And an overwhelming tragedy. Host when we rise my life in the movement. Cleve jones is the author. Live coverage of the 22nd annual l. A. Times festival of bucks held on the campus of universities Southern California you can watch the full schedule today at booktv. Org we will be doing a call in later on the book the mother of all questions but right now lets go inside to another panel on writing history. Live coverage on booktv. [inaudible conversations] i am not putting down fiction i have aspiration for anybody who can write a great fiction that they were talking about what kind of book tells the story about what you already know . Widely read the book widely read books about what you know about because you need to know more. So of the great writers of fiction that meursault popular youre not reading the information and to see what happens in these books will we are discussing today with the authors is how they get to that conclusion and make those choices through a massive sweep of history this is the person and the moment that tells the entire story. So we have our authors first and my colleague at the Los Angeles Times. [applause] written about the dawn of the computer age now the work that you know, very well the author of king leopold. [applause] and joe jackson the author of black elk about the race across sea atlantic by a airplane thanks for being here. [applause] when we talk about a big history it is the need that unless youre writing a College Textbook how do you find one character or one moment to say this is 600 pages with that one story or moment . Who wants to talk about that first . Bed genesis of all of my books and networking on the seventh starts when i become interested in a topic orate a person to discover there isnt enough written about him or occurred to satisfy my curiosity proposal i approach olivines has educational efforts fell dedicate myself to learn everything that i can and hopefully the adn to find a moment at has broader issues like big science uh genesis of that was an interest in cosmology in physics if you read that field the enough you will come across the name laurence who invented in the 30s because he invented this machine that required millions of dollars to operate, he began the paradigm of big science which is capital intensive multi disciplinary science paradigm that we live in today in this surrounded by here on the campus at usc. And that has implications as he was a major figure in the Manhattan Project and and the making of a Hydrogen Bomb in the 50s. And joe jackson every baby boomer probably read black elk speaks and was moved then moved on but this seems not to offend a fully painted picture of a man whose history stands well into the 20th century so haughty you choose to undertaken as a subject . That is a good question. I am not sure i know the answer to that question but i guess every one of my books has Unfinished Business so last book that i wrote him was about the race that made lindberg famous but writing about the losers it was the way america creates and then destroys its heroes and i was interested in that i thought about what real st. Or holy man . So when i first thought about thomas with there was a lot written about him recently so i remembered black elk. Day remember from reading we my guess. I imagine i came up at the same time that you did. With native American Affairs and wounded knee is more of the piece of history it is a strange hybrid that is a collaboration between the zero lakota sioux holy man who tried to preserve a vision but the nebraska of poet laureate so it is more of a piece of literature and is starting to look at black elk then i found out with research that the Catholic Church the very church that tried to stamp out his religion is passing around a petition trying to turn and into a saint for cry was fascinated by that i am always interested in character. I was an english major at the same time i was a psychology major so i have always been entrusted and so for me what made him tick were devoted his life to the vision that he add at nine years old is what i tried to solve and really the story turns into a history with the plains indians and extends into 1950 with the reservation the book goes from 1863. We think we know about the brigade in the civil war from the food the bill tolls quebec and the persecutions sea your brave man and as we find that yet more about it . I always like to think talking about history in terms of characters if i am fascinated about a particular era of the spanish civil war and if they will understand where that comes from so here was a precursor to world war ii nowhere else in the world three years before began were americans with the french people being bombed proposal was always fascinated by that period and they knew half a dozen volunteers that join the civil for present day fascist takeover but that was my privilege to know number of them. And b have long been fascinated. Those that with a particular place looking for people you could write a book about the spanish civil war events focus mainly on Ernest Hemingway with a larger than life figure and done memoirs. It is impossible to read about americans in spain at the time but looking for other characters trying to find the people you dont know about. Bin right to favorite finds in to drop out of college on their honeymoon. Indicia enter new has been ever traveling in france in birth those worker malicious with the widespread social revolution and she said to her we have to go there. To hitchhike through france in spent as next 10 minutes working in barcelona. So i unable to see that era through the eyes of this remarkably perceptive american. If we need to