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Transcripts For CSPAN2 2013 Texas Book Festival Sunday 20131027

for today and c-span 2 booktv so make it all proud just to give a brief sense of how we do things in the next 15 minutes. i'm going to introduce just an art. make sure there've book will have a discussion. i think the title of this panel is rebuilding or evolution informally in my mind. it is detroit and austin that the beginning and end of all things. that appeals more to my grammatic sense. so jeff kerr is the author of austin texas history. the first was austin, texas: then and now. the next was republic of austin. on the most recent one of the reason we are here this morning is "seat of empire: the embattled birth of austin, texas," which is a history of the founding of boston and the battle in the republic of texas over by this capital would need. jeff also raised a regular history and he is practicing pediatric urologist at the same time. if we have and the emergence sees. the author will take care of them. mark binelli is the author of vincennes msi, contributing editor to relate to and men's health -- men's journal, sorry, mark. so mark was born and raised in the detroit area. he went to university of michigan as an undergrad and got is an essay from columbia university were mark and i were actually classmates. so it's a bit of a reunion for us. his new book is "detroit city is the place to be," which is the fruit of three years spent living in detroit after he been in new york, but went back to detroit wanted to find out what kind of place that had become and what it had to tell us about maybe who we all are or what we all are as a nation right now. mark now lives in new york. he told me on friday if he hadn't had a disk it is detroit landlord, he would still be part-time or half-time in detroit. i'm sorry that have been. i'm sure you can find some good housing stock in detroit if you're really motivated. first, mark is going to read the book and maybe set it up in riga forest. >> great, thanks, everyone for coming. i'm going to read a very short -- section. it's pretty self explanatory. it's a description of the neighborhood near. depopulated. in my front 2 million minutes p. to 700,000 today. so there's a neighborhood that are really no longer neighborhood were barely neighborhood, a couple houses on every block. so i'm going to read you a little bit about one of those neighborhoods. people like to compare the amount of vacant land in detroit to the equivalent sized pieces. all of paris could fit into detroit's 40 square miles of nothing or to manhattan for a slightly shaped boston. such formulations inevitably lead one to imagine a contiguous land mass separable is a rotten when or possibly some thing beautified like a central park, which of course is not the case. they can parcels were spread throughout the city closer. two tumors whittling the body. when enough of those happen to cluster together come your urban prairie scum entire neighborhoods marked on the map. the inevitable result of a place built for 2 million less than half that number. an exemplary swath of perry had crept within walking distance of my history. some called the neighborhood i'm talking about south pole town, but i started thinking about it is that their shame which runs straight up from detroit river. on a two-mile stretch, once the thriving commercials if you can count the viable operating businesses on two hands. several of the unrecognizable storefronts having earned busch untouched as a monument to the dead. as a residential streets. they ran schizophrenically from obvious but to beautifully cut separate branches from old wooden bungalows scrapped to the trepidation of venturing into such lonely and forbidding territory. on summer afternoons, the effect noise could be deafening. and now the people sitting on their porches would stare, i learned country was applied here, too. it is not a giveaway for had not come you generally get to stand back, saving of course the doughboys to sergey's dedication to radiating inscrutability mns convinced me to drop the smiling part. mostly that the masses due to the absence of people in this far more than urban, putting 76 petition of the hills have eyes or texas chainsaw massacre in which nate cityfolk centered on the wrong turbo to find themselves in the business end of a meat hook. the scrappers are everywhere one sunday morning in broad daylight out of a stretcher greatly. the classic ipod types twice the length of his body and loading them out of the basement of a foreclosed home into a white minivan. a few bugs that are a couple wants printers came driving in a pickup truck, overflowing with twisted pieces of metal including what looked to be a number of shelving unit. in another failed its sheen and can fill, tyree guyton, and artists from heidelberg street had a range of venture discarded shoes shape of a river or shortly after he laid at his installation i noticed kids from the neighborhood reading right through the middle lake anglers pier one astros up, they said free shoes. is at oak grove warned warned me it is hard to find her size or not you care what a few blocks away past the church of the living god number 37, a white pit bull began barking furiously at you from the yard of a home i thought abandoned. when i got closer i noticed a young man and attacker scott staring coldly at me for one of the front windows. i bicycled with a single house festooning the most dead center of one side the street. dole could turn pharaoh, gnarled trees, despite its isolation from the two-story wood frame house had been neatly maintained with the handsome paint job and a lush garden of rose bushes in her tree surrounded by a picket hands. a round faced man in the berber teacher in bermuda shorts sat on the top steps of the porch had i stopped and said hello. his name is marty. when i got closer he had a cane. they proclaim to the excellent slicker number one dad. marty stuart miano industry and the napa valley, a sausage plan near eastern market closed in 1998. i made frequent deliveries to apple valley teenager while working for my father who sold them sausage casings. marty and i pondered, to we figured that we'd never met back then. i did think the pigs come alive pixie told me, widening his eyes theatrically signified you don't want to know. he told that while he'd never butchered it at the karmically unpleasant job of the slaughtered pigs into the web had he gotten into the habit of naming his pics as long as possible although he be wind to move if it got right size. this is our house or generation. prepare taxes. that's not happening. someone opened the gate direct sight of the house. he's back there? internet to be the family home. she tended the flowers this afternoon was fun to read back and made supplies. i do as much as i can't she said. the house had been the family for 60 years. 64 years my mother bought this house when i was three months old. he lived his entire life watching the neighborhood disappear around them here to barbershops, ice cream parlors, all gone. the neighborhood used to be street he said. he squinted at the thicket of trees across the street. you get used to it though. it's quiet here. mobile the crazy stuff. i like the serenity of my environment. to me, always a big pass the screen. you just have to be strong and keep god with you. what does the bible say? you are in this world, i said i thought it was that this will did not in it. he nodded right, mate. later realized they screwed up the quote. of course to rollina. [applause] >> one of the things who wants to talk about this morning is the idea of the frontier. it's a frontier that detroit is kind of reverted to win for just the. so with that. >> austin is where it is because of one man, miramar amal. in the story and going to read islamize first contact of the area. it's a story that about 10 years ago watched my interest in writing about local history. see the vampire tells the story of austin excretion against the backdrop of texas politics and to texas giants, sam houston and mirabeau bomar. details entertaining yet important for a different outcome would've left us with a much different modern state of texas. the city of boston was born in 1839, almost at in the early 1840s. for a few twists and turns of history, my current hometown would likely not exist. the southern rockies of the texas mountain and we would remember mirabeau bomar rather than seeing houston is the political titan of his age. but it does and they aren't we don't. the explanation begins of buffalo hunt. sna campaigner mast, quickly joined in local custom upon jacob harrell and other frontiersmen meant. one morning as lamarr, herrell and the others practiced in herrell's cabin, one of the sons burst into the room at the exciting news that the prairie was full buffalo. quickly a stretch of the outcome commander of the short distance to reroute the income which intersected the colorado river. two gigabyte they encounter great numbers of dynamic beast wasted no time in shooting as many as they could. with the way but didn't come a buffalo is easy to kill because of very poor vision it reminds untreated eyes on us not to detect danger. the survey hunters stay to find and possesses a vital powerful enough to send a bulk of the animalistic hide, it's impossible to pick off large numbers one by one without surrounding them is sensing danger. but they hunted for food from the anglo settler preferred this method. first worth a hundred shows a more thrilling technique, armed with one or more single shot pistols, he charged on horseback through the herd while blazing away at the beast. at the bottom of the ravine, bisecting the perry, and mirabeau bomar chased and shot with his holster pistols largest buffalo one of his companions had ever seen. later, one of the hunters would be able to gather the man atop the hill at the head of the regime. from the summit stretched a view which would give delight to every painter a mother of extended landscape. the german traveler later described as idyllic while in 1840 mcguirk called it a fairyland. a year after the mice as they, thomas ball wrote home to his brother, i must consider this the most beautiful country ever saw. the most beautiful lance ever held are expected here james jones in 1839 letter expressed equal enthusiasm. we are marching for a beautiful country if they possess a sense of grandeur and magnificence of ever witnessed in any other part of the american continent. mirabeau bomar, politician, firmer, and military hero was also a poet would imagine him regarding without assigning it a before and have elect on the health was the colorado river. perhaps he composed a diverse as he gazed upon the woodlands and the perry's shuttle in the waterway. smiles in the foreground of blackjack,, my folks trees. frame in the mars skier to either side were two beautiful strains of clearwater. in a short span of three years, and mirabeau bomar had escaped personal despair, obscurity and political humiliation to obtain a position of prestige and power. they'll assume command in embryonic embryonic nation destined for great as. he had just finished a buffalo hunt on bringing down in earnest in a mall, the largest of one companion had ever seen. he now admired with this poetic i which consistently stunned far cruder and less imaginative men than himself. faced with this awe-inspiring vista, vice president mirabeau bomar announced that they ambitious trained to fellow hunters jacob herrell, while a savory come edouard fontaine, james rice, for texas rangers and maybe the slave jacob when he cried from the hilltop, and they should be the seed of future empire. [applause] >> just to be clear, this is where we are next to the subway. >> it was eighth in congress right appeared by the starbucks. [laughter] >> so maybe he was right i guess. >> could've been. >> before we get into bigger questions of empire in history and geography, i just want to ask both of you kind of a more personal question, which is am i right in assuming that these books are kind of personally meaningful to you, do you have a personal relationship to these landscapes? you grew up outside of detroit. he went off to new york. you're living the high life? as the writer in new york. and then he went back in there for three years. and just come you're not from austin, right click >> rope in houston. >> is to have adopted hometown. he's now written three books. can each of the talk about mark first in najaf about what's personal about these projects and places. >> shortcoming out. detroit, as many of you probably know is very segregated city. as i said earlier, it's only about 700,000 people. the entire match or area to include the suburbs is 2 million to 3 million people depending where you cut it off. growing up in suburban detroit and spending a lot of time in the city as a kid, got my parents were talking immigrants. my father was a knife sharpener, so i was in the city all the time. he always sought a very special place in my heart. seeing the way detroit has been portrayed over the years in films and media, i always thought i would write about the city in some way. i thought it would take the form of a novel. then around two dozen nine, beginning 2009 with the world economy seemed to be about to collapse in detroit in particular, the auto companies were on the verge of bankruptcy, i went back for "rolling stone" ran a features writer and the article just about the auto industry. and while i was back there, i sold journalist coming from not only over the country, but the world really looking at detroit is sort of a metaphor for everything that it got wrong and were coming into town for a day or two and were writing what i thought were superficial portraits of the city. so for me as a native, i started thinking how may be i could bring a more new ones hopefully to the story, really spend some time there. not only write about, you know, the assertive crudeness, most most obvious dark side of what goes on to a postindustrial city, but also bring out things like the weirdness of the place. it's a very strange and darkly funny place. i wanted to most of all bring out the stories of people who still live there. a lot of the photos you see at detroit on mine are shots of old factories that have been a man and for 40, 50 years. you never see any people in these photos. i really want to hang around and talk to people who live there and get their stories. so that was my goal. >> i'm curious coming and you have old friends who were still there that you hung out with? were there elements of the debris fell back into your life at all? or was it really this new detroit that you are interested and click >> my parents and my brother are still there living in the suburbs, so that was just great for me personally. i moved into the city proper. the one funny day. the warehouse buildings where it's been kind of converted. it was the very beginning of this little tiny justification in the downtown core. though when i first arrived, the first neighbor and that, one of the first things he told me it was about how he would carry his gun when he walked his dog and i should be careful in the neighborhood. it wasn't exactly then. when i got there, i remembered making deliveries for my father to one of the shops on that street when i was a kid. so they were little connections like that would have been throughout my reporting. i would meet somebody who knew somebody i knew, things like that. >> so my question is why do you love austin so much and find it so much more interesting in houston? [laughter] >> yeah, my mother so complains that i write too many negative things. i live here about 12 years before i really started it or in the city's past. i've always loved history. i heard the story about the buffalo hunt and came to this intersection and was trying to imagine it. one thing led to another and i started taking pictures of historic site and it was my sunday triggered my thinking about a book. he told me half in jest that i should read a book and i think he was really trying to get you to shut up at the dinner table. but i got to thinking about the stuff i had discovered and learned and these were about sites that i was driving on a weekly basis but it previously know nothing about. it seemed to import than other people living in austin and perhaps in texas because this is a city most texans eventually visit should know those stories. my first book was an attempt to spread the stories. that made me realize what a rich history there really is here over the past 180 years. and writing these books, i think it is important in order to understand where we are and where we might want to go, where we've been and who the people were that shaped the events that we experience every day now. >> it was interesting. jeff and i were talking before this and i commented. i'm from massachusetts and i grew up in massachusetts senator drenched her hunched over with history by americans and news and then when i moved to boston, it felt a little bit scammed on the history. what was your response coming from houston? >> well, from houston -- in houston it seemed to me growing up there really wasn't any history there. houston is always seem to need to be a city about making money. if there's an historic site i can make money on, i'll tear it down. whereas i think it's a little bit different here in austin and things do change. there's just a very rich history here. i am amazed going around in telling these stories how little of the true details of it and the importance of it on our life now that people that have been here for a long time really now. >> i wrote down a sentence that really struck me for marks the couch applies to both of these books. he said the frontiers unless the ricin has protected to those at the facility for conjuring utopian images. i wanted to ask both of you kind of what the frontier means in the context of the cities you're writing about. i guess in terms of both what is appealing about the frontier and also may be what is scary. so mark, detroit as frontier, postmodern frontier. >> sure. detroit is a very old city. it was founded in tina one as a french trading post recently. this really for the first hundred years or so come even longer really, was just the frontier. it was the middle of nowhere, kind of a scary place to go. the sentence that he had just read means sort of commenting on what detroit coming in now, one of the things detroit has become today in the sort of national this idea that everybody has gone. it's a city that's been left behind by not only business in capital, that humanity come in another 700,000 people left there, which is something people tend to forget. extruded by some people at the new frontier. it's a relatively lawless place. there's lots of cheap land. there are lots of abandoned buildings. about 70,000. the year i moved back, there was a big news story about artists buying houses in detroit. one sold for like $100. it wasn't that great house, but it was a house at four walls and a roof. so there is this new narrative developing. at the same time that meredith at detroit be the worst lace in the world, the metaphor for everything that had gone wrong. it was also this idea of some sort of topical hope of rebirth. they were especially making the pitch tlp will, to artists, bohemians, trying to make detroit hip in a way, the new brooklyn, the new berlin, fill in the blink of the cool city. so i found that an interesting dynamic to explore because the coors i mean, there are aspects of the modern frontier that detroit does share, but of course there's plenty of people who never left and i have to live their lives there every day and they are not really part of this narrative often. so i thought they are being ignored with a very interesting fact. and also, as the amount looted two, the downsizing frontier of the traditional frontier coming in no, they'll probably talk about when you talk about austin, the dangers of the frontier are still very much the same in detroit in a way. it has one of the highest murder rate in the country. a direct connection to the frontier in my book. funnily enough, i was reading a section of a history book about where the french settlers originally landed on the detroit river at one point. so i bought after that stretch of the river and i was sitting by myself, kind of thinking about where they had shown up. they lifted his letter to show me he was a machete and a giant hot kind of in to a dollop. he said it's okay, i'm a licensed carpenter. these are my tools. and so i got frontier. [laughter] >> jeff, there's a lot of different ways you can talk about it, but i was struck in reading your book. talk about what austin is like and maybe of those dangers, but also the excitement of living in austin circuit 1940. >> to assert it different world. it describes the frontier is being this kind of wide section of ground that is the no man's land between what was here before us, meaning the native american cultures at what was coming, anglo cultures. what we viewed this wilderness for hundreds of thousands of years had been viewed as holland by a lot of people. that would merit while the bar came here, but they saw was a wilderness that they couldn't live in unless they implemented a major transformation of the landscape. that took several generations. initially batman buildings were reduced of living and come of laying out streets, building rustica travelogues safely in creating farms we would have food. what's interesting in reading a lot of the letters and diaries of these people, the aim of is that they recognize what a beautiful, pristine wilderness as they put it, this was, what the same time they wrote about the inevitable passing of that wilderness, that they would have to essentially destroy what they were coming on so they can take a hospitable place for them to live in. it was a dangerous place for a number of years. i was one of the big reasons than his unopposed was because of the fear of indian attack in attacks or mexico. there were numerous incursions by the indians, most of the comanche right into the heart of austin. they're in an parlays right about where we are sitting right now between comanche cover can't be whether capital is now and people scalped within a stone's throw of where we sit right now. so it was a dangerous place. it was a place where people didn't leave their house at night and if you did they've come you carried a loaded gun with you. >> is on the question i want to ask just. but if people of questions want to start lining up at the microphone here in two or three minutes. jeff, very quickly tell the story of the archives warrior and the statute he says is about two blocks from here, angela and i really commend the city from boston now it is a striking statue in a story i didn't know until i read the book of a kind of mini civil war within texas all these other things were swallowing around. >> mexico is still technically at war in 1841 they said two armies up to occupy. sam houston pointed to that as a reason to temporarily pull carbon out of boston. he shrank from a thousand to 200 people. the people didn't want their city to die, so they find it and archives to registered station wagons leaving town to load onto the land records and keep them from leaving town and that was their last hold on government. houston sends the men to collect the record and they got chased away. then he sent another group those little craftier. some unranked indiana fire bell to clear the white men out of town. then they came in and read up on the east side with the land office was come and they started loading up the records. the few people left in town at sixth and congress saw what was going on. a frontier woman started shaming the man or congregated down there to some sort of action and she pointed across the street is that what is the candidate mashup for? to the will of the campus of congress while she ran into bullets and came out with a lit torch. she took a look, didn't like the way was aimed at due to the right. thomas william ward heard somebody shall come up with your house to pieces. angela and a fire that cannot be a long story short, they came back and realize what was going on. they caught up with the crew that had taken the records at round rock. of course there was no round wrapped wrapped in those days and force them to come back. it's a funny story but if it hadn't played out that way government did not come back, we could be sitting in the middle of the prairie right now. >> i guess they would all be in houston. >> elsewhere, that's right. first question. >> i'm kind of relating to both stories because i was born and raised in the 50s in a small town in central ohio. i kind of related to george packer's recent tatian yesterday on where we went wrong and i've now lived in texas for 15 years, so i live in this contrast that i'm listening to, okay? i beg to address my question to you, mark. it is kind of two-pronged. one, the title of your book is detroit city, it could lead to be. i wanted to know why you felt that way because i have my memories of what i choose to go back to the 50s come even though my hometown is very depressed like youngstown, ohio and some of those. i understand detroit on a grander scale. so i wanted to know about the title of your book. the next question is what do you think, how long would it take to revitalize detroit and these towns in ohio that are very similar? what is it going to take to describe this connoisseur? >> it's a great question. there's lots of little detroit says you know there are places like youngstown, gary, indiana, cleveland. the title of my book is heartfelt, but also somewhat ironic. it's a line from a song ted nugent. the way the moment is describing at the beginning of the top when i first arrived in all eyes were on detroit and you could sort of project whatever you wanted unto detroit. so people -- if people wanted to a match in this artists, and that's what detroit became. urban planners, irving geary tapes who had ideas on how you could reinvent the city that is to cities for their field all coming to detroit to figure this out. urban farmers. so that's mostly what i meant by the title. si is a timetable for fixing detroit, it's funny even over the course of the four years that i was paired, since i started work in the book, i've seen amazing transformations, particularly the downtown and midtown core. i think there's certain advantages frankly with being the worst of having the reputation as being the worst, craziest, most unfixable city, a lot of smart people, a lot of ambitious people decide they want to take on that challenge. so there's lots of exciting things happening. the big problem is of course most of the city continues to languish. most of the city downtown core and is describing as the tiny -- what i refer to the book as the green zone and the rest of the city has the same entrenched problems with the bankruptcy discharge is going through in the absence of any federal aid, state aid. that part makes me much more pessimistic. >> good morning. i was from flint, michigan, just north of detroit and also porphyry and, mark, so go blue. two questions really. i moved to boston three years ago and the three places couldn't be more different. one, politically. maybe you can address a different political climate, a red state versus a blue state, the different ethnic on the health of the two cities. secondly, one of the things we have in michigan that is more scarce in texas is water that is global warming continues, make that shift the balance and maybe see alvy you're detroit and a less healthy central texas? >> shura, it's funny you mention water. if you're detroit a while come you get people talking about ways to shrivel inevitably come back. one of the things i heard from a few different people is despite the eventual global water shortage has the capacity positive for detroit because around the great lakes. it seems that a sad way for us to make a comeback. but seriously, you're right. the water is a real asset. detroit is also a big international border crossing with canada. so they're talking about trying to capitalize more on that. as far as red state, blue state, michigan generally votes, you know, on the presidential level they've gone with obama. but the governor is a republican. rick snyder. he is the one who appointed this guy kevin or, what is done as an emergency manager, basically running the city. he asserted dictatorial powers over the city's budget and finances and he made the decision to put the city into bankruptcy. so yeah, you see some of those device, conservative liberal divide some of the best to fix these things playing out in detroit. the governor when he took office made the decision to slash corporate tax rate throughout the state. you know, to lure business back to the state. he did not choose to increase aid to the largest and most troubled city. he instead chose to appoint this emergency manager and move towards the manage bankruptcy. so yeah coming out, it is not as i guess maybe in some ways texas and detroit -- michigan rather honesty from sbc maywood v. >> jeff, a quick question on that front because you and i were talking before about how we from the contrast, think about a place being in disrepair and maybe the tide shifting. we were talking about the difference between austin now, city of the future, maybe the detroit of 2013 for something of what detroit was in its glory days. but even the contrast of the seven days when it was not somewhere you would look to. >> right, but i've read about austen in the 70s. i was a care much. but downtown and 86 historic area was pretty run down. it was because of its run down it attracted some energetic people without a whole lot of money to comment tartar bars and music venues that eventually gained the notice of a lot of people. and that kept things holding on i guess until the city took an active interest in revitalizing down town. so far just in the past 10 years i've seen a huge change down here. it's a different place than in 1991 and even a different place when i started writing the books 10 years ago. >> it is kind of an odd advert in the way you are part time because you are writing the early history of a place that at the moment everybody cares about because of kind of what it says about the future and what is happening right now. you can kind of walked into without "the new york times" writing about -- [inaudible] or not that's because it's unfashionable or in reaction to what some might comment that orientation towards austin. >> it has come to be the place to be in texas. when my wife and i were looking to move back in texas in the 291, this is where we wanted to come. that reputation has only grown over the years. it's attracted young folks. this economic opportunity, which is key. but it's also a fun, vibrant place to live in. >> on another son of the motor city as well and from european immigrant parents, so i know what you're talking about. you haven't touched on my part of detroit. i grew up in greenfield, sheraton area, went to cooley high. i'm curious, what is that like al? >> again, you are talking about a lot of the neighborhood in detroit are sort of unrecognizable. i don't know when you were last back there. >> 15 years >> yeah, so my father for instance when he first moved to detroit from italy and i just early 60s, he lives in the neighborhood that was very german italian. come on seven-mile crash it. one of the things i did when i moved back was dry back to the old neighborhood with him. the house he lived in was gone. the neighborhood was completely unrecognizable. again, going back to what i said earlier, that's part of the problem. you can look at "the new york times" and read about these amazing developments happening in the downtown area. a lot of the skyscrapers completely abandoned when i moved back in 2900 pics to buy developers like dan gilbert of quicken loans and mike kelley chew on little caesars and then moving people downtown. it's really exciting. but she got a neighborhood you corrupt or where my father grew up and it's as bad or worse than ever in a lot of these places. >> mark, you mentioned earlier you were thinking about writing a novel about detroit. i was wondering what sort of push each got a nonfiction word about with the non-nonfiction paper tray. >> one of those instances where the cliché of you can't make this stuff up was true. i was back there reporting the story for "rolling stone" and i met a guy who had logged, one of the yangtze would do is sneak into abandoned buildings and take pictures of the ruins, which say hobby for some people down there. he took me into this downtown skyscraper, probably 15 or 20 stories is called the metropolitan building, the center unworldly jewelers were in shops where and was completely abandoned. we claim to the roof and were staring at this sort of crazy wintry landscape of being a skyscrapers. and as i said, i sought reporters writing the same stories over and over. i just knew there was so much more to the reality of detroit. you know, could be a sort of rich bottomless wealth of stories for me. and it was. the point i eventually had to leave when i came time to write the book as it is a type of place where every where every day would open the newspaper and it would be some new insight you wanted to write about, so i had to cut myself off eventually cold turkey to write this thing. >> hi, mark. another michigander here. we just all came together for this. >> do you guys have a club in austin? [laughter] >> yeah, saw a bunch of them yesterday. so there's a big interest for a lot of people to be able to help detroit's regrowth in any way they can. but there's always a challenge of understanding you want to make these efforts based not on iso or stereotype bad data. you want to unders and where the growth is happening and you want to focus your attention there. and in your opinion some in his bed in area, who understands how things are going, what can any one of us come to any individuals interested in a church, but the best thing we can do to help with recruitment support? >> that's a good question. there's a lot of great nonprofits operating in the area. you know, the frontier question you asked earlier has led to come in now, lots of that things, crime, but it's also created this void is really force people to step out. i will chapter in the book called diy detroit, about people kind of stepping and in doing things that people in austin or other sort of normal functioning cities don't have to do. so i write about this group of guys who just patrol neighborhoods and coming you know, actually look for and catch criminals. that's possibly slightly scary. but also needed in some neighborhoods. one other thing that's gotten lots of attention is urban farming. there's all these weekends plots of land, where neighbors are just getting tired of seeing coming up, the fields in the summer with the grass is literally up up to your waist. so people just take them over and start planting not only gardens, but little farms. says stuff like that is happening all over the city. i recommend doing research online. there's lots and lots of different organizations that could definitely use your help. >> this is going to be a last question. then i have one quick question for mark and jeff to answer in 20 seconds or less. >> sure. so for mr. binelli, what do you think about selling off the price or collection of the dia. >> it's a terrible plan. i don't think it's going to happen. yeah, you know, it's another thing that i really dislike about the emergency manager wayne mentioned earlier, kevin, why don't think he's serious about doing it, but floating the idea is disturbing. he comes out of the world of corporate bankruptcy. everything about the auto company bailouts, which i do believe are necessary, but when a company goes through that sort of managed bankruptcy, they are forced to sell all of their assets. they also get a large -- generally get a large fusion of cash i want that allows them to restructure and move forward and make themselves healthy again. and so there is no talk of that. if you sell everything off, you're not going to have a city that demand. >> so, that brings the session to an end. i want to remind everybody that mark and jeff will be in the signing tent after this. my name is dan oppenheimer. i should've introduced myself myself in the beginning. thank you again for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching live coverage of the 2013th texas book festival in austin on booktv on c-span 2. the next panel is due to start in about 15 minutes or so and it's a panel politics and president obama. but in the meantime, we've got to show you some of our past coverage from texas. >> writing as a scientist. i became a writer later. for me, one of the big responsibilities is asking tough questions in science. one of the things that's true about science ready to soften his cheerleading. there's not a lot of journalists who ask a lot of tough questions. a lot of headlines bcr about, decisively and in fact night scythians. it's not until much later with people start asking questions about things that happened long ago. it's important to ask the questions about nixon how science is impacting people's lives, but also to not demonize science in the process to the system and important to me was the people behind the science and showing their human is behind scientist and sometimes well-intentioned scientists have accidentally had the negative effects on people. i thought it was really important to present all these issues do not scare people away from the science. in my case, so much of the stories about african-americans who have a history of being afraid to go to the doctor because there is a long history of use in research. i didn't want to make that problem worse. so i think you have to think about the responsibility in any kind of science. science is scary whether you talk about annotate elegy, little molecules you can't be being created and used for things we don't know what's going on with them or cloning. it's really easy to sensationalize scientists to scare people. i think a lot about that when i write. okay, hundred dollars these things and make it so i the science, important issues come ask tough questions, but making it clear the science that we needed to keep happening and i don't want to scare people from going to the doctor. that's a big personal responsibility. people come to my events and will send you to the doctor were supposed to go next week. should i be worried? i spent a lot of time talking about okay, no, you should not be worried. you should go to the doctor. read the forms they give you. i spend a lot of time translating that for people. >> the point you make about demonizing the secret one because it's something i've had to do with both of my books, with human experimentation. an estate agent perspective you look at that and say how could you possibly ask here meant on humans with or without their consent. this was a writer, myers possibility is to re-create those epidemics that would make people so desperate we are losing one 10th of the population to doctors for itself in fact their patient, knowingly, unknowingly. so if you look at it from a different active in history, there's also a lot of us on stability there should not demonize. >> yeah, context is everything. putting people in the mindset of that this is what it was like in the 19 tens, 1950s. this is why people were doing what they were doing. when people pick up a book and start reading about research done on people without consent, they read it from today's perspective. you can get into a lot of trouble when you start looking at the bar path on your path through the eyes of what we see today. but in that context is important. >> malik come you mentioned one of the things we all share his illness and medical writing has that. another thing, and both of you read about those effects in your books. i wonder if you can talk about that a little bit, collateral families of damage. >> yes, my second thought is that they see being epidemic throughout history from the 1920s and it was a personal story to mean honestly forgot epidemic. literally there is not one book i could find in the subject. it was personal to me because my grandmother has been a survivor. that's the reason i knew about it. she was living in dallas, yes. 1929, 16 years old. she thought for 180 days. so she was never able to finish school. she had a slow recovery from that. i want to live live a relatively normal life. i knew all of my childhood there was some not quite right and she seemed very removed and detached at any time i asked you for the family about it, they would say with a sleeping rudeness epidemic. that's what piqued my interest and wanted to cover this beat even more so when i realize nothing written on this. surprise inasmuch as it considered for pot, when i give talks to interviews, i'm off in contract by people who say my great-grandmother had better make great uncle had that. now we know we at least one or if there is a lot of mental illness involved. people were admitted to mental illness is genetic and now they know it is related to this were to be epidemic circulating in that time. so this is certainly a personal story for me. >> that's one of the things about narrative science writing. it was personal for everybody. it affects everyone flies in ways you don't think about on a daily basis. it's personal for the scientists. their personal stories behind every bit of science that happens. one of our jobs is to bring us out and show people this is how the site was personal for you and the people in the story. it's interesting my book is about anything. the one story that really grabs people is in a lot of ways it is a story about the effect that losing a mother to cancer had on her family. so much of what happened to her family after she died was later used in research because of the cells to detail was how many things and also just living in poverty with a father who was never there in five kids whose mother died when they were -- the youngest kid was a few old and the oldest is 16 and they were sort of thrown out into the world. it's a very personal story and the number of e-mails i get every day from people who have lost a parent and read the storied connect on that level where people who almost lost a parent. for me, some of the most emotional e-mails i get are from readers whose day my mother or my father or grandmother or whoever important in my life got cancer when i was young were recently. they are actually still here. i didn't go through what her family went through that losing her mother because of herself. there used to to develop the drugs at my parents and grandparents. that is an incredible personal connection that people have with it. [inaudible conversations] >> and we will be back with our life coverage of the 2013 texas book festival in a few minutes. here is a look back at some of our previous coverage. >> major struggles of being president that you run for office and you say vote for me, i'm going to do these things. and parenthetically i want database, the image that many people in the modern political presence tried to create of most presidents are somehow corrupt and without conviction in repose, and say whatever they want to say. thomas patterson who is as far as i know the preeminent scholar of the relationship between the president and the media has said looking over the last several presidencies, i think he said it last six or seven. he says it's astonishing how i presidents try to be precise in what they say they are going to do when they run unless something big happens. two of our three greatest presidents, lincoln and roosevelt wrote their most visible campaign promises that god. lincoln promised in his first inaugural not to free the slaves, making humans trying to hold this together and stop the engine of slavery. roosevelt promised when he ran in 32 that he would balance the budget. which was precisely the wrong thing to do in the country that had 25% unemployment. by and large, presidents do try to keep their campaign promises. one of the real issues is how do you run a vast and complex enterprise like this ends to deal with all of the incoming fire? for example, president bush did not run for prez in it to deal with osama bin laden. he did clearly want to get rid of saddam hussein when he was running and anybody who pays close attention to his camp in speech would have seen he was obsessed with name -- saddam hussein. but he never thought 9/11 would have been. so 9/11 happens. when those things happen, you have two choices. you can say well, i ran for president to do these things. so this is what i am going to do. but if you don't respond to something -- this is a major shaped his whole first term. if you don't respond to things that happen, then you will fail. on the other hand, if all you do is respond to what happened and you forget to pursue the agenda that impelled you to run in the first place, you'll probably fail. so lincoln was somewhat ingenuous, although technically accurate when he said in the mid-civil war, my policy is to have no policy. that's not true. his policy was to reserve the unit come or high water and in the process he wanted to free the slaves. but his policy also realized he was so controlled by events that he had to create the type that could make it up as he went along. but every president, if you look at other president in history and you try to evaluate what is going on, you have to see the cons struggle that is in the mind of the white house staff, the cab, everybody involved in the enterprise between how to pursue the agenda he ran to pursue and how to deal with the incoming fire. and i tried to tell that story. >> as nasa's future goes, though to decide of america. and if not that is healthy, then you don't need a program to convince people that science and engineering is good to do because there was the writ large on the paper. there will be calls for engineers to help us go ice fishing on europa where there's an ocean of water that of liquid per billion of years. .. