so many of the books are their books because that. even though when i'm not writing because sometimes they don't see the entire book all the way through because i'm rush to get it. but they are so there because as i'm writing and turn on the computer they are sitting on my shoulder. i hear them say, don't do that. or, if you do that, you will be in trouble when you bring did to the group. it's the learning process and they have done that with me for every book. with women of the sill ik they were good in helping with that and samurai of the garden i thought they would say, what's she doing. >> i'm writing a quiet book about a japanese seaside village and the man has tb and the woman had leparcy. it doesn't matter. my editor doesn't get to see it until it's finished but these ladies do. even if she said put it in your drawer and take it out when you are 80, which is around the corner, it would be fine because they wouldn't say they liked it if they didn't kind of thing. i felt comfortable to keep going. i'm not adjust saying this becau

this book find a readership like square books and myriad books.inally -- [applause] i would also like to thank the people of my community in mississippi for being my home and my inspiration. i am grateful for my family, friends for being and believing and encouraging me and most importantly for giving me life meaning, especially my mother who made her way out of no way, who worked so hard to give me the opportunity to dream this dream and become a writer. i love you all so much. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> wonderful. [applause] this concludes the 2011 national book awards. i'd like to thank harold ogenbrown, all the judges. i'd like to congratulate all the winners and thank you for your beautiful, beautiful speeches, and for all of you finalists who did not win, congratulations to you, too. [cheers and applause] i urge you all to remember those dark, gloomy days before you were nominated for a national book award. [laughter] i have made light of my duties as a master of ceremonies tonight, but it truly has been a wonderful and humbling hon

book. that is where you have more censorship. >>host: what do you teacher at the university of texas julia mickenberg? >> a survey of cultural history 1865 through present also a course of the 1960's. i teach a course on children's literature and american culture. currently teaching day corzine expatriate him political pilgrims living abroad and i am always inventing new course is because i want to learn things. >>host: your books tales from the left "tales for little rascals" to consider yourself for radical? >> i sympathize with those who were involved and i have their romantic sensibility but i don't really consider myself a radical. i hate to meetings and i also think that people are too greedy for something like socialism to work. it is nice in theory but i do support the movement certain they for environmental or economic justice but i tend to be critical of any type of dog month or ideology. if you take one type of line it is more at a foreign to think critically but i think of my ow

the book is out there. [laughter] he is gone, so that i'm very proud of it and most important with me, it was all that he hoped for and really knew it. he never doubted it. >> wow am i love that. that is a wonderful introduction. we will delve into the book a little bit after we do a round. let's go to chris buckley next, who was a very close friend of joe heller's later in life and as i understand it, i understand actually from you that the two of you exchanged hundreds of letters on top of having many meetings in person. so tell us about joseph heller's, the guy's guy, and in. i would love to know he was funny in person. >> well we didn't go to girlie clubs together. valerie heller is with us in the audience, but i didn't just say that for her benefit. we are coming together, which is odd for this reason. i reviewed for "the new yorker" the sql to "catch-22", a book called closing time, which is a sort of mad, jumbled novel and it is used to -- yosarian 40 odd years later. i couldn't resist quoting the li

>> children's books -- >> books about science, i know. many of the books that they published were science books, and i said, why all these science books that seems pretty, you know, if you're trying to teach kids about politics, and she said to teach materialism because she had -- she was a hard core marxist that she had the idea that markism was the only> >> we included the original version of dr. suess, which became popular later. dr. suess i don't believe was affiliated with any political movement other than the democratic party, but he was strongly antifascist and antiracist, and it's beginning as a story of anti-semitism, but it's really about respecting differences, and so that was published, i believe, in red book, and then it became one of those popular stories. there's a piece in there calledded the practical prince seases by jay williams, and this is part of the wave of feminist fairy tales published in the 1970s and 1980s. i think that was a pretty popular book. one of my favorite stories in there is one called the day they par

