started to go into the book. and it gave me the structure of what the book would become, which was very much taking after what a japanese garden it. early on a read about gardens. you don't know where you are going you just read. because japanese gardens are a huge aspect on the culture i started reading on gardens. i love the natural and the idea on how they use the gardens and how much it reads to them i started reading. i read a line like the silk worker line where it embraced me and i thought, that's what i would write about. you never walk from the front gate to the front door in a straight line it's always a curving path in which you discover things along the way. i said, that's it. he lands, he gets off the train and slowly he would walk down this path and discover the story of this caretaker along the way. it began to move. but, you know, when i speak of it it seems like it's simple. it was not simple. this month of thinking about things. this is times of writing things down and thinking it doesn't work. a

a lot of authors just skip the book and go straight to the e-book. and i have a lot of second thoughts about that. what is selling in the world of a million new titles a year? well, i would say probably two-thirds of those books are fiction, and half of those are erotica. that means almost half a million are erotica. and i guess these are fantasies that authors are putting down on paper. i'm not sure who the customers are, but they're having a lot of fun writing them anyway. so, let me talk for just a little bit about the books. e-book sales last year were around 6% industrywide. talk about different categories, it's much higher, or lower. fiction, nonfiction doesn't sell as well as fiction. and erotica fiction sells better than fiction. so a lot of what's being sold through e-books is fiction, and a lot of that is erotica. the nonfiction space i think will probably double, e-books sales will probably double this year. they will still be under 10% in the nonfiction category, but that is double which means that our sales which are tracking pretty much

welcome to the 2011 harlem book fair. my name is mr. williams, i'm associate professor at fairfield university and chief his touron at the jackie robinson museum. i want to welcome you to this forum. we are here to discuss manny marable's recent book "malcolm x" and the recent impact on the life and legacy of the african-american icon. manny marable first began the study as a corrective to the autobiography of malcolm x which stood as one the most important works of african-american literature produced. dispute the widespread influence and claim, there has been questions concerning it's authenticity. published nine months after his death, for instance, it portrays a neat portrait of his life in a realty tale. but it's always been at odds with the complex individual that many knew malcolm to be. the liberal control that the press enjoyed over the final draft begs the question of what malcolm himself may have excised or concluded if he lived. one scholar, the late manny marable, like many, ask the question, how much isn't true? how much ha

>> guest: what the book focuses on is the best known book, the most influential book, but in many ways not well understood book, so part of the goal of the book is on one hand to reconstruct the critical thought. du bois was treated well by biographyers, but not by political philosophers. my idea was to treat du bois as a political philosopher bearing in mind when you think about du bois in that perspective, he's a contributor to african-american political thought. again, i come back to the influence idea, the idea that more than any other 20th century african-american thinker, du bois is the thought -- du bois's thought -- you asked about the shadow, cast a shadow over the thinking of other african-american theorists, but more generally beyond the -- beyond just the world of african-american thought, just a shadow over nip and everyone whose thought about african-american identity, black identity, political policy and part of the idea is going back to du bois and engaging du bois as political thought, we have our own thinking about many of these issues. >> host: in the last 110 years

everything in the book is reprinted. a lot of the dialogue is actually, you know, straight from the transcripts and everything. you know. i do get attacked a lot in the press for my style. which is a very kind of dramatic, sinmatic way of telling a nonfiction story. >> you brought that up. that's what i wanted to visit. that came down a lot in bringing down the house. i wonder if you can talk about the technique that you employ. your controversial technique. nothing sells book. how you employ that and why. i have to say in the "new york times" that just came out yesterday. >> she hate me. >> she hated me. he said it. that's part of it. that was the hangover from that. tell me -- >> you know, it's always -- it's been like this in my entire career. i'm a cinematic thinking. this is the kind of stuff that i like to read. it's a form of new journalism, i guess, i get all of the information. i interview just about everybody. i get thousands of pages of court documents, all of the fbi stuff, and i sit down and i tell the story

one of the things l.a. and in this books documentation that the justice department has gathered over the last couple of years. what you see is that there has been a documented case of home grown terrorism come caseserror- involving american citizens with some type of tied to an era atto -- international terrorist organization. the numbers are there. people ask me how many people j are there, i can't tell youhere that.in the i can tell you what these cases. are. you see them falling a couple of different patterns.th one, american citizens who have traveled overseas to pakistan od yemen to get training, perhaps ni of the most famous cases is the times square bomber. hze man who traveled to pakistan and get training from the top man and came back to the unitedn states. he drove in suv into timesta dro square and thought he had a - viable explosive device.e counter-terrorism officials say they believe that was a successful attack. the only thing that saved us in that situation was the fact tha the bomb did not detonate. there w