discover somebody like that to give you a perspective on the time and place via their personal was happy to discover was the oil man was a villain for one of the two most covered news events there were more than 1,000 frontpage stories. Been there were more than a thousand correspondents at one time or another the big story for them was the first time the major European Capital was under bombardment that adolf hitler had loaned with hundreds of thousands of words of those experiences not one of them looked at the aircraft where is the fuel coming from . And with large amounts of armaments with importers and not exporters. From the texas oilman with the enthusiastic admirer. Fast connect and also had champagne parties. And have a the party at the of waldorf astoria totally unknown. Bid this such of pleasure when you can find somebody like that. There is the sign of a well told story be is of the telling detail and then with the list of people then he decided to be executed. And sent out to those penal institutions then pausing to strike fear into all those before them won the womens prison one of the nuns perform this duty. Does that not so low point is going on there . About the of break through talk about the researchers to be alone in the lab to test whether night the device works to be punctuated emanated from the french melodrama from the nearby balcony. Before dawn he withdrew and scraped into a bottle been the and on his way home to be picked up by the Berkeley Police cruiser with a multiple murder committed that night. Repasses the test and then slept for 12 hours. And then in this moment with after the massacre they go looking for survivors. Miraculously if they had held on. In getting those details how do you find them . With the tomb in egypt to see wonderful things and how do you contain your glee rex. [laughter] you know, the feeling. My approach basically comes trump might journalistic training with the individuals when you find it you know, you could eliminate one part of your story or another with every ounce the demotion and incident and the episode is actually part of the memoir in which he wrote about the discover of carver carbon 14 the first isotope of the organic element and looking for of the ruby for years. And when he found it he remembered the surroundings and what happened later that night. When you read Something Like that you know its going to be a part of the books some way. So George Washington did not write that. [laughter] what was your voyage of discovery . But they must have a lot of those. Is a messy process. You make it sound better libyan the story well. Returning in a manuscript 100 pages but that publisher would have a heart attack and they did so i had to whittle that back. So we have to research so then we also went to families involved and with the Pine Ridge Reservation riding around especially when you do find these moments that seem to define your character and those i knew at one point that people continued to die on pine ridge that he became a catholic preacher to adopt the religion the one of the most effective native americans because it is believed he converted people into catholicism this flutters word like st. Paul olmos like of letters to the corinthian. That none of your friends like you and these are the problems youve got. Black elk did the same thing so i knew i had to spend a lot of time on that as well. That took over lot of editing and rethinking how he reconciled the two. I get all this stuff and a half to write and reread it. When shooting the civil war there is a beautiful theme apropos of mark twain. With this episode that episode earlier or later and then to say we have to lose this. Obviously joe had to news several hundred pages. Were there this you had to kill . Gimmicky yes. Paintball a painful example the book prior to spain that is a mighty big subject that killed 9 million soldiers and i had us strategy and a number of 140,000 words but the first draft and was to under 25,000 words i gave it to half a dozen friends to read so you have to cut cut cut so if you of suffered through this one piece of advice instead of thinking of reducing a book for shorthand then the whole arm think of it is i m overweight in the need to lose some weight. You were talking to a california audience. So i could get to the point where it feels really good. [inaudible] can you redid as a somebody else . I tried to bed another trick that i use is on my wordprocessing program into a series of actions it takes a highlighted block of text but when i push this special key that puts it in another file probably no. [laughter] isnt gone forever or deleted. It is a lot less painful. And with that experience to come across that episode that is so great you know you want to use it. You cannot validated. And Frances Perkins musil labor secretary was giving testimony with senator tom gore and who was a is questioning her said is this socialism and then he leaned into the microphone with that little bitty kind of socialism. With the stories that anyone who knows or follows the history that this is great to have all of the transcripts of all of the hearings i could not find this exchange. With that Social Security looking to see where the footnotes are. I think when you write one of these big picture books that the temptations you fall into specially with this great stuff and research you fall into the temptation you want to write the definitive big book about this. I fell into that trap. Black out speak was a story about black out, his family and tribe. I wanted to write, when i first wrote the book, i wrote it about black elk and the tribe and it was so big that i had to windenl it down and thought