House, now that we been able to reopen and have you all here. I hope you take time afterward to walk around if you have another chance to see what weve done. By the end of this year we will have brought over 15 authors to toledo and thats made possible through generous report of the Library Legacy foundation and gifts will allow us to not only bring world are nine authors to toledo but also help the library to be at abthat includes things like homework helpers, the ready to read program and our summer read. Speaking of summer read, we will soon be announcing a winter read so keep an eye out for that we will try to get our Community Reading just like we do in the summer through the month of january. In addition to the Library Legacy foundation we owe a debt of gratitude to our presenting media sponsor. Buckeye broadband and the blade supporting sponsors peer group and hcr manor care. And Community Sponsors runs of the library. As i mentioned, weve had a great year of authors so far and we are not done yet. I hope you will join us later this month as we wrap up the 2019 series. We have authors, kevin wilson on november 14 at 7 00 p. M. In the glass media room downstairs. Tickets are free but registration is appreciated and books will be available for sale at that. Thats november 14. We also will have authors presenting the joy of cooking on november 23, 2019 here in the mcmaster center, tickets are 50 but they include a copy of the newest edition of the book and a small sampling of some of the most loved recipes and cocktails. So hopefully well see you there. And now, for the reason you are all here today, our moderator for this afternoon is a pulitzer prizewinning columnist and professional in residence at canaan State University school of journalism. Shes the author of two nonfiction books including and his lovely wife which chronicles successful rates of her husband and presenting author we see name for the u. S. Senate. Her novel, the daughters of erie town will be published by random house in spring of 2020 hopefully to bring her back here next year for that. Please join me in welcoming to the stage miss connie schultz. [applause] [applause] dont laugh while i get on the stool. Our guest author is a senior u. S. Senator from ohio elected to see in 2006 a member of the Democratic Party he began his political career in 1975. Prior to serving this United States senate he served as u. S. Representative for the 13th district ohio secretary of state, member of the ohio General Assembly in a talk in ohio Public Schools and ohio State University, he has written three books to melissa which is desk 88, eight productive senators who changed america. Tells the proud history of his current desk on the senate floor by sharing the stories of eight men who were there before him. An eagle scout, our guest is a native of mansfield ohio he spent summers working on his familys farm, he is as many of you know very to our moderator this afternoon and they live in lincoln but together they have three daughters, a son, daughterinlaw, three sons in law, seven grandchildren and two blue big Furry Friends in franklin and walter. Please join me in welcoming to the stage the honorable Sherrod Brown. [applause] [applause] okay. Ready. Weve never gotten that reception in our other book talks. Hello husband. [laughter] weve done a number of these now and it seemed odd at first for me be up here with my husband on stage. Its not something id done before but more i thought about it nobody knows his book i come close second to you i suppose. In terms of just how hard you worked on it what i would like you to answer first because i been watching people and listening to them asking the same question over and over again. Youre such a good writer if sherrod hadnt been so funny and literate and his emails to be there would never been a date. Talk a little bit about how the book came about in the writing process itself. Can i Say Something really nice about the library a number of you saw connie and connery interviewed Stacey Abrams earlier this year. It was marble to watch these strong smart women sit up front. Special thanks to kathy and jason and the number of volunteers, luanne, louise, mike, so many of you to make this happen in the library board. In ohio still we are necessarily have the best State Government we do libraries better than any state in the country. Lets get to the questions. ab the committees are more or less placed by committees of seniority. Someone had told me that senators carved their names in the bottom of the desk drawers the fourth when i said. He said thats gotta be bobbys because i have jacks desk. He did get first choice. But then i started thinking about the senators who signed this desk. Im guessing theres at least one senator or maybe two who almost never heard of or would know very little about. You do do your job better whether you Practice Medicine or law or run the library or get able or work in government or work in business or work in fifth third, if you know the history of your institution and of a business you do it better. Connie went online and found probably a dozen or 15 books about senators or the senate all out of print all very inexpensive in 10 years i read about 100, most are about 160 books and i interviewed about 100 people. I wrote it for the same reason i wear this abit was given to me at work is memorial day workers mine workers took a canary down to the minds. Its about workers, fairplay, civil rights, womens rights. Talk about the writing process itself. I wrote what i thought was a good for strep. By about 2011 i had a pretty good strap to connie she said not even close. She said first of all. I said this with love. She said the writing wasnt good enough at that point. I hadnt done enough rewriting and more importantly i had not done, she said there was just not any historian