Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20130126

Dominical the middle of the atlantic ocean. Six years ago in bermuda i embarked on a 140 foot sailing ship, the seat association education, i was at sea for three weeks away from telephones, internet and libraries. But i was in the middle of a Research Project on Benjamin Franklin that required me to read material in french. I decided to use my time at sea to revise my french by reading a novel in that language. The book i chose is a small paperback edition of jules vernes around the world in 80 days First Published as a newspaper serial in 1882. When i wasnt on watch or otherwise busy on the ship by slowly made my way to the book. My french was good enough to my surprise that i enjoyed the story and as a historian i appreciated it. A detail. Especially the nature of the sense the protagonist racing around world. At his london club he remarks offhandedly that scheduled travel services could take a person around the globe in a period of the days. Proved it, a challenge him and he is off. The att measure was only conceivable by the late Nineteenth Century. In the age of sail getting around world had taken months or even years. The speed of my sailing ship would have lost his bat. It was the invention of steam power and the creation of regimented european empire around the globe, opening of the suez canal and the emergence of commercial travel services that together made it just possible by the 1870s to do the global circuit in a daze. What impressed me was how material developments that up Global Travel to dramatically increase use of natural resources. He takes his new ballet, the two men board a night train which is scarcely in london when it let out a real cry of despair. In a rush my state of confusion i forgot to switch off a gas lamp in my bed room. My dear fellow, you will be paying the bill. The gas lamp is a running joke. It is only a small part of a journeys total cost but presentday readers of jules verne realize the joke is on us. We are notoriously the first generation that has realized what planetary bills for centuries of burning fossil fuels is going to be. In jules vernes era cole was a costly but essential part of progress but Steam Powered exploits were at the height of european imperialism represents a phase of the past that is history meaning over and done with. Airplanes have replaced the cold burning engines that hurdle fog around, the empire protected some people including 5 at the expense of others have been replaced with other political regimes. It is not difficult to cross the world in 80 days, and get a passport and visa. When i returned from see on land, a look for history of around the world travel. There was none so i wrote one. I very quickly decided very early on that there was no point in trying to document all of the circumnavigations that never existed. I didnt want to write an encyclopedia. I wanted to explain why circumnavigation is distinctive. What we have the term around the world, what do these mean. What is going around world matter in the broader scheme of things. It matters because it shows how human beings have been thinking of themselves on a planetary scale for a long time, nearly 500 years. This is significant. The planetary consciousness is reason, something developed in modern times, that people in the past didnt and especially associated with the realization of things on a planetary scale with the Online Environmental crisis which we think of as unprecedented which is but the planetary consciousness that may go along with it may not be unprecedented. Certain navigators for a long time were by definition not only thinking of themselves in relation to the entire planet but doing something in relation to it by going around it. Second navigation is the oldest human activity done on a planetary scale and remarkably sixteenth century sailors did it first. Sell in this book i define a round world traveler as a shield drama from the greek for earth, g for guy and action drama. Europeans on to the first section navigation there with an established tradition of considering the world as a theater. This is an ancient greek idea sustained through and to agree and the renaissance and exemplified in shakespeares claim that all the world is a stage but it was a metaphor but around the world travel made it a reality by presenting themselves as actors on a stage of planetary dimension. Overtime sayre navigations would be represented as dramatic entertainment, first in print than on stage and later in film. Geodrama is different from geography meaning depiction of the earth made by writing but geography engage is the human eye, hand and mind, geo drama requires all of a human being, the entire body and its range of physical experience in relation to guy, the earth. The whole body experience is documented in the accounts of circumnavigation which describe what it felt like from agonizing to exhilarating. Most people never go around the world but by now almost everyone has some idea of the big statements such a journey makes. For that reason published firstperson accounts of circumnavigation of the books principal sources. Together the accounts constitute the longest and most sustained way people have been able to consider themselves factors in a geo drama even as the drama has changed over time. The changes can be understood as three acts in a drama, three phases in human beings comprehension of themselves as active and fiscal planets. In the first act which lasted from magellans departure on the first circumnavigation to james cooks death in hawaii from 15191779, mariners who went around the world did so in fear. It was reasonable