the radar and turned into this huge cultural phenomena there's only about the coming streetcars yale yale rep that area new haven and new haven you know going to go i think the show starts previewing late september and runs through october you still like theater better there's nothing like it and it's tightrope walking without a net and as bitchiness as once the curtain open i think the directors are getting more that's true and you're doing you know this three hour play this epic through our play every night as opposed to you know three and a half pages of dialogue what do you like about it's three hours and it's it's certainly not laughing it's certainly not it's certainly tension filled sure. you know it's every scene in that plays apic i think it's probably the most epic female role ever written i mean even when blanche is offstage she has to sing from the bath up and then as far as you know stanley i just think those characters are so they're so true they're so real like you know those people were you affected by the way brando did it. sure and i think is as a young actor he was one

the radar and turned into this huge cultural phenomena there's only about the coming streetcars yale yale rep that area new haven and you have been you know going to go i think the show starts previewing late september and runs through october you still like theater better. there's nothing like it and it's tightrope walking without a net and as bitchiness is once the curtain open it ain't the director's art anymore that's true and you're doing you know this three hour play this epic through our play every night as opposed to you know three and a half pages of dialogue now what do you like about it's three hours and it's it's certainly not laughing it's certainly not it's certainly tension filled sure. you know it's every scene in that plays apic i think it's probably the most epic female role ever written i mean even when blanche is offstage she has the saying from the bath up and then as far as you know stanley go i just think those characters are so they're so true they're so real like you know those people were you affected by the way brando did it sure and i think is as a young actor

yale is or harvard is or any schools, look at the people we've admitted. in 2009, for example, yale had its commemorative issue of the daily news in which they talked about yalembers for the class of 2009. every single number was about the students before they set foot on yale. it was as if yale added no value. the value came from bringing these students who were from many different places. >> right. which i want to come back to that. it goes to policy question of diversity. >> what's the issue? is the issue simply diversity in terms of the groups you're bringing to the school, or is diversity actually a way of making better decisions because you have a diverse group of people looking at a problem from multiple perspectives. through that process, you're actually improving merit. >> lets come back to that. nick, you're a house conservative. you're not meant to be seen and not heard. we'll get your take on all of this when we come back right after the break. [ male announcer ] a doctor running late for a medical convention loses his computer, exposing thousands of patient records to identity theft. data breaches can happen that easily. we don't believe you shou

yale architecture school. >> yes what is it schooled. >> yale school of architecture. >> rose: are the young architects different today than they were say 10 or 15 years ago? >> oh, well they're always different-of-ree minute. but yes. >> rose: are they driven by different reasons to be architects, as the challenge of the profession produced a different type of person who is interested, et cetera? >> i think they're all its same kind of person, independent, art artistically inclined but the issues they are interested in changed. >> rose: what are they interested in now. >> well, the role of the computer is a completely obsessive. >> rose: because it gives them new power. >> they think, we hope. >> but there is some doubt about that. >> rose: can't you measure structure and all that. >> they use different materials. >> absolutely. and the computer with its capacity to fabricate things digitally may make architects back into the craftsman that they dream of being in a way. the results are not clear. >> in a way is right. the old guys are a little suspicious that this may not happen. >> rose: so in journalism we ha

yale law degree or yale university background and part of skull and bones. part of that is a testament to the mess when you talk about a growing population and not opening more schools. just a growing national security intelligence community that gets bigger and bigger. 1.5 million with some sort of classified access. you need to hire people -- >> you know, i just said something i need correct. i said this starts the second you leave high school. since i moved to the northeast, it's the -- i have figured out that all up and down the east coast, i'm sure it's in other places, mainly the east coast, when we first got here, everybody was like what kindergarten are you sending your kid to? i don't know. >> oh, my lord. >> it starts there and parents teach their 4-year-olds how to get like in these interviews to get in these elite schools. they start taking s.a.t. prep in eighth and ninth grade, tutors in the summer, they start once their kids are 4 years old, focusing on a college to get into. if i grow up in a middle class family like i did, with parents who are both working hard. >> working. >> like they did, who can't afford s.a.t. tutors. >> can't even -- >> who can't afford to send their kid off to s.a.t. camp, i mean what chances do i have today of competing when people are going to be looking at -- well so-and-so went to yale dartmouth or berkeley. >> you're pointing out the game which we think of as a fair game, we have this equal opportunity and people by their grit and gumpion and brains work their way up. all these privileges cascade down from folks who have access to things like test prep or have early tutoring -- >> money. >> and so what we see is the system ends up reproducing privilege. you talk about the options for the middle class. one is just as an impurecle matter we are seeing less social mobility generation after generation. this is something i think you've spoken about and conservatives have started to worry about. even if you're not a hard core egalitarian like yours truly you have to worry about social mobility. >> alan greenspan himself said, that one of the greatest threats to american capitalism is growing inequality. you know when margaret thatcher in 1975, i actually -- huge margaret thatcher fan, because of what she did in great britain in 1975 was was so radical, one of her top goa

the yale chief executive leadership institute with the yale ceo summit at the nyse.eup is amazing, dave hormatz, steve miller, a lot of good policy discussions will happen today and the ceo of lennar who is participating in the summit. we'll talk to him in a minute. encore capital group and a provider of debt management solutions. so we'll keep our eye on a number of names, as we said. amazon is getting a chatter today because of the reports that their fresh grocery business which they've had in seattle for a long time might go to l.a. this week. san francisco, maybe 20 cities around the country. this is something a lot of people have been waiting for. bezos is notoriously enigmatic about it, but i've got to tell you, when you rule out all of those warehouses, carl, you're every bit as good as fresh direct, right? he is a serial creator of warehouses. >> they have a very big cloud business. >> it's huge and hugely important to the future of the company. >> that's why it's not just walmart. this is the age of amazon. >> yes, it is. >> the age of walmart. now i'm askin

from yale law school in 1993. yale, he duating from went on to corporate chief judge joe flath of the 11th appeals.court of mr. dellry went on to private at wilmer, cutler & wilmer-hail wn as where he was a litigator for 14 years. if contract and corporate dministration and administrative law matters. n 2009, he held a number of leadership roles including the chief of staff and counselor to attorney of the general, the associate desk of the attorney general. advised positions he the department's leadership on a range of matters including civil appeals, national security litigation, and policy. s acting assistant attorney general for the civil division, he supervises approximately attorneys representing the united states, the president, nd cabinet officers and agencies. he supervises much of the government's civil litigation includes the defense of legal challenges to congressional statutes, policies, and actions. at the justice department, he tooted significant attention the civil division's extensive docket of nationa

none and i asked him about the airbus and the rivalry and i said is this harvard and yale, and he was at the harvard/yaleeat sportsman and knows the sports, and kcongratulations, hawks, for hockey. and these guys are coming in to sell the planes against airbus and offering the technological superiority, and how can you not own the tostock? >> you said on squawk at par, it is still a buy. >> the runway here is so long that the company is so well managed, the orders are so great, yeah. boeing. key corporate holding, key, and i mean for institution, it has to be. >> right. >> and individuals, $100 is too much and don't be put p off by a $100 price range. >> it is a dow component. >> of course, and second best performer. >> and up in the last four days, and how do we positiontoday, an dash" is next as we get ready for the futures coming back in a few minutes. in today's markets, a lot can happen in a second. with fidelity's guaranteed one-second trade execution, we route your order to up to 75 market centers to look for the best possible price -- maybe even better than you expected. it's all part of our goal

yale. is airbus like harvard, or is it the sworn enemy and you want to smash them on the windshield of the 787. >> the competition isn't quite as gentlemanly as harvard and yale. when we're fighting for a customer, it's tough. it's very tough. and i know the guys. they know me. it's friendly, but it's rough. >> and at the same time you have to deal with the sequestration. has there been even a penny lost in sequestration 2013. >> are you saying year over year? there's been some year over year. you've got to remember, jim, most of the cost was taken out in the run-up to sequestration. a lot of us took out 10% of our cost because we saw it coming. >> you don't blame anybody on the battery. you just took it on yourself, even though you didn't make the battery yourself. you don't care. >> we're a company that innovates. we take some risks when we innovate. in the end it's a great company. along the way there are risks to deal with when it doesn't turn out right and we work it and got it done. >> if your game is invasion you can tolerate failure and learn from it. that's true now. >> you got it. >> trying to figure out if you're trying to figure out whether afghan

yale law school. i hate it. i would like to take a leave of absence and go to oxford. if i get income ago? why? oxford, that is even better than harvard or yale? if you would say is, a go was the highest certification. in a wily way, suggested that, if oxford, at harvard was the omega then oxford was testing. he was very impressed and on top of which i want to go where you were thrown away and come back and the student and make an impression in and get a degree. so he was very kind to me in a sense and let me go but first there was another request of a foul. the know what that was? like a fairy tale so he said i will let you go but i have another request of you. oh oh. i want you to vow that wherever you wander and wherever you go, and that is not likely to happen. in the birthing room i was told, this incredibly -- it wasn't going to be that i would forget. >> tell us -- >> where jews were regarded in england. >> my trip to oxford every adventure begins with the journey. and a million things happen and anthony goes home, my parents said their journey across the atlantic, is a drama was told to leave the place you are used to and go to a new

graduated phi beta kappa from the university of virginia and earned his jd from yale law school in 1993. after graduating from yale he went on to clerk for chief judge for the 11th circuit court of appeals and justice sandra day o'connor and byron white on the united states supreme court. he went on to private practice at wilmer, cutler and pickering, now known as wilmer hale where he was a litigator for 14 years. his practice ranged across complex and security litigation and administrative law matters. in 2009 he left private practice for the department of justice where he held a number of leadership roles including chief of staff and counselor to the deputy attorney general, associate deputy attorney general and senior counsel to the attorney general. in these positions he advised the department's leadership on a range of matters including civil litigation, appeals, national security litigation, and policy. as acting assistant attorney general for the civil division he supervises approximately 1,000 attorneys representing the united states, the president, and cabinet officers and agencies. he supervises much of

yale law school. i hate it. i would like to take a leave of absence and go to oxford. if i get income ago? why? oxford, that is even better than harvard or yale? if you would say is, a go was the highest certification. in a wily way, suggested that, if oxford, at harvard was the omega then oxford was testing. he was very impressed and on top of which i want to go where you were thrown away and come back and the student and make an impression in and get a degree. so he was very kind to me in a sense and let me go but first there was another request of a foul. the know what that was? like a fairy tale so he said i will let you go but i have another request of you. oh oh. i want you to vow that wherever you wander and wherever you go, and that is not likely to happen. in the birthing room i was told, this incredibly -- it wasn't going to be that i would forget. >> tell us -- >> where jews were regarded in england. >> my trip to oxford every adventure begins with the journey. and a million things happen and anthony goes home, my parents said their journey across the atlantic, is a drama was told to leave the place you are used to and go to a new land so i crossed the atlantic, and it was very monolithic we english at the time. and it was far more mixed and english people and english culture speaking english in england with the church of england so outsiders were treated somewhat white outsiders and being jewish was certainly thought to be subject i would be ashamed of and so if i would say someone to someone else they would say you jewish i wouldn't dream of asking, and if their descendants of abraham and moses, and a communicable sexual disease so my geiger counter was going up and i was very excited, op-ed not experience what my parents talked about all i believe the them and i read a jewish history and was watching the world's, it was fraught with conflict. and i fell in love with an english guy, that would have been the last thing my parents would have wanted because my mother's view was particularly if you marry a gentile, he will drink and be you and call you a dirty jew. that didn't happen. my husband, this person's parents absolutely hated you. and his mother said clearly that she hated them and was very open, it was not politically correct and i thought misguidedly that they would like me as soon as i got to know me and that didn't happen. my charm failed miserably and telling them how good i was in school nothing worked and they seemed to be saying to me that we are in england and even if you discovered a cure for every cancer and had a board made of solid gold we don't like you. we are english and we stay in england. we don't wander the world and link people. and flirting with their sons. we don't do that. there's a lot more to the story. much more. >> didn't his mother save this incredible phrase in response to you and his courtship of you or your courtship with him, better a negress that a jew? >> it is loaded in so many ways. the thing about calling women something, and a baby was a baby woman, so yes, and this was my mother-in-law. and eight presence for hanukkah for each of three grandchildren is 24 and mailed them from england and they are softball. she did say that and was told she was brought up that way in a small village in wales where she definitely met jews and in england they were about centuries with note jews in england and kicked out in the middle ages from york and a lot of the literature has illusions to jews and very negative ones and she learned prejudicial things my father experience in eastern europe. and try to beat him up and say that he drank christian blood. i don't know what her particular images were but she felt they dread of me and my family. and in the end she met them. >> you wasn't the only one who tried to stop the court should. >> needless to say my parents believed in continuity of their heritage. and 5% remaining that got out and they felt it was their duty to transmit this torch, to the next generation and white it again and the worst thing that would happen is it would be snuffed out and forgotten. not just their life all the way back, so a long, poignant, resilience tradition easily snuffed out, both my parents thought this would be a good thing. and make the argument, this is the greatest attempt, and in love with one of the 36 and this was all jewish legends and 36 in the world are not jewish and they make the world so good. and the father said gave us some consideration, i really don't think so. so now that i have been married for a decade i can say yes, not one of 36 for sure. but who it is, they were broken up. married someone else who fit the bill, a law student who became a lawyer and his father was a professional and my parents didn't get what they wanted because there was a big piece of ham in the fridge and a offered something to my father and said why did you read this handy of the guys is why don't you? it tastes great so even though they were jewish and was not quite the familial feelings my father wanted, but about to marry the wrong guy. i call him dan and have a lot of misgivings. i'm thinking of the boy in england that i loved and i am getting older and older and feel this was one and i am sure and about to walk down the aisle and i pretty much like a lot the don't think they should be marrying him and i went to my father and said let's call it off, always go forward, not backward. that might have been how he survived. doesn't work in a speeding car rushing toward the cliff or if you are a living, but i sent an s o s letter to paul, what do you think? something like that. i learned later my mother had fort up those letters. what i finally did get back together i separated from the husband and left my wonderful job as a beautiful desk and flowers on it and went back to england because paul said he would marry me and things were different now and by the way why didn't you answer my letters? at the wedding day my father apologize, i for the month, i am really sorry. i cost you so much time. everything happens for the reason. i guess we were both more mature, in our early 20s, now a more appropriate age and it was very hard to get the jewish divorce. that was from the first husband died decided to do it in a religious way, no question we were divorced. the impression was i was married to the father and it was like a court when you get a jewish divorce and stood up on the stairs and the rich three rabbis like the smith brothers won high, one low and one sideways