Shows but honestly a former independent bookseller. [applause] but i could not hack in the tough independent world so i joined the confines of forprofit corporations where things seem easier now i can oversee shows like this and talk to all of you. But i will not delay the amazing lineup of authors we have coming up. I just wanted to take a moment to tell a story and acknowledge a friend that many if not all of us have in common. Talking my way to get a job into running and independent bookstore in my hometown st. Paul i didnt know anything about independent bookselling unlike the other luminaries i knew woebegone but shortly after i took this job i got a call in the famous person in the book world into call me to meet the nondescript meeting at a hotel in january in minnesota. [laughter] so this chilly introduction was how i first got engaged with the American Booksellers Association and in that room were people that soon became my luminaries ken white before he was famous himself i am not sure Mitchell Kaplan was in the room but his charismatic figure was looming about somewhere and independent bookselling i got an education with a 2 percent solution teaching me how to do my job so from there i moved east ended up getting a job running book expo over ten years ago and then did events all over the world and to build relationships but none of that wouldve happened if they hadnt made that phone call and asked to participate in the American Booksellers Association. With my story specifically and there are thousands of people that have a similar story and the details are different with the impact on their lives and then to retire. And then to take a brief moment on behalf of myself personally on behalf of people like me to champion independent bookselling so thats my story i just want to say thank you. [applause] so now we invite jen the more merchant who will introduce the panel for the morning and we will have a great conversation. Thank you for being here. Good morning everyone and editor for book expo and the adult author best one dash breakfast with an amazing lineup of authors so well just get right into it first we have tana hussey coats. [applause] next we have marjorie. [applause] next up is Karen Malcolm gladwell. [applause] and now our mce Rachel Maddow is the host of her own show on msnbc awardwinning show as well as the author of drift which is the number one New York Times bestseller. With the Public Policy from Stanford University as a doctorate in Political Science where she attended on a road scholarship. She said she would write and one never write another book but we are glad that she did. Welcome Rachel Maddow. [applause] speak i am such a night owl this constitute is very late tonight so smoke or drink or whatever you need to do. It is exciting and intimidating to be here i am more than excited with each of their new work i have imposter syndrome so i will be brief about my new book that is called blowout as some of you may know i have a tv show very soon it will be a phone show and at what length and for that show i write several thousand words a day as long as there are no swearwords and abide by nbc news rules and standards i can say all the words that i write on my own terms on tv every night which means i have the greatest job on earth. But that may also make you wonder why on top of that i would be so greedy to want an additional outlet. So in the abstract i dont but in 2012 when i wrote my first book drift, and this past year working on blowout, i felt like i was writing despite myself because in the course of my day job i found myself repeatedly getting stuck doing my regular work to try to make sense of a larger dynamic i cap felt like i was caught in the intellectual bottleneck so this process dynamic any given day but that was a couple hundred pages long and although i talk access loan incessantly that doesnt fit into my daily work. It is the same thing that happens in 2012 if you remember drift that was the use of American Military power from decisionmaking and then Congress Never votes on. I feel there was a tele bull story where that all came from in a very recent one fairly recent story and a way to point out why it didnt have to be that way forever. But my new book, blowout came from a realization that there is a fairly simple uniquely destructive dynamic at work through the news we are living through right now with the oil and gas industry. It is a couple hundred pages long but the basic idea the democratic system of government and competent governance at home and abroad has a potent and unrelenting enemy in that industry. Oil and gas was a rich and dangerous sector and should be recognized as a political entity with a track record eve being strong governments. So part of the book subtitle is the phrase rogue state russia. On my day job i have spent an amount of time on the russian attack and the aftermath. The book is not about that attack per se but it does let me get off my chest what i hope americans could better understand about why russia would want to do anything like that. And why they chose those weird methods i think it took that from profound economic and strategic weakness and for me, coming to understand that is revelatory thinking about what they have done but since the attacks and why and what makes for success in their own eyes as they mount these operations. One last point i recognize the oil and gas industry is amalgamated made up of Many Companies run by many executives many employees, shareholders each person who comes from a mother who i am sure is very nice. [laughter] i dont think the oil and gas industry is bad because it is made up of cat loan bad people but it is uniquely destructive entity particularly to our democracy and democracies abroad because of its inherent process purpose was cynical but rational expectations it has built for itself in terms of the way it does business. When used as directed this is an industry whose products are in the process of ending the world