those books were informative. >> which book has sold the best? >> i think that "cleopatra" has sold more than the others combined. >> y de thing that happened? >> i do not know. i do not know. it is one of those interesting things. you never know what people are going to find in your work. you hope someone might read what you have written in the end and understand or even enjoy it. i am interested in the ideas of women in power, the remnants of the east and west, those teams have certainly hit a home. there's been a lot of interest in terms of female empowerment. a lot of men have come to readings and asked me to sign books for their daughters. going around and poisoning your relatives is not necessarily something you want to encourage, but there's certainly a sense of a smart, canny, smart woman. i think we're always interested in solving a mystery. the human mind works like that. this is a book that said our misconceptions are wrong. we have so many ideas about her that are misplaced. the basic ideas about her our fault. she is not egyptian, sh

has a second book.dy here i feel sitting here all of you have one book in you. whether it's a family story or your story whether it's ancestors whether it's your history you want to write about. but it's the second one that's hard. i felt that when i turnod the computer and thought, now i have to write book number 2. i had in mind that i wanted to write something very different from women of the silk that was strictly about the feminist chinese women during the turn of the century and i wanted to write about my japanese culter. i didn't have the story or the culture unfortunately because i was born in san francisco, half chinese and half japanese but raised in the chinese culture. when it was time to write the second book and i knew i wanted to explore my japanese side it was going to be difficult in the way that i didn't know the culture. right away i had to learn a lot. it was something that was not engrained in me besides the story. i sat down and thought about the story my mother told me about her b

once he sort of dumped this book on me -- it was never intended to be my book. it was supposed to be my art and his book. one day he came schlepping boxes and said, here, it's your baby, i don't have time. and i s left crushed under the avalanche of his enormous life that was both fascinating and -- it had so many tributaries to it. i had never written a book before. i had written journals and some articles. i mean, i consider myself a visionary, and my head isn't filled with words, it's filled with pictures. but i'm capable of describing the pictures that i see. so anyway, i began this journey of a thousand miles with one step at a time, the shrapnel of his life all over my floor, and trying to put together this puzzle which became so frustrating that i kept running away from it as much as i embraced it. i finally ended up two states away to kind of get my own perspective on things. and i now live in new mexico. which is where the book ended up being finished. in the meantime, i became a magician in las vegas and just did other things. [laughing] it was too muc

book -- i read books saying, oh, this is not a great book, but i have not read books where i felt, oh, they didn't research it well enough. i'm trying to think -- i read a couple books -- what was the book that i last read, a non-fiction book -- no, you know. i'm more of a fan than a critic. i read the perfect storm, and i read he spent years living there in a frozen -- i'm like that's amazing. i wish i could do that, but i couldn't do that, or the wolf of wall street was a book, and i wish he'd come to me, not because it's a bad book. it's a great book, but i would have loved to have written that book, and that's what's it like for me. >> host: she's going to the library, picking up your books, but if she just got one, what one do you recommend? >> guest: that's a tough one. sex on the moon is the one she might een joy the most. i think sex on the moon is the one now people are getting libraries and people love it. i think that one and bringing down the house are the two. ugly americans is, i think, maybe the best writing, but it's a darker story. you have to be -- you have to want t

i would appreciate that and i also like your book i saw you last time i had to check out this book i am reading and again. >> host: thank you very much. >> guest: i appreciate you reading my book. first of all,, question number one, of black america is large and internally divided over various things. many people in black america are immigrants from africa or the caribbean and there are certain tensions between than native-born black americans and black people who are immigrants from other place is. sometimes to the attention becomes rather ugly and use the a little bit of that in a commentary about barack obama truly a black american that his father was a black african as opposed to a black american. i think has subsided somewhat as the caller indicated that was a topic of conversation at all across the united states they deal with the attention but on a question why i went to princeton university, because my older brother went there and it was recommended to me and my older brother suggested that i do. i am very happy i went there. it is wonderful. the third question on occupy wall

"the alice behind wonderland," i counted 29 books. -- 21 books. you had more before that? >> i am sorry to disappoint you. i think that is it. >> the one that is on top here, "atlantic: the biography of the ocean." i understand that the paperback is out now. >> yes. in the beginning of november. >> what led to this book? one of the statistics in your book is that something like the ocean has been around for 170 million years. why did you find interest in this? >> i sort of knew how the ocean was formed. as a geologist. and people who are in the business of plate techtonics know when the ocean will cease to be. i did not need a pick -- need to do before it ceased to be butit will be 100 million years before it disappears. i grew up by the atlantic. i crossed this and it occurred to me one crosses it so easy, some people do anyway, we have come to disregard this. this is merely an expense of distance. it is just a nuisance that keeps usgetting to new york as quickly as we would like. and i thought, what i knew about this, this was a romantic and bea