>> the book has been translated into 34 languages. i can why it in bogota, i -- buy it in bogota, i bought it in cape town. you can buy it anywhere in the world. it, obviously, travels. people read it, things happen. its first round happens to young people who are thinking of vocation. some of them wanted religious vocations, but others steered their life in the light of it. , that's not the central use today, but just the variety of some of these impacts. the first, i brought a couple samples along. the first big book about him gives you a sample of what it goes to. an east german communist theologian -- that sounds very contradictory, but the stalinists were running east germany. in fact, the very town where bonn bonhoeffer went to school and studied was one of these headquarters. they allowed a few universities and a few theological fact faculties, humboldt university was one of them. and they had to allow theological faculties because the majority of the people were catholic and reformed, and they had to comply with what was pushed

>> in the book. it was huge. the plutonium are the reigning in tennessee, that outfit polled more power off of the united states electrical grid on any given night than the entire city of new york city. and yet no one knew it was there. that's how powerful a black operation could be. the vice president not your referring to when the manhattan project was originally going on was harry truman. he had no idea about the nuclear weapon until he became president. and the person who told him was vannevar bush. >> basic question. by name at area 51? are there one through 50? if so, explain. >> that's the subject of great debate. even a lot of my name sources in the book will say that's just a quadrant that they came up with. but according to my source in the end of the book, the reason that it is named area 51 is because in 1951 the original equipment and the remains of the roswell crash came there. >> have you been called a conspiracy theorist, this audience member asked? >> i will let you guys decide on that one, but wh

welcome to the 2011 harlem book fair. i am yohura williams from fairfield university and chief historian at the jackie robinson museum. i want to welcome you to this forum. we are here to discuss manning parable's recent book malcolm x a life of reinvention and its impact on our appreciation of the life and legacy of this african-american icon. manning parable began his study as a corrective to the influential autobiography of malcolm x which for five decades stood as one of the most important works of african-american literature ever produced. despite its widespread influence and a claim there have always been questions concerning its authenticity. publish nine months after his death the autobiography presents a unique portrait of malcolm's life as a quintessentially american morality tale but also has been at odds with the complex individual many new him to be. in addition the liberal controlled press enjoyed the final draft bags the question what malcolm himself might have excised or included in the book had he lived. w

those were the 2 things i knew when i began the first book. i was fortunate enough to it stumble upon the silk working women which gave me everything i wanted. it gave me the culture. it gave me a sense of what it meant to be a female chinese women in that time and a sense of empowerment on what they had done. regardless of what they understood they were doing at the time. they didn't know it was a culture that was earning money and living independent of husbands and family that was doing everything against what it meant to be in the chinese culture. i hadn't heard about that and it was perfect. it was exactly what i was looking for. i can go off and preach about the fact they think so many of us asian american authors and asian authors in general tend to go back and write about our ancestors and write about things in our past not our specific past but may be of of ancestors and mothers and grand mothers. we have been telling their story. i think the generation to come, will be telling stories of living here. it will be different stories. but t

the book deals with many of the same issues that his book did. matter of fact, i teach at boston university in the same classroom where he taught. so this is so very special to me. just so you know, the room attracts people. stevens always are coming into that room. something very spiritual about that room. it is as if they know that he has been there. and so the meeting of the decisions of the people had to come from the archival work and all of the additional work that had to go. former journalist. i mean, it started as journalism because i approached it as a journalist and from an anthropological expedition into the lives of people. and then it became history once the people passed away and suddenly journalism becomes history of the stories become archival, and i had to look at that. i ended up using a structure, the grapes of wrath because the grapes of wrath, while about fiction and is a masterpiece and i'm not comparing it in that way, but the structure was great -- quite useful to me because i needed to have a way to incorporate that conte

prize and the ambassador book award. he was also the finalist for the national book critics' circle award. he was the editor for six books and is the author of "waking giant: america in the age of jackson," "john brown: abolitionist, the man who ceded civil rights." john brown also a connecticutan as stowe is, so you are already seeing some overlaps here. author of "wallet whitman's -- walt whitman's america," a book with the straightforward title, "walt whitman." he's the author of beneath the american renaissance in the age of emerson and melville, and i certainly found that that s word, subversive, came up quite a bit in his analysis of "uncle tom's cabin "and its impact. and david is the author of faith and fiction, so when you see this list of books, you begin to understand how much he may -- how often he may have run into stowe and uncle tom's cabin in his other work. his latest book that we are talking about tonight is "mightier than the sword: uncle tom's cabin and the battle for america," which as i mentioned wil

