To get the Recording Studio and voiced a book that youve written in having some fun with it and i try to get that done right now so before i get to see whamalala i have to finish this audio book. So that is on my list. Williams talks about creating his 1982 book blue highways a depiction of the United States and its people as seen from the countries back road. Spent 42 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list when it was published. This is about one hour and 20 minutes. Can everyone hear me . Okay. Good. In 1977, the young professor at Stephens College during the winter of 1977 he got word that the population was diminishing and that his position was no longer going to be existing in the following semester in 1978. They hit the road for william at the time to see whats out there to see what the back roads of america look like. Something that he had been dreaming of doing for years anyway. The time was right. So he left columbia missouri and he headed to the circle around the United States and the 38 states and almost 13,000 miles of backroads america. I started reading that book o ta cold january night in 1983. It didnt take me very long to realize someday im going to make the trip. My wife is a secondyear medical student and i was three years in the medical practice you can columbia. I had an 8yearold daughter and a 5yearold son and i didnt have time to travel the route. So it was a dream i had to hang onto for about three decades. I put it down stairs and it would be one of the photographers to help me fulfill that dream my son edgar for the limit is 5 inches taller. When i retired in 2005 i went to work with a company that we formed and about a year into that i said im going to talk to him about that trip. As we met i a cafe in downtown and i would shoo i wish you hadf these images from the coast. They cant begin to write like he writes bu that they could tae photographs. He said one of the most common questions people ask is to find out how things have change chant i am never going to make the trip again. Four years later he didnt think that my son or anyone else for that matter would make that 14,000mile journey into turn it into a book. So the goal into taking the trie truth or to find the characters in the book and we found about 11 of them still living almost three decades later. We wanted to find the beauty of that backwoods america that he had so beautifully described in his book and we wanted to find the patterns that he frequented. We wanted to find the mom and pop cafes that he always ate at. And after visiting he came up with the five calendar system for ranking. If the cafe had no calendar it is the same as eating at a pitstop in the interstate pitstop. One calendar suggested that they have pre processed food similar to new jersey. Two calendars would eat at if it had this on the wall with the two calendars. Three calendars meant that you couldnt miss the farmboy breakfast because it was going to be good and the four calendar straight to eat as well, keep it on your head or franchise. Im going to brief you take you on an 8,000mile trip for the United States and when you get to the primary speaker. You would think making a trip almost three decades after the original would be very difficult to recognize what he was talking about. What surprised me was that time and time again w we did go out d then and there was the scene that he had so beautifully described 30 years prior. In this case it was on 60 into something that wasnt indeed from the road. There was a shoulder on the bank of the ohio river. He also visited some wonderful towns. Two of my favorites were from tennessee and from texas. When i arrived to find out how it got its name. When i arrived i thought on every door in town except for one. Nobody was home. The Merchandise Store was still there but of course i had no idea. Later i would track down any town probably 30 miles away he and his aunt marilyn would come back. Unfortunately she would sit on the bench while i was talking to davis and her son after helping out of the pickup truck. He said im really sorry but the original at the other end of the bench but we gradually scooped you down and she would move that direction and halfway down she said you know everyone in the picture but me is dead and im just about that as well. So she like most of the other characters that we were able to find were indeed wonderful characters. I really thought that i would most enjoy and i thoroughly enjoy the landscape photographer because he described many beautiful scenes but i thoroughly enjoyed people. Adding to see the inside of that is like taking a time capsule that could have 30 years and it is preserved in about three saturdays in the fall it is open is more of a museum. He continued east until he hit the North Carolina coast. He left for South Carolina and we are making a rapid prediction. Hes all the water tower and he said even the bible belt. He drove down the line to find the monastery of the holy spirit and it was there that he met the 23 for the guts of the people, 37 people in all in one of them was Patrick Duffy is very outspoken monk and he carried on a long conversation that goes along five or six pages. He was in the monastery for about 20 years total. Then he became a priest in new mexico where i was able to track