I think those are the two where the question is most relevant. Yeah. Well, i would just say it had an immediate effect on me, because i was supposed to be in germany right now at the bayer stockholders meeting. I had bought one share. I should mention, i was train by some really amazing historians, a bunch of people, but we didnt learn journalism, you know . We didnt know how to go on the ground. Ive had to learn on the fly. Buying a share, that sounds great. Ill tell you, the zoom version of the shareholders version was six hours straight, no breaks. No breaks literally just watching zoom from 4 00 in the morning germany until i dont know what time it was when i gave up. But and it was really interesting because heres the interesting confluence with this company, right . Its both a company thats on the cutting edge of health care and dealing, you know, so theyre talking a great deal about the pandemic at the exact moment in that stockholders e meeting theyre getting peppered by whats happened with this roundup lawsuit. And so its this really interesting merger with bayer and also monsanto, big pharma and big farm, right . Big ag. Some would argue this roundup story about cancer and all this being caused, discussions ongoing, of course, right now. Interestingly, bayer also sells medication that helps you deal with cancer. So theres this kind of interesting story here with and you could see anytime that pandemic moment in that shareholders moment where they were playing this dont look here at this roundup, look at all our great stuff thats helping to deal with the pandemic right now. And it was, i think, kind of an utter magic trick. But i is have to say a after the six hours on zoom, i crashed pretty hard. [laughter] i would say that its not fun to go to a stockholders meeting on bayer. How serious is the liability that bayer bought from monsanto . Huge. They have shareholders that are suing the company, you know, even last year there was a moment where the leadership, you know, they had a vote of no confidence because were talking about billions of dollars. And theyre currently into discussions about settling all these lawsuits, these roundup lawsuits. Some figures are 10 billion, 11 billion. If you go back to 2008 if you look at their ticker, you can go do it and look at august 2018 when the first roundup case was decided, 285 million, one person, you know . It just dropped off a. And the other cases came, the big verdict came in january. I was at that trial, and you could see it again drop. Because its the solution to roundup. And yet people are seeing that theyre both problematic. So its the huge, and i think theyre going to be moving to try and settle as fast as they can because its existential. Yeah. Alex, how has covid19 passed through the lives of the people you chronicled and the communities they belong to in chicago . You know, or chicago was the first city where we began to notice the disparity of the pandemic in minority communities, first the black community and now the hispanic, latino community. And, you know, a lot of it had to do with underlying conditions of people in those communities. Partly the lack of access to health care over the years, but also, its also consequence of stress and trauma of the health of individuals. So weve seep that not only seen that not only in chicago, but elsewhere around the country. The other thing i think theres some, at least for me, smoke and mirrors is the stress maybe it is way of building, maybe a way of building in which we build community. Because these are communities, again, that are family isolated from the rest of the city both geographically and spiritually. So maybe this is a way that well in some manner connect in ways that we havent managed to before. Yeahing yeah. This whole subject after the pandemic is going to be a rich one. I is have a question for carrie. Ill just read it. Its from allison, and the words all run together, so i wont try to separate whatses the is second name and the third name. We encouraged africanamericans to vote in their best interests but it was critical to both democrats and republicanses, so who did trotter encourage black americans to vote for in those years . What was his electoral strategy, if he had one . His electoral strategy was pretty sophisticated. He argued that although africanamericans on a National Level could not sway an election until we get to 1912 and the election of Woodrow Wilson, but africanamericans locally on the state level particularly outside of the south in which more than 90 of africanamericans were disenfranchised, but outside of the south africanamericans in the north and the west, even though they were a small portion of the population, they could act as swing voters and actually use that term to elect people to office to meet their immediate needs. So somebody who advised africanamericans who could vote to vote nationally for republicans, but to vote on every single level locally, governor, mayor, to vote for whichever candidate was a appealing to the black community. And this was actually very successful in boston in various amounts of elections in the book because he was able to get africanamericans to swing local offices to the democrats, which massachusetts at the time was a pretty large stronghold for the republicans. So to answer your question, i would say that his mantra was that electoral politics had to happen because the country had betrayed the policy move by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, and those were happening in realtime as he was, you know, alive. But that electoral, both