Bookseller here and also in charge of the first editions club. A few bits of housekeeping and we can jump right in. Pleasesilence your cell phones, we are also going to be recording video and audio. Its going to, also when it comes time for the q a portion, we have a standing might read here. Im at the end of the aisle, you speak clearly into it and keep your question to a question then following oueverything , we have all the books on sale behind the Cash Register at the front of the store. So ifyou just want to get those and come back in , matt will be more than happy to sign them and then we just ask that you keep your chairs in place. Ill need another talk after this and we greatly appreciate that. But also, we have as many of you know we host a lot of events this year, every year really and if you need any help keeping track of all those we have the calendars at the info desk and also just check our website. We update that all the time and its the best way to get that information. We cant push that not. But we had the pleasure of posting matthew algeo, matthew is an awardwinning journalist who stories have appeared on public radios all Things Considered in the marketplace, hes the author of many books. Harry trumans expresident adventure and the president is a sick manamong them. Hes here to discuss his new book all this marvelous potential, Robert Kennedy 1968 work inappalachia , the story tells of kennedys tour starting in midfebruary less than four months before his assassination. Books like convicted hillbilly elegy, have recast the midcentury story of appalachian life and what decisions were in place to generate the world as it became. Myself having lived near on the story told in the seen books title resonates with the population there. But even deeper into the books pages readers will familiar with the story of economic withdrawal and Party Infighting will find much to discover and ill jump right in, everyone join me in welcoming matthew algeo. Thank you travis. I just want to adjust this a little bit. Hows everybodyfeeling . Doing this with the handshakes. Its great to the at politics and prose again. Ive said it before, for authors this is like Madison Square garden. Just smells better. The travis as you mentioned in some of my earlier books, i kind of like how where this fits in to some of the previous books ive done area but a little background about myself first i guess is in order. Its always good to let people know the person who wrote the book. The person who you will be giving your money to , hopefully. I grew up in a town about 30 miles north of philadelphia called burke to see, its an indian word that means we are not for cracked and i went to college at the university of pennsylvaniaand majored in folklore. So ive got that going for me. And after i graduated, i couldnt find any work because my parents were surprised so i started working in public radio and it was kind of the place where folklore people went at the time you and work at a few stations in seattle and minnesota and st. Louis and im at my wife in st. Louis in 97, we were married in 98 05 she was hired by the state department and joined the Foreign Service and so since then ive been able to write these books because my wife has a real job and this string of nonbestselling books has given me something to do at least while we are overseas. Quick plug for some of my earlier books if i could, first book was last seen standing, about thank you, big fan. The 1943 merger of the steelers and the eagles. The nfl was so short of players during world war ii they had to merge two teams so the cornerback was blind in one eye and the running back had ulcers and its, somehow the last Team Standing but the publisher insisted on calling the book last Team Standing but dont worry about that, its a good book. The next book was Harry Trumans excellent adventure enwhich trace the road trip that Harry S Truman took in the summer of 53 after they left the white house for expresident had pensions or secret Service Protection so harry and best just got in their chrysler and drove from independence to the east coast to visit their daughter margaret who lived in new york at the time and drove back again and its a sweet book. Harry and best are just staying in motels and eating diners and its really speaks to a bygone era. I dont think expresident now are basically inside corporations under themselves what when truman left office he was the last president to treturn to something was ambling a normal life so it was a lot of fun to do that story. Real quickly ti did the president is a sick man which is about the secret operation on Grover Cleveland to remove a cancerous tumor from his mouth. How are these not bestsellers, i cant believe it. Pedestrian is him, a history of competitive walking in the 1880s, americas was popular spectator sport was the six a walking race and ava and fido which was widely acknowledged as the greatest biography ever written a lincolns dog. And i mean, lincolns dog, come on. What do i have to do . We will see about all this marvelous potential and how well that fits into the scheme of things. This book came around in 2016 after the president ial election youre probably aware donald trump is president and a lot of people were surprised when he was elected and they might have looked at the numbers and they were surprised at the overwhelming majorities he picked up in a lot