him down and he was already retired. You knew how outspoken he wasnt one of the questions i asked him is what is it like. People kept coming to the monastery asking what is it all about. By now we are headed across southern louisiana on highway 15. It was on that path that they would have out if only for the cooking. We are now in texas about a third of the way across taking to the little town. Claude tyler was a barber that took him out of his chair and over to this window right here to look at a cottonwood tree rolling out from underneath of the building it was lifting of the foundation and for six years he cut it out and it kept coming back. The book was released in 1983 in the claude tyler died. When i went to back it wa back l causing havoc in that building. We are now in new mexico. Its difficult to see with the slides on but there is a on either side. He pointed out that the coffee mill off of the old west. They developed a way of using the coffee mill to make barbed wire. Another of my favorite towns was the frenchman and people often ask me what di did change on the route and the two things that changed the most were frenchman and the area in west virginia. The frenchman had a population of the people and the younger lady here in her motherinlaw and her husband chris and daughter consisted of two buildings. The larger was a cafe both held and the other was a garage related to the service station. Behind that was a fence that separated their property from the naval bombing range. And they heard a story about the bomb that got dropped and almost killed a guy. When i went back there he was gone so im sitting there with the doors open eating my Peanut Butter and Charlie Savage thinking how am i going to find him in the tow town isnt even. About that time i began to hear it does and i thought its coming from above me. I realized its one of those drones. So i looked up and said i was in the air force. [laughter] in retrospect but probably wasnt smart because they were navy pilot. Several minutes later the bombs began to drop about a mile away. They used to sell tshirts and they said i got bombed in frenchman and i joined the club. I was able later to track her down between two of her daughters and grandson there. All of the stories of these 11 people that we found our wonderful and i hope you get a chance to read about them. He described david climbed down the side of the wall of the lake and if they survived getting to the bottom you know if you read blue highways every coldstream he came across he jumped into. So knowing that he had some heritage i think it had to be in the dna. We have now hit the west coast and we are going to quickly turn north and head east along washington 14 where of course on the south side are the busy highways in oregon that asked you would expect they took the less traveled road. He ran across and noted the significance to the rosa parks expedition because it was the first place they made very asians in the river so they knew that they were very close. Weve now traveled all across northern United States. Most of it is no longer legible. Weve now hit the east coast and we are now going to turn south and eventually go down through new england and head back west through west virginia. West virginia was the other place that changed the most. He described billions of old tires disposed of and hundreds of old rusted out vehicles. I am looking for faces that i recognize. Too many im afraid. [laughter] it is a common thing among writers to say the home town is the most to the audience to face and i found that to be the case. From outoftown people dont go be but nothing to as i am finished i am out of town so whod give saddam but i will stay after this. I want to thank Patricia Miller for helping to set this up with the columbia public library. On occasion was a very good copilot but was a reporter rest of the time. In to see one of the photos khios the deducted the cover photographs in this is my fathers watch. Not having a lot to do with time the place and direction. In to pick up the Book University press gives me five copies. The rest i have to buy. I went up to the clerk a and i said to you blue highways . And he said he was that by . I said william least heatmoon simic he said no. That is not its. [laughter] i am pretty sure that is set. What you think . To make is that the one with the dog . The guy who walked across america. But i dont think he wrote that he said i am pretty sure. [laughter] and i did want to blow my cover so let him look on a computer intel he founded. [laughter] my wife she and who is sitting here in the front row is one of my editors ox and also edited my remarks for tonight but first i want to tell you. She also has a book coming up next year it is accepted by yale the boyle person that she is to misery even though her degree is from arizona Missouri Press will publish her book next year as the unknown travels in dubious pursuits of William Clark of the lewis and Clark Expedition and with the days before the if you are interested in the with sand clark you will find your understanding as it is vastly change. There was information is there that they would have the preferred she did not find out. It anyway i asked her to looks the talk over said she put brackets around certain things but i did not know