those air fields in southern italy to keep pushing up one damn mountain after another? i'm not sure that that is the case. you could have had the air fields. it's a long way for those pilot flying. nevertheless, it would have allowed you, as it did, to have really substantial air assets in southern italy. but what -- the die is cast once you have i decided that on november 8th, 1942, you're going to north africa. george marshall, who's dead set against that plan -- i happen to think that was the right plan. but marshall warns, when you're in north africa, then you're in the mediterranean. you're in the med train for a while. so thanks for that, sir. sir? >> my name is peter otto. and first, a compliment to you on your maps which i thought were amongst the best i've seen of all the books. >> thank you. >> but, but -- >> ah.

>> is it possible that when a book is going to publication, you can have somebody look down the map, your dialogue, and ten pages later when you talk about battalion x that somebody goes back to the map and mark where battalion x is? because you drive me nuts. anyway. my more serious question is, all the books that you read in the united states in english are invariably about the difficulties of the americans. no boots, no winter overcoats, no ammo, no nothing. my god, the germans had a depth -- tenth of what we did. are there any decent books about how bad those guys were and how in the world were they as successful as they were? >> well, on the maps first, gene thorpe is my cartographer and he's responsible for all the mistakes, i'm responsible for the good parts. you saw some of these maps identifying battalions is virtually impossible on a large-scale map. but i'll tell gene. >> if you write about it, you've

got to give me some kind of clue where they are. >> i think you'll find that most of the -- i'll stand by the cartography in there. you'll find there are very few place names in particular that are not identified on the maps. we take a lot of time doing that. and most of the larger units, maybe not down to battalion level, but you can find them on a map in there. enough on the maps. so -- the germans. well, i write about the german difficulties. certainly in all three books. the germans lose the campaign in north africa because their supply lines are strangled. they cannot get supplies across the mediterranean. to reinforce the german and italian forces that are fighting in north africa. and it is catastrophic to rommel

and arnum's forces. they are short of everything. including fuel, food, ammunition. i write about them in italy too. they have a long supply line. it's not as difficult to supply everything by sea as we do but they're being hammered constantly by air attacks. when you're fighting expeditionary warfare, supply is the essence of it. the old bromide that amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. certainly that's true for these campaigns. the germans' logistical problems will only intensify as the war accelerates. partly because those air fields were also flying bombing missions out of north africa and sicily. they are bombing german cities,

german factories, they're bombing everything that they can find to bomb. and that aggravates the german difficulties of both producing things and there's a very concerted campaign, called "operation strangle," to cut the -- to interdict the german supply lines. among other things they want to see how effective can it be to do that kind of interdiction campaign for when we go to northwest europe and france. how effective can aerial interdiction be? turns out it's a mixed bag. the germans are extremely resourceful. you cut a rail line and the next day the germans have fixed it. they did that in part because they've got millions of slave laborers. when you're using 7 million slave laborers, you can do a lot of fixing in europe. but, yeah, it's -- i mean, the germans have ultimately fatal supply problems. fuel is their achilles heel. and fuel in the winter of

'44-'45, on into the spring of '45, is what will bring the germans really to their knees. that and of course the russians. thanks, sir. >> thank you. >> sir? >> good morning mr. atkinson. just wanted to ask you about -- you say, as we know, the central tenet or one of the central tenets is to hold the high ground. and the terrain of italy, wasn't there significant reconnaissance or intelligence to find out about, say, not even just the fortifications around them but simply the geography as well as the geology of the area going up the boot? >> yeah, we knew a lot. for one thing, when the italians switched sides we had a lot of italian informants. body the italian military, italian military provided lots of maps. needless to say they had lots of experience in areas around casino and the other german fortifications.

we had aerial reconnaissance that was pretty good. we had extraordinary abilities to eavesdrop on german radio communications. at the highest level there was an operation called "ultra," the british had been able beginning fairly early in the war to intercept radio communications that germans thought were sufficiently encoded to be indecipherable. and the british were deciphering almost all of them by 1944. that gave a very detailed picture of what the germans were doing, particularly at the highest levels. and you could find out how many gallons of gasoline kesselring had in this place or that place. it was very illuminating. but even if you know, you know,

there's a german battery here, there's a german battery there, we may be wrong about whether they're germans in the casino or not, but we have pretty well identified where those german units are. we know them by name, we know who the commanders are. we know what reinforcements are coming. we know all that stuff. knowing is not the same as being able to do something about it. you know, you say, well, if you know where the artillery batteries are, why can't you bomb them? well, it's really tough bombing mountains. mountains really suck up bomb loads. and you can bomb till the cows come home and you don't necessarily -- first of all, the germans are very good at camouflage, they are very good at fortifying, they're very good at moving. >> did they take that into consideration though when they were planning the campaign? >> well, yes and no.