>> got the american book award. >> hinojosa: got the american book award.but a lot of people, again, know you as the writer who brought to forth this story of the yuma 14? >> yes, right. >> hinojosa: just so people can remember, that was the really horrific story of how many pele w got stuckn a... well, you tell. tell the story. >> it was may, 2001, and it was a group of men from veracruz who were recruited by coyotes, by smugglers, to come to the united states allegedly to work picking oranges in florida. >> hinojosa: which is another thing that people don't realize-- that there's a lot of active recruitment of mexican workers... >> oh, yeah. >> hinojosa: ...to come. it's not like suddenly they just wake up and say, "i'm going to..." there are people recruiting. >> oh, well, you know that and i know that, but lou dobbs might not know that. i mean, i always tell people on tour, "you know, being mexican does not mean you have an illegal immigration gland in your body." at 13 years old, your body doesn't start pumping hormones that tell you how to cross the b

[laughter] could be a book. that room is really cool. >> so i have a question with the, i'm sure there were letters of threats that he would receive. what do they do with those letters? >> yeah. the first thing that happens to any mail is it goes through this weeklong screening process where it's scanned for chemical threats, radiological threats. so that happens first. then it comes into this office, and the reason they have this huge staff is there's a rule there that every single letter has to be read because who knows, you know, buried in one of these letters could be some kind of credible threat. so that's why, you know, they've decided we need to make sure that a person reads every single one of these letters. and letters that are threats are flagged immediately, and, you know, go places much higher than to me. but, you know, also like on the comment line even people calling in to the white house, they -- all those phones have a red button that automatically transfers both suicide calls and threats which i

this book was different than the first book because in the first book i had so many voices and this book everything had to be seen from steven's point of view. when i narrowed it down the story told itself much the process of a writer is elizabeth said, you cannot be afraid to make mistakes. that's the writing process. we are making a lot of mistakes i am constantly rewriting and looking at something and saying, i could say it with less words. i could look at something and say, she would kill me if i did this and i would change it. there are all the things. it's a constant process. no book falls on to the page and the words don't just fall on the page. they may fall on the page and you delete half and start over. you take the one line that works and write around it. that's basically a lot of the way i write. i want to read you some and i guess i should read a little and i want to open up for questions about this book or the other books or what i'm doing now or not doing now. basically, for me i think samurai's garden another reason why love this book. everybody says, what's your favorite

in detail, the john's book rhett -- rose head and shoulders above the books.there is a book eminently greeted both terrifically entertaining and deals with substantive issues in a way i think that makes everyone or should make everyone who reads the book think about it. in a shameless plug, the next event john and i will be end in october next year or next month at yale university to feature and highlight another iconic figure in american literature, mark twain. to find fund find ways or for mark twain museum. jody will john -- join john and myself. if you are in a part of the country want to go to it please do. all the funds go to mark twain house museum. in this country we can't celebrate others like harper lee and mark twain than there something wrong. if we get things wrong he will let us know i'm sure. i have a series of questions here but really i left the questions and we will have a free flow of dialogue. i won't call in any one person on the panel to answer. please feel free to jump in. i like this question and i'm going to start with it. how is the l

you are on a book tour. it is a long book tour.he research, the right thing, the speaking, -- the writing, the speaking, what you like the most, the least? >> nothing compares with a land to the library. i spend a lot of time in libraries. you find that one document -- it restores you, it keeps you going. it helps to solve a mystery. it brings for two pieces of narrative together. it puts the keystone on a theme. there was a bag of correspondent. it was postcards' she received over a lifetime. they had never been gone through. in that bag was a postcard she had received in 70's from a woman she had known in the 20's. the woman reminded her of a conversation. she had talked about a book to be written on the importance a woman provides inspiration for her husband. it was what i was writing about. that one little postcard kept me going for the next three years. it might be an interview. when i was working on a book, i walked in and he said i am glad to see you. i was apologizing. he said you can write a book about -- you could never w

