Transcripts For CSPAN2 2014 Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest Sunday 20140608

Please keep the spirit of lit fest going all year long with a subscription. This year we are also introducing a new digital bookstore. Please take one of our promo cards for information about the app and axis the special book deals. Before they can todays program please file ensure cell phones. You return your camera flash off. We will allow you to take pictures. You can post those pictures online using hashtag printers row. Gives me great pleasure to introduce to you guys are moderate todays conversation, eric banks. Mr. Banks. Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome everybody. Its good to see you here this morning and its my pleasure to welcome today Monique Brinson demery, the author of the amazing book, finding the dragon lady the mystery of vietnams madame nhu, which has recently been published by Public Affairs books. She holds a masters degree from harvard university, and when she made contact with madame nhu who was the unofficial first lady of the south east government in 2005, she was the first journalist to interview her in almost 20 years. She is based in chicago where happy to walking, monique. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming today. Its such an interesting book. Im curious how you first became interested in writing a book about what i think a lot of people might be somewhat unlikely an unknown subject, someone who was known to scholars of history of the vietnam war, but probably not that well known to so many other people. How did you become interested in madame nhu . It started sort of by a mission. My mother is french and my dad is american, so it was a very clear to me what had happened there, and every time i tried to ask the adults around, it was too controversial to really talk about. So there is this nagging question of okay what happened in vietnam and every time i looked at a book there was a very gory picture, that youve seen a vietnam or napalm picture and then flip the page and heres this beautiful, stylish comes with a very cosmopolitan looking woman and theyre calling for the dragon lady, the diabolical what is not to be interested in . I started digging around, and actually out of curiosity wanted to read a book about this woman because her life sounded interesting to me, putting the pieces together. I would have known that she grew up during the French Colonial period and i thought, okay, someone has written maybe a great historical book about this one. There was nothing, really just these articles from the 60s that had been written about her. And then no biography, no mr. Koh fiction. What i noticed was no obituary. So that led me to think, ma wow, she still alive. Somewhere out there. Yes. Great fascination for writers who are reporting from vietnam. There was very much a builtup image of her in the United States, but then after she went into exile in rome and later in paris, she does kind of disappear from the records. You had a lot of sleuth working and tracking her down. I did. I mentioned there was no obituary. There was no obituary from madame nhu but what he did find was an obituary for parents. Her parents in 1986 were living in georgetown. They made the elder after he resigned in protest from his daughter and soninlaws government so they been living in georgetown. And 96 they were murdered in their sleep by their only son. And i thought, this is a reallife . This is nonfiction . So the ministry really threw me in zooming in and those of us time madame nhu emerged from her self imposed exclusion to say this is a family affair, leave my family alone. At the time she was living in rome but she was back and forth between rome and paris. Did you start out possibly, the parents, did you start out thinking about writing about their lives perhaps and then she became such an interesting figure to you a long the way . I sort of thought there was something there. Their faces looking, 90 im going to get the names wrong 90 and 86 or something when they were murdered and they were murdered i read in their pajamas. That seem so heartbreaking and sad. I start looking into it and what i found was that these lives, these very sympathetic, elderly couple had, in fact, lived quite a life before that. Madame nhus mother was known as the pearl of the orient by the french. And benefit archives was digging around all these references to she slept with and why and then she slept with the japanese. And in this sort of further confusing, she was 14 when she had her daughter. 14 years old. So i thought, theres really, theres so much contradiction here and she wasnt just a sweet old lady. She was a sweet old lady who slept around quite a bit. But you also had a daughter at 14. All of those questions kind of led me to pursue them. Its a very aristocratic family. We probably need to take a step back and see exactly who madame nhu was. She was calm her brotherinlaw, the brother of her husband became president of South Vietnam in 1956 or 55. Fiftyfour he becomes premier. So yes, madame nhu is the first de facto first lady because the president of South Vietnam, and theres a few titles before that, primus to, premier, for simplicity call him the president. He was a bachelor. Thats what makes them sound like he was going to vegas on the weekend but he was really very moral. He slept on a hard, wouldnt cant. He personally signed entry visas in and out of the country sing up late at night. Theres this very catholic austere man who needed a first lady became somewhat to host parties and go to the orphanages and those flowers should. So madame nhu, his younger brotherbrother site becomes thin and she perfect for. She looked great for the cameras. Should like to be out there. This gives her a voice. All of her life i think matter had been looking for the perfect combining, she was the second child, she been overlooked as a child. She had a bit of a chip on her shoulder, and so for her to be handed this, you go, b. The first lady, be the official hostess, she took it and ran with it. And she basically occupied this role up until 1963, when the government was upended, and her husband and her brotherinlaw were both executed. Thats right. And one within. Madame nhu wasnt just first lady to she was overwhelmingly elected by like an unrealistic 99. 9 of the population to hold seats in congress, in their legislature. So by doing so should still the first lady hosting parties but you can also pass laws. So madame nhu past these family and morality laws. Some of them were very well intended, i think perhaps theyre all well intended but south of the needs women were not able to open Bank Accounts but they were not touch the South Vietnamese women. Madame nhu before the laws. So madame nhu recognized what her husband and her brother did that was the 50 of the population was being just ignored except by the communists were doing a great job of recruiting women. So madame nhu thought okay, lets give these women some rights and some power, and she did and sort of took it upon herself to be the voice of the women. She doesnt like most vietnamese women. She came from a very aristocratic family. They spoke french at the dinner table. So for her to suddenly declare herself a voice of the vietnamese woman was all presumptions. She couldnt mshas unable to write in vietnamese, is that correct speak what she didnt write, i mean she could, but she expressed herself most will only in french which is what of course she studied in school and what they spoke at home. So the other laws that she passed were a little ridiculous. I mean, thinking about them in context it seems to make sense. Vietnam was a country at war and the north vietnamese, the communist were to ever good job of saying this is a war, we have to treat it is usually. Madame nhu was wordy, its becoming like a party. There were girly bars and all of that stuff that is on restarting and madame nhu said no, we have to take a series of. So she outlawed dancing along with prostitution. She outlawed hand holding and kissing but she outlawed underwire bras, but she wore them. So she had these sort of, this moral like high horse, and then the best was her sister had been married off young like a madame nhu head, this is her older sister issues married to a guy who worked for the government. They fell out of love i guess come in a, and she fell in love instead with a french guy. He was a big game hunter and madame nhu thought you cant leave good upstanding vietnamese guys for a french guy. Disappointing colonial. So when her sister tried to divorce her husband, madame nhu outlawed divorce, and the story goes, theres a record of this but the story goes madame nhu sister slashed her wrists and going to the pound and madame nhu locks up in hospital and takes her own mother to come back to saigon to break up the daughter then goes to the United States enters the french guy anyway. They are still alive, correct . I believe so. She lives in north carolina, correct . I tried to reach out to her with letters, but the event unanswered. So her husband has published a couple memoirs at this time, and they been published by a small press and candida, perhaps selfpublished. Quite interesting. One of the things remarkable about your book and her store, and i should point out you mentioned her looks, a real striking figure is hard to characterize her but the image on the cover really says it all. You all probably cant see it from a distance, but she knows how to handle a pistol. And especially with the sort of beehive haircut that gives a nice lucks been she did have a fashion thing. A high collar, a manager in color and madame nhu was one of the first to say, you know, if youve got it, flaunt it. So she cut the neck down so you could see kind of her collarbone. At the time this was like really risk a. So the president , her brotherinlaw, said dont you think thats a little too flashy quick she said Something Like, its not your neck that is sticking out, its mine so shut up. Thats a great line. What is going to say though is its fascinating not just from a geopolitical standpoint and from a historical standpoint but it really is a family saga as well. One also where you see someone who is able to use whatever we think about her, and we can come back to that end a little bit, has this incredible amount of gumption. She managed to create herself and to really direct her own idea of what a public image would be, with an iron will pick anything thats really fascinating about her. And it seems like when you may contact with her, many years later, that that sense of herself was still very much intact. I love the word gumption but i think thats a great description. And yes, madame nhu was going to tell her own story. So when i did find madame nhu she was in her early 80s, and she sort of said to me, this is great. You are the angels that god sent to me. We are going to do my memoirs. Youre going to get me a book deal, its going to be great. And i was like, all right, you know. But i wanted to hear what she had to say but she had very specific way of seeing her past, which is understandable. Perhaps we all revise history in our own way but madame nhu, she was vietnam was the center of the universe and she was sort of the thing everything revolves around. So she was very much at the center of her story, but then again it was also understandable. Her husband and brotherinlaw were killed by the sanction of the americans and should gone through this life had been quite hard. And so i think to make sense of it she really turned to religion and that was the only way that she could really make sense of things, and biblically or ordained. A joan of arc idea, survivor story. How did she come do you think its just the force of her personality gave her the presents she had in the