Facebook. Com booktv. Booktv is live from savannah, ga. Home to the annual savannah book festival we will bring you several authors including mike redmond, lily cobble, scott bird, john rizzo and debra solomon. We kickoff live coverage of the savannah book festival with gabriel asherman, author of the loudest voice in the room. Good morning, everyone. My name is alex gold and i am happy to welcome you to the seventh annual savannah book festival presented by Georgia Power. Into our new venue of the Lutheran Church of ascension which is made possible by the generosity of fred and john kane. Many of you have already attended our terrific special events with our opening and keynote addresses. Today your work is cut out for you as you choose which authors to visit during this day that offers dozens of announce writers to established astounding books in the last year. We would like to extend special thanks to our presenting foster, Georgia Power, individual donors who make Saturdays Free ev
From the 7th annual savannah book festival, the Astronaut Wives Club is discussed. Good morning. It is nice to be here. I heard there was a rumor i didnt make it out of new york city because of the weather so i am glad the volunteers believe this is me and i am here sharing the story with you this morning. I loved Great American stories and i love bee hives and a combination of those two things, as you will learn, led me tell this amazing, but looked over american story of our original asastronauts. We are going become to 1959 and the country is waiting for the announcement of the mercury 7th astronaut. It is the height of the cold war and we are looking to these seven men as our cold war care warriors. These silver suited space men who are taking us to the star and beyond. So you have these matcho test pilots on the stage and the reporters are raising their hands and instead of asking, you know, tell us about your bravery or why you wanted to volunteer, the reporters want to hear what
Quarters and the field station where the new asset was. We went back to basic toes communicate. It wasnt the stone age, but it was pretty close we said. We did have a technical something that was sort of out of this world at the time. We have our new asset. He is okay. We are keeping this one alive. Enter my coauthor who is on assignment in garbone as our chief of stations. She returns home and she is trapped with trying to determine what in the heck happened. She has a Small Task Force of people who begin this effort. At the same time jean and her people are looking at our losses, the fbi has also established a task force. They suffered similar problems with their soviet cases during the same time period as we. All right. Now we are going to have to fast forward. It is early 1991, a little over five and a half years later and we still dont have a clue as to what happened. That is not to say there were not plenty of explanations and leads. There were lots. Each was fully investigated a
Came which is to upset the russians. The more they can do the more likely it is russia comes to the bargaining table. The russia of love spee and now they thought that could go on forever. It was brilliant. That gives the enormous amount of leeway to mao for public support and nixon says he could not have done this and he says they always tell you what they are thinking. That is extraordinary. But of all the people with meticulous manipulation the tiniest of details and everyone was bamboozled. That really means the whole world has changed in the greatest irony is it all started with montagu only to real gloves in his life. Pingpong and the soviet union will of the chinese and americans had gone their own way in an end to where are they today . Thank you. [applause] this microphone does not project but it is important for the internet. Please raise your hand to come up to you. What inspired your research to even look get this story . Yet was a mixture. Going to beijing to wonder why on
Here with you to do this oral history. Its a pleasure, sir. Lets begin kind of not at the beginning because there is a beginning before this but april, 1959. It was one of the happiest days of my life. That was a day that was congregated officially as the u. S. First Astronaut Group and previous that is the day we first showed up officially as the first astronauts in the United States at Langley Field, virginia. It had become nasa in a hurried turnaround as you recall and astronaut selection and training basically was run by the people that work from langley. We all reported under washington and that is where the initiation and the introduction, the preselection, all that sort of routine went on and then as you know, we had a physicals elsewhere in the country. But once the selection was made, of course we reported to those people at Langley Field which was kind of neat for me because i was already stationed in norfork in a job in which i didnt like in the first place. So it was an eas