and sooner than previously expected but even before we get to the climate apocalypse that same industry really is doing its best to undermine the ability to govern ourselves effectively. So that is cheery theres a lot of Oklahoma City and equatorial new guinea there is a taxidriver warm seats in the house including rex tillers and. [laughter] z now warrior princess. And the spy ring made up of terrible spies. And the cover is a little apocalyptic my mother has already told be based on the cover she is afraid to read it and i will admit it is about the end of the world but it is a funny story. [laughter] thank you for this time and in advance it comes out october 1s. Thank you. [applause] and to bring up the first real author Malcolm Gladwell a tipping point, blink, and david and goliath host of the podcast revisionist history one of the most 100 influential people in the world by Time Magazine and one of the form policies global thinkers. Previously as a reporter with the Washington Post covering business and science serving as the bureau chief graduated from toronto and was born in england growing up in rural ontario now living in new york. Please welcome Malcolm Gladwell. [applause] thank you for that introduction. It is a pleasure to be here although i have profoundly mixed feelings i see all of you who have done so much over the years to sell my books and advance my life on a metaphorical level im glad to see you up and at them this first thing in the morning also i am somewhat appalled i am up this early i have not seen 8 00 oclock a. M. In many years so it is very novel and terrifying experience. I have a book coming out septemh called talking to strangers i hesitate to use the word inspired but grew out of an incident with a young africanAmerican Woman and as she pulls out around the campus a Police Officer comes driving up behind her quickly and she moves to get out of his way. Instead he pulls her over and says i pulled you over because you did not use your turning signal when you got out of the way. She is baffled by this and they have a conversation in the beginning it goes according to protocol as a motorist in place officer. But she is quite upset and lights a cigarette so the officer tells her to put out the cigarette and he said what does she said why cracks i am in my car he said no. Put out your cigarette he said now you defied my order and as you remember things escalate they have a tussle and he drags her out of the car handcuffs or inputs are in jail than three days later she hangs herself in her cell. That was one of a number of cases that captured public attention beginning with Michael Brown and extending through eric gardner and mcdonald and fitzgerald and on and on but that was the case that affected me the deepest forgot im not entirely sure why but there was something about the meaninglessness and the stupidity of the officers reaction that i could not let go of. So i decided to write a book about it and what happened between those two people. First with the conventional explanation. The first was that this was about race. A racist cop who thought the worst of her because she was black and there is an awful lot of truth in that that case would not have happened as it did if she had blue eyes and blond hair. So now the alternative you is that its a bad cop who didnt know how to be a cop and theres a lot of truth to that as well that if you read or even listen to the audio tape he has no idea how to deal with someone who disrupts the carefully narrative way it is supposed to work. But then they were laughing or a deeper way to understand this and it was a failure of communication between strangers they were profoundly different on many levels one from chicago or texas one armed or unarmed one standing and one seated and fundamentally have a new idea who they are talking to and then to see something sinister and then realizing she is dealing with the immature rookie cop and not a Police Officer who knows how to deal with issues so then i realized we have versions of this breakdown of communication over and over and that signature crisis of the day are versions of the same problem. So with bernie made off someone who investors thought that they knew but nobody could glimpse his true self or think about the Jerry Sandusky case at penn state or larry nasser at michigan state. Two men highly regarded in a professional role hardy on hiding a dark secret and incapable to know how to communicate that reveals themselves to us. I could go on its about an American Woman who goes to italy and acts in a way that is consistent with her own american codes of conduct that is inconsistent with italian codes of conduct and they are so baffled and disbelieving about the way she believes after the death of her roommate they falsely imprisoned her for four years. I could go on and on but at Stanford University two people who meet each other late at night at a party and proceed to misunderstand each others intentions while being totally drunk out of their minds. This is what happens we had alcohol to the problem. So to take all of those case studies and others that i talk about late milt chamberlin, hitler, sylvia platt to understand what it is about the particular dynamic between strangers that is so problematic in the mistakes that we are making that cause these encounters to go arrive. I try to come to an accounting of what we can do to get better for quite will not ruin it for you but two points and passing are worth considering but the striking thing it did not happen in the context we normally associate with these crimes it was not late at night in a bad neighborhood but coming from a Job Interview in the middle of the day in a rural part of texas with cows grazing in the field. So that suggest that these problems are not confined to the most darkest and problematic areas of society so when you examine the conduct of the Police Officer that arrested her closely you realize he was not a rogue cop or bad apple but textbook behaving