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. and thank you for being here. it's always a pleasure to see a full tent. welcome to day two of the texas book festival. my name my name is brian sweany and i'm an editor with texas monthly editor and it's always a great opportunity to be part of this event. over the years i've had an opportunity to do more and more events and it's always a treat because there's always such a wonderful response from the crowd. we are grateful to have dan balz hear somebody that i look up to and have for a long time. he is the chief correspondent for the "washington post". many of you will know him for his writings on national politics over the years and his emphasis on -- appearances on pbs and with gwen ifill on "meet the press" and other assad -- as sordid shows so i would like to welcome dan balz to the texas book festival. [applause] just a quick programming note unfortunately as you all know richard wolffe the political editor of "msnbc" was scheduled to be here and unfortunately he had to cancel because of a family emergency that had come up sowed dan and i are going to wing this together ourselves. we will miss richard being here but we will see if we can fill in the gaps of that commerce asian and in fact dan is one of those authors that we like him so much he did a session yesterday in the capital so we are glad to have him back. >> i will apologize in advance for anybody who was at that session if i repeat myself on occasion. i just want to say it is so delightful to be here. my wife and i lived here 30 years ago for a few years on the "washington post" had a bureau here so coming to austin is always homecoming for us and this is a great festival. it's been a treat not just to be a presenter here but to wander the streets and meet other people and hear other authors so with that i will turn it back brian's capable hands but i just wanted to tell everyone thank you for being here. >> as they trained editor they force me to dial into the texas editor. you were the southwest bureau chief of the "washington post" in the early 80s and in fact he worked here in austin as he said. can you just give us a sense of what you remember from that time? what were the politics and who are the players and what were the things you took away before he went off to a bigger stage? >> this is one of the best reporting experiences i have had as a reporter or have had at the "washington post." he came down here in january of 1981 and the bureau had been in houston set up as an energy bureau back in the late 70's and the bureau opened up in the middle of the 1980 campaign. i was the political editor of the newspaper at that point it was eager to come down here and move from editing to reporting. they said sure you can fill once the campaign is over and then i said do you think it would be possible to move the bureau from houston to boston? my editor who knew austin said sure we can do that and a couple of conditions. one you have to be able to get around the state gave the airplane service has to be decent enough and i said that's no problem. he said second you can't spend all your time reporting on the texas legislature. [laughter] molly ivins in those days had shone it was a ripe area for recovering. and bill writer who is my editor at the time said you can't spend all of your time there. now we have to sell than bradley on the idea of moving the bureau so he went into battle and came up with these elaborate journalistic reasons why we should move the bureau. then listen to him yeah yeah that's fine but is just a heck of a lot nicer place to live terry at. [laughter] so we got the best of all worlds. i remember when i was down here one of my friends who is at the old dallas times harold at the time when he learned i had gotten to move to the bureau he said that's better than winning a pulitzer prize he said. [laughter] >> you with apologies to our friends from houston. >> my wife's family -- has family in houston. we visit cost -- houston and it's a nice place but austin is a great place. [applause] >> the time i was down here was an interesting period rico's i arrived when bill clinton had just started his second term and i was here in that period. there were two things going on. one was the economic boom, the oil boom that was going on and the influx of northerners particularly in houston but other parts of texas but particularly houston essentially emptying out parts of the rust belt from michigan down to houston to take advantage of the oil boom as the recession was hitting in the midwest in particular. it was an interesting economic story. the political story, there were two things. one of my first assignments was to go to midland on the inauguration day 1981 which of course when reagan was inaugurated to spend the day with people who knew george h.w. bush being sworn in as president. i spent the day with george and barbara bush's old friends watching the inaugural parade and that evening they had a celebration as i think it was a holiday in. they had a buffet table and a centerpiece with a capital on it and there was a little placard on the capital dome that somebody put on and they had written one word, hours. it was this notion that the republicans were taking over in washington. what happened was this remarkable resurgence and what turned out to be temporary but resurgence of the democrats in texas. when mark white won the governorship in the whole series of new democrat officeholders were brought in and richard was one and richard hightower was another. this was a vet erie engineered lie in part lloyd bentsen and his operation to have put together a get out the vote operation that was below the radar of the republicans. i was talking regularly with the pollster for governor clemons who won the weekend before the election had governor clemons comfortably ahead and on election day when i called him i said how does it look? he said something is going wrong here. we are seeing turnout patterns that we have never seen in texas so clemons lost that race. i solve the pollsters some months later and i said, what was it like when you had your first meeting with governor clemons after the election? he said well i think it was a little bit like napoleon's intelligence chief after waterloo. [laughter] at any rate the other fun thing about being down here as a reporter was by god to the cultural stuff and rome -- were on and widely so we ended up with a great appreciation for austin as a place in for texas as a place. >> let's fast-forward to the book. the book is called "collision 2012" obama v. romney and the future of elections in america. i'm going to start with a process question before we get into the content question only because they think of myself as a journalist who was over at the legislature every day this session covering the special sessions and out crazy that schedule is and how much information you are processing. tell me a little bit about the conception of the book like this. you wrote about the 08 election. this one you authored as well and i wonder as you were sitting down as a reporter who is taking things in on a daily basis how do you then manage the huge task of putting together a book like this project? >> the good thing about doing it look afterwards is you get to rethink it and you get to essentially unpack everything you had been doing as a daily journalist and retell the story in a more coherent way. the cliché about newspaper journalism is the first rough draft of history and it is very rough. when i or anybody else goes back and looks at the things we have written in real time is often embarrassing because you overemphasize things which fade quickly or you miss or under estimate things that turn out to be important. and so the value of doing the book is that you can finally set the right context for the events that you have been covering. when i did the 2000 a book with haynes johnson who is a great reporter and friend from the "washington post" who unfortunately died just before the book came out -- haynes had written 14 books. he called me one day and said i'd like to talk to you about the project. i said to my wife nancy, haynes and i are going to have breakfast. he has something in mind. she said if it's about a book just say yes. she knew i had written one book which was a fine book but not a bestseller by any means and haynes had written many bestsellers. haynes and i set out and i learned a lot and haynes. haynes conception is that all great journalism really is storytelling. you want to tell his story and his conception for the 08 look was we want to write a narrative history of the 2008 campaign. and so that has always been in my mind the idea or the conception behind this. so the process of it is that i'm reporting in real-time and will writing for the "washington post," not everyday but many days. a lot of that reporting obviously in forms or shapes the backdrop of the foundation for a book. but at the same time i always -- i did a lot of interviews with the campaign people in particular and with some of the candidates and we will probably get into that discussion. some of those done on the condition that the contents of that interview not being revealed until the book is actually published. the idea of that is to try to get people to be candid and to the extent possible on the record in real-time is what happens after an election is there is a lot of revisionism that goes on and a certain embellishembellish ment. the winners are always given more credit for being geniuses than they probably deserve and the losers are described as you know completely out to lunch in ways that aren't necessarily fair. if you can get people in real-time to be even moderately candid and it's hard to get people to be fully candid in real time because they are fighting a campaign you have then have the basis i did a lot of interviewing along the course of the campaign and then afterwards though this was on a very tight deadline a series of deep interviews with the main players immediately after the election. i did most of the writing after the election i think between mid-november and early march. i had written a number of chapters beforehand and you will appreciate this as a writer. i had written for chapters having to do with obama's pivot after the 2010 shellacking and one of my editors said you no,. just make two chapters out of that and then i had another editor when he looked at those two chapters that i think those two chapters can be won. [laughter] so i think i wrote 250 or 20,000 words in the book is about 160,000 but the editors were wise. i called one of them at one point in the middle of it and i said i hate it when editors are right that they were right. >> i'm curious i want to drill down on one of the things you said that i want to talk about the two primary characters president obama and governor romney but you said and i'm interested as a reporter and writer myself that obviously events are happening so fast when you're covering things daily. again i think of all the events that happened in the legislature this time around up until the filibuster and i remember being on the floor that night and you're trying to interpret these events as things are happening but it really does take a wild with clarity about why things happen and what the dynamics are behind them. you had said sometimes it happens you overemphasize one thing or under emphasize something else and i'm wondering if there something that jumps out at you from that cycle that as it was happening you are thinking one thing about it but as you were able to get distance and put in a little bit of time between the happening you thought about it in a slightly different way. >> there a couple of things. one is a very tiny one but it's emblematic of the era we are in. there was i remember one night i came home late or i wasn't watching twitter in a timely way anyway i checked the twitter feed and twitter had exploded over a comment that hillary rosen who is a democrat had made about ann romney saying ann romney had never worked a day in her life. in the vernacular of today twitter exploded over this. it became a running story for two days and cable could not get enough of it. it was like this was going to be at least temporarily a shaping event in the campaign. everybody was paying attention to it and everybody was writing about her. within a matter of -- you could tell within a week to completely disappeared. it was a miner offense but it's a reminder of kind of how we are so myopic and cable seizes on something. a bigger one which is interesting and still the subject of debate and i tried to air out the debate. the obama campaign ran a massive advertising operation against governor romney starting in the late spring of 2012 and they ran $125 million in advertising. in one way this was a defining moment in the campaign and if you talk to the campaign people on both sides, that they believe that it was a defining moment. the obama campaign was able to make the case against mitt romney as being capable of handling the economy more effectively than the president. they went after his record in massachusetts. they won after things that the capital had done and they literally piled on. the romney campaign had very little response to it. they had an internet response but because they were short of money and because they have a strategic sense that they did not want to fight the campaign on the turf that the president had chosen had they wanted to pick their own battles they didn't respond. both sides as i say thought this was a defining moment as political scientists have looked at this. and there are a couple of very good young political scientist who have done a book called the gamble which is political science in real-time about the campaign. their analysis of the period is that it had only minimal effect on the campaign that in fact the polls if you look at the polls at the beginning of that advertising and the end of that there is almost no change in it. so it's one of those reminders that you know this was important moment in the campaign. it was important for us to be covering it and understanding it but you can sometimes overstate the significance of events like that given give another forces that affect the campaigns. >> lets dig into the characters and sort of see. they're a couple of questions i want to ask specifically about it. in the time he spent with president obama in that campaign apparatus as they saw they were nearing a victory do you think he is now able to run a second administration the way that he had planned in terms of what he was campaigning on which is to say of the check box of things he wanted to proceed forward on is it working in the way that he hoped that it would or as offensive change in washington have a change in large part because of a certain senator from the state of texas has the dynamic switch in such a way that the expectations were in 12 bears no resemblance to what is happening in d.c. today. >> is a really great question. i think the second term has not played out as the president had hoped all though i think is hope for having it play out the way he wanted was somewhat misplaced. one of the interesting things as i went through this process of writing the book can't cut the 2008 campaign will always be remembered as an historic election obviously and one that people will want to look back on. i don't think that's the case in 2012. it it was obviously a more negative campaign and a more negative period but i thought particularly as i was writing this book it was a more important moment in the history of the country because it was -- because of what it said about her politics. as i watched the last several months of the campaign play out, that we think the campaigns are there to help resolve differences and to resolve the base and point the direction for the winners to follow that the country was so divided that no matter how the election turned out the other side -- the losing side would not be easily willing to give up the fight that they had been waging in the campaign and so i think the president came out of the campaign believing he had a mandate which is common for presidents who wins first time or particularly second time but is often overstated the size of that mandate. i think that even people around the president in that period between the election and the second inauguration said to him don't overinterpret the mandate. you did win but the reality is he won by a smaller margin the second time than the first time which is very unusual in a re-election campaign. so i think it was almost inevitable that he would be frustrated in trying to carry out the agenda. he came out of the campaign as we could see in those first months and if you think back his very robust inaugural address i think he came out of it with a sense of i am going to push and fight hard for the things and hopefully i can get at least some republicans to go along but he was not going to repeat what he felt were the mistakes of his first-term particularly in the debt ceiling battle in 2011 and i think he felt that he could take his argument to the country in his second term he could force the republicans to compromise. it hasn't turned out that way as we saw during the government shutdown and we may see it as we keep going ahead. >> i know this is slightly rolling forward in the book but i'm curious if one of the signature elements of this administration and the light in washington is the affordable health care act. are you surprised at the degree to which they're having difficulties in rolling out the web site? does that surprise you about what you know about the obama white house and is this something that's to be expected given how divisive politics are in d.c. where you have one site side that is pulling very hard for it to not work at all? what is your sense of that into and to what degree will this impact what happens to his domestic agenda going forward? is there anymore but domestic agenda at this thing cannot get sold? >> there is no question this is the biggest single thing that will define his domestic legacy. it was an enormous accomplishment to get it passed. people have been trying for 100 years to get some kind of national health care passed so he will get credit for that but if it turns out not to function the way he promised he will pay a price for that. we don't know the answer to that yet but i think people look at the technological competence of the obama campaign of the 2008 in 2012 campaign and ask if they have watched the rollout of the affordable care act if these folks can run a campaign as skillfully as they did with the use of technology at the level they did why can't they make a web site. i think one is these are two totally different animals. two totally different groups of people and in a sense the campaign is not the government. the campaign is a private-sector startup company that was literally created and run with the ethic of a startup. eric schmidt from google is kind of a principle outside adviser to jim messina and some of the others running the campaign to get them to understand how you do that. the health care.gov was by hhs and outside contractors and that's a whole different process that they go through. the obstacle the president has faced is twofold. one is there are still a lot of people who don't like the idea of the difficulty selling this and winning the public relations battle. john alter rightly pointed out that some people who are dissatisfied with the law are dissatisfied because they preferred single-payer to what we ended up with. but nonetheless the president has struggled to win the public relations battle on this and now they are struggling to prove their competency. it may be we will look at -- back at this as a glitch but it seems more substantial than a glitch. it may simply be a web site that needs to be re-scrubbed and rebuilt. but if it is larger than that, if they are unsuccessful in signing up enough people there aim for the first year is 7 million people and they need the right mix. they don't just need people my age who are older and probably less healthy. they need younger very healthy people to keep the balance so that the health insurance rates don't go up. there is still a lot on the line and they are struggling right now to get it repaired. >> let's switch over to governor romney then. i know in stories like this sometimes the perspective of the losing end is often even more compelling in some ways just because of the battle ones at that person with an unbelievably brutal republican primary season that was. a lot of the candidates had shot to the topple me to fade always seem to be hanging on at the top and never seemed to fully be embraced or loved by the party. one of the things that is terrific about this book is how deeply sourced it is. you really do have the sense that dan is talking to all the key players and fills in a lot of those blanks you are talking about as things are happening so fast and daily reporting. it's a book that allows you to get context and perspective to fill in those gaps. one of the things that stand out to me in this book is towards the very end in the last chapter where you do an extended sitdown with governor romney after all was said and done and you got his perspectives on the campaign. i wonder if he would talk about that sort of what did he tell tell you it was there anything in there that surprised you as far as how he viewed what was happening? >> it was a fascinating interview as you say the losing candidates are often more interesting than winning candidates particularly when they are going to through the kind of kim made -- campaign that governor romney had gone through. through. i wasn't sure whether governor romney would consent to an interview. as a candidate it was difficult to get him to sit down for an interview. the "washington post" had one on the record interview with governor romney in the course of two years of that campaign. so as i was doing my postelection interviews in boston i asked a couple of his most senior people do you think you would be willing to do an interview and their reaction was probably not. are you kidding? that they said we will ask and one of them asked him and basically said you probably don't want to do this but dam asked me to ask you and he responded yes i would like to do an interview. it was scheduled for one hour and one of his people said to me tonight before governor romney is a very polite man. please respect the fact that you have an hour. he is too kind to throw you off but don't let it go on indefinitely and i said that's fine. we got there -- i got to his home outside of austin. it was just the two of us. that surprised me a lot he could as a presidential candidate is surrounded during a campaign and particularly by press people. for the governor to sit down with a reporter after the campaign was nobody else there i found refreshing and encouraging. we ended up talking for 90 minutes and he was quite gracious with this time. there were two things that i thought were very interesting. the first was his son tad had told me his father had some doubts about whether he should run and in fact the family had gotten together in december of 2010 over the christmas holidays and they had a discussion and they had taken a vote. should he run or should he not? they have done it for years earlier and it was a unanimous vote yes you should run. this time in 2010 the boats was was -- and governor romney was one of the 10 who said no. [laughter] so i asked him about that and he said to be honest i was not sure at that point that i was the best republican of all the possible candidates out there. to take on president obama and a general election and that someone like jeb bush would have run i mike not a friend. i will be honest with you will i don't think there was every chance he was not going to run but what i found interesting was we think of candidates as being ambitious totally self-confident driven and all the things that anybody who runs for president has to be and yet we forget they are human beings like all of us and everybody even when you are doing what you think you need to do you have doubts and you have moments of concern and you wonder whether you're up to it. he was willing to talk about that. the other aspect where he had some doubts or i should say as he saw the field assembled, when he saw michele bachmann and herman cain and people like that getting into the race i don't think it was that difficult for him to say i am the class of this field. [laughter] and in fact your governor had the best line on this long after his campaign. he spoke at the gridiron club and he said i ran against the weakest republican field ever and they kicked my behind. so governor romney i think felt he was the strongest but he also wondered whether he was a perfect or good fit for the republican party that may had come out of the 2010 election with a conservative head of steam. this was a republican party southern base -- he is an evangelical-based mormon but it is very conservative as you well know in texas. he is conservative but he's a conservative from massachusetts so there was a moment a few weeks before he announced when "the wall street journal" hit him with a nasty editorial about his health care plan in massachusetts massachusetts and he called his son tagg and he said i'm not going to run. i don't think i can do this. again he was talked out of this or talked himself out of deciding not to run but those doubts were real and i think things all candidates have to work through. the most interesting part of the interview was where we talked about the mistakes he had made and we talked about the self deportation plot which obviously was a very bad moment. he used it in a florida debate and when i asked him about it, to his reaction or his response or his explanation was 180 degrees in the opposite direction of what everybody else thought about that. everybody always said this was a terrible remark. it was a punitive remark. it would hurt him with the hispanic community. his response was when i said that what i was thinking was deportation is punitive and president obama had instituted more deportations than george w. bush or prior presidents. he said i felt self deportation was a more benign way of talking about the process that would occur if the immigration laws in this country were forced -- in forest and employers decided they were not going to hire undocumented immigrants, that people would make the decision that they were greater opportunities back home and they would make the decision to leave so he still didn't understand why that had played out so badly. the more interesting moment was when we talked about the 47%, and that it then secretly videotaped at a fund-raiser in may of 2012 and revealed in september of 2012 by david corn of "mother jones". we got to this quite dare the end of the interview and he tried to say well what i was saying is president obama has 47% of vote and i have 47% and i'm never going to get his 47% and i have to get the people in the middle. i said to him also these were people who felt dependent on government and would never take personal control of their own lives. his response was i didn't say that. now we know he said it. everybody has seen the video and read the transcripts. we were sitting in two chairs and his ipad was on the kitchen counter nearby and being charged. he got up and pulled his ipad out of the charger and he said i knew we would talk about this and i made some notes. he went and found the notes andy started to read some of the notes he had made and the question he had been asked. he never did read exactly what he had said but what i came away with from that was that even three months or almost three months after the election he could not bring himself to acknowledge exactly what he had said. he did not want to believe that the words that he had uttered reflected his heart. so he was still in denial about that and it was such a fascinating moment because again you rarely get that kind of insight into a candidate. they are either too guarded or they are too well prepared. they have their talking points down and i thought this was just a very human and revealing moment. >> that's very interesting. it's moments like that i think in this particular book where you are getting to peel away the speed -- you mentioned how twitter will drive new cycles and i think if there was a herd mentality prior to something like twitter there certainly is now because once something hits all of the journalists are following the same journalists in the same outlets in the same politicians. once some ngo's, you cannot take the chance of being left behind because your editor is going to ask you why you're not covering a story that may turn out to be nothing. to have the opportuniopportuni ty to go to that level and that depth to get to the contours of that campaign is really terrific and that's a wonderful chapter in part because of the things you say that he reveals about governor romney which is that he was not quite ready to acknowledge it. he was still reframing it in his mind. i'm going to ask one last question and then we are going to open it up her audience questions for which i hope we have very many. we will have microphones coming through. if you can't hear a question please ask and i will be more than happy to restate it. i want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to hear the question and if you have one please have one ready. you mentioned this in a previous answer so i feel like i'm obliged to bring this up. in the book there is a chapter called candidate will oops. i assume i know who you are talking about. can you give me a little detail on this? who could it be? >> the chapter title is just too cheap to pass up. [laughter] because of my background having covered texas in the early 80s i have always tried to stay current with texas politics and follow texas politicians. i have interviewed governor perry over the years many number of times and i'd like some others thought he could be a very presentable candidate. if you think of what i just said about being a bad fit for the republican party rick perry was a perfect fit for the current republican party. he sort of had a perfect pitch with a tea party even before the tea party became as prominent as it was, a successful southern governor who had been in office for a long time etc. etc.. so when he got into the race there were a lot of people who thought that he was going to be a very tough challenger to governor romney including governor romney and his team took this very seriously and really went after him. they did what they could to knock him down but he obviously helped them. [laughter] so the perry campaign was notable for several things. one was his real lack of preparation for running for president. second was just the woeful performances in those early debates. third obviously is that loops moment and for this the campaign that was riveted with dissension as any of the other campaigns that were operating in 2012. this was a campaign that was airing out its differences. they had kind of grafted new people on with old people and as the campaign was sinking into the abyss, they were airing out their differences in fighting their battles externally. so i asked to enter you governor perry after he had dropped out of the race and i came down here in may of 2000 and we spent an hour or so together up in his office at the capital. he was more relaxed about it than i thought he might be and not at all defensive. he understood that the mistake he had made in thinking that he could start a campaign in a few months before the iowa caucuses. whether that was hubris or people were telling him he will be great and you will do fine i don't know the answer to that but it was a reminder that running for president is unlike anything politicians ever do and even the most experienced candidate who has been through big statewide races in a big robust state like texas don't know what they are in for when they run for president. they order of magnitude of the competition to scrutiny in the preparation and everything about it is different. he said you know if i were to do it again and he obviously was thinking about doing it again i will try to be better prepared. he also said another piece of advice i would give to people as don't have back surgery just before you going to do a campaign. he talked about the fact that he is a runner and for a number of weeks if not months after he had his back surgery he was unable to run. he said running was a way that i would let off stress and got myself mentally more healthy and i wasn't sleeping well. he was sorted out of sorts physically but the most interesting thing was when we talked about that loops moment he said you know it was obviously a bad moment but he said my view was i went into that debate feeling better about it than any other to faith that i had been in. they had revamped the process of debate preparation which have been chaotic in the early campaign and brought in new people to help with that. he felt that he was more relaxed and better prepared for that debate than any other. he said what happened when i couldn't remember the agencies i wanted to shut down he said you know this was a brain lapse. it happens to anybody and he said i felt i could get past that but he said the reality was that was not what ended my campaign. he said my campaign was over before then. he said mike campaigned with sending because of those debates in florida in september of 20111 he did badly on social security and he did badly defending his immigration policy in the state. he made this comment about if you don't agree with what will be done you don't have a heart. that touched off real anger within the conservative movement. so he recognized the mistakes that he had made and the effectiveness of the romney campaign fighting him on social security and he had contributed to the loss of his own candidacy long before he got to the oops moment which we will all remember forever. >> thank you dam. i hope if you have questions please there is a microphone up front. i would like to say is people are assembling dan will be in the book signing tent after this so if you have a copy he will be there immediately after that. we have a good 20 minutes or so for questions and we will start right here. >> hi. i have been recently watching -- it's not on. >> we will adjust to the technical difficulties. >> wait for the mic. >> okay. >> hi. >> not there yet. i'm afraid because we are being filmed we have to have the mic on unfortunately so if not -- there we go. >> i just watched the netflix series house of cards with kevin spacey wonderful show but it left me a little bit disappointed about politics. if you can imagine you know the machinations of washington d.c. being full of favors and ioan accused and blackmail and whatever else. yesterday in obama part one jonathan adler kind of did obama as being too genuine for politics and i was wondering how you felt about that. >> that's a terrific question. it's a terrific question and there is a normality and president obama that we don't see an all politicians. he is not unique in that regard but he loves being with his family. he loves being with a close circle of friends as john alter said yesterday. he is not a needy politician and that is unusual. i commented yesterday that a person who was very senior in the administration said as he was told of obama he travels light which is to say he doesn't not need a lot of people. he is a singular character and you know the washington can be caricatured as being terribly phenol. i don't think of it that way but we are at a point in our political history in which washington is dysfunctional and perhaps more dysfunctional than it has ever been. i think there are several reasons for that and some of these i've tried to describe in the book. we are red america and we are remember barack obama's keynote address at the 2004 convention that nominated john kerry in which he said we are not red america or blue america. we are the united states of america. that is an aspiration of do we are still red and blue page you could argue that red has gotten redder and blue has got him bluer for a variety of reasons so those differences and i called this book "collision 2012" him part because it was a collision between the america that elected barack obama in 2008 and the america that elected republicans to control the house of representatives and to control a lot of governors offices and state legislatures across the country. it was a collision between those two americas and they were different americas and they have different values and that people hold very passionately. it is hard to reconcile those two americas easily in the legislative arena. the second factor which is an overlay of that which we saw play out in this government shutdown is that there is now a part of the republican party who came to washington determined not simply to slow down the process of what was happening or the direction that the country was going in but to try to reverse it and to use