of counties in appalachia and people started writing about this and i thought thats interesting, i wonder how that happens. I knew about the kennedy trip just as a piece of political trivia that Robert Kennedy in 68 had gone on one of his famous poverty tours to Eastern Kentucky and at the time kennedy was not officially a candidate but was considering running against Lyndon Johnson in the democratic primary so it was in effect kind of a campaign stop. It certainly had all the trappings of the Campaign Trip with Photo Opportunities and the theories and sieges and i just thought it was interesting that Robert Kennedy in 1968 as a liberal could go to Eastern Kentucky and credibly campaign and 50 years later we see donald trump winning these counties 60 or 70 percent of the vote like i should write a book about that and everybody else thought the same thing so this book ended up being a little bit different and it focuses more on the trip itself. I dont get too much into the analysis of why things have changed. I look more on how things have changed and ill leave it up to the rtreader to decide hewhether the changes are for better or worse. I went down to kentucky. I began researching the book in 2017. And i have, i grew up in philadelphia or outside philadelphia a lot of my, i have a lot of biases attached to. To the story of appalachia and also the 1960s. My idea of the 1960s was woodstock and the chicago convention. San francisco, you dont really think of kentucky when you think about the 60s you at least i didnt. Where i came from. But the 60s happened in kentucky a lot. There were a lot ofcrazy things going on in appalachia and Eastern Kentucky. Things to do with environmentalism and poverty and it really surprised me and i really thought maybe thats the way to approach the story is to look at what the 60s were like. In Eastern Kentucky. Just by way of background before the rfk trip in 1960 as brother jack ran for president West Virginia was a important primary for john kennedy to when bobby was his Campaign Manager and this was the first time jack and bobby were exposed to american poverty up close and i think it stuck with both of them. Theres a funny story on the 1960 campaign in West Virginia where an old coalminer came up to jack kennedy and said is true you never work today in your life and jack kennedy said yes, there is some truth to that ne and the coalminer said dont worry, you havent miss a damn thing. So kennedy really was enamored with the people with the people in appalachia and they stayed with and in july 1963, Harry Caldwell who was a writer from Eastern Kentucky wrote a book called the cumberlands and it was an expose on the exploitation of the people in Eastern Kentucky by the Coal Companies and major corporations in the us that depended on cold and then in october 1963, homer biggers who was a reporter for the New York Times wrote an expose about poverty in Eastern Kentucky and i think jack kennedy had seen both of these and they made an impression on him and he planned to go to Eastern Kentucky to see what the conditions were like for himself and that trip was scheduled for december 1963 so of course that never took place but after his assassination, lbj stepped up and took up the mantle for antipoverty campaigns and in his january 64 state of the Union Address famously declared a war on poverty and in august 1964 just seven months later, the Economic Opportunity act was passed creating the office of Economic Opportunity or oto which was the agency that oversaw all the war on poverty programs. And there were so many programs. It takes a page in the book is to list all the programs but some of them were headstart, medicare was something that came out of this, School Lunch Programs, things like this so rfk when he went to Eastern Kentucky in january 68 had a few reasons to go. One was was still in the back of his mind that his brother had made, had wanted to visit Eastern Kentucky in december 1963 and had never made it. He wanted to gauge the poverty. Of the war on the bill to the appropriate office of Economic Opportunity was coming up so he wanted to see what progress had been made. I think Robert Kennedy also wanted to show poverty wasnt just an africanamerican problem or a native american problem or a Mexican American problem, was an american problem affected every community in every group including white people, be what people in Eastern Kentucky particularly and i important to show that to the country. The trip itself was two days, he held hearings in a oneroom schoolhouse in vortex and an regulation in a town called neon, a High School Gymnasium and as i was writing the book i thought it was more interesting. I mean, Robert Kennedy, a lot of books have been written about Robert Kennedy. Larry tied what i thought was an excellent biography and he may gave me a good blurb which is the most important thing and i didnt want to write a book about Robert Kennedy and a biography as much as explaining what you get on the strip, the people he met and the issues you face and put them into some kind of context of what was happening in the as60s and whats happening today. Also to show what changes have happened since the 60s and what changes havent. Just a few of the issues that he discussed when he confronted in Eastern Kentucky, one was stripmining. At the time there was asystem called abroad form the. These were deeds that people have