room, verizon scandals following and run with peter elkins, her second book she co-authored with joe nocera is all the devil here, the hidden history of the financial crisis. her most recent book, before this one tonight, his shaky ground, the strange saga of the us mortgage giants. she is a contributing editor at vanity fair and lives in chicago. her new book, "saudi america: the truth about fracking and how it's changing the world," reveals the true story of fracking's impact on wall street, the economy and geopolitics, a topic near and dear to our hearts in houston and i'm happy she's here to discuss it with us. please join me in welcoming bethany mclean. [applause] >> thank you all so much for coming. i am going to talk for half an hour and come back to the probably and open up to questions. the probably is because from a young age in grade school i detested speaking out loud. i trained myself to speak as quickly as i could which means i talk really fast because i can't seem to one train myself so somebody in the audience yells slow down, i will take it is a helpful suggestion, not a ro

caroline: sarah, your perspective of the -- joe nocera . sarah, what is your perspective? hink this is less about amazon and more about self-inflicted wounds. lampert'sder eddie stewardship, the company has suffered. saw in newhat joe york, i have seen in maryland and virginia. these stores are underinvested in and are not compelling destinations to shop. amazon, there were things that brought sears to this point. >> sears was the amazon before amazon existed when you think about the mail-order business. how did we get to this today? >> i think that their success has sowed the seeds of its destruction. they were so dominant and the executives were so sure that they could feedback any competition -- beat back any petition, that the hubris was overwhelming. the market began to change. all of these little malls that all had little stores and the specialty shops. then kmart and panties started -- jcpenney started to take customers away. they were so used to being king of the hill. to me, that's where the problem started. when eddie lampert came in in the last 15 years, he was t