they don't review the book. the near times janet has a huge problem with me it does not like hell i write nonfiction. i find it comical i read them with enjoyment because she has so much hatred for me but it? me up. my readers understand what they're getting into. it is the true story is a thriller that happens to be true as long as imf front this undersigned-- understandable but there are plenty of nonfiction books written where a mean character dies 500 years ago. there is the interviews there the author house to put himself into it and you make your best guess but that does not change the fact it is not fiction. >> host: welcome to booktv this is our "in-depth" program the monthly author interview with one of their and their body of work. this month we have ben mezrich author of six nonfiction books. beginning 2002 with "bringing down the house", "ugly americans", et "busting vegas" "rigged" coming the accidental billionaires' coming and his most recent thomas sex on the moon. this is your opportunity to talk

i don't think it's a bad book, but i think it's a popular book. it's entertainment, and god knows it made a great movie. made almost a better -- well, as good a movie as the book, let's say. and then there's the kind of, there's the joseph conrad movies that certain directors made into great movies out of great books. it can be done. i think every book is different, and every writer is different. for instance, dickens is famously cinematic, and everyone who writes about dickens says the same boring thing, and i'm now saying it now. but when you read a dickens novel, you can see it as a movie. and many of the movies are wonderful. like "great expectations." >> here's what i thought just to slip sideways for a minute. it took me 30 years to realize that "the graduate" was e polltous just like it took all of us a long time to realize that the wizard of oz is ulysses -- >> i still hadn't realized that. [laughter] >> well, think of -- >> i like it. >> they always have the same ending. you bring me the head of frey doe garcia or the grail or the witch's

, different categories, a medical book, novel, book of poetry, book of history and he would read each one every night for 20 minutes and then switched to the next one and that way he was getting a liberal arts education as life continued through his experiences. a gorgeous as you know helped eliminate yellow fever in the panel which made it possible for us to proceed with building the panama canal. next question comes from the audience at the national book festival. >> i want to express my gratitude for your positive comments about teachers early on i have a background in history and i also enjoy reading your book. my question though is as you look at our students, one of five lessons from the history of america or otherwise that our students need to know before they graduate from high school. >> five lessens our students in history need to know before they graduate from high school. well, the first 1i would tell them is what i was told by a graduate students when i was a sophomore in college and not only had i never forgotten it, it changed my whole point of view about history to the

and you can read about it in the book. finally, the president, gerald, of the new federal reserve bank, wrote in a letter and said look, sometimes they take a few meals, and a literal handful, that's a direct quote from his letter, well, henry hit the ceiling. because they're supposed to be investigating. the information we got, it is kind of a joke. and that's probably why banks like citibank had 50 billion off their main record. where would the examiners? with a dining out with the people they are investigating. then we got information that the los angeles branch of the san francisco federal reserve bank, which has much of the currency that comes into the fed, they store all the new currency from the bureau of engraving and printing as well as all the money that the banks don't want to hold on the premises. they all ship it to the federal reserve banks. and a public number that he put out on a press release, i can use it, is that they had 80 billion in cash. we got information that the accounting records there were corru

even my first book, written in an era before he books have been released in the e book format and away that takes the vantage of the medium. the e book of chaos has an atlas with and some video, visual illustrations of the scientific content that do some things i wish i could have done in the printed book. but i certainly share the concern of librarians and booksellers and anyone else who has a fondness for the old delivery format of the printed book which in so many ways is a beautiful and effective technology that is perfect for the purpose to which was intended. >> host: chaos, older boat was a finalist for the national book award. what is the premise of chaos? >> guest: chaos was about a new science, still a very active branch of science attempting to explore pieces of the universe that appear to be 5 orderly treatment by traditional science. parts of the universe that included turbulence in fluid flows, that included erratic behavior of dynamic systems and everything from economic systems to the human heart arrhythmia. >> host: next call from mr. gleick from jerry in philadelphia.