government . The american thought she was really the problem behind the problem that were very clear with, in the South Vietnamese government, that she was the one pulling the strings. I think the way that you write about or she does come across as a who had an unbelievable amount of influence over what her brotherinlaw did. Do you think thats just come you know, force of the personnel because you write about, for example, when she was taken a prisoner of war in 1946 by the communists, and that this figure images from that who is so strong. Is that your sense of it or do you think her role has been somewhat overrated in government . I think it is actual bit of both, if thats possible. Madame nhu has the story of when shes taken by the communists and shes carrying her infant daughter, walking across the bridge and bullets are flying and she emerges unscathed. For her, she was like oh, yeah, i got i a. All got to do is be brave. And that message, that, in the face of your in any, stare him down, and stand strong the matter what you do dont back down, that was kind of her motto. Everything she tried to pass that on to the brothers. There was one point when they ty were negotiating, there didnt t attend to attend an institution to open up his government and madame nhu thought that was just awful, that he would dare to share power and all of us do. She convinced him to stand firm. In some way yes, she had the power to convince the brothers that they did need to open up the government. They needed to lock all the doors and keep it even more but i think the other thing is just the appearance that it looked like the men were following what she said. Kennedy said Something Like she looks like she is leading the meant around by her apron strings. So theyre just sort of following and i think i was just as dangerous as any real power, to make it, they were sort of an estimate by her and that was kennedys biggest fear is that they would look like america was following us for late around and that was not going to fly. Yes, and so much of her criticism of, well, i should put it this way. So much of her reaction to what was taking place in vietnam, modernization, its neocolonialization if you want to call it that, westernization that started to appear in South Vietnam, in the late 50s and 60s that she run it against, was very much a criticism of america. It put her very much, because so much of that was made possible by the influx of Foreign Policy money from the United States, which put her very quickly i think on the opposite side of the thinking of the government of the United States. States. She was happy for the money. Lets be clear, that was how they were funding the fight. But what they wanted was the money but then stay out of our business, let us run our government. And the United States obviously wanted Strings Attached to that money. When things were going the right way, for example, the United States tried to send in Ground Troops a lot earlier but the brothers of said absently not. You know, these have to be advisors only. It wasnt until much later that the vietnam war escalate into what it became. There were several trenches attempts against the government began in 1960, i believe. Coup attends. A couple of air men desperate she narrowly survived spent there was a direct hit on madame nhus bedroom. Some rogue South Vietnamese air force pilot was tired of this sort of bossy lady, pushy lady. One of the vietnamese i talked to said she was, talked to big. She was too much. One of these South Vietnamese air force pilots was upset about it and did a direct hit of her sweet. So there was this gaping hole. Madame nhu fell through she said three stories again, one of her sort of survival, she survived it, it was magical. But she hurt her arm but one of the childrens nannies was killed but otherwise no one, no one in the family was hurt. And then finally the protest against the government began to escalate in 62 and 63, and there are, for the first time very strong confrontation with the buddhists in vietnam, which he described very well. Why dont you tell us about how those protests started and what, i think this is really when madame nhu filter place, a bad figure in history around the buddhists protest to if you will remember, there was the famous pictures of the Buddhist Monks burning themselves at traffic stops. I think they were seven who committed suicide that way, the way of protesting against the government. It started with a law that had been on the books since colonial time. No flag was allowed to flya state like but, of course, nobody really paid attention to the. There had just been a catholic festival and white and gold flags have been flying all over, and so for the buddhists birthday sometime in may, one of the brothers, so theres the president , his brother, madame nhus husband who was kind of ahead of the secret police, also in charge of all the politics, he was kind of a guy who did the dirty deeds, and there were a few other brothers, one of whom was the archbishop of a city in central vietnam. When is coming into town one when he noticed that buddhist flag was flying to i. So he ordered people to take it down and there was this backlash by the buddhists of why are you enforcing this random law now against the backing down and saying, youre right, were making a mess out of this, they cracked down and it was suddenly a protest by the buddhists. People started firing on them. People were killed, and so then assessing we are sorry, things got out of hand. The family played the communist. Blame the communist. Sort quickly turn into a mess, and basically the buddhists repression was less, less repression in the way we think of now than more of a vehicle for every grievance you think of because no one had been allowed to say anything against this family. But 90 of the country was buddhists so anyone could identify with this, youre putting down these people, so it would everybody jumped on the bandwagon. Elderly monks were self immolating, which means they were letting themselves on fire. When madame nhu solid, she sounded like marie antoinette. You know, great, lets clap our hands and have a barbecue. The most cruel response you get to old Buddhist Monk lighting himself on fire and that just spread like wildfire around the world. People couldnt believe that she could be so callous. Now, from madame nhus perception was the buddhists have been intoxicated, which doesnt mean drunk, it means poison. They been intoxicated by communism everywhere a very loose knit association organization. There were no strict rules coming in, coming out. Madame nhu was pretty sure they had already been infiltrated by kindness. And it turns out actually that by 1968, the United States even agreed, yes, they had been used as a cover by communist. But it was such a shocking thing to say and then to be so light casual about suicide, its unforgivable. Its never, i dont think its ever a good tactic for a leader who is dependent on foreign aid to castigate Buddhist Monks for protesting in the name of religious freedom and whatever else. And that is really when i think at that point that the u. S. Government knows that is a problem on its hands, and it passively supports the coup that will,. Correct. In august, president kennedy okayed a change in government. The new ambassador was sent over to saigon goes with the understanding that he is there to go look for alternatives to the summit has been in power now. And it takes some, theres some false starts but, you know, some real alternatives have finally been identified. The brothers are killed in november 1, 1963, which many of you know thats just a few weeks before kennedy himself was assassinated. So madame nhu is a conspiracy figure in some of these who killed kennedy questions. Many think it has something do with madame nhu, but i can assure you it doesnt. But it was a terrible, terrible time. And so kennedy seems really shocked that the brothers had been killed. By all accounts he gets up when he hears the news and he is visibly shaken, cant believe it, they killed the brothers. But he was the one who sort of gave the okay to go ahead and topple this allied country, this from the regime and overthrow the. For him to think they couldve got any other way, a little naive. At the time she was on a tour of the United States. Did she believe that if she came to the United States to convince people that there was a grave threat, if our government was not supported that communists would topple South Vietnam quite quickly. So she came to the United States on a speaking tour, and quite a spectacular tour. She went to a lot of colleges, did a lot of television. And it was probably a lot harder come at a time is a lot harder to do that than it probably is today i think. What was her reception like when she came to the United States . It was very next. So as you say she came to the United States because she been asked to leave vietnam. By now the buddhists thing that really escalated. The United States thought the only thing, th the way we can tp this down restore any order is if madame nhu just lease. So this is been something that the brothers have not going to but finally they said okay, madame nhu, youve got to get out of vietnam. Shut up and basically. So what is she go . She comes right to the United States and goes on it this press relations to. She doesnt understand, she was invited to speak at harvard and columbia and georgetown, and shes also invited by meet the press and all of these press organizations. She doesnt understand why she feels like the government hasnt rolled out the red carpet for her. Was and she invited . She doesnt get this separation between the press and the government. Because in her country of course like the government, the press can only see what the government wants them to see. For her it was really totally befuddling to the end of her days. They said to go home. Why didnt they want me to . She goes, ghost in your comment goes to washington, d. C. , comes to chicago. She stays in the blackstone hotel, and what my favorite poems of the trip is she goes to dallas and theres a ranch there and she gets invited to go shooting. So her daughter dresses up in like western gear and apparel has the first kind of teenage romance with a texas guy. And her reception that madame nhu gets from her mother, was very worried about madame nhus visit to the United States so she posts a state department has had an estimate as has madame nhu really shouldnt come you. I have arent all that the in these to throw tomatoes after and if they see her to run her over with the car. This is her mother. She does get tomatoes for better. She also gets Standing Ovations from fordham, from georgetown, from a lot of Catholic Education speed is good to say, she really mapped out the Catholic College and universities, i can or as part of her tour was she presented at that point as her catholicism commune, very important part of her political ideology, if you want to call it that. Was she seen in that light, in 1963 in the United States . I assume to the extent that she was hitting, you know, places like fordham, georgetown, they were very much selfconscious of that. Was the part of her reception as well . I do think that part of the political closet of the South Vietnamese government was based on something called personalism which is this philosophy that started in france in the 20s and it was a catholic closet, supposed be an alternative to pure capitalism and communism but it was kind of his third way. That was a cornerstone of their government. No one could quite understand how that translated to South Vietnam, and so that was really the problem wasnt marketing. But the regime had bought all the property outside of rome, and property of course enormous pretty and expenses of the bought large tracts