extraordinary means to do so. and we just saw that happen in the government shutdown. the republicans carried out a policy, a strategy i guess would be a better way to put it that they wanted to try to attach that the funding of the obama health care law to a short-term government spending bill with no hope of being able to win that battle. the numbers were never going to be there. the senate would not pass it and if by some miracle the senate would have passed it be -- would have vetoed it so it was a losing strategy that they kept playing one version after another. i always thought that speaker boehner would walk up to the edge of the cliff and then convince the house conference to say okay we fought the fight as much as we can fight it. we don't want to take the risk of going over the cliff but in fact they did walk over the cliff so you have this extraordinary situation in washington now. washington is a town of favors and logrolling and lobbyists and a lot of things that people don't like. there is too much money involved in politics and we all decry that but politics at its best is something in which there has to be compromise in there has to be give and take. one of the things the obama campaign found as they were doing their focus groups was that a lot of people who were sympathetic to the president would say you know i think he has tried hard but you know i wish he could be more like lbj. and it got to the point that you know they would watch these focus groups and they would hear lbj and broke their hands because it became so common. because lbj was known as the master of the senate and as president somebody who could work his will to get legislation through. i am not sure that lbj could be lbj today given the environment we are in. so it is a different place and we could talk for a long time about is there a way out? i don't think there's a short-term way out of this. >> thank you for your question. >> it's amazing and you just covered all my ground. [laughter] as a historian i go back to the smoke-filled rooms of lbj and sam rayburn in texas and how they were able to get people to work together. i guess since you mentioned the tea party a while ago my question is going to be directed this way. i kind of relate the tea party today with the know-nothings under lincoln. my question is do you think that eventually because of the pendulum of history that the tea party is going to slowly fade away or are they going to be with us for a long time? >> that is also a great question and one i wish i could give you an intelligent answer to. you know they were enormously successful in 2010 in helping to fuel the energy that led to the republican victories. they were also detrimental to the republican party in 2010 because of some of the people who ended up as nominees for the senate. sharron angle in nevada and christine o'donnell and delaware , a woman who ran an ad that said i'm not a witch. it's not formally the way you try to win a campaign. [laughter] desperate times lead to desperate possibilities. you could argue that the republicans would have a 50/50 split in the senate today were it not for some of the tea party candidates in 2010 and 2012 who they help support. the tea party has been a double-edged sword for the republican party. it obviously has come back in force in this government shutdown period and i don't think we know what the consequences of the impact of that are going to be. there's no question that the party has taken a huge hit as a result of the shutdown. the image of the republican party and a number of polls is that the lowest point it has ever been in the history of those polls. you have to say to yourself is the same moment in which the country turns away from the republicans or is there a way for republicans to refashion their image in the 2014 and 2016 campaigns to rise again or to rise further depending on your perspective. i don't think we know the answer to that. there is a debate going on as you all know within the republican party today of who should we be? what is the right formula to become not just a party that holds onto the house of representatives but the party that can win the senate and most importantly be able to win a national election in a presidential campaign. that is the highest hurdle that they have got to get over and the one that has the most difficulty for them at this point. we don't know. we will see because there are people on different sides of this debate. obviously senator cruz is clearly stamped on one side of this but there are others on other sides of it and we will see that play out most significantly in the 2016 republican nomination contest. >> my question segues right off of that last comment that you made. i thought one of the most fascinating things that happened in the aftermath of the presidential campaign was the chairman of the public and party with reince priebus went on a listening tour and came up with the report that when the today's coverage came out it was mostly to compensate for the hispanic vote losses but in fact there were over 250 representations that covered the ground operation information analytics and so on. clearly that report did not resonate with the tea party movement but i'm wondering what your senses as to whether that report and those recommendations has resonated with any part of the republican constituency whether it is a blueprint or whether it has just been shelved for the future? >> a good question. what i would say to that is i think a number of the things that report highlighted on the process side of politics, fewer debates for example or improving the ground operation and getting back up to speed with technology are things that are happening. i think the republicans believe they will be more ready on those fronts and 2016 than they were in 2012. so on that i think there is a consensus that the party needs to do that. the other part of that which is sort of this kind of ideological question or the presentation question and a lot of it did focus on the woeful performance of governor romney in the hispanic community. i thought -- he got 27% of the hispanic vote. nine of every 10 votes for governor romney got came from a white voter and in a country that is increasingly diverse, that is a recipe for losing presidential campaigns often to the future. the republican party and republicans know this and have been sounding this alarm for years. republicans have got to find a way -- they are not going to necessarily win a majority of the hispanic vote but to go from 27238 or 44% is important. a lot of people thought the passage of comprehensive immigration reform was a first step to that. john mccain has said you know if we pass that bill it's not going to win one hispanic vote but it will at least put us on the playing field to compete on other issues with with the democrats to win those votes. it looked as though there was some momentum behind comprehensive immigration reform at the beginning of the year at the time the report came out and there was a bipartisan group in the senate that put it together led in part by marco rubio a florida senator. since it has gone to the house where the dynamics are much much different it has run into a series of roadblockroadblock s and it is not at all clear at this point that it's going going to pass in there are a lot of republicans who have argued that it is not in the party's interest to do so. i think that debate is still playing out and you are right that part of the priebus report as we call it has more or less been shelved or put on the back earner and we will see in the aftermath of the shutdown whether there is any effort to revitalize immigration in the house. the president is pushing it obviously but we don't know what the republican response will be. >> hi. my question is related to a point you made about how romney came to the conclusion that he was probably best qualified amongst all of the persons seeking the republican nomination. in 2012 although i guess some people disagree with that. this is a very hypothetical question and the question is, do you think it's likely or likely not that in 2012 or 2010 when the campaign started reagan was 30 years younger, still alive and all those people like baker and the other from california helping them could he have defeated obama in the election of 2012? >> i'm not sure if everyone heard of. the question boils down to if ronald reagan were in his prime in his previous election cycle would he have been able to pull off the defeat of president obama in 2012? this would be one of these great jeff greenfield alternate history books which i would love to read which what she would do brilliantly. [laughter] there are a lot of people who have argued with some legitimacy that ronald reagan could not win the nomination. he feasted for what he stood for when he was governor in his early presidency he could have not won the republican nomination because the party had shifted to the right. as governor of california he read raise taxes significantly and he legalized -- approved the legalized portion bill and compromise with democrats on a somewhat regular basis because the democrats were in control of the legislature. so you could look at that and say we wouldn't do it. on the other hand you could look at ronald reagan's say this was a very skillful politician. he would have figured out a way to adapt to the times and make himself presentable enough to have won the nomination so i will answer that question out of both sides of my mouth. [laughter] this will probably be our last question. go ahead please. >> i will try to make it quick. in the final days of the campaign did candidate romney and his staff actually think they were still going to win and if so do they think nate silber of "the new york times" was a tool of the obama campaign? [laughter] >> they did think they were going to win. on the day of the election late in the afternoon, paul ryan who is getting ready to fly up to austin for the evening was talking to one of the people in the campaign and essentially said i am giving serious consideration to resigning as chairman of the house budget committee immediately in order to focus on being vice president-elect. they knew they were going into the fiscal cliff negotiations and the lame-duck session and he needed to concentrate on being vice president-elect and i asked governor romney about this and he said i was not 90% confident that we are going to win but as an indication i had written an acceptance or victory speech and i have not written a concession speech. now to be fair inside the romney campaign they have done some of the nate silber analytics and my political science friends said those people deep in the of the campaign said their analytic show they only had a 20% chance of winning but the romney campaign and governor romney they thought two things. one they could see the the energy and the audiences as they were going around the country in those final weeks. i traveled with them a little bit and they were extraordinarily more energetic than they had been before. their feeling was there is a surge of republican voters who are going to show up who are not showing up in these polls. the other is they believe that the electorate would not be in terms of the white versus nonwhite share, they thought it would be a little bit more white and a little less nonwhite than it turned out to be so they were wrong on those assumptions and it misled them. >> my question is who do you see running in 2016 on both sides? who do you think are the probable nominees and will there be another look after the session and? [laughter] >> a great last question. thank you very much. i have been so wrong so upon on who's going to win nominations that i will refrain from that but i mean the democratic side is clear at this point there is a widespread assumption within the party and the belief that hillary clinton will run for the nomination and at this point she has to say no rather than say yes. if she says no they will be left with a much smaller field and a field that may be vice president biden will run at that point and martin o'malley the governor -- mayor of -- and there is talk of secretary clinton does not run kristin gillibrand might run. amy klobuchar might run and there a lot of people who might run. the republican race is wide open. it will be robust and it will be a great story and i'm trying to decide whether to do it in a look. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you very much. i would like to thank you all for being here. we very much appreciated and i would like to thank dan. the book is "collision 2012" and again he will be in the book signing tent immediately after this. thank you. .. but to have to to do with styles. jfk did not relish the close company of the vice president. he complained to his secretary come at leblanc and from the johnson want to travel on air force one whenever the two men were to appear together at a political enclave. not only was it important for the president to travel by plane together, he did not look forward to being combined to close quarters at the space president. kennedy also.obj talk to budget meetings. the president remarked, we never got anything done today. linda never top talking. for his part, johnson saw them felt at ease with the candlelight coup surrounding jfk. predominately easterners often argue there were about permissible cultural circle. he lacked the cultivation of the harvard intellectuals who advise the president. he could not traverse about recent literature at the arts. he did not go to concerts or move your plays. he was the ladies at the various gatherings the kennedys held for outstanding scholars and cultural luminary. the kennedy entourage for their part despite the president's instructions going to put the called an uncle horn home and considered him a crude exhibitionists, a loud clownish text and. within the social circle of attorney general robert kennedy, the hickory hill gang, named after robert kennedy estate in the virginia suburbs, the vice president was a favorite, but at one point in late may 263, a gift to bobby vice president lbj doll produced agricola to laugh. society of time disapproved of the disrespect for johnson later noted the merriment was overwhelming. the provocations of bobby and some of them recalled jim were pretty outrageous. johnson undoubtedly do with the kennedy people were saying in private, but try to ignore it. he was determined to be, according to columnist william white, first of all a loyal vice president and did everything in its power to live up to this principle. he never openly disagreed with anything jack did and went out of his way to make sure that he never uttered a critical word about the president, even to his old political friends in the senate. johnson enjoyed poking fun of people and had a gift for making rivals and enemies look ridiculous. his self-restraint towards kennedy had to expect considerable emotional price. he was restrained non-roman by loyalty and piety, he also realized he could not be a breakaway vice president like john nance garner amado ended up antagonizing franklyn rosado dropped from the 1940 ticket. if he could keep his discontent and resentment bottled up for eight years, he would stay on in 64 in four years later get kennedy support in its own bid for the vice president -- for the presidency. though he kept his tongue about the president himself, johnson snared at the artery surrounding him. his whole adult life has been dedicated to action and getting things done. the kennedy crowd often preferred, he believes, to talk endlessly about theoretical issues rather than act. but he also felt insecure and resentful in the presence and however much he chewed the president's own ears seldom spoke up a cabinet meetings or even get-togethers with congressional leaders. kennedy later complained to his friend, george souders. i cannot stand johnson's blog and face. he just comes in, sits at the cabinet meetings with his face all screwed up, never says anything. he looks so sad. johnson supposed reticence has a number of ex-con, the emergency steering committee during the 1962 cuban missile crisis aroused the contempt of attorney general robert kennedy also prejudice against obj. kennedy later giant during the tent meetings in later sober when the world seemed to totter on the edge of nuclear cataclysm, lyndon johnson never made any suggestions or recommend nations as to what we should do. after each meeting, he would circulate and whine and complain about her being week. in fact, as the record showed, the vice president did speak up once or twice during the meetings, but he clearly added asap with such foreign policies, his secretary of state, secretary of defense robert mcnamara and national security adviser george the period as her body, who already viewed johnson's grossly distorted lenses, has rolled some ex-con concerned that the texan was an ignorant lightweight unsuited to world leadership. the gap between the nation's two top officials extended to their lies straight jacqueline kennedy, graduate in farmington, connecticut had attended in paris. she was clever, fashionable and beautiful, spoke french like a native, but she was snobbish and extravagant. she was clearly in a dormitory handsome husband. she cannot be counted not to undertake one political responsibility, although when she dish impressed everyone with her talent and style. she was jealous of her husband underwent minimus often resentful in with john. she poked fun at mrs. johnson's devotion to her husband, remarking that one point that ladybird would curl up pennsylvania avenue on her hands and knees over broken glass from an end. if i may interject, a very snide, disgusting remark. ladybird in fact was smart, plain and practical, and excellent businesswoman and as jackie observed from the fiercely loyal to her husband. she was also exceptionally supportive and provided the emotional balance it desperately needed. if london romanced other women, she did not let it affect their relationship to matter what else happened, she knew she was the most important woman in his life. she was a fundamental source of advice and kept well-informed on all political matters. an article in the washington evening star said the gentle mannered mrs. lyndon b. johnson masked stamina, efficiency and a strong sense of purpose. she is feminine, fred and folksy. when johnson became vice president, she formed a small class of four other washington lives to learn spanish because she felt this hemisphere is terribly important and wanted to be a lot of speak the language of the people who live in it. >> on your screen is a live picture of the texas book festival in downtown austin. it extends over several blocks. it starts at the state capital income so congress street in the center of downtown austin. live coverage on booktv all day long and we will be back in just a few minutes with the next panel. >> as a young child, i faced racial discrimination and i didn't like it. as my mother, my father, grandparents, great grandparents, why segregation? by racial discrimination? that's the way it is. don't get in trouble. don't get in the way. in 1955, when i was in the 10th grade, 15 years old, i heard of rosa parks. i heard the voice of martin luther king junior. in the words of dr. king inspired me to get in the way. some of my first cousins went down to the public library in the little time of joy, alabama, trying to get library cards, trying to check some books out. we were told by the librarian at the libraries were for whites only and not for colors. on july 5th, 1998, i went back to the pike county public library at troy, alabama for a book signing at hundreds of blacks and whites showed up and gave me a library card. [applause] walking with the wind is a book of faith, hope and courage. it is the story of hundreds and thousands and countless men and women, blacks and whites, who put their body and the wind turned a very difficult. in the history of our country, to end segregation and to end racial discrimination. >> several years ago, my father told me about a german ship sunk world war ii. he didn't know much about it other than it's name and that it was incredibly devastating. and so, i decided to look better. and what i discovered was that it was in fact the worst maritime disaster in peace or war. more than 9000 people died on january 30, 1945 when a soviet submarine, the s. 13 attacked the wilhelm farmer cruise liner turned ski ship. so put that into context, that's about six times more than those who died when the titanic sank after hitting an iceberg. during the initial research into this it today, i found that few people outside of the military took noted thinking in the immediate aftermath. as the years went on, it was mentioned in certain histories of world war ii that there had been nothing that was six morning and depth. so because of that, little is known. initially, i could find no information and no explanation for the knowledge. why did so little excess clicks that actually piqued my curiosity even further. i wanted to know more about the thinking and more about the people aboard the cruise lot that night because to me, the story is not only the story of a ship sinking, it is the story of how people came to be aboard the ship. it's about what it was like to come of age in a part of germany that until the early 1940s had remained in some ways isolated from what was happening closer to berlin. well, the first survivor that i found was a man by the name of the poorest way. for a screwup in east prussia and today he lives about three hours north of toronto. he was a 10-year-old boy at the time of the sink and. so i traveled to canada and the thinking naturally still haunts him. he thinks about it every day. though the loss of ice was massive and desperate as conditions were, stories like his have remained largely in no. i spent a few days notorious, but i knew after the very first hour that his story in the story of the other survivors needed to be told. so this book is the story of what i found. it is the result of interviews with survivors in the archives including the national archive in washington d.c. i was fortunate enough to spend time at the risk of post-memorial as well as the federal archives in germany. in early 1945, the ends of the war in europe was the site. the americans and british were closing in from the west and the soviets were closing in on berlin from the east. many civilians and some soldiers chose to abandon these volatile areas of europe by any means possible, especially for those civilians living in east prussia at the time. they knew exactly when the soviets were approaching. they did the same acts of barbarism, the same massacres which happened to them as happened to the russians as the german army had advanced its invasion of the soviet union in 1942. however, they were under orders. they were not permitted to leave until the very end of january january 45, the government forbade anyone to leave for to do so would've shown signs of of defeatism and it alleged that they were going to lose the war. >> coming up next, live from the 2013 texas book festival, john taliaferro and h.w. brands. [inaudible conversations] >> thanks to all of you for coming out to the panel this afternoon. we have with us to historians who have written respectively two new books about a couple of major 19th century figures in american history and politics. to my immediate left, h.w. brands has written this book about ulysses s. grant called "the man who saved union: ulysses s. grant in war and peace." internet further left we have john taliaferro, taliaferro for anyone looking on amazon or any other bookstore for the book is called "all the great prizes" and it's about the statesman john hayes. so i thought we could start by asking each of our authors, starting with h. dub you about their subject, why they want to write this book and why they wanted to write it right now. >> thanks, erica. thank you all for coming. i wrote a book about ulysses grant because i had many years ago decided i was going to write a history of the united states through biography. i had written my way up to the middle of the 19th century and then i had a gap in a pit to death in the end of the 19th century. i had been avoiding civil war for a while for a number of reasons. one is there's lots of stuff written about the civil war. there was a lincoln bicentennial that was coming and it was pretty clear in this 2009. it was clear stuff on lincoln would the air out of all the rooms out of the subject. i wanted to give it some clearance. when i eventually came back to it, i wanted to read about someone -- i had a very specific need. i needed an individual whose public career or adulthood could span from 1845 when jackson died and was still going in about 18 a.d. when my next subject can theodore roosevelt became an adult. i needed someone who pretty much rules out abraham lincoln, who toys through no choice of his own in 1865. the other reason was i wanted to write about a soldier. my observation and reading history has convinced me that soldiers have an outside important than human history. this is because it's human history. the war mentality. i wanted to pick someone who has shown no particular promise prior to his rise as a soldier and quite admirably. so that would be writing about reappeared the other thing was i also wanted to correct a problem that people like me who teach american history contribute to in our day jobs. that is we tend to divide american history at the end of the civil war. so i'm teaching an introductory class on american history the ghost of the colonial science in 1865. the second half of the course in 1865. it suggests something ended in 1865, which of course he did. it was the civil war. the problems that gave rise to civil war didn't end. in fact, they simply took on a new form that became it so much more more stubborn than ever. so i wanted someone whose career included both the civil war and reconstruction. if you narrow it down, he became my guy. >> one quick follow-up to that. so grant has been writ about in biographies. this was very warm and also corrected a lot of misimpression of grant. sincere person, looking to fill the gap historically, chronologically, we surprised that you found about grant? >> i wasn't surprised about grant because i had a big advantage over a pot of people who read history and then i teach history. i've been preparing to write this book with previous 25 years. i knew the ground of reconstruction civil war. one of the things i nail there's never been a more difficult time but after the civil war. war is easy. politics is hard it is one of the attractions of war because the question that i posted my students every semester is a very basic question of history. why is there were? why do the humans go is worse off as we do? every society does it every society makes a big deal for and i want to know why this is so. they become straightforward and more. as you look at the history of the crisis in the united states, centerpiece of the book, in the 1840s and the east, things get complicated because north and south have different views about her handle the issue of slavery. each side, all parties have votes. the policies come you have to listen to the other side. they can frustrate we are trying to accomplish. even if you're convinced of god morality on your side. you can't do what you want and tell war breaks out. the biggest mistake was to succeed. then you shift from politics, where they had a veto over what could happen to slavery to the battlefield where you don't have a veto at all. if you resort to war, you have to accept the outcome of war. you lose the war and you lose the things you want to fight for. so that's the easy part. with grant, including napoleon sherman and robert e. lee, one of the reasons they were drawn to war and were so good at it is that they thrive under the clear life of war. things tend to be black and white. there is your price and the enemies. you live or die. when the war ends and grant becomes president during reconstruction, things get all great-aunt. i wanted to draw the contrasts. one of the points in the book is until quite recently, where it was considered one of the two or three presidents in american history. you can give reasons for this. there were scandals, that sort of thing. but it's a demonstration of a contradiction of what's generally considered to be a truism. that is the vic is that they history. that's not the case in american history is that the civil war. in fact, it was the southern interpretation of the civil war is lost cause, was in the slavery slavery period of states rights of all this. he was a great general and grant was a butcher. those were the ones that took hold until fairly recently. so i didn't set out trying to rehabilitate grant as president. that was a side effect of the project. grant will never be ranked as a great president, but he was a whole is better than he was given credit for. it was mostly a matter of standing up for principle rather than getting results. grant was the first president in american history to take the rights of native americans seriously. he was the one to institute policy, setting aside reservations. more or less it didn't last very long. it couldn't hold western settlement on the part of the majority. grant also is the only president in abraham lincoln and lyndon johnson to take civil rights for african-americans seriously. read was the one who broke up the plan on the south. he could not hold back the tide of public opinion in a pretty racialist or racist society. and it demonstrates there were limits to a democracy. one of the fundamental questions is what you do in a democracy if the majority support the policies that is simply wrong, unethical, immoral. granted know what to do. in fact there's no good answer to the question. >> your subject is someone there has been astonishing career when he became like an secretary and remains an active influential figure in american politics until teddy roosevelt administration in which he served as secretary of state. but for all his accomplishments in the last experience is hasn't had a biography written since the 30s. how did you come to write this? talk about what you found. >> well, there is ulysses grant and nurse sean hayes. [inaudible] >> i'm sorry. is that working? gray. as i said, there is ulysses grant in the sean hayes and their lives paralleled each other very closely and intersected at similar times and we can talk more later about lincoln and the civil war all the oxygen out of the room. my approach is a little less methodical. i am not as a trained historian. i'm basically a reader of the books i've written, my hunting ground, my reading ground. as i've read and research, john hay appears like in the old movie in the corner, every photo from that. , from as mesa title from lincoln to roosevelt. what i'm looking for is a man with a story, is incredibly dimensioned and he himself is a storyteller. he was one of the great literary figures of his time as well as one of the great public figures. i guess what really tipped my hand to dig deeper to john hay was when i discovered novel that was john hay at abraham lincoln's bedside, he was mckinley at his deathbed. i realized that in history, to a lot of historians and people i talk to, to the hands-on accordion, and cannot one hand, theodore roosevelt on the other. you open that apart and off the chart is in american history fallout and seeing very beautifully in between. as bill said, as with all responsible biographies, you have a vehicle to tell the history of the times. john hayes fingerprints were on every bit of that history from the civil war to his death in 1905, the first 50 years of the republican party. and i also realize a lot of people, the link in pete will, the lincoln camp because john hay of course lived in the white house with lincoln for four years and so much of what they know about lincoln intimately, what he ate for breakfast, how is that a horse, all of the things that we know about lincoln from all of the other wonderful lincoln books to read, most of those can be attributed back to john hayes white house. on the other hand, the other side of the accordion, you have another equally robust crowd and that is roosevelt crowd. john hay was ambassador for mckinley. mckinley brought them back to be secretary of state. he was on deck when america emerged as a world power. when mckinley died, theodore roosevelt kept him on as secretary of state. what i discovered is that a robotic people who didn't realize it is the same john hay of the history. so filling in that. and between was what i try to do and it turned out to be a great adventure for me. >> john, could you talk about hayes perception of grant? they met during civil war because hay worked with lincoln and of course also served under lincoln. it's interesting as you describe in the book it seems to be an ambivalent wearer key respects in this unassuming and unaffected years since some ways. also hay feels like the trade that grant brought to the battlefield kind of backfired -- [inaudible] >> well, john hay like lincoln but grant was a great general and then he won the war. john hay thought grant was a lousy president and there's quite a few who agreed with him. he remembered that the republican party had just informed in 1864 and was just clarifying his identity when the war broke out in lincoln was the republican party. after lincoln's assassination and after the unfortunate years of andrew johnson, grant came into office. as carrying the flag for republicanism, john hay felt that he knew as well as anyone what lincoln stood for. he had almost literally been placed in lincoln's blood. with reconstruction, struggling, there were a lot of critics of how that was being handled by the white house. there was a lot of question about what the republican party should be. we know that the grant administration was rife with corruption. john hay was working at the new york tribune under horace greeley. they formed their own splinter republican party, a liberal republican party that ran against grant. hay was very merciless towards grant maltby editorial and it didn't really matter if grant turquoise greeley, who ended up eating the liberal republican candidate for president. hey thought it was sort of in the conscience of republican has some from lincoln all the way through to the roosevelt administration never forgave grant for the soul in and of the republican managed that it thought had been established by of course his great mentor, i mean come his great president, abraham lincoln. >> i will ask bill how you'd respond to that. some things you mentioned earlier, grants every two native american rights and civil rights for advance for the lincoln legacy also albeit for a different approach than would have preferred. >> the republican party was born in two different intellectual strengths. one is anti-slavery. if you want to come you can call one is the conscience wing of the party in the corporate wing of the party. as long as they were in opposition as often happens, what parties are in opposition, parts of the party can hold together. as long as civil war was on, lincoln became the leader of the party was alive, the two wings could write together. during civil war, the antislavery faction of the pro-business faction made effective common cause. after lincoln died, it was almost like the death of obama, were the followers begin to dispute what did lincoln really believe and who was the true heir of lincoln? to two wings of the party begin to diverge because the anti-slavery. do we push hard for civil rights were equal right? that was a bridge too far for even some of the abolitionists. and then there was the corporate wing of the party, the capitalist wing this is the real reason we objected to the democratic control of the south was that they got in the way of the industrial revolution. i will digress briefly to say the big scandal of the gilded age, which are often blamed as grimsby had nothing to do with grant. the scandal of the transcontinental road with bobbi parker became president. and the scandal in new york with a function of local politics. there were a few scandals and grants administration, but not the next word very. but the problem is that the republicans now can't figure out who they are or what they're supposed to be. grant is this figure that tries to straddle the divide. on the one hand, it's fair to say in his support for agreement, the african-american former slaves come he's the last lincoln republican. of course lincoln himself at the other side. lincoln was a corporate lawyer. so lincoln was behind the pro-business legislation. if lincoln had one hesitates to say this about a tragic death, but it was, you know, the best career move he could've made because he exits the scene went you get messy. if lincoln had lived, lincoln's reputation would not be what it is today. he's generally considered to be the greatest of american presidents. but if he had to do with reconstruction, he would've come across exactly what grant had to deal with. he would've faced a revolt within the party and revolt by congress. one of the reasons we remember lincoln is that he could affect only by decree and slavery. those either seen the movie, lincoln realizes that was so wasting power and one of the reasons he's so concerned with getting the 13th amendment to the constitution. but it's a huge problem and john hay, a whole lot of people who are quite happy with grant while he was a general. they get him out of his milieu into politics. i thought other people who know more about politics not to be in charge. i'll just say this, that if you didn't like grant as president, if horace greeley had become president, that really would have been a disaster because he had no standing at all. the thing that made it successful to the extent that he was successful as he was the most popular man in the united states. any democracy, that counts for a lot. >> reminds me of another question. i want to make this not about republican, democratic party ideas that today but in small democrat republicans. grant is kind of them are democratic figure in that he's the one pursued for office, could've been reelections, but decided not running for reelection after two terms as someone who is popular and even at the time of his illness and death is a following by papers and that people hanging on, wondering what would become of him. where is john, you read he was sort of -- i don't know if he was last -- one of the great defenders of this tradition of gentlemanly behavior from the meetings behind closed doors kind of diplomacy pursued through talking it out in a kind of quiet judicious way outside of duty with other highly informed, highly influential people. said he was said he was kind of. >> well, another of the differences between grant and hey was john hay was very much of a patrician. he was cosmopolitan. he spoke four languages. he traveled widely in europe, dressed by the finest tailors, quote greek and latin off the top of his head. that wasn't grant. [laughter] and not to stretch the comparison too far, but we talk about what was going on in the republican party throughout its history. the more grittier side of the republicanism were both embodied in the two characters. >> eric has raised an interesting question of the type of people who could pull political this country. i perceive a difference between those people who can get elected and those people who simply get appointed. he was a good example of someone who did his best work as an appointee. especially the gilded age, he was not the kind of guy that could get into too much. there was this distinguished tradition, dean acheson, clark clifford, george shultz. one can argue even the elder george bush, who really had this quite distinguished appointed career and willie had to have run either some outcome he lost in 1982. >> politics is dirty. >> that really has a lot to do with it because there is a monk i hate crowds, that whole bunch, a certain distaste, or at least discomfort or what democracy has become or is. as you know, henry adams famously said that if you want to see a contradiction of the theory of evolution, all you have to do is look at american presidents were george washington to ulysses grant. and there are people like that who either don't want to put themselves through what you have to put yourself through to get elected, or in some kind of vague way, usually unstated, they're rather dismissive, of this whole idea that it gets a vote. they wish may be aware so. i will just say that you don't have to look much beyond washington and the last two or three years to really wonder. i say this as a fan of democracy, but is the last version of the countries are run? you have to quote winston churchill who said democracy is the worst of government ever except for everything else in a try. >> i will have to follow john on that point. in the meantime, we'll do q&a in the audience. if you want to line up, alternative guys after the next question. so john, in response to that point, it's interesting in comparison to churchill because they think he said hey to some like churchville. but in reading the book, it was really striking how much hay worked with teddy roosevelt when they didn't seem to have necessarily a natural affinity of temperament or approach, but had quite a good working relationship. >> well, they didn't box a lot together. >> john hay was like a son to abraham lincoln. lincoln had not been very close with his eldest son, robert for a number of reasons. they were just a part often. haywood