i mean, they know all you have to do is look at a map and you can see that it is one damn mountain after another. >> that's exactly -- >> there are people saying, look, the old bromide is, if you're going to invade italy, don't do it from below, if you get into a boot you get into it from the top. i think only general bellisarius, he was the last one to invade italy from the south, that was the sixth century or something like that. napoleon knew if you're going to invade italy, come from the north. but that was not an option, really. the options are, as we've discussed, you can forego italy altogether, you can stop at sicily, you can stop in southern italy, or you can try and occupy as many german forces as possible. this is a war of attrition. it has its own logic. you're not really -- i mean, liberating rome is a political feat.

but the rest of the campaign is really about killing germans and occupying germans. that is what they're doing. and there's not a lot of fun in that. wars of attrition are almost never glorious. thanks, sir. >> thank you. >> sir? >> yes. my name is joe antonuccio. i enjoyed your talk very much. >> thank you. >> my question is specifically about anzio. while it's true that we were pinned down about three or four months there, was that not avoidable if general john lucas, instead of -- he found no opposition, according to the reports, no opposition at all from the germans. there were no troops there. as a matter of fact, one of our patrols, i think, made it all the way to the outskirts of rome at that point. that lucas i think decided to dig in and handle a counterattack, from where that was going to come is mysterious,

and that he was eventually replaced. and not only replaced from his post, he was sent back to washington. >> yes. that's right. well, good question. hotly debated then, hotly debated for 70 years since then. you're fundamentally right, general lucas is the core commander. he goes ashore at anzio nettuno on january 22nd, 1944, with a force that is too small. it is a small corps. there's one british division, there's one american division. as often happens in allied amphibious operations it's too

small. now, opposition is minimal. there are a few startled germans who are -- shoot away as the landings occur. but lucas recognizes that, to thrust toward the alban hills that i talked about, then to get from there to rome that he needs more combat force. in part because, for every mile you move inland, you're adding seven miles of perimeter. george marshall, who almost never got involved in tactical disputes, actually defends lucas. you're right, he is relieved of command. but it's not because he has made an insupportable tactical decision. it's partly because -- i showed you his picture earlier -- he has no combat presence. you're pinned down at anzio. you're getting shelled every day. your casualties are mounting. you're stuck in italy in the admit of the winter. and lucas is like a grandfather. one brit describes him as

constantly getting out of endless layers of overcoats. there is no panache when he walks into a room. and it becomes infectious. there's a feeling that this guy -- i'm going to die for this guy? could lucas have pushed farther inland right as the invasion at anzio took place? yes. and they are several miles inland where he waits for the inevitable ver man counterattack. one thing that had not been anticipated by churchill -- this is a churchill brainstorm. the whole anzio thing, churchill is driving that train. and alexander feld and clark feld appreciate the alacrity with which the germans respond. kesselring, within an hour of

learning there's a landing at anzio, is bringing german forces not only from southern italy, he's bringing them from northern italy, he's bringing them from france, he's bringing them from yugoslavia. and the germans respond much more vigorously and with greater force and depth than had been anticipated. >> what do you think patton would have done in that circumstance? landing an army on the beach with no opposition? would he -- do you think he might have dug in? >> you know, that's a counterfactual and historians always love counterfactuals because i can't be wrong. i can say, yeah, he would have dug in just like lucas did. . or no, he would have raced to rome and the story of the anzio landings would have been considerably different. my belief is had general lucas taken that small core and pushed inland they would have been destroyed, that they would have been annihilated. not only would we have had the agony of four months at anzio, but that we would have probably had the agony of an entire corps being annihilated. so i'm a defending of lucas even though i recognize he's the

wrong man for the job. he's replaced by general truscott, the one who was born to lead men in the dark of night. >> he was released by lucian. >> yes, sir. thank you, sir. >> rick, i wanted to commend you on that d-day program that you were both on brian williams' show at 8:00 in the evening and during the day on msnbc. you added immeasurably to our knowledge. i can't use the word enjoyment. but the commemoration of such a solemn day. >> thank you. >> and i do recall when charles de gaulle got on his high horse and wanted nato taken out of

paris, eventually to settle in brussels, that lbj said, does he want us to take our cemeteries as well? and what i loved about the entire trilogy, your opening lines, an army at dawn, is the american cemetery in carthage, a stone's throw from the ancient punic city. >> right. >> and how you then use the names and dates of death to surmise what happened to these soldiers, who were killed by french resistance, for example, or at kassering pass. and general truscott, what he did. what i'd like to ask is did you visit the cemeteries at carthage and nettuno where the general said to the chaplain, get rid of the stars of david. they mar the cemetery. and the chaplain told him basically to go to hell, because my boys have title to this land. >> yeah. >> can you tell us about those visits, if any? >> yeah, i spent a lot of time not just in the cemeteries but in all the battlefields that i write about. it's i think quite critical.