signed over the mineral rights to their property. Often 5200 years earlier. Of these he gave companies the right to strip mine, to set the land that the coal was on. And Companies Work required to repair the land. They werent required to do anything to fix the damage that was created by stripmining so cold companies would comein, dig up the call and leave. It was very environmentally disastrous. Strict hillsides of all the cover so the hollows would flood every spring. Not to mention lovery explicated and destroyed the land will had and they got no no benefit from the coal that was taken out. Hi i think Something Like 1 trillion worth of coal has been extracted from eastern tekentucky and not much of that money made it back. Another issue that was present at the time was this concept of maximum feasible participation. The Economic Opportunity act provided that the people most affected by these programs, i. E. Poor people would begin maximum feasible participation in deciding how the money would be spent and what the money would be spent on, where the money would be sent and so just as an example there was a grassroots Business Committee of and bracket counties that was organized. They got a 40,000 grant from the federal government to buildnew roads. This was a committee that had been formed by unemployed minors in the two counties and it seemed like a fantastic thing they were fable to get this money but you think you like the fact that the federal government set money directly to grassroots citizens committees . The state and the county srpoliticians. They were used the money go to them for they would decide who got suspended so when the money started going bypassing state and local politicians showing directly or people, this was the final straw for a lot of people who were opposed to the war on poverty and Economic Opportunity act in a way i think the Economic Opportunity asked my maximum feasible participation was one of those things that was such a fantastic idea that in a way hplanted a seed of its own demise right there in the act. It triggered such a backlash among the entrenched political interests and this wasnt only inkentucky but everywhere that any of this money went. Of course, 1968 president ial campaign was heating up at the time Lyndon Johnson im not withdrawn yet from the campaign, that would come in march. Bobby wouldnt announce his candidacy into large aware is took place were about six weeks for Robert Kennedy officially announced his candidacy. Bertbut like i said earlier, ha the trappings of a Campaign Trip and its funny. I have pictures in the book of kennedys aide did not expect quite the crowd of press to accompany the senator on this trip so you would see the long caravan of cars following him and he would stop somewhere and go inside the house and talk to somebody and he begun. Eating on to the next house for the caroline is pulling fiup to the house so its kind of funny how much attention although i was surprised to learn that the networks did not archive nightly newscasts. Until august of 1968. When the Democratic Convention came there would be occasional newscasts and you would find that someone thought it was important to stay for onereason or another , but a network newscasts from kennedys trip, i was not able to find and i think they just didnt archive the newscast at that time. There were a host of issues, and just real briefly, food stamps is one of the fascinating issues to me i learned about in this book and mainly because people have to pay for food stamps which di hadnt really appreciated but when the Food Stamp Program began you paid for a certain denomination of stamps and then in addition to that you were given free stamps if you had paid say 10 and get 15 worth of food stamps and the was determined by a number of factors, the size of your family, your income, that kind of thing that could be a fairly big price. Kennedy, one of the people we talked to on the trip one of the hearings was an unemployed miner named solano fugate. I love these names who spent 72 a month or 94 in food stamps so he had a 72 basically to get 22 in food stamps and another minor was a guy named Kristin Clifford johnson, a father of 15. With monthly income was 60. He paid 26 a month or hundred 12 and leaving just 34 for other expenses. Christian johnson at the hearing said to kennedy have you ever seen 15 kids and three that Robert Kennedy said im headed inthat direction. He had 10 kids at the time i think. And after the trip one of the things that did come out of this wasnt eventually, the just requirements was lifted although it didnt take effect until the food stamp act of 1977 and that didnt take effect until january 1979 when the purchase requirement was finally ended and participation in the Food Stamp Program went up 1. 5 million. In one month. So it made a big difference in a lot of peoples lives just by looking back purchase requirement. It was also interesting to find that food stamps are a Welfare Program for people, for the hungry and its also a Welfare Program for walmart because four percent of walmarts sales come from food stamps so its always interesting to see walmart, how they come down on legislation that makes it harder for people to get food stamps because it cuts into theirrevenue. Of course, after rfks assassination in june 1968 Richard Nixon was elected president and he had to appoint someone to oversee the offi