is treated like a son and was absolutely stricken with 35 years later, when theodore roosevelt came into office, who very set money, john hay became like a father to theodore roosevelt. he had not roosevelt when he was a little boy. roosevelt was exactly 20 years younger than hay. roosevelt's father had died when he was in his 20s and college. and so, they did have a lot of differences with teddy and for john hay along the avenue and his top hat was pretty good xers dies. and yet, they had a terrific reporter. john hay essentially was the guy who walked and taught softly, while theodore roosevelt granted the big stick. and they got in the habit of one roosevelt would go to church on sunday morning, he would come by on the side of what is now the hay adams hotel and they would fit in his parlor and talk about politics and talk about what was going on publicly. teddy roosevelt with say i made all the big decisions. i was the administration. but it served him very well to have this avuncular paternal figure, giving him in face throughout his term. and they were terrifically well as a team, i discover and declared my book, more so than people really realize. >> gray. we will start with questions. >> thank you. my question is for mr. brands. i was really stand in your books to the extent to which between the wars the amount of his failure and humiliation. it seems to me into his mid-30s, like you said, working for the fathers, separation from his wife. then he goes on to become the highest ranking general since washington and a best-selling author. my question is first, did anything like that ever happen now? i'm guessing not. second, without transformation bebe, and in the mid-19th century? are there other figures like that who had that dramatic postscript? >> whether this sort of late success could happen today, i am guessing it could. but it would require a great crises on the order of the civil war or world war ii or send them like this because it only worked for a grant because it utterly change the context in which he lived. now i try to account for the spirit of grant's life, i really had to do my best to suspend the historians tulip hindsight because i knew what he became. i was tempted to go back and look for clues that this is what he was going to become. of course grant had no idea this is what he would become. i'm pretty confident they had not been a civil war, grant would never have amounted to anything. one of the reasons i say this is unlike some other public figures, whose ambition was evident to a lot of people, who probably would have succeeded at some tenets not this or that or the other thing. if you look at linda johnson. you can see the ambition. here's a guy who grows up in the hills and he's going to become something. with grant, i knew what he became. i knew he became the great military figure of his age, the most popular world figure after he left the white house. i'm looking back. where's the ambition that makes this all possible? maybe i was not very observant, but i couldn't find it. and so there's a moment that i describe in the book were in the early part of 1861, grant had to humiliate himself by except in an offer to work for his younger brother in the family business, something he tried to avoid the whole time. he's nearly 40 years old and is living in a rented house in kalina, ellen away. the high point of his days playing with the little clip on the floor of the living room. he seemed to be reasonably content. people knew him that did into his bitter or his life had come to anything. now, that was his life. i meant the work comes and he discovers in himself something he had no clue about as far as i can tell, that he had this genius military command. if you think that, it's not too surprising he would've found it has more is this different sort of thing that peeves. he has served in the war with mexico in a junior position. there you take other people's orders. but he discovered that when he had command, he was really good at it and he rocketed to the top of his profession. if not for the war, that would've happened and he would not lift up the rest of his life at that particular talent undiscovered. >> to add to bill's answer, briefly, just two words, colin powell. i've yet run for president, united had elected, certainly would in a best-selling author. who knows what kind of trouble his administration would've got in. >> i had an ancestor, playback caucasians who served under sherman and grant. he was a brigadier general. i spent years studying his campaigns under sherman and grant and i've read a lot of books, got a lot of stuff from the library of congress on hayes. the guy with a book called the best hated man. i was real curious. i ordered that book and i found out, my ancestor who served in affably under sherman and grant was hated i grant, sherman, sherry dan and every soldier. he was appointed as chief officer babe ruth hayes and he died in that capacity. and yet, he was the best hated man because he was involved in exposing all the scandals under grant. my question to you, mr. brands, and all this research i've done, i understand that grant also had a civil war act, okay? he created the civil rights act, but he didn't enforce it and that became a little bit of a smudge in the scandal. so what is your comment? >> i'll take issue with that. congress has legislation. as a civil rights act in 1867 before grant became president. but granted was to persuade congress to pass something that came to be known as the ku klux klan act. this is the time of the ku klux klan was doing its best to undo the union victory in the civil war. some of you may know that when robert e. lee surrendered to grant at appomattox in 1865, that by itself did not end the war because there were several other confederate generals in the field and we spoke only for the army birth virginia. the great fear of grant and other leaders including lincoln was the confederate army would stand in engage in guerrilla warfare from the valve's. in fact, that's exactly what the ku klux klan became. the ku klux klan did its best to keep african-americans and their white republican supporters from exercising the rights they were supposedly guaranteed on the 14th and 15th amendment. so grant persuaded congress to give them extraordinary powers to expand habeas corpus, to extend law with the state authorities could not enforce the law. this was a huge -- there is a huge reach by the federal government because the federal government did not enforce laws in those days. when the state systematically did not defend the right, supposedly guaranteed on the constitution, congress set to grant, you cannot. they essentially let him tub once again. and if grant succeeded in breaking up the ku klux klan. said the claim dissipated as at the end of 1871, not to revive again until the 20th century under rather different circumstances. so grant did defend the right to the freed men as much as anyone could. but what grant understood was, and this gets back to everything about the difference between wartime and peacetime. in peacetime in a democracy, you can't rely on the army. you can't rely on coercion. you have to resort to persuasion. when people don't want to be persuaded, especially in a federal system like ours, it is fair to say a majority in the country as a whole was more or less in favor of more or less equal rights. there's a lot of more or less there. it's also very to say the strong majority in every southern state was bitterly opposed to that. so when can the federal government impose the national will over and against the state while clicks is a problem -- we see today with obamacare and whether texas flop in an opt-out. it is an issue that doesn't go away in our system. >> my question is for mr. brands. what was the most challenging aspect of doing this book for you? was this referred to as the suspending high-fat or was it something else? >> question is what was the hardest part about doing this? there was the issue of suspending hindsight, but the other thing was to try to figure out what it was that made this seemingly ordinary person so good at what he did. this comes down to the question of and what lies, all colored military genius. i'll use the term genius. not everyone would agree with me. we can argue about it. here's the thing. but is it that makes one person a great general and another person not? wireless grant the one who read the union army to the tree not george mcclellan, for example. i came to conclude that grant's gift lay into things. one that he was sort of intellectual and mental and the other was fundamentally moral. i'll let you decide how moral this other one was. the first is grant had an ability to visualize, to imagine the battlefield. this was critical of his time when there was effectively no aerial reconnaissance to figure out where your forces were, how they interacted with the terrain. this is something great was good at. you can see a little disagreement within west point as a cadet. he was a surprisingly good artist and at artistic imagination. the bigger deal, the thing that distinguished grant for mcclellan to not use this term. they see as literally true. quick to pull the trigger. mcclellan was at least as good as grant was preparing for battle. mcclellan was below that of the soldiers. he gave them everything they needed, stroke their egos but -- maybe i shouldn't say but, but he never sent them into battle. grant was to attack it is strategy was simple. a tack and then attack. this aspect of grant i found to be both admirable and appalling at the same time. admirable and if you have to have it work, you want people who can win the war and you have to do this in order to win the war. but it is appalling in that grant could walk around his camp on the night before a battle and he would talk with the soldiers and encourage them, but he knew to a statistical certainty that hundreds, probably thousands of those young men would be dead i did the next day and he could still get the order to go ahead. that's not something fortunately everybody can do. i'm pretty sure i could never get such an order and i think it's good most people can't. but it's having a separate agreement to a blanket vitrified generals before he came up with grant. i guess if that's the secret i discovered, that's probably it. i don't really know what to make of it. is still exist. maybe it's the higher chain of command. do you order drumsticks knowing that civilians are going to die? well, you sort of have to if you are going to be a leader of a great nation. >> this is direct aid to mr. brands. you talked about how history was written by david rees, but he also said most of the knowledge comes from without here's my question is why did you write the biography -- robert e. lee comes to mind, but someone from the south jefferson davis and the other figure -- >> the question is why did i write about them? [inaudible] >> let me elaborate on this interpretation of the war. one of the things that happen, people like john hay were complicit in this. many members of the republican party, those who call themselves liberal republicans come to join in with the democrats to run against grant in 1872 was this great desire and one can understand it, to forget those late unpleasantries as southerners like to call the civil war. they want to get over the sectional crisis and get on with putting the nation. part of this was the business takeover of american politics because one of the themes that occurred to the corporate class of the capitalist classes in america is once the civil war ended, the south became the new frame to your. they're even anti-capitalists before the civil war with an economy based. there are these enormous opportunities. by the way, this is what gave rise to the carpetbaggers. in order for this to happen, those words had to be killed, sort of had to forget about the civil war at what it was really about. the reason that grant got into politics, grant was not eager to go into politics, but like some other generals, including dwight eisenhower, people came to him and said, you know comite guided this country to victory in war. unless you take the home helmet piece, the area sent down. in grant's case, it was look at what is happening in the south already and somebody needs to stand up for what abraham lincoln said for. later on in the 1950s and people came to dwight eisenhower said the republican party is reverting to isolationism. robert taft was the candidate of the traditional republicans. they said unless event, the republican party will take over and handed the victory that you won in europe. the great class and the war will be undone. >> my question is for john. your book deals with a long period of time and kind of design this scene set history and politics. i was wondering, what person did you run across in your research and work them as the price you are a treat to also what event it is perhaps not very well-known digi democrats? >> the girlfriend. [laughter] but maybe that's not surprising. it's often been said about john hay that he knew everybody in the gilded age from all the presidents, major robert bair and, every significant not there, mark twain, william dean howells, significant review. henry james. the point is he was then collect and friends so much as they are collect teen him. it was quickly regarded as everybody's favorite guy. they all wanted to be around him. they wanted to hear his words. they wanted to be included at the dinner table and went away the next day. of all of those acquaintances, henry adams was his dearest friend. they both thought i said houses in washington and there's never been a friendship like this. they wrote to each other over many years. they wrote letters knowing that he would be received -- might ever be received. they wrote letters to each other knowing they would see each other before the letter arrived. they took in the box. it was one of the great extraordinary friendships of any area. they didn't necessarily disagree. henry adams' work democratically inclined and john hay of course was a republican. and yet, as they couldn't really be without each other. they were closer to each other than they were at their own wives. methane sexual implied there, but to answer your question, the thing that really resonates strongly and really holds the corner of my story is this wonderful, wonderful friendship between these two men. >> thank you so much for coming. the signing will be behind you. [applause] >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] .. kwanzaa à la date from the time you let those governors go to the time the taliban forced- >> 4045 minutes maybe. [inaudible] i just pulled my head down over my eyes to try to get some rest. you saw a force of how many men coming for you? >> i got a signal. he was signaling me down. we were standing against them out like this like this chair straight up like this. i went to kick at the ground and when i looked at him he was looking past me and his eyes were bigger than sand dollars. i'm not going to turn around. if i don't turn around they are not there. sure enough i rolled over and through my scope or i was one of the snipers out there. first i saw the line of people in the first guy i saw had an eight k. on his back. you could hear them. we were out at the rich 20 meters and we could hear them back there talking to each other. it's not in quiet language. so i turned around and looked back and i was like hey get back on the clock here we go. there is a huge pine tree in front of me. this guy on the ground was looking straight past me and when i turned back around he was gone. i waited for a little bit and sat on him and i could see the guys were running and coming to our sides. he peeked his head round the corner and when i did i took a shot and that is when they unleash the fury on us. if there was any doubt where we are at -- [inaudible] maybe it was the right thing to do and maybe it wasn't that i did it. that was the only advantage we had. >> there was no escape but down the cliff for you. >> normally you want to advance on ambush but the terrain was so bad that you couldn't fight your way up so i crawled on my hands and knees. that's how we got up there in the first place on our hands and knees. the fire was coming down on top of us and around our sides. >> you were on point so there was no lateral movement possible to escape. >> there was a little bit of lateral to the left but they had already cut off. >> how close were they when you opened fire? >> i took the first guy out of 20 yards. i could see the whites of his eyes. his head with the same size as my scope. if i missed the guy should've been out there in the first place. sometimes we were taking shots at 250 yards. in the valley everything close down on top of this so my hands were like this. they were running up and down and halfway down the mountain they came underneath us and once they got us and a 360-degree pan there was no way to go. the only thing we could do is keep moving and we went from the spot where we could sit and they were hitting us with mortars and rpg's. it was tearing us apart but it was also throwing dust in the air so we could hide. however once they moved underneath us -- i can explain it. he knows what i'm talking about. at that altitude i felt like my lungs were burning to death and once i -- once i'd stopped we could keep moving the entire time. they just picked us off one by one. >> how long did you hold out before you were on your own? how long did you guys hold off? >> about two hours. four against 240. there is no way to tell. >> anywhere from eight to 200. before the whole thing showed up. we called in for reinforcements and they came in with reinforcements and got shot down by the rpg. i didn't know about it at the time. >> you are on your own and let's just cut forward to the point where you're improbable survival was a part that was out of the kindness of strangers. tell us about those strangers and let's get back to the culture of afghanistan, this tribe. who were they? >> i crawled about seven miles after this happened and wound up up -- i was trying to find water. i fell down the side of this mountain at least 2000 feet. i rolled straight down and i made a lot of noise. these people came up and started chasing me again so i had actually been shot a couple of hours before that the next day and i thought this is happening again. they attracted me to this water source so i had my gun right on this guy and i was going to pull the trigger. he put his hands in the air and it was like no, no don't shoot. they didn't say that but i don't know i just had this feeling. i was like what's going on here? i was kind of confused. i came away from my muscle a little bit. he was 10 feet in front of me. the two guys chasing with a case came behind me. i was like hey i have been shot. he was walking out with his hands like this and i lowered my rifle and pull the pen and was holding it there just to make sure they tried anything i'm going to go out -- i'm not going out like a quitter. he threw up the word hydrate to me and i was like zero company but he. that was was i was upset about. i had been drinking out of the creek so i sat there and drank all their water and then he rolled me over and he was one of the village medics. he rolled me over and looked at me and he was like we need to take him to the village. three or four of them picked me up and took me to the village and dropped me down there and pulled my clothes off. they pulled my top off and doctored me up and i had a lot of shrapnel and frag and they started managing me up. long story short in an hour or two hours later the taliban showed up and they had me pretty much all day long. that was a unique experience. fighting them is one thing but to be in their custody was a different thing altogether but later that night they were coming down to kill me or to take me to pakistan. i couldn't really figure it out. there was a language barrier there that i couldn't break through but the three villagers broke the door down and took me to this cave. for the next four and a half days they moved me from place to place. people were in trees with a case to watch over me and stuff like that. >> explaining case anybody is unclear the taliban had custody of you for a time. that was in this pashtun village who forced the way the taliban? did they take you away or execute you? >> they had me there most of the day. i was just lying on the ground. you can only take so much of that for a while so the taliban use those villages and they have family members of those villages as well. they weren't going to go with the village elder said because it's posh and culture if someone asks assistance for the village they will give it to them no matter what. i didn't really know that at the time. wish i did. it would have made my time a lot easier. he was negotiating money and jewels and the whole nine yards to go give me up in the village elder wouldn't do it. that is when the three guys came in and grabbed me and took me to that cave. >> there were pledges to defend you to their own death because of tribal law. and there was no in briefings about afghanistan and the culture it just didn't come up? >> to be honest with you i didn't really care. in my mind it is just like these are the people that came over. i was over there for one purpose and this may sound bad but i was a special operator and i had one thing on my mind and alice to go over there and make it right. you can only imagine the conundrum i was going through when all of a sudden the people i was there are now saving my life. it was a tough pill to swallow you know. i am a better man for it but my whole world flipped upside down. my team was gone. the people i was hunting started hunting me and the people i was out there to kill were protecting me. i can't believe i'm not on drugs. [laughter] i never really thought about it like that but -- >> he spent the rest of his life after her oshima trying to contain the bomb. this book is extremely relevant to our post-9/11 era. his life and work stand as a warning to us all. in the late 40s we will hear oppenheimer's voice. in the late 1940s he was invited to an executive session of the u.s. senate and he was asked by a senator -- this was about 1947, two years after hiroshima. would it be possible docked or oppenheimer for for five men to construct a crew atomic device and put it in a suitcase and smuggle it aboard a ship in the new york harbor the new york harbor? oppenheimer said yes of course. that would be pretty easy. the senator kind of startled said well what is our defense against this? oppenheimer could be rather rudely witty at times and he stopped and said well sir you could get a screwdriver and open up each crate and every suitcase and expect -- and inspect them there is no defense. >> visit booktv's live coverage of the texas book festival in austin texas and in just a few minutes we will continue our live coverage with alan weisman author of "countdown" our last best hope for a future on earth. >> visit booktv on c-span2. now life, alan weisman. >> hi. my name is juli berwald and i'm a science writer based in austin. we are at the texas book festival to discuss "countdown" by alan weisman. i remember the first time i heard of alan weisman. my father told me about this great book he was rating. he said it followed the thought experiment of what our world would be like if humans suddenly vanish. he described the flooding of new york and the return of coyotes to central part. i confess that i didn't buy the book not been anyway. that is because alan weisman is one of those authors whose work seems like they are scary to pick up and not just because of the half. it's because alan tackles content that most of us don't want to look at squarely in the face. elizabeth colbert zeroed in on this in her recent piece about "countdown" and she quoted thomas who wrote about the threat of human overpopulation 200 years ago. the most mischief may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face the truth because it's unpleasing. this is alan's gift to us because when we do finally square our shoulders and pick up allen's books we find stunning words artful craftsmanship and engrossing storytelling all of which can come together in an alchemy that seamlessly conveys complex content. we read writing so lyrical and so fluid that it softens the edges of reality so that we can dare to face the unpleasing truths. allen's talents haven't gone unnoticed. his reporting has been heard on npr, pri and 8:00 p.m. and is published in an arid times atlantic "vanity fair" "l.a. times" magazine orion and audubon might to beverages "mother jones" and anthologianthologi s including the best american science writing. his previous book the world without us was an international bestseller and the winner of numerous prizes including being a finalist for the national book award the o'brien award and the rachel carson prize. it was named the top nonfiction book by many magazines. it's my pleasure to introduce alan weisman. [applause] first way you set a context for us about "countdown"? >> sure. some of you even if you don't know the previous book of mine the world without us, all you need to know is that i really wrote it as i want the world with us. the idea there was to theoretically remove us from the planet, to show what nature would do when it's relieved of all the daily pressures that we keep on it and it turns out that life is incredibly resilient and ounces back rather gloriously and doing a lot of the damage that we have done with surprising swiftness. even to the point of evolving new creatures to fill some of the niches that we have inadvertently emptied by extinguishing their members. what i hoped readers would come away with was thinking wow, is there some way that we could add ourselves back to the picture of a healthy restored planet? only this time in harmony as opposed to the mortal, that we seem to be locked in right now. the epilogue of that book was devoted to that topic but i ran into something that i hadn't did and that was trying to quantify what our human presence and impact is and i discovered that i did some long division on long numbers that usually overwhelm our capacity to get them. every four and a half days we are adding a million people to the planet which did not seem like a sustainable figure. at the end of the world without us a left that on the table. is there something that we should possibly due to manager numbers to try to take control of our impact on the rest of nature before it not only starts undermining more species but undermines her own presence on this planet. it's an uncomfortable notion of course. what comes to most people's minds right away including mine was the chinese wind shall policy which most people find abhorrent including chinese where ice and quite a bit of time when a research "countdown" it turned out that readers were fascinated by this idea. they said nobody is talking about population. everybody wanted to talk to me about it and finally i realized that a there was so much interest but also such a loaded topic that is heaped with religion and all the other things that concern us. in fact not just religion. each one of this this us is reay uncomfortable with the idea of having to impose limits on ourselves because like any other organism in nature we are designed to make copies of ourselves. it just feels like an unnatural act as opposed to doing what comes naturally. so i decided as a journalist i should try to investigate this as objectively as possible to try to determine how many people can fit on this planet safely and it turned into much more research than i bargained for. the last 100 pages or ably upper fee in very small type. in the accompanying index and ultimately i went to 21 countries. go ahead. >> i want to talk about some of the loaded parts of the book. there are two elephants in this tent as we sit here in texas. the first one is a couple hundred miles from where we set there's a place you describe in your first book and here's what you said. one of the most on mental constructs human beings have imposed is in houston the industrial class that begins on the site he continues uninterrupted to the gulf of mexico 50 miles away. it's a largest concentration of petroleum refineries petrochemical companies and storage structures on earth. so can you talk about connections between fossil fuels and population growth? >> to me the connection between fossil fuel and population growth is one of the reasons we became so populous is directly related to fossil fuels. there is really only two things that have made population grow. population always grows as more people are born than have died. for most of human history that really didn't happen. unfortunately most babies did not make it to their fifth birthday and if you can imagine the pain of our ancestors. like every other organism they used to make extra copies of themselves in hopes that some would survive and human population grew very slowly because slightly more than two children on the average survived. anything -- that's two people were placing themselves population stays the same. in 1798 edward jenner developed a vaccine for smallpox and that was followed by more vaccines for more diseases and then the originations of antiseptics, pasteurization of milk and a whole lot of medical advances occurred in the 19th century and suddenly fewer infants were dying. many fewer infants were dying. mothers were surviving childbirth and people were living longer. suddenly we became more populous. we actually moved above a billion people in the 19th century but then in the 20th century here comes fossil fuels. it started just before world war i where two german scientist and an engineer named carl bosch and a chemist named fritz haber came up with the a way to pull mitogen out of the air and chemically slather it on the earth to fertilize plants. the invention of artificial nitrogen fertilizer might not come to your mind when you are thinking of inventions that have changed humankind but it's probably the biggest invention in terms of what it has done to us because it totally blew the lid off of what nature can do. how much plant life they can produce. as a result let's put it this way, 40% of us here in this tent would not the here without it. 40% of the people on the planet would not he here without artificial mitogen. it completely change the amount of food that we could grow. however it self is derived from fossil fuels both as its feedstock and because it takes a lot of energy that you have to burn to make this stuff and it also turns into nitrous oxide which after methane is our third most powerful greenhouse gas. now we have a situation on this planet where we are hooked into fossil fuels in more ways than one. we are all addicted to energy. i'm talking to you through electricity right now and everyone here has it cell phone etc. etc. and every poor country that i went to for this book they are urbanizing more and more and think you know matter how poor people are somehow they have a cell phone too. it's sort of leapfrog technology. they are plugging in their charge at the same as you and me so we are addicted to the stuff in terms of how we run our fascinating technical lives that we have now with all the stuff the concentrated energy gives us. we are addicted to us because we basically eat it. fossil fuels are the basis of nearly half of our diet. as a result we have a come much more numerous. our population doubled in the 20th century and then in the 1960s we came up with a green revolution that greatly increased the amount of grain per stalk. a lot of you since juli quoted lewis colbert quoting an office earlier a lot of you have heard the term malfusian as a pejorative that discredits somebody talking about malthus. many people are under the impression that malthus because he predicted that food production would never keep up with population and later paul and anne ehrlich that wrote a book that helped detonate the environmental movement worldwide out of 1968, that book predicted that widespread famines were about to set in for the reason that malthus talked about even we were -- when we are at a billion. when it turned out because of the green revolution those famines did not take place but these guys were disproved. this is however a very select if reading asked to what actually went on. first of all the founders of the green revolution won the nobel peace prize. his name is norman borlaug and he is credited with saving more human lives than anyone in history. the more food that you create the more people that eat it survive to have more people and food production is what pushes population. you look at the two places where the green revolution was first tried out and india and pakistan pakistan -- india is about to surpass china as the most populous china on earth. pakistan has close to 190 million people today and it's the size of texas which is 26 million and by the middle of the century the keeps growing at this pace it will have many more people. it will still be the size of texas. they can't possibly employ everybody. their economy can keep up with this so it's filled with underemployed frustrated angry young men and i don't need to tell you that pakistan is turning into place that is out of control. norman borlaug's except in speech he did not gloat about triumphing over malthus. he said unless we solve population control we are going to be completely overwhelmed by ourselves and he spent the rest of his life on the lord of population groups. what compelled me to write this book really has to do with the fact that now so many of us are using so much energy. there's a rise in fossil fuels and we are packing our atmosphere with insulation so to speak. it's heating up. that heat is being absorb by the oceans which are expanding, rising and the chemistry is changing. they're moving more towards the carbonic acid side of the ph scale and talk to your oystermen down here on the coast especially people who are culturing oysters. they are really worried about the largest capability of developing shells. this is all catching up with us and i wrote the book because if we don't know how to slow down our carbon exports to the atmosphere soon enough to do something we do know how to control the number of us who are demanding that carbon. >> that brings us a thing to the other tough subject that is another omen in this tent which is just a few months ago there were big clashes over abortion rights just up the street from us. i wonder if you might talk about the ways that abortion is viewed and legalized in different parts of the world as you travel to these different places. >> it don't spend a lot of time looking at a worse and in this book except for usually in the negative sense. i mentioned pakistan. abortions are legal in pakistan so they're about 400,000 illegal abortions in pakistan every year because inevitably about half of pregnancies in the world are unintended pregnancies and women are desperate. so they seek an abortion or occasionally contraception fails on them so they seek it as a backup. that figure was so astounding to me that i researched. how many abortions happen worldwide? it turns out that various demographic institutiinstituti ons looked at this and they came up with about 40 million. because i'm not a numbers guy myself i tell this story through stories. i found people all over the world whose own experiences our own studies exemplify what we need to know but that number really stood out to me because they have also calculated that if contraception were made available universally throughout the world and everybody could choose whether to use it or not, there would be not 40 million but 14 million abortions in the world. that's still a lot of abortions and antiabortion people don't want any but i have yet to see since roe v. wade anyone ,-com,-com ma but the way for saving us from 26 million abortions so contraception is really the best antiabortion antidote that we have. >> you one of the most interesting comparisons i think for me anyway in your book were the policies in iran and in china. i wonder if you might just compare what you found in those two countries and how they relate to population growth? >> sure. i mentioned before that none of us like the idea of the one-child policy. nobody wants the government coming into our bedrooms and telling us what to do. the chinese one-child policy has been of course a huge test case to show us what some of the real pitfalls and exes can be of extreme government intervention. but you do have to understand, i had to learn the context of that. china -- this was before the green revolution. they had just gone through one of the world's most horrific famine in history. over 40 million people died in the famine and they needed to do something because their population was still growing very fast. there were so many chinese. the one-child policy probably if it hadn't been imposed when it was in 1980 there would be 400 le and more chinese now. it has become such an ingrained part of their culture particularly as more chinese live in urban areas they don't feel the need to have -- you don't need a lot of farmland when you live in apartments of people tend to be satisfied with one or two and they are very accepting of the chinese policy. i found many countries they came up with noncoercive totally voluntary alternatives to it that worked works surprisingly well and one of them is a place is really surprising here in united states. it happened in iran which is one of the last countries i've visited because it took me a long time as an american to get in there. the reason i went with this. in 1979 we have the islamic revolution and they were attacked by saddam hussein because there is this oil-rich province on the border. he figured it was easy pickings because the iranians knew it was busy organizing itself. saddam hussein then had the backing of nato. he had sophisticated weaponry and even had the components for nerve gas. all iran ran headless bodies body so the ayatollah khamenei asked every woman in iran who was fertile to do her patriotic duty and build the 20 million man army to fight off the iraqis. they help them to a stalemate for eight years but then the following that in the planning and budget office they realize they were going to have a tremendous problem. within 10 years as all these kids that were born grew up in needed jobs and they didn't have one and what was happening with is what's happening in pakistan right now. they convinced the ayatollah they had to talk about family planning. the chinese policy has been going on for 10 years. the persians did not feel that was culturally acceptable to them just as we wouldn't so here's what they did. first of all they told women they could have as many children as you want but the only thing that was compulsory was premarital classes for every couples that would get married. frankly it's a good idea for anybody and quite reasonably here in the united states. in those classes among other things how much is a cost to raise feed and clothe and educate a child? second a fatwa was issued saying there's nothing in the koran that says it was dictates you have a number of children you can responsibly care for that you can use any form of birth control from all the way up to a or tubal ligation. third, they made that available everywhere in the country. i spoke to this wonderful ob/gyob/gy n and woman in tehran a devout muslim woman who talked about how they would ride horseback to the furthest villages to meet with surgical teams and later on they would add four will drives or helicopters providing these services. here is what is crucial. it asked women to stay in school because the woman who is studying to defer childbearing until their studies are done she has something interesting and useful to do and helpful economically to her family. she may want to be a mother but it's hard to do all that stuff when you have seven kids. ultimately iran brought their fertility rate down to an average of two kids a year faster than china a totally voluntary program. today 60% of iranian university students are female and it continues on. >> i can't believe the time has flown but alan has a reading he would like to do and i found it one of the most beautiful parts of this book. it will take about 10 minutes and then we will turn it over to the audience for questions. >> i just want to add one more thing before the reading in case it doesn't, big questions. this is technology we are to have. it's not like coming up with magical zero-emission energy and suddenly we will get rid of fossil fuels which will only go away gradually. this is something we are to know how to do and it's cheap. we could provide the universal birth control for everybody on earth to choose if they want to use it for a little over eight billion dollars a year. that's less than we were spending a month in iran and afghanistan. this is an affordable thing. the first thing i want to review from the book is a portion that deals with one of the other questions that i raised in this book, cannot just how many people can fit on this planet but how much nature do we have to preserve in order to have the state ecosystem for ourselves? for centuries the cultural fabric of iran has been woken by persian carpet may curse. each strand of yarn is nodded around two strands by persian rugs has one per each warp and they are twice as tight. the tigers may have 144 knots per square centimeter. a rug like that of wall from the elusive spring lambs can take two people eight years to finish. in tehran's cupid museum hang masterpieces created for royal families with 160 knots per centimeter woven by girls with sharp eyes and tiny fingers. one fabulously complex floral pattern that measures 320 square feet took three people working 10 hours a day 18 years to complete. the principle weaver was 17 when she started and 35 when it was finished. as a biology student from the 1960s is male would stay at the dash stare at the rugs and museums that depicts the tree of life assemble that predates islam. among its branches he recognized turkeys bolger's owls does thrushes flamingos swallows parrots ostriches and partridges around the trunk bears turtles alligators betel centipedes lions and leopards. the details were so detailed that sue suwa alleges could determine each species. he was looking at some creatures now extinct. the eyes of ancient carpet weavers to know what once lived there. the son of an air force pilot who like his mother was one of 12 children. as a boy his father would take him writing -- riding in a wildlife refuge south of the caspian sea. the grass grew so tall he would have to stand on its forces back to see where the stocks are moving to know which way to go. it was home to the largest population of cheetahs in iran and the sight of those fleet creatures thrilled him so he resolved to become a naturalist. after graduating from the university he became a field -- eventualleventuall y he was appointed director of the bureau of wildlife and he began a weekly television probe and that introduce viewers to the natural wonders of their country. his tv documentaries made him iran's best-known naturalist. he took viewers to places like me and go a 48 kilometers sandy peninsula that is the last stretch of natural coastline along iran's 800-kilometer caspian sea coast. in the early 17th century abbas killed 90 leopards and 30 tigers there. in 1830 knots are all being shot of the dynasty who had 85 wives wives -- 85 wives rode early one morning he watched millions of migrating birds darkened the skies for hours. 