about what this book is about and it was about him and who hade him who he was. He had two cousins, this great character who i loved, and who comes in and out of the narrative. But i had him as, you know, like a supporting actor, i had to take out some the good stories about Standing Bear. Krauz crazy horse was important in the story because he is blackouts older second cousin. I kept in a lot of stuff about crazy horse because black elk modeled himself as a medicine man after crazy horse and crazy horse was born for war but war was in many ways, black elk modeled himself after his second cousin. I had this character over here who blackout didnt model himself after. He wasnt part of his psychology but crazy horse was. I kept him out and i had to get rid of at lot of Standing Bear. You boil it down to the basic story. Did you find it is almost as if there is an ouija board where some characters assert themselves more. Did that happen in the writing . Like with Standing Bear pushing himself to the front of the line and you didnt intend for him to. Oh, yeah, all the time. I wrote a story about a man who stole 7500 trees from the amazon and how that affected the world. I thought it would be about him but it turned out to be about his wife who followed him to the worst places on earth. She pushed herself forward. It greatest thing he had was the love of his wife but his ambition drove her away. That became a story about that. These historical characters, the more research you do, these historical characters do push themselves forward. You have a conception of what your book is in the beginning but then you have to step back and decide what your book is really about. To that point, for each of you, did your poe about the book and the ideas about the book change . Did you approach it with one thing and as you researched it you found it became Something Else . Mike you were talking about big science with the Manhattan Project and nasa. How did the book lead you as much as you lead the book . That is a good question. I found each of my books, the structure, and chronology i go into it knowing what it will be. Big science is built around a biography of earnest lawrence and his professional life suggested the beginning and end of the period i was going to write about. He died in 1958 and born in 1901. It was really the story about physics in the first part of the century and everything that happened there. Sometimes it is a little bit more difficult. My new deal book, i had friends ask what was the new deal period. The beginning is straightforward. It starts with the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt and then in my book i went back to his campaign with herbert hoovers perspective but where does it end . What i ended up doing was basically ending the book in 1939 not only because that was a period fdr was turning from domestic policy to International Policy was war was looming but because i had an incident i thought would put a period on the end of the store and that mauz Mary Andersons concert at the Lincoln Memorial and barred her from fdrs concert hall in washington and her invitation by herald dickeys who was a key figu figure in the new deal to give that concert on the mall. There has been a book just about that that is very good. But it allowed me to put a book end on the beginning and end of the period i wanted to write about. I was going to ask you, adam hochschild. To put the civil war in context we have to get rid of the 80 years of intervening history through which we have viewed it. For example, if you in the United States new hitler was a danger before the government you were a premature anti fascist and people who fought in the war with great passion came back to a country that not only didnt want to hear about it or were suspicious. How from your point of view for this rag tag group that was disorganized and what you brought into it changed as you came out of the writing process . I cant say my view changed but knowing half a dozen vets and there pay be Something Interesting about writing in the war but one of the things i learned and that surprised me was the extent to which even today people are saying. It has been fascinating going around talking about the book because i ask does anybody who have a relative to joined the fight and 110 people put up their hands usually and i met one man for example after giving a talk in berkeley who told me he had his father had lived a long life and died in his old age but it was only after his fathers death that he found out tat his father had been a volunteer in spain which says something about the extent to which people felt they had to keep that part of their lives quiet. One of the reasons, in fact, the reason, was volunteering in the spanish civil war was tied up with the fact about two thirds of those who volunteered were members of the communist party or affiliated organizations and when they came back to the United States they were mercilessly harassed by edgar hoover and hoovers imitators at the state and local level and many essentially went underground and kept secrets from friends and family that they had ever been there. Perhaps the most extraordinary story i heard in connection with this was when i was writing the book a friend of mine asked me what are you writing about and when we asked me the game it sounded familiar and i said put me in touch with her and i did. It turned out this womans father had been a doctor and when i realized that, i go that is where i heard the name. This guy once operated on me when i was 12 years old after a childhood accident. Here is this mans story and i will tell it quickly. A polish jew, left poland in the 1930s, very anti