to be fearful given the dangers of such a voyage in the age of sail when mortality rate for circumnavigation was in the 80 and 70 , people tried to go around the world, the world simply shrugged most of them off. In this initial phase of longest in history of circumnavigation, death prevail and fear was the response. From the 1580s until the 1920s travelers who made their way around the world did so with striking confidence that they could survive the experience. Western societies generated technology and Political Networks that seem to have conquered the glow. At this point it was not only possible to go around the world but has become a popular pastime. Representation of doing circumnavigation became playful, enticing, even julius. There were costs, not all of the hidden bad outweighed by the glories of making an easy swing around the planet. Over the 20th century and into the early 20 first century, the confidence has given way to doubt. Technologically newer forms of travel, especially airplanes and rocketpropelled spacecraft revived the sense of extreme danger that had faded during the sacred Nineteenth Century. Equally it is clear that imperialism has moved away from most earlier second navigators under political and social conditions that would be unwise and unjust to perpetuate let alone recreate. Above all there is a growing sense of the planet beginning to bite back or shrug us off now that the environmental costs of planetary domination have begun to haunt us. We live with all three legacies of around the world travel, reemerging fear that the planet could simply shrug us off, continuing confidence that we might be able to generate technology and political alliances to dominate the planet and doubt that it is wise to dominate it in that way. It is apparent the characteristic confidence of the long Nineteenth Century was the shortest of planetary experiences yet has been the most difficult for us to relinquish. Our current doubt have taken us back to fears of the early modern period, a circular turn that matches the swing around the globe that themselves went through three acts of geo drama but they were always more helpful elements to the story. Bright moments matter too and make clear the human pat is complicated and contradictory as present condition with a scene on a small scale or a large one, even the largest of all, geo drama in three acts. I wish i could introduce you to all the characters in the book, all of the people coming animals and even robots that have circled the world but for a 500 year history, this would mean really going through quite literally a cast of thousands so i decided to read to you about a handful of folks from the waning years of confidence about going around world. When the prospect of aerial circumnavigation which was first done in 1924 raised questions about whether going around world was getting too easy and whether the older, harder and perhaps much more difficult ways represented Something Better and if so for whom. There would be suspicion that flying around the world was cheating, surface travel was more challenging. In 1928, the centenary of jules verne, the danish newspaper in partnership with the stockholm newspaper advertised that it would send a boy aged 15 to 17 around the world to commemorate jules vernes famous novel. The boy had to be in good health, needed permission from his family, must speak english and german in order to do interviews and was not allowed to fly. The Canadian Pacific railway arrange the travel and the newspapers would pay any remaining expenses, competition was open and over 100 boys mobbed at the Newspaper Office in copenhagen as possible contestants would a girl telephoned to protector in eligibility. The political staff eliminated all 15yearold voice that made a task easier, and as a contest identified two finalists, both of them boy scout. The two boys drew lots. The winner, a freckled face red head went home to tell his mother he had a week in which to pack and get his vaccinations. He was required to keep a diary and either male or telegraph a report at each stop. Another obligation was to meet and charm the public which made him into a roving commercial advertisement particularly for Canadian Pacific railway. A book narrating the journey appeared following year. Got to tell how much of it is his own prose. His comment on meeting the press in london says reporters were awfully witty and have a lot of fun together. Hints that the newsroom probe in copenhagen had given his story the final shape of the confluence flown in for the english colleagues. For the 44 days he went around the world was the star of the show. A circumnavigation was the ultimate boys adventure, good but not dangerous test of his character. The emphasis was reinforced by introduction of the english translation of holts book was what would which was written by ed kroll not stating a round world, everyone of us has made the voyage many times in our imagination. The introduction made a typical not to ferdinand magellan, the great pioneer of the whole thing and flew in Francis Drake for good measure but fast forwarded to jules verne. Posthumous reputation was beginning its descent to that of childrens offer. They were challenging much of the circumnavigation, now in the 1920s thought to be. Quote narrative claim that his mother had arrested him when he was a child, also that the novel was the only book he took from world as if it were the second navigators bible. The boyss an element of the store was present the ball in holds membership in the International Fraternity of boy scouts. The year 1928 marked a peak in early enthusiasm for scouting, that hole and the other