because for one thing i'm an amateur, i need to see with an amateur's eyes, the terrain, to understand why they went left, not right. so i've been to kasserine pass a number of times and it is in the middle of nowhere, it's out there on the algerian border. and to virtually every battlefield i've written about. some of them i've been to a number of times. most recently earlier this month at normandy. and the other reason i think, other major reason, is not only does the ground speak to you but the dead speak to you. and when you go to that magnificent cemetery at carthage, which is run by the american battle monuments commission, and kept up beautifully by the tunisians i must say, you don't have to listen very hard to hear those young men, they're mostly men, talking to you. and the same is true at nattuno

or the cemetery at hamm, luxembourg where patton's buried, that magnificent cemetery above omaha beach. and, you know, what we are all doing is keeping faith with the dead. 317 million of us today keeping faith with those who fought, in some cases died. part of that keeping faith i think is going and listening to what it is they have to say and having some kind of a sense of communion with them 70 years after the fact. walking through that cemetery in normandy on june 6th, absolutely gorgeous day in normandy, and -- you know, i cry every time. i don't know who doesn't. because you just see, okay, well, he was 22. he was 19. he was 26. and it kind of reminds you the essence of the story. thanks, sir.

yes, ma'am. >> good morning. this question comes to you from my 93-year-old father-in-law who was an officer in the 361st infantry. i will relay your answer to him. so please be careful. >> okay. all right. >> on behalf of my father-in-law and the thousands of allied troops who fought their way up the boot, through the gothic line, and up to the pogh river, can you elaborate on why you did not more fully describe their endeavors in your book? >> yeah. okay. well, tell him i'm sorry, first of all. >> i will. tell him that when you sign his book, please. >> i'll tell him that. right. tell him to write his own damn book. >> i'll tell him that too. [ laughter ] >> as an author you're

constantly making narrative decisions. and yes, i know there's a big bloody campaign that goes on after the liberation of rome on june 4th, 1944. i also know that i cannot get distracted by it. tell him that i write not a word about the pacific. tell him i write not a word about the eastern front. that there are many things that i don't write about because i can't. and do the kind of writing that i want to do. and yeah, i think that there is a legitimate grievance that those who were stuck in italy for that last year of the war have had for 70 years, that they kind of get the short end of it from historians and the public at large. because it remains awful and their sacrifices are no less substantial than those of young soldiers who fought before that or in the more "glamorous" campaign in normandy.

but for my purposes as an author, i cannot go off with them. i'm telling a story that is a story. and that has a chronology and a through-line to it. and it starts in north africa and it goes to sicily and southern italy and then the center of the story moves to northwest europe for that decisive campaign. so, yeah, you know. guilty as charged. but there it is. >> i'll ask him to write his own book. he's alive and well and he'll probably do it. >> that's good. good. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> thanks. my father is about to turn 90. he's a career army officer, enlisted in 1943. and i get the same questions from him all the time. sir? >> yeah, i have a question. are there any examples in which we couldn't act on ultra

information for fear of giving away the fact that we had that information? >> yeah. ultra was the deepest, darkest secret of the war. it did not become public until 1974. and it was so intensely guarded that first of all, there were relatively few people who knew about it. i think the ultimate -- i found the ultra distribution list at the national archives. and there were about 500, ultimately, who knew about ultra, who were privy to the take from the decrypted intercepts. there were rules for when you could act on ultra information that you had. and the rules were pretty strict. they did not want the germans to put two and two together, because the germans were really good at figuring out stuff like

this. but in the main, i think you have to say that, although there were times when senior guys -- ultra did not go below army level. so if you were a corps commander, you didn't get ultra. you weren't even supposed to know about it. so at army level, which is a very high tactical level, you got ultra and you had an ultra officer there, he would bring the stuff in, he'd say, this is what we got from bletchley park today, where they were decrypting this stuff in england. he'd say, this is what we got today, this is what we know. sir, you probably can't do anything about this because the germans would figure out that we got this through a radio intercept. and they would err on the side of caution. rarely, and i'm hard pressed to think of a time when they knew that something was going to happen and they let men get killed instead. and there were times -- ultra