semitic regime there before hitler. Came to france, went to medical school and finished medical school just as the spanish civil war began, volunteered to fight in spain as a doctor. Went through the whole war and fell in love with a spanish nurse who worked in his operating room. At the end of the war, they were some of the half million refuges that walked into france. After walking a couple days, the nurses lover was pregnant said i cant go on any further. I cant make this journey pregnant. I have to go back to my family in madrid so they separated very painf painfully. This man got to france and managed to get out of france justs in time as the germans came, made his way to the United States, got recertified as a doctor here, married an american woman, had three children and became the doctor in the place where he fixed me up after the childhood accident and never told his family he had been in the spanish civil war until general franco died in 1975. Then he told them and his american wife said we have to go to spain and find your child. And they did. The nurse, the mother of this child had died at that point. They did and now that childs childrens is friends with this mans American Children and they go back and forth and visit each other. Somehow writing a book takes you into all these stories where you feel there a dozen other books that can be written here. I want to ask you each question starting with joe jackson. We are facing an age where nothing will exist on papers. Emails will disappear, there wont be journals or letters and trunks in the attic and email if you are lucky and more likely nothing. What kind of world is this going to be for historians and biographers . It is going to be hard writing biographies. I can tell you that. Luckily a lot of stuff doesnt leave the internet so you will have to learn how to plum that. Also, more and more people write their own memoirs these days so you will be able to access that hopefully. But letters and in the kinds of documents we use, like, the letter section, the manuscript section at the library of congress filled with letters by sherman and grant and everybody in the world and that is going to be hard to find. The good thing about letters is that you read a letter, and then you do more research and you find more nuances as far as what the writer was really talking about. And so that is going to hurt, i think. Michael hill, that passage i read from the book is from a journal which might not be there otherwise. That is true. I agree with joe and what he said. But i also want to point out we have already suffered a lot, i think, because Corporate Archives have been systematically dismantled just literally a week or two ago i was trying to find a document i knew was in the archives for the pacific railroad. It took me a long time to find the responsible archivist at the union pacific. I said this is what i am looking for, i know when it was written and he said i cant help you, i dont have any staff, money or time because of that we at the up do not allow outside researchers access to our archives. And i said well, is that going to change . And she said i sent an application in to get an intern but i wont know for a year and even then i dont know if i will be able to do anything. This is mnot only the document have been looking for but every else in the Pacific Union archives, an important corporation, is inaccessible and vulnerable of being thrown in the winds because companies dont want to spend the money to maintain them. So i think we are entering a period where our own history is disappearing in front of our eyes. I met the predecessor to that archivist back when the archives were at the Old Union Pacific station. He was a big guy, used a walker and i was doing a book about the only person to ever escape from levanworth and survive and he had some records i wanted. He disappeared into the bows of the archives and it took him along time to get there, i hear him wrestling around, and it took a look time to come back. It was like a ghost on the steps. Thump, thump, thump. He gave my the bios and came with a pair of guns and he said those are the guns jessie james used allegedly when he held up such and such railroad. And i said what is going to happen when you leave . And he said nobody is going to know where the stuff is. Heartbreaking. Adam hochschild, can you top that . I may be more optimistic than michael and joe because there is still a lot of paper around. We print stuff out an awful lot. My house is filled with paper. I suspect that is true for a lot of other people as well. Everybody predicted that, you know, the rise of computers would lead to the Paperless Office but look at how much paper is told today and how many filing cabinets there are in offices. I think in one way or another a paper trail will survive, if not, certainly an electronic copy. And new Technology Means new things. For example, in my book about the spanish civil war, was the first time i had worked in a period of history that was recent enough so that there were oral histories of the people i was writing about and 5060 video interviews made with the veterans before they died. I had access to this material. It is on audio disks and video disks and so on. I am oft mystic they will find it. Lets take your questions now. I have superglued the microphones to the volunteers hands so if you try to tear them away it will rip their skin. Please be kind. Here is the question in the front. Can we get to him quickly . Thank you. I want to ask do you see a way to bridge the gap between journalists and academic historians . I had dinner a historian and asked about work produced by students and he thought fascinating