book. martha was his daughter. half the reason why i did my book was because of martha. when she arrived in berlin with the family, she was in love with what she referred to as the nazi revolution. she was enthralled by the nazis. it really struck me as a surprising thing, given what we all know in hindsight. how can you be in trouble with the nazi revolution. it was not an unusual position for somebody to have. >> william., who was a professor at the university of chicago -- was am dodd s, who professor of the university of chicago, you say he was the first ambassador to the not too regime. >> yes. >> had did he become the fuehrer? >> hitler was appointed chancellor early in 1933 in a political deal. those who engineered this deal thought that they could control him. there were proven wrong. he did not possess all powers initially. he was chancellor. hindenburg had word on who had power or not. but hindenburg died and hitler engineered not really a coup but seized, through various machinations, the power that hindenburg had and became the absolute ruler of germany. >> if

that's their own statements which i outline in the book. the endgame is a world governed by shari'a. they would like to establish what they call a caliphate. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: that is basically an islamic super state all of the world's muslim's nations gathered in one united bloc to take on the west to take on all infidels and subvert them to the law of shari'a. that's the endgame. it doesn't matter if it's the brotherhood, al-qaeda, that is the shared endgame. they may have different tactics but the endgame is the same. >> host: so let's talk about the means to that end because if the muslim brotherhood is kind of the overarching holding company, if you will, of the strict shari'a ideology, would it be fair to say that some of their tactical units would be organizations like the council on american islamic relations or the muslim student association or the north american islamic trust? you know he's, obviously, because they're part of the holy land foundation trial proceeding but how much or how little should we trust these organiz

"thoug >> you haveht to read the book thoughts without cigarettes. w >> the second question was when you write fiction or the memoir, how do you decide protect people in your life? in other words sometimes people are offended if you include them in your book or a character is an amalgamation -- >> we touched a little bit on that. >> i don't have anyone in the book who i think and kindly of. i hope that comes for. sometimes it is a little raw but i did my best. if someone happens to be offended by a certain something, i don't know. >> that is very clear. that does come through in this book. it only hit the stand two days ago but if you get to read this book and i hope you do, it is a touching book about someone coming to terms with an upbringing was a surge in the set of circumstances. and really making choices that reform a life. would you say that? >> if you want me to, yes. >> we're all in agreement. you make it so easy. so tell us about that. you are a different animal from the rest of your family. >> i have a creative brother. my mother was quite

so i am reading the book and wait a second. did they read the same book that i just read? the point i am trying to get at is this idea that in the book you write critically about yourself and what you have done and the failures you had just as quickly as you have written about microsoft or the relationship with bill gates. that is really interesting and where i wanted to start off. you have been ubiquitous on my google alert for two months. i am curious what surprise you the most about how people reacted to the book? >> guest: a number of things. in my life i have been fortunate to be involved with so many different things. involved with microsoft, will always be my signature achievement. i have high hopes now -- we will talk about that later. i have been involved with so many different things. if anyone tries to pigeonhole me into one area -- they struggle to do that. >> host: you said in the book and in interviews that this was one of the hardest things you have ever done. why do you say that? >> i had been thinking about doing a book for years and then i got very ill and

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

the book is a "conscience." [applause] >> this event was hosted by the tenement museum in new york city. to find out more visit tenement.org. >> what are you reading this summer booktv wants to know. >> a book by john kenneth called the good society, it's a small book, tremendous wisdom for today. i am reading an encyclopedia of conservatism and edited by jeffrey nelson. reading a book called viral spiral on the digital commons bide david, and a recent bestseller which i haven't got around to fully reading, the black swan. >> visit booktv.org to see this and other summer reading lists. >> up next on the 2011 los angeles times festival of books, gayle lemmon, author of a "the dressmaker of khair khan" discusses her book and takessiob booktv viewer phone calls for about half an hour. >> it's my final guest this we afternoon and we're going to move from american history to f foreign policy and talk aboutut her new next best selling book andbe this is the first book for was you.w what's it like to be on the bestselle