was fallible. two examples. kasserine pass, the battle of the bulge. the germans did their planning not by radio communication, but they did their planning basically over the roof of a jeep, their equivalent of a jeep, over the hood. and so there was nothing to intercept. and so when the attack came on february 14th, 1943, it led to that disastrous retreat at kasserine pass. then again on december 16th, 1944, in the ardennes, the battle of the bulge, we're completely surprised. part of it is the intelligence officers have become too -- they lean on ultra too much. if you don't have it from ultra, it didn't happen. eisenhower relieved his senior intelligence officer after kasserine pass, he was a brit, and eisenhower fired him. because he felt that, well first of all, he needed a scapegoat.

second, he felt that he was too enamored of ultra and not using other sources as fully as he could. sir? >> i'm howard crook. my wife and i have really enjoyed your speech this morning. and i've read all three of your books on the war. the thing that i've often thought from reading it, actually, is that we -- how much did we need those early battles in north africa and sicily and italy to learn how to fight the germans? >> well, that's a very good question. and that is -- that's kind of the essence of the campaign in the mediterranean. look, the mediterranean campaigns in general are a proving ground. and you are learning a lot of things. you're learning how, for example, to put a force onto a hostile shore.

and to do that, you realize that you need various kinds of amphibious landing craft. so the biggest and the baddest of them was the lst, the landing ship tank, which can carry 20 tanks on it, it has clamshell doors, it has a shallow draft, it can land right on the beach. and they're absolutely fundamentally critical to normandy. and they have been critical earlier, and they're first used in the mediterranean. so that's one small example. more important is probably you are learning who is capable of the stresses of combat. you're learning things about leaders at all levels. from a platoon-leading lieutenant who's perhaps 19 years old, or at most 22, leading 40 infantry men, up through corps command and army

command. and you're learning who has got the ability to lead other men in the dark of night. who has got the physical and mental stamina. they underestimate the physical. they underestimate the physical rigor of it as we go into the war. who is -- and what is the trait that napoleon most cherishes in his generals? anybody know? luck, luck. luck! who's lucky. who is not lucky. americans are always uncomfortable with this concept. people kind of squirm in their seats, you know. don't you make your own luck? not in war. sometimes it's made for you for good or for ill and this is absolutely critical. who among those commanders again at all levels is lucky and who is unlucky. we talked about some of the unlucky ones, john lucas, and we

have talked about some of the lucky ones, dwight eisenhower being first among them. by the way, he keeps seven lucky coins in his pocket and he takes them out and rubs them all the time. mark clark, that four-leaf clover, his wife sends it to him, he keeps it in his wallet through the italian campaign. so, yes, the answer it your question is, yes, we have to go through this, we have to -- you're looking for killers, and we're breeding killing divisions. we get four of them out of north africa, and they're really good. first division, third division, 34th division, 1st armored division and they're full of killers because that's how you win. you find men who are willing to kill other men and leaders who are willing to lead them to kill other men, and that's a painful part of the whole process then

and always has been since the early days and is now in 2014. thank you, sir. >> while congress is on its summer break, we're taking this opportunity to show you some of the book tv programs normally seen weekends on c-span2. coming up, a discussion on feminism from this year's los angeles times festival of books. then from the las vegas freedom fest a foreign policy debate between authors dineshd' souza and dan mccarthy. that's following by poet richard blanco on growing up in miami. tonight on american history tv, programs on sports and culture. starting at 8:00 p.m., a history the kansas city monarchs, author and baseball historian talks

about the team. at 8:00 p.m., basketball hall of famer bill russell and football hall of famer jim brown describe their struggles for respect throughout their careers. and the role of african-americans in sports. and then the book pedestrianism, when watching people walk was a favorite sport. here is a great read to add to your summer reading list. c-span's latest book sundays at eight. a collection of stories from some of the nation's most influential people over the past 25 years. >> i always knew there's a risk in the bohemian lifestyle and i decided to take it because whether it's an illusion or not,

i don't think it is. it helped my concentration. it stopped me being bored. it stopped other people being boring to some extent. it would keep me awake, make me want to have the evening go on longer, to prolong the conversation. if i was asked would i do it again, the answer is probably yes, i'd have quit earlier possibly hoping to get away with the whole thing. easy for me to say, of course, not very nice for my children to hear. it sounds irresponsible if i say, yeah, i'd do all that again to you, but the truth is it would be hypocritical for me to say, no, i'd never touch the stuff if i had known because i did know. everyone knows. >> soviet union and the soviet system in eastern europe contained the seeds of its own destruction. many of the problems that we saw at the end begin at the very beginning. i spoke already about the attempt to control all institutions and control all parts of the economy and political life and social life. one of the problems is that when