and it was humiliating because i had to be given a bill of divorcement in the old-fashioned way and one said to me do you have children? i said no. thank god. i went through a lot but as a writer it is for the mill so that is what happened. >> let me ask about something that is more difficult. two subjects, shame and guilt. you say when your parents came to one of your college graduations in law school how ashamed you were about how they looked and like everyone, the other people's parents and how guilty you felt about that, the shame you felt when people came to your apartment and saw what it was like. tell us about those things and how you deal with that. >> i wanted to come back and talk about the wedding and by parents were madly in love with each other and it was the most beautiful scene of a tiny wedding band on his deathbed many years later my father said thank you for bringing these people into my life and so my fear is and shame and all that vanished away. i felt i was a teenager that my parents were so different was ridiculous and i now know that as a teenage thing because my parents also think that of me, wonderfully, mommy, don't talk, we see someone in the department store i have to hide behind the rack so i know it is a common thing for children. it is like you are talking too much. i probably am. with my parents my parents were coming to visiting day and there was, became very sassy and told my dad i was a grown up because i had a id bracelet from some cute guy. i got the look and my long hair and was as straight as it always has to be and i am doing my thing and here comes mom wearing soft sandals and has a bag, everyone getting snickers and m&ms and my mother says i brought some hardboiled eggs and reasons and the eggs are in their appeal and diffusion of the one they're not that hard. my father is wearing a straw hat which he wore every day in the summer. at some point he sleeps on my bed asleep and snoring with a yiddish paper over his face. that is really cool. i have no idea what i had to deal with. i was always ashamed and even if i was with religious people so few people came from the holocaust but also my parents who knew the rules and on the sabbath and was sitting with the rabbi's daughter and turned on the light and said you are not supposed to use electricity and she says you are not? you could never do this because -- the pinnacle that howard was bringing up, graduating from law school, before i went -- it was exactly like oxford and everybody's parents, the dads were all 6 ft. one, silver hair, beautiful hair, the moms had been a player in the page, that kind of thing, here come my parents and my father with a hat and my mother has food and at this time it is the banana that is five days old and brown and i can't think it was an accident, this is where she got revenge on me for being a smart alec, being my dad's favored and she said the when the banana? yes standing in the cap and gown and i write about this, one of the kennedy kids, bobby shriver in my class and we are friends and his parents are like what i just described and maria who is not yet journalist, she is not going to get my mother opening the tinfoil, bananas and tin foil and the tinfoil has been reused. it is like catching the sun in so many ways. that was -- a horrible thing for me is my kids when they are mean to me, hide behind the coats. they don't feel guilty because my husband and i are strong modern parents. i would feel bad that i was ashamed of my poor parents and feels that the kids would come to my house because we were in the wrong neighborhood but also why would be relieved. there was a very big conflict. they couldn't return. i could address them. they were adults, or answer the phone and they would have accent's. it was hard for me. >> i want to ask you. what is it, you devote a lot of to and pages in this book to the deaths of the each of your parents. a lot of time why do you do that? why is that looming so large in the context of your story? >> i just want to say a lot of immigrants will know what it is like to feel ashamed of yellowing plastic on the furniture and plastic flowers but okay. about their deaths. i wrote the book many years after my parents passed away and i was not going to write this kind of book. my mother used to say to me everybody has the story. i have a story and she wrote her story and is in the book of how she survived and she said tell my story but i agree that everyone has the story. everyone out here watching has the story and can be vivid and amazing. you don't have to have gone through these dramatic things to have a story. there are a little dramas everywhere. i waited, they passed away, almost like a couldn't go on living. i was so much in their world and felt by failed them and each of them died of cancer and i was heroically trying to get them the surgery that was impossible, so you have to get mad from pluto i would try to get mad from. no. i remember playing tapes from my father, new age things about did you really fulfill yourself? is it something you didn't do? do i have to listen to this? after they died, many years later a started to write the book and i feel only in terms of a memoir one should be writing a diary, a journal, but really see the characters of people as fully fledged, rounded people with good and bad. i have to fall in love with my characters to see them as real people, not all rose and pink and sentimental, but some bland. i hope i did that because i saw this story as being a story, it happens to be my story but it has the drama of a novel in that i'm born in two world, america and there's, they so don't go and i take the journey and meet the catalyst, the person they least wanted me to be with and he converted and all families are happy and my father's that he says thank you for bringing these people into my life and i feel i delivered to them certain sense of peace and my father had even though he was a coma he was able to have a last moment with my brother where they sort of gave each other and told the judge that they love each other and my mother and i had that moment as well. the death is important because i also think people think they can keep their lives safe, in some way we think we are not going to get sick or die. it is part of life as with the holocaust or any challenge how do you deal with this? they were lucky to be surrounded by love. >> tell me saying sonia taitz. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we will be back in a few minutes with more live coverage of the printer's row with test in chicago. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> let us know what you are reading this summer. tweet us at booktv. posted on our facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> here's a look at some books being published this week. in lincoln unbound:how an ambitious young rail splitter save the american dream and how we can do it again rich lowery, editor of the "national review" details president lincoln's economic policies. carl heart, associate professor of psychology and psychiatry at columbia university presents his research on the relationship between egyptian and the brain in high price:a narrow scientist's journey of self discovery that challenges everything you know about drugs and society. in the great generation power institutions the k and economies by historian bill ferguson argues markets today are hindered by overcomplex regulations that render them increasingly incapable of supporting america's economic and political system. david leper, director of the innovation and technology for a matt new york university polytechnic institute discusses how group of moderate founding fathers made the american revolution of possibility by keeping radicals from acting too fast in the founding conservatives:how group of unsung heroes save the american revolution. and in dollarocracy, journalist john nichols and media critic robert mcchesney argue citizens united and a profit driven media are putting americans in danger of being less informed and more open to manipulation. look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> in your first book, the exception to the rulers, you write, you're quoting the washington post, that any goodman is the journalist as an invited guest. why do you write that? >> we are not supposed to be party to any party. we are journalists. there is the reason our profession, journalism, is the only one explicitly protected by the u.s. constitution. we are supposed to be the check and balance on power. >> in that book also, war and peace, life and death, that is the life of the media in a democratic society to provide a forum for this discourse, to do anything less is a disservice to the servicemen and servicewomen of this country. >> i had just flown in from denver at the national conference on media reform and when we flew into the airport where people hold up signs when you come out to pick you up and as we were walking there were some soldiers, they were going to be picking up a general and as we walked by we were waiting and i thought the general was waving because there was a sign for the general, didn't look that way. i thought i am going to go back and talk to them. we went back and said do you watch democracy now, they said every day. so i said really? widely watched? they say it is objective and you cover work. it is not about whether you are for or against war. it is about covering the most serious decision a country can make. i see them be as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe, that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day. as you quoted, war and peace, life-and-death and anything less is a disservice to the service men and women of this country. they can't have these debate on a military bases, they rely on us in civilian society to have the discussion that lead to the decisions about whether they live or die, whether they are sent to kill or be killed. anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society. >> one of the recurring themes in your riding is the corporate media as you call it. what is the corporate media and what does it do or not do? >> what most people see on television on those channels. and channels, nbc, cbs, abc, cnn, that break for the advertisers, turned to corporate support. i see the hope as public media, listeners and viewers deeply committed to independent information. and it is not brought to you by the weapons manufacturers, and when we cover the health care debate in this country not caught by big pharma and the insurance industry, and brought to listeners and viewers by listeners and viewers who feel that information is power, information is essentials, is the oxygen of a democracy. >> back to the exception to the rules, our model is to break the sound barrier. we call ourselves the exception to the rulers. we believe all media should be. what do you mean by sound barrier? >> so often in the networks we get this small circle of pundits who knows so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. we go to the community to talk to people in this country and around the world who are the heart of the store. is not easy to find the people sense authentic voices. i think it is why so many young people listen to democracy now. we have a diverse audience in this country and around the world because it is people knowing what they're talking about because they're talking from their experience. that is the best kind of journalism, providing a forum for people to speak for themselves, providing a forum for people from different strata of society to debate and discuss with each other critical issues, but hearing those voices, great diversity of people, that is the role of journalism in a democratic society. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> what i you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> i am robert cox, washington editor of "national review," have a lot of books on want to read this summer but as a political asylum looking ahead at the 2016 presidential race, looking at candidates who are probably going to run especially on the republican side and one of the people i'm looking at is chris christie. i picked up a new book called chris christie:the inside story of his rise to power, it is a fun read so far and it takes you back into chris christie's political ascent in new jersey before he became u.s. attorney. he was a morris county freeholder involved in a lot of county politics, it takes us behind the politician with a scene on magazine covers with president obama in new jersey and asks who is chris christie and is told by people who really know new jersey politics. it is a fun read so far. chris christie is a likely contender and got to know where he came from and what his politics mean ahead of the election the second book on my list is by colleagues. kevin d. williamson wrote the new book called the end is near and it is going to be awesome, how going rogue will leave america richer, happier and more secure. one reason this book is the last one is the fiscal cliff earlier in 2013 was a big story we covered but later this year we are going to have the debt limit be the story that consumes congress and can williams and looks at the debt from a political perspective, historical perspective, consequences of the desk powered has taken a lot of congress's time, could potentially ruinous country, make the country go broke and does it with somewhat, some fun and i think the end is near is a great book by kevin williams and. and as a journalist in washington, there's always gossip and talk about what is happening behind the scenes, how stories get written, who is leading to, power struggles not only within politics but the media. cellmark has the ear of the beltway crowd coming up with a book, it is about the inside seen in washington, in dupont circle and the georgetown salon. that book gives us a story and the color of washington and the political media establishment is all about and for fun, a book i am looking forward to reading is called mickey and willie, the mantle in may, parallel lives of baseball's golden age, one of my favorite sports writers. i was in spring training in arizona watching my cleveland indians, chicago cubs play baseball and ran into willie mays who is getting up there age but this is great because it looks at two men, mickey mantle and willie mays came of age at the same time, became stars at the same time and form a lifelong friendship, something i never knew. that is a great book, a big book for baseball fans, that is my list, looking forward to reading them all. >> let us know what you are reading this summer, tweet us at booktv. post it on our facebook page or send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. >> an end of working day, 2:00 a.m. the prime minister would say soup out loud very loudly, that was the signal the working day was over. the secretaries could leave to begin typing up the day's memos and he would have what he always ate before going to bed. churchill loved all games, especially deuce and he raised these on his farm at treadmill. at one dinner, the goose was made in front of him at the table, he said, quote, you carved, this deuce was a friend of mine. in all my research into churchill's life i never found a mention of a vegetable. he made fun of vegetarians who recalls nick peters. at a meeting he quipped to two net peters, if you are finished toying with your be route we will get on with more important matters. another tease, all the net eaters and food faddists i have known died early after a long period of senile decay. another chill favorite food is irish stew. with plenty of onions and surprisingly sometimes pineapple. this is the meal churchill's served to general eisenhower when a plant the invasion of europe. and caviar. he was thrilled when stalin sent him some caviar when hopkins brought caviar back as gift from the soviet union. churchill wade small portions when traveling, had his meals served on his, quote, funny time, not on the clock. churchill loved picnics. whatever the place or the weather, even in wartime there's a wonderful photo showing churchill and a three piece suit in join the picnic t sitting on a rock by the side of the road. tp connect with roosevelt in hyde park, a picnic on the banks of the rhine with his generals and in the north african desert with friends. he established his own picnic rituals, enthusiastically seeing the old indian army tests and calling for versus that the only be recited at picnics. much has been said about churchill and alcohol, some of it true, most not, some exaggerated. i go into detail about churchill's drinking habits. churchill had been told -- roosevelt had been told churchill was a drunk, charged one or two of his critics repeated. churchill did consume more alcohol than we are used to today but not a great deal by the standards of his contemporaries and drink did not affect him or his work. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. .. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] we would like that give a special thank you to our sponsors who helped make today a success. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span two booktv. and if there's time at the end of the session for q & a we ask that you use the mirk phone in the middle of the room so our audience at home is able to hear your question. if you would like to watch the program, again please note that coverage will reair at 11:00 p.m. central time saturday. please keep the spirit going all year with a subscription to printer's row. fiction series, and membership program. visit the welcome center for special a lit fest subscription rate and perk including a lit festet to bag and poster. finally, the author's weaks -- books will be on sale in this university center. i'm sure you saw when you came in. they'll be signing books in the art room which is to the left i should say. my right. your left. i ask that you would please turn off your cell phone and electronic devices now and without further adow. i would like to welcome and introdoes our moderator of the "chicago tribune." [applause] >> thank you. thank you all for coming out on a beautiful day here we are. we don't gate lot of those here. i'm phil rosin that with the "chicago tribune." i'm with ken cull less than, -- cull less than and shelley murphy who are here not to do scouting on the chicago black hawks. [laughter] but talk about their new book on whitey bulger. the boston mobster caught on the lam after sixteen years. and first of all,let get the -- you have boston journalists for a long time. >> between us it's probably like what? sixty years? [laughter] we've been chasing him combined total fifty years each. >> wow. at this point in journalism, having a job is its own reward. you have an armful of to if i. a pulitzer prize, it's an impressive list. you know, it's a wonderful book. the thing that i was reminded of at the beginning, something when i was a kid my father was taking friend of mine to see butch cass did i did. he said whatever the movie makes of them, they are the bad guys. and the ore thing that reminded of is the old line from mel brookeson, the 2,000-year-old man asked about robin hood and he said, what about robin hood? he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. it's nonsense. he stole everything and kept everything. how did it happen? he said, well, he had a guy named marty. marty would tell everyone he gave from the knew. who knew. he hit you so hard you didn't know. i of thinking about that about bulger. there is a myth and i don't know that we want to believe the myth or whether they want us to believe the myth. they all seem to have myths. tell us about the myth of whitey bulger and it come apart when flushed against reality. >> when we sat down do the book, several narrative art. one is myth making of whitey bulger. from a very early age when he was a young teen criminal he lived in a housing project, the first built new england. and he had a car when no one else had a car. when he wasn't driving around with his girlfriend, he would be scouting and he wasn't scouting for criminal opportunity. hef looking for old ladieses. he would see the oldly i did, pull over, jump out. take the groceries and drive them home. it was a very conscious decision. they call it stoop talking. every once awhile that jimmy is a hoodlum. all the old ladies. he's a lovely young man. he gave me a ride home from the market the other day. he was so conscious of doing that. he did it through. he was the one -- the difference about bulger and it wasn't just his narrative that he was pushing out there, he had very influential family and particularly his younger brother became hid advocate and bill was prop all gaiting the myth. he said to my face, my brother would never touch drugs. and jimmy -- whitey is good at -- he'll tell you he was never an informant. he never testified against anybody and put them prison. we found the file of 700 pages. he was very much an informant. he would tell you as a criminal that he had all the scruples and never touched drugs. in fact we have a scene he's in in the car with drugs. the reality, he made millions and millions of dollars by shaking down drug dealers and letting them go through the neighborhood of south boston. i lived there in the '80s there was more there than any neighborhood in the city. whitey has that on his hands. >> you mentioned his younger brother, and billy end up becoming president of the montana senate, president of the university of montana, even when he was in the state house he would succeeded by the future mayor of boston. we're not talking a quiet power broker. this was a guy out there. they both came out of the family. the father had been injured. but more importantly where that those projects were south boston. tell us a little bit. >> south boston is a name hood where there was an irish even to there were many different ethnic groups that live there had. the name identified as as the irish. even in the public schools, the al banon kids were forced to sing irish songs. it's a neighborhood where loyalty meant everybody. it's interesting billy, as you said, would was probably the most politician if in the senate for many years. he describes growing up in south boston in aid listic term about how close knit it was. and nobody had very much and they were feeling poor they were, you know, the kids hanging together outside playing games, kick the can, football, whatever. there was a lot of, you know, of it sort of not unusual for one family to have someone who would be a priest or a politician or a police officer. and another who would be a gangster. it was not all that unusual in that city at that time. and one of whitey's closest associates also grew up in the project, and two of his brothers went to harvard university. and yet kevin could have gone. he was so brilliant. his father was prouder of kevin for working his way to the top enforcer than the two that went to harvard. there was a culture about the place. and loyalty did mean erg. that takes us to how the story starts with whitey being cultivated an fbi informant. it's an fbi agent that grew up in the projects who recruit him to be an fbi informant. >> that agent john connelly. the thing that was interested, and there are so many interesting aspect about the bulger story even the stuff where he's part of the cia research project with when he's in police and, you know, who knows what the lasting effect of giving him lsd was. you'll hear it during his trial. but the really striking thing is this intertwined corruption of the mob and the fbi. if and so they thought -- first of all, did they think they were making an informant out of him? was it simply, you know, a bad idea corrupted at the core? >> one of the things we talked about this while we were planning the book out. could it have happened in any other city. my belief is no. there's no other city whether talk about new york, chicago, philadelphia, cleveland, l.a., atlanta, there's no city where you have these two strands of organized crime. one is irish, one is eye tal yab. in all those other cities the mafia is more powerful, lucrative. in boston it wasn't that way. one of the things we try to show it went square or all went pear shaped in the '60s bobby kennedy went to hoover and said you neat to get -- hoover didn't accept there was an mafia. hef awarded you have to develop a trait gi. it didn't pick up until the '70s. that's a national policy. the problem with national policy that they don't take in it account regional differences inspect. boston the model didn't fit. you have the fbi agents were told do whatever you have to do to make our policy work. so in the 1906s they decided who would be killed in the irish gang in the sixties. whitey was lucky. he was locked up at the time. statistically it would have been a high change he would have been a perpetrator or victim. instead he comes to a decimated landscape, it's wide open for anybody with opportunity and smart and vishnd and he had all of those things. he goes in and connelly is cynical. he's from the hood and he's saying the -- the other thing about the fbi. you get big salary raises based on your ability to make cases but tush informant. you want to have as inincredible. when john connelly recruits white you bull taber, he gets to say this guy is the leading member of the mob in south boston. it looks good for the fbi. the idea he was going give them anything on the match too -- the italians woptd have told whitey if his pans were on fire. his associate knew a lot about the mafia had been recruited several times. always turned them down saying i want to stay on my own. and he does it for two,s. it looks good for him. there's an ult tier your mode m going back to the hood. that was protect the family. this is going to look great for me. make sure i'm okay. i'll keep talking to them. i can cover my tracks. anything i can use this -- i can send them off on people i want to get out of my way. >> that's absolutely right. right around the time that whitey becomes an inform mantd, he actually charged with 19 murders. he's charged with killing nineteen people. one of the people is a guy who had been kind of a rivel gang, and eventually basically sort of there was some mediation and worked together. he still had it in his mind he wanted to wipe out the guys he never liked from the rival gang. after he becomes an informant. he's charged with take the guy tommy king. killing him. he has a bulletproof vest on and get in the car. they hand out guns. tommy get blanks in his gun. and they kill him. and they bury him in a secret grave. and right the same time they decide to kill his friend, a guy named buddy. they kill him. so now the meeting meeting that whitey has with the fbi handler he said, john, tommy king just killed hum and he's gone in to hiding. he's in a discredit grave. he's dead. heyed in the fbi file whitey told him that, you know, tommy king killed leonard. and this disseminated to boston police. they are looking for tommy king. now he goes back a couple of week later. he's like they have to be wondering where tommy went. he updates the fbi and said, well, you know, they told tommy you better get out of town. you're going get killed. >> he didn't want the cop -- he wait and said tommy king is dead. they killed him. now you'll never find him. this is how he's manipulating the fbi. over the course of the years and actually gets much worse and sinister than that. the allegations are that when people went to the fbi to cooperate against whitey, they would leak it to whitey. hey. and he would kill them. >> they didn't see the pattern. and they -- [inaudible] they didn't care about it. the number in the victims in the case are fbi informant. at some point, you know, as he's more woven he can get away with anything. now later on we see, you know, business american legitimate businessmen who shaking them down and not killing them. summoning them meetings and give them a chance to buy your life. you pay me $400 ,000, and i'll let you live. don't go to the fbi, because if you do i'll know in five minutes. >> one thing we wanted to -- one of many things we wanted to do is show that the justice department narrative offing this be the creation of one -- was too close to the home boy is maloney. and that was . >> thank you for saying that. >> he doesn't usually say that. he doesn't think about -- the fbi and the justice department is absolutely determined not to make this a big scandal. so they didn't indict other fbi agents. by my count at least a half dozen fbi agents could have been indicted including ones that called me in 1988 and said if i put in the paper that whitey bulger was an informant would be murder. that agent was allowed to testify. -- retire. and in 1998, i testified to that about him calling me and saying if you do this, you will be killed. now, the government had -- . rebut my testimony. >> he said, you know, -- like that. he claimed that a gangster called and wanted to pass over. the gangster didn't know me from a whole in the wall. there's no way a gangster is going say i'm worried about kevin. it doesn't matter what happened. what happened is a series of hearings. i testify for three and a half hours. and tell my story. i have a note i was ordered to write after the phone call by the investigator. and the judge kept asking, are you going put the agent on the stand? they wouldn't put him up there. he would have perjuried himself or taken the fifth. they would have had to do something. they would had to do something to tom. no. the judge said i accept mr. connelly's testimony especially given you were not rebutted and the agent retires with a nice full fat pension. that's the thing about this. we were talking about how we game out whitey is one thing. it's what this says about the justice department. it's the fbi. >> i agree. the institution, corruption that source. is it -- you think it's lunchtime now? >> now i think it will be interesting to whitey on the run for sixteen years, he's finally caught living in a rent controlled apartment in santa monica california where he was living for fifteen years. it's a crazy story how he's caught. it's actually, you know, an former neighbor who lives in, you know, a former misiceland who lives in santa monica several month after year and back home, she's watching a cnn n report on the latest combine to find whitey. she recognizes the wanted posters on the, you know, of him and his girlfriend. he knows them because kathy, his girlfriend, by all the accounts a lovely woman. a complete, you know, it's whitey years old never have done the horrible thing. he loved animal, and she was feeding stray cats in the neighborhood. and this anna thought how wonderful. a what nice lady. she's kind to the cat. and she thought her husband is a little cranky. but she recognized them. called the fbi and how they caught them. we have received for the book a friend of whitey's who has been writing to him since his capture shared some of of the letter with us. i might add, it gives you a great instieght whitey. he may have a lot of problems. but self-est teem isn't one of them. in one of the writes a cat got me captured. >> they grewed up in the subtitle. see the tub subtitle. it should say how a cat caught most wanted character. >> he's a fan of reading about himself. >> he absolutely. is. >> he likes to read in general. he's fond of the "boston globe." he shot up the officer because the way they -- the boston globe is a good company. he also, you know, took part of his social scrowt reach campaign, went after john f kennedy. because he was angry at the kennedys in general because the biggest is that a judge named -- [inaudible] a federal judge. bobby kennedy promoted him through the justice department. and then teddy kennedy became his not only his prime to push him for federal judgeship. when gary issued the ruling which is controversial. and in the city in particularly we see they were poisoning the social experiment. and it was wouldn't assent all the rich white suburbs. they hated the kennedy and they were hated teddy. he fire bombs jack kennedy's bitter place and spray painted bust teddy. >> a swell guy. >> meanwhile his brother is also fighting against the -- and -- and . >> well, in rerning the book i traveled to california because whitey spent federal years for bank robbery. and he was sent to alcatraz which was the first maximum federal security prison in the country. he looked at alcatraz fondly like where we look at our alma mater. it gave heath him a lot he went to al can raise. we have a chapter in the book called university of can trays. >> anybody can step through harvard. but in the boston area but when you can go to alcatraz. that's right. he was a high school dropout who earned his ged while he was in the air force. where he educate himself was in l can trays. he boasted he read a book a day. became well read. read military history. mack when they hear the -- i think he's in the cleveland crew. [laughter] he knew who he was. took the lesson well. one of the interesting things you could ask about the family dynamic. he's in prison. his brother, billy, at the time is boston college of rule. law school. he's five years younger and determined to help him go straight. host lobbying while at law school to get whitey moved closer to home. get him early parole. and he enlists the dean of the boston college of law school, the to become whitey's prison pen pal. he's writing to whitey. it looks good for whitey. it look like he's trying to turn his life around. so you see this priest who is writing to help him. even within the prison system to do well, he also gets at the time the speak much u.s. house to lobby also from south boston to lobby the prison, the bureau of prisons to get whitey special treatment. can you watch out for the guy. he comes from a wonderful family. he did. can you get him moved closer to home? whitey gets caught up in a prison escape attempt he ends up at alcatraz. the house speaker gets the head of the director of bureau of prison in washington to fly to san francisco, take the boat to alcatraz and pay a little visit to whitey bulger. and he how are they treating you? how are you doing here? how many -- bank robberies got whitey is seeing how political connections can pay off. >> when he got out he came brother is his protecter when he was in the can. when he got out, he finally got very involved. anybody he perceived as a political faux of had his brother that would include the newspaper we worked for was an enemy. whitey would go after them. there was a guy named alan who was a state senator who suggest it on the floor of the massachusetts senate that billy bulger controlled the legitimate and his brother the gangster controls the ill legitimate. he was in the midst of a mental break down. no truer words have been ever been spoke. kevin told huhs he called and said this unanimously said i'm going kill you. that's the stuff that whitey did to anybody perceived as a threat to his brother. >> we're not amateur when it comes to families and politics and corruption. chij, -- chicago, illinois. i have a sense that if you were a brother of well known mobster, you might run to a few -- you know, stumble along the way. it might be a problem. how did his rise continue while it was also going on? that's one of the things that i think would puzzle far from the story. >> the fbi protected him. we know that. >> yes. >> the legitimate why billy signed a lot of things. he a huge machine. i had cousins that got jobs that would have to have been approved by the bulger office. it's the way it went. they were interested in enormous intimidation factor. you weren't supposed to be sitting around a barroom talking about him. there was a sen if you stepped over a line -- the funny thing what we know now the bulger organization was purposefully very small. criminal organization. i think the perception when i lived there it was huge. and there have a big brother was everywhere. and everybody was intimidated. the other thing, like i said, there were legitimate police officering trying to take out. there were few her res in the weak -- heroes in the book. there were three boston cop that tried to take him out. they were getting screwed at every point. they investigation being comprised. and one case it was a corrupt fbi state police officer who thwarted an investigation. everybody assumed it was the fbi. i that wasn't just me thinking it up. i was hearing it from the people. they were frustrated at this point they could not take him down legitimately. in one case after bobby long and the state cops went after him it killed the salary for the state police commanders. no one ever figured how how it happened. it happened in senate. i wonder who could have done that. [laughter] the idea of family comes up in at love ways in this story. not all the conventional ways of a mob story. one is that he had so many. he was very complex and had lot of -- he's an fbi informant even though he denies that. he's liaison. but, you know, he's an fbi informant. at the same time he's the head of the underworld. he is also juggling lot of different women. one of the most interesting story he had the two of the women were his longest relationship. he young woman named teresa who he met when she was a single mother with four children under seven years old. he meet her shortly after she get out of prison in the '60s. he never marries. he basically treats her children as his own. he buys her a house. he moves her out of the project. and insists on sit down family dinners every night around 6:00. no interruptions. no tv. no phone calms. and he lectured the kids on the important of staying away from bad influences. he -- there are kids they were hanging out with. stay away from that. and he physically sit, study study hard. he could go off in the night and shock down drug dealers and bookmakers and legitimate businessmen. >> he has to earn an occasional murder. it was like a scene out of "father knows best" he would go off around 1:00 or 2:00 when the boors closed down he would head to his other girlfriend's house. she was ten years younger. the thirty years he's juggling another relationship nineteen years. kathy greg who ended up on the run with him. very interesting story. she was voted the prettiest girl in her high school class. she never thought that was good enough for whitey. she had cosmetic. he yachted from college. kathy knew about teresa. as the clock is ticking and whitey is under investigation. he's likely to be indicted, and the p. he was as paive person. you know, okay. so kathy picking her upbringing her to her house. for the last nineteen years. he's been with me for the nineteen. it was dramatic scene. whitey walks in upon it. kathy is yelling . >> what could possibly go wrong there? [laughter] >> according to both teresa and one of whitey's friends. kathy is screaming i'm tired of being the other woman. and whitey is strangling her on the ground and his friends pull her off. the way it resolve himself. all right. it's over. i choose you. lucky teresa. she was a . he take her on the trip to europe but teresa thinks it's a vacation. he's stop, in, you know, london and dublin and paris and hitting up safety deposit boxes where he stashed money and fake id. he's planning on a life on the run. he get the head up from john connelly. you better take off. off he goes with her. after a month on the run he said, you know, after the way he raised my kids and took care of them and paid, you know, walked her daughter down the aisle and, you know, she said i would have felt obligating to stay with him. he drop her off south of boston. picking up kathy. and off they go. and it's an amazing story and how they lived on the run. because she's grateful to finally be the only woman. and he describes her as like his wife. they