finalists for the competition or the adventure were both boys out is probably not a coincidence. A scout is never without a home the narrative concluded, being received wherever he goes in the entire world. And holt was the guests of the scoutmaster of japan and met groups of scout everywhere from tokyo to warsaw. Other aspects of the journey likewise emphasized his youth rather theatrically. When he arrived in copenhagen triumphantly two policeman had to hoist him to the crowd and carry him into the Newspaper Office. The juvenile drama climaxed his return during subsequent visits to england and france. In london he attended a gala luncheon with the head of the Canadian Pacific railway comment and a founder of the boy scouts. When he was in paris, he saw around the world in 80 days, very popular stage version of jules vernes novel that had been playing decades. He watched a copy of the novel being printed expressly for him bound in gold and embossed with his name on the cover. He then met jules vernes grandson who escorted him to his grandfathers grave. Surrounded by local boy scout he later read the message in memory of jules verne from his greatest admirers. Adult world circulars of the time of voided aviation in order to make a point about their place in the world. Bicyclists not in the western imperial power began to read brand the bicycle as a peaceful way to see the world. Nakamura cycled the world from 1901 to 1904 gathering at miring newspaper accounts as he did so but because he did not publish his own narrative of the journey remains better known within asia and beyond. He was later fees to welcome to japan three fellow asian cycle lawyers, trio of young indian men a data world tour, the three young r. C. Men were members of the bombay weightlifting club. They were in very good shape when they left home on bicycles in october 23rd, returning in march, 1928 five years later having covered 44,000 miles and demonstrated the sons of mother india were as enterprising and courageous as the children of any other nation in the world. In making that point about mother india, the revealed several global societies that assisted them in the 1920s, the first was the british empire. Not an obvious choice but a paradoxical one. The bicyclists were anxious to make clear that british passports and letter introduction for the british governor of bombay had been critical to their passage into and for europe. Whenever private feelings, they saved their criticism of imperialism for French Indochina where they claim to encounter racism unparalleled in any other part of the world they had gone to. They routinely stated branches of the ymca, the equivalent for grown men of the boy scouts and. They were cheered on by enclaves of indians who constituted the south asian diaspora over much of the globe rather remarkably, consequence of empire and the kind of counterweight to it. A different i ask for and similar manifestations of internationalism supported in this collection of circumnavigate ears, International Support on the slightly later circus tour of the world. Several came from a privilege russian family but that was of no help when he found himself on the losing side in the russian civil war during that countrys revolution. As a White Russians stranded in china, without a country, so destitute that he made his way to shanghai over when and in a mix of men and women cast off clothing leading shanghai he obtained a passport. The lead of nations began to issue 2 stateless refugees, initially russian 1922. The first step in and develop into the International Refugee law and policy announcing International Office for refugees for women 1938 nobel peace prize. He year and to rally members of the non bolshevik russian diaspora and wished a russian could do something akin to lindberghs recent flight across the atlantic. It was up to him to do and equivalent, to go around the world alone by bicycle. Luckily he didnt have to do that. He departed shanghai on a battered secondhand bicycle but upgraded to a new bicycle in bangkok and the battered secondhand motorcycle in singapore. Benefactor gave him a brand new aerial motorcycle in karachi plus a letter that guaranteed parts and assistance from aerial offices around the world. Several in his public accounts thank the Worldwide Services of the ymca, shell oil and the Firestone Company and he depended on the global availability of gasoline, oil and food, the array of industrial goods and services that were now spread almost everywhere in the world. Like the cycling parsees with the saudis in diaspora the encouragement of many White Russians. There was his passport for which he was an unlikely around the world ambassador. The document raised eyebrows at the start of his journey but once it bore an impressive succession transit stamp, without suspicion, real vindication of the international document. He arrived in shanghai on november 7, 1930, just two years after the day that i set out with my passport, no visa, brokendown old bicycle and 20 mexican dollars. He fulfilled the promise to continue to karate making a full global circle on the very same motorcycle. There you have it. A very small sample of the unusual people who found it necessary to go around the world for very different reasons. So thank you. I hope there are questions. [applause] when i heard about your book circumnavigating the globe, people heading east or west, tales of people going north or south. Yes. Thank you. Circumnavigation, classics and recommendation it is circumnavigation has an unusual ad measurement, it is the only form of time travel that is proven to exist. If you east to west you gain or lose a day, right . So if