you do that, when you try to control everything, then you create opposition and potential dissidents everywhere. if you tell all artists they have to paint the same way and one artist says, no, i don't want to paint that way, i want to paint another which, you have just made him into a political dissident. >> if you want to subsidize housing in this country and we want to talk about it and the populist agrees that it's something we should ubsidize, then put it on the ballot sheet and make it clear and make it evident and make everybody aware of how much it's costing. but when you deliver it through these third party enterprises, fannie mae and freddie mac, when you deliver the subsidy through a public company with private shareholders, that is not a very good way of subsidizing home ownership. >> christopher hitchins, anne applebaum and gretchen morganson are a few of the engaging

stories in ", you knound"sunday" >> a panel discussion on feminism. it's a little over an hour. [inaudible discussions] >> my clock says 12:30. let's get st well, my clock says 12:30, e so whys don't we get started? welcome to "the los angeles times" book festival. i'm robin abcarian. i'm aco columnist whose work

mostly running online these t days. i hope you can check me out at l.a. times.com/local/abcarian. this is the evolution of feminism panel, so if that's not what you came to hear, you're definitely in the wrong place. y i have a few housekeeping issues to attend to. i want to ask you to please silence your cell phones. you probably don't need to be told that.owing th there's a book signing following this session, so you can continue the conversation with our authors afterwards in t signing area five. personal recording of the eing sessions is not allowed. we're also being broadcast live on c-span, fyi, and i was supposed to say something aboutn earthquake safety. i think the drill is if you feel an earthquake, please leave calmly, calmly, and put your ou hands over your head.

i want you also to know that at the end of thefrom session, abo0 to 15 minutes before the end, we will be taking questions from y the audience. there's a mic set up in one of the aisles and if you're you impossible, just raise your hand, we can bring a mic to you. let me start with myra mcpherson. >> that would be me. >> she's an author and a veteran journalist. she spent manyrote years at thei "washington post" writing for no that paper's legendary style section. shes, has interviewed serial led killers, celebrities, international leaders like cuba's fidel castro, and when she was an infant she ies s interviewedhe president kennedy. >> i was 4. >> a series that she wrote for "the post" on vietnam veterans led her to write her ground-breaking book "long time passing: vietnam and the haunted generation," one of the first ss books, if not the first to examine the insidious problem of ptsd. and in 2006 she wrote "all el

governments lie: the life and times of rebel journalist i.f. stone" and she has also delved into intimate topics in "she to came topi live out loud: an t inspiring familyhr journey throh illness, loss, and grief." she experienced the last years of a woman's life who died of breast cancer. breas her new bookt is "the scarlet sisters: sex, suffrage, and tals scandal in the gilded age." it's a biography of victoria wood hall and her extraordinaryh sister, tennessee, whose escapades in the 1870s mike so the -- shock the most were contemporaryst woman. she broke free of their parents where they became stock brokers, free love advocates, and ma and newspaper publishers. if you think barack obama and

hillary clinton are political pioneers, consider this.we victoria woodhall was the first woman to be nominated for president in 1872. her running mate, frederick douglass. m.j. lord is a journalist, cultural critic, and a highly regarded ti eed teacher in this school's master of writing program. she was a syndicated political cartoonist and columnist based at newsday and is a regular contributor to "the new york times" book review, its arts and leisure section, and numerous other national outlets.astro she is the author of "astroturf: the private life of rocket science, a family memoir about cold war aerospace culture, but she became a true literary celebrity after she wrote the ground breaking forever barbie,u the thunauthorized biography of real doll. doll which examined how a fantastically sexual doll that was inspired by a jokey erotic knickknack came to hold a place

of honor and meaning in the honr childhoods of so many american girls. she argues thatin barbie was invented by women to teach girle for better or worse what was expected of them. and now she has turned her critics' gaze to another curvy e american icon in her new book i "the accidental feminist: how elizabeth taylor raised our consciousness and we were too distracted by her beauty to notice." here she argues that taylor wass more than just a fine actress, that she was an unwitting role p model for feminist causes and d ideals, whether posing as a boy to ride national vel set, as anh unwed mother in the sandpiper, or the boozy unhappy academic wife in "who's afraid of th virginia virginia wolf." this is before she was the first celebrity voice to take up the fight against aids. i thinkco i need to note you ara

co-writing the lib ret toe for an opera about the 110 freeway on its 70th anniversary. that's talent. >> that project is creeping along. >> like rush hour. an >> not unlike the freeway itself. >> wom nancy l. cohen is an exp on women and american politics. she's taught american history and political science at columbia, binghamton, cal stated long beach and is currently teaching a course on women and american politics at occidental college. she has also been a visiting scholar at the ucla center for the study of women and the ucla institute for research on labor and employment. her books include "the reconstruction of american liberalism 1865-1914" and the 1990s, a social history. professor cohen has written e essays for the guardian, new republishing, "the l.a. times,"t playboy, and rolling stone.