are like a married couple. she spend the . >> brings a tear to your eye. >> and the funny thing in the letters we obtain so they are captured and serving eight years in prison because she refused too cooperate again him. but he's writing letters to his friends saying those sixteen years were the happiest years of his life. it was like a sixteen year hon my moon. how dare the government sentenced her. they should have given a medal. she kept me crime free for sixteen years. >> he doesn't count the thirty guns in the wall of the apartment. >> yeah. not that we need background checks or anything. >> it's a love story. >> it is. he's working hard to keep her. he's saying, you know, do what you must with me, how can you . >> that brings us full circle to the myth making. we have the letter when she said she offered himself for engs cushion. if only they let the woman i love go free. that sound very nice. t baloney. why. >> why? >> if he cared about kathy. all he had to do is go tow her lawyer, have his lawyer talk cohim. give me up. i'm going to die in prison. tell the fed whatever you want. the feds would have severely reduced the sentence and maybe not sentence her to any time in prison if he cooperated. she wanted to be the culty girl. it's -- we talk about whitey being the myth making. the bad guy giving ride home to the nice laity and carry the gauche i are full circle to whitey the 8:00-year-old gang. down 155 pushup. it was meant to you to believe he's a good bad guy. >> there are two other points to the reputation is everything to hill what we no from the letters he's written. he's sort of resigned himself to the fact that the chances he'll get acquitted if the trial not next week but opening probably run through september. he said i'm going to spend the rest of i my life behind bar. >> 83. he thinks? >> he does. there's two things he wants to achieve at the trial. i was never an fbi informant. i department kill the two women. two of the nineteen victims young 26-year-old women accused of strangling. let's face it good bad guys, gangsters with scruple. they don't rat on their friends and strangle women. >> you got word yesterday that you're going to be allowed to cover the. he put us on the witness list. >> we would be such good witnesses. >> i would be terrific defense witness for whitey. i fired back before the judge actually sided with us our lawyers made a first amendment argument saying our first amendment rights trump his sixth amendment right. we i actually wrote a column. i'm sure he was not fond of. he fired a motion back saying which i talk about the myth making and whitey wants you to believe. whitey has -- i guess what the psychologist would call fit of grands grandiosity. he talks about what he has to prove in court is -- i feel like philip nolan. it's the protagonist in the short story "man without a country" it's about a noble character who peoples like he's being persecuted by his government. i ended up saying he's no nolan. history chip it was the protagonist in the great short story called "informer" he sold out his friends for money. i have to tell you, this is a greelt story. >> whitey would not have like the way jack nicholson portrayed him. he was unkept, a little overweight. and whitey is more disciplined and his soishts told us he would never be that disorganized. whitey is not happy? he doesn't want people like us to defining him. that was, you know, in term of putting us on the witness list if you are on the witness list you are sequestered. we could not cover the trial. he's determined to tell it his way. how dare they write my story. he called me something i can't repeat on tv. [laughter] and called kevin another low life. >> just proves he did -- whitey is not happy. that's okay. white why with the book is "whitey bulger: "america's most wanted" gangster. "we have a few minutes for questions. we have to use the mic. >> was whitey and his brother fans of -- hicks. since he was a reader did he read the book about his the that covered boston during the heyday? common ground? did he express and opinion? >> i believe he did. and yes, they were big fans of hicks. and there was a book when he went on the -- run the fbi seized belongings. a teacher had written. i'm not sure -- i don't think common ground was among those. he read all of those and wrote about how much he hated -- it was interesting in the book she mentions the bombing of the jfk birthplace. they found whitey's copy of the book. next to the section he writes in the margin of the book, too bad ted wasn't in the house mary joe would have been happy. you know. >> nice guy. >> he would make a great -- [inaudible] >> your book shows us truth is stranger than fiction. i think the soprano is nothing unwhat this could be if we were watching it. i want you to ask you step away from the role of author and how close you are to it case but journalists, if you were reading this account and just how the fbi and people we look to as citizeny to protect our rights, protect us. how that comprised your livelihood. what you're supposed to. the role of journalist. and if you comment on that a little bit. professionally. what you uncovered and you you feel about that. i expect criminals to be like that. i don't expect my government to act the way they do in the book. one thing we wanted to show is that the individual crouping of connelly was -- investigating the mother and threw them off the trail. rather than turn him over to law enforcement agencies. the other thing i deeply resent is the way that the government has tried to suggest -- he was only killing gangster. my government doesn't get to pick who lives and dies. the reality is that he killed a number of innocent people. davis was not a criminal. debra was not a criminal. michael was a no a criminal. roger wheeler was no a criminal. the other thing we did try to show is where the john connelly taking money and protecting this guy is like corruption. you understand corruption. the justice department did teferg could. would not acknowledge the hurt. they never app fiesed. they gone out their way -- seeking compensation had been thrown out. and the way the justice department it is cynical. on the criminal side -- got people killed. send the civil thriewr a different courtroom and say they have to be thrown out. you can't believe a word of the gangster. that's to me is corruption. that our government could that to the people. >> i thought just quickly that is one of the thing i found most startling. we covered the story since the '0u. after there were revelation in court about the fbi's current relationship with bull gear it thread a number of -- when the families filed the wrongful death suit alleging the government liable because of the handle of the two informant, they managed the to get most of the suit dismissed on technical grounds. you should known. you should have been watching tv and reading the paper more closely. you should known a couple of years ago that the fbi was to blame and you waited too long to sue. you have to state your claim within two years of knowing so you a claim. so they were dismissed on the grounds. to me that's just funny. >> proud moment. time for one last question. i think you started to answer my question. it seems like what you said bulger was a "perfect storm" in term where he happened to be. are there other whitey bulgers? do you see that happening again? >> i don't believe the culture of the fbi has changed much. and last year i did a series of columns based on reporting that slelly, i, and another reporter have a lins ya did we found a guy named marc. i remember getting the first phone call about the story. accused of suspected and at least six . >> he's a mafia guy. they rolled him. the state police decided to target him. he was a well known heroin dealer. he was not a nice guy. and so they thought he was an fbi informant. they called the fbi. it was two years ago. called the fbi and think it's your guy. we're going move on. no. no. t not your guy. as soon as we get the wire on -- they wifes on subpoena they get a court order to go on to the gangsters cell phone. the first very first conversation they report is him talk together fbi. >> i think the state police are coming after me. >> he was right. when they took them down. the same fbi sprucesser said -- call the state cop commander and said that was a great one. want to roll them together? the state cop looked him and said roll them? put them in prison. he said what are you crazy? he's a killer. he's killed at least six people and the response was we know only one. he was the guy that killed one person is acceptable. so you ask me has it changed? i don't believe it's changed. i think fbi needs an enema. i'll go back to had. i walked by shelly and were in washington last week. i walked by the hoover building and thought what a disgrace that the name is up there. what with know about the guy he was one of the most corrupt government officials in the history of the republican. and his name is still on the building. his etho is still in the building. that's why all we talk about whitey gull we are bsh bulger. >> on that cheery note. [laughter] i would like to thank you for coming out. i would like to thank shelley murphy, kevin. the book is whitey bulger. i don't know how many of you have time to come over. i have a section coming up in an hour. the book is a revolution was televised. but thank you for this one. the books for for sale in the lobby area. they are signing them in the art room to the west. thank you. we ask you clear out the room. we are expecting a full house for the next session. we need everyone to clear the room to make sure that everyone is able to get a seat. [inaudible conversations] our live coverage of the printer's row lit fest continues in a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] what are you reading this summer? >> it's called the "victory lab." my third book is "lean in." i can't go a summer without -- reading a baseball book. it's a novel. i'm reading a novel might as well have bash stories inside of it. and the fifth book is sort of guilty pleasure reading i haven't done yet and put off. "game of the throne" very popular tv series. my big fear once you start reading the books you have to read all of them. i may true to tackle the first this summer. >>> let us know what you're reading this summer. >>> what you helped my with there have a disconnect. the world that i have been working in for twenty five years tv. everything is exaggerated. you have to be much thinner than the normal person. so you think. you have to be a certain way. you have to look a certain way. your hair -- we have broken all of those rules on our show. but twenty five years of local news and networking news took the toll on my image of myself. and i tell stories in the book about how dress a certain way and everything has to be really tight. i was told by a executive they wanted to hire me. i need to lose weight. and come back in six months and try again. i did and came back in six months and got a job. the messages were clear. symptom of them were subliminal. if you already have a certain obsession or comp pulsativeness, or i claim even addiction to some of these foods we are surrounded with in our environment, i think it's a bad mix. and i tell the story because i discovered after a very, very uncomfortable tough conversation with an extremely close friend who was actually obese that even though she had a very different physical result, we both had gotten to the point that we had gotten to the same way. and driven by food obsession. >>let set that up in one second. let people know how the obsession continues. on the "today" show yesterday. she's talking about being obsessed and working her way toward healthy. >> you were a size 2. >> 118 pounds and size 2. >> since you have done the book you have actually started eating. and you weigh how much do you weigh now? >> 133. size six. >> okay. >> and it look good. [applause] we are celebrating this and she's saying i look good. she's convincing herself. yeah. >> but obsessed demon inside of you. i call you on the "today" show and say it was great. you kicked their -- it was amazing. i looked fat didn't i? i looked fat. i was like, god, you're still obsessed. but it's -- you're obsessed, diane, your friend even though she weighed 250 pounds, she carried the same obsession around with her all the time. and talk about how this book started on a boat . >> two years ago. >> almost -- . >> by the way, an addiction is not something you ever get rid of it. we'll go there in a second. two years ago i'm on the boat with one of my closest friends. our families are there. and, you know, i'm known for her a long time. we have shared so much together. >> you had a baby together. >> we had a baby together. my husband was out of town for the bitter bit of her second child. he came to the hospital with me. in the middle of intense labor, carly was taking long time to arrive. the doctor went to order a pizza. diane caught my baby. literally there's sides of me i wish she hasn't seen. i'll tell you that it was amazing to me that about two years ago we have known each other so long. shared so much. we haven't talked about this one thing that really needed to to be addressed and divided us. i was really skinny. probably too skinny. yes, i was too skinny. diane had become obese. he caned 200 pounds. i told her on that boat ride, you imagine how thin i was and how she must have felt. i told her that i was worried about her. and that she was fat. and i used the word obese, and i found my heart beating and sweat beginning to run down my back. i could tell the conversation could get really bad. >> i don't usually call my friend fat. but you decided to do this, you decided to do it because you loved her and you knew that she was literally killing herself as much as somebody that smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes. >> here is the question i have. if you are -- and women claim to be able to tell their intimate their friendship, they tell each other everything. do we? if you have a friend who is so clearly obese and struggling and can't even get to a boat. if your friend had cancer wouldn't you support her and talk to her about it and helper her if she had a illness or condition. wouldn't grow through and walk her through it. if a friend is obese we subconsciously judge them. the data shows we don't hire them. we think they are slobs. we think they are undisciplined. we don't think they're as good as us. >> you can watch this and overprograms online. booktv.org. >>> what are are you reading this summer? booktv want to know. >> the book i read the first chapter is -- [inaudible] "eating animals "my daughter read it. she's an environment studies major and interested in the food movement and fighting against factory food. and i'm interested, i mean, i eat meat, chicken, seafood. i may come away from the book not wanting to eat any of that or be more selective about how i eat it. i know, that it's a compelling writer and i'm looking forward to that. next on my list is a tribute to my son. this is the new biography of david foster. it's called "every love story is a ghost story ." i've heard it's well researched. david foster wallace, the professor of college where my son graduated. my son is a big fan of wallace. he read -- wallace was regarded by many to be one of the most interesting and creative writers of his era tragically killed himself a few years ago. and i'm interested in sort of what happened with his life. i know he had many struggles, and i love biography. that's my biography for the summer. next is a book by the friend of mine. it's called "our commonwealth." he sadly passed away two years ago without having finished this book with so friends came together and pulled together his essays, all about the commons, which is basically anything that belongs to humanity, the air is the water, it public spaces, the internet, and what is his drive in life was to protect the commons and make sure that everything doesn't get taken over by private enterprise. that's very much on my list to read. i've heard it's interesting. last is fiction the new book by colin called "and the mountains echo ." i read his first two books to afghanistan and this is my way of going there without getting on a plane. it's a family story intergenerational family. and i think he's a wonderful writer, i plan to cry, and just enjoy every minute of it. thank you. >>> we're back with more from chicago. douglas foster talk about post apart south africa. live from the printer's row lit fest. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. we would like to give a special thank you to our sponsors. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span2 booktv. if there's time at the end of the session for q & a, we ask that you use the microphone in the center of the room so our home audience is able to hear your question. .. >> i would like to welcome the moderator, the author, thank you. [applause] >> well, thank you. this is a real treat to be here today with doug. doug and i are old friends. for those of you not familiar with doug's work, doug was formally the editor of mother jones. his work appeared in places like the new york times magazine, at lain -- atlantic, washington post, l.a. time, and we are colleagues in the school of journalism. it's a thrill to be here to talk about his recent book, "after mandela," which i think is a beautifully rendered and beautifully written account of contemporary south africa and profoundly important book. we can talk about that. it's profoundly important because not only does it help us understand what's taking place in south africa, but there's many less -- lessons for us in the u.s. and countries elsewhere as countries emerge from years of tyrannical regimes and trying to find their way into a democratic government, a democratic system. i thought we'd begin talking about mandela. as you know, he's in the hospital now. it's fair to say to say he's, you know, near death, and i always found it interesting that to doug that he titled the book after mandela, not after a partide. a couple days ago, an activist in south africa asked the question, would we have been much better off if he served a second term? >> right. so we would have been better off if he had had a second term because, quote, because he was a committed democratic, unquote, and i think it raises all kinds of interesting questions about the history because, of course, mandela was old by the time he was released from prison. he had been in prison for 27 years, and that kind of delay in a transfer of power to a new in a nonliberated liberal south africa meant he was in a position he only wanted to serve for five years. the question about the legacy is raised and an assumption that everything since mandela stepped aside from power in 1999 has been a devra devra -- and it's o that, the book, and it says, yes, a lot was lost, both by the fact that there was depression led to cop straint on what south africa could become, but it's a more complicated story than that, and there's a new generation emerging that will shape the country opposed to par tide post transition. >> i'm curious, you know, i mean, in reading the book, it's clear that they have had very troubled government of the aid epidemic and poverty and crime, and what's interesting to me is the difficulty people have in one point being the opposition and next being in charge. and we think about southern georgia, a book about the civil rights movement coming late to the county, and those who sort of really were in opposition took power, what difficulty they had once they had any kind of power, and so i guess i wonder why, what happened? >> well, i mean, it's the big question in a place like this. obviously, people came back from 30 years in exile. in the case of the successor to nelson mandela in 1999, and mostly leaving a country he didn't know as 