can write a book about senators and you have to bring yourself in the Senate Perspective into it. I didnt start over but i did a much deeper dive and i had no deadline i dont do this for a living. Obviously i have a day job but i wanted to make it i wanted to make it what it should be and im very grateful for that because if she had not done that it wouldve been a shadow of this and the payoff in some sense was the first big review of the book in the post today the Washington Post posted friday night and it was done by an historian from toledo. By the name of Doug Brinkley going up in terrys work. I so appreciated historian did this review, not political writer. We dont like political writers. We do like political writers. [laughter] he was not in any way assaulting her but i think the abof historian because went deep enough into the stat historical accuracy and im not a professional historian, i dont have a phd in history but i think i can write and put a lot of seriousness into it. The reason i offered the critique i did at the time was precisely because you are a senator writing it and he brings a different perspective. So bring yourself into it, i also encouraged you, i so love being right about all of this. [laughter] i also encouraged you to tell more about yourself because one of the questions i so often have heard asked of sherrod, specifically by reporters is how does a doctor, very strong middleclass family and it being such a champion of workers rights and civil rights. So much of your early story involves your mother. Talk about your mom a little bit. My mom grew up in a town called mansfield georgia, town of 500. She went to washington during the war. She worked for the oss, which later became the cia transmogrified cia years later. She met my father for mansfield ohio and they married and they met in 1945. She found segregation first just puzzling and then and then repulsive as she thought of, confounding and repulsive and much of the way she saw the world was through race. She would tell me, i was born in 52. I remember all the 60s and 70s busing issues while people were bussed for integration in toledo and cleveland and much of our country. Its when they force bussed black kids past good white school to send them to inferior black school. She did all kinds of things when i was in high school she got pickup shirley chisholm, head of the ohio ywca which she would say next to the naacp and urban league where the best advocates for race and womens rights of anybody any Ongoing Group in our country and she got to pick up abfirst speech once. Talk about the work she did with registering voters. 2004, my mom was 84 then, living in mansfield my dad had passed away four years earlier. She thought the john carey campaign wasnt being run quite well enough in mansfield. Towns like mansfield are sort of not a pretension in a president ial race so she said she was gonna do something about it so she got up and talked to a friend in doing this they took a card table put it in her trunk and of her american car i would add of course, she drove to a Grocery Store in a part of town where there were lots of people werent registered to vote in over a week i think she did every friday for six weeks or Something Like that she registered 900 voters and she, because shes an organizer and emily brown, she kept all the names and phone numbers and called all of them to get them out to vote leading into the election. [applause] thats the kind of stuff she knew what to do. She was a woman who knew her a [inaudible] the first time i met her i had just bought an evening gown which i have bought in a gallon since prom. A daily member of congress, which really thrilled my editor, who were going to a formal event so she standing next to me we were staying at her home i know her 20 minutes and she standing next to me as were looking in the mirror and she never lost her southern accent. She said, connie, would you like a necklace to go with address . She said is not what you are trying to do . [laughter] only 83 then. One more thing about your mom, she was the first in the family to support barack obama. She came out for a while, probably 2007, early, and i was not endorsing anybody and was just, she was the first one of the family and when my mom was dying in january of 2009 when obama took office. We were with her in hospice in our home. Both my parents died in hospice and i want do commercials anytime anybody the hospice asked how important it is. Connies mom was a hospice worker for years and years. 800 people showed up in her moms wake when she died because she had helped so many people. But my mom, my brothers and i and connie were there and on january 19 she said, i really want you to who go to the inauguration and leave. I turned out that was my mom the last day she got out of bed and she sat up and she watched the inauguration it was her last really good elusive day on earth. She died about two weeks later. We came back that night but the next morning and we were all with her when she died but just was, she just thought that it was the greatest thing this level southern white girl daughter of a farmer thought it was the greatest thing that we had a black president in our country. Argue god he included all that in this book . I just think it gives such context. Now were to go to the nice stuff. [laughter] its all good. One of the things as you know my response to reading the biographies, the stories about these different men in the senate is they were very flawed human beings. Some of them not additionally very progressive at all. And we wanted him to change and he began to change in his last years. So i look for that and elected officials and there were three people in particular that journey the furthest from their Early Careers and Robert Kennedy and alberta gore senior kennedys father was a difficult man to