she is the kind of source every political journalist or talk show needs in their rolodex and among those who can count on her for comments e that are always right on the money. in her new book, "delirium: the politics of sex in america," professor cohen analyzes the counter revolution unleashed by the sexual revolution and it's influence on politics. she explores why and how the tia christian right has wielded sucs an extraordinary influence over the debate on issues like sexual freedom, gay rights, feminism, contraception, abortion, of course, the fights and battles still rage on. the sexual counter revolution, e she argues, has been going on for more than 40 years thanks to a small politically sophisticated minority. it is no coincidence, she writes, that the politics of sex, women's rights, and gay marriage has erupted at the ver moment when the gop is farther p

to the right than any political party in american history since the time of slavery. so we have come a long way, baby. of course, mos atr of us aren't smoking anymore, at least not ct cigarettes. venice beach so -- taken together, your books femn present a wonderful chronology of the history of american f feminism starting in the late n 19th century with a stop in theg middle of the last century and an examination of what's happening now, and it's essent fascinating toia me each generation fights a new iteration of essentially the same battle.fordable some things really never change. we're still fighting about equan pay, affordable child care, the, balance between work and home life, whether women can do everything men can do.do now we're discussing the battlefield instead of the racetrack. women are still dismissed as jezebels or sluts for boldly claiming their sexuality by lets say twerking at the amas.

women are still battling for reproductive freedom which is bein ag narrowed by state i legislatures. so i wonder if each of you can start us off by giving a short maybe two to four-minute explanation of what exactly inspired you to write your book and let's just go in order starting with myra.. >> oh, i always hate this. starting first. wan well, before i do that, since you really covered so much of et the spot, i just want to quote two quotes from -- and have you imagine where it came from. one is, the love affairs of the community should be left for the people to regulate themselves instead of trusting to legislation to regulate them. now, this is not some activist talking about the defense of mr marriage act. this was woodhall in 1971 -- 1871. this was a timeotal when men ha

total power. there was nothing that a woman could do on her own, but these s two absolutely managed to do ito and the other one which is again topical is, put a woman on trial for anything. it is considered as a legitimate part of the defense to make the most searching inquiry into her sexual morality. now, this is not somebody currently talking about the problems of rape and domestic violence and being able tohi gea fair trial.h teddy it was teddy back in 1871, and h the reasones i got involved wit these sisters, never thinking they would be so rip and read out of the front page, they were for equal pay for equal work, s and we saw what happened this last week. the reason i went into it was po because --ss precisely because 2008 everybody was talking about the possible wonder team of iny hillary clinton and obama, and i

started reading this tiny little squib that said, it's been done before, it was virginia woodhall and frederick douglass, and i was just astonishedshed becausen had known of woodhall but i didn't know they would been tha progressive. then i started reading about her incredible sister and found out how they pulled themselves out of absolute fraud.orribl they were fortune tellers, fraudulent fortune tellers men n living a horrible childhood to m become not only the richest but the most famous women in america at the time and i'll tell you more about that later. >> tell us how you got the ideas for your book. g why you decided to write it, as m.g. >> oh, well, i never thought i'd write a book about elizabeth taylor. my last book was about the jet propulsion laboratory, and i'd mostly been writing science articles, but what happened was i found myself stuck in a stuck vacation house in palm springs

with a bunch of children, gen xx gen y. gen x knew her only through joan rivers appalling fat jokes in the 1980s. vag and gen y, gen y knew she had some vague connection to film but mostly they knew her as thes person she was in later life, an aids philanthropist and a leade in that way. anyway, stuck in this house thea only thing we have for we entertainment is box sets of ile elizabeth taylor movies.d so we thought, oh, all right, it will be a campy night, and we ao started watching in away chronological order, and we were absolutely blown away, not just by the quality of her of her performances, but by the unrelenting feminist messages of her movies.