exactly the way he was trained to behave in once we realize that fact we realize who is to blame for these encounters not the individuals but all of us. Thank you. [applause] next author one of the worlds most popular and to claim storytellers publishing 120 countries more than 35 million copies sold her 19 novels include a grant country as well as pretty girls and the Good Daughter and pieces of her. This summer she returns with her latest installment called the last widow the founder of the save the librarys project to support libraries. [applause] and Library Programming and native georgia living in atlanta so the pieces of her that her are in development for film and television. [applause] everybody has notes i feel bad i realized i have my grocery list. [laughter] milk. If you dont know me i write violent shocking twisting thriller. Slaughter is my real last name. Some of my earlier reviews said i write like a man which i think was meant as a compliment they just didnt know how to explain why a woman would be so interested in crime that so affects women so thats it they came up with. [laughter] but usually people are surprised when they meet me they think i am in leather with a switchblade i have social issues so maybe beret and they often say i thought you would be taller. Which is disappointing to both of us because i didnt think i was taller. [laughter] but normally i dont talk about my books a lot you get it for free so i dont have to sell it to you. [laughter] normally what i talk about the book i give too much away so now i will talk about myself. Into give you my origin story the way that i write so to be attractive and successful. [laughter]. Strikes back, thorn in my side. So very early on i was encouraged to write these violent graphic stories. Her dad was a typical 1970s, 1980s dad. He didnt know how to communicate a. To this day whenever it rains, all of us limp from my dad grabbing our knee. He still does it by the way. But when we were kids you know how at christmas time or dad gets on the roof, he would do that at the summertime we cant forget when we were in middle School Together at a slumber party. I said you are going to have to be more specific. So he climbed up as we had gone to sleep finally and he put a white sheet over his head and forgot to put the ie holes. We screamed so loud he laughed so hard he fell off the ladder. I was born and raised in georgia. When we went on vacation, the Florida Panhandle and my dad would drive us there. When i was the youngest i was in the middle on the hump. We would eventually start to wilt from the heat because it was about a thousand degrees in the car. My dad didnt believe in turning on the air conditioner because it wasted gas. He would talk about family and that is the Great Southern tradition. He would tell about my aunt and bless her heart we all loved her an awful human being she was really mean and constantly disappointed in us. She loved the church. One of the things she did for the church and volunteered at the bingo parlor because that was the moneymaking side and that was the only one she could get because people hated her. This is something that can be fixed but in the church and took up savings for her to have this surgically repaired but she wouldnt do it because she said jesus touched her on the lip and made her special but i think thats what she loved was challenging able to laugh at her and so when she would work at the bingo parlor, she insisted on calling out the balls and she would say [inaudible] i remember my dad telling these stories and thinking wow if you tell stories you can cuss and you will find i cost an awful lot. My dad started telling stories because my grandmother loved stories. They were dirt poor literally they would have to bring the word from the floor with them to the next place so they didnt have to sleep in the dirt. He was one of my brother nine bd sisters in making my grandfather smiled as the gift everyone could get her by telling a good story but she had a magazine called drew krein magazine in. Every sunday she would go to the bad side of town and she would read it while she was cooking our son a dinner and then she would hide the magazine in her bedroom so we wouldnt know she was reading it and as soon as we kissed her on the cheek and we were told to go play we would find this magazine and read it cover to cover and scare each other to death. There were these horrible stories they always have the hae standing she should have listened to her father or her husband. We were afraid we were going to be murdered so that is one of the reasons i love writing about crime is i think my grandmother would be mortified that people know im really interested in it. When my grandmother passed away, one thing that we always did every easter which was an important holiday for her we would visit her grave. Anybody from the south, this is a true story it was a preacher that was buried with a telephone because he was afraid the rapture would happen and he wouldnt be able to get out of the grave and its a story like harry potter but he still needs classes. The leather shoes, pink dress, my sister was 16 and i was kind of chubby so just picture what happens when you open a can of cinnamon rolls. We would all trend aloft to visit my grandmothers grave under this telephone line to trade one day might have thought that it would be really funny to ring a bell. Remember when telephone sounded like those he rang hi key ring w and we all started screaming. [laughter] none of us can quite recall what happened next but we do know we ended up in the back seat stacked on top of each other. When you read this book its pretty scary and people will come up to you and say that kept me up that was so scary. My first thought was at least you are not covered in urine. Thank you. [applause] [cheering] it makes me realize i definitely should have tried to be funny or. [laughter] today is the first day that ive ever talked about the book. Im going to work on that. Our n