what shec meant normally when we add it that means take this out. She said you cannot tell the story at the columbia public library. [laughter] so i went through and looked and said i have space left. [laughter] and unnoticed where she had taken out with stories that did the blonde and so would cut my time down. Of what you to know when i get to a portion that i have a story to tell you and i am not allowed i will let you know, at that point, can you see that red light . That means i had a good story and it has been edited out. [laughter] i heard mark twainsbbr wife olivia was his editor for his performances of which there were many. He got so good delivering his lectures there almost perfect and people began to fall asleep. He said it is because theyre so perfect and flawless. When i was teaching it was for the opposite reason so twain built in deliberate errors to keep people wake. I want you to know now when you see a mistake in this script i am just trying to keep you awake. Mark had the idea but i will use said. Sometimes wonder what he bush have done if he had a little technology. He loved inventions and lost a lot of money on new products id like conventions to a and i am working now on one that i call the apps. I dont have a cell phone but if there is allow a person on the phone speaking on a cell phone i can pick up my apps hit the button and disconnect him. I want one that will change volume or channels on public tv so if i am at the dealership and the tv is going to pick a channel may be fox news. [laughter] maybe play a pivotal to loud i can turn it down and disconnect or when i am at barnes noble the next time to turn off that music in there. B this is of bookstore were supposed to be able to concentrate. Now were into the age of laptops and computers you know, theyre pretty flimsy compared to the typewriter those typewriters were solid if you are a writer it was an important thing to do. But now there goes 1,500. But i am working on it. I will call with the suburbs of small device and when it makes one to the mistakes it you are ready to hit it you hit the stumper that cries out in pain or program it so apologizes to you. [laughter] or better yet encourages you to keep continuing. Most of them are pretty interesting. Some of these letters came in earlier. Deere mr. Heatmoon 12 lead levels well written books and have ever read but what have you written since travels with charlie . [laughter] deere teeeighteen your book is one of the dell listings i have read but i read every word of it i read portions to my wife said she could see how dull it was. I think the term is obsessive compulsive. Deere mr. Heatmoon forgive so long12b letter but i have the odd habit of reading your books. [laughter] select your former professor please hurry up with your next book i got your last but categorize sale for a dimeni. [laughter] did you know, how long it takes before things get to a garage sale . [laughter] my motherinlaw told me when rivers speaking that i should read your river horse book. Of course, she will read anything. Have you had enough . One more . The favorite time to read is in the afternoon when the kids are not home yet but there is a problem my husband told me that if i would stop maybe he was stopped writing your book ct to ontime. Of these make we want to continue writing the other ones that i rely on that make me think occasionally whenever is spent by life to bring it could be worse according to somebody else. In el way, a sequel to blue highways and why it took me so long to write blue highways. For years. It happened because i was 60 years a photograph of Ernest Hemingway and a little nibble typewriter at a mental working on his books. A fiber of my typewriter on the mantel i would be typing like this. [laughter] but hemingway was over 6 feet so that worked. I knew he was a correspondent, a foreign correspondent. So i decided i wou p like to be like Ernest Hemingway and for my 16th birthday in 1955 i asked for the olympia us portable typewriter which i still have the first draft was written on that. I said i will sit down to write a short story i got ready to type i sat and i sat so i will begin with the title. I dont know what it is about yet. Woody allen said calling from nothing to something was the hardest part but i learned later that isxd exactly it. I was blocked by trying to work on a machine and i began to understand now what i call wearing. It works like this. To begin with so little notebooks so finding something making notes i have something there. It is not good but it is something. Then i proceed for coil is wanted to teach chemistry or physics quiddity to spare . So then i go to Something Like this that happens to be of book. How many of you read this . How many of you would like to . [laughter] but the if you have this she would be happy to cite it. But on this side of free here this is the narrative but on the other side i would receive these blank. Photographs or whenever it happens to be. I had not written a word yet in the final manuscript but nothing is gone and now i have something to work from in that horrible fear the bank the blank page is not there. I began the book months in plants ago. I keep pointing to a point to your book with the photograph of the last few days of working on blue highways there is a picture and there are 10 box is about 1 meter high. Those are all the giraffes of blue highways 1982. There are almost 2 Million Words i was using a portable typewriter so those had to be hit with a keystroke every time. When i just about finished i had a hundred pages, a double spaced in there was no way another writer will get the 800 page manuscript published. I had to cut it down so i started to sink like a dime store manager. 