you go over the poles you dont lose a day. There isnt the element of time travel and to honor that distinction there is such a thing as a trans global voyage that is going around the world but not like classic circumnavigation in its element of time travel. The first polar circumnavigation trans global voyage was done by aircraft in the 1960s by a very small plane called polecats that flies around in that direction. Later on in commemoration of some commercial anniversary, pan am does a very the likes trend global flight. Only one time in history in the 1980s has been a trend global expedition done by land, we have been to the moon several times but only one team led by the british explorer fines has gone around the world on the surface which just sounded miserable it must be said. It has been done on a polar route, mostly aviation, once on the surface. Your story about captured my imagination because you mentioned and arrows cycle. Can use a little bit more about that contraption . Aerial cycle. Flight as well as was the companys name, possibly name i never look for the reason, might be a family name. My guess was shakespeare. That would have been very nice, but motorcycles at that point had amazingly powerless motors. This was a step up from a bicycle but only jumbles. Something about the illustration the title of the book was taken from shakespeare. He will put a girdle round about the earth in 40 minutes, the fastest on record. No one has ever done that even in orbit. The title is round about the earth and a great picture of scantily clad healths dashing around the world. Trying to keep up with his own state of time. I was intrigued by your comment that air travel made it easier and some people tried to make it harder. I was thinking Amelia Earhart went from west to east around the equator or tried to. Was she trying to she was trying to do the most difficult thing that did anyone ever go beyond that . In air travel . She was looking to do something that was really difficult. There have been increasingly fast aerial circumnavigations from 1924 the first one done by a team from the u. S. Army air corps, in four plains. That guaranteed somebody would finish. With that danger is. Several other teams were trying to do it at the time. The good news was none of them were killed but the bad one was no one finished. It is quite difficult in these early open claims. You would feel the weather, whatever it was, all the way around the world. There were these attempts to go around, fly around the world and very quickly by the 1930s someone does it with in eight days which is an amazing record and it is hard to break that. If you go faster is not quite the endurance tests to try to keep awake as much as you would need to fly around the world. If you do it slower, who cares . But what happens with the eight a record being set is people start to notice it is not really what we would call a great circle. People were sticking to the Northern Hemisphere where they could get gas basically. Amelia earhart said i am going to do it around the equator as much as possible. She was trying to do something much more difficult which no one had tested and that is quite a strain. In honor of her i would state that was an honorable death in terms of trying to make a planetary record that was quite dangerous at the time. I dont know what you mean by more dangerous than that necessarily. Again, the records keep falling. Concord, the supersonic aircraft, holds the record for fastest flight around the world. No longer commercially available. We will see in future what will be more difficult. Even in the 1920s there was a realization that flying the unless youre doing something really arduous in an almost of the carry sense flying seen the lee easy by commercial aircraft and from that point onward, the growth funds circumnavigation. The younger the person the more unusual the transit, the more bizarre the animal companions. That is currently what we are witnessing at this point. How would you say these stories, people making these journeys, figure out what the world is or was as if they were making them. Im interested in how the definition of the globe or the world changed through historical progression of circumnavigation and how that ends up as far as the concept of global that we have today. I am not so interested in global because that is very well study. Everyone understands. Global is social. It looks at human relations that exist for different activities around the globe. Planetary is physical or natural and that is really what i am interested in tracing, how ideas about not just the planet in the abstract but how each individual human body or a Human Technology can measure it and determine something in relation to that. There was accumulating a form of knowledge through each of the three periods it find. It is well understood by commanders of the early maritime circumnavigations were going to do something dangerous and everyone understood that that is what you did. By the Nineteenth Century the idea was to stay alive and everyone thought that was a brand new gold and it did work. Interestingly another goal would be not to harm anyone that you need along the way which is certainly not characteristic of the earlier period. The sense of circling the planet was no longer a very dangerous, violent thing is the first biggest work transformation but then again as it gets easier and we are more aware of the Technology Necessary to keep making it easy, that is where the dow has come and about what kinds of technological achievements are necessary to physically dominate the planet and whether that is in the end good development. [inaudible] you mentioned