had to be done based on whichever person, whatever party, whatever policy was going to immediately meet the needs of africanamerican people. So in 1912, for instance, he urged africanamericans to vote for Woodrow Wilson. Theres pretty strong evidence that that led to wilson winning in a strong, republican stronghold like massachusetts and ohio. And when that happened, of course, Woodrow Wilson betrayed promises he had originally made for civil rights. But trotter thes argument was black people had no choice in that election because the Republican Party had betodayed africanamerican betrayed africanamericans in an antilynching law. It was radical in the sense that he was saying that voting should be done based on the needs, the demands of africanamerican communities but that you shouldnt, africanamericans should not put, as he said, your eggs in one basket on a party that has betray us or yet to show us the goods, and thats kind of a quote he had in 1912. I think that was very prescient for today. Definitely somebody who was at heart, really believed that you should not vote for party, and you had to force elected officials to meet the direct needs of the people. Yeah. Obviously, very resonant today. Its exciting to see the major prize thats catching up with the scholarship of your generation of historians. You see it across the boards, big biographies of familiar figures like Frederick Douglass and elaine locke which won big last year or the year before. Yes. Theres obviously the africanAmerican History is as rich and buried at any history. What are the eras of africanAmerican History do you think that your generation of scholars see as opportunity the way you did with trotter that really havent been researched and written with the originality and the kind of revisionism thats required to really understand our own heritage in. I think that im definitely humbled and very proud to be amongst a generation of younger historians who are reevaluating the black Power Movement of the 60s and 70s and sort of resurrecting motions of gender and race and sexuality that have been overlooked. I feel like ashton farmer and others who have [inaudible] i think that the era that i come between the civil war and sort of the progressive moment in the 1920s and 1930s is a moment, and you mentioned the locke book kind of looking at whats going on in that area, in that era, but not looking at it and consigning it merely to reconstruction and lynching in there africanamerican have no political thought, will, control or given the idea of race relation. So really in terms of being a historian, many of the moment in American History that we take for granted as historians whether that be the 1970s or 80s, whether that be the revolution their era, that theres a whole crop of people who are reevaluating what that looks like. It definitely complicates our notion of what africanAmerican History is and what impact africanamerican people is have had on the political consciousness of the country. Even when we dont think africanamerican people were in members large enough to make, have an effect. Uhhuh, thats great. I, i think weve got one last round briefly for each of our winners, and ill take inspiration from Vanessa Rodriguez who asks a happy question which is could each of you and its always awful to be asked this sort of question first, so im going to go with alex because he has probably the most experience being asked questions like this. [laughter] can you just, like, resurrect some small moment of joy that you had while either writing or researching this book, that moment of discovery or satisfaction that makes this life im actually going to i could put up a recent moment postbook about one of characters in the book, i wont give away his story, but he was 17 years old, and he was walking a kind of tight rope. He was a member of a gang and yet he was a straight a student. He was really trying to sort of figure out his place in the world and trying to figure out himself. And is so without with giving away too much, marcelo aggravated assaulted from depaul university, and i used a pseudonym for his last name in the book. We, he and i had decided that a crime he had committed, it would allow him to move on in life. A couple of months ago before the pandemic, we had a small Panel Discussion with myself and marcelo and the mayor, mayor lightfoot. And marcelo called me two days before the panel, and he said, alex, i just want to make sure you introduce me by my real name. And he was kind of taking ownership of the story. It was kind of remarkable to hear. And then he was just hes now working in a bank, and hes just doing i just am so proud of what hes become. I mean, hes kind of finally made sense of who he is. No, thats lovely. Thank you. Bart, nobody gets up at four in the morning to zoom [laughter] but awe part from loving monsanto enough to get up at four in the morning to do this, what other moments of suffering along the research or composition trail i think its a lot like alex are. Were is so lucky to meet people in these journals that change our lives. Theres someone on this call who has traveled with me and shot photos with me doing weird things, trying to get into various headquarters and all that. Weve had, i think that bond with, that friendship that you build through that. Probably the biggest moment is related to this, it was a student in my class i was just teaching on what i was doing, and i told him i was going to the trial in missouri on saturday. I was going the travel. And the student came up to me after the class and said im coming with