19, coming back, and representing a place that went bankrupt. he describes former president describing walking into the office in union buildings after being sworn in and finding nothing, no computers, no pencils, no pens, no paper. in which to manage the developing country, and so i think part of it is that that generation came back from exile to run a country they didn't know, and now the presidency is in the hands of hands who is skilled, where largely shaped by having been part of the gorilla army, the formation, the armed wing, and being chief of intelligence, and there's a succession of people from different parts of the liberation movement taking over, and who have been out of the country for long periods of time, and to a certain extent that shaped some mistakes made in the last -- >> do they talk about what surprised him when he came back after all those years? exile? >> what you quickly learn if you interview people who are politicians and in political power is nothing surprised them. [laughter] the main thing that upset jacob every time they interviewed him is i would, you know, that's the typical journalist question; right? what surprised you? what's up usual, what jumped out at you? every time i said that, he would lean back from the table and look at me as a lizard-like look when you know you irritated him, and that would come. no, my brother, never surprised. you know, never admit you were surprised. i think the things that surprised the second president of the liberated south africa was the extent to which division of people in rural areas and those people who had migrated and were part of a hybridizing, modernizing, urban experience that divide, had if anything, grown deeper while he had been away for 30 years, the differences between the so-called kaba, people from rural areas who have indigenous beliefs and the cull pa, people who were more westernized and christianized, that that kind of dividing line really posed huge challenges in the coming a governing of a liberated country that had a goal announced in 1994 of becoming a nonracial, nonsexist, nonhomophobic society of the southeastern tip of africa, big dreams for a very troubled place. >> and so just to be clear, why was it that they didn't like the idea that they could have been surprised by what they saw? >> well, because if you come up in markist, len nonnist thought and did the correct study about the objective conditions that are, you know, shaping history, then the last thing you would ever want to admit is something caught you by surprise. >> you know, you got this wonderful line early op in the book, and i'm going to just read it in which you right you were intrigued by how a society stitches itself together in the wake of horrific traumas, and for me, it's resident. i think a lot about the violence in this country. i think about the western and south sides how individuals and communities win their way after experienced such trauma, and i want your thoughts on what that's meant for south africa coming out of what was really an incredibly violence period. >> you know, i came to the story after maybe 25 years of covering stories like it in my native california and in latin america, particularly in central america, and peru, argentina. other people, i think, are much better at being war correspondents and being under fire. i tend to be the keep of person who comes in after story's been forgotten for a while or -- and the thing that intrigued me is just this point. what is it that takes the -- that it takes for people to figure out after horrific trauma in which up believable things have been done, and find the social pace, economic and social justice space in order to gain traction to make something better? that's what i was interested in looking at here. think back to friends of mine who were correspondent in 1994 in south africa sent to cover the election who went fully expecting they would cover. i don't know how many people in the room remember what the runup to the election was like. there were 12,000 people who were killed in violence between the ifp and the anc, and the full expectation was that there was going to be huge amount of violence, and that it was going to be a disaster, and, largely, the election came off largely non-violencely, peacefully, and i think that moment is one of the things that sets the tone in addition to the truth and recop -- reconciliation commission and those places in south south africa life since then where people really expected explosions and huge amounts of violence, and they didn't have it. i think every time there's an expectation of the cat tas trough fee which media is really good at predicting and covering when it happens. we're not quite as good as getting into the inner systems of what make people turn away to create a new way of being. >> talked about the place of truth and reconciliation commission. it's the part was the most exciting and exhilarating and most difficult to understand. >> yeah, you know, the truth in recop -- reconciliation commission got a lot of attention from around the world and got oprah-like treatment of what was going on in south africa. contrast that with the way people in the township talk to you if you asked them about the truth in reconciliation commission. they might say we got the truth, but not justice. we got truth and not necessarily reconciliation, there was the protection from criminal charges of people who committed or risk crimes, and so i think it is -- that is a contested part of history. it is true, though, that if you travel around the country, you'll meet people, you'll meet family members of people who disappeared who said i was able to talk to the arch bishop and others on the commission, and i found out where my son was, where my son's body was, so there are -- you know, it's a difficult, complicated history and hard to sum up in a line or two. >> but when you talk about wanting justice, i mean, part of the whole conceit is that, in fact, it was not until after justice; right? in some ways, people have taken issue with just the notion of the truth in reconciliation commission, and it was not how it operated or functioned, but the notion of having this idea of forgiveness, ultimately, what it was about. >> right, but there was a provision for compensation, and they are the condition that largely failed, and so there -- i think there was an expectation, still is an expectation on the part of lots of people who are involved in the struggle that those who were part of the former regime and whites who benefited, would at some point express some kind of grief over what took place, and i think that quite has not quite happened, so the process of the truth in reconciliation commission is people came and spoke their pain and discovered a lot of information because police officers, those part of the army unites who killed people came forward and gave details, but there's a certain kind of undi jeesedded quality of it, but maybe because because it's under justice. >> the notion of truth in reconciliation is a difficult concept. it's about ultimately about forgiveness, and forgiveness, as you say, there's something oprah-like about it, facile, and yet it's difficult, and i'm not -- it's something i grapple with a lot in my work as well. i want to talk about the main character in the book, one of the favorite characters, and that's john, a young -- he's 16 when you meet him? >> 15. >> yeah, he's 15 years old, and what's interesting is 40% of the population is under 18 which has a number of implications, but one of which is obviously that notion of nation's history is very compact and do not experience the struggle, and the other part, of course, in south africa, like so many other countries has been hit by the globalization of their economy and so it's led to, as it has here, this incredible divide between those who have and those who don't, and those who don't tend to be the young people, and john is this young boy who when you meet him is essentially homeless. >> yeah. he's living on the street, sleeping in an alley when i first meet him, having run away from a township nope as atlantis, not the mere rack cue louse place, but a real place part of the formal process of appartide, removing people, eliminating the black spots from places like cape town, and people were pushed out, in this case, about 40 miles away from cape town, concentrated in areas where there was no industry and the rest of it, so we understand what it looks like, and the separation was imposed by law, and as a result, the drug economy, which john came up in his step dad was a big dealer, and he ran to the streets, so he becomes, in a way, the story intended to explain to people why south africa's still such a violence place, and what it is the logic that takes somebody who is a decent kid with a big struggle with his moral conscious about what he will do and won't do, but we see him go from being a run away, homeless run away, to becoming a beggar to becoming a chief and then an armed thief and worse. he becomes our window in to how that happens for so many young south africans. >> and i'm curious, i mean, how are you able to win his trust the way you were? he talks about things that could get him in great trowel. >> yeah, you know, i had the -- i know you've had this experience too where you go and see somebody and you wonder how much of what they told you is true and weather you'll see them again. with each of the main six young people who stitched the narrative together for me, i probably had ten who i was thinking about playing a certain role, and john from the beginning, since i gotten to know street kids in johannesburg and capetown was one of those kids whose story kept taunting me because of where he came from and the way in which he talked about the choices ahead for him, and it really probably was the fourth or fifth time i went and just hung out with him, which is always a challenging thing. you know, you're an older white guy from america hanging out with colored street kids, and as a result of that, you probably have to spend more time doing it until you fall into the background. with him i think he told me the whole story because i kept coming back and because i asked, because i kept asking. i remembered what he said the last time, and when he lied, i caught him out because i knew enough of his friends that i could say, you know, but that's not what colin says. i caught him out enough times, and i checked up on his story enough times, and i think he was, you know, at a certain point astoppedded -- astownted -- astounded i was patient enough to come back, and he knew i cared about him. he knew that i had some respect for what he was facing, even as he also knew that i had deep concern and judgment about what he was deciding to do and the bad things that he was doing. >> i remember the part in the book where he talks about holding people up, and held up in cape town; right? by gun point, saying it could have. me, and he reflects on it more a moment, and, yet, still continues to justify what he's doing. it always astonishes me, i think, when you spend time with somebody like john that the natural reluctance and distrust people have, but i think in the end not a willingness, but no one asked them anything about themselves, and so for the first time, they are forced to reflect on their own lives, and i sense that with john. >> yeah, and just as you were talking, i'ming this point when i went to see him, and there was the long, what i would do, always 15 -- i'm quite a bit older -- >> not much. >> i go to the dormitory, and i don't know what experience you've had talking to teenagers, but you don't sit across like i'm facing you. you sit sideways like alex and i, and probably i would be mostly looking at the ceiling asking him questions because that is the way i get the most interesting information, and that was the day he told me that we he killed people, and that he killed people for hire, and i had a choice, you know, of either responding the way i was feeling, which is to be freakedded out, and i think there were, you know, in my relationship with him over time, there's been all kind of ethical questions that came up that i don't have bright line answers for. you know, one of the things that's a big challenge about doing this kind of story and this book is it plunges you in nuance difficult ethical questions that are not easy to answer, and the only way you escape them is by being deft to them or by pretending that they don't exist or by never including somebody like john in your narrative. >> right. no, it's interesting. i mean, both of us teach, and it's when you teach ethics, clear ethics, but you are right in dealing with john. you are faced with conundrums and questions that you would never have considered. a couple questions, and we'll take them from you guys, but i'm curious what the reception of the book's been like in south africa. >> i expected that i would really get slammed in the reviews because, you know, there's a pattern of people coming from outside south africa to tell the south african story, and either to do the miracle story, you know, nelson mandela, the miracle leader of the exceptional place, the rainbow nation, ect.. you know, we tell the story and sing, do a little dance. one version, and the other version is it's all crap; right? it was all soiled and terrible tricks that the nc played, and so i kind of figured that i would get pegged as one of the other, milan said i was immune to pessimism. that was criticism. i take that as a point of pride, kind of pessimism, but not soft headed or soft hearted about what i see. that's the kind of trip that i tried to make so the reviews had been quite good, seems to be selling, and sort of bracing for that first really brutal review. it has not happened yet. >> have you heard from zuma? >> indirectly from president zuma who gave he a lot of time, eight interviews, more time than anybody else ever had from him, and i expected, i don't know, actually what i expected. he's still trying to absorb what he thinks of the -- it's the best way to put it. >> and my final question is, as i read the book, i couldn't help but think of the arab spring and sort of what it means to come out of the, you know, very difficult period as a nation and try to find your way to some kind of democratic rule, and i guess given your experience in south africa, what are the lessons that you see for a country like egypt, for instance? >> yeah, i think there's a whole bunch as we think about parts of the world where particularly there's a generational cleanse, a big generational agreement on cultural grounds, economic grounds, and the rest. one is that it's not -- revolt is not necessarily driven by economic hardship. the unemployment rate in egypt, among young egyptians was much better than the unemployment rate among young blacks in south africa that the likelihood of an explows eve reaction is based on any expectation that there's some traction and that people are going to be able to get somewhere without a massive revolt. that's aless sop. the second lesson is is this generational question. is there a place for a generational voice and people to be allowed to shape their future without being dragged back into debates of the past? we see things developing in a sustained way in south africa partly because it occurred largely peacefully. >> right. it's interesting, the rebel yon in south africa was not -- it was not necessarily driven by youth, up like in egypt or now as we see in turkey or syria -- >> but led by an older generation that was once young. >> all were once young. >> when you think about the uprising, that was 1976, so forced goo a guerrilla war, so you hope it doesn't take three decades for the airplane spring to yield more sustainable steps towards a fully democratic society. >> are there lessons you take from your time in south africa for here? >> absolutely. i think the biggest is 11 official languages. and over the battles, the idea that we should be dealing with each other in two languages, well, i've just been bending a ton of time in a place where i only speak one of 11 official languages; right? you go to a place that's a wonderful place in newtown in johannesburg that represents a modernizing cultural place, a kind of african place, a place called cafe, and they do spoken word, and except in five or six or seven languages, and they'll walk in there and somebody begins a poem and then lapse into english, have a little zulu, go into africon, and somehow that entire group of 300 people gets enough of the just what's going on to have the experience of that kind of cross cultural exchange that means people who come from -- who grew up speaking 11 different languages are in the room together and having one conversation so i think there's a ton that we have to learn about that. i think even though it will sound odd to say, i think we have a top to learn about how to talk about race from south africans, even though they are much more recently out of politics defined by an extreme, strange form of racial segregation. there's much more open conversation about race in johannesburg or cape town or durbin or if you're in a township outs johannesburg than we have. we have two conversations going on. one in our head and then what's actually being said, and there's a big gap in that conversation. i don't think that's so true, at least in the circles that young people that i've been traveling in in south africa. i think those two things are big, and then the third thing that's important to say is that memorialized in the south african constitution is a commitment to social and economic justice to nonracialism, to nonsexism to making sexual orientation as protected as any other category and to social justice, and so there's a way in which at least the goals in the country and party certainly falls short of the goals, but the goals are codified and understood as the core values of the country. >> i think we like to think that those are the core values here, but as you say, they are not often articulated in any real way. with that, opening it up to questions from the audience about what doug talked about, about the book, about south africa. meze. >> hi. >> hi. >> i'll go first. it's been said that the reason for the transition of power, the republican it was peaceful is because it didn't bring about any real economic reform, that ab sent, like, real lap redistribution, the unequalities were doomed to continue, and the poverty in the violence, could you comment on that? >> sure. thanks for the question. the big accommodation that was made by the anc and the negotiations that led to the first election as you know were to keep the terms, private property rights, and the basic struts of the economy protected. that was the tradeoff. the crude way of putting it is the vote and the right to have an effect in politics in exchange for a no radical change in the economic structure, no radical redistribution of wealth so 80% of land, 80% of wealth is still held by whites, minorities of about 9%, and that entwining of race and class constrained the eight to feel political liberation followedded by economic liberation, and that's the biggest challenge for the government and for the society of figuring out legal ways in which to alter dynamics, and, now, at the same time, in the last 19 years, 2 million black people have moved into middle income stratus. we want to be careful in terms of evaluating what's going on there, but certainly, that -- the entire thrust of the liberation movement was to disentwine these two things, race and class entwined for so long by law, and that that disentwining is a work in progress, and after 19 years responsible for, of course, the resentment among people who have a right to expect better and more progress. >> hi, doug and alex. for those of us not following south africa that closely, we saw the photograph in the newspaper of mandela and zuma and