in the course of their navigations that they would lose two or three ships in a journey and there was a recent discussion in the press about whether we have found the remains of Amelia Earhart in terms of traces of the middle of the plane. In your research did you come across anybody who said we found evidence of the remains of so and sos ship or evidence of where they are and thats sort of thing . Everyones in a while. One of the early mysteries solved in the 20th century was the fate of la rues, a fringe navigation that vanished. It was not known until through kind of a reading of folklore in part of polynesia as well as underwater archaeology to establish what had gone wrong. That does sometimes come to light. Amelia earhart remains a mystery. There are claims draw what has been found and what that will prove. I guess as far as my own research went, those discoveries never answered a question i was asking. We already knew about the disasters and that integrated by stories about the level of danger and the perception that and so everyone knew Amelia Earhart had gone down, had been lost and that is the more dramatic part that i integrated into my story. What exactly went wrong . Maybe we will find out when i revised the book in subsequent editions, i might have to add a footnote definitely. I am curious, did you include airships . I think the crop zeppelin went around in 1929. That was a great feat but also by air. I am wondering, it was the first and i think the last sort of backnavigate lighter than aircraft. Not the last. It was the first. The graf zeppelin did the letter from a whirl. It was phenomenally expensive but perceived as the grandest way to travel in its time. People always remark that zeppelin travel was unique in its luxury. There you go. Another thing like concord, we dont have now anyway. It may not have been physically dangerous but there was a stretch over siberia with no radio contact with anyone and that sort of scooped them. That was actually not what people would have expected by the 1920s when Radio Communications would have been the very latest in the way you get information and know where you are. And crossing the pacific. They survive siberia and crossing the worlds biggest ocean by zeppelin was breathtaking. Soak not without danger. When they get to los angeles the air ship captain leaves a note on his hotel door saying do not knock whatever the circumstances because he so desperately needed the sleep after all that, long stretches of anxiety. The most recent record or achievement, the more recent records or achievements with balloons have waited until the 1990s when for the first time a balloon, not as a plan which has or an air ship that has a motor but a balloon that doesnt have a motor did actually make a round world. Two men took it using at this point not radio but satellite information about the weather because that is the key. You have to absolutely no the wind patterns to get a balloon in the right way so that you are not only traveling in the right direction but not over territory where you do not have the right to be entering. Since then there have been various. Records, solo, faster and so on so entered that we know we can do it territory, how can we do it unusually now. Let me get a copy for my dad. I was really interested by your examples, you explain circumnavigation is a privilege basically, you gave wonderful examples of unusual access like being a subject of empire for example of being a White Russian with a refugee passport, really interesting. I wonder if you have any examples of the limits of the privileges, cases that from the other side you dont have access to those or dont have the right status to circumnavigate. Interestingly at the start of the story a lot of people who go around world are not very privileged. We think of it as very glamorous to be a circumnavigate. But the status of ordinary sailor in europe at the time is faber slightly above slaves. They were considered people without real skill who were so desperate they had to go to see. There is a way in which i am not shore all of magellans men made what we would consider voluntary choice. That remains pretty standard where especially on military ships that go around world men have been impressed voluntarily. I look at sadly common phenomenon of the captive circumnavigate rear, the person who is taken against their will usually to provide some navigational information. Very possible the first person to go around the world was in this category, a slave owned by magellan, a malaysian man known as enrique the magellan took because he would give information about eurasia. So he runs away from home so he would have gone all the way westward to get home. The captive circumnavigate remains a stock character until the mid point of the eighteenth century when european stopped picking people for information against their will. There still are a lot of people who go around world probably not voluntarily. The First Global Health mission, a vaccination campaign. The spanish sent the ship around world dispensing vaccine from orphans, they take a long orphans as human incubators for these children, did not make a decision that that is the way they want to see the world. Glamorous idea but a lot of people are still doing this by the end of the 18thcentury not so glamorous. The last captive circumnavigate results interesting. This would be the soviet dog i lai laika. The first living creature to orbit the world, not her choice and sent to her death. There was no recovery plan. That practice stopped after International Outcry about doing this even to a dog. That is the last example but there is a robust history of people who and