in "national velvet" her character, velvet brown, age 12, challenges gender discrimination. she's excluded from an important horse race because of her gender. of she poses as a male jockey and wins exposing the pure bigotry of the exclusion of women. her next big one "a place in the sun," 1951 is an abortion rights movie. it's an adaptation of "an american tragedy.ore "i will have an opportunity to elaborate on this more, but basically no pregnant mistress, no american tragedy.s butterfield 8 is a movie about woman's -- a woman having a right to her own body, not adhering to the conventions of '50s era marriage where a womane was a possession, either owned p by a man as a spouse or rented

as a hooker. she writes no sale in lipstick on the mirror of her married lover's bedroom.vers and even "who's afraid of s virginia woolf" is very much pps about what happens to a woman, t and both a manhe and a woman he locked into a marriage where the only way the woman can express herself is through her husband's career or children, and her husband is unsuccessful and she can't have children. so just -- so i was amazed by this onslaught, and i won't yap too long, but i wanted to make sure that my friends and i weren't -- my infantile friends and i weren't projecting 21st si century ideas onto mid 20th ac century material, so i started looking in the academy of motion picture arts and sciences i

library, and what i latched onto were the -- well, just a little bit of briefly the content of 6s american movies between 1934 anh 1936 was entirely controlled by the production code administration. they held sway over every word in those movies, and all the ord things that my friends and i had seen in the movies, the censors had seen and tried to grind theg out. the scene in which the shelly winter's character, not th e elizabeth taylor character, asks for an abortion had to be rewritten about 12 times. i mean, to a degree these actors had to communicate through telepathy. but suffice it to say that my suspicions were buttressed by the paper trail left by the censors and the combination of l those two things were what led me to produce the book. >> thank you.

nancy? >>g so one day when hillary clinton was making her first run for the presidency i had an pren epiphany. i was going through some of those typical women things, balancing work, balancing my e kids, and i thought, you know, we've experienced some of the biggest transformations in world history in the last 50 years. the revolutions in gender, in sexuality, in freedom.ye and i thought, you know, maybe there's a connection between our political delirium and this revolution that upended the most intimate relations that we all have, and so i jotted down thisd line, perhaps if the pill hadn't been invented, american politics would be very different today. and, you know, honestly, i l thought it was ait literary t devicehe, kind of metaphorcle, n

literally true, and then the week that the book came out in 2012, as many of you probably remember, the republicans convened an all-male panel to debate birth control, including at least one celibate, okay? so, you know, thanks, republicans, thanks for the book promotion. i really appreciated it. anyway, so that's my book looks0 at the last 40 years of our history to see how -- what i w call the t sexual counter ng revolution has been driving our dysfunction, driving our and polarization, driving our insanity, and, you know, as robin mentioned, the real reason for this is that the republican party has been captured by a group of sexual fundamentalists who honestly believe that women's rights, gay civil rights, the sexual revolution are a mortal threat to american

civilization, and they have beel politically acting onik these e beliefs. i'm not in anys sense saying t. every republican is like this.rt it has to do with the factions t within the party.public but part ofan it is it's not ju the republicans. it was democrats and liberals also who misinterpreted public opinion, overreacted to electiod losses, and ran scared and allowed a lot of this turning e back the clock to happen.t now, i do think we're seeing a shift in that, but there's a loe of ground to make up after this -- these 40 years of rolling back these rights. >> myra, let me start by asking you a question. you immersed yourself in the 19th and early 20th centuries. was feminism even a word?n the had it been coined at that point? >> no, it was not.t and, in fact, i find it kind of upsetting when i see somebody oe calling susan b. anthony a ed te

feminist because she was so urgently wanting only the vote, she was a single-minded person,d and all she wanted was a vote, and the sisters and elizabeth at kadyan stanton who was really tw quite sexy, you wouldn't know it to look at her. she's very heavy and has six kids, but she had had this love affair, and so she was right into the free love movement, all the rest of the sufficieragistse aghast they could go on in such feministsi ways. al they were trying to keep it just on the vote, and the sisters said, hey, if all we do is re-elect the same corrupt and dumb white males, there's no te reason to get the vote. they were unbelievably ahead of their time, but when you were talking about the women and thee fight, that same fight was going on in the mid -- it's identicall in w the mid 19th century with e

religious right, and the sisters were so far advanced.o the man running with grant titui wanted to put godon in the e constitution, and they said, i we're not sure he wants to be in the constitution, and how about those other two along with him? you know, and so they were incredibly up front about this but they fought these clergy ana they fought the most -- a woman's worst enemy was the gynecologist. they were all olve anti-contraception.this they were all just fiercely involved in this, and one of the few joys, and i mean few, of being older is that i covered ua everything you were talking about. i covered gloria steinhen, i covered the whole movement, and we saw the backlash with phyllis at the time. sh e convinced women if they h the equal rights amendment, they would end up having to lose their husbands, their husband would never have to pay them alimony. she said we'll have to have