of them with the idea that they would send a South Vietnamese functionaries over to rome to go get in doctor naked in their version of personalism. And then come back to South Vietnam. That didnt work out so well for them but it was a place that madame nhu after her family was itself empowered, she go back to the land outside of rome which was not very valuable and sell it off piece by piece. I was always curious about that in a relationships with kennedy, the fact he disliked her so much and was were interested in how the catholicism worked into that. You would almost think that there might be some kind of, you know, sense of closeness between her and kennedy that was obviously not there. If anyone, the person who had the fondest thoughts about it would have been lbj. Thats right. Madame nhu convinced he was flirting with her but i think he must have flirted with everyone. But the connections between the family in saigon and the Kennedy Family in washington come is really, its uncanny. On paper they look like they shouldve gotten along great. Catholic dems, both governments run by a lot of family members, and very anticommunist. So they should have really gotten along well, but as it turned out they didnt, and Jacqueline Kennedy was a real critic of madame nhu. She thought madame nhu was just sort of pushy, what did she call her . She called her everything that jack found unattractive, when sort oppressed, she boasted about her own marriage to president kennedy saying they had this marriage which so what is that . Who knows, sort of submissive and madame nhu is anything but submissive. Starring the power of full comments iconic canadian asian woman. Or shes a very submissive kind of geisha girls. So theres these two ways asian women have been portrayed. And so, when women rise to certain level of politics, they certainly get shoved into one of these to the categories. We even had chicagos tokyo rose. When i was trying to kind of wrecking waits this very complex figure, you present her and all are complex today, which i think is wonderful. I kept thinking also about modelo to mark those who doesnt come up in the book, this strikes me as a counter model. She certainly was a figure like that. The mac now she wasnt. Registered theres an offbroadway play in new york. Discussing about the delta markers. I think it was called boots. A thousand shoes. Its called here lies love. And i think madame nhu would be a great character for his next. She was flamboyant and didnt go quietly either. Has anyone been interested in making a film about her life if im asked quite not that i know of. The next theres anyone out there, taking authors. Thats right. What was she like . You portray this very well in the book, but tell us about what she was like when you anointed a contact. She wasnt exactly advertising where she lived in paris. She has avoided pterosaurs son because she couldve been extradited. The correct, yes. Rented the apartment, is that correct . Madame nhu told me it was anonymous gift and she always implied to me it had been given to her by the American Government because they felt bad for not enough for a been a brotherinlaw. She tried to come to the United States, but her visa was denied. They needed to keep renee save face. But to the pair should rent out the apartment to get the cash from it. That is where i found her. My vietnamese is really bad, but for now and then i look online and tried dictionary, decipher my way through a little article. I found this article in early 2000 by a guy who claimed to have interviewed madame nhu. She was on the 12th floor this building and that rung a bell to me, so i thought id might note and i said i see here she wrote a letter to clare booth luce to this address goes to the eiffel tower. I will go there and see if i can anger. This is when i thought there was no way id ever get her to talk to me. This is around 2005. Around 2005. I go to this address. It is only eight euros high. I totally missed database. A sort of look around paris and i realize all the building in paris or in fact really love mfn looking for 12 or a building i wont have to go very far. Its Like Washington d. C. Theres limits on how high buildings can be built. It really sticks out. It does. So i started Walking Around paris among literally knocking on doors every building i was high enough. I got to the concierge said theres an older vietnamese woman live here. I wasnt sure what name she was going by. She said no, she doesnt live here. She was nextdoor. So that was how i found her. I was writing her letters and asking her to tell your story, trying to pitch it as they let me sort of did this in a scholarly way. What ended up happening was most unscholarly thing possible. We connect to in a way because the day that she called me for the first time i had written maybe 10 letters at this point, was the day i found out i was right. So i get the phone call and the woman says this is madame nhu. I just now noticed with my first son is automatically my relationship with her, going through the birth of my son was almost as maternal grandmotherly thing. I think we told her, our families are expecting, but before i told many friends i told this woman on the phone, who immediately changed her attitude towards me. It was suddenly like a redneck, let me tell you my dear and we could really connect in a way that was so personal and nonthreatening for her because suddenly i was this girl who needed help and she had four children, so she could tell me every emir was to know. You develop this relationship over a number of years and a much gained a cat and mouse. How long did it take for her to really start to talk to you about the memoir she was hopefully going to tell you about quick she started talking about the memoir almost right away. It is clear the memoir was going to never be produced via she was talking about it in 1963. She mentioned it to the saturday evening post. When tension was at their stages everywhere, even under mess out for. I thought gosh, were never going to get the spirit that they did exist before she passed away commissioners elsewhere long time and before she passed away she decided ive got to get this done. This is my last chance to get my side of the story heard. So she sent them to me, all 400 pages of why she was the center of the universe. We want to take your questions if you have any, but i want to ask you a couple before we do that. You are writing about it. That has been receding in the american imagination for some time. How has both been received . When we were talking earlier, you mention that you get a lot of feedback from the veteran, people are very interested in the industry of almond want to know more about that. What has that been like quick are sent to different ounces and the Veterans Community has been wonderful in curious about my work and found them im young and i wasnt there that dont have that experience, so i really do respect people who had the first 10 picks. They are. But they often wonder, why would you ever go digging into this moment . She was terrible and she should just be left as it is. She hurt so many people and made vietnam, which is only a problem so much worse. I would you go digging around in not quite my answer is simply because she was fascinating exploration of what went wrong with our involvement in South Vietnam and she sort of personalizes the history in a way people of my generation, when i is in eighth grade we couldnt even talk about the vietnam war yet is cool yet he cuts it was an okay here it was too controversial. So now theres more education about it, but it is still a hard conflict to streamline and get people talking about. So if this is one way to do that, madame nhu is a very polarizing figure and i i think it needs to be explored, and all. Did your personal feelings for her change over time . I dont know if you started the project is a blackandwhite figure politically and historically. I dont know whether you take became from that kind of a physician, but did she become much more personalizes you in the process of working on about quick when i started i thought this is a woman whos been stereotyped and i was going to rescue her and all this stuff. But she really didnt need to be rescued. She was good in that. She was complicated. I think my initial i am going to do this world a Great Service was quickly changed when i started learning all the facts. But i have the up most respect for her. I mean, she was a strong woman anytime in place that it was not okay to be a strong woman and i really thing she embodied a lot of the conflicts women face when they are trying to be ambitious in a place that wont let them express themselves and tries to put them down. I have a lot of respect for her. And not only yet not only strong detractors who were women in the early 60s, but a couple people who really thought she was a much more complex person and wanted to write about her were also women. They talk about margaret higgins, for example. Harker adrian and clare booth luce for big advocates. Its interesting. I think were living in a time where we see more interesting layout or fees written by political figures and particularly from asia that weve seen. There is a really interesting biography last year written by the woman who wrote wild swans. It seems like theres a different generation of women whove come of age after the victories of feminism, offering very different as that would not have been available 30, 40 years ago. So that is wonderful. I think its a terrific book. Very happy to been able to read it. Does anyone have any questions in the audience . I think we have a microphone. Yes. Hi, you talked a little bit about how deronmadame nhus recollections might have been colored in how you dealt with the unreliability of the source for your working on the project. Its a great question. Madame nhu was an unreliable character. And writing a book, i chose sort of the unorthodox path of putting the elf in the book because i wanted to be someone who could see bothides. I mean, it did the research in the archives in france. I did the research of materials United States and i think there are no real check confused of madame nhu that was written about her in the 60s was also the lancet by the mostly white male reporters who are writing about her. And so, for both of these sites i had to kind of navigate okay, what is true, what is false and in her memoirs that she wrote her she is the center of the universe, obviously that wasnt much help to me, but what was was fighting out what kind of shoes to spring, the Little Details that were factual but i wasnt going to get anyplace else. But youre right, there was a really tricky thing and i try to be as honest as they can in the book about walking that fine line between believing what shes had also making sure it is factually correct. The photographs i mentioned earlier are really quite incredible. I noticed a couple of them came from her own collection. Dashiki because photographs quick those are part of the memoir to be published. Okay. To the question . First off, thank you for a great program. I am curious about what you think about how the press did commit the u. S. Price. You mentioned how it was under the thumb of the vietnamese government. How much better did the American Press deal . You must have read a lot of articles and watched a lot of newsclips. The u. S. Media today built her up or demonize her or trivialize her, how did the u. S. Press deal . Such a good question. The u. S. Press, if you read the accounts of how versed in and she had and Malcolm Brown who went there in those early days, they tend to have really believed the United States was doing the right and ive been in vietnam. This is a country that aided to be saved, that the dominoes were very real, really falling and said they were really started patriotically behind United States involvement in South Vietnam. But because the back, madame nhu and her family were really a stumbling block. They were stirring things up right and left in these reporters could see it and no one else is talking about it. So they were advocates i dont want to say their advocates farreaching change, but they were advocates for getting america more involved in South Vietnam, reporting facts as they saw them, which was hard to do in that context. I dont think they build madame nhu up. I really dont think they liked her very much. We should point out that she read them religiously. There is a point in the book where you tell her that David Halberstam has just been killed in a car accident. He was in a car accident in 2008 and you break that news to her and she actually seems kind of sad diet. But it was a personal friend of hers, someone she had known well. He said something about her like she was the only one of the family who knew how to do a parade. She raised her hand like mussolini. She said these things than any other reading would be not compliments, but she was sort of like i remember him. He was a good reporter and he always told the truth. Im not no, were about out of time. Went to thank you very much. Plays outside the bookstore for sale, we will hope you will pick up a copy. Thank you for attending. Thanks to mr. Banks and his family. Copies are on sale the lobby and she will be signing outside the auditorium. Thanks, everyone. Enjoy the let fast. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] balustrade three talking about the search for vietnams madame nhu. We will be back with more shortly. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] every month, we have a new book for book club. This month we have chosen the forgotten man, either the original edition orthographic edition. So if you would like to read a lot about economics, the depression come you can lot is in today. Amity shlaes, the forgotten man and starbucks election for the month of june. Get a copy and join us in reading. If you go to book to be or, you will see at the top a tab that says bookclub. Click on bookclub and beginning this afternoon, we will start posting your comments. We want to hear what you have to say about sunday, our Book Club Selection for the month of june. In 1986, the chairman of the communist party by the name of who yeah bonne who is sympathetic to the students today and democracy this then not doubt that will was stripped of his position and put under house arrest. When not abend, china came under where they had to go underground and that caused a lot of tension in that builds up until the 1989, spring of 1989 when he unexpectedly died of a heart attack and i miss you all remember what the event that triggered Tiananmen Square demonstration in the students wanted to go out into the street and demanded they would be allowed to his funeral to say goodbye to someone who is sympathetic to the students. When the demand was refused, the student took to the street and developed into a massive demonstration. I took part in the movement with a lot of my friends, who some of them became very prominent in the movement and became student leaders and let hunger strikes, for example, throughout the seven and a half weeks that the tiananmen movement. When june 4th came, the tanks wrote in today sharing in the army opened fire on the students. The movement was crashed and after that, and nation came under martial rule in the universe of the campuses were sealed off. There was a lot of arrests. There were executions and it became very dangerous place and i had the further tiananmen event earned a scholarship from the u. S. Undergraduates at it. I was able to get my passport after been in hiding in the countryside for about a week. Once i received my passport, i got my visa from the u. S. Consulate and left china on the second of august into america. I remember clearly when i arrived in williamsburg and i stood on the campus of william and mary and it was very quiet and there was an amazing and liberating feeling to be standing in a place to have realized for the first time in my life that no one was watching me and no one was going to report the things that i said. Tv asks, what are you reading this summer . Im just finishing up the roundhouse, the latest book he or she may have one after that. I would really recommend it to anyone who really wants to lenders and native american jurisdiction and perhaps one of the challenges that we have in terms of law and order on the reservations. She just writes with such a wonderful year. Its been a nice time and european country and she captures us so well. Very authentic. Amy tan, i pretty much read anything she writes. I think shes a great author. I have a friend who has great concern about the privacy debate and she sends me lots of books and so im going to actually try and plow through some of the books being written about privacy challenges in america because i think those are some of the challenges in the next couple years of legislating and protecting peoples privacy in a way that does not shut down this Wonderful Development of access to information. Can you tell me about your childhood and reading . Ive read a lot when i was a kid. Im so old we only had three channels aired on any given good day with the antennae could get one. So i think we all read probably more because it was in a whole lot of entertainment alternatives. I spent a lot of time reading nancy drew, hearty voice, chip houghton. He was a sports hero and we loved him and i loved books about car racing. That was really our form of a. Now i think what you see if its not a Harry Potter Series or a hunger game series, the center of reading back to kate and i think a very positive way, but i think it takes a bit lock buster to do that. [inaudible conversations] our live coverage from the printers were let fast will continue in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] heres a look at books being published this week. Is tuesday, Simon Schuster is releasing Hillary Clintons latest book, hard choices. Recently, booktv was in new york musharraf is to talk with some of the people involved in the production of the book. Ive been totally involved throughout the books actually. I am not the one im not an official publisher of the current book, but ive been involved in the process all along. When back when she was in the way passably would donate to try to persuade her to publish a book which became it takes a village, her first book, you know, i was there trying to help convince her to do so. Ive been involved in every single one of her publications. I am not the editor because that is not my core strength. But i watch over the publication and i hope get it all organized and make sure things are on track. I started also the living history, but in this case making sure that people are working on it. Where publishing hard choices on june 10th. Its our fourth back with us. I was editor commissar was involved in the beginning acquisition and overseeing all aspects, working closely with all the people that the company. Is the editor, is there a lot of emails back and forth to train you and the author, is that how its done . Every case is different. In this case they try to get just as much attention to secretary clintons book is out to all wealthy authors who publish. I should mention the same breath where publishing james webb, who is a terrific United States senator and his focus right now. So i dont want to favor one author over another. When we acquired that book, Jonathan Karp knocked down here and now sits there was anything we could do for the ebook specifically to brainstorm some ideas and talked about when the right time to act on those ideas might be. We been thinking about also as a Digital Product from the very beginning. Of my rule is the National Media and the Communications Team. What is an effective Media Campaign . Verdugo . Depends on what the book is and it depends on what the potential for a book is. There is what i like to think of as topdown campaigns, campaigns like Hillary Clinton, which begin with National Media and breakout from there. A few big hit generate a number of things that sort of create themselves. My role at the clinton title has been to work on the marketing side of that, which has involved a website for the book, increase the page, the production of promotional videos, the release of content on the web. My role up to now has an very much the Digital Marketing role on this particular title. And it has been a fun one because so many people are watching and so many people care. Or make a lot of videos for which we dont have many go up on the home page of aol for their yahoo picks up instantly and puts on a major page. That part its been really fun. Watch for Hillary Clinton to appear in booktv soon on her latest book, hard choices. Next is lets just say it wasnt pretty by Diane Keating and then followed by everything i needed to know. For more information visit latimes. Com. Next, live from the Chicago Tribune printers row lit fest Thomas Johnson and james nowlan discuss illinois politics in their book fixing illinois politics and policy in the prairie state. Good morning, everybody. My name is john dudly. If gives me pleasure to welcome you to the lit fest. I want to thank you to the sponsors that make this event possible. The authors book fixing illinois is on sale right now in the main lobby. There will be signing copies of the book outside of the auditorium outsidef of the conversation. Todays program is broadcast live on cspan booktv and if there are questions we ask thad that you use the microphone so the vow viewers can hear. If you would like to see this again it will air again at 11 p. M. Please subscribe to the road journal. This year we are introducing a digital bookstore through our tribune book app. Before i begin todays program. Take a moment to silence your cellphone. Please turn your camera flash off. You may take pictures. In fact, we encourage you to do so and post to twitter, instagram or facebook using printersrowfest. It is my pleasure to announce the moderator. I cannot think of a more appropriate discussion in 2014 and an Election Year too a conversation with you and the authors of the book fixing illinois politics and policy in the prairie state there is a book coming out i believe on tuesday by Hilary Clinton called hard choices and that might have been a more appropriate title. On my far right is j. Thomas johnson. Tom was appointed president of the Tax Federation of illinois in 2006 and became president in january of last year. He was on the illinois revenue board and was the chairman of the gaming board as well. Tom johnson. [ applause ] to my direct right is james nowlan. Jim was a senior aid to three governors. He is president of stark county communication and they publish Community Newspapers in central illinois. He is vice chair of the Illinois Ethics Commission that oversees the ethics and ethics training of 120,000 state of illinois employees. He was elected to the house of represent in 1968 at the age of 26. Four years later, then governor richard ogle tapped jim to be his running mate as the republican candidate for lieutenant governor. Welcome, please, jim nolan. [ applause ] now, i read this book and encourage you to do so if you care about the future of illinois. Given what these gentlemen do in the book, it is series of recommendations or basically just conversation points. I had tom and jim on my radio show on wgn earlier today called the sunday spin and one of the questions i had was given all of the problems in the state of illinois, their recommendations only total 98. You couldnt get to 100 . And by the end of the show we did get to 100. I want to address, and something i learned from talking