50 years later one of his many sons would take a group of friends with newly invented high-powered rifles and they shot 6000 dozens 150 dear 63 buffalo 18 leopards and 35 tigers. he later described an area outside of shiraz were hundreds of men hunted day and night. the mountains were so rich with wildlife he wrote in his memoirs that if the numbers of humans were 10 times over there would still be enough game animals for everyone. we stayed there for two months in when we were leaving the number of animals were still the same. statements like these have proven that hunters never set out to eradicate entire species of wild animals. in fact they hope to hunt forever. they considered natural resources such as wildlife and forests to be renewable resources that simply could not be exterminated by man. all the species are rare or threatened or extinct. the mighty lion and the caspian tiger the iranian gazelle big horned mountain sheep leopards and the cheetah. yes the cheetah he says. in his home near tehran's islamic university where he teaches small persian rugs cover the hardwood floors. the brick fireplaces flanked by migrating cranes and the endangered red dues. above the mantle 19 century tapestry declares a grace -- farsi calligraphy that god is the greatest protector of all. someone demanding to know whether it matters of cheetahs disappear from the face of the earth are tigers go extinct he tells them about one particular cheetah. it was where you was where he least expected tang counter one. it was january 2003 and he was visiting america for the first time. a cousin in san diego had married a schoolteacher who invited him to observe the sixth grade class. he was charmed at the teacher brought an iranian flag and claims to show the students. she next enrolled and exquisite crimson red. that red kenya was a pure soap paisley pattern from a holy city of goma were thousands. our guest is an ecologist she told her students. colleges should explain is the science of how everything on earth people plans fungi of walks -- rocks are connected. dr. krohn is one of them. there was a knock on the door and he gasped along with the sixth-graders is another teacher entered accompanied by a curator from the san diego zoo. the leash she held was attached to a muslim cheetah. their two populations of cheetahs won in africa and the other in asia. the asiatic cheetah today lives only in iran. he was amazed that this american woman and it was something he wished his own people can't print it. what do you think would happen she said that the asiatic cheetahs disappeared from the earthquakes would it be a disaster? would we still be able to go to school? would there be gasoline for your father's car? should we be concerned? for students agreed this alico and creatures silent on its conscious before them deserve to live but none thought that their world would come crashing down along with the cheetahs if it didn't. the teacher turned to the glowing silk rug draped on an easel. this beautiful persian carpet belongs to an iranian who lives in san diego. it was made with more than 1.5 million knots. suppose somebody with a pair of scissors cuts a few nods from its edge. what will happen? nothing. you won't even notice it. what if he keeps doing it back soon you will have a small hole and it will get bigger and bigger and eventually nothing will be left of the carpet. extending her arm she pointed at the foliage outside in the cheetah watching her as the students. all of this is the carpet of life. you were sitting on it. each of those knots represents one plant or animal. they and the air we breathe in the water we drink in her groceries are not manufactured. they are produced by what we call nature. this road representrepresent s that nature and if something happens in asia or africa and the cheetah disappears that is one not from the carpet. if you understand that you will realize that we are all living on a very limited species and resources on which our life depends. thank you very much. [applause] >> if you have questions can you please come to the microphone? >> dan brown and his recent book and for now i think did more to popularize the idea of mathematical progression of human population. however he is talking about the levels of purgatory. his is more figurative based on history and culture but do you think that we are headed towards some sort of literal purgatory and my simple question is what country tops your list as doing the most to be forward looking into the next century's? >> i haven't read dan brown's book yet. the question of whether we are headed towards purgatory -- let me put it this way. every organism in the history of ayala j. when it exceeds its resource base suffers a population -- sometimes fatal to the entire species. we have used brilliant technology to extend our limits and many economists would have you believe that human ingenuity will keep extending those limits i told you of the words of norman borlaug who extended limits more than anybody else. he said he can't go on and he knows the way he extended the limits one way is only exacerbated the problem on the other end. i explained about those populations in india and pakistan and many other places on earth. we don't really notice the population explosion as we all grew up in it but it used to be the line is like this and now the line is like this. we are headed towards 11 billion by the end of the century if we keep growing at this rate and frankly i don't think we can get to it because the atmosphere is already telling us that things are going to become inhospitable to human life at a certain point or at least it will radically change our coastline. iraq is seen as seacoast change and there is no way around it. all of the shrill denial that comes out the tries to drown out the facts just simply doesn't have much faction left to it. i'm not going to make any predictions other than homo sapiens are an extraordinarily creative and flexible species and i would not have bothered writing this book because frankly it took a lot out of me. that travel did not come easy. i would not have bothered doing it if i didn't hope to think that there is something we can do and i think there are things we can do on every level starting with being more efficient coming up with better forms of energy, good cleaner forms of energy and also limiting the number of us. this is something that is not onerous and if people can have two children or fewer and the population will come down to sustainable size or if people love the idea of a large family and god knows most of us really do come to one resource we are not running out of on this planet is children who need a home. a adoption is a wonderful way to have the zeiss family that you choose. i hope that we all take advantage of everything we can possibly do. for countries that are the most forward-looking iran is a mixed bag. that program began and the poster child for the united nations in terms of family planning. there are several other countries who did very different things but also voluntary. thailand conflict country that has a industry is now below the replacement rate because they made a national joke out of using and convince the industry that if you want to have a successful industry you don't make your client sick. it utterly worked through some brilliant advertising. mexico the same way. mexico is now very close to replacement rate. they did it through soap operas. these episodes on tv that suddenly put the message in there that smaller families seem to be a dashed do a lot better than bigger ones at work. >> two quick comments and then one question. one comment, i used to run tours for adults and when we went to québec province the catholic church was actually handing out in various places in montréal which i thought was rather interesting. and in québec they lowered the birthrate from 14 to two or a little less than to cut through a natural process of urbanization. the question that i had was why do you think -- i'm old enough that i taught in various types of institutions over the years. in the 1960s and cpg very popular. people had this conversation all the time. >> that zero population growth. speak it has disappeared. why? that is my question. >> first of all i want to respond to your comment. one of the reasons i travel to so many places was that i wanted to see was there anything in their religious or cultural history of the world's wide swath of different kinds of cultures and nations etc. that would accommodate the idea of so to speak refraininrefrainin g from embracing so much a time of need. just like in the bible after we have several polygamist abraham isaac and jacob trying to fill the earth and multiplied then joseph realized scarcity was setting in and he had one wife and two kids and counsels the israelites in the pharaoh of egypt that this was a time to conserve. which we may be headed into and which i found in many religions the same thing. catholicism is tricky. there's a chapter i go to the vatican and have interesting questions and surprising answers. no one-handed out there but it wasn't necessary because the vatican city is surrounded by catholic italy where some of the most educated per-capita women on the earth lives and they have made this decision long ago. their fertility rate is way below replacement because they'll have something to do with their lives. why did zero population growth drop off the map? i think partly because the green revolution of the mentioned a lot of people said. ♪ weight there is no problem after all. look, we were saved from the famines. nevermind the fact that borlaug himself was a member. we also limits to growth was another book that came out a couple of years later and the idea that we were running out of resources prompted a backlash. we are running out of resources. suddenly we have this great global marketplace where everything became a cornucopia. you would go under the grocery grocery stores in it to get watermelon all year round even if you lived in the frozen north. the idea of abundance was sold to us through all of the advertising and we still haven't sorted out the idea that really there's not much of a problem except since the cpg happened in 1968 are population has more than doubled in the problem has too. next question. >> how are you doing? let me say this. as far as contraceptives to me that is not an answer. as far as population my parents said this. my father did. he said son, keep your pants on. they were married almost 70 years. they are not here anymore but -- see how many kids did your parents have? >> i am number five. >> anything over two grows the population. >> also maybe as far as america we are so industrial. the nations south of us is so unindustrial. all they do is have babies who no? >> actually their population growth rate is now below ours because we are still growing. you no, i really understand where you are coming from because it seems like we can do what we have been doing but the fact is 40% of the earth's surface right now is dedicated to growing food for us either through cultivation of grazing. there's not much room for these other species upon whose existence of ours depends. you know if you go back to genesis to where it tells us to fill the earth and multiplied. in genesis five god is talking about her excesses and how they will wipe us out. i will you stick around and you can save your family but what does he tell noaa? you have to save all of the animals. you can't have a world without them. we just can't keep growing and pushing everything else off the planet the way we are without running into real trouble. plus all the fertilizer and the pesticides protecting the plants are starting to come back on us take time. the cancer clusters in the autism clusters. i'm not going into this stuff right now but we all know it's happening. we can't spread poison out there and hope that it just picks off the species that we disapprove of. >> i'm regularly asked to donate money to poor charities for improved water extraction for jobs for men in tribal societies for fertilizers so they can have better crops and the sounds with that's not sustainable in the long run will hurt those countries. aside education for women what are some ways that i should direct my charitable dollars to improve the lives of those people in other countries? >> well, first of all i don't want anybody who is alive to die. i want everyone to have a long and prosperous life. i just want us to recruit fewer people to replace ourselves. the water shortage thing i will give you a sense of how critical it is. there were 50 to 75 feet deep and then they went down to 250 and then 500. i spent a day in the punjab but basket of india interviewing widows of farmers who committed suicide because they could no longer afford to keep digging their wells down to 501000 feet deep. since 1995, 270,000 green revolution farmers have committed suicide. i corroborated that figure in the drug truck of choices by drinking pesticide. there is simply not enough water to keep supporting our population. here in texas you guys ought to know that. >> this is going to be our last question. >> my question is to part. one is how much our government spends on the military and the other is the policy of having economic growth put forward to the public all the time in a world of limited resources. so what can we do to stop art policymaker and leaders from pushing us down this path? >> i don't have figures on the military expenditures but as i mentioned for what we were spending in a month in iraq and afghanistan we could put that money into helping -- one thing i'm proud of the united states government. we are the biggest providers of contraceptives which started during usaid which raised funds against communism. people wanted it. costa rico where we started is below replacement rate than they used to have the highest population growth on the planet. i do deal an entire chapter with the economic question. how can we redesign our economy to prosper without depending on constant growth on a planet that does not grow? ultimately we are going to have to because it's a resource base and because of our waste products such as the exhaust we are sending up into the atmosphere is starting to become a serious limitation on what her future is going to be like. i visit japan in this book which now is actually shrinking because of sort of an anomaly. after world war ii they had to cut off their baby boom because they lost the war. their economy had crashed entirely and when their soldiers returned home in the population started to grow again they just couldn't afford it. people were starving. women were throwing themselves in front of trains. .. become vacant by the sign-up generation. wages are going to remain high because workers will be fewer therefore more valuable, but probably as demand drops, as population as working hours will decrease and that means we will redefine prosperity in part because we will have more leisure time and were spaced out there to enjoy it in. there's a lot of talk about, but time fortunate will prevent it. thank you all for coming. >> alex willoughby for books. thank you for. [inaudible conversations] >> we will be back with more live coverage of the 2013th texas book festival in a few minutes. here's a look back at some of our previous coverage. >> they are happy that they are in power. that day. i suspect they wake up screaming from time to time because they don't have control over their caucus. leadership are referred to speaker john boehner, eric cantor, the majority whip kevin mccarthy. if not for this class of 87 freshmen, class of 2010, he would be minority leader been there. if not beholden with leadership that made it clear from the outset that they were not just going to be fall into line. the real problem for not only this republican leadership, but will prove to be the case if ever the democrats regain power is that the enforcement tools are indeed of yesteryear because earmarks have now been banned, since but the blog is here, you can turn someone into a nested ardor by stripping that of their committee assignment. it's very, very hard to use a stake in addition to a kerry. there's a point in my book are referred to after the debt ceiling fiasco of the summer of 2011 when they come back in another continuing resolution used to fund the government of the above evisceration had passed a budget with coming up. the republican leadership believed they'd get an easier vote. the appropriations committee was designed the spending bills with serious and they insisted on a medium with the leadership and they said you need to punish these numbers. we are doing everything you want us to do. we are cutting spending to record lows and discussable port for her. boehner said we can't do that anymore. we simply cannot. >> said the leadership leadership doesn't feel it there in any position to lead on matters of debt ceiling or anything else. >> it's interesting this whole book has been devoted to the debt ceiling and specifically magazine stories to the so-called grand bargain between boehner and obama fell apart. or my standpoint, all of that has been set with alternate back to the authors of those stories and books because the bottom line is speaker boehner never had to go to anyway. whatever deal he would have struck with the obama administration would almost certainly have failed and he would not have been able to get sufficient those. where do he would have relied so heavily on democratic foes to do so that he ran the risk of insurrection. this is detailed in my book. there is a meeting during the whole summer showdown over the debt ceiling in which some of boehner's closest allies have met in the speaker's office and said to him, john, if you come back with a deal that you fashioned with obama, that doesn't get more than a 100 goes thursday. cantor is already started a whisper campaign against duke. we saw it happen with speaker gingrich and it can happen to you. buhner walked away from a jail shortly after that. >> i want to come to an interplay between the second. you may know that the president gave -- was initially off to the des moines editorial, on the real tamale did not get the endorsement of that paper. one of the things he said in the interview as he could get a grant or construct on the debt ceiling if he were reelected on november the sixth. a somewhat you are saying, it may not be possible if the freshmen, now sophomores for new members who come into an essentially give boehner they're laughing to cut a deal. boehner may feel the same tests but now that he was last year. a grand bargain ultimately based on what you're saying a not be possible if obama wins under any circumstances. >> i'll go ahead and take it anyway because i've been doing general election for "the new york times" name. in talking to jim messina, the campaign manager of the obama campaign, david axelrod, rahm emanuel, stephanie cutter and asking them, how would the next for your summer, president date, given that the house composition would be more or less the same. >> almost certainly simpler. >> uniformly their example, this is a talking point, was that the fever will break. the american people as they vote for president obama for another four years will basically be voting against obstructionism. the republicans will get the message and they will walk, albeit any soldier fashion towards the center. >> i can see that happening at all. >> is a talking point, but it's due. >> say governor romney on november the sixth as opposed to the president being reelected that their son you waiting for him after he gets into office click >> no, no i am not. i wrote a story for "the new york times" magazine on governor romney, specifically on his time as governor that appeared about three weeks ago or so. the way the piece concludes is i interviewed a number of people, particularly the more conservative of house republicans. and they are their chops. they believe this'll be a great moment if mitt romney wins. a moment for them to legislate very aggressively a conservative agenda. my question to several of them was what if that is not so? what is president elect romney decided that's not how he wishes to govern. that will govern more in the mode of his first two years when he was governor of massachusetts. the uniformly said they'd be disappointed and one of the stars of the tea party freshman class is featured my book said we been pretty calm thus far. people say we've been really boisterous. you say nothing at. a president romney does not behave like a conservative, it's going to be the death of the republican party, but we are going to burn it down. >> i'm going to let that sit there for a second, think writing. let's come back to the leadership. i want to ask you about specifically individuals and as on the way they do or do not work well together. boehner, cantor and mccarthy. characterize each one in shorthand beginning with speaker boehner. >> john boehner is a washington lifer and was was not the obvious choice to be leading the assertive tea party class. nonetheless, he could be the tea party phenomenon for the free chain it was an elected to be on the train rather than underneath it. speaker boehner campaigned heavily and believed this presented the republic can and indeed america with a great opportunity. his belief for example was that this would be a perfect recipe for entitlement reform. if you were going after entitlement reform ideally to have, you know, bipartisanship, specifically a democratic president said they couldn't walk away from it. said he believed that he could leverage, you know, but deep conservatism at the tea party into action. but he's failed to do so. the tea party freshman come with whom i spent a great deal of time and i spent time with an awful lot of them come you know, like him personally. from attenborough in the way of a genial ceo. the certainly not as their real theater. that has been implicitly clear throughout the 112th congress. eric cantor is a bit different, somewhat younger than boehner, a very clever guy. very, very ambitious. he has a channel interestingly in the obama white house against vice president biden. they are very close and they found they need each other as information services and i believe it was biden, this would not surprise any of you, that was looking to eric cantor for speaker boehner was pursuing his separate talks with obama during the so-called right talks of which eric cantor was a part. this may cantor live it and he ultimately walked out almost money because of the dynamics going on with boehner, though the excuse he gave was that he heard the democrats are going to blow. does this sound childish to your? >> the question i'm going to ask a little jealous, which is if eric cantor squad has been a number and no, he wouldn't hesitate to push them, woody? >> for one thing, bonners and even tempers were. you tend, unless the moment is right come you tend not to be able to get ahead by declaring a mutiny. >> said there is enough evidence between -- [inaudible] >> you could say, yes. [inaudible conversations] >> on your screen is live picture of the texas book festival in downtown austin. it extends over several blocks and starts at the state capitol and comes right down congress street in the center of downtown austin. live coverage on booktv all day long. we will be back in just a few minutes with the next panel. [inaudible conversations] >> up next, two others have written about the state of texas. kate galbraith and asher price, authors of "the great texas wind rush: how george bush, ann richards and a bunch tinkerers helped the oil and gas state win the race to wind power." live coverage on booktv on c-span 2. [inaudible conversations] >> hello and welcome to the texas book festival discussion on the great texas when brash -- "the great texas wind rush: how george bush, ann richards and a bunch tinkerers helped the oil and gas state win the race to wind power" with authors kate galbraith and asher price. my name is hilary olson and on the moderated is afternoon good i am a geologist at the university of texas at austin. before we get started, i want to say a few words about the festival, although the mission is a festival that celebrates books and authors. i want to emphasize that it also benefits texas public libraries and literacies across the state. proceeds from the sales of all books and merchandise benefit the staffers. since 1995, the festival has contributed more than $2.5 million to libraries throughout the state. you can participate through purchasing this book at the festival today. 15 minutes after the end of the session, the authors will sign their book on congress avenue between 10th and 11th street. now it is my honor to introduce the authors of this very interesting book. empire melcher losses were to the texas tribune, "the new york times" and the economist. asher price has been in energy and environmental reporter for the american-statesman since 2006. i'm going to start out by turning it over to the two authors to tell us a little bit about their book. >> banks, hillary and thanks to the book festival and c-span 2 for hosting this event. we are the authors of the great texas when brash, which aims to get the irony of how a state like texas, which is an oil and gas state came to be the leader in the nation and wind power. another challenge for as is the same we have enough panel, which is how do you make us worry about wind power remaining? in fact, i told a friend is to be the most raucous panel other on when power on c-span 2. so what we decided to do was tell the story through characters. and so, we had a priest and lovick, for whom conservation was second to salvation. we had an ax music promoter from austin who went back up to his hometown in tampa in turn in one of the farms in this date. nearly the second major wind farm in the country. and so we have a set of characters. a couple of them are here today. michael osborne is in the audience. von melson, and other protagonist is here. >> can he stand up, please? >> is my goal. [applause] >> said the story kind of tracks to things. it tracks how wind power goes from being a hippie, alternative sort of power source to dig business and the characters involved with that. but it also takes a look kind of inside at the back room politics involved the capital, to forge certain compromises, legislative compromises that got wind energy off the ground in the 1990s. so that is for amateurs -- ann richards comes in. and then the other thing that maybe we will talk about later is the wind is both as a character of the book because texas is a particular kind of place and so we wanted to try and capture that. >> the story really goes back to the 19th century, the old days of the farm water windmills, which i'm sure you've all seen opera roads in many parts of texas. it continues on through the great depression when a lot of people were putting up when chargers liked her farmstead. the administration of ursula comes along, centralized power, every farmer and rancher wants it. essentially knocks out when power until the 1970s when they had the oil and gas -- the oil embargo, the great energy prices. energy prices go through the roof and people look for alternatives that dr. nelson's alternative energy institute was up in the panhandle founded in 1977 and michael osborne put the first wind farm in texas in tampa in his hometown in 1981. the story really picks up from there. back in the 80s, oil and gas prices fall. there's little interest in alternatives. as asher said, it picks back up in the 1990s and political interest increases. so it's really a story that spans decades. it's actually continuing today. today, texas has more than 12,000 megawatts of wind compared to just very little a decade or more ago. california is the second weakest with less than half the amount texas has been about 9% of the electricity on a texas grid last year came from wind power. it's a substantial power source and growing. >> i have a question to follow up with what you mention. in the book, the wind really is an overarching care or throughout the book and there's some really great descriptions of the year there's all kinds of people trying to tame it, harshness. and yet it seems very cantankerous throughout the book. i wondered if you could read some of those descriptions you have about the wind and the book to give us a sense of its carrot there. >> near the beginning of the book, we write a little bit about the natural history of texas that made at such a fitting place for wind power because there's a lot of wind here. so the physics of the texas strain make it just right for wind. now it's relentlessly for some the landscape as the brainy ways once were. it was once a giant ocean that was over what is now known in texas. the state highway department in its own type knowledge mended the emptiness is rose cut or assess this deployment at edn is part and only then fans because one had to be said. the visitor along the interstate has brought us an airport runway, it's dark asphalt just short of melting away in the surrounding dirt feels buffeted by the end. the ocean of land is how the journal describes the feeling of bumping along west texas roads in his memoir, a personal country. so relentless is that it was always my main, crazy. in the first pages of the wind, a melodramatic 1925 model come a day naïve, pretty, 18 to 20 mason blondin wavy hair and perry wrinkles, cheeks pink as the petals of peach blossoms. train down to the west texas hamlet of sweetwater to be a governess learns from work roddy, a mysteriousness -- a passenger of the hard life that awaits her. folks say the west is good enough for a man art thou, but no place for a woman her cat. but why? why? the wind is the worst thing. she truly was the side. when? has nothing to be afraid of. he went on as though she had not spoken. it's ruined nations to a woman book and nurse pretty often. it dries up her skin until it gets brown and tough as leather. figure about as her eyes out with the fan that all day. it gets on her nerves, makes art irritable and jump be. i want to say by the way, that was written by a woman. that's my disclaimer there. >> in 1927. decades after that novel publication, joe caldwell, who hails from the texas panhandle, where the wind relentlessly remember being haunted by the stories of pioneered women's driven not by the wind. this was a force so strong it would disfigure trees. ms. gaither permanently bent over like women hunchbacked in the day and come a day of strain of drawing water from a well. cattle could die, drought relief from the snow that blew horizontally with tremendous forrester in a blizzard. in the 1930s, the panhandle was so bad in the land so dry the field were scooped up incense swirling across the nation. trees were such a rarity that they grew so singly that a kid might name them. you get a sense they are of how wind is not only shape of the landscape, but also literature about texas. one of the things we did is pick and choose bits from poets and writers, where wind kind of crops up to give our readers a sense of what a force that is. >> one of the favorite things i learned is that a lot of kids in west texas, they go entice sales to their wrist and off they go. it sounds absolutely marvelous. by the mid-90s, there's one point in our book. they put up the first commercial scale in just these very remote mountains on the ridges may put it off in 1995. they are very proud of it. six months later, what happens? a monster storm through that was said to be overturning track or trailers. it wreaks habit on everything, including the wind farm. some of the turbines fell down and they might've said bob we know it is with you here. wind works. >> already. thank you. so just thinking about the character of the wind and the book, how do you see that essay compares center contrast to some of your human carrot is in the book? like for example, one of the things you talk about is the importance of the quality of perseverance of a lot of these people and certainly the wind is sent thing that is persistent. could you speak a little bit about some of the characters in your book? and maybe read some passages i would describe them for the audience? >> do you want to give it a shot? >> clearly, perseverance -- anyone has felt the west texas wind is like okay, enough, i got it. perseverance also of course carrot arises some of the folks in our book because they really started tinkering around with this technology in the 1970s and they persevered with it through the 80s, when the federal government in the state of texas government and everybody else really lost interest in wind power. but these guys hung on and by the 1990s, when the democratic administration of dan richards and someone came into power, they really got a second chance. they've got this technology through the trough. i'm just going to read a quick passage. he's one of our favorite characters in the book. in 1982, he puts up several turbines besides his church, specifically besides his church football field in lovick. and so, father joe james, with the boy from doll heart, his father had built a wind electric generator to create life for the family in the days before of education. he was trying to make the wind turbines spin in the winds of west texas is the nation's energy crisis in tents outside. this again is the late 70s, early 80s. he was not in the research business. he wanted to but the turbines to use for god. james had first heard the law of the lord as a fifth grader. drama funds he helped his father at their ranch. that particular summer in the early 1940s, he had broken his ankle. he can't remember how. his parents sent him to bible camp. a resource, during a game of baseball, he was out in right field on crutches when the pastor came to bat. james heard a voice. the lord tells me he loved me and he loves you, james remembered. that call has never left me. and so, he really believed that saving energy and alternative energy was essentially next to godliness. years later, he said we are supposed to be custodians of god's creation, but churches are among the greatest energy of any building. and then again, he puts up this very small wind farm in early 1982 and james had spent weeks prior to that check in the wind currents. he made a kite vanilla together a small wooden cross and on the long tail of twine, tying streamers every five feet. then, like a priestly ben franklin, he flew the kite over the property, figuring out the best sites for the turbines. they need to have plenty around them so the top of the plates wouldn't hit anything at a cell and they had to be far enough apart so that they wouldn't interfere with each other is meant. if he got a template object, you would cause turbulence 40 feet down when faced james. in 2011, a 79-year-old with bushy eyebrows and navy denim coveralls didn't make him look like a not a mechanic, the only tip office he was to have the cows in the same entity and a gold chain around his neck. finally, as i said, he settled on putting the turbine besides the churches is a field. the turbines were taller than anything around. james planted three of them, each 60 feet tall, along the sideline and find the end zone. they are wired directly in the church in the school and an evening when the lights are out in the air-conditioning was turned off, excess power could be said to the city's electric grid. the luster by many next to the church. it was called big birds because it stood 80 feet tall. the turbines generated enough electricity in the 850 strong congregation. everybody going down with a wind generators were a mile away, james remembers. and so, he was one of those in the energy crisis and really hung on. those turbines were up for quite some time. james did not remain with this congregation forever, but you've visited right and they're still the gray stone markers? >> yes. those relics still up there at the wind turbines. one of the things i was struck by going up to lovick and one of the interesting things about reporting this book was seeing these people out in the hinterlands, who were so close to the ground that his theory, the wind, the forces that shape people who don't live in cities feared her i should make a come fashion that neither kate nor i are native texans and yes we had the chutzpah to write a book about wind turbines in texas. for me, i grew up on the 10th story of an apartment building in new york city and water and wind and rain, do you swear -- these were things scarcely worth caring about. it charla tapp, water comes up. either about flooding in the mississippi on the evening news and you turn the channel. and so now been a reporter here in texas, i see much more intimately this relationship between human beings and things like wind and how you both endure such forces, but also how you can exploit them, which is really one of the fascinating things about texans who are self-sufficient, not just really by nature, which is how a lot of texans like to think of themselves, but by necessity. so that is kind of a string of self-sufficient iraq to the book after a lot of the care nurse who write about here. >> you know, i never put in texas until 2005. was a selfless correspondent for the comments from london. yes, it was a culture shock as well as a rather short, too. but one of my first stories in 2006 was i learned up that tab time, what i thought of as the oil and gas state is actually passing california to become number one in wind power. you know, much as a century before or a little less repass california. california is to be number one in oil. now of course texas is. so i went to the town of bikini and west texas it is a long drive away. it's kind of a long drive. i reported the story nash is fascinated by the seeming contradiction that in fact it isn't really a contradiction in all of the oil in gas state came to the top. what was fun about the stories i also got to talk to jerry patterson, who is the current land commissioner. anyone who knows jerry patterson just does what journalists call it a bit a quote machine. at that time he was very interest to and leasing of state land offshore for wind projects, just as ushers it land for oil bricks. so i asked him about environmentalist concerns that these offshore turbines might lie in the path of a major bird fly away from mexico. he said to me, well, sure. the end of the day we will have smarter birds. [laughter] and i thought, this is just a dream. great story. >> evolution texas style. >> exactly. >> since you bring up the oil and gas industry, just real briefly and then we will open up for some questions from the audience. i wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about some similarities and differences he found between those two industries. you know, maybe economic motivators and business cycles. we're all familiar in texas with the boom and bust of the oil and gas industry. it is interesting about how the how the industry actually affect each other over the history of one development in the state. could you speak a little bit to that? >> go ahead. >> yeah, what are my favorite quotes of the book and this is when they find these folks are looking not a wind turbine in west texas mayors meet water. some another bell and remarked, now we can drill above the ground as well as below. this is sort of the texas mentality. texas now thinks of itself as an energy day. there are many complementarity is between oil and gas, landowners in west texas, were really primed more so than other state to understand the idea of royalties. so when oil production started declining in the late 1990s, you know, they were ready