the book has already been reviewed in "the boston globe," just this last weekend when it was described as a scathing and wonderful new book. and i think the full implications of the scathing part, as well as the wonderful, are likely to be clear in this discussion. probably know at the outset the book is not the classic story about building the transcontinental railroad. the story has been told many times, very ably in fact. richards story essentially begins when the railroads are virtually finished, and his history is a history of how they were operated in the first 30 years or so. so it's important to keep that in mind. this is not another epic saga of building the railroads but have several transcontinental lines were actually moderated. operated. so richard, you've entered a field of study here that others have been in before you, i think especially in the work of chandler and vogel. who have studied the railroads as the precursors of the modern american economy and the modern corporation. your view is so different and i hope we'll get to that different view you have with vogel and

you have to read the book. you have a question? crophone right there. >> i hope it's okay if a judge asks a question. if not, sapi rainout. i was the chair for the work in progress award and found a very moving experience actually after many years as a book critic, getting the finished product, not thinking a lot about what went into it, kind of assuming this is the book the author wanted to write, not just the book the author could afford to pay. and i was moved by a lot of the explanations of how they will be a will to do the book i want to write if i don't get some more money. i may have to give up this book when they have to truncate it in a way that i don't want. after the experience, that there should be a nonfiction bank, maybe the goldman sachs nonfiction bank and you apply 45,000. but i wanted to ask you this last question about the relationship of money to the kinds of book you can do. just give you two examples come without naming names. i remember one proposal at a $100,000 advance, but i'm going to need this to be able

politics that you ended up excising from the book? was there -- >> you know, there's a lot that i deal with in this book. and i could have dealt with the impact of a threat by al-qaeda to destroy a major western city which is one of the plot points in the book by how that affected the u.s. political scene. and i chose not to do much of that because i really wanted to keep the focus on the story at handment -- at hand, and keep it driving forward. you know, given the current, um, rekrill that story, dishonest, poisonous and utterly unhelpful political dialogue that we have in this country, you know, i can well imagine that if there's a potential act of nuclear terrorism that the finger pointing and potential scapegoating would pick up right away. i've got to say that even faced with all sorts of national peril, you know, like a deficit we obviously have to do something about, the intellectual dishonesty and self-serving quality of our political leaders really is quite special. [laughter] >> well, we'll break for the applause from the a

you can see the spine on this book had been removed. and the courts have fallen off. so we are going to have to re- so this book. in order to do that, what we do is we take this book apart to the stage. that's what this is. this is one of the books that have been taken a part. in the various signatures. in order to be able to transfer the book, what we do is we use some japanese tissue and we create the signatures. and you can see that japanese tissue here and we've done a little repair here a on the book. and this is what we have done. you can see, the book has expanded a little bit but this is what the book looks like after it has the tissue repair. and we put a weight on it to keep it flat. then what we do is we take the book after it's been put back in the signatures and attached the japanese tissue repair, this is called a sewing thing. what we do is we take some linen thread that has been waxed and we will sew each signature to these courts. they were originally sewn on raised courts. and so this is the sewing frame that it will be sewn on. this is what we use fo

the o.k. corral. why? do we really need another book at the o.k. corral? >> guest: why we need another book, the reviews so far they were written by critics do not consider themselves expert of tombstone or the gunfight or the american frontier. all claiming it is a book of revisionist history by which they mean it is shocking to them that these things in the book are fact. one reviewer said he was stunned to learn that the battle did not occur in the okay corral but in a vacant lot yards away. i think we can thank bill breckinridge -- breckinridge and others for that but trying to write later about the gunfight it does not have the same ring throughouthroughou t history. [laughter] and people also seem to be astonished instead of talking about cardboard cutout participants but real human beings in good qualities and losses. everyone seems staggered that tombstone may have been anything other than an a dusty hamlet. the fact there are so many intelligent readers but it would be helpful to tell us what type of day town it was back then. >> guest: i am willin

but in the book, this is the level of affect i had. hey, shrek, when he walks the ground does in the form. your brain is tell you something is wrong. you know, you don't know what it is. okay. were going to fix it. so that is the kind of affect. >> i'm sorry, million dollars? >> i think it was a million. that is a lot for dust. he no. so i had done some documentary films that we talked about earlier. one on psychology, one on global health and one on evolution which i'm very proud of our documentary work. but documentary, to stone topic endeavors. >> but what has been the best investments so far? >> well, a few years ago i invested. some people convinced me to invest in oil and gas pipelines. >> i read about it. okay. go on. >> it turns out a lot of people in the oil and gas. and so i did very well in that investment. it's not one of those things. you know, most investments that i enjoy that were super profitable, the ones where you think as a technology person you can have some value. that happens and it is really rewarding. hey, on-l