498 pages to begin to cut. Of the first putt the first part i would cut out about myself. It is not about me. So i got a bid of maybe 200 words. [laughter] then it got hard. Pe so if i can demonstrate government you will space see this in the back but that is what you get for assisting in the back. [laughter] as simple manuscript page. Can you see that white space . That little bit of dark . That is called a widow. Trying to get rid of words i thought i can do this so i started to play with the margins i would move those out for a deaf so it did not look like i played with the margins exactly the opposite where writing students wanted to do. So at that point i was ready with an electric typewriter. I would come through with the finished page and say i have bow window that is a whole line is so i would go back to retype the page to get rid of that. It would work sometimes it would create another one. So i would have to retype it again. But i take it down to the 498 pages. It worked so well that when the editor first saw the book he seriously amiss underestimated how the new words were in the book. I got a call that manuscript that there was a hundred and 45 one headed 45. It is getting too expensive. People will not pay 13. 85 for a book. It is not all right. We have to take up the photographs. You cannot take that people will say i made up the trap. So they said if that is the way that you wanted. They said the i said if you take a matter of a straw the manuscript for i was working on there for four years. Finally when i find up publisher the author says no you cannot do that. He called the next morning and all he said was you wind. The photographs remain and they are important reason why blue highways found the audience it has found. The problem with the book is the trip took three months, 100 days but to write the book took four years. So what you see now is the ratio 15 115 days of the typewriter to describe one day on the road and questions come up dont you overdraft . I dont think so. Nobody would be here tonight to try to pass off an early draft it is just not pretty enough ranging from the idiotic at times it takes that want to go back to get it right. Stand by. [laughter] thankyou deere. [laughter] so moving back senate will you publish the outtakes . [laughter] writing blue highways is a sequel to blue highways in the way it is there journey n. And said he is older in changed in then to set their to think about what has happened. The route was similar but not the same but it is two different trips in writing blue highways is not a writers renewal but it is more about how to with statement that it helpco at has ramifications for someone whos comes up with the new economic theory. Go with the the first london of us have any idea of the financial, psychological, em otional price we have to pay to get that invention out. It was much higher than expected. Certainly on the first day of writing blue highways was the fourth of july in cairo to 12 pages that day. I thought i will be finished with this by christmas. Four years later, the finished. So what i wish i had was a book like writing blue highways would not be sitting there reinventing the wheel. I did not know about it so i begin in experience. Talking with my current editor in my maiden publisher said,dq it is too small or not big enough. We wanted something bigger but during that conversation he said what you have now is of a more of the memoir . I took umbrage. I said it is not the view called that to more than the journal of the was the clark. It is not about the but the people ive met. The two things i hope that will happen when people read blue highways and the first is this, that you get to know the people that some of then you make a connection and then those 36 people means Something Special in your life. I the way i am not of the loop brian not there anymore. And i think now this is what i would like to close with his blue highways and yves writing blue highways is not about the author a and the you have good company john updike reviewed blue highways for the new yorker he complained that we dont know enough about the author. Bad is say exactly why i took out those 200 pages about me because it is not about me. It miss the point people do that occasionally. Do you remember i hope the book is about other people . The more that i write the morass to do with what i try to say. Those have become so incredibly important so many of the problems i have today is just look get congress to take a ludicrous ji example but if they had respect for the other would there be a different atmosphere in washington d. C. . I think so. If that sell it would consider other points of view we would have less this a and that. That is that the heart of my value system raised in a Presbyterian Church in that story is told in a novel that i just finished. After a while it was now working very well