leave it at that and they probably got the job through his father he also wiretapped doctor king when he was attorney general and two big things happened his brothers assassination one more tragedy to the Kennedy Family at that point with many more to come that changed him to be sure he was much more introspective learning about the greek poets but lincoln staff wanted him to say in the war and he said no i have to get my Public Opinion why i study body i never knew him of course or any member of the family but he really did hear people to get Public Opinion. The dinner that we had with peter started off with the kennedy staffer Marian Wright grew up in South Carolina went to Yale Law School and then she read the lawn ran the Head Start Program and they refused to do it so she ran it kennedy came to the poorest part of the country she didnt like the kennedys and you may remember this because all of his federal judges in the south went through the committee and eastland would not allow him to appoint anybody that was segregationist eisenhower appointed much better judges when the decisions were right where eisenhower judges not kennedy judges. Bobby showed up with this guy but she marries him years later. [laughter] but bobby shows up all the media and the tv cameras said he picked up this dirty little child and said i would not have wanted to hold him and something she had never seen in a senator and hardly a human being. So he became that empathetic and then became the Bobby Kennedy we all know. But hugo black became the furthest gore went from the uneven career to do the right thing with his bosses election for what he did with the vietnam war and because he opposed to racist judges nixon went after them and defeated them but hugo black went from the kkk member full circle by the 19 fifties after the most important integration decision at that time after that hugo black was in the tuscaloosa law school. You mentioned gore but the value of a public hearing and to talk about the value of the public hearing during watergate because it was when watergate was processed in the current climate we are in or are we not there anymore cracks its easy what the republicans want but do the American People want that. American people want almost everything to be public they want a light shine on government thats the idea. And what youre referring to is january 1966 the fulbright hearings which gore participated in that johnson tried to stop cvs from uncovering the hearings actually he convinced cvs to take the hearings off and run reruns of i love lucy but the hearings continued and got a lot of attention and he said in 2007 that changed the american publi public. So they had a great impact so to have people speak with a can see the hearings to think the house will likely impeach i know nixon didnt do some of those things and trump asks a Foreign Government to help with the election and would do what i would do because of a jury or that we should weigh the evidence not listen to Public Opinion so we will see i think they are really important united American History shows its a huge impact these are the same of the mccarthy hearings the titanic hearings and i was in that room when we wrote the Affordable Care act so they have a gravitas around them and they know how to do that. And if you have so talking about impeachment what will it take any republicans to stand up to donald trump to support in the senate cracks we have enough in the house but in the senate than any republicans are changing their mind so what would it take is there a possibility of that quex. I hear republicans talk privately they think this president is not informed. He does it run the administration in any coherent or legitimate way. Many think eli is a lot many say he is a racist. They like what he does it with the attacks on voter rights and working rights and the environment and they like the tax cuts. The other reason that they dont there is a palpable fear that if they Say Something to follow up they bring a primary on themselves part of that reason is if you are a trump supporter between the 35 or 40 percent do you listen to conservative talk radio and watch fox you never hear elected officials criticize him unlike any president. I was critical of clinton and obama on trade brick i think they were dead wrong. I was supportive of them most of the time but when i wasnt i wasnt afraid to say and that era has changed. Where are you with trump on trade . President drop ive had conversations with him in the oval office with full of senators i was not surprised but his two issues taxes and trade even on the issues that he cares about but the tariffs i support tariffs in the past i advocate for them but they are temporary tool for longterm policy. And they never work that way so and then to look at that indiscriminately you figure which are the serial cheaters. And then you build support with our allies to reinforce those tariffs and that has been lost. What its doing isnt working clearly it has hurt our economy and could be done differently. s not the message of hope but with those perspective and now not particularly longterm is there message in this book quex. Yes what connie said the progressive era i can document directly and indirectly talking about wilson by any measure was pretty racist but there were progressives that came out and the Federal Reserve like women getting the right to vote during his Administration Even though he didnt always support this initially it was the times and the elections of roosevelt and the democrats in public sentiment but then the thirties and the sixties the greatest progressive era that they are only shortlived they last two or three or four years they have great accomplishment with longterm consequences making our country better mostly from conservatives and conservatives want to hold on to wealth and pow