where the country at the this is why the book is called that. very quick, because i'm guessing that many people have not had the chance to read it so this is one of those delicate things we don't want to give away -- >> i tend to give it away too much. >> tell us about thad and what he is and what he does. you said he is the most complex individual that you have written about in any of your books. take that, mark zuckerberg. [laughter] tell us about him and what mainly attracted you to tell his story? >> thad roberts basically came from a very hard background, a very fundamentalist mormon family. he was kicked out of his house when he was 18 for admitting to premarital sex. and then he decided he wanted to be an astronaut and he changed his whole life and kind of became james bond. he majored in geology and physics and astronomy and you learn how to fly airplanes and scuba dive, and spoke five languages. and then he got into nasa's johnson space center, a co-op program, so it is for college kids but it's a feeder to the astronaut training program

these four examples in the book. en we come back, we will talk a little bit about the fourth one on religious liberties. stay with us. 24,000 children... every day. they die for reasons we can prevent. like not getting enough food or medicine... or clean, safe water to drink. but we are gaining ground. a generation ago, twice as many children were dying. still...24,000? every day? i believe... i believe... i believe... i believe... i believe... believe... i believe that number should be zero. believe in zero. >> welcome back to mosaic. we are talking with judge john newnan about his new book, the church that can and cannot change. we have outlined that you had four examples over the centuries of how the church has responded very at not so much change by blueprint or from high and low but kind of moving along. through this change of movement, the fourth. of your book -- >> religious freedom. that has had a long and not always happy history in the church. of course, was the first three centuries the church was a persecu

debbie, what is the theme of your book? >> i think there is a number of themes but the main one is that vietnam's does not go away in every president has to do with it. it is there every time i have to make a decision and it is there in the politics of in terms of what happens what they serve your didn't serve it does not go away in that is the theme that carries through the book. >> but yet to be a non clearly has affected different presidents in the diametrically opposed fashion? >> sometimes. that there are two levels. on one level you have to imagine what are the major influences of all the presidents when they have to decide about sending troops to fight? the vietnam coast is there all the time. each president operates in his own environment and his own time. so while the overall ghost is there you will get a different response. for example,, 1983, 241 american marines are murdered in beirut lebanon. by a terrorist group known to the president and the people love around the president they knew where they were but yet ro

the book is a live with details. it is fascinating for him to write a novel and i think it will be a great success. >> mr. gibson? inside the criminal insurgency. >> the author who has lived in mexico the last 10 years have gone inside the drug insurgency in mexico interviewing everybody involved from the gang's leaders to the police and toes the inside story of what is happening in mexico. the extraordinary of people in society and because he tells the from all angles, you come to understand who was responsible. the government bears responsibility, not just the gangs but the result from the united states they're all over. >> american crisis back. >> a distinguished professor at northeastern say they want to ride a book and in 1783 but the war had not ended we think it ended when cornwallis surrendered to the yorktown but then it went on to more years pulling the forces out of new york and this is the tumultuous two years and the united states could have so easily fallen apart with no money, the state's four non-align

the idea was in this book. i could have dealt with the impact of the threat of al qaeda destroying a major western city which is a plot point in the book and how that affected the u.s. political scene. i chose not to do much of that because i really wanted to keep the focus on the story in hand and he paid, well, driving forward. in know, given the current crematory, dishonest, poison -- poisonous, and utterly unhelpful political dialogue we have in this country, you know, i can well imagine that if there is a potential active nuclear terrorism that the finger-pointing and potential scapegoating would pick up right away. i have got to say that even faced with all sorts of national peril, you know, like the deficit, we obviously have to do something about it. the intellectual dishonesty in cells are and quality of our political leaders really is quite special. [laughter] [laughter] >> we will break for the applause. of course you would know more than the average person because of the personal dealings with politi

he was also a finalist for the national book critics circle award and the editor for six books and is the author of tweaking the giant american in the age of jackson, john brown, al-awja nist the man who killed slavery sparked the civil war and seated civil-rights. john brown also connecticut as stowe so you see overlaps year. author of walt whitman, a cultural biography, e-book with a straightforward title, walt whitman. he's the author of believe the american renaissance the imagination and the age of emmerson and nels will and i found that that word subversives came up quite a bit in his analysis of ongoing tom's cabin and its impact and to david is the author of fifa fiction the religious literature in america. when you see the books we begin to understand how much -- how often he may have run into stowe in his other work. the latest book we're talking about tonight is "mightier than the sword" come on call tom's cabin and the battle for america which is as i mentioned will be released june 14th, stowe's 200th birthday. also released by oxford university press will be in the moder