for something else. they were used to getting energy money from their land and they thought the wind was a good idea. so you know, landowners, folks who have worked in the oil business also than work in the wind is it. ellijay carter senior n. jay carter junior, a father-son team who makes a wind turbines in the late 70s and for now, which is near wichita falls, north texas near the oklahoma border, hometown u.s.a. because of oil. jay carter senior, his father was in the oil business. so that gave been a heritage of tinkering around, you know, linking to produce energy and when the oil prices comes along, they think what other energy sources can return to? the >> i will just amplify one thing kate said, which is we have a quote from michael weber, an energy expert and in texas because we don't care about the environment, we are actually able to do good things to the environment. what he means -- you know, you can write things like wind turbines much more easily than states like california. one of the things is one way of thinking about this book -- one way we thought about this book is we were trying to describe the texas wind rush as he might have described the oil rush a century or more ago. so the kind of come you know, used wild counters. peabo went to the hinterlands and try to make a buck off the winds, just as you might've once upon a time! thank you area not. now we will open it up to questions from the audience. so if you would come up and get in line behind the microphone, we will take you one at a time. okay, please, yes. >> thank you for being here, both of you. kate, you mentioned 9% of our state power comes from wind, which is a huge figure. so during the course of this talk and in the book had me describe some of the unique fact is in texas and physical factors, although bickle cultural fact yours help us become a state so far ahead of other states on this. do you think the others dates could derive as much of their power, is that possible? related to that, has the fact that they stayed gone so far as when, has not proven as an example to any other state that if they can do it, we can do it, to? >> texas is a little bit unique. it's a laboratory for wind power and everything else because we have our own grid and there's basically three grids, lecture grades in the lower 48, east west in texas. so that means texas is in the relatively unique position for being self-contained and having to rely on itself for its power. and so, you know, the fact that taxpayers built out when really gave some heart to other states that are interested in wind, but not quite willing to bite, we had the first renewable energy mandate -- one of the first renewable energy mandates in the country that had teeth and worked and i was fine by the legislature, saying that george bush in 1999 as part of a mega electric deregulation bill. so i think the texas experience went to scale up, california had done a little bit of that in the 80s. california had 90% of the world's wind capacity. they have problems, birds, among other names. some tax credits that didn't work. so texas kind of looked at california and said we see what went wrong there. were not going to do that. texas went ahead and built out when. other states.they could do it as well. >> i just want to add to that, one of the interesting things about texas. kate mentioned what was called a renewable portfolio, which was legislative speak for willie and mandate. the legislature commanded utilities in the late 90s as part of a big legislative compromise with just a small thing in it that turned out to be. that utility shilluk at a certain amount of luck to city from renewable energy, which in fact ended up being wind power. to me, sort of the last part of our book is really fascinated with this because it's a real irony that you have a libertarian does she have a red state like texas. from on high, there is almost a chinese five-year plan for getting a certain amount of electricity from renewable source. and so, we draw the reality of why that happened to be the case, which involved some important political donors to the bush administration when he was governor. you know, bush's aspiration to be president and to build whatever kind of environmental record he may. in some ways, if you can do a mandate here, you should be able to do it other places. as kate said, texas also has its own aspect, its own peculiar history that distinguish it. >> i will add briefly at a renewable energy mandate or just about any other kind of mandate is not so popular these days as it was 15 years ago. >> catos thought about this and it's fascinating how republican politicians were behind this mandate 15 years ago. but you know, if perry ran for president, is he going to play for texas being the leader in wind energy are in the republican primary will come out as part a mandate. so how politicians in this state, running for statewide office or national office inc. about wind energy will be interesting over the next year or two. >> kind of following up on that, could you talk about the business of wind? i hear different things, but is it really viable? in other words, without tax credits and incentives and mandates from on high, would it even exists? is it a financially viable thing? where's that going to go? just kind of talk about the business of wind. >> that's a great question that's a very complicated question. one thing is we might see at the end of this year how much wind is going to be built out independently because there's a very important federal tax credit that is due to expire at the end of this year. the wind industry says if this tax credit expires, they're going to really struggle to build wind farms in the tax credit is almost expired for quite some time. i am thinking kind of a wait-and-see attitude did of course the industry has an incentive to howl about this tax credit to be extended by how much they're continuing to build if it expires. i think we will see. one of the most interesting and untold features of texas i think it's a huge build up the transmission lines to the remote areas of west texas and so on were allowed to wind farms exist. there's also wind farms closer to the cities along the gold coast, so they work better with a great. the state is spending $6.81 billion. actually you guys. everyone in texas is spending $6.8 billion collectively to build out these lines when they approved the lines in 2008. they pegged at 5 billion somehow it sort of crept out. i think now of course they are saying that these plants will power the oil and gas drilling operations in the permian basin area. that is a really fascinating story and going to be several dollars a month i never went electricity bill coming soon to your home and we will see how that plays out. >> one other quick thing, which is the viability of wind is also depend didn't on the price of other forms of energy. so natural gas is quite volatile. i was in tampa, the small town in the panhandle and i heard t. boone pickens, a saudi investor talk about -- this is five or six years ago now, four years ago maybe, but his plan for building a giant wind farm in the tampa area. he was meeting with the townspeople of tampa. some of them were suspicious about whether this had come to fruition and others were suspicious about how loud it would be. he said well, do you like the kind of money in your pocket? he meant be getting royalties from the electricity generated by these turbines. has happened, because of changes in the price of natural gas basically, that huge wind farm hasn't happened, hasn't materialized as >> that's a complicated interaction between wind of natural gas and has a whole walkie panel on it. >> i would like to thank you are reading this book. i am looking forward to it being a series. i'm hoping the second book in your series will be the great texas solar rash. do you have any insight or not? >> well, solar is very interesting. it would like to get some of the mandates and those types of things that wind got 10, 15 years ago. the political climate in the energy climate as asher was saying has changed. they've been trying to get a non-wind man they were some kind of, you know, some kind of other incentive for solar power that's been unsuccessful so far. but on the other hand, san antonio is certainly taking a lead in solar power, building out a huge amount of solar. so you know, solar of course works better for the texas great. i do hear solar advocates saying, you know, let's can better the entirety of what solar does for the grid. the fact that the sun shines when we need our air-conditioners and are using a of power. so they like to see some pricing mechanisms potentially that reflects that. so yeah, we will see. we will check back in five years. >> could you comment on the significance to the future development of wind power as a source of energy for this state and elsewhere, the development of more efficient storage facilities, bigger batteries or whatever the other possibilities might be. >> just in a nutshell, the question if you couldn't hear it was about what the potential for storage of wind power and how about shape the future of wind power? so as kate alluded to, a lot of these are in remote parts of texas. we consume energy in the central part of the state. austin, dallas, houston, san antonio, et cetera. the wind tends to be transmission lines. the wind often when we don't need it the most. so hot summer days when you set your conditioner on high, it might not be. the question becomes how do you store that power when you need it? smart people have been working on this problem for decades. they still haven't quite solved it. you know, there's all kinds of experiments going on. you know, given the way our society has been going the last 50 years, i suspect so on will solve this in a cost effect of ways sometime and that will make renewable energy more attractive as a business. >> just add to that real briefly. duke energy, which is the utility has a significant battery project besides delivering it operates in west texas. that just began operating in january. i haven't checked in on it recently. also, wind advocate say that you don't necessarily need as much energy storage as he was being because if you disperse wind turbines everywhere, which of course they would like to do, the wind will surely be blowing somewhere, even if it's not in another place. you know, do we have that capability? in texas, the coastal wind farms to afford much better with the bread. and do we have that in texas? i honestly don't know. but naturally the wind is going to north dakota, but not blowing in oklahoma, maybe something will even out. >> my name is ron calhoun. as public director back during the 1990s. i just want everybody to know that the inception of the state involvement in a wind farm out in west texas delaware mountains was governor and richardson land commissioner jerry morrow. and i have a question. i've talked to you, asher, a couple weeks ago about an incident in the inception of that wind farms in delaware mountains. you might tell about the big enemy of wind farming is no wind. but the question i have is, did a wind power companies have the power of eminent domain? >> thank you for the question. let me first address the episode, which we read about in the book. the first kind of major wind farms in the delaware mount, which is in far west texas north of icann. if you more or less go north to big band, up above i attend -- i attend, you get the delaware mountains. it is a very windy place, but when they have the kind of christening of the wind farm, and there was no wind that day. and so, kind of an embarrassment. >> they try to find the windiest site in texas. when they have the opening pair of money, not a second went to be. six months later as i said, way too much wind. >> kate has a great bit of reporting what the people who are studying the christening ceremony, they wanted tablecloths to make it seem fancy. it's so remote a dare. they had to search over something like four counties to look at table class. so the question about eminent domain. do you have any? it's not something i've thought about. do the utilities have powered a minute domain? the public utilities commission has made decisions about the routes of transmission lines. those have been pretty contentious because you know, if you're a hill country landowner come you might not want a transmission line going through your view. ciresi reporter, that's an interesting thing to write on because you have what i call green on green violence. you have environmentalists who are all in favor of renewable energy wind power. and then you have another apartment to list who are for maintaining what they call view shed, which are your view. and so, lawyers get fired and press releases are filed and that's where i come in, to write about this pretty interesting contentious moment. >> one other thing. [inaudible] >> we've been working on her pronunciations, believed me. >> apologies. >> i was just wondering if in your research when you came across her interviewed pat white, who was my understanding had a big influence and impact on getting the legislation done to get wind power in the state. >> yes. pat wirth was the chairman of the public utility commission, the electric regulator under george bush when bush was governor. he tells us wonderful story. it's a very nice, charming fellow. he tells a story about how in 1996, you know, pat wood is leaving and walking out the door and all of a sudden says paypal, were? we like wind. okay, go get smart on it. so of course thinks the wind is just this kind of hippy dippy thing that people in california have done and not done very well. you know, so that launches what is called a deliberative polling process, the idea of bringing people in certain towns in texas together to learn about the pros and cons of different energy sources. at the end of all the sessions, toot cat was surprised that people come out in favor of wind power because wind is free and it doesn't emit pollution. so this helps lay the foundation for the renewable energy mandate that george bush ultimately signed in 1999. >> just a very quick comments, then one question. the comment is my ex-wife is environmentalists and has done when study in vermont. she's gone to the senate in vermont. a lot of the north eastern states don't want them because what you are talking about cannot see them money not reach is disturbing to many landowners into various. tourism being big up there. the question i have is who is going to take them down? i've heard they have a shelf life. who is paid to take them down when the shelflife expires? >> that has been an issue in california with the turbines put out in the 80s. my understanding is today contracts between the wind companies and landowners to provide for the taking down of these turbines. >> all right. that's the end of our question. we want to thank asher and kate again for this wonderful panel discussion. thank you very much. [applause] just a reminder that they'll be in the book signing tent in about 15 minutes. thank you all so much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> while we wait for the final panel today to begin, here's a short portion of the event from years past. >> life had not stopped after the white house. the last 10 years have been filled with travel, making new friends, working on causes that we care strongly about and the usual ups and downs of a virus, close family. and very exciting moment. i bet you didn't know that outlawed biker magazine declared a first lady of the century. [laughter] this of course accompanied by a picture of my head, superimposed on a curvaceous body draped over a harley davidson bike. biker babe of the century was one headline. it was quite an honor and certainly will be another boat. and yet there were two sons and one who went on to become governor and one went on to become president. so there really some things i could write about. as for research, i didn't have to do any. try to remember what happened when and who said what to whom, i didn't have the worry about that either. i've been a devoted diary keeper for years, so while i had to do was take my diary, already on my computer, turn it into some kind of readable prose, take out an opinion or two may be. not all, but some. some things are left best unpublished. now usually in the early mornings, sitting with my laptop in bed while george read the newspapers, while i've wrote, he cursed. somehow it all works. already, people are asking me if there are yet again a sequel. at age 78, i rather suspect not. but who knows. life didn't stop after the white house. it doesn't stop either as you approach 80 years of age and beyond especially if you're married to george bush. after all, this is demand who is parachuting one more time on his 80th birthday. he'd just done a 77 birthday and left it an infinitely with $10 million for m.d. andersen shuster cancer research hospital. now, on the 13th of june, this is the night -- the day after the gala, for to celebrate, he will make his last job and friends around the country are raising $30 million to be shared by m.d. andersen, the points of light foundation and the george bush presidential library foundation. .. george and i were invited to spend a day with president putin along the black sea. sort of the russian equivalent of camp david. when we arrived my george was wearing a suit and tie while putin had a more informal -- now we were very very flattered that he came to the airport while we were driving back some 20 minutes away. he suggested he would guess drop us off and we would freshen up and he and mrs. putin would meet us. they were going to have a press conference right after that. george dressed in very casual clothes. he wanted to be like putin. sweat pants and a polo shirt. that's all he had. as he walked up it became obvious that president putin also changed his clothing. [laughter] into a suit and tie. anyway i found myself running -- writing in my diary that night. this should go in the next book. i know writing this book reminded me of a couple of things i have always known. one is you shouldn't take yourself our life too seriously. i'd like to read a short passage from the book to prove my point. a regret, not my only regret but eric red that i did not keep all the pictures i have gotten from the barbara bush look-alikes. i get at least four letters a month and have for a year from ladies who have been told they look exactly like me. i'm so common looking that when i once spoke to the junior league in toledo ohio in october they had to look-alikes. they could be 5 feet tall or 5 feet 2 inches tall to 6 feet 2 inches tall. they could weigh 120, i like that, to 220. they can be 55 to 95 years of age. they all have one thing in common, white hair. i have finally learned to say i wish i did look as pretty as you and in most cases it's true. as you can imagine the mail brings all sorts of funny surprises. one year shortly after giving a commencement address at texas a&m university i received a letter from a lady who thought i might he amused by something that happened after my talk. she had taken her granddaughter with her to the graduation and when she returned the little girl to her mother the child ran into the house yelling mom, you will never guess what i did. i heard the mother of the president of the united states. i heard george washington's mother. [laughter] now i might have been more amused if i didn't sort of look like george washington. [laughter] another letter that surely thrilled me and amused my family came from a dear little girl who said something like that dear mrs. bush, great news. i have named my hat half are after you. [laughter] this nice child fairly often send me updates armed barbara bush the heifer. barbara competed and the houston livestock show one year and came in eighth. i was sorry for my little friend that but i was slightly relieved as i am not sure could have stood the headlines barbara bush wins stock show. [laughter] which brings me to the next thing that i was reminded of while writing this book. you cannot survive life without a sense of humor. otherwise you will never recover from all the ups and downs and disappointments and wrong turns. one of the reasons that i married george bush was that he made me laugh. this was written after the death of our beloved dog millie, you know the one who wrote the best-selling book about life in the white house and donated all the proceeds to literacy. malays book made over a million dollars for the foundation. george used to say you know you work all your life and finally you obtain the highest job in our country and maybe the world and your dog makes more money than you do. [laughter] we were very sad when milly died but thankfully some of the reaction to millie's death made us smile. i wrote in my book, could the outpouring of letters faxes flowers and telephone calls about millie was unbelievable. people read things like i love her and i will always remember her or, and i am having a mass said for her. this was accompanied by a mass card. at our first congregational church in kennebunkport they prayed for her on the sunday after her death and one lady wrote that she knew the pain we were suffering. you see my husband died last year. [laughter] that made george very nervous. [laughter] the barbara bush foundation for family literacy got a 500-dollar contribution in memory of millie. it was really sweet. people wrote letters about their dogs death, sent pictures of their dogs or cats either living or dead. millie would not have liked the latter one. my good friend mildred kerr after whom we named -- after millie was named head reporters called to interview her in georgia's george's chief of staff jane becker was interviewed by "people" magazine. both lady said the interviewers said they knew mably had written a book and she had given her proceeds to chair the but they wanted to know the personal side of millie, what she had done lately. millie was a dog. thank god for a sense of humor. however the most important thing i was reminded of is that i am the luckiest woman in the world. i have a husband whom i adore, children that bring us great joy , good friends that mean a tremendous amount to us and we'd lived in the great state of texas which is part of the freest nation in history -- in the history of the world. [applause] >> you are watching booktv on c-span. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> up out every 40 years some form of global power has tried to come in and dominate the afghan scene and control it and use it for its own purposes. there have been periods of afghan history when the rulers of afghanistan have taken advantage of the geographical position of afghanistan to play a sort of neutrality card using the favoritism towards one global power playing that against the possibility of leaning towards the other woeful power to keep both of them somewhat at bay. this has been the diplomatic strategy of successful afghan rulers whenever there have been any end the cold war for example was a notable. back. both the ussr and the bad states were interesteinterested in afghanistan and they both were competing to enlarge their influence in the country and somehow because of the counterbalancing of those two forces there was a period when afghans were in control of their own destiny. during that period you saw modernization and change in afghanistan that was more rapid and more sort of dramatic then you have seen anywhere in this country. that period ended when the pendulum of trying to swing back and forth between the inner afghanistan and the outer world started to swing so fast and so far that it finally crashed and the country succumbs to a coup by the small communist group which then quickly was followed by the soviet invasion and i would contend that from that day to this we are still in the aftermath of the aftereffects of the soviet invasion. the soviet invasion was pretty much destroyed the fabric of the country and of the 6 million refugees that were driven out of the country to the destruction of the villages compound the tearing apart of the tribal structures and the creation of a state of war in which the old traditional afghan systems for generating leadership gave way to a new system which was in that state of chaos you are probably going to end up being an important guide. so that brought into being a hold of the class of afghan leaders who are commanders and now they call them warlords and that entered the fray. when the soviets left those guys all started fighting each other fighting each other and they tour the cities apart and then in the wake of that came -- so now we are in the country and i think we have come in with something of the same idea that the soviets had which was this is a primitive country and in a lot of trouble and if we can restore everything and produce material benefits for the people they will be grateful and they will come over to our side. there's more to it than that however. afghans are very interesteinterested in material benefits like anyone is that there is a question of the reconstruction of the afghan institutions come for the society the soul in the family structure and the reconciliation of the ball these contending factors on the afghan scene. this taliban business is not completely separate from the contentions within afghan society over dominating afghanistan. >> you can watch in this and other programs on line it booktv.org. >> we are back live in austin for the texas look festival. we today's live coverage with ricardo ainslie and alfredo corchado talking about mexico on both tv on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] >> we are going to start right now so grab your seats. >> good afternoon. thank you all for coming tonight. we are happy to be here at the texas oak festival. just a few notes of business. i'm asking everyone to turn off their cell phones so we don't interrupt the conversation with that let me get started. i'm shannon o'neil and i work for the council and foreign relations where i focus on mexico and latin america more broadly and i have the distinct pleasure tonight talking with two wonderful gentleman that have written really impressive books about mexico. the first one here on my right is ricardo ainslie. his book is called "the fight to save juarez" and this book tells the story of this order city which many of you know has had the unfortunate distinction in recent years of being not only the most violent place in mexico but by some accounts the most violent city in the world. he tells the story of this descent into darkness of this border city through the eyes and through the stories of many people in war is but security for people. it is the mayor of juarez from 2007 to 2010. it is a newspaper photographer who patrols the streets and shows up at thousands of crime scenes. it is a mistress of a mid-level cartel operator and it is finally a human rights activist that is thrown into this fray trying to make sense of it and people on the criminal side but also those who might be breaking the law on the governmengovernmen t side. in this book which is a highly readable book that i recommend to all of you, he really brings out the complexity of the situation there and particularly in a city that usually all you see are very broad and damning brushstrokes so this is ricardo's book. the other book we will discuss tonight is called "midnight in mexico." the author is alfredo corchado and this is actually his own story. this is more of a memoir and it's the story of the man who was worn in mexico who spent his childhood in the vegetable and fruit fields of california and to then as an adult return to mexico as what became a very respected and well-known foreign correspondent. in this role he ended up explaining his first homeland mexico to his second homeland here in the united states is a longtime correspondent for the "dallas morning news." in his 20 plus years working as a reporter, he covered mexico's political opening. he covered its economic ups and downs. he covered the movement of people and the migration of people from mexico to the united states on both sides of the border and he has also covered increasingly mexico's drug war. and as a result of that final part of his portfolio he has received several death threats for his deep and investigative reporting for trying -- dedication to his story. this is such a compelling book that i will tell all of you that the movie rights are -- sewing courage you to buy it and read it now before the movie comes out so you came compared which one you like better. now on that let me turn to my two authors and let me start us off with one personal question before we get into the histories and the stories in mexico. let me start off and i will start with you ricardo. particularly why did you write this book about juarez? >> thank you shannon. i am from mexico and they came to the united states when i was 17 years old. it has been just witnessing what has happened in mexico over the last decade or so has been released so unsettling, so deeply troubling. 10 or 15 years ago no one would have imagined that mexico would be living what it's living today. and so that was really the impetus. it was sort of a heartfelt wish to partly to really just understand back sicko. i think it's difficult to cut through the headlines to get a three-dimensional picture of the reality of what is taking place in cities like juarez and many of the cities along the border. so mostly it was that. i wanted to understand what was taking place and i wanted to make sense of it and in some ways also shed some light on the aspects of the story that include not only a very dark aspect of human nature but also include the people who are really trying to do the right thing. i think there is -- it's easy especially from this side of the border to put a gloss on everybody in mexico as being somehow either corrupted or colluding or not really involved in their communities in a constructive manner and it is not accurate. partly my interest was to explore it portrait of a city where yes there are plenty of people taking place but there are also good people trying to do good things for their community and for their nation. that was really the essence of it. >> of frago why did you decide to write your story? >> first of all thank you for being here. i was at the texas book festival two years ago just walking around and i thought wow if i ever write this book i didn't at the time think i would ever write this book. i had no idea how to write a book but i wanted to be back someday so thanks -- thank you for being here at the texas book festival. i wrote this book because i have had a privileged front row seat for the "dallas morning news" as a correspondent for them and watching probably some of the most turbulent times in mexico since the revolution. i wasn't there for the revolution but it's contemporary mexico. these have been very defining times. last week we released a look in mexico and someone jokingly said you know you are probably the forest gump of mexico. [laughter] i have been and some of the most important times whether was-- my father was a guest worker and so i've lived in the area. we lived in san joaquin valley. my parents worked for the chavez union and when i wrote for "the wall street journal" i would try to find dedication around something in mexico's i was able to cover-- help cover the 1988 residential election arrived in mexico and later had the first interview in 2000. when penguin contacted me they said we would like for you to write a book about mexico in the last 50 years. i thought of it as a journalistic narrative but they really wanted much more of a personal narrative so it took a while for me to get comfortable with that era. i guess the last real big event was the return of the once powerful revolutionary they came back to office last year. it all kind of came together and watching mexico descent into this darkness because of the drug war and trying to figure out what have and to the hope in mexico and what happened to these. we were supposed to go into the first world so in many ways writing this look was therapeutic trying to explain to myself why my mother was a adamantly opposed to make going back to mexico returning to mexico so i was trying to understand both sides of the border come, understand my mother's opposition and understand what happened to mexico. >> if you read rico's book you will see what looks broadly at the history of juarez it focuses on 2007 to 2010 and these are the years when the city is really unraveling with the violence. he talks about the offense and he also talks about the people who are affected by it and trying to stop it at all different levels. but it ends in 2010 and in fact the last chapter leaving the epilogue aside is really that mayor who struggled with trying to stop the violence and him literally getting in his car and heading across the border to el paso to live presumably the rest of his life. it leaves an unsettling note, the question whether the next mayor who has a much murkier history and some would say at least allowed it to not actively enabled some of the bad things that happened in juarez, him coming back as the mayor. rico i would be interested -- you have to buy the books to find out what happened in those three years so do that would in the time since the book left off looking forward over these last three years what has to happen in juarez? where is it today versus where you stopped her narrative? >> well, first of all we need to think about the character -- the dimensions of juarez. over the course of six years you have over 11,000 people killed in a city about the size of 1.3 million people or so. that is a tremendous number of deaths. so you have it as the epicenter of the drug war in mexico. about 20% of the national fatalities related to the drug war take place in this one city and the mexican government deployed 20% of its forces to the city. it was sort of a testing ground of the mexican government strategy. the mayor of juarez who leaves office in 2010 really leaves in the context with a tremendous amount of violence and he is replaced by a man named uke we who had been raised the predecessor as mayor also. he was mayor and then he won re-election and became mayor again. during his first tenure the man he appointed number two man for the police department for the juarez police department was by all accounts -- had close ties to the juarez court tell -- cartel and within six months of mcgill leaving office the number two man in the juarez police department has arrested in el paso having attempted to bring a ton of marijuana across the river. he was appointed by mood he is so that was one of the telling points about his administration perhaps. we have another crisis taking place in juarez at the same time that the sterile eruption of violence and that is an economic crisis of enormous magnitude. the finest 50% of the economy are assembly plants in most of the plants produce for the assembly. we have an auto industry that is -- these companies are on the verge of bankruptcy. in mexico and juarez in particular this leads to catastrophic economic crisis. you have 80,000 people lose their jobs in one year in 2010. so you have the violence and to have this economic crisis. in 2012 almost 800 people are killed in juarez and that's a huge drop. in 2010 and 11 you have 2500, over 3000 people killed a year so 800 people in juarez. people think it's such a relief and at the same time the question is what accounts for that? if you have people in juarez, after six or seven years of this kind of unrelenting violence where there's tremendous amount of cynicism about any kind of authority what some people will tell you what happened in juarez is -- and that is why we have it drop in the violence in this community. other people will say look, 11,000 people killed? the profile of the average big them is 50 -- 15 to 25 years old, men. if you have lost that many young men that may affect the character so some people say it's the change in the economics with the uptick of the u.s. economy picking up that has brought them back. one thing that hasn't really talked about which i think is really an important point is that in 2010 the mexican government with some foreign aid put almost a quarter of a billion dollars into social infrastructure in a city that had been so neglected for so long that you know many communities had no schools, no electricity. and so i think that's another variable in the crime. it's probably some combination of all of those elements but the fact is that juarez has seen the worst of the violence. 800 people killed. to you all and to most places would be still -- i mean san antonio had 100 e-book killed and 2012. that is a city with a lot of poverty and a lot of street gangs and so on. there is still a lot of violence but in juarez that comes as a relief almost. tax revenues are up. realistic markets are up so there's every indication that the community is on the rebound. so i think all of those variables probably have a role in that. >> all frago -- alfredo let me turn to you. mexico itself has had changes in the year since you finished your book. one of the biggest is that it has a new government so you mentioned in your book this is the party that ruled mexico for 70 years and was kicked out in the late 90s and 2000 but is elected in what everyone deems free and fair elections, elected back into mexico's white house. could you give us a sense of how you as an author and somebody who follows mexico as a mexican and an american but also as a reporter at the "dallas morning news" how do you see this? what has or hasn't happened? >> as a foreign correspondent it has meant a real effort on the part of the new governmengovernmen t to try to change the narrative, to try to change the storyline from violence to other aspects of mexico which i think is very fair. mexico also has some very prosperous sites. there are some prosperous regions like central mexico where you have the growth of the aerospace industry. one thing that's interesting that i always find interesting as someone who has covered immigration and you see the big ties between texas and mexico, the number of times i talk to mexicans these days who are somewhat linked to the labor market in north texas and they say you know what -- i will ask them do you plan to emigrate to the united states like your grandparents are like your father etc.? they will say well yes but more out of curiosity than necessity. that makes me kind of think about the long-term immigration. whether americans especially texans were that they will miss mexicans. in that sense for the government to change the narrative at think its fair. we should try to report about other aspects of mexico. i don't think it should mean one or the other. i don't see how you can change the storyline that 100,000 people died or disappeared in mexico. i think that's still a very important story that we must never forget. so it has been hard to balance the two. rico's point is a great point. it's emblematic as the rest of the country. in some ways it is but i think if we look at juarez today, if we see you juarez and places like laredo and laredo, texas if we see them as a patient in remission or is it recovering? i would say it's still in remission. a lot of the same year's are still there. whether it's poverty, whether it's any quality. more than anything impunity. so i am guardedly optimistic that things will continue to get better. i do agree with the rico that the community has also changed. civil society has changed in places like juarez. you see a much more active engaged civil society people who are much more interested in trying to change their authorities. i think the role of social media has been incredibly important over the last two or three years. the other thing that i think has changed is the mexico relationship with the united states. the u.s.-mexico interagency relationship. i think during the 12 years of the opposition the national action party, there was so much closer tie from agent to agent. i think there was a sense that maybe the americans had come into the kitchen and they were not just helping with the food, but they have essentially become the chefs. it was a way to politely tell them thank you for your service and thank you for your health but it's time for us to take over. both sides are trying to find their footing. >> let me pick up on that and especially the relationship with the united states. i was born in mexico and lived in mexico you feel a close tie to it. here in texas is obviously much more back and worth but if you are going to talk to americans more broadly -- i grew up in new york. what would you say to someone in new york or south dakota or other places? why whitest mexico matter so much? why should they care about this country to our south? >> i think there are so many reasons why we need to care and we need to be concerned and thoughtful of what's going on. first of all the obvious is that we share a 2000-mile order. secondly most people think that china is the second trade partner for the united states. actually if you look at this in terms of who buys american products mexico is the second most important trading partner not china. then you have the cultural reasons. everybody knows that there has been a tremendous migration to the united states over the last couple of decades so you have these cultural and familiar -- familial linkages. they're all kinds of reasons that this is an important relationship in these be thought about but also picking up on alfredo's point in thinking about a comment that the ambassador of the united states said. he made this statement in may i think. he was at the wilson center and he said you know in terms of the definition of the relationship between u.s. and mexico he said it is no longer our top priority to fight the war on drugs and he said we do not control all of the variables that are involved in that word. i think that was really a very clear signal basically saying here in the united states we have to deal with consumption that the problems of mexico is having. if we don't deal with that it doesn't matter how many people you send to mexico in law enforcement or the military whoever you want -- at the end of the day this is not a law enforcement problem. i think that's another reason why we should care, because we are part of a relationship that has created this problem and has allowed this problem to endure and it's not going to end until we deal with that fact. >> when you are pitching your editorial ward why should the mexico story that you have so well researched the on the same page? the same question. >> it's not that difficult if you live in texas. we did have a bureau at one point. 