to them both, the last chapter of the book is entitled corruption an enduring tradition. And you explained you made it the last chapter of the book for a reason. Yeah, we believe in fact a gallop poll did a poll on trust in government and illinois ranked next to last in terms of Citizens Trust in government. Corresponding to that was also a poll question asked if you could would you move from your state. And illinois ranked first in that regard or last. And they are tied hand in hand. We believe the basic need in fixing illinois is to address our corruption and ethics in Illinois State government and local government as well. And jim had a prospective on that coming from a slight different angle. There is a cost to corruption we found in a survey of Illinois Development executives 2 3rds said the corruption effected somewhat or a great deal efforts to recruit business to come into the state of illinois. So it is a serious problem not only for the perception but in a sense in a reality of recruiting business in the state of illinois. But when you you have almost what i would say is an x ex acceptance of corruption. I wonder if there is an acceptance among people there is always going to be some level of corruption and at least maybe we be we can try to find people with the bar low so tolerance is accepted. I was going to note i teach american politics at the university of illinois, or used it, and each course i would give an exercise to students, most seniors headed for law school, and in this exercise, i said your older brother has been charged with a serious dui. He is in his first year out of college, must have a car to do the job. His wife is at home pregnant with their first child. And the savvy lawyer for the older brother says look, i am confidant i can get this case dismissed if you will provide me 1,000 in cash beyond my fee and the question the older brother asks the younger sibling anonymously is should he go for it or reject the idea. And in 78 courses in which i did the exercise, 2 3rd of the students said go for it. Gives you a sense of what i consider a culture of corruption that too many of us in illinois feel we should take advantage of government because that is what everybody else does. What do we do about this . We know it is an enduring tradition. But what changes that kind of mentality . I think we need a take a bold initiative. We have passed nibbling around the edges ethic reform legislation in illinois but Nothing Specific with strong penalties. If we take on the challenge we want to fix illinois, we have to take bold initiatives. And one of those areas we need to do that in is in the area of ethics and corruption. Legislation that people look at and say wow is what i mean. Did you see what they are doing in illinois . Jim made a point that, you know, it used to be cigarette smoking was standard for young people. Now it is no longer a standard vice. Drinking and driving and so forth was okay. It is no longer acceptable in our culture. Corruption can be no longer acceptable. And ethics lapse can no longerby acceptable. If we create a structure that that is the messening the public demands of their officials maybe we can have the same level of success on this area as we have in cigarette smoking and in driving while intoxicated. So we can do it. We just have to embrace it and say this is what we need to do to address the problems that this state faces. Give the mere suggestion number 99. We have 98 suggestions in this book. We invite people to add another 99. You know, our email are in the book. Just send us a great idea. This was my 99th. Eliminate all public pension for all elected officials in the state of illinois. Not civil severants and career employees but elected officials. Why do i say that . Pensions are a benefit for a professional core of longterm employees and that is what what elected officials are. I am so tired of reading in tth the Chicago Tribune about a public official committed a crime, pled guilty and it took a year half so they drew pension the whole time before sentences. If we eliminated that and gave every public official a 5 raise and said contribute that to your ira you are no longer covered by public pensions. That is not what they were created for. It is for longterm professional employment. Get rid of it. Why have that cloud hanging over public official because 25 have ethical lapses and paint ugly pictures for all of the servants. Jim, you note the history of smoking and drinking and driving and that seems like a generational kind of change. One of the recommendations, jim, in the book is about teaching ethics as part of high school curriculum. We require two years of social science in the high school curriculum. Indiana requires three and i think that is more typical in illinois. I think one should be devoted to civics or American Government at least and that clearly has elements about ethical behavior should be part of that correspondence work. We touched on this earlier today about education and things like that and this really goes to one of the early chapters in the book where you talk about the issue of renalism in illinois. And you have the political differences and most recently in this state the issue of carrying a concealed firearm in public. And the issue of down state illinois, the six counties outside of the chicago area, and truly then in chicago and more urbanized area, the urban areas are more supportive of gun control and down states more supportive of gun rights. And illinois under a court order was able to come up with the law thatoo make illinois the last state in the country that leg legalized the concealed carry of firearms. And you made a comparison of texas. Dont mess with texas. Texas is its own country for anyone who hasnt been there. But in illinois there is diversity. And that has consequences. The suburbs of chicago is looked at as one state and look at down state, lack of growth, declining economy, fewer educational choices and also link that to come neighborhoods in chicago. I think many parts of depleted rural down state illinois have a great deal in common with the struggling neighborhoods in the city of chicago but they dont realize the commonalities they face. You talked about regionalism and how it can be reversed. We have two regions. The metro area and then rest of the state. Maybe the northeastern part of the region has identified itself as a metroplex and one of the great city areas of the world. And the rest of the state lost who they are. What are their goals, dreams and aspirations. How do they tie themselves to chicago . Or will they tie themselves to chicago . We need to edge educate them about the fact their livelihood is dependent on this area. Many of the things produced in illinois are consumed by people in the area. How do we respect different traditi traditions when it comes to regional areas and we need to help the public understand how we are interconnected and the differences and that suggest the great met met metropolitan does a great of planning and put out broader Economic Development studies of the metro area. But illinois as a state is lost in all of that because it is the poor cousin to the metropolitan area. We dont do longterm thinking at the state level. There is no planning unit in the budget or civics units on a statewide bases that think about the problems and issues related to regionalism. We need to do more of that. Or begin to do that. Lets go back and do the overview here. Illinois is a state facing many challenges. If we are not at the Tipping Point we may have tipped over already. Most of those challenges, basically are financial challenges and those kind of affect Economic Issues about the we talked about corruption but the states economy and businesses that might look to come to illinois are looking for a financial certainty and so you have a state with a 100 billion unfunded pension liability. We have a law that is passed but it is being challenged in the court. Lets take that off the table, though. You have, we just saw lawmakers left springfield and passed a 35. 7 billion budget even though there is not revenue there to sustain the budget and there is a budget balance requirement in the constitution. One thing noted in the book is we have a finance structural imbalance in what the state takes in, how it takes it in and what it delivers. How do we fix that mess . We have this longterm planning. How do we tell the people how we will take care of the pension problem . How do we tell businesses looking to invest in the state this problem is going to be managed . On the revenue side of the fiscal challenges, our tax structu structure depends on narrowbase taxes in the area of sales tax which is the primary revenue of state government. We tax goods at very high rates and we dont tax services at all. In the income tax area, we dont tax retirement income. We give a big property tax credit. Both of them grow faster than the income tax base. So what we structured in illinois from a tax perspective is what i call an anemic tax structure. It doesnt grow with the economy and slower to growth. And we have to knowledge that we need fix that. And in our book we proposed various ways to do that. Broadening the base of our tax structure. Lowering the rates and with that broad n based we will get more Revenue Growth than in the current structure. We need to have have long term vision of our fiscal challenges and how we will address them. If we do that, we will gain the confidence that we have a longterm plan and we build the faith in the ability to manage the fiscal challenges. And you note fax fairness. We have the effort it will be an advisory referendum about a millionaires tax. And we had talk about a graduated tax. Even the sales tax has a fairness question there. Absolutely. Me perspective is get the tax base first before you decide the rate structure you put on top of it. We dont tax retirement income. The federal does. But we tax unemployment compensation. What the policy rational for that . The Fastest Growing potential income in this country is retirement and if you exclude that the base grows slowly. Politically the rational is seniors dont like paying taxes. I am a senior. I paid them all of my life and i have an obligation to pay them. We need to get the base right. And when we do i think the tax system will be fair moreso than a graduated tax rate on a base that is the wrong tax base. In proposing these, you are not proposing them as revenue n increases . No goodness no. We think we met our maximum tax burden in this state. Broaden basis produces lower tax rate. We need to lower the tax rate and expand the base so it is more responsive and grow with the economy rather than slower than the economy. Lets talk about the spending side, jim. What solid steps you talk about medicaid spending and there is one of those parts of structural imbalance, even though the state gets a match from the federal government, but the inflationary increases in Health Care Spending we will see what the Affordable Care act does to that in the future but that helped drive this kind of exponential growth in the state. I think the biggest challenge in the book is medicaid spending and how to bring the rate of increase for medicaid spending closer to that to the rate of inflation or growth in the revenue system. We make several proposals that might not stand the test of the waver process in the federal government, but one is from the very conservative Illinois Policy Institute which has suggested that if we put most of the medicaid enrollees on private system basically a voucher system . It might be less expensive than the fee for service we have now. Another area in which i think the state of illinois shouldnt be more aggressive is that of the rate of reimbursement to the state of illinois which is the lowest rate among