mandela looked like he wanted to hit him over the head with a two-by-four, and i want to know what's behind that. is it that mandela doesn't like zuma? is it that he is disgusted or disapproves of the way he's governing in the direction of the south africa, or is he just a cranky guy who wants to be left alone. does anybody know what he thinks at this point about the direction of south africa, and does that photograph tell you anything? >> wow. [laughter] i guess i should say thank you for that question. [laughter] i think the people who i rely on to tell me what he's doing is one of the informanets, and as a result of that, has given me good access into his thinking and what's happening in the family. the truth is he's a 9 had 4 -- 94-year-old man about to turn 95, and to a certain extent -- and very ill for the last couple years -- the last time i saw him in 2010, he said as my sop and i came into the room, it's nice that young people still come to see an old man who has nothing new to say. he's been trying hard for a long time to retire. he retired, retired from retirement, retired from the private retirement trying to send the message both to south africans and the rest of us that he was done. he staged that event in which the leadership of the party was, you know, allowed to be photographed with him tells you how in secure some of the leaders are about whether they are seen as caring the man tell of mandela. there's a big struggle going on in south african politics to latch on to the legacy of mendel la, the spirit, about by the opposition, democratic alliance, and by the anc, and i think the reaction they got to that, those kind of staged photographs means that luckily for mandela and the rest of us, it won't happen again. >> talk about the reaction because it was a controversial photograph. >> yeah, no, i mean, the video is just painful, you know, it's painful. it's the video of leaders including president zuma keep of trying to get his attention, trying to get him to smile, you know. that's the money shot. that's the shot they wanted, and i suspect he had the same kind of feeling towards them that he had to other visitors which it's amazing that younger people keep coming to see an old man who has nothing new to say, so i think that the public reaction, if you follow the blogs and the online reactions and also just listen to the chat shows which i do, you get up early, and you listen because it's seven hours ahead, there was a revulsion against the political class for this crude, raising the banner of mandela, trying to use it to anoint themselves. you know, mandela was a disciplined member of the african national congress his entire life giving his whole life to the party and struggle. i'm sure when they toll him that morning what was going to happen, he agreed to it, but the point when somebody's 9 had 4 and 95 is people should know not to ask. >> when you talk to young people in disstress like john, what, if any programs were institutions do you hear that are doing them some good, whether it's government or faith based or other? >> i would say all of the above, and john, himself, has been reached by a small ngo in cape town working with homeless street kids. i think during the points where he's in a struggle with the morm conference and getting off the street and not doing robberies, it's because of the amazing group of outreach workers. some of them are faith based, some simply, other young people who banded together and got funding, there's many, many great programs involving building. this particular ngo trains young men to be bakers, and he has succeeded in educating and placing in decent jobs dozens of people in similar situations like john. john's a limit difficult in that he doesn't want to be under anybody's thumb so it's hard for him as he goes to work at eight in the morning and some boss is telling him what to do. i think there's -- in a way, it's a stand-in for some of the difficulty in the country in moving on. there was a, you know, an understandable call by the liberation movement to make the country ungovernable, to create a generation of people who were so rebellious that the old system could no longer survive, and what we are seeing partly in the maturation of things in south south africa is the new generation coming along for which rebellion is not enough, knowing when to rebel and when to build skills in order to construct a new country becomes more, a bigger part of the agenda. >> thank you, doug, and thank you, alex, and, you know, you were talking a little about the -- what's -- the young people in south africa might have to say to the chern growing up in the arab spring. you know, i'm wondering if you have any comments for those palestine yaps growing up in a system which many identify as very similar to south africa, looking forward to what strengths can they find and draw of what's going on as young people mature, you know, are able to find in growing up. what words would you have to say to the young palestinians growing up now? >> yeah, i mean, there's a deep identification in south africa with the palestinian struggle. partly because during the years when the nc was deemed a terrorist organization in the u.s., the plo was one of the biggest supporter of the dnc so because of the history and also because of the way the conflict is reported in south africa, there's a kind of deep identification, and i think to the extent that the interview subjects i had talked about it is a kind of identification around the possibilities of seemingly ire recon siebl differences potentially being bridged because you'll be in townships or parts of johannesburg where people are suddenly in school with an afr africon speaking white person whose parent probably supported a division, and people are in schools, socials situations, networks together, and i think to the extent that they are thinking about the middle east opposed to what's happening down the treat, the mdges is message is sometimes it's reconcilable where they can peacefully tolerate one another. >> thank you. >> time for one last question. anybody who? >> well, doug, thank you very much. [applause] >> as mentioned previously, doug's book can be found in the lobby of the university center so right where you walked innings and they will sign copies of the book in the art room which is right to your left. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we'll be right back with more from chicago in a couple of minutes. >> i got five books on the reading wish list. three of these i consider a success. i'm trying to finish "ten letters," written a year and a half ago, and it's a look back at some of the people who write letters to president obama. he leads ten letters every day from everyday americans, and so eli went back and found temperature of them who wrote to the president with real stories of woah, especially in the midst of the economic recession. it's a neat look back and deep dive into some of the interactions people have with the president, and it's not so much about him, but the people who reached out. it's a good read. almost done with that. when that's done, moving on to "act of congress," from another guy at the washington post looking at how congress dealt with regulatory reform years ago and used it to explain why it is the congress is broken these days. bob covered congress back in the 1970s, and he says it's a big difference between then and now. clearly, it's obvious to most, but there's real dysfunction in a few different ways, and it's supposed to be a good read. after that, another book by a guy who works for the washington post. it's not on purpose. these guys just write good stuff. "collision 2012", a look back at the 2012 campaign, did a similar book in the 2008 campaign, and so this is his look at the obama versus romney race, talked to all the guys involved, and that's coming out in august. that's later on in the year. the other is the "perilous fight," also from the washington post, took a two-yearbook leave to work on the book, it's a neat look back at the six weeks during the war of 1812 and when washington was urn siege and look at what the city went through and how it changed, supposed to be a good read. we hope to get into that later this summer as well. if i get through two or three of the books, i'll be proud. the only other one is "great gatsdby" because i never read it in high school. hope to finish that as well. >> tweet us @booktv, post on our facebook page, or e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. here's a look at books published this week: >> host: you spend time in the book on israel, iraq, and islam, and you talk about islamism. the real reason the islamists have declare war on the west, that it embodies the freedom of the individual and negation of thee karattic authority. in a globalized world, this freedom is viewed as a con they onthat threatened islam everywhere. >> guest: yes, well, this is, you know, in preoccupied me for simple years and more of us more and more, and i do think, as i said, there's a problem here with the islamic world, and with the religion at the root of that islamic world, and it's very, very important to understand, i think, in all of this, that when one talks about the concerns, one is not talking about all muslim. on the contrary. there are, i mean, just speaking from the point of view of britain, there's many muslims who came as imgrants to brit lap because they wanted to sign up to british and western values, freedom, wanted to prosper and have good jobs, but wanted freedom because freedom is important to them. the women wanted to be treated as equals, and they wanted all the things that we all want, freedom, peace, security, prosperity. you know, they are not hung up on these religious precepts causing us in the western world trouble. the problem is in the islamic world, those preceptings have been interpreted in a way in which comes out of the religion and which is dominant which is to say that the view of the world which says that the world has to be remade according to islamic, that, of course, there's that, you know, enjoying freedom, and that has to be pulled back to cop form to a very, very narrow, authoritarian conservatism interpretation of islam. that view is now dominant. the view that the west must be brought to heal this is islamism, and others say, what you mean is islam, and i understand what they mean is islamism is a made up word, but i use it for a particular reason because there -- it is in order to allow for the fact there are muslims not extreme who do want to want western values, and those muslims who don't. those who don't i call and others call islamists because they are trying to impose the doctrine on people who are not muslim, and they are trying to impose the most high bound antifreedom interpretation of the religion at its most narrow on muslims, and so i call those people islamists. they are a threat to us. they say the whole time what their intention is to recreate the old islamic state, the old muslim empire to go beyond that and to conquer, you know, britain, to conquer america, they are explicit, and to impose sharia, the rule of islamic law upon anywhere that muslims live. those are islamists, and some of them are violent, equipped themselves with weapons of war and terrorism, and some of them are not violent, but believe they conquer the west through a kind of cultural creep if you like, a keep of culture takeoverment we should also be extremely worried by them. they are all islamist, some violence, others not. on the other hand, there's a lot of muslims who are not islamists, and we have to keep both in our minds. there is a difference between those who interpret religion in a way that threatens us, and those who belong and strive to islam who are muslims who are, themselves threatened by these islamists, and we must keep those two things, i think, in our minds at the same time, and that's what i tried to do when i wrote the book, that was about what i say the case to which my great horror and fear the british ruling class was giving in to islamism, to the attempt to take over, to the attempt to undermine britain and the end crochement of islamic values in britain, and the class said let's go along with this. that's why i wrote the book, but in the book, i was extremely careful, and i think we must be to acknowledge them, there many, many muslims who find this equally frightening and worrying and have nothing to do with it. .. the reviews have been compelling, and i think that's going to be an interesting case study. when you're reading a book and you know the characters, barney frank and senator dodd and the legislators, it's interesting to get the perspective, and some of the staffers'. and then there's a book i just ordered on james burns, legendary south carolina in politics -- john martin said you'll love this book. a guy who very nearly was vice president instead of truman in '44 and continued to play an extraordinary role in politics and became one of the architects of nixon's success in the south, and it was interesting enough, popped up working with harry hopkins, and the third term of fdr. so, i like to read about the process and i like to study history and i ought to read more policy and less hoyt -- history but i learn better in history. >>> now from marvin kalb preempts his book "the road to war: presidential commitments honored and betrayed." [inaudible conversations] >> hello, and welcome to the 29th annual chicago tribune printer's row lit fest. we want to give a thank you to the sponsors. today's program will be broadcast on c-span2's booktv. if there's time at the end of the session for audience questions, we ask you use the microphone in the center of the room so our home audience is able to hear you. this will rebroadcast tonight at 11:00 p.m. central time, and then alsod a midnight on sunday. please keep the spirit of litfest going all year with a subsubscription to printer0s -- printers row. and visit the web site for rates and posters. the author's book will be sold on the second floor of the university center where we are. and he wanted me to make a special hemmings he will be signing said pack or books that you have in the art room following this session. i now ask you turn off your cell phones and all electronic devices, and i would like to welcome our moderator, mr. bruce dole of the chicago tribune. applause. >> thank you very much. one of the legends of television news in the united states, exactly hired by edward r. murrow. a veteran -- [laughter] >> that was so good i'll say it again. he was actually hired by edward r. murrow. a von of cbs, veteran of nbc, and a veteran of the nixon enemy's list. [applause] >> host: is -- it only gets better. and the awe or the "road to war" about presidential decisionmaking and how at it taken us to war. on -- you would use the word the whims of presidents. we're going to cover all of that in the book. i want to ask you about presidential decision moch making. that's a guy from chicago went to the white house. you look at what we've learned in the last few weeks on nsa mega data gathering, on the irs going after tea party groups, the department of justice going after fox news, who you have an affiliation with now, and the "associated press." is this the guy -- is this the presidency you expected to see when obama was elected? >> the answer to that is very simply, no. i would never have expected the president to yield to the kind of pressures he has over the last couple of years. he explained the other day that what he is trying to do is in the best interests of the american people, and by that i think he meant that he was seeking the best way of fighting terrorism, and this is a challenge for any president, not only barack obama and what we have learned in the past week is not all new. that has been kicking around, but with in angle inside the past week. there's a bottom line issue here and that is, how much of your personal freedom, how much of your personal privacy, can you give away in the greater interests of saving the nation from a terrorist attack. my question on this is that i fear every now and then i literally fear the power of government. and every now and then i fear also in the deepest sense that the government, even run by the best people, can do dreadful things, and there is would way that an accumulation of power, in the hands of a president, is simply not a good thing. >> host: what do you think happened with obama? much of the book is about presidents who looked at a war situation, knew it was probably unwinnable, and yet kept getting us in. is there a parallel to how obama may have approached the war or terror? >> guest: there's a great similarity. i don't think obama when he came into office believed he would be in a position on his own, up checked by congress, uncriticized in many ways by the media, on his own to start a war if he felt like doing that. for example, i would not be at all surprised if tomorrow morning there were headline that the united states has opened a different kind of -- or maybe an old fashioned kind of military operation in syria. now, the administration has been on the edge of a military involvement in syria now for about a year. but it's very close at this point, and if the president would decide to do that, he can do it on his own. he doesn't have to go anywhere to check with anybody, and that, to me, is the reason why i did "the road to warmth" this book has been on my mind nor years, ever since i covered the vietnam war, and in the middle of that war, when it suddenly occurred to me, there were 548,000 american troops in the small country of south vietnam. and i asked myself, how did we get into this war? how did it start? where did it begin? did the congress actually declare war? which, by the way, is what the constitution of the united states says it is supposed to do, to declare war. that is its responsibility. but we know that, in american history, the congress has declared war only five times. the war of 1812, this mexican war of 1846. spanish american war in, world war i, world war ii. since that time anybody is aware of the fact the u.s. has been in am an almost nobody stop war, korea, panama, you name it, and now afghanistan, and we got out of iraq. we got out but we may get in but that's a separate end paren. during all of those wars was there ever a time when somebody said to a president, you can't do this? you simply can't do it. you are not a king. you are not the modern monarch of our time. you are a president. you were elected. you might have gotten 49 or 51 or 52% of the vote but that not the whole country, and let's moderate the excessive use of presidential power. but in going to war, it is the president who has that power, the congress has literally become irrelevant. former senator jim webb did a marvelous article in which he begins by saying the congress of the ute has become irrelevant. and that's his word, and that's all power now vests in the president, and it seems to me that in a democracy that's not the way it is supposed to work. >> host: you make the point, even when the congress stepped, in, say the gulf of tonkin, and few cases where congress put a brake on it, and the same thing with iraq. >> guest: there was that one time in 1973 when the congress passed the war powers act. the war powers act was an act of utter frustration on the part of the congress. the vietnam war had been going on and on and there was no end in sight. and so the congress truly fed up, and also fed up with right-hand nixon at that time. parenthesis, which a number of us were, close parenthesis. but at that time the congress passed the war powers act. the most idiotic piece of legislation you can imagine. seriously. what this legislation says is that if the president wants to go to war, within 48 hours he has to inform the congress. inform. not consult. inform. then he has 60 days to accomplish the military mission. if