12 people in the bureau and we are down to one and you were looking at him. i met the texas book festival but i challenge all of you to think of what that their country impacts you more on a daily basis than mexico whether it's food culture music lead lines politics. sometimes when you ask mexicans when you are talking to them they say do you know what? i don't get why were not that important to them united states. is it that we don't have a bomb like the people in the middle east? i don't know how to answer that that i would eram as -- i want to go back to be a journalist here for a second. we have one of the premier experts on u.s.-mexico with shannon o'neil and her book. i will actually ask shannon why should mexico matter so much to united states? >> i would say this. in researching and writing my book and looking closely at the united states but also mexico there is no other country that affects us as much on a day-to-day basis so from the food is on our tables to the parts in our cars to the gasoline in our tank to the consumers products to the drugs in our streets mexico is part of our day-to-day lives wherever you live in the united states. that is the reality. you may recognize it here in texas but i don't think the other 49 states see it quite that way. that is why i hope with more and more votes in people talking about it more people will realize that. i want to ask you one last question and i will return to the personal site here and then i want to open it up to all of you for for your question so be ready for those. my final question now will turn to you ricardo first is having gone through this myself, not about the book is much but about you. how has writing this book, how has it changed you? >> that is really an excellent question shannon. i think for me almost two years that i spent going to juarez to research this book and really seeing first-hand, not reading accounts even though there are many excellent accounts in the papers and so on but to see first-hand what can happen to a society into a community, to a city that descends into this kind of chaos. you just can't imagine living in a city where there is no one to turn to. there is no authority. there are no police that you can turn to. you are at the mercy of the forces that are around you. some of them are official and some are organized crime forces. it doesn't matter. nobody feels protected. nobody feels that they have a voice but seeing the day-to-day in juarez, the number of victims. i hung out with a lot of juarez journalists, so that meant that i had the opportunity to visit a lot of crime scenes with them. these guys all traveled with police scanners in their cars. they are at the crime scene even before the front six people show up half the time. just to see the character of that violence and the impact of that violence is sort of like tearing off the veneer that we have. we think this sort of life that we lead -- we take it for granted and we think it's stable and it's reliable. i can guarantee you that 10 years ago no one in juarez could have imagined that their city would default into this kind chaos. i think that's the thing that changed me the most. sort of peering into this abyss first-hand. i have never seen anything like it and it was extremely powerful personally because this is the mexico that i loved. i still have friends and family and this is absolutely heart breaking. so i think to me that was the most profound and impactful aspect of this book. >> i think more than anything it changed me and helped me embrace my fears. in many ways the book is domesticating this death threat that was made and that is the backdrop of the book. it was understanding and addressing the fear and appreciating i think the courage of many of my colleagues in mexico conquered the people that don't have the protection. my colleague -- if you think i'm brave imagine being a reporter in going into these border towns that you stake out -- you stick out like a sore thumb. the thing that changed me the most was really understanding that in many ways this locus about death. it's about life. it's about hope. it's about the universal search for home and it's coming to the realization that in the end you are seeing some of the darkest moments in mexico. but i also walked away seeing the best of mexicans, seeing this incredible resilient spirit that is fair and understanding that we are there. we are still standing and we are changing. some others have told me over the past few years we are hoping a community with the blood of our children. i think in the end it made me understand just the resilient spirit but one last thing. you are looking for home throughout this whole process. where is home to us is it in the united states are set mexico? it made me appreciate both places. i don't think if i'd would have written this book if i didn't live in mexico said made me understand the importance of living up in the united states and my parents sacrificed. >> let me open it up now to your questions. please use the microphone and let me ask you all to ask questions. we have these wonderful authors who you can turn to. >> my name is anita from austin texas and i've been here since before it is texas. i want to point something out and ask you a you feel about it. i think the texas book festival is a good example of people not thinking of mexico are mexican-americans as very important. there are very few latinos here at the book festival and i don't think there are any latinos on the staff or the board etc. for the festival. it seems like there is an attitude out there in general that latinos don't read. how do you feel about that, the lack of latinos at the texas book festival? >> latinos don't -- don't only read, but they write. [applause] >> we talked about the changing area for the mexican administration towards the war but have we seen a shift in the strategy or is there still a continuity between the previous of administration and that of president pena and if you are still relying on the army. >> i mean i spent some of last week and last month in d.c. and mexico city asking that very question. how has the strategy changed? people keep telling me give it a year and maybe a little bit more so to be fair to the administration we are skeptical that maybe we should wait. i personally haven't seen much of the change in strategy. i do see them with less information coming from the administration. i know the violence in general has leveled off. there are places where people will tell you things are better, not perfect but juarez is significantly better and as far as an official strategy i don't think we have seen that big of a change. shannon you are a big expert on that. >> when you look at what president calderon did you can criticize him for not doing enough or not prioritizing heart not doing it fast enough or in the right order but many of the basic things he did at the blueprint for how you improve security in mexico. you invest in cleaning up their police forces and professionalizing your police. he began to reform your justice system so you can clean up your courts. you do what they did in juarez which is invest millions of dollars in socioeconomic programs to help youth at risk keeping people from going down that path in the first place. while the campaign was about changing what you were going to do when you get into office what can you do to make mexico safer. there may be different emphasis under this government but i don't see it being a real sea change because there aren't a lot of other options out there. >> i would add that i think they're conflicting messages and it probably is a matter of time. for example the interior minister talked about pulling back from security collaborations and some of the fusion centers they used to have a lot of american participation and i think they have stopped that. they started that in february so that is one message but on the other hand when they took down one of the top leaders of the cartel that was clearly an operation that involved close work. an american john helps track this guy and so-and-so there very mixed messages. >> i have read recently that some of the emphasis from the standpoint of the cartel's or other underground forces has switched from maybe carrying the drugs to threatening people and kind of like the mafia did or does with extortion. i have heard that is really a growing problem. i have friends in mexico. my question is, can you speak to that? do you know what's going on in in that realm? >> one of the things we have learned over the last few years is i think it's kind of an anathema to call them drug trafficking organizations because it's really organized crime. i think the paramilitary group has been the big lesson for them they are into piracy and prosecution kidnapping, extortions controlling immigration routes in mexico and they operate right along i-35. san antonio right here in austin and dallas. he came of age as a criminal in north texas but i think it has changed the whole dynamic of simply saying they are moving drugs. it's really organized crime. >> i would only add that i don't think it's the drug related operations. it's just that they diversified a business plan. they have other sources of income and they now extort people and kidnap people etc. etc.. that is become one source of revenue for them and that is why i think it's better to think of it as organized crime rather than drug cartels. >> you mentioned the importance -- just how important it is to really have a memory for the things that have happened in mexico. europe book and especially yours are very informational. my question is with regards to the arts in the words of playwrights in the works of musicians and fiction writers who eventually capture the heart or the madness in a more artistic or underlying waive which war do you consider to be more representative of these terrible years? >> that is a great question. >> first i'm going to say the new movie coming out of alfredo corchado pasta -- 's book coming out. i don't know if you can cite specific works but i can tell you a moment that speaks to it. i happen to be in juarez witness program was launched. there was a complication. the cabinet had come in to hear the reports from the various committees did they go through the various committees and they are about to wrap up. do you know what -- is when someone jumps into the bull ring and tries to fight the bull? this guy jumps up and he says mr. president, calderon or whoever says okay let the man. >> the word. he said i represent the arts in juarez. in all of these committees in all of these groups may be very important but without the art you don't have spirit, you don't have hope and you don't have a future. the place was just captured by this man. and so i think you were speaking to something essential, vital. without that no society can function, period. >> hi. i've been enjoying the television series the bridge which if some haven't seen it it's about a serial killer operating literally on the border between el paso and juarez and juarez detective and cop team up. i was wondering if you had seen it if you like to benefit adequately conveys what's going on in your book's? >> i haven't seen it. >> i haven't seen it either. i've been in to see it but i haven't seen it. [laughter] >> you guy should see it. it portrays latinas in a very same way but i think you would enjoy it. >> we will put it on the list and tweet our responses. [laughter] >> you like you said earlier its organized crime. it's not just drug trafficking but it's other things. i would like to know the this sets those are one thing. i don't think he is the one running it but at the same time the soviet submarine was in the gulf of mexico so what i'm saying is how are we supposed to control somebody that has so much money and so much influence that they spread to other countries? >> so what is the reach? what is the reach of the influence of these organized crime groups are or aren't? i think that's an interesting question. >> clearly they have tremendous reach. people are being busted in. >> and in france, south america and so on. i think that the amount of money even though nobody can really put -- get a fix on just what the churn amount of money that is being generated and where it's being you know managed etc., it's very murky. there is no question there's a tremendous amount of money in it and that fact complicates any effort to address it because you know billions of dollars are a very sweet thing. >> it's global. i was in west africa about a year ago and they took me down to show me where planes were landing in colombia with the help of mexicans. it's also important to understand the depth of the corruption in places like mexico the government corruption. that's not to say every one in mexico's growth. i think their people trying to do the right thing but the corruption is such that the collusion is an organized crime. it helps you understand explain why this stuff is -- stuff doesn't just magically appear in austin or dallas. it's a vast network that extends all over the world to its beloved me just add onto that and the worries we have for the global reach but they are here in united states. we have the biggest drug market. the most money is here but we don't have the crime problems that you see in rico's book and we don't have the five and so i don't think these people are invincible. we found a way to have this crime, it to have these drugs and to have this money but not have it affect the vast majority of citizens on a day-to-day basis as a dozen other places so there are lessons too. if we have these markets we may never get rid of organized crime for smugglers or whatever you want to call them but it's also way -- there also ways to make a seed with a safe and prosperous life along having illegal markets. >> thank you. >> this is the last question. >> i have a question about -- i feel like it's from two different places the border and everywhere else. i wanted to know if you think that is a legitimate distinction or not and within mexico there's also that distinction there may be by mexican citizens about that dichotomy or not? >> well i'm sure alfredo can speak to this better than i can but first of all there are other areas of mexico that are profoundly affected. the archbishop recently said our state is uninhabitable. that is after years of effort. so there is that it also there are broad swath of the country that for all intensive purposes are no different than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago so i think that's really important to recognize. things shift in terms of where the focus of the issues are. so i mean i think the violence is one part of the narrative in mexico and unfortunately it overshadows other narratives that are equally important, equally true and reflecting what people are really living. >> i will try to answer that more from a mexico city perspective. that is where he lived in mexico city and when i first started covering this in 2003 and 2004 there was always the perception from mexico city residents but that only happens on the border. that is their problem and it's been going on for years and years. i think if you talk to people today that sentiment has changed. it's no longer just on the border. it's moving -- it used to be in juarez and now it's in mexico and things are moving more and more into mexico city but also i am aware that i'm here in texas and i want to make it clear that when i write a book called "midnight in mexico" i'm not trying to scare the bejesus of the people into not going to mexico. ..

Transcripts For ALJAZ The Stream 20221116

this is al jazeera. these are the top stories, nato says is looking into an explosion in easton, poland, which ukraine is blaming on russian missiles. 2 people were killed in the blast and a village near the ukrainian border. moscow denies carrying out strikes in the area . you as president joe biden said that based on the trajectory, it's unlikely. a missile fired from russia caused the blast. it was speaking after world leaders wrapped up an emergency meeting called by him on the sidelines of the g. 20 summit in bali. the leaders released a statement offering full support for an investigation into the poland incident. former u. s. president donald trump was announced. he will run for president again and 2024 elections trumping trump's earlier than usual announcement is seen as a move to discourage other contenders like father the governor wrong de santis. together we will be taken on the most corrupt forces and entrenched interests imaginable. our country as an aig, horrible state were in grave trouble. this is not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate. this is a task for a great movement that embodies the courage, confidence, and the spirit of the american people. this is a movement. this is not for any one individual, thousands of people in democratic republic of congo, a scrambling for safety. the conflict between the military and the m. 23 fighters is moving closer to the regional capital of north hebrew province. norma, the m $23.00 fighters, a widely understood to be backed by rolanda and allegation the rwandan government denies. the international committee of the red cross says to trucks carrying medical supplies of arrived into gray, ethiopia as prime minister abbey ahmed promise to implement the ceasefire. deal signed between the government and rebels. earlier this month. the tooth aims to and to years of conflict that has devastated the ticket i region. wal mart has agreed to pay $3100000000.00 to settle lawsuits across the u. s. over strong opioids sold by its pharmacies. the retail giant is the latest chain to reach a deal to close. lawsuits filed by state and local governments. and those are the headlines. the news is going to continue here on. i'll just get off to the stream. good boy. talk to al jazeera, we also do believe that women of afghanistan were sent out at band in by the international community. we listen, leah pig shooter press for the role against terrorism as glen, more money. we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter on al jazeera. i welcome to the stream i much habit dean sitting in for phemie. okay. tens of thousands of people in eastern democratic republic of congo have been forced to flee their homes as government forces battle the resurgent m. 23 militia. now as the rebels draw closer to the major city of goma, we look at how civilians are coping and ask what it will take to bring the fighting to an end. ah, joining us for today's conversation, reagan, missouri is an activist with lucia, a youth based civil society movement. he joins us from gama, also, and gama. we have malcolm webb, he's a senior al jazeera correspondent and completing our line up from go. my grant laity is unicef representative. indeed, congo, thank you so much for joining us on all 3 of you. and remember, you can always send us your comments or questions here on youtube, and i'll be sure to put them to our desk directly. so let's start with a little bit of basic background to this conflict. m. $23.00 or the march 23rd movement is a mostly congolese tootsie militia. now, in 2012, it briefly seized goma, the capital of north keybo province. and in 2013 the government and m 23 reached a peace deal, but in late 2021 and 23 resumed fighting, saying that the government had not kept its promises. as am 23 leads a new offensive now in north kiva, the congolese government says neighboring gro, wanda, is giving support to the rebels. the government in kigali denies any involvement. now, with those facts in mind, i want to just start by kind of addressing to why, why is this happening, malcolm? if you had to kind of boil it down, why are we seeing this renewed violence? well, it's not just common government that accuses wanda, enrolled him and i mean you and investigators leak to report. earlier this year we seen photographs of robot rwandan soldiers with $23.00 even videos. we proceed with the release from antarctic 3 show that fighters wearing rwandan equipment equipment and now it doesn't come through and it does deny it and we're waiting to get them. they'd like to reply and include that denial. but it doesn't surprise anyone in this region. java, another iteration of was widely to believe to be over one then backed on rebellion and $23.00 rebelled against economies government 10 years ago with rwandan support . before that came c n d p in 2008, 2009. at the job history in the, in the 990, were wondering you got the invaded in 96. following the one, the genocide that had been accused of repeatedly entering with the military's meddling and of lifting mineral since then. so not sentence a kind of repetition of this. why is it happening now? yeah, i mean, a year ago, congos army, congress government let in. you got the army, you know, given to the province austin, to believe, to fly and call the adf at the time. relations were not good between you gander wanda, and i wonder, objected to his rival being given access to eastern congo where it's made money in the past. and so what was the point when we started seeing and $23.00 active again, which a lot of people understand to be under setting itself militarily, anything con day? sure, ever since the relations between those 2 countries have improved, and it was widely seen as a sort of a weak moment for the congo, leads the government and the congress forces with relations, particularly poor, the un peacekeepers a here. yeah. and i probably many people it's, it's an open door a month or unity to, to come in again. and then they bring country and you know, when we talk about the neighboring countries, i want to kind of broaden this out for a 2nd. for those who are not familiar, and i appreciate that context to begin with reagan when we look at the civilian toil, i mean the displacement of civilians and also just to detect you know, the conditions that are deteriorating so rapidly. what is a major concern to you and what looks different perhaps this time? reagan? yes, that's the major concern. it's about the shelter for people who move from that place. his work been obliged to move from that villages but sort of saw the need for they need the what are they need and sensation. there is a lot of needs and so far as mentality and response as being a school. busy slow, right, and i had a mom and i see, sorry, i don't want to interject, but when we talk about the humanitarian response, i know you're particularly focused on children grant. we have a video common in fact, or i should say, this is from the you and hcr is joel smith. that raises this point, take a listen to what he had to say. but he seems high. this placement is forced to flee the cautious including warning resumes, territory, sheltering 23000 people who is and she has to flee overnight until. ready so she has gotten to regina and the outskirts is going from any, this isn't the 1st time this should come from violence. we're seeing families driven to pause many years for us arrives and younger is she new, unaccompanied children have already lived through trauma confluence. so grand children being abducted, we've heard, you know, either killed, maimed or even, you know, so far as so much sex or violence reported what, what concerns you most here. well, thank you. that just to, to 1st of all, put a few numbers that you mentioned tens of thousands but, but actually since the, the, the, the escalation from the 20th of october its estimated the new 188000. i'm bringing the total to since the beginning of march this year when things started to reactivate, right? as messy was mentioning up to about $240000.00 overall. so in terms of displace people, a 150000 of those in round numbers have arrived just north of goodman and then you know, gone, go area. can you change this? let's think of about 25000 households. so as, as reagan was mentioning, the immediate concerns or water sanitation on that, i just want to add, this is a zone that is well, cholera. we have done about a 160 interventions in just the last week on the caller alerts, shelter is a major problem. some people are sleeping literally on and this, this is an error with like lava, you know, from previous volcanic eruptions and having, we've seen mothers, you know, have the, the babies lying on top of them and then a small piece of plastic. yeah. just, you know, when we say shelter, we need to be clear, really setting right on the child's protection area. you know your question about the different sort of concern we've had. we've since march had a 1500 separated children identified a 1200 of those have been re, unified with the families over 200 children, child soldiers, children associated groups have been identified and released and have gone through rehabilitation services. and then we've also had over 300 and we've had a 140, very 5 cases of the agenda based slide. and so the protection issues are significant, of course and grand. i appreciate those numbers, those statistics, but of course, as we all know, it's all the more impactful to really hear those personal stories. i know malcolm in one of your packages. earlier this week for al jazeera, you spoke to a woman who survived a rape by am 23 fighters. i'd love to play the clip for our audience and then we'll come right back to you on the end of it. take a listen. gloria. not her real name says she was pregnant when she was gang raped by fighters from the n 23 rebel group. earlier this year, there was nobody to help me. when i woke up over the hospital, my neighbor had rescued me. i don't know what they used because it was badly torn, and my bladder was leaking. gloria's baby died before she gave birth, and was surgically removed. now, she's joined the nearly 200000 people have fled their homes. the conditions in the camp subsides. there isn't enough food or clean water and shelters, don't keep out the rain. well, congos army and most of its armed groups are accused of widespread right to be says, the fact that tens of thousands of people have chosen to come here, leaving behind their homes. and they give some indication of just how scared they are of m 23, malcolm watching that back and knowing all that, you know, based on your coverage in past years, looking back at this conflict. of course, as you mentioned at the top, this isn't new. how does it compare in terms of what the people are having to endure? i mean, i guess and me, what seems i guess really quite sad about it or be depressing is having to enjoy the same things again. i was here in 2008 when the c n d b i, we're talking in 20122013 the fact that yeah, it was kind of history. seems like history repeating the same thing happening again . that's terrible. and, and then i'm guessing the case of rights abuses. i mean, as you said, then the story is not only just m 23, a 2 committees. the army is accused of right? this is on many occasions over the course. emily, better when they're waiting that better when they're funded, they're better when they're fed and wanted the west moment to when they're being beaten. when the retreating, the grades in accused of fighting alongside congress they. they also deny that including the law and others, m $23.00 is a fighting alongside and then known for right to be seen and brutality in the thirty's they control. yeah, it was unique about i'm 23, operate commissions like a conventional army and, and in the past and it's taken over territories. it's them administered them. it's got prison prisoners. and i because it i history because they've done that before then the population is very good. rank these guys, reagan, we just heard malcolm bring up the fear. obviously, the fear factor, not just from m 23, but just escalating situation and even regionally, which we'll discuss in a few minutes. but i do want to ask you, we heard from patricia who and she's a freelance journalist, she had a very interesting point. i want to play it for you and then ask you something going. genuinely, 3 variables have advanced in recent weeks. they have, he's several keystones and they are known about 30 kilometers away from the provincial capital where they are not for sure. however, if, if the rebels had the intention to push forward and try to seize gomez, they did a d k. the go, what seems clear is that they want to put more pressure and has more negotiating power at the talks that will take place in the next 3, please. the company, so sorry. in the meantime, obviously, the c began populations that carried the worst burden of the crisis. reagan when you listen to patricia and knowing that we've seen civilians attacking a u. n. p convoy. earlier this week, we've seen obviously maybe the united nations role being limited. what are, what are your concerns about the or their ability to actually protect civilian? yes, the men think that there is there is no longer trust. different regional foresees or more news call even we verified to see. so that's a big problem when you come to the population. so the population is not really working for, for any protection from me. and from that for this, keep us. but that means don't. so that's when it come to for ya. when you come to do to all the cash and people can tend to be also violent. and that's something that should be tricky, not going to make sure that the population is i eat. yeah. we, we make sure that that population is getting got a bit more information and that it was right spur and see if there is no information. yeah. tend to creates fake news and of course and of course not to interrupt but, but how big a role has fake news been playing? i mean, we've seen the conversation on social media really erupt thing in terms of misinformation and fear mongering. yes, we went lives in that, you know, there is a facebook la accounts. oh which i was just printing a fake news and a ira information that's making people be in this dance should la, today there was a dance sion and because you know china camp were at was and people were there was this room or that's ok that entered you free, it's e that coming back just right. you don't get up from here and that's i'm gonna make people moving. and oh, the or that sense in that would be dangerous. yes. and i see, and i see that grant is nodding as you're, as you're making that point. and i do want to ask you and you know, grant, we've seen the fear is rising. we've seen what hundreds, if not thousands joining the fight against m. 23 volunteering if you will. we also have this clip actually, that will play from malcolm's package earlier this week. you know where people are signing up to join the military. a lot of people on our youtube shot or discussing that issue. take a look at grand these men say they want to fight him across the republic of comrades. army says that more than 3000 people who responded to a cool for recruit property. you mean, wow, i am here because we are suffering too much my family, my sister's they have suffered a lot from war. some of them were right. so we have because from now on, i need to defend myself. you know, grant, when you hear that and boasted and he's not going to go in the story, i was, i was careful not to to do a tribute this claim that these people are recruit to the army and the army that said that they were great. but to me they looked a lot like guys we saw in 2014 off to the time the n 23 with the fee to now a lot of the groups have anything kong start with 1990 the early 2000 community members defending themselves against the foreign armies, including rwanda, and you can come into the country and then when m. $23.00, which is widely seen to be approx, april 1 that was defeated in 2013. the governor cooled a lot of these groups. the come out the bush because from that perspective what had been a kind of arch rival for decades. and finally, for one been to see. yeah. thousands of these guys in a demobilization camp. then i think many of them went said they left, went back to the bush. the others went to other parts of the country. but the way that they sang the songs they but very muscular jogging around together. these, the mobilized militia, guys were exactly like what we saw with the people that the congolese army said we need to create. so we also spokesman if, if the, the, the mobile of militia guys coming back and they denied it. and they said that they're not fighting with great, but we will say wait and see if you guys will actually be given uniforms and guns and will be trained right. last time i saw them, there was still comes out there by the round about here. and even gamma, i'm yes, i'd like to call my son please. yet regarding that, it's hard to see. we know that the has many problems when you come to recruitment, when you come to equipment and when you come in about not in house or are i manage inside the army? so i think that's something you bought and we couldn't just speak about having more men in the army, but we need to sort to make sure that the me is responsible for helping people accountable for that happening back. right. and also to make sure that the chain of command is key. i, we know we there and people was being asked us for violation of human rights should be put aside from the army. and he's being said, yeah, they're buried there is, there is real mobility ratio of the population to make sure that bacon bits or so yeah, to, and reagan. and that's of course, that's of course important. it's also important that we bring in some additional voices from youtube, people, timing and grant. perhaps i'll put some of these comments and questions to you. deep bo thing. how large is this rebel group in comparison to government forces? and been lucky, she making perhaps you know, kind of a premonition of what's the come thing d r c has been purposely weakened by the international community. and sebastian saying, congo will end up like through dan divided by 2 east will be another state. do you think grant that that's the possible possible? yes. so mother just want to come back to cover a lot of ground. yeah, the 1st thing i wanted to mention is there was a discussion around going to fake news, news and manipulation of different media channels. so i think just to run through this very quick, i mean, 1st of all on that, it's very difficult to do real time verification of what, what's confirmed as opposed to a kind of a deliberate sort of room, a set of to generate stuff. second, i wanted to just comment on the, the call to mobilize the youth and it to very important things. that number one is, there's an age verification problem that has been established with f, a r c. it's extremely important that that age verification process is strictly applied when there's a significant number. and in the same way also the, there's the issue of the training of new recruits, right to be per, professionally trained. and then just, i think, you know, a comment on your, your, you know, the other question really because we're running out of time. yes, we haven't talked about this is extremely mineral reach part of the our feet. right? so they are, there are a lot of interest around around the strategic result. and i think that the question of whether the extent to which the international community or ease of use and i, 1st of all, part of the problem is around the, you know, some of the other major global crisis such as ukraine, russia and their number of others right, but you know, the question is whether the effectiveness, it's the effectiveness of all of the diplomatic assets. right. and there's been a lot of that are going to succeed, of course, and i see malcolm's nodding. he was nodding throughout a lot of your interjections there, and malcolm before we wrap, i want to come to you based on what you just heard from grant. knowing that there's been a lot of criticism levied of the u. k. of the us. when we look at the macro big picture of why this might be happening again, i want to ask you, what if goma does fall to the rebels? i mean, is that likely in your estimation? so the military suited to spoken to everybody here is i can familiar with the forces involved seems to think that sooner or later and 23 with it's widely believed to have for london for could take or if they really wanted to come to lead 40 to contain the food that was that it didn't have enough ammunition and they say that the enemy that i think has been kind of refreshed and replenished in the break . well, armed with everyone that does deny it, but then if indeed it was rwanda and possibly you got the behind this movement. then i think if they do have the choice, they are the minute gave them relative. and the choice of whether or not me take a few factors would be the and any 12 that was what really turned up the diplomatic pressure melinda, to then pull back and, and eventually brought an international support to congo to, to defeat them. and other possibilities that you understand being supported by significant numbers everyone. and so just in case they did a billable cave in the city and that would make one the position harder to defend and internationally. but in terms of the negotiations coming out that have been mentioned thing both sides will be interested in militarily getting a stronger physicians as possible. and if the incoming forces just surround goma to the north and to the west render to the east, then that would even that alone would put them in a, in a strong position for negotiations from a military point to be and very, very quickly, if i can grant to circle back we, you know, people making these concerns that the international community is purposely weakening the d r c. what do you make of that? i just want to come back to an earlier comment from reagan, which i agree with the humanitarian response to this crisis is, is some, it's not at the scale, it needs to be. so we need immediate, we need significant red resources. we need to move the piece to safe side next to water supply. and we have identify these. these are being discussed with authority. well, well, grant grant that's, i'm probably going to bring up. i'm unfortunately gonna have to cut you off there, but it really is going to be a question to see how that gets scaled up. that's all for today. i want to thank reagan, malcolm and grant. remember at home you can always find us online at streamed on al jazeera dot com. thanks for watching. ah, what happens when the news media failed to do that joke? it's one of the biggest reasons why iraq is not yet a democracy. there's no accountability for listening post exposes the power is controlling the narrative russian media. does a lot of fabre rapidly. his message has to be back by the whole propaganda, apple and the tools they used to do it. how do you read through all of them? information, how do you determine what is this and from now, with the listening post your guide to the media on al jazeera, it's a simple act, applying a flag, but in the occupied west bank, we think the palestinian flag could get you shot or arrested after the also a ports of the 8900 ninety's between the palestine diversion organization and israel. the bottom of the palestinian flag was listed. but on the ground it's becoming much harder to express any type of support for the palestinian call. one day there are no palestinian flag. the next mysteries are filled with them. they need y t your net by young men who are not even born with these really government for the or the palestinian flag in frank assessments if the united states. so if you're running a good program, was there to build a nuclear weapon they would have signed a deal by now informed opinions. i believe that armenia and as of a judge should have bilateral negotiations. we've been holding that for many times . critical debate is the commonwealth now still something that king charles will take in depth analysis of the data global headlines inside story on al jazeera. we are all reasonable, even people far away are also helping with the environment problems in the amazon because their consumers. i teach kids about the oceans are facing today. i've been working in earnest, trying to find ways to get to sleep with kids. what do we do as the ocean? why and what are you going to do to keep out of the sort of language that keeps the red blood women, right? they have one back over there, fight for equality and got married. i was told, i think that with women, we made a challenge in the region. i will not being pro life. i want to sleep. we don't have read them in this country. these are about 2 weeks now. i say 3 days, journey to a shelter. west grade, so one destroys our country. someone needs to rebuild ah all on says it's military is.