of them and that is 50 federal match to 50 state spending. Several states around us have lower rates of unemployment than we do but are reimbursed at 63 rather than the 50 we are reimbursed at. If it was 57 by the federal government, we would save about a billion in state revenue we could apply to other purposes. So i think the illinois delegati delegation, the congress, should work on this with other members of congress because several states like illinois are being shorted. One thing that every politician says is education is my top priority. The illinois constitution says the state shall have the primary obligation for funding public schools. We know as a result of the Supreme Court decision that that was a goal and not a fact. We increasingly see the property tax burden going up as a support mechanisms for public schools. We talk about tax reform and then you look at a property tax which is basically based on an 18th century model of wealth. What do we to do reduce spending, make a equitable, and try not to make it the quality of your school depends on your zip code in the state of illinois. Lots of ideas. Florida has 150 School Districts. Virginia has about the same number. Indiana basically the School District is the size of a county. We have 893 School Districts in the state of illinois. Many of them are poor. Many of them are very wealthy. The wealthy do not want to share with the poor. They can tax themselves because they often have a high commercial and Industrial Base and they can produce far in access of the revenue flow of each student. We need to look at how we fund k12 education not only from the state level but the local tax resources as well. We also suggest that in order to get a better product out of our k12 education system, we need to lengthen the school here. And somebody asked the question where are you going to get the money for that and my First Response was reallocate resources. I sounded like a politician and she said that is always the answer you get. Further in the book we said maybe we should look at how we Fund Higher Education and we should eliminate the appropriate funds to universities. A voucher of Higher Education in the state of illinois . I dont think we agree on this totally. I see transferring it to a voucher as you are saying. So as to make Higher Education, which is in great turmoil right now, and make it more of a market in which the students march to the institutions thank you will provide them the best value and outcome. Does anybody do that now . In some states, the public universities, i think pennsylvania is one of them that has very little direct appropriates from the institution. But the dollars follow the needbased students. We do that now with the illinois financial assistant program. We do direct appropriates for public university. How many students do you have in the classroom is asked but in the four year programs we dont ask that. We think more accountability occur when the dollars follow the students rather than direct appropriates to the school. Does that change the mission of some of these public universities in trying to cater to a more freemarket based approach . It undoubtedally would. But we saying the goal is to educate the students and the dollars follow the students. We think that is more appropriate of a measure given the tight resources we have that could produce greater accountability. When dollars follow the students accountability occurs. I want to go back to elementary and secondary education. You talk about consolidating elementary School Districts into the overlay of high School Districts that exist. Doesnt that go back to the regionalism issue in that con l consolidation has been talked about as a way to make more efficient use of but you have towns that first lose the post office and now you write in the book about the School District near you that was consolidated. Schools are like the last identity of these towns. There is efficiency but you lose your identity in the process. Many of the School Districts or grade School Districts underlying high School Districts are in the suburbs. So is that more of a turf issue in the suburbs . It is an issue of here is what we have and we like it the way it is and we dont want to change. So there is no motivation for efficiency . We need to do a better job educating the public as to the option. I agree with you, rick, that often community, especially a community shrinking in size the only last identity is their School System but what is that School System producing . Do the students coming out are they able to compete to get into the best colleges or the best opportunity that people coming from larger School Districts have . We have to think about that. The next generation. The future. That is what this book is about. Fixing illinois for the future. And we need to take bold steps. They maybe tough. But in order to say to the world that illinois is really dramatically addressing some of our challenges so that the public regains confidences and we regain confidence in ourselves and the world gains confidence in us as well. Some of these things are tough. But if the ultimate outcome is positive, better Education Opportunities for people in shrinking areas, they ought to suck it up and swallow the will. As bitter as it maybe. As bitter as it may be. When we look at illinois and its strength, the transportation front is one major one. We are the crossroads of the country and a choke point in some respects which it comes to issues like moving freight from coast to coast. But nevertheless, we have Ohare Airport and the interstate highways that converge here but they are crumbling. The infrastructure is crumbling. Chicago metropolitan area is dependents on mass transit and the Chicago Transit Authority needs are huge. What do we do about that . We will have to make more investment in the infrastruct e infrastructure. The highway system is 50 years old and that is the standard length of the system. So we must do more than repave we must begin to rebuild them. We will have to invest more and that is a problem for us in illinois because we have a high motor fuel tax rate when you consider the home rule rates plus the sales tax that is put on top of the basic state motor fuel tax rate. Which i believe are we the only state that does that kind of tax on a tax . Or one of the few . There is only five i think that have the motor and sales tax. The sales is for general purpose rather than investment in the infrastructure. We will have to look as the agency on planning talks about pricing on the expressway, more tolling and probably an increase on the motor tax because we have to face up to the investment needs we have in not just highways but mass transit. And one thing you note in the book and this is something states across the country are dealing with is fuel economy standards, cars are getting more bang that goes into the gas tang so had efficiency of the motor tax itself isnt what it used to be. It isnt keeping pace for those kind of needs. When you look at what other states are looking is perhaps a fee more miles travelled. A user fee. That is the orther thing. We need to look at our tran Transportation System as one thf big assets. Texas and alaska look at oil to do such. Transportation is ours and part of that is because we are in the middle of the country. You almost have to go through illinois. It creates a lot of jobs; that Transportation System. So we have to say this is the best asset when it comes to moving commerce and people through the state who buy goods and services along the way. We need to think about it in those terms so we bless the opportunity to put more investment in that and keep it current so that we are able to reap the benefits of the a thriving Transportation System in the state. And you mentioned areas that do a shipping tax. Absolutely. And those should be investigated. Are they a fair system to support maintaining that asset . We think there are some. It is boom and bust system now. Every 68 years we come up with a capital plan, fund it squen the eight years later we do it again. We are coming to the closing minutes of this session so if iowa a question i would encourage you to come up. You ha encourage you to come up. Im not hearing about gubernatorial stuff in the debates that you talk about. We are coming up on the 200 Year Anniversary of our state. In 2018. We hope it will steer the public debate to asking those seeking Political Leadership what are you going to do to fix our state so that the in the year 2018 we are not continuing to apologize for failures but we have things to celebrate our successesses we hope that is what is going to happen. We hope the debate is over what are you ideas to fix illinois so in four years we are celebrating successess rather than continuing to explain our failures or being the butt of the late night shows. The last primary had a 12 turnout. Vot voter appathy is great in this state. Your ideas are great but they will never get anywhere with 25 turnout or lower. They were very low. Partly offset by the facts that major democratic races were not contested. Even the general election, what are the turnouts . They turn out to be higher because you have independents. And one answer, and i never thought of this in the past, is open primaries in illinois. While their primaries a Party Functions and parties use them to create membership rosters i am told that is the old days. You dont have to do that. People know how to target voters easily these days. I hope one of the answers is that we really focus attention on the 2018 celebration of 200 years of our state and that every media when the politician comes in says what are we going to be celebrating four years from now . I am coming to your house in four years. I want to come over for the celebrati celebration. If we can get the theme going maybe we can increase the Public Participation in the government by focusing on successes in the future. We have a touch point. 2018. Where are we going to be . What are we going to be celebratin celebrating . And how will you get us there . Or what is left . We are thinking positive. We are optimist and we insist those who seek office talk about the future not about the failures of the past. We had them. I am tired of talking about them. I want to talk about success. I think sameday registration was pased. It is Pilot Program for this year and i will have a story on this in the tribune in the next couple days. You will be able to register, and signup to vote at a concern spot in every county. It will be an interesting test of the county clerks and Election Authority in the state. My name is john. My question is how come i never hear about the fact as documented by the bureau of labor that the average wage paid to government is 40 higher than the public sector. That is a good statistic. It is a reversal of a generation ago. And the reason for that is the Service Sector is a much larger part of your Employment Base than it was a generation or two ago and the Service Sector isnt paid as well as the producer sector. The other thing is Public Employment compensation as risen dramatically compared to the general population. More teachers with higher degrees, more degrees equals higher compensation. You are right. When questioned they acknowledge public is 40 higher than private but the Public Employee is also on average much more educated in todays world. I think if you will break it out you would find lower skilled governmentm employees or lower skilled persons in the private sector whereasin the higher skilled level the Government Employees tend to do well in the private sector. When you look at the details and they have details in the report. Every category and level of experience within that category is the salary paid to somebody in the local government is higher than