for being and i found out if you go around to say you are atheist people get upset and somebody may say where to stand with religion . So i decided i would become something else. [laughter] i told them i was sent provide like rock gardens and paintings and trees but it worked but then that is accurate but really i am a cosmotarian. Presbyterian boy who wanted to be an astronomer but did not have the math skills to do its. [laughter] here it comes. [laughter] i think. I have of some of you have questions but wave your arms and i will point did your direction is somebody with a microphone will come around. I see one person all the way there was the priest and a rabbi and a penguin that went into a bar. [laughter] not a a question but a request. Would you read the opening paragraph of your new book please . I dont usually do that. I dont like to do that. I dont have a copy of the book. [laughter] why . I dont read to that well. What is your name . It is funny you mention that because i did think of doing that one time here because were all neighbors i would tell you what page i would read this you could read along if you had copies because i do know that people like. Like the unchurched . I will see how i feel about it. Let me see how long the paragraph is. Do we have blue highways . That is shorter. I am not allowed to go past this line. [laughter] this is shorter. I will do this. By the way the commission the four years it took to write this book how manyhi. R you have copies of blueni highways . [laughter] why only three hands went up . Im in with you. D. C. That preamble . Zygotes that over four years, two dozen times if you saw the first version you wouldnt recognize it but i just cannot get it right i should know this by heart but i cannot remember million sentence. But we will give it a try. If this is don cspan i will not talk to you anymore. [laughter] on the old highway maps of america now the colors are changing but just before dawn after dusk the roads return to sky than a intrudes the mysterious cast of blue when it is the strongest field baroda is beckoning a place where a man can lose himself. And deadhead the photograph of. [applause] to that looks like that description if i remember you took that out down by misery. That is sold williamson place. I have got it right here in my hand. [laughter] it looked like there was no yellow stripe. We added that digitally. And people ask here or1]s elsewhere . Can you pass that up . They assume it is my paragraph. From the National Seashore . Spa and if there is a point like it there but this is in the county . The forest is the media be behind you. Immediately behind you. This came over this way. Watch these people in between there were books for sale a woman and then walked off with it and the clerk had to say you have to pay for that. Did you get your buck back . That was one question. Is that it . You must have been surprised that the success of your book every young author dreams of having a best seller. What was it like when youre it she realized you had achieved that . Remain bad young author was 42 years old. [laughter] that changed things a lot because by that age would you have since into your head and much less likely8,f to take things for granted. In a way i was surprised and in the way i was not because when i was writing blue highways i began innocents naivete in tell the truth filtered through the of many script was rejected a dozen times of each rejection my confidence would take a shot the question and comes up why am i doing this . I sent out 600 letters before the trip looking for a of a job actually 620 letters i got six request for the dossier and that was it. So the rejections plus whatever the book would bring in and as a result of felt i have no other place to go at that time for if i was 38 when i began and 42 when it finished at the age what do i do next . So for a backup plan i was going to buy a truck to go into the field to be there with my torch for i was serious about that. So when the book came out there was a relief everything that i had gone through looked like it would be worth it. Im a 1,200 per year. At the loading dock. So does give you a little suggestion may be jeff more than 1,200 to spend. The only time in my life which i wept aloud of joy]t5 out of choice was i felt is when i realized this long process is over. Is not entirely painful but it was not the best four years certainly. Some of what i had hoped for was not expected but i could imagine and a dream of the book might find leadership so i called the secret society and by all of you looking at your faces some if you are scowling at maybe you are members of a secret society. I was is that columbia bus station waiting to get the bus home on the edge of town. I started in the Probate Court in the next day and that you know,. [laughter] so i quit the worked at the loading dock on weekends. But then i would get on the bus to go to where a live. Theyre all waiting for buses and nobody was reading anything but just sitting there sleeping or eating pretzels life that wouldnt this be a good time to read . You are right thing of bookies think people would read but nobody is reid. They will not read your book. Those are not the people that is when it dawned on before the first time america was not going to have 300 