unisex bathrooms which made me f wonder if she was ever on a plane. you know, i mean, and i debated her and a woman who said she was there to protect the rights of the unborn child and then i said, how many of your friends will adopt a black baby?ghts that's not the point.ren i said, yes, it is. so we used to have these real big fights, but what i really wanted to say about this religious movement is today, and i know i'm sure you covered it because you're so smart, but the money is there. you follow the money, the koch brothers, everybody else, the tea party for us is a gift that keeps on giving because we can always fight back at it, and all the women's -- i'm even tweet, everybody. anyway, on the internet you have all of these women writing ne everything, emily's list, everys single one, as soon as the koch brothers do something, they e rattle it back in, and, you know, b we have to fight the ds

money. wendy davis is -- i mean, i havd covered texas politics, god forbid you should ever go there, but anyway it's just horrible, and they've just come up with the most draconian abortion lawe and the reason these women are my heroes is because they took such unbelievable chances. put they were -- i'll stop now, but i want to talk about when they were put in jail and arrested when they blew the whistle on henry ward beecher's adulterous affair. >> i just want to jump in here on the question of were they dic feminists.s coincidentally feminism was discovered in america 100 years ago this month. century magazine wrote, you know, feminism is on everyone's tongue. it's in the germ of our women.d

we must define it. w we must understand it. and what feminismhe was, it was imported from the french by greenwich village bohemians to mean a -- you know, it was in t many ways against the susan b. anthony type of -- what they called the woman movement. we want to distinguish ourselves. legal they fought for legal birth control which wasn't legal at the time. there was censorship, you couldn't even write about birth control and send it through thee mails. people were put in jail for mailing information about birthl control, and it was kind of their spirit. you know, i agree with the woodhall sisters who are just y. amazing, i have been waiting for a new biography about these women so thank you. jo thank you.s kind >> they were audacious. she struck people as kind of, x. you know, charting a new human sex, a new -- leaving behind the

moralism and the sanction sanctimoniousness. if you think about the very nature of what w women are to bh not just roles, it's no wonder that we've seen such resistant f to accepting these changes. these were, you know, thousands of years of these roles for women that in really the space of half a century were completely changed, and, you know, personally i look at this kind of glass half empty. i think we're on the cusp of w even more amazing changes and wt have the feminist movement to thank for it, but it's also re these values are now common sense throughout america. i mean, we've won.so >> can i chime in quickly.pty >> i also want you to address - >> the glass half empty

business, i'm glad you mentioned glass because that was one of the things that made the women's movement complicated in the early part of the 20th century it was so closely linked with the temperance movement becauset men would get drunk and beat up their wives, and the separating of these two movements i think was very important.r just mentioning it. >> i wanted to -- among >> i would also add in some ways elizabeth taylor was, among other things, she was one of the first free lovers. >> absolutely. the vatican accused her of erotic vagrancy. >> i know. >> and i don't think the vatican was -- i mean,at it wasn't like some priest chatting privately y in a courtyard.news it was the official radio station and the weekly up newspaper. >> but she had a fabulous response to that that was in cn your book. something about the pope -- ot >> she said can i sue the pope. but i think she really got her revenge with an underappreciated movie called "the sandpiper"

we're we've actually gone beyona the whole issue of abortion and she makes a decision to have a o child outf of wedlock, and she - i mean, she is this sort of emblem of -- i mean, she's openly -- the character is openly atheistic, kind of pantheistic and very much linked to the ancient goddess cults, and she manages to destroy the faith in the marriage of a protestant which is about as close as you're going to get to theit high church episcopalian ministerar played by burton. and it was not appreciated at he the time because they were such big t stars. one of the things i usually like when i give a talk like this is you have to believe ctivme, buts often more effective when i can just show a clip from the film d

and you see it and hear it yourself and you don't have to trust me, which may be an stacle obstacle for some of you. >> not at all. i wanted to ask you though because she was born in, what, 1942 -- >> no, wait, 1932. she came of age basically in world war ii, so she was very much of the cohort of women whoo moved through life as second wave feminism, you know, became discussed and controversial andt then changes were made, et cetera. did elizabeth taylor in her own life ever consider herself a feminist, ever talk about feminism or show any kind of awareness that these roles were, in fact, emblematic of the larger changes in the culture? >> i think the fascinating thing about elizabeth is that directors you a things in her e that only in much later life would she be able to identify in herself. thesen qualities of, you know, that you could be beautiful and you could be very strong.