people in private industries. Thank you, sir. We have time for one more question. I am just barely old enough to remember word sentinual. There was one word never brought up. Madden, public enemy number one. The reason i dont share your optmism is the Redistricting Initiative and i would like to know what you think about that and the implications. I think we both feel strongly the redistricting issue should be on the ballot. We recommend it in the book. I think it is number 97 or 98 in the book. It is one of the proposals we make in the corruption chapter. We support an independent Redistricting Commission and it needs to be done to have better accountability and more competition. With more competition you will have greater voter interest because people will debate different points of view and seeking the same office. We dont have that today in part because of the legislative process because of the lack of independent redistricting process. It is absolutely something we have to achieve one day. You could have done tease. You could have said if you want to know the answers, read the book. Thank you for attending this fo fo fo forum. Thanks everyone for coming. Their book fixing illinois politics and policy in the prairie state on sale now in the main lobby and they will be signing copies outside of the auditorium. Thanks, everyone. Enjoy lit fest. [inaudible conversations] we just heard from Thomas Johnson and james nowlan. We will have more from chicago in just a few minutes. Booktv is on facebook and twitter. Like and following us for book industry news. Book tv schedule updates and behind the scene looks at author events and to interact with authors during live programs. We tweeted on the content of Hilary Clintons published book and we posted an article about the swearing in of susie levine. We tweeted and posted our author programs in recognition of the 25th an answer of the protest on tinam square. We want to know what you are reading this summer. Post on our facebook or twitter or send us n an email. Like us on facebook or follow us on twitter for more news about the word of publishing and what is happening. What is the d in dday stand for . It stands for nothing. Soldiers joked it stood for death. Or day. It is just a code. You know, people have tried to figure out what it stood for. It has no meaning other than d why june 6th 1944 about 69 years ago today . That is right. It was supposed to be june 5th. That was the day picked. It is tricky to invade the normand coast. 23 foot swing in the tides so the moon has to be right if you go at night to allow paratroopers to see and the glider pilots halling them. So june fifth was pick and the weather was wrong. There was never good luck with weather there. Stormy for morocco and sicily innvasion. You can count on benign weather in the coast of france. It was awful. He postponed it for a day. They had a narrow window that was suitable. The next appropriate period would have been several weeks later and there was anxiety the germans would find out. If they had any idea they were coming to normandy it would have been catastrophic. So the anxiety level is unbelievable when they post pone it. But they did and got away with it. Number of troops and number of death . Well, there are five divis n divisions that go in over the beach. Two american and three british and canadian and three air borne divisions. So a couple hundred thousand troops. The worst beach was omaha with several thousand deaths there. There was concern that the number of deaths could run into the tens of thousands but this didnt happen. The deaths were not light but less than anticipated. The british and canadians have a tough time but by the end of june 6th there were canadian troops as far as six miles inland. At omaha they were no further than 1500 yards inland. So there was disparty between the resistance these invaders found and their ability to push inland and that is the trick in an innvasion. You want to push the enemies artillery out of change so cann cannot shell the beach. At omaha beach it took several days to get to that point. But nevertheless it turned out to be quite successful and the deaths, 3,000 or so, were lighter than many feared. You can watch this and other programs about dday and world war ii online at booktv. Org. Just type dday or world war ii in the corner of the home page. Booktv asked what are you reading this summer . One book i started and i will be finishing is the big burn by timothy eagan. He walks through the creation of the national forest. It is always good to know your history when you are on a Committee Like energy and natural resources. And great story of Teddy Roosevelt and the big fire of 1910 and hopefully lessons we can apply today. Anything else . I am looking forward to reading a book called the Second Nuclear age. It is book jack reed gave to me when i came to the senate and i have been putting it off too long. I have an interest given new mexicos history in the role of the nuclear deterant and looking forward to the learning about the landscape of Regional Nuclear power. Hopefully he has answers along the way what are you reading this summer . Tweet us at booktv. Post it to our facebook passenger or email us. Booktv cspan. Orbooktv cspan. Or. This is a look inside Jones College prep. We will back with more live coverage on booktv in just a couple minutes. We cover hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long. Here is a look at the events we will attend this week and look for them to air in the future. Tuesday we are at the Harvard Bookstore in cambridge for lawance tribe and his thoughts on the Roberts Court from his new book unconcern justice and then we look at the use of invisible ink and how messages have been kept secret at the International Club in atlanta. And on thursday in new york city we recount what occurred in america outside of the british colnies. On friday, Hilary Clinton discusses her new book at Georgia Washington University in washington, d. C. That is a look at the author programs we will be covering this week. For more go to our website and look for upcoming programs. The reason we are focusing on the speaker is because it is the speaker with the full majesty and weight of his position to yesterday made certain allegations he hasnt answered to. Would you prefer well i will yield to you. You have an audience. You dont normally have this in the 26 hours you present the case to the publicfelt but the interesting thing about your remarks is taking out of context, you were the for one purpose and one purpose alone in my opinion, and that was to imply that members were not american in their activities. Would you respond and you knew there was no body here. Cam scan. Put those two men from your perspective on the two. Speaker oneal was a giant. He knew the politics of the house and he kept much of it to himself. But he obviously received a great amount of intelligence all day long from what was going on in different places. He always believed politics was the art of the possible. He was broker within the caucus and the house. And what you saw was Newt Gingrich they would also be in the minority because they worked with the majority. So he started attacking bob michael, the leader and john rhodes and everybody in his own party because he said the only avenue to the majority is about confronitation. This was about tv being misused. He knew in fact the chamber was empty. The rule came to show that the chamber had people in it or was empty and that changes the whole dynamics. That was a process that many years later tore this inst institution apart. Congressman miller, tonight on cspan at 8 00. Partnering can do things we cannot do alone. Let me give you on example of fighting poverty in new york. Robinhood runs 90 programs and one is called single stop and it brings to bear a fee lawyer, social worker and other teams of people and anyone who comes in we sit down and figure out there problem. We compete the tax forms of 60,000 lowincome low paid new yorkers. On their behalf we recover about 120 million almost entirely from the federal government. When you put 5,000 in tax refunds on the table of a lowpaid new york family you will have added Something Like somewhere between half to a third of their income they earned into the private sector. And that is the amount of money that has covered their rent and now they can buy clothes, books, schooling materials, whatever it is that they want for their kids. This makes a huge different. If you put it in the context of the total amount of poverty in new york, even the difference you add to families to bring them up to a nonlevel of poverty that is small. But the 60,000 tax filers we help these differences are huge. So i would urge you to change your focus from thinking you have to be talking about something that solves the most problem to something that squeezes the most out of those dollars. You can watch this and more programs online at booktv. Or what roll should the government play in Housing Finance . If you want to sfinance housing make sure everyone is aware of the cost. What when the subsaharsidy is through companies that can abstract it to benefit them that is not a good way. We are back with more live coverage from the 2014 Chicago Tribune printers row lit fest. Next we will talk about the current state of africa. you may take a moment to turn your camera flash off. We encourage you to take photographs. Just please know flash. You can post those photographs on answer grammar facebook using hash tag printers or appeared without further ado comic is a great pleasure to introduce her moderator for the conversation, doug foster. Thank you and thank you for coming. Its great to meet you and have a chance to talk about the wonderful book. I wanted to start with the wonderful essay from the great kenyan satirist denyer banca pena who wrote that nine bloodedly good essay, how to read about africa by which he meant of course all of us who write about the continent should stop representing that. Hes down with the following. Broad brush strokes throughout are good. Avoid having the african carrot tears laugh or struggle to educate their kids or just make good mundane circumstances. How could the women except in about europe or america and africa. African characters should be colorful, exotic, larger than life, but empty inside with no dialogue, no complex resolutions in their stories come in no kirks to confuse the cause. Perhaps we could start there since it seems to me that your book is precisely what hes advocating in his essay and that is a portrayal of africans as people with their own agency. And idiosyncrasies and a sense of destiny. So what inspired the project in the first place . Were you fed up at the way africa was being reported on from what you call Poverty Point . Yes. That is the short answer. First and foremost, thank you all for being here and im glad you chose this particular essay, which does have a lot of resonance. He was writing about fiction, but when it comes to nonfiction, my discipline come in the narrative biases replicate ready reference poverty, we been in the most recent weeks where weve been again about the stories that have gotten our attention about africa, it hasnt been it is spending up a kidnapping of nigerian schoolchildren rather than a decade, weeks, months, years as well, unsexy Economic Development, for example. Its hard to grab our attention on the story is one of generally incremental positive gains. So to that extent, thats a very good example of the way the nonfiction media industry, the reporters community struggles to get the attention of the world at large surrounding issues about and development and ordinary africa. Now back to my book, i am proud that there are no animals in this book. A book with africa without animals. Until i looked at