Million People live up to buy blue highways. Made the 3,000 would be dynamiteyv]. But that 33 because i realized i was writing for a select group of people. There is a word they dont know. In that context to follow along you dont have to look up a fuel want to. Those who dont mind senses with more than 12 words in two or three successful writein at the time it is considered to be better than i am. To respect the secret society to talk about certain things and using words that somebody may not know the secret society will tolerate. The seat is society will follow. And if in doing that. First of all, i always told my students dont write down, writeup. That doesnt happen much today. And it looks like people have written down to their ideas. There is a book out now not to mention the title but it is on cspan2 win the National Book award i think. The test isguq simple to read the first aircraft usually not dialogue. Is then walking down the of street to said they the to beautiful. [laughter] and i suppose not. Said that did not care much about craft. In those definitely see it in writing. And it was not any better than someone that has not taken the time to write the best book he or she could write. John updike was one of them. But he is dead and he would pick on me. I will get you back. He who lives long guest writes the history but he was a highly talented man. I am impressed but attorney ira a book every two years you will not turn out your best work i dont care who you are. Nobody is that good. Not even shakespeare. That just does not have been. So if you are writing their not finished six times . If added is excessive for compulsive disorder okay but that is the mix my books what they are that was a very long answer. With blue highways frogs hr lizards are voracious twos spend time in the Library Issue were raging writing . I was not well trained in science. I did a fair amount of research. Even more demanding of research. Iona have 17,000 books in my library. But because i have 10 books on astronomy that they still have to do a great deal of research. To get something is that you can begin to make embarrassing errors that way. But that is what makes the book what it is. This will follow along with the subject simic joking terry the presentation so nobody would thank you made it up there seems to be a non fiction revetment so could you talk , e . And the trend today . It is the crime. Is they become suspicious. Im in tune to earlier is still have questions raised about various aspects of blue highways did you make that up . You really cannot argue you did unconvincingly unless you have other facts. But when a writer does create false nonfiction it really hurts the rest of us. It is incumbent to make sure that you tell the truth accurately. It is not the whole story so there will be distortions but one day on the road 15 days of riding so i still just had a tiny piece some are hardly in there at all. But if the truth is in complete it is not really true. And right here i am stumbling tried to find the right word that is the readable see you have to clean it out. So to not have somebody say to be in contradiction to his or her beliefs. But with compression you have to do that. Started out the elevated typewriters then moved to care computers now the laptop but a writer takes that moment from the brain to the page now Technology Changes that with observation to find our way of life to chase the map to think about it. How has this old one dash Old Technology changed the craft . Dash italy wonder if i had had a Digital World when i was on the blue highways trip what type of book it would be. I see some that has a photograph that would have been tempting but to have more resources to work from by would still have to boil those down. Would the information be better . I think by working so mentally i relied on male brain. I began writing i began writing with the numbers to lead benzol i like the black but montana indians pencils. A and i do take a piece of notebook paper cohosh because i have no committed to what i am writing. And i get frustrated if i have a piece of paper i just wanted up and throw across theb5n room if it is a purchasing. The first draft was said and pencil. This was an easy topic. But working with pencils i went to the fountain pen and then to electronics i usually dont do the ink draft any more. But the reason i do it with that hemingway typewrite typewriter, this action does not use the same part of the brain i do draw butted is of a bit of a combination alonsos joint on the left side of the brave. It is said different expression with my blackfeet pencil them if when i sit down with a laptop. A different person coming out so i really recommend you consider using your hand or the pencil. [inaudible] i do that when i am trying to move that. I do that with my arm. And i talk about these with a loss of dilutions that a secret society was my biggest one but there were that is the multiplier effect. Inanimate have tided many times. It to take a paragraph to save themselves through the eyes of providence. These things dont show up with this type of discussion it is books like this that make the job manageable and even a delights. It is and i spoke and to have blue highways been writing blue highways to come out i can tell you but i wont. [laughter] [applause] your