he hasn't accomplished it in 60 days, he has to go back to the congress, where there is some kind of debate, and the congress will fifth it approval for another 30 days of war. but at the end of 90 days, that's the end of it. wars don't begin and end on a time schedule. and it is so absurd, i sometimes wonder, what are these peopling too on capitol hill that they could come up with a piece of legislation like that? and by the way, when obama decided that he would commit the american air force to the war in libya, he did not even inform the congress. >> host: what goes through a president's mind? you make the argument that nixon knew when -- when he took office, knew we were not going to win in vietnam. when kennedy took office he was skeptical, and yet they did carry us in. is it a fear of being -- looking weak as a leader if you don't carry out -- execute what your predecessor started? >> guest: it really depends on -- if i may discuss for one moment the vietnam experience, which as i look around this room, many of you do remember. but in that experience, it started, believe it or not, with harry truman in the late 1940s. when harry truman looked at france, which was reimposing its colonial rule in indo-china, the u.s., franklin roosevelt was against that. truman was again that. what was happening was that joseph stalin in the soviet union was movings hi armies westward. truman got frightened. this was the beginning of the cold war, the start of the nuclear age. and truman was concerned that communism would simply take over in western europe. so, truman did whatever he could to win over the french. and he said, what can i do to help? and the french said, you don't make a thing of our re-imposing colonialism in indo-china. we need your weapons and we need your money. so truman began early on, 1947, put in i believe the figure was $137 million at the beginning. by the time he left it was triple that. now, did truman have in mind that we're going to get into a big war in vietnam? not at all. what he was concerned about was the in the middle of a budding cold war, that he not be the president who yields territory, more territory, to the expansionist communist empire. so the next guy comes in, dwight eisenhower. eisenhower likewise did not want to get the u.s. involved in the french war, in indo-china. but what did he do? in 1954, he in effect christened the arrival of the country of south vietnam as a result of the geneva convention at that time. he didn't want to do it. but you're in the middle of a cold war. he didn't want to give the communists a leg up so he agreed to the television of indough champion into two parts. communists have the north and we have the south. we have the south. we, the united states, began to inherit the south. then in 1959, eisenhower said in a speech at gettysburg college, this is close to an accurate quote -- the continued existence of a free, noncommunist, independent, south vietnam is in the direct national security interest of the united states. big, big phrase. so, when john kennedy comes into office, the kid, the new kid on the block, he is not going to be criticizing this world war ii hero who had just finish who'd terms in office. so, if he says south vietnam is in the direct national interests of the u.s., yes, it is, and at the beginning of the kennedy administration, we had 800 military advisers in south vietnam. by the time he was killed november 22, 1963, we had 18,000. lyndon johnson comes in. he doesn't want a war in vietnam. what are the first three words out of his mouth as the new president? let us continue. and that was to continue the kennedy policy on south vietnam. which was the eisenhower policy, which was the truman policy. and johnson was a brilliant politician but cursed by a deep insecurity, and he simply did not want to be the first president to lose a war. and when it was clear to his military advisers we were losing, he then put the 540,000 troops in so we could not lose. what do you think happened when richmond nixon, the next guy came in? we lost it. in april of 1975 we were kicked out of south vietnam. it was a humiliating defeat, and many of you will remember the americans going from the roof of the american helicopter, 'rope ladders to helicopters hovering up above, and taken to aircraft carriers in the south china sea. we lost that war. what is the message here? and really the reason for the road to war? the message for me is that presidents, no matter how wonderful they are, how brilliant they are, the experience they had in war, it should not be to them alone that we vest the responsibility to take us into war. there are other people in this democracy who also ought to have a voice, including, i think, the biggest abdicators of responsibility here, are the congress. the people in the congress. i also tend to blame the media, because i don't want to sound like, in our day it was much better and blah blah blah. but it was. [laughter] >> host: i think people know that -- john f. kennedy. the press protected him. there were things a president could not get away with today. when did that change? did the press turn on the presidency as we lost the war or the press figure out what was going on? what changed between john f. kennedy and tougher reporting later. >> guest: one, i think the whole financial underpinning of the media underwent a revolution, and in the old days at cbs, for example, i knew, literally knew, the man who owned the company. bill paley opened the company and revved to us as the jewels in my crown. he loved the idea of news, and he knew that we lost money. we always were a loss leader. but he would say to us, you guys cover the news. i have jack benny to make funny for me. so that if jack benny brought to 100 bucks and he knew that news always costs 20 bucks and we're going to lose that, he could make it up very easily with all of the other money coming into cbs. but now we have faceless corporations that own the media. they really do not look upon the media as a public trust. they look upon the media as a place to make money. as a profit center. and that whole structure of money and all just changed the business. >> host: but that doesn't explain why the press protected john f. kennedy. >> guest: because in those years we did not cover the private lives of public officials. it's that simple. i remember once seeing a beautiful blonde with stunning legs being escorted into the elevator to go up to where the kennedy suite was located. if i had gone in to walter cronkite and said, what a pair of leg is saw going into the elevator of the president's suite, he probably would have kicked me out of the studio. we didn't do that. we did not probe personal life. by the time clinton -- >> host: did that carry over to foreign policy? was the press tough as kennedy was getting more involved in vietnam? was the press paying attention? >> guest: i don't think so. there were two or three or five reporters who were superb on the coverage, but they were not dominant figures in the numbers they were good journalists but not dominant. the thing is, you know because you're in it every day, we have superb journalists working today. it's their working in an environment which is so very different from where i was and people of my generation were. the technology today has transformed the industry. i mean, think about it. years ago, we used to sit down when we watched something terribly important, before we went on the air we would said down and have to write what it is we had just learned, and then there were producers and there were editors and people who checked on what it is you were saying. today, 98% of what you all hear and see on radio and television is live. why? because the technology allows you to speak from location anywhere in the world, and be seen live. and those two issues, the change in the money and the change of the technology, have totally transformed the media. >> host: let's talk about your friend nixon. [laughter] >> host: the irs comes after you, year after year. you foreign is tapped. i think there's stories they were tailing you at the paris peace talks. >> guest: they tried to. >> host: what did you do to get on his bad side? >> guest: i don't have a clue. i really don't know. i think, what i've been told, is that nix wonas the sort of guy who did not like any kind of pit -- criticism. but during the vietnam were there were so many thing that were obviously wrong, that if you didn't report them you were not doing your job. and every now and then nixon would hype the news and twist it so that it wasn't accurate, and on one occasion, said that ho chi minh, the leader of north vietnam, had totally ejected my efforts at peace. when we were told about it, it was 4:00 in the afternoon of the day he was to speak. and why did they tell us this at 4:00? they wanted to fill our minds with their point of view. but there were a couple of us who would then check what they had given us with people around the government. and when i checked i was told that simply is inaccurate. that ho chi minh actually had opened the door an inch, to possible negotiations, and so i said that. and so he blew his stack. and all i can tell you is that i've been yelled at by lyndon johnson and ignored by nixon, whatever. it doesn't really matter all that much. if in your gut you know that you're doing the right thing, you know that you're honest and you're trying to report the news, and you're doing it as well as you can, that's the best you can do. >> host: how did you learn you were on the list and how intimidating to find all the powers of the government were coming down on you? >> guest: they began to come down on me in the tail end of 1969, but i did not know about it until 1973. and one of the reasoned i didn't know about it is that the wonderful boss that i had at cbs, bill small in washington, bill knew some of this but he never told me, and he never told me because, he said, it's none of your business. he said you just cover the news. i'll look after relations with the administration. and when i found out about all of the things you mentioned, i was hurt first, i think. hurt because i had spent five years of my life covering the soviet union. i covered a communist country. i knew they were bad guys, but i never assumed my own government would do anything bad to me, and there would be no reason to do that in any case. so i was hurt at the beginning. and then i also felt very sorry for the government because they had spent so much money looking after me. so many people were tailing. so many people listening in to my telephone calls, my wife's calls at home, my children's calls. i mean, why did they have to waste so much time? but they did, and it was very bad, but at the end of the day, nixon moved on and we had new people. that's why, by the way, it's sort of sad now to watch what is happening with all of this listening going on right now and the deep probes into your personal life. the president says that is not the case and i hope he is right. but governments have a way of tripping over themselves. and every now and then, with the best of intentions, doing bad things. and when the par of -- power of the government the power of the president is so great that a president can go into war without a check, that the entire government at his order can begin to fiddle around with your phones and all of that? that's just not good. it doesn't sound like america. and i would hope that it would quickly turn around. >> host: there's a great sweep to the road to war through five administrations and also a lot of interesting stories you wonder, you fear, could get lost to history. one is president kennedy's complicity in the coup against the president of south vietnam, just a month before his own assassination. what was he thinking? >> what he was thinking, things were going south in south vietnam. and the government led by a man named diem, he was not the greatest guy in the world, not running the most effective government. he was absolutely corrupt. and hooked in with all kinds of bad guys. an asian mafia operation, and kennedy wanted to change that. and so he put the word out that if the south vietnamese generals, a number of them, got together and sort of eased him out of the way, and moved better generals in, who would do our bidding but in effect a more effective job fighting the communists, that would be a good thing. so kennedy did not go into it with the intent of killing diem. but kent was amazingly naive in believing that once you open up the floodgate of a military coup, you can't at the last minute cut it off if you don't like the way it's going. that was terribly naive judgment on what it is he had unleashed. but he did it. and when he found out on that day that diem had been killed and his brother had been killed and stabbed 20 times, he left the meeting when this was pointed out -- he left the meeting almost in tears and in a state of shock. and that -- again, these presidents are human. they are human beings. and they have theories in their minds about the way things ought to go. but then there's reality that sets in, and it doesn't go that way all the time. and i find it in researching this book, the opportunity that i had to delve into the policies, the minds, the records of a succession of presidents is so illuminating, on so many different fronts, on korea, which is the beginning of the book. vietnam, the middle of the book. israel, the tail end of the book. presidents deal with, say, korea, by providing a mutual defense treaty, and that is a pretty good way of doing things, and we also have 28,000 troops there. as a trip wire against the possibility of the north sending troops into the south. that's not a bad way of doing things. in vietnam, another case study, in vietnam we just screwed it up totally. it was presidential action, mindlessly pursuing a policy that was clearly failing as you looked at it, but you could not accept the responsibility for the ultimate failure or loss. >> host: you write about one war korea fought to a stale mate. another war, vietnam, that we lost. how close do you think any of the presidents involved if came -- we lost all those warses without using the ultimate weapon how close were we to using nuclear weapons to try to resolve one of those wars? >> guest: well, in vietnam, richard nixon, vice president, and admiral raft, the chairman of the joint chiefs, recommended the use of three nuclear weapons again communist forces in a battle, and eisenhower, god bless him said, are you guys nuts? we just used two weapons less than ten years ago, against the japanese. you cannot do that in asia. white man -- you can't do that. and so he stopped it. johnson never, to the best of my only, never thought about the use of nuclear weapons. nixon thought about it, but killed the idea very quickly. because he knew the war, as he put it, was up winnable so why in an unwinnable situation use nuclear weapons and destroy whatever goodness the united states still maintained around the world. >> host: there is a microphone in the center of the room if folks would like to come up. if you have a question we'll take them right from there, and i ask you to keep the questions pointed and not be speeches. >> i have had conversations with some of your colleagues and had the sense that in the coverage of vietnam there were two generations of correspondents that were at war. many of them, cronkite, diggers, these were men who had been basically formed by world war ii, and in being formed by world war ii, that, my sense is, colored their ability to perceive vietnam, whereas the younger generation of reporters, yourself, morely safer, others, seemed to see it more clearly for what it was. in validity of that? >> guest: i don't think it was a matter of generations. i think it was individual reporters either having better sources or better insight or clarity in their minds, more of a determination to stay away from official briefings, and to report what it is they saw. there's -- in saigon there were the 5:00 follies and the reporters would come back -- the colonel of the army would tell them the great victories the united states had. when these guys had actually seen what happened in the field. and that became the so-called credibility gap. but essentially it goes back to the way in which a president wants a war to be pursued, wants a war to be started, and it raises again the fundamental question about the trust that we can have in a president, in an issue as important as war to do it all on his own. >> in your presentation you did a really great job of presenting on the one side a more modern free willing media that, as you said, tells a lot of lies and you get down to, where do you go for accurate information. then before that you presented unchecked presidential power almost as a trend or something that is going health were those two opposing problems in our society, and when you fill in the fact that a good part of the planet is in a constant state of conflict, war, including the united states -- probably involved in at least 120 countries in one way, shape or form, and the trend looking forward looks like war is just going to happen even more, whether you name syria, the horn of africa, or the militarization by the chinese in the pacific, however you look at it, war looks to be with us for the foreseeable future. challenge that premise or not. my question to you would be, in that context, how are you going to mediate or fix the free wheeling media so it becomes more like it was in the old days, and how will you put a brake on unchecked presidential power? >> guest: as far as the media is concerned, we have passed that bridge. we're not going home again. we are in a new world, and there is a new media. and we are all going to be informed by that media. period. and it becomes the responsibility of each individual to look at what it is they're reading or seeing, and say, am i really being given all of the information i need? and the answer is, no, 90% of the time, but that requires people to go out and read more and think about issues more, and not simply accept, forgive me in a lazy way, what it is they hear on see. it's not good enough anymore in the world in which we live. >> you opened your discussion with a statement about the constitution and what needs to be done within the constitution in order to declare war, yet we have all these other wars that are going on that have never been declared. my question really has to do with the supreme court in the polarization of congress and the polarization of media, and why hasn't anyone challenged the presidential authority within the constitution before the supreme court, to declare war or not? >> guest: one of the answers -- that's a very good question. i thank you for it. one of the ways in which you see it -- i mean in a simple way, we have three branches of government. i'm saying that in the executive branch of government now in the presidency, is an almost unnatural accumulation of power. so somebody has to check that. according to the constitution, it is the congress. that checks it. the supreme court will tell you whether the law is unconstitutional. that's slightly separate issue. but the congress, according to the constitution, has two principle responsibilities. one is to declare war, and the other is the power of the purse. i mentioned earlier that only in 1973 has the power of the purse power ever been exercised by congress since world war ii. just hasn't happened. and you could ask yourself why is that the case? and one explanation -- it's too quick and easy but it's so much to the heart -- 40 to 70% of every congressman's and senator's time today is spent raising money. when you have to spend half of your day raising money, when do you have the time to come up with thoughtful legislation? because you don't have the time, everything ends up being sort of blown to the extreme corners of the dialogue. and you have an acute