animals who dont want to be doing this but there they are becoming historically famous for going around world. I am not sure there is such a case as well as people who choose to do it and all the entities that actually dont. Thanks. I was wondering at people cycle in around the world. What routes are they taking . I was interested about using examples of indian i was wondering if there was any exclusion on them, certain countries in the 1920s. They only describe that in French Indochina, otherwise they are ok but it is true that sidling around world you have to take a kind of unusual route. It is amphibious, using steamships to cross the ocean. They have to be very careful what territory they go through and this remains the case for people who want to do circumnavigation, you have to piece together your visas very carefully. The first person to cycle around world does it in the 1890s on a penny farthing, the bicycle with the enormous front wheel. You have to make a real point doing this. He gets into trouble in turkey where he is turned back and then he continues on and to manages to get through there and is turned back afghanistan where he insists i will be ok, really. Authorities just laugh at him and say you are going back. He has to take a long route through ac channel to get to india. Definitely, anyone circumnavigation is always a map of Global Political relations definitely. I think the cyclist from the late Nineteenth Century onward were the pioneers in figuring that out. If you didnt take commission steamships over part of the navy you had to figure out who am i a citizen or subject of an who is going to let me into their territory . [inaudible] people neglect the Southern Hemisphere because it is elegies year. So much water. Cycling across australia people dont the first man to walk around the world does go over australia in a mule. At that point this is the 20th century so he could get food and water more easily. But yes. The surface travelers, i must say, are some of the toughest if not most meanspirited people in the world but you have got to be that way. It is really hard to do physically and i think socially to put yourself at risk constantly like that. Kind of a bloody minded thing to do. I dont sense among people you are going to go off and do it any time soon. Or maybe so. You mentioned some of the dangers. What did locals, what are some do you have stories of what the local people, how they reacted to these adventures and how they may have supported the Afghanistan Government i guess, are there other tales or difficulties travelers had with the people they encountered . Constant. That social friction or political friction is always there. It is very clear that it is imperialism that helps white travelers get around world, having that kind of political control over strategic territory that makes it possible. That is one reason it gets a lot easier in the Nineteenth Century. Earlier european mariners could have expected anyone would welcome in a lot of parts of the world, that makes it harder. I think the scurvy a lot of mariners died from was precisely because they cant get the land to get anything so that is a political problem more than a natural one but Nineteenth Century, it is empire that gives access but increasingly there is resistance to that especially from nations that are not part of empires and fear that they might be sort of nudge into somebodys empire and they are not actually welcoming to western travelers. Why should they be . It is interesting. When people do start doing what i would call stunned circumnavigation, faster than ever, more unusual than before, they have to telegraph to help publicize what they are doing, writing for newspapers and how they pay their way and often they comment they come to a new town some place and everyone knows they were on their way because the local newspapers said so and so loves the and and they would know about when they would arrive and that seems to be global. You can see that in parts of asia where people are reported rising in different parts of india or japan and none of those conditions are more nuanced kind of a rival. People are curious. They may even be at miring and there is resentment that this is being done under political conditions that local population would not want. [inaudible] it is easier now politically and not so related to empire obviously. People do it for fundraising now in terms of getting a visas and bureaucratic necessities. The impression it is much easier now. Easier for some people. It is not cheap to travel around the world. That is beyond the consumer capacity of most of the worlds population. You need to have a certain kind of passport eligibility to get your visas in the first place which is why it remains a minority experience. So easy for some but in terms of Global Society not actually distributed to any white extent. I guess that would be my response. In terms of doing the surface travel, has become the vogue, that is pretty difficult. I havent talked about space very much that that is pretty hard. Only 500 people i think as of this date of gone into space and not all of them into orbit. That is a very exclusive club in terms of around the world travel. That remains the case. We will see whether that reporter s. Do you have a favorite character in the book . That would be leaving out everyone else. One person who comes to mind, because i actually wrote this book in some ways as an environmental historian looking at the human relationship to the planet, i was interested by the 20th century and people who began to suspect going around world was not a very good idea, that it demonstrated a mastery of the planet that