not like journalists. It reflected what i still see among many academics that unless the prose is led with foot notes and you cant read it it is not real history. I can tell you having written, i will call it journalistic history that i rely to a great degree on professional academic historians precisely because of the standards that require them to cite everything and provide a road map. In many of my books, not all of them, but many i have gone to academic histories and i have mined their end notes and foot not notes. There is no hope of finding those sources except men and women have done the ground work for me and done it for the purposes of academic purposes and really for keeping a record of history that is indepensable and god bless them. You find this in the science as well if you are able to write in publically acceptable prose you are considered a popularizing and that is another negative term. I think my role is to bring the essence of what academic historians have found to the general public public. I dont think it is necessarily monolithic. I went to an american historation meeting in new orleans a couple years back and they were arguing can you being a historian if you are a poplar historian and can you be a historian if your books are bestsellers and it is almost the same sort of argument the poets have. Are you a serious poet if you are embraced by the multitude . A lot of academic poets dont think carl sanburg is a good poet because he was too poplar. I think this is something which isnt going to go away and i dont think all historians are like that but i do thing they argue about it a lot. Also this is a real problem you refer to, that many academics and disciplines write in a way that is simply not accessible to ordinary people. All of that in which the way the acad academics operate and you get promoted by getting a ph. D and books published in journals and University Presses and you know those are going to be refeed by other callers so you better have footnotes to everybody who as written on this subject because he or she might be among your anonymous reviewers and it leads a terrible writing in style. I think in history more than other academic fields there is a tradition of good writing that some people practices. Other disciplines, sociology is mostly hopeless when it comes to this. But you look around and there are some historians who are distinguished academics but know to write for ordinary people. Joe lapoor at harvard. And joe slum at columbia. One interesting experience i had that showed me a desire to write this way among many historians. When i finish a book, i seek out scholars in the field, most of them in the academy. I wrote about bury the chains and went to five scholars in the field and they agreed to read my manuscripts and these are people who write Journal Articles and they were helpful in pointing out errors and suggesting things and what was curious and moving is two of them made suggestions of a literary nature saying well you introduced to character in chapter four but maybe you should tell us about him earlier on. I want to remind you something Ruben Martinez said. The barber in santa ana who became a bookstore owner and book lover. He said i traveled the world sitting in my bathroom. Travel the world, read a book and remember to lock the bathroom door. Please, thank the panel. [applause] [inaudible conversations] booktvs live coverage of the Los Angeles Times festival of books now continues. We have a couple more hours, couple more author panels coming up. In about half an hour or so, author panel on syria. And that will be coming up as will corey fields who writes about black elephants, the gop Africanamerican Community and radio talk show host hugh hewitt will be joining us. We are on the campus of university of Southern California and now joining us on our set is Rebcca Solnit who is the author of this book, the mother of all questions further reports from the feminist revolution revolutions. What is feminism . The idea women are people who deserve equal rights. Why is that controversial . It shouldnt be. You would think we are all created equal but a lot of people dont quite seem to see it that way. From your book, so much feminism has been women speaking up about unacknowledged experiences and so much of anti feminism has been men telling them these things dont happen. You see that with rape, domestic violence, workplace harassment, the attempt to drown out whoever is testifying. We had the case with bill orielly who managed to adequately silence his speakers for decades and finally they became audible enough he had to go. You see it and here we are on campus with the stories and attempt to silence women in so many different ways. What is an example here on the campus . Well, you know, you hear the morning after regret and women make something up. Coming from a foundation that men are reliable and women are inherently unreliable. Most rapists lie about rape and most victims dont according to the evidence. You are not supposed to tell about Sexual Harassment you write. Yeah, there is often this sense of you are just supposed to suck it up, put up with it or you are told you just imagined it. We had a case at uber where a worker who left testified about working there for a year, experiencing frequent Sexual Harassment and having the Human Resource people be uninterested in responding in another way and telling them like it is this guys fust time and nay compare notes and realize it isnt the first time and that would be another example. When did this topic becan come aof interest to you . It became a framework somewhere, god, you know, when wasnt it . I think there is a point we