a lot of this book is in london. but what goes on in manchester and cotton manufacturing districts vis-À-vis the civil war? >> guest: since the original stories came out, revisionism and their pro-southern and of course you always know that the totality of the argument. so the point is they didn't. the 500,000 cotton workers and clearly something happened in the majority felt something. so why did they? i think is a classic working-class understanding of earning the fruits of your labor and that is a fundamental difference. so i think there was a genuine class consciousness which moved them, even though people understood the argument about wage slavery and people had come back from america. nonetheless it is fundamentally different from slavery. the second reason is the most expansive and best organized charitable campaign in british history to that point was organized by others to provide help to the cotton workers, including journalists who were involved in helping children, wives, families out of work by stirring

i think it's the favorite book of almost everybody you meet. >> the first time in my life that the book had sort of captured me. that was exciting. i didn't realize that literature could do that. >> i remember reading a copy of my aunt's in jamaica queens. it was the first book ever written by a white writer that discussed racism in ways that was complicate and sophisticated. -- complicated and sophisticated. >> a touchstone in american literary and social history. it's a story gently tugged at the issues of racism. >> she was a champion of people who helped us get liberated from racism in this country. >> harper lee's first and only novel. >> a masterpiece is masterpieces not because they're flawless but because they tap into something essential to us, at the heart of who we are and how -- >> a masterpiece and a mystery. >> of course, one kept hoping and waiting for the next novel. sadly, that never came. >> i cannot imagine what drove harper to silence. >> thank you. i prefer to pass. >> what did you say? >> well, i have nothing relevant to say concerning the case. however, when i hav

sign their books at the book signing tend. one thing about the festival. i don't know about you but this is my favorite festival. i love south by southwest. [applause] this festival is fabulous. the people are doing the lord's work depending which lord you are thinking about. along with celebrating books and authors the festival benefits the texas public library and literacy across the state. we need that. proceeds in the sale of all books and merchandise in the sales tend benefit these efforts. we are celebrating our sixteenth anniversary this year. the past 15 years the festival contributed $2.5 million to libraries to enrich 35,000 children in low-income schools throughout the state. i want each of you to buy the books from both of these guys because you will read great books and benefit this wonderful mission. i am not an expert on the debt and the dollar. i am paul stekler and are in or about politics and i found these books fabulous. i loved it when i began searching the web to figure out who david was and in the backgro

and there are a lot of corrupt lawyers in my books. there are a lot of nasty people in my books. there are a lot of lawyers who are not portrayed in a particularly favorable way. but the centers of my story are two small time criminal defense attorneys who work on michigan street. and if you get accused of a crime, those are the people you want to call. >> that's my approach. and they're both former public defenders, right? >> yes, they are. they are both former public defenders here in san francisco. without giving away too much of the story, there may be a return at some point to that particular office where they would, of course, be working for you. >> anytime. [laughing] there seems to be such a huge disconnect, you know, between what you see on tv and even what you read about. most of the tv shows like "law & order" you have a judge who's eminently fair, a prosecutor who is completely ethical, a defense attorney who doesn't show up half the time. these images really result -- i know this as a public defender, because the portrayals of public defenders are usually negative. w

in books you can get away with that but my books are very written like screenplays. i get attacked for that as well. i am always thinking of the movie when i write. i visualize every scene. i imagine justin timberlake doing it all. that is how i sit down and write. when i write it is that if i am writing a movie and book form. they are different. people who write screenplays didn't usually write books. >> host: michael tweets and what are your upcoming project storylines? >> guest: good question. michael is in boston. i think i know him. he is an incredible fashion designer. he works in boston. he wants me to tell secrets. i'm working on a big new project but i am not at liberty to say what it is about. it might be a female main character which would be new for me. i have never written a female main character before. if i write that book next that will be it but i am not sure. i haven't decided yet what my next book is but i have projects and working on a couple television shows. i have scripted show i am working on and i have a show, reality type documentary show wh