maybe we shouldnt be demonstrating any more. I am fond of a sailor and a 1960s, bernard montessier, an incredibly gifted sailor who entered the first around the World Sailing race, the first round world nonstop sailing race. He had do without assistance from land, you can get Radio Communication but nothing physical, no ones foot can touch your deck and your foot cannot touch land. Pretty tough. He was in the lead during this race which was funded, a big price set up by the sunday Times Newspaper in london. He was in the lead and he decides it is a useless if not pernicious gesture to go around the world as part of a commercial competition so he froze the race. He was in the lead and says i am going to keep going even after he passed the point he could have gone back to port and another half way for of the world and stopped in tahiti. Who wouldnt . That is interesting and i really admire him and recommend his account, bernard montissier, wonderful rider, donning consciousness of human relations and to the planet that is quite interesting. Thank you so much. [applause] now on cspan2 we bring you booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books and here are some of the programs to look out for this weekend. And noon eastern booktv brings you a few National Book critics circle award nominees, the Award Ceremony itself will be played in new york city and the new school on feb. 20 eighth. We start with steve call followed by reynard brandy and robert caro. At 5 00 p. M. Widow of jack nelson and editor of mr. Nelsons memoirs sits down with president carter and and Terry Adamson to discuss his life and career. Flint and pillaring and leverett argue change in policy for the government of iran is necessary. That is a 9 00 eastern. And 2 00 p. M. William rhodes exports the current state of economic and financial challenges facing europe and asia. Watch these programs and more all weekend long on booktv. For complete scheduled visit booktv. Org. Finance starts in the 1930s with sophia Quarter Ended the spinoff of the 1930s, the 1930s unknown from everything from the hard Economic Times of the 1930s you see everything from Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1930s to people thinking they could get rich to various social activist movements, fascism and communism had a huge appeal and there is the fulcrum going on out there. So personal finance out of this over a period of years and her goal is to educate people that the Great Depression will never happen again. It is a way of its time, the we can teach people certain skills and if they learned the skills we will be okay. The dark side of the personal finance industry with helene olen on cspan2 and look for more booktv on line. Like us on facebook. And now Ricardo Cortes talk about attempts to prohibit the use of coffee and coca in the u. S. And around the world. Ricardo cortes describe secret deals made by top u. S. Antidrug official perry andsolyndra to keep the cocacola co. Supplied with coca looking to ban its use worldwide. This is a little over an hour. Tonight we have pleased to welcome Ricardo Cortes to discuss his latest book a secret history of coffee, coca and cola, a tale of coffee, coca, cocacola, secret formulas, special flavors, special favors and the future of prohibition. Ricardo cortes is creator and illustrator of a series of subversive books for all ages but mostly all ages about such things as marijuana, bombing and the jamaican bobsled team. His latest book examines a series of highly addictive substances that have caused many deaths and fuelled much profit in how they make their way into the u. S. And what the u. S. Governments role has been in ensuring they come into this country. We are pleased to be joined by two drug policy experts as well, san ho tree and colletta youn r younge youngers. Without further ado want to hand it over to the panel. [applause] thank you. Thank you so much for coming out here. Im really excited coming to new york and excited to be here. Im going to start by talking about my book and we will go into a little bit about which focuses on coca and coca policy and how that is relevant especially this week what is going on in the un and the history of the tree that prohibits coca round world. My book started as a Childrens Book. Started as a followup to a Childrens Book i did about marijuana in 20042005. Wasnt about teaching kids how to smoke weed but an educational book about how a parent might talk to their kids about difficult subject that they might run into. That is why the format is like an illustrated picture book for kids but as i got deeper into the subject and started looking into coca which we jenna lee i thought was relevant to childrens lives, not so far removed, families are involved in the oppressive policies to eradicate coca, that is a family issue and social and cultural issue but as i got deeper into the history of coca and specifically the relationship to the Cocacola Company and the origins of cocaine from a medical marvel to the drug problem we have today it got complicated and so it is the book for adults. I also started back before coca, a secret history of coffee, coca and cola, i started with coffee because i wanted to a comparison of something that is always fascinated me with the way drugs, plants change their perception of these drugs and plants change over time, cultural perception, legal, social perceptions. I was inspired by michael collinss book about the history of four different plants, one being apples and how when apples first came to the country they werent the fleshy fruit we know today, but used for fermentation purposes. People would get drunk and people wanted to ban