check is waiting for you when you leave. [laughter] seven she was in my classroom i was teaching at omega some time ago still mccann i want to say about the community of seekers. Soon after check my class with you r and i gave your book to some and i was saying and he read it and that was the end of that. [laughter] that was a good litmus test and that was of could to use part of your brain. In what about your own work or what you recommend . The secret society . So any recommendation would depend on your interest. But a very humiliating topic because sanders and all the words in a sentence but i dont understand the sentence. [laughter] if you can explain e mc2. I know what it stands for but can i really understand it . This was a real blow. Then i found out einstein had some concerns if he really understood it. So i felt a little better. So greedy and cosmology about the origin it is wonderful in time. It is humiliating. So yes i know all the words. But to think how many of you believe in the Big Bang Theory . Who does not . You are wrong. [laughter] but you read about that in 14 billion years old. And everything around us is you look get your he and in think it is of 42 billion yearold hand and. [laughter] those particles are 40 billion years old. It gives a different perspective. That is my i am now a cosmotarian. The simplest things and sometimes it just stops me from thinking. I start thinking about that and then where am i. I dont know what the question was. Did i answer ex [laughter] if you read my books you know they are pretty digressive. There is one critic who i can just certifiably insane. I wont tell you the name [laughter] he twice said, once a gratuitously or maybe twice that it was a train wreck because he didnt understand the structure. While if youre listening you have a mind that isnt working. If you studied about it does work just because you dont see it right away doesnt mean its not there. How did i get into that . One more question that i can answer . [inaudible] thats right. Does anybody have a short question . A good closing question . Or a short answer. [laughter] i dont have those. I heard you talk about some of the problems he said hes heard the problems ive spoken of. In the organization for example youve talked about that and other venues. How about the toughest question i find i them both being able to direct or encourage students when do you know youve told the story . And do you know when to stop . You talked about the knowledge of the audience and whether you go on about something or stop. [laughter] the answer is in this book. Ernest hemingway said the book is to be measured by how much good material can be thrown away. Maybe that is true but i think also a book can be measured by how much good material needs to be in the book and there are times a writer doesnt know how long the book is so you dont know what you still need to put in there. I think it should be longer. Amplification could go on indefinitely. I think you have to have some kind of a beginning notion which is going to change and im sure its never perfect. Thanks for coming out tonight. [applause] up next on the tv after words with guest host toby Washington Bureau chief of the sunday times. This week Kwasi Kwarteng war and gold explores the history of money from its relationship to the war and the resulting impact he believes the connection has on the presentday free markets worldwide. The program is about an hour. Welcome to after words. With me today is Kwasi Kwarteng born in london and here to discuss the new superb book warren gold a 500 year history of empires adventures and deaths. Its received great reviews already. Its enormously readable in a history that shows that past 500 years. Its great to have you here. This isnt usually the description that you get into strikes me as not really a politicians book that isnt designed to get you further up. Why did you write it . Ive always been interested in history and i have a doctorate in history and i think that when we look at what happened in 2,008 with the financial crisis, huge amounts of debate but today all looked at shortterm perspectives. They were looking at the banks and hedge funds and Credit Derivatives and i thought lets take a step back and try to understand something about the Global Financial system and the curtains he would have because one of the features of the book is to remind people for 400 years for 450 years we had a gold backed currency and in 1971 when Richard Nixon shut the gold window. Host one of the things i love about this is you have a dramatic moment its about an ostensibly sort of dry subject of money thats coming up at the moment when the program was interrupted. Guest the key moment in any historical narrative there will be the moment people sit back and think my god this is what is happening. It was august 15 i think on a sunday it was one of those moments Richard Nixon appeared on National Television and bonanza which is a great cowboy show, not really my type but maybe the viewers will remember and he interrupted to say we are not going to allow the dollar to be converted into gold and in many ways this is one of the most significant events and things to have happened in the history of money into was a very decisive moment where essentially he shot the gold