>> this was the book i wanted to read. it was the book that we wanted to read. errol louis and i were working at the new york sun together as new young columns and we started to talk to our colleagues, the late great jack newfield and saying what he or favorite columns, who are your favorite palm this? ian jimmy breslin his friend both picked the same one called the death of frankie jerome. it hadn't been anthologized since 1924 and it took us weeks to find. jesse angelo are coeditor of the "new york post," we'll begin this process but at the end of the day this was a labor of love, and education with inspiration but it follows a ruler think you should follow when you are putting a book together. you should write the book you want to read. >> john avlon who hoosier favorite newspaper columnist of all-time? you have to have one. >> if i had to pick one i would probably pick jimmy breslin. >> why? >> breslin is the great and murray campton, pete hamill who will be with us later today, they can hit any pitch. they don't write in one genre. ernie cobb is the patron

my books were not selling at all. had written this book on the yangtze river, which did not sell any copies. i have a real problem, will let go to public relations or something like that? and then, suddenly, the possibility of actually making a living out of writing suddenly occurred. "the maap that changed the world," was about a geologist, who became the founder of modern geology. i kept believing that this would stop sooner or later. not to go buy jaguar motorcars. i could possibly make a living writing. many people to not do this. the successful writers, they have day jobs usually teaching. this is very much a high wire act. there is no disguising the fact that book sales are going down, advances are going down, how long can this be sustained? i am looking for alternate avenues. i am interested in new technology. and although i am writing this american book, this sounds rather bizarre, but the huge collection of skulls -- i think there is a chance that this will sell very well. in which case, this is another avenu

fair in owner of books & books and has been our partner for years here at the miami book fair we appreciate that and your assistance as well. we have about an hour and a half left of our coverage on booktv on c-span2 but we have three more hours at a speech 23 you can find the full schedule and author evens jim lehrer will be here in about half an hour we'll talk with him about presidential debates called attention city is his latest book yesterday we had an author historian here who has written a new book on the bay of p.i.g.s. invasion a brilliant disaster a call in program from yesterday and here is jim now. >> your book billion disaster, said jim invasion now joining us here in miami. ji what role did miami play in the bay of p.i.g.s.? >>t it was center stage theame cia came to recruit cuban exiles who eventually in participated in the invasion of cuba.t after castro came into power many people did not like can very much fled cuba and where they fled to wasmain mainly right here in miami. after the bay of p.i.g.s. operation mongoose was another covert operations o center out of miami an

. >> host: this is your most recent book. this is your third book? >> guest: fourth. >> host: fourth book? how did your journalism career begin? >> guest: um, i was working on the fire this time, the newspaper i founded at emery, at column, and i had occasion to call somebody at "rolling stone" for some reason to ask them some question. and i talked to the perp for a long time, and i said, well, who are you to have this time to sit on the phone and talk to me, thank you so much. and the person said, well, i'm an intern. and i'm like, they have interns at "rolling stone"? this is amazing, i want to be an intern. so i applied, and i got an internship at "rolling stone," started going there all the time. quickly realized that we are just here to be a free labor force. you're not teaching us anything. so i started to not do the things that they told me to do. i would delegate to the other interns the tasks that were delegatedded to me which completely, you know, was not appropriate at all, not at all what i suggest interns do, but that gave me pockets of

books. books. his current book and one will be discussing today is called "lions of the west," which is a history of the period that we know as manifest destiny. the great period of expansion where america fulfill its continent of destiny and became the nation that we know today. but, of course, at a price that makes some people a little and easy when they think about how we achieved that greatness. so, we are just going to have a conversation for about 30 minutes and then we will open it up and have you folks ask questions, if you would like to. first, we want to thank the texas book festival for having us here. we want to thank all the volunteers and all the people who work so hard to make this a premier event in the united states, and a premier event for people who love books and work in the world of books. my first question is, is one that always intrigues me. i love dedications to books. your book is dedicated to mrs. elizabeth rogers who taught you american history. what's the back sto

it's mostly through books, reading books that they've written. but across that spectrum, haitians will tell you that no small amount of their current problems are related to the haitian revolution and the price they paid for actually pushing forward these ideas. now, i said how can you say that in a more concise way and that's why i took this medical metaphor and for those of you who are not in medicine, we talk about the history of the present illness. that's when someone comes in with a complaint, different sort of complaints usually for john's patients than mine. >> i'm an internist here. >> i'm an internist too. they come in and say i'm coughing and losing weight for weeks or whatever it might be. and then you gathered the history of the present illness. you find out when this started and one of the things that we like to do -- and i put this in the book, maybe pushing it a little bit, in my work infectious disease work we always go chronologically and the patient may or may not have an idea about when a certain illness. they always do have a

magnificent book.thank you very much. [applause] >> i'd like to add a special thanks to the library. both for bringing us here and for existing. this is a great place. you should use it. [applause] >> is a nonfiction author of book you'd like to see on booktv? send us an e-mail or twitter. >> here are this week's best selling nonfiction books according to publishers weekly as of november 1.