polarization which does not allow for compromise, does not allow even for enter taping the idea that the opposing guy might have an interesting idea. you just reject it. and you have to rush to the phone to find out where mr. smith is and how much money he is going to give me, which gets also to the power of television to determine the very nature of our politics today, and the internet. and that is this communications revolution that has tran formed the media and transformed our politics some so many fundamental ways. >> said we lost in vietnam. i'm a pacifist. we don't engage in wars so we neither win them nor lose them. i don't identify with the state. marvin kalb says that nixon did not consider using the atomic bomb in vietnam. my question is, are you aware of the film "hearts and mines"? that film shows nixon trying to get the french to use the atomic bomb -- who acomic bombs in vietnam. to arm the two bombs on the hornet. >> guest: i don't know the specific that you're referring to. i do know that at a number of national security meetings, in 1954, admiral radford, spurted by the vice president of the united states, recommended the use of three atomic bombs in the battle of phu. the middle group thought that was a terrific idea. they raised it with the president, who unceremonyoutly killed and it killed them idiots. >> nixon was involved in wanting to use the atomic bomb in vietnam. that's my point. >> guest: i just said that. >> oh. >> host: one of the key issues you raise in the book is a long-standing relationship of the u.s. and israel. you argue that would be better served on all sides with a formal understanding of defense rather than relying on the whims or beliefs of the current president. i read that section and wonder, would the u.s. really be well-served by that, especially in such a volatile region where, in korea, yes, there was deter rent for -- has been a deterrent for decades-same thing with nato in the mideast you're dealing with. terrorist organizations, militant groups. wouldn't the u.s., if it was required by treaty, wind up playing traffic cop in the middle east? >> guest: well, possibly, yeah. and i think that any new idea relating to the middle east is going to kick up a storm. and it could very well be that the idea that i'm laying out will kick up a storm or perhaps should, but let me be clear about what i'm saying. what i am recommending is that since the united states has mutual defense treaties with countries all over the world, with korea, with australia, new zealand, japan, the philippines, nato, all over the world, that since this is not a new thing, that it also be applied to israel for the following reasons. that whether we like it or not, in the middle east today -- and i've covered this story now really on a semi embarrassed to say more than 50 years. the united states is regarded by the arab side of the equation as locked in with the israelis, whether we have a treaty or not. that is simply a conspiratorial vision that exists and there's nothing we can do about that. what i am suggesting is that following up on an idea that senator fulbright -- i don't know how many of you remember senator fulbright of arkansas. senator came up in august of 1970. not because he loved israel, by the way himself affection for israel could have been put in a thimble. but he did believe this was the best way of avoiding a possible exchange with the soviet union. that was his concern. and that if we had a mutual defense treaty with israel, the russians would do what they wanted to do on the arab side but it would be balanced and we wouldn't, by miscalculation, get into a war. the israel leaders, starting with perez in 1996, netanyahu in 1998, and barak in 2000, all of them raised with president clinton the -- this is the exclusive part of the book, chapter nine -- they all raise with clinton the idea of a mutual defense treaty, and clinton said, yes, if, if, if the israelis were close to deal with the palestinians -- in other words they didn't have the deal but were getting closer and closer -- then the idea of a mutual defense threaty between the u.s. and israel made sense. then that treaty would lock in the deal, because from the virgining of the middle east, what are we dooling with here? you have the israelis and the palestinians. the palestinians want their state. they have every right to have that state. the israelis want security. they have every right to want security and have it. the difficulty is bringing these two perfectly legitimate interests together. we're in it whether we like it or not. so what i'm suggesting is, do with israel what we have done with countries all over the world, arrange that at the end, sort of as a carrot at the end of the stick you guys reach this deal with the palestinians, bingo, we'll make it clear to the entire world that you can't destroy the jewish state. now, that's a huge responsibility. but we have undertaken that responsibility without the treaty. and i'm only saying that with the treaty you have rules of the road as to how both sides should separate. it would be so much easier, for example, right now, with syria and right now with iran. there are a lot of people in washington, and jerusalem and all over the world that believe the iranians are really out to get a nuclear bomb. if we have evidence that they're going to build a bomb, the president is already on record assaying, we will not allow that to happen. in other words, he is saying when we have the evidence they're going to build a bomb -- >> host: has also drawn a red line -- >> guest: the redline in syria. he has red lines all over the place. >> host: do you think he has committed us eventually to some kind of military action in either states? >> guest: well, yes, he has committed us, except who will trust him to do that? in other words, if you ask people -- it's interesting. people in the middle east, many of them simply do not believe that this president is going to go to war, another war, after afghanistan, after iraq, will go to another war with iran, and so the iranians believe the same thing. as far as the israelis are concerned, if you say, will the israelis do x, y, and z? will they attack iran on their own? we may not want that. but if they do, everyone is going to believe that we're in bed with them anyway. so, the better formula, it seems to me, is if there is this kind of treaty which is sort of major between nations. you have a deal. you have a contract. it doesn't mean you live up to every word but it does move you in a certain direction toward a mutual accommodation, and israeli prime minister once told me that we live with the presumption of 100% agreement. i love the word, we live with the presumption. doesn't mean it's a fact. you presume certain things. and i think that we do, but i would like it -- i would like it -- who is asking me -- but i think it's a good idea for people to consider the -- a mutual defense treaty between the u.s. and israel as a concluding element in a deal between israel and the palestinians. >> host: last question for you. when you look at iraq today, do you see similarities to vietnam and the eventual fall after we have departed? >> guest: iraq or afghanistan. >> host: you pick. >> guest: we know when at the left iraq in the end of 2011, the country began to fall apart and continues to fall apart and it's not an accident in any way that every single day we'll see a headline, another 40 people killed in a bombing hough deep that decay will go, who knows? but if we were there, it would be unlikely that it would have happened. on afghanistan, we are at a point now where the president is holding off on a final decision about how many troops to leave in afghanistan. what i hear is that it may go as high as 18,000. if we leave 18,000 there, they're going to be the cream of the crop, very very best. for two reasons. one to prevent afghanistan from going down at the train -- down the drain completely. more important, there are about 130 acomic bombs in pakistan, right next door, in the northern part of pakistan, and if the bad guys get their hands on those weapons, that is when the u.s. will go in immediately, into northern pakistan. that's already understood. so with this particular point we are on the edges, one gentleman said, of so many continuous wars that the question must again be asked of -- i tried very hard in this book to do -- why is that the case? who has the authority? and should it all be vested in one man? and my answer is, no. >> host: the book is "the road to war." and marvin will be here signing copies later. thank you very much. [applause] >> excellent, thank you. the authors' book is for sale in the lobby and he will be signing net the arts room to the left. we ask you clear the even if you have tickets for the next session. it's very important. so the and have a good afternoon. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> we'll be back in a couple of minutes for the final panel of the printers row litfest. >> representative greg walled, what's on your summer reading list? i just finished the victory lab. i threw a little political stuff on the side. that talks' persuasion and how the world of campaigns has changed. i'm hoping this summer to get to the biography on jefferson, which i have on my pile. and then i have a new one on roosevelt, teddy roosevelt. i'm a big fan theodore roosevelt and his energy and stale, style, and one that deal with his anytime south america so should be interesting. >> the book is called, if you knew me, you would care, and as you said, when it comes to women in war, everyone thinks of them as victims, but i really did not actually -- none of us wanted to convey the victim's story because though there is a victim in the story, their story is so far more than just a victim story. they are not defined by the actual story. what they're defined is by what they make out of the story. claudeine, for example, is a woman who wanted to be a doctor when she was a kid. she wanted to have -- had an aspiration and everything is good and her father died when she was 13 and he had to leave school so she can work and help her mother support her. with claudine, i can tellout what she went through, but when she was 16 she fell in love with a young man. sew saw -- she saw him on her way to church and they would glance at each other and had crush on each other, and until -- she talks about how she fell in love, and they got married when they were 18, for those who are young in here. they got married when -- later on and they had a happy marriage, and they had kids and they had a house and it was a happy marriage. until the war one day broke out. and when the war broke out it took everybody away from him and he started drinking and became alcoholic and then he start beating her up. and one day he beat her up so badly that the hospital refuse to treat her unless she tells who did this to her, and that's how her new journey started. they told the hospital, they took him to prison, and when he left prison he divorce his life, but, yes, she was raped two year ago by a soldier she did not know who he is, but not only claudine, claudine made her hair in this style, see how cool it is. claudine is a woman who is in love. claudine is a woman who was beaten, who survived, who has a farm right now. it's the story -- the story is never a simple story of those others in other parts of the world, and in this case in congo. i met -- i started the journey of women for women thinking i am embarking on a journey to save the world. i learned that the world is saving me and the very woman i end up thinking i'm helping-end up helping me. i asked her what does peace mean for her, ask every woman, what does see men for piece, bus part of the goal is to understand war and peace from a women's perspective. when i asked what does she mean by peace, she says peace is inside my heart. no one can take it away from me. no one can give it to me. now, i go to yoga every single day. at least i try, and i spend so much money on yoga studios and meditation and all kinds of things just so i can understand the peace claudine is talking about. peace is inside my heart. no one can take it away from me. no one can give it to me. if i tell you she was locked in a room for three months and raped day in and day out by one military commander, and the day she was supposed to be killed he said i cannot see you to be killed so he gives her his military uniform and pretends it's a machine gun, he steals one0s motorcycle 0 he can give hear ride to her home village, and she says the child i had out of rape is my profit. she teaches me how to love, and that is if you knew me, you would care, you would care that you would understand the intimate stories not only of the horrible stories. this woman said, do not look at me as a poor woman. i was a rich woman once. she had her cows and chicken and goat and the war came and they just stole it a. from her. and we have to connect what i learned in the journey, it's not only what the victim's story. this woman was not smiling because she has a gap in her teeth, and like many of us appreciate beauty and want to be beautiful and was embarrassed just to smile to show the gap in 2007 her -- the in between her teeth and if we connect on the beautiful story and connect on the love store and the story this woman's husband cheated on her and got her h.i.v. and they're not all bad stories. it is stories i learned from this woman who is beautician. i learned how to pay attention to my upperly and my eyebrows and she helped me clean it up afterwards because in afghanistan there is a beauty that every woman appreciate and by far we see them only as the burka, this woman has a beauty parlor, she actually makes sure that -- she does all the weddings. she was talking about makeup and all of that. but the woman was married to a man who is 40 years older than her, and her parents did not want thor marry this man but they were so worried about her, they gave up. the were so worried he would kidnap her anyway. she is struggling day in and day out so she can send her four daughters to school. she has been victimized, but she is not defined by heir victim story. and if we cannot see her beyond the victim story, then it is shame on us. the dalai lama said if you cannot respect those you serve, then better not serve them. because they would feel if you do not respect them. >> one of the interesting aspects of this building's history is the fact it exists at all. and really, much of the reason this building is still here is due to our governor at the time, governor vance. when the civil war started to come to a close and union troops were camped outside raleigh, he was very concerned about the fate of the people of raleigh and of its buildings. he knew what had happened in many of the other southern cities when troops came through, and so he crafted a peaceful surrender of the city of raleigh. he agreed to leave the city of raleigh and have the confederate troops leave the city of raleigh peacefully, and if the union troops would also take charge of the city of raleigh peacefully, and specifically if they would spare the state capitol with its museum and library. we do have three representations of george washington here at the state capitol. one outside and two inside. and the statue downstairs is actually a copy of the original statue within the state house that burned and that was destroyed. that statue was made by an italian sculptor. he represented george washington in a way that he felt matched his reputation, as military leader, as a political leader. and so he made him in a very classical way. looked like a roman general. and that was not entirely a popular decision with the people of north carolina. and probably the thing that shocked people the most is his legs and feet are completely bare. many people thought that was disrespectful to show a president with his legs and his toes showing. >> more from the north carolina state capitol next weekend as booktv and american history tv book at history and literary life in raleigh, north carolina. on c-span2 and 3. what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> three books. the first is, community project. and about a -- [inaudible] another book on my list is gulf, adventures of -- a book about how we eat. [inaudible] and the last book on my list is called -- on life's meaning in math, and -- [inaudible] >> let us know what you're reading this summer. tweet us at booktv, pose it on our facebook page or send us an e-mail. >> watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> and now here's edward ball and john glassie, live from chicago. >> printers row lit fest. we would like to give a special thank you to all of our sponsors who have helped make lit fest such a huge success. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. if there's time at the end for q&a, please use the microphone at the center of the room so that the home audience will be able to hear the question. going along with that, after this if you would like to see your question on air or just catch anything you may have missed, this will be rebroadcasting at 11 p.m. central time on saturday and midnight central time on sunday. please keep the spirit of lit fest going all year with a subscription to printers row, the tribune premium book section fiction series and membership program. visit harrison and dearborn. there you will find special perks for subscriptions and rates including lit fest totes and posters. finally, the authors' books will be sold on the second floor of this center where we are, so you saw them in the lobby. book signing will take place immediately following this session in the arts room to your left. at this time i would ask that you turn off your cell phones and all electronic devices. and without any further ado, i would like to welcome our moderator, eric blanks. [applause] >> thank you. and thank you for coming today. this'll be a very interesting panel between, with two authors who have written books that may on the surface look quite unalike but, i think, share very interesting affinities. i think that the woman who just gave us the fine introduction may have mentioned that you should turn off your cell phones. if you still have them on, if you would, please, do that. what we'll try and do today is we'll have a little bit of a conversation about the two titles, and then at the, for the last 15 minutes or so if you have questions, we'll take them, and you can address our two panelists during that part of the conversation. um, i'd like to well cardiology to the -- welcome to the stage right now our two authors, edward ball and john glassie. [applause] edward ball's new book entitled "the inventor and the tycoon: a gilded age murder and the birth of moving pictures," and edward ball is the author of four works of nonfiction including "slaves in the family" which won the national book award. he lives in connecticut and teaches at yaley. and to my right is john dallas si who has written the new book "a man of misconceptions: the life of an eccentric in an age of change," which he does not include the name of the subject that the biography concerns, so i will give it right now -- i'm going to say kercher, although we've already had a discussion about the way to pronounce this man's correctly. john is a former contributor editor to the new york times magazine. helys in brooklyn and is -- he lives in brooklyn and has contribute today a number of terrific publications as well, so i want to welcome both of them. [applause] now, as i said, the two subjects of these and in the case of edward ball's book really his two summits as well -- subjects as well -- so we'll say three subjects, are very much money of a particular time. one flourish inside the jesuit culture of knowledge in the 17th century. the author of seven million words all in latin and who already by the end of his life was considered something of a, by many pe