the apple. I looked further and found there were other plants similar the that today you would say that is incredible people would have problems with tomatoes which is fruit or potatoes that were not in the bible. So we should have problems. And obviously coffee because there were points, great gorge in myths of coffee and eventually going throughout the islamic world questions to the health of it, the religious legality of it and there were times when coffey was banned, coffeehouses were shutdown, sometimes for Health Reasons but often for political reasons, sites of political discourse. I saw that this coffee was another plant with an alkaloid as its principal active ingredient, the caffeine, that was something that went through these cycles of experimentation and prohibition and acceptance. Coffee is pretty much legal in most parts of the united states. So coca is a similar plant, very similar, sometimes picked on the same mountainside by the same people and they both have an alkaloid as its current collective ingredient. Caffeine and cocaine are both in their pure form, powerful stimulants, caffeine is toxic in its purest form. So i wanted to make a comparison about those two plants which is why i went so far back to get to the history of coffee. And get a little bit into the history of cocaine. That is when it crept into the question of cocacola. The Cocacola Company which is something that fascinated me because i grew up with rumors that there was cocaine in cocacola. Was there ever cocaine . Yes, there was cocaine in cocacola. It was cocacola started to take the cocaine out of cocacola in 1902, 1903. They met a german cocainemaker, louise schaeffer, who was the person who would take out the cocaine at a facility in new jersey. We can talk about today, that pharmaceutical company, the Chemical Process Company is still there today, stephan co. You can go on the d e a web site and see how they had to register to import coca leaf and register for the production of cocaine as a controlled substance. So i went into that history too and found out cocacola has been getting access to coca leaf for the past century and where this all comes together today and were going to get into is coca became prohibitive around the world through one of three trees that dictate International Drug policy. The first is 1961 convention on narcotics drugs. That was that treaty that says bolivia is supposed to eradicate all their wild coca bushes and we have to stop what is going on in south america for thousands of years and the cocacola co. Had a role in the the negotiations of that treaty. I went through the national archives. What you see a lot in this book is illustrations of the pictures that i took in the archives. Instead of prose book and writing the words out, i found boxes and boxes of documents of the federal bureau of narcotics and the longtime commissioner of the bureau of narcotics and took photographs of them and illustrated them so what you will see in the book is actually rather than retell the story and words i recreated these documents and letters and correspondence that went over decades and decades and literally decades and decades and decades between harry andslinger who is the architect of the Reformation Campaign against marijuana. That was one of his strong, really active and successful in providing marijuana. At the same time he was the point man for the federal government in its negotiations at the un to code a fighting laws against coca. While that was happening, harry andselling was in communication with the Cocacola Company through Vice President ralph case who i really got to feel a relationship between them over time. They had a really interesting parlay between each other. That is the beginning of an overview of the book. But i want to be able to pass the microphone back and forth and we will have questions for each other. But yes, that is the beginning. Good evening. I am from the institute for policy studies where i run the drug policy project. I was once asked to talk to a group of High School Students and they look at your resume and background and came up with a topic and you had to stick to the topic. This being a high school audience they wanted to hear about sex, drugs and international relations. And i thought, going to tie these three things together and it didnt dawn on me until the last minute and i realized the way to tell that story was through the story of columbus who likens it to be the granddaddy of International Drug traffickers. I used the word drugs because it is relative. How you see the world depends on where you said, where you stand, your perspective. I want to refrain this discussion in ways we may not think of very often. You know the story of columbus. After the spice route to asia looking for a shortcut he was interested in gold and spreading religion and stuff but primarily about speightss. Y speightss . Why were spices so valuable . It wasnt just the food was terrible and all these things in the new world, and it was but all the spices, each new exotic spice was fought to have certain properties. They might make you feel a bit more randy. How should i put this . Each of these new spices were the by agra of the day. That is one of the reasons this trade became so valuable and people risked their lives for these things. After the conquest and colonization the settlers made fortunes exporting drugs to europe and consuming them with this tendency as well and buy drugs i mean sugar which people consider a drug where we get rum from, definitely a drug, coffee, tobacco, tea, aphrodisiac spices. Please became the development of engines for hemispheric development. Vast fortunes were creat