>> the book by mr. pearl. there's no doubt about that. >> lydia was beaten for seven continuous hours interrupted by short prayer breaks on the day she died. the sound of the police siren was recorded by a paradise police officer racing to the house. when he arrived he tried to save lydia with cpr both the parents present. >> she was like, really tired and her eyes, her vision was blurry. >> listen lart to the day to the seriously injured girl. >> on my bottom and on my back last night, too. underneath my feet. >> underneath your feet? zaria, i'd like to take you to the hospital, okay. >> i probably need to bring a pot cause i'm going to puke. >> at the sentencing hearing the 11-year-old who is still recovering from her serious injuries had the courage to address her parents in open court about her deceased sister. she said why did you adopt her? to kill her? it's a heartbreaking story. kevin pleaded guilty to murder and torture and will be in jail for at least 22 years. elizabeth for at least 12. do you think

it is on as to a fault, this book. but i decided to tell my story -- is honest to a fault, this book. but i decided to tell my story by telling stories. it is like a series of mini dramatists -- dramas with me as the title character. they are all about acting, what i have learned stage by stage. tavis: how ud construct that at 35? -- how do you the construct that, at age 35? >> it was a very important year for me. for one thing, that white wife -- and met my wife. it was a logical intermission. if my life was a play, age 35 was my intermission. again, i did not plan in. i had never written anything that long before. before coming here i had written about -- i had written children's books, which were about 27 pages long. i set out early on finding a logical place to wrap up. tavis: something that may have surprised you, but when you are so busy living your life, you do not have time to process your life until you come to this moment. when you have to go back and come face to face with the life you have lived and hopeful

his book. there are deaths and disease -- which that's the human -- sorry. >> to you feel, the question, i guess, is not would we be better not to have met each other since that's impossible, but are you optimistic about this thing that's going to continue? this 14 93 is not over. it continues. and when i said tiger woods, i meant that jokingly, but in some way we're playing out the dramas of 1493 in this city. >> with right. >> and the concerns with illegal immigration -- >> the whole country. >> that's right. are you optimistic? >> i think, you know, the way i hear your question you're saying is, is the pains of this kind of calamitous, explosive mixing that's been going on for 500 years outweighed by the gains? >> that's right. or do, do we as human beings somehow manage to find some benefit in this calamity that -- >> there's, i guess for me when i think about this and wrestle with it is that the problem is the pains and the gains, the goods and the bads are incommensurate. let me give you

book fair. it is the big street fair here on the campus of miami-dade. of three events still happening we have another call and with jim lehrer. we still have some webcast happening at booktv.org isabel wilkerson will, then chat -- jeht mahal to talk about herblock you may remember her at the national book festival and then jim lehrer will be speaking in chapman hall as well and in the miami book fair 2011 concludes with author michael moore at 6:00 p.m. eastern that is nine booktv.org as well. one of the co-founders is ms. caplan and he joins us now on our set. how did this get started and when? >> this is the 28 the book fair and it was started because the president of miami-dade college called a number of us together in an attempt to bring life back to downtown miami was suffering from rough economic times and it is thought if we could bring literary culture to downtown we might be able to unite the community at the same time to bring some focus. >> host: the owner of books & books and your i

or maybe part of another book. and in the spring and summer of 2002, economists were coming out with all these explanations, you know, just many of them wildly contradictory. i mean, not individual. i mean, one contradicting the other about, you know, what had happened to cause this terrible disaster in this country. some say it was a convertibility system, you know, that was doomed to fail. and other people said no-no, the problem is they didn't adhere to the convertibility system rigidly and some people said, well, it was the washington consensus, you know, this is sort of the free market orthodox macroeconomic policy sort of good -- the christmases of the imf and the world bank and other people said, no-no it was they didn't apply those principles with enough discipline. and there was some people who said well, it was tight budget policy and some say it was excessively loose budget policy. i tried to sift through a lot of these. i'm not a ph.d. economist but i'm allowed to kind of at least make up my mind about