you. And i said, well, you have two days to put up a plane ticket. [laughter] you know, i dont care, i want to be at this trial. And it actually turned out to be amazing. We just had our notes. We couldnt bring in any electron ticks, and the student was able to write down things i wasnt able to get, and it was just an amazing experience. We walked out of that trial which was in Rush Limbaugh courthouse, by the way. Okay, this is going to be good. But anyway, it was just that moment. And seeing the student, you know, really embrace the importance of this moment, you know, that is priceless. So id say the time we get to spend with the people that travel with us on these journeys. Im so lucky to have them on my life. Im going to have trouble getting over those three words, Rush Limbaugh courthouse [laughter] what county of this great country of ours . Southeastern District Court missouri, so south of st. Louis. Yeah, and his cousin, distant cousin, steven limbaugh, was the judge. And all i can say is steven limbaughs a very nice guy. So very different character, for sure. Okay. All right. Sean . Youve had plenty of time now to choose one. Yeah. And i dont even know if ive arrived at a moment of pure joy, but i spent a lot of time with hostages. There was a lot, there was close to 150, obviously, around. But ive also, i mean, the real challenge was the hostage takers, and many of them are now field. And, you know, one of the hostage takers that i did end up spending, flew out to colorado to spend some time with him. And he was one of the more violent ones of the 12 men who had entered. So i went in with a really i dont know, id never met a hostage taker 40 years after the fact. I spent a day with him, and now he does a amazing work. Hes working on kind of getting young men who are getting out of prison and reintroducing into society, hooking people up. Got state funding to expand his program, building halfway houses. And i spent all this time with this character who is an important character in my book. And it was, and we were obviously just mostly i was interviewing him about had happened, but it was a reminder of why i had been so drawn to this story in the first place. Its very complex. Everything that was happening to the cardiacs, theres no easy way to paint these characters. And so, and it was just, it was really, it was a special moment to see what somebodys done after spending a lifetime almost in prison and how hes come back. And so i take that to be my one very special moment i can think of. Yeah. Inspiring. Carrie . There are actually many, many moments of joy despite what seems kind of a grim subject matter. I think the biggest one that sticks out is is when i started working on the book in earnest, and it was very difficult to find records from the 1920s that were primary sources that i felt as a historian i could include in a book without them being just kind of hearsay. But i went through all of the records that i could find k and it was very daunting to find records of trotter. And then in some archive in massachusetts, the massachusetts state archives, i found his fbi records, the bureau of investigation monitoring trotter beginning in 1919. The joy i had was that it was documented, his radicalism and the way that his radicalism was feared by the power structure in a way that i was told as a historian i wouldnt be able to find. So that was a moment where i realized the book would come together, that this was more of a significant story than just me liking trotter [laughter] that it was sort of, led right into this long history of africanamerican activists who were so radical they were monitored by the government. Thank you for that question, because i think in these times we should all talk about something joyful at least once a day, maybe twice. Weve checked that off this evening thanks to our speaks. Congratulations to all four of you, just so fully deserved and what a pleasure to spend some time with you and to understand where these terrific works came from, are coming from in a couple of cases. Please, all of you who have joined us, think about clicking on those links in the chat to actually own these books. Normally wed have a chance to connect you with that opportunity at a table or through a bookstore, but its these are wonderful ways to pass what remaines of this miserable remains of this miserable pandemic. So please add them so to your stack. And, again, congratulations to everyone. Thank you, abby and lisa and team, for putting this together in difficult circumstances. And, everyone, be well, take care, and we will see you the oldfashioned way next year, i trust. Good night, everybody. Here are are some of for current best selling nonfiction books according to the washington post. Topping the list is the memoir, untamed. After that its the splendid and the vial, eric larsons study of Prime MinisterWinston Churchills leadership during the london blitz. Followed by charlie mcquestions city s illustrated fables. And wrapping up our look at some of the best selling nonfiction books is robert kolkers Hidden Valley road, a profile of the Galvin Family which consisted of 12 children, half of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. You can watch some of these no, sir online at book of these no, sir online at booktv. Org. Tonight at 8 30 p. M. Eastern, best selling thriller writer David Baldacci talks about his writing career on in depth. Watch booktv on cspan2. Hello, and a very warm welcome the National Book festival presents lucky you by the library of congress. My name is marie acran a that, im an