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20131102

physics, geology, planetary geology, aerospace engineers, mechanical and electrical engineers, all the s.t.e.m. fields, signs technology engineering and math represented in the nasa portfolio. a healthy nasa pumps that. i healthy nasa is a flywheel that society caps for innovatioinnovatio n. n. >> booktv hazard over 40,000 programs about nonfiction books and authors. booktv every weekend on c-span2. >> this is a tough time for nsa where everybody says what are you doing or why are you doing it. here's what we do. when we get together we don't -- to be a couple times we whine, but we actually say, it is much more important for this country that we defended this nation and take the beatings than it is to give up a program that would result in this nation being attacked. we would rather be here in front of you today telling you why we defended these programs than having given them up and have our nation or our allies be attacked and people killed. >> this weekend, intelligence officials defended the nsa surveillance program. this morning at 10 eastern. live sunday on c-span2 your calls and comments for kitty kelley, best selling author of unauthorized biographies. on c-span trees and american history to become each weekend in november remembering john f. kennedy. sundays at 3 p.m. eastern. >> and now from the 18th annual texas book festival in austin, texas, a discussion with author mark binelli. his book "detroit city is the place to be," and jeffrey stuart kerr, author of "seat of empire the embattled birth of austin, texas." this is about 45 minutes. >> i think the title of this panel is rebuilding or evolution informally in my mind. it's detroit and austin at the beginning and end of all things. [laughter] that appeals more to my dramatic since. so jeff kerr is the author of three books about texas history and in particular austin, texas, history. the first was "austin, texas - then and now." the next was "the republic of austin," in the most recent one and the reason we're here this morning is "seat of empire: the embattled birth of austin, texas" which is a history of the founding of the austin and the battle in the republic of texas offer what its capital would be. jeff also writes a review history column for the austin post and he is a practicing pediatric neurologist at the same time. so if we have any emergencies -- [laughter] he is the author that will take care of them. mark binelli is the author of the novel "sacco and vanzetti must die!." is a contributing editor to rolling stone and men's health. "men's journal," sorry, mark. not health. so mark was born and raised in the detroit area. he went to university of michigan as an undergrad and got his degree from columbia university where we were actually last night's. so this is a bit of a reunion force. his new book is "detroit city is the place to be" which is the fruit of three years mark spent living in detroit after you been in your but he went back to detroit and one to can find out what kind of place it had become and what it had details that may be who we all are or what we all are as a nation right now. mark binelli the new york. he told me on friday if he hadn't had a dispute with this detroit landlord he would still be part-time or half-time in detroit. i'm sorry that happened. i'm sure you can find some good housing stock in detroit if you're really motivated. first, mark is going to read a passage of his book in the set it up. >> great. thanks, everyone, for coming. i wanted to meet a very short section. it's pretty self-explanatory. it's a description of a neighborhood near where i was living in detroit. you guys probably have seen photos from detroit and hard about how depopulated the city is. it went from 2 million to about 700,000, so there's some neighborhoods that are really no longer neighborhoods, or they are barely neighbors. just a couple houses on every block. i'm going to read you a little bit about one of those neighborhoods. people like to compare the amount of vacant land in detroit to the equivalent sized spaces. all of this could fit into detroit's 40 square miles of nothing or to manhattan's or slightly shaped boston. such formulations though inevitably lead one to imagine a contiguous landmass separable as a rotten limb, or possibly something to be cordoned off and beautified like central park which, of course, was not the case. they -- vacant parcels were spread throughout the city. when enough of those parcels happen to cluster together you had urban prairies, entire neighborhoods nearly wiped from the map. the inevitable result of a place built for 2 million surfacing less than half that number. aand exemplary swath of prairie had crept within walking distance of my street. some call the neighborhood i'm talking about south pole town but i start thinking about it as out for shane which runs straight up from detroit river. on a two-month stretch, once a thriving commercial strip, you can count the viable operating businesses on two hands. several of the now unrecognizable storefronts having burned and partially collapsed years earlier looks like funeral pyres left untouched as a monument to the debt. on the residential street entire blocks have gone down. the remaining houses ranged schizophrenically from obvious trucks bought a beautifully kept up rate ranges, from old wooden bungalows to foreclosed properties scrapped to the joyce like copper thieves. once i went to such lowly territory i took bike rides. on summer afternoons the insect noise could be deafening. those people sitting out on their porches would stare. i soon learned country rules apply care. if you smiled and gave a little wave, you generally would get the same back. saving of course the doughboys whose heart is dedication to radiating and credibility and demand is convinced me to drop the smiling part. mostly though the menace was due to the absence of people and was far more relevant urban. the scrappers were everywhere. once in the morning in broad daylight on a desolate stretch of road i wrote assegai polling -- a guy twice the links of crashing into a white minivan. a few blocks later a couple of entrepreneurs came driving in the opposite direction in a pickup truck, its bed overflowing with twisted pieces medal including what looked to be a number of shelving units. in another field, an artist from heidelberg street had arranged a bunch of discarded shoes and shape of a river. shirley after he laid out his installation i noticed kids from the neighborhood going to the middle of it like anglers. when asked what was up, they said free shoes. a little girl wanting it was hard to find your size or even a matching pair. a few blocks away past the church of the living god number 30 7a white people began barking furiously at me from the art of the home that i thought abandoned it when i got closer i noticed a young man staring coldly at me from one of the front windows. i bicycle down a block with a single house left standing almost dead center of one side of the street. the whole on the other side had turned hero, force did by its unnoted grass. despite its isolation the two-story wood frame house had been neatly maintained with a handsome gray paint job and a lush garden of rose bushes and fruit trees surrounded by a picket fence. a round faced man and a bright red t-shirt and bermuda shorts sat on the top steps of the porch. i stopped and said hello. his name was marty. when i got closer i noticed he had a cane next to him. the writing on his flip-flops proclaim him big slugger number one bad. marty used to work in the auto industry and also at a sausage plant near eastern market that closed in 1998. i had made frequent deliveries to the store enough about as a teenager while working for my father who sold them sausage casings. marty and i bonded over this odd coincidence but we figure we probably never met back then. i did things with pigs, live pixie tobin, wiping his eyes theatrically to signify you really don't want to know. he told me anyway while he never butchered he had the unpleasant job of herding the soon-to-be slaughtered pigs into the upper toward using a will upper toward using a will. he got in the habit of naming his favorite pigs and keeping them in the back with them as long as possible, although eventually they'll have to go. i asked him if he would be willing to move if the neighborhood got right size but he shook his head. this is our house or generations. we pay our taxes. that's not happening. someone opened the gate. who's back there, marty asked. it turned out to be easy and. she didn't the flowers and this afternoon was pulling a red wagon with gardening supplies. i do it as much as i can she said. marty said the house had been in a summit for 50 years. 64 years. you've got to analyze this, marty said. these are some rough times we're living in. most of our jobs went overseas. you lived on the block's entire life watching the neighbor disappear around him. the barbershops, bars, ice cream parlors all gone. this neighborhood used to be straight, he said. he squinted at the thicket of trees across the street. you get used to it. it's quiet. i like the serenity of my environment. to me, all this is a big plasma screen. you just have to be strong and keep god with you. what does the bible say? you are in this world but not -- way. i said i thought it was all this world but not in it. he nodded, right, right. later i realized i screwed up the quote. of course, we are all in it. [applause] >> and just to maybe frame it before just read this passage i think one of the things we want to talk about is kind of the idea of the frontier, so for mark they say front to the detroit is kind of reverted to and for jeff's book it's the real deal. it's the frontier in its beginning. so without jeff. >> austin is what is because of one man. his future probably in the book industry i'm going to read is omar first contact of the area. it's the story of about 10 years ago actually launch my interest in writing about local history. seat of empire tells the sort of austin's creation against the backdrop of early texas politics and the extraordinary struggle between two texas giants, sam houston and mirabeau lamarr. detail of entertaining yet important for a different outcome would've left us with a much modern state of texas. the city of austin was born in 1839, almost died in early 1840s, and spring back to life thereafter. but for a few twists and turns of history, my current hometown would likely not exist, the southern rockies would be texas mountains and we remember transport rather than send used as the political titan of his age. but it does and they aren't and we don't. the explanation begins with a buffalo hunt. as any good political campaigner must, mirabeau lamarr quickly joined in local custom upon his arrival in waterloo. jacob harrell and other frontiersmen this meant hunting. one morning as they ate breakfast them one of the sons burst into the room with the exciting is that the prairie was full of buffalo. quickly a stride of their mounts the men rode a short distance to a ravine which intersected the colorado river. to the delight they encountered great numbers of the mammoth beast and wasted no time in shooting as many as they could. with the right weapon a buffalo is easy to give. because of their poor vision ever live by bread on its sense of smell to detect danger. if a hunter stays upwind and possesses our rightful powerful enough to send a ball for the animals they tied it is possible to pick off large numbers one by one without the surrounding members of the herd sensing danger. when he hunted for food or heights, they prefer to this method. for sport the hunter showed -- chose them are throwing technique. armed with one number single shot pistols, he charged on horseback through the herd of blazing away at the fleeing peace. at the bottom of the regain, bisecting the prairie near waterloo, mirabeau lamarr chased and shot with his holster pistol the largest buffalo one of his companions had ever seen. later, one of the hunters blew a bugle to gather been atop a hill at the head of the ravine. from the summit stretched a view which would give delight to every painter and lover of extended landscape. a german traveler i described the scene in as idyllic while in 1840 immigrant called it a prairie land. a year after lamarr visit, thomas bell wrote on his brother, i must consider this the most beautiful country i ever saw yet what i've seen. the most beautiful lands i've ever be held or ever expected. james jones in 1839 letter to lamarr expressed equal enthusiasm. we are marching through a beautiful country. it is rarely if at the witness i imagine in any other part of the american continent. mirabeau lamarr, politician, farmer, adventure and military hero was also a poet. one imagine him regarding the stunning beauty before and as he looked down the hill towards the colorado river. perhaps he composed in diverse as he gazed upon the woodlands and prairies straddling the waterway. small hills in the foreground were crowns of object, and home and live oak trees. thickets of dogwood, hackberry, elm and live oak blended the river bottom. framing his the word to beautiful streams of clearwater. in the short span of three years, mirabeau lamarr have escaped personal despair, obscurity and political fumigation to obtain a position of prestige and power. are in disaster he was in command and embryonic nation destined for greatness. he had just finished a thrilling buffalo hunt in which a distinguished himself by bringing down an enormous animal, the largest at least one companion had ever seen. he now admired with his poetic i natural beauty which have consistently stunned let's imagine the men than himself. face with his awe-inspiring vista, vice president mirabeau lamar announced that they an ambitious dream to fellow hunters jacob harold, was every, james rice, for texas rangers and maybe a slave jacob when he tried from hilltop, this should be the seed of future empires. [applause] >> and just declared jeff, this is where we are right now right next to the subway speed was this exact spot. right by the starbucks. [laughter] >> so maybe he was right i guess. >> could have been spent before we get into bigger questions of empire in history and geography, i just wanted to ask both of you kind of a more personal question, which is am i right in assuming that these books were kind of personally meaningful to you? you have a personal relationship to these landscapes? mark, you growth outside detroit, went off to new york. you were living the high life as a writer in new york. and then you went back to live for three years but and jeff, you are not from austin? >> grew up in houston spent but this is sort of your adopted home town and give written three books about austin. can you talk about, mark first and then jeff, about what was personal about these projects and these places to? >> detroit, as many of you probably know, is a very segregated city. as i said earlier, it's only about 700,000 people now. the entire metro area including the suburbs is two to 3 million people depending on where you cut it off. so growing up in suburban detroit by spending time in the city as a kid, my parents were italian immigrants. my father was a knife sharpener. he had a shopping city. i was in the city all the time. it always held a very special place in my heart, and seeing the way detroit has been portrayed over the years in films and media, i always thought i would write about the city in some way. i thought maybe it would take the form of a novel. then around 2009, beginning 2009 actually win the world economy seemed to be about to collapse in detroit in particular, the auto companies were on the verge of bankruptcy, i went back for rolling stone where i'm a features writer and wrote an article just about the outer industry. and while i was back there i saw a journalist coming from not only all over the country but all of the world really looking at detroit as sort of a metaphor for everything that had gone wrong, and a lot of them are coming into town for a day or two in writing what i felt were sort of superficial portraits of the city. so yeah, for me as a native, i started thinking about how maybe i could bring more nuance hopefully to the story, really spend some time there. not only write about the sort of grimaced and most obvious dark sides of what goes wrong in a postindustrial city, but also bring up things like the weirdness of the place. it's a very strange and darkly, funny place. i wanted to really, most of all, bring up the stories of the people who still live there. a lot of the photos that you see a detroit online are shots of old factories that have been abandoned for 40 or 50 years, or these burned-out homes. university in people in any of these photos i really wanted to hang around and talk to people who live there and get their stories. that was michael. >> just before go to jeff i'm curious, did you have old friends who are still there that young out with? are your parents still there? were the elements that you felt like into your old life at all or was it is new detroit that you are interested in? >> it was pretty new for me. my parents and my brother are still living in the suburbs so that was just great for me personally. but i moved into the city proper. the one funny thing is i ended up on this blog in the city that was a bunch of sort of warehouse buildings that had been converted into lofts was the very beginning of a time zone justification in the downtown core. that not really. when i first arrived, the first neighbor i met, one of the first things he tony was about how he would carry his gun with him when he walked his dog and i should be careful in the neighborhood. it's not exactly, wasn't exactly -- when i got there i remembered making deliveries for my father to one of the shops on that street when i was a kid. so there were little connections like that what happened throughout my reporting. reporting. i would meet somebody and you somebody who knew somebody i knew, things like that. jeff, why do you love austin so much and find it i guess so much more interesting than houston? [laughter] >> yet, my mother still complains i write too much negative things about houston but i do love and austin. i've lived to about 12 years before i really started exploring the city staff. i've always loved history. i heard this story about the buffalo hunt and came to this very intersection and was trying to imagine you. one thing led to another and i started taking pictures of historic sites. it was my son who actually triggered my thinking about the book. he tony half in jest i think that i should write a book. and i think he was really trying to get me to shut up at the dinner table one night. but i got to thinking about the stuff i had discovered and learned, and these were about sites that i was driving by on a regular basis that i had previously know nothing about. it seemed to me important of the people living in austin, and perhaps in texas, because this is a city that most texans eventually visit should know those stories. so my first book was really just an attempt to spread the stories. that maybe realize what a rich history there really is here over the past 108 years. in writing these books, i think it's important in order to understand where we are and where we might want to go, where we've been and who the people were that shaped the events that we experience every day now. >> it was interesting, jeff and i were talking just before this and i commented on, i'm from massachusetts and i grew up in massachusetts we're drenched or hunched over with history, at least by american standards but then when i moved to austin itself and on history and jeff, what was your response to that coming from houston's? >> you came from -- from houston, yeah, in houston it seemed to me growing up there really wasn't any history there. houston always seemed to me to be a city about making money. if there's a historic site, somebody thinks they can make money on, they will tear it down. [laughter] whereas if they got a little bit different here in austin and things do change, but there's just a very rich history here. i'm amazed and going around in telling the stories how little of it to details of it and the importance of it on our life now that people have been here for a long time really know. >> i wrote denizens from mark's book which applies to both of these books. he said the frontier has always proved attractive to those with a facility for conjuring utopian images. i wanted to ask both of you kind of what the frontier means in the context of the cities that you're writing about. and i guess in terms of both what's appealing about the frontier and also maybe what's scary about it. so mark, detroit has frontier, postmodern frontier, or something. >> sure. historically, detroit is a very old city but it was founded in 1701 as a french trading post basically. it was really for the first 100 years or so, even longer really, it was just the frontier, it was the middle of nowhere, kind of a scary place to go. the sentence that dan just read means sort of commenting on what detroit, you know, one of the things detroit has become today in the sort of national psyche, this idea that everybody is gone, it's a city that's been left behind by not only business and capital, but humanity. even though there are 700,000 people left there, which is something people tend to forget. is treated by some people as if it is a new frontier. it's a relatively lawless place. there's lots of cheap land. there are lots of abandoned buildings, about 70,000. the year i moved back there was a big news story about artists buying houses in detroit are like, one sold for $100. it wasn't a great house but it was a house with four walls and a roof. so there was this new narrative developing. at the same time as a native of detroit being the worst place in the world, the metaphor for everything that had gone wrong, it was also this idea of some sort of possible hope of the rebirth. especially making the pitch to young people, the artist, but he means trying to sort of make detroit hip in a way. the new brooklyn, the new berlin, fill in the blank of the cool city. so i found that an interesting dynamic to explore because of course there are aspects of the frontier that modern detroit doesn't share but, of course, there are plenty of people who never left and they have to live their lives there everyday and they are not really part of this narrative, often. so i thought they're being ignored with very interesting facts and also as a band, you alluded to the downsize of the frontier of the traditional sort of frontier that, you know, you will probably talk about when you're talking about austin, the dangers of the frontier are still very much the same in detroit in a way as well. as one of the highest murder rates in the country. i mean, a direct connection to the frontier in my book, funny enough, i was reading a section of a history book about where the french settlers originally landed on the detroit river at one point. so i walked down to the stretch of the river and devastating pumice of, kind of thinking about where they had shown up. and a guy came up to me and started talking to me, and then lifted his sweater to show that he was holding -- he had a machete and a giant ax kind of tucked into his belt. and he said, he said it's okay, i can carry this, i'm a licensed carpenter, these are my tools. [laughter] and i was right -- i was like, right. frontier, still happening. >> jeff, i mean, there's a lot of different ways you can talk about it but i was struck in reading your book, talk about what austin was like and then maybe some of those dangers but also the excitement of living in austin circa 1840. >> it was certainly a different world. i read in a book years ago the printers described as being a wide section of ground that's the no man's land between what was here before us, meaning the native american cultures, and then what was coming, the anglo cultures. what we viewed as wilderness of course for hundreds of thousands of years have been viewed as home by a lot of people. but when mirabeau lamar and angles for skinner what they saw was a wilderness that they couldn't live in unless they implemented a major transformation of the landscape. that took several generations, but initially that meant building billions that were used to live in, laying out streets, building roads that we could travel on safely and in creating farms so we would have a. and what's interesting in reading a lot of the letters and diaries of these people from that era, the angles, is that they recognized what a beautiful, pristine wilderness, as they put it, this was while at the same time they wrote about the inevitable passing of the wilderness, that they would have to essentially destroy what they were coming on so they could make it a hospitable place for them to live in. it was a very dangerous place for a number of years. that was one of the big reasons in houston opposed putting the seat of government that it was because of the fear of it in the attack and attack from mexico. there were numerous incursions by the indians, mostly the comanche right into the heart of austin. there were indian parleys right about where we are sitting right now between comanche that were camping out for the capital is now and there were people scalped within a stone's throw of where we are sitting right now. so it was a dangerous place. it was a place where people didn't leave the house at night. and where if you did leave, he carried a loaded gun with you. >> there's one more question i want to ask jeff before we take question, but if people have questioned want to start lining up at the microphone right here in two or three minutes, we would do that. jeff, i wanted you to very quickly tell the story of the archives war and the statue you said is about two blocks from here of angelina eberly, those of you who are from austin the. is a story i did know until i read the book of a kind of mini civil war within texas while all of these other things were swarming around. >> mexico was to type up at war with texas in 1841 personal. they sent to separate armies up to occupy san antonio briefly. sam houston who is president of the time point to that as a reason to tempered poll government out of austin. when he gets of the population shrank from about 1000 to about 200 people. the people of austin didn't want their city to die so they formed an archives committee that started searching backings leaving town to hold onto the land records and keep them from leaving town and that was their last hold on government. houston sent someone over here to collect the records and they got chased away, and then he sent another group that was a little craftier. somebody rang the indian alarm bell to clear all the fighting men out of town and then they came in and write up here on the east side where the land office was they started loading up the records. the few people left in town at the hotel at six and congress saw what was going on. a very tough frontier woman named angelina eberly started shaming the men that were congregated down into some sort of action. and she pointed across the street at a shed and said what's the canon in that shed for? they wielded this can out in the middle of congress while she ran into bullets and came out with a let torch. she took a look at the gannett, didn't like it was the way is aimed and ticket to the right. thomas william ward was in the land office heard someone shout blow the old house to peace. angelina fired is the canon off. long story short, the austin ice came back. they realize what was going on. i caught up with her that i'd taken the records of in round rock. of course, there was no ground rock in those days and forced them to come back. it's a funny story but if it hadn't played out the day in government had not come back, we could be sitting in the middle of a prairie right now. >> or i guess would all be sitting -- the texas book festival would be in houston. houston. [laughter] >> so yes, first question. >> i'm kind of relating to both stories because i was born and raised in the '50s in a small town in central ohio, and i kind of relate it to george packer's presentation yesterday on where we went wrong. and i've now lived in texas or 15 years, so i can live in this contrast that i'm listening to, okay? i would like to address my question to you, mark. it's kind of two-pronged. one, your title of your book is detroit city, a good place to be, or you know, and i wanted to know why you felt that way? because i've my memories and what i do to go back to the '50s, even though my hometown is very depressed like youngstown, ohio, and some of those. i understand detroit is on a grander scale. so i want to know about the title of your book. and the next question was what do you think, how long would it take to revitalize detroit and the stand in ohio that are very similar? what is it going to take to take us out of what you just described? >> thanks for the question. that's a great question. there's lots of little detroit as you know throughout the rust belt, places like youngstown, gary, indiana, and parts of cleveland. the title of my book is heartfelt but also somewhat ironic. you know, is a line from a song of the great detroit poet, ted nugent. [laughter] but it refers in the way to that moment i was describing at the very beginning of the top when i first arrived and all eyes were on detroit. detroit and judah toward project whatever you wanted on to detroit, right? so if people wanted to imagine it as this enclave for august, that's what detroit became. urban planners and urban theory types are also divided on how you could reinvent this city that was sort of like the unsolvable math problem of difficult cities for their field, were all coming to detroit to figure this out. urban farmers. so that's most of what i meant by the title. as far as a timetable for fixing detroit, it's funny, even over the course of the four years that i was there since i started working the book, i've seen some amazing transformation, particularly into downtown and midtown corporate a lot of money has been poured into. i think there are certain advantages, frankly, we think the worst with having the reputation as being the worst, craziest, most unfixable city, a lot of smart people, a lot of ambitious people decide they want to take on that challenge. so there are lots of exciting things happening there today problem is of course most of the city continues to languish. most of the city, the downtown core i'm describing is a tiny, unit of its whatever virtue in the book is the green zone. the rest of the city still has a lot of the same entrenched problems, and with the bankruptcy detroit is going through and the absence of any federal aid, state aid, i'm not, that part makes me much more hesitant. >> good morning. i'm from flint, michigan, just north of detroit, and also a wolverine, mark. so go blue. to question. i moved to austin three years ago and the two places couldn't be more different. one politically and maybe you can address what the different political climate, a red state versus blue state, what difference that is made on the health of the two cities. but then suddenly one of the things we have in michigan that's a little more scarce here in texas is water. and is global continue pashtun global warming continues, mike that shift the balance and maybe a less healthy central texas? >> it's funny you mention water. if you're into tour for a while you start getting people talking about ways that detroit will inevitably come back. one of the things i heard from a few different people was they cite the eventual global water shortage and cataclysmic crisis as a positive for detroit because we are on the great lakes. [laughter] that seems like a sad way for us to make a comeback. more safely, you're right, the water is a real asset. detroit is also of course a big international border crossing with canada. they are talking to trying to capitalize more on that. as far as great state blue state, michigan generally votes -- red state-blue state, the last presidential level that gone with obama but the governor is a republican, rick snyder, and he's the one who appointed this guy kevin or it was what's known as an emergency measure and is basically running the city. you sort of powers over the city's budget and finances and he made the decision to put the city in bankruptcy. and so you can you see some of those you know, i guess divides over the best way to fix these things playing out in detroit. the governor when he took office made the decision to slash corporate tax rates throughout the state. you know, to lure business back to the state. he did not choose to increase aid to the largest and most troubled city. instead chose to appoint this emergency manager and move towards managed the bankruptcy. so yeah, you know, it's not as, i guess, maybe in some with texas and detroit, our michigan rather aren't as different as they seem they would be. >> jeff, i have a quick question on that front. because you and i were talking before about how even the contrast, thinking about a place being in sort of disrepair and then maybe the tide shifting. we are talking of the contrast between austin now, kind of city of the future, maybe the detroit of 2013 or what detroit was in its glory days, but even the contrast in the '70s when it was not someone you would look to for sort of -- >> right. what i read about austin in the '70s, i wasn't here back in much the downtown area in particular and east sixth historic area was pretty run down. it was because it was run down that it attracted some energetic people without a whole lot of money to come in and start up these bars and music venues that eventually gained the notice of a lot of people, and you know, and then that kept things holding on i guess until the city took an active interest in revitalizing the downtown. so far, as in the past 10 years i've seen a huge change down your. it's a different place than it was when i moved here in 1991 come and even a different place when i started writing books 10 years ago. >> it's kind of an odd endeavor in the way that you are embarked on, jeff, because you're writing the early history of a place at the moment everybody cares about because of kind of what it says about the future and what's happening right now, right? you can't kind of walk 10 feet without "the new york times" writing about how hip and cool austin is. >> it has come to be the place to be in texas. when my wife and i were looking to moving back to texas in 1991, this is where we wanted to come. that reputation i think has only grown over the years. it's attracting a lot of young folks. there's economic opportunity which is key but it's also just a fun, vibrant city to live in. >> next question spend on another son of the motor city as well, and from european immigrant parents, so i know what you're talking about. you haven't touched on my part of detroit. i grew up in greenfield, puritan area. went to the lehigh. i'm curious, what's that like no? >> yeah, again, you're talking about a lot of the neighborhoods in detroit are sort of unrecognizable probably. i don't know when you were last back there. >> fifteen years. >> yeah, so i mean my father for instance, when he first moved to detroit from italy in i guess the early '60s, he live lived in this neighborhood that was very german and italian, around seven-mile -- one of the things i did when i moved back was to drive back to the old neighborhood within. the house he lived in was gone. the neighborhood was completely unrecognizable. again, going back to what i said earlier, that's part of the problem. you can look at "the new york times" and read about these amazing developments that are happening in the downtown area. a lot of the skyscrapers that were completely abandoned when i moved back in 2009 have been picked up for a steal by developers like dan gilbert of quicken loans, and they're moving people downtown. is really exciting. but you go to neighborhoods like a neighborhood where you growth or where my father grew up and its communist, as bad or worse than ever in a lot of these places. >> market, you mentioned earlier that you're thinking about writing a novel about detroit. i was wondering what sort of pushed you to go the nonfiction route, what the nonfiction could convey that maybe a fictionalized detroit wouldn't be able to? >> i think it was one of those instances where the cliché, you can't make this stuff up was true. i was back there as i said reporting the story for rolling stone, and i met a guy who had a blog who, one of the things he would do is sneak into abandoned buildings and take pictures of the ruins, which is, you know, hobby for some people down there. he took me into this downtown skyscraper. it was probably 15 or 20 stories. it was called the metropolitan building. it had been the center where all the jewelers offices were and shops were. it was completely abandoned. we climbed to the roof and we were staring out at this sort of crazy wintry landscape of abandoned skyscrapers. and i thought, and as i said, i sought reporters writing the same stories over and over, and i just knew that there was so much more to the reality of detroit bat, you know, and that would be sort of a rich sort of bottomless wealth of stories for me. and it was good to the point i eventually had to leave when it came time to write the book because everyday i would open the newspaper and it would be some new insane thing i want to write about so i had to cut myself off eventually cold turkey to write this thing. >> hi, mark. another ex-michigander here mac we all came together for this. >> do you guys have a club in austin? [laughter] spink saw a bunch of them yesterday. there's a big interest i think a lot, for a lot of people to be able to help detroit's regrowth in any way they can. but there's always a challenge and your

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