the manuscript when it was finished, i went through like i did it. No safaris, none of that. This book is a users manual for the africa you have not heard about. The very ordinary things. Given that my background is one of someone born in the u. S. , right here in chicago, was in a lot of time and countries in Subsaharan Africa. Its given me make perspective on where we are missing the mark, what we are not understanding and ordinary things like giving directions that here we would say we are coming to 700 pastry. If you were in nairobi where i was coming to be like okay, you will look for that petro station and then if you see a yellow building youve gone too far. So ask someone and then double back. So its all contextual. If these ordinary little differences between different types of societies that i seek to eliminate, which is not as sensational or is scripting us a story of the kidnapping or multiMillion Dollar spanking transaction, but its really the subs and so the real africa and the one i eliminate in the bright continent. Lets go there and talk about have been a homegrown chicagoan from a nigerian speaking family how that informs the way you approached the story wanted to tell. You know, i spent a lot of time in nigeria and not sort of shuttle he between washington or is working as a reporter covering american politics, covering the state Department Come International Development and home really again illuminated for me where we were missing the mark. Not by the casual conversations and the fortune to go back and forth. Theres a lot of African Diaspora who do not have the opportunity to go home and feel like its another site of relevance for them. But it was when i was covering the United Nations week, which is the General Assembly every september. Ever comes to new york. Traffic is crazy. Every head of state and entourage is very new york. In 2010 was the 10th anniversary of the famous Millennium Development goals, which was the blueprint for solving property in 15 years with these simple steps. As a journalist, as an american journalist for an american publication, i was watching the presentation and the United Nations had a poster competition to commemorate the 10th anniversary. The winning poster they selected goes to the issue of agency we are mentioning. At the top of the photo, theres a photo of the book because its hard to describe, from the bottom up from the waist up there with the leaders of the g8 in their suit in yucatan because Angela Merkel was the lone woman in the pants to. From the waist down it had what i can only assume were sort of african children in a refugee camp. The mac break, no faces. No fleeces. They were reading online in the tagline read to your world leaders, we are still waiting. That just jolted my sensibilities. It took me out of my role as an american reporter and put me in the role of an irritated african because anyone whos spent time in Subsaharan Africas most people work twice as hard to get how this far. The idea someone could sit around and wait is preposterous. My first trip to nigeria or remember being floored about what you could buy in traffic. I was like 10 years old, nose pressed against the glass in traffic, seen people selling fruit, electronics, art, anything you could think of. Live animals, vcrs and the vhs tapes, which dates a little bit. An enormous amount of dynamism and force innovation. That ended up in the resonant game was necessity is the mother of invention. Africa is the mother of necessity. And we are missing not as the world, including the United Nations, the people who ought to be thinking most critically about what life is a contextually import countries. So that within a month i had liquidated all of my things and moved and started writing this book. As you set off, what were the misconceptions you were carrying yourself into that situation . What were the biggest surprises for you . Great question. I will answer them in two ways. One i think formality bias is a term i coined in the book to talk about the expectation that thinks a book is organized as they look in the United States for another wealth wealthy western country. As the presumption that getting directions means using google maps and you suddenly get where you are going. I think that extends to the role and reach of government by someone who is a good liberal, grew up in hyde park and covert american politics to realize the connection between the citizen and this date all across Subsaharan Africa was bankrupt and it has been a huge part of what i realized was driving all of the innovations i went onto document. And the reason why people were needed to generate systems of production for workers that had nothing to do for the formal sector. People finding ways to provide a safety net without a government support. People finding ways to create Health Solutions and Energy Solutions in the apps and electricity. All of these things driven by fundamental lack of belief in government. For me coming from a place where of course theres garbage collection, of course the lights are going to go out, that was one important difference for me in terms of trying to understand the political economy of what i was writing about. Im sure we can talk much more about that because theres lots of different ways to think about the role of the state of africa and everywhere. The second was agriculture. When i first started eating it and started to talk about it with folks come it was a book about the funds. Cell phones have come into africa and everyone is in no way the democratic moment. People are solving problems. All of that is true, but the very basic two out of every three people was touched by agriculture. Food production, Land Use Committee future of all about in africa is probably the most important thing. That was at the front of your consideration hyde park . That even now. This is so interesting given the essential nature of Food Production for the world is one of the things that should make africa a site of concern and importance for everyone is the idea that we need so much more food. We need more arable land than we have. We have quite damaging monocultures and capital labor intensive Food Production in africa is in natural solution and to hunger at the same time. That to me was the revelation and to realize theres so much to do there and had not occurred to me as something that was as important as it was in Subsaharan Africa. Im wondering what your own identity and background brought to the story in the places they created an obstacle. If i go into a small village in south africa to do my reporting and you go into a village in kenya or nigeria, theres a different reaction to that arrival, right . And curious how you thought about that as you are setting off because in some ways in terms of race and background and maybe some language i dont know you had a point of affiliation. In other ways he were an outsider. A single woman in her 20s living alone as you point out in the. Im curious about deeply into jason where were the trickiest click is a wonderful question. Nigeria is my country in your blood is my tribe. Everywhere else, including chicago through certain extent im traveling. I lived in kenya and i chose kenya for a particular reason. One is a tech explosion. The first story about that ended up being around these themes of the book was about google africa, how did the state offices that were plain hard work tumors in this exploding technology sector. So i went to kenya also in part because it wasnt nigeria and i could move between cultures and professional environments with more ease i thought than in nigeria but the expectations of me culturally. That proved to have been an important dispositive position. I also traveled to 17 countries over the course of the two years and in each place their advantages have been able to not invite people to begin performing. In many places the donor economy comes with white faces and provokes a certain set of behaviors and a certain sort of lack of discretion or lack of disclosure that it might be in the case for someone who looks like someone, even if theyre not the same background. So that was an advantage. My trip to somalia and Marcus Everett of countries with the disadvantage to be a woman. I faced this in washington as well, lets be clear. Knowing your stuff, having the right questions, understanding the informal expert patients in terms of your interaction with one, particularly in government really matter. I felt that was very uncomfortable and id never been in a situation like that despite having traveled in the middle east and reporting from israel and turkey. I thought not only was it odd that someone whos very american to be completely covered, but also so hot. It was like 95 degrees and i couldnt believe it. For the most part it cut both ways but is very enriching and humbling to travel to different cultures. One of the exciting things about the book is where the voices of so many young people and you point out 70 of the population in Subsaharan Africa is below the age of 30. Many commentators see including african heads of state he that sat as president s in modern south africa likes to say, the ticking time bomb. You see the flipside of that is a situation that creates tremendous potential. I mean, the demographics are shocking. It really my mind when you go down to the statistics and look at the youthful age. It is worth looking at the sort of charts that matthau, places like india, which is a similar profile, china has quite oddly unfair one policy kicks in. Western europe in general were the replaced rate for like 2. 1 people for every couple of notches not enough to sustain this sort of perfect dignity levels that at a macroeconomic level are for global competitiveness. You have this enormous youth bulge. I caught a Demographic Dividend and you have a workforce that is maturing. It can as a result of Public Health came from a living past childbirth, increasingly following through the educational endpoints to take ownership over both political situations that are 50 years old, so the onus well, adolescent ease and economy setters thinking ahead. Those dynamics are incredibly positive for Subsaharan Africa. What is frustrating and i hear this everywhere. Theres the mozambican anthropologist named us a note in one who talks. We should instead space between childhood and adulthood where you are stuck, we dont have Economic Opportunities that match or omissions. When the juggernaut gdp growth has not trickled down in the form of a job. When you work the informal dirt coming herbaceous, but she dont quite have all of the assets, whether tangible or skills base to move on with your life. You know, to get married to him to start a family, become an adult. Weve had is now the lots of these millions tens of millions of young people in Subsaharan Africa. When you look like it organization, those are the fruits of idleness with religious extremism. Thats one end of the spectrum. The other embassy and incredibly dynamic young people who i profile throughout the book to incredibly important things to solve problems locally and scale them to improve the continent and the world. So the frustrating thing for all these folks is not the economic soweto, but the political economy where their government Subsaharan Africa has largest gap between the age of leadership in each of the public and the world. In the United States 16 years. Iraq obama, what is he now . 52 . Pavia and kimber in his 80s to come and look of a celebrated his 90th birthday. Were talking about folks who are geriatrics and a population that is under 30 and hungry and concerned and motivated, but the cap is 46 years compared to 16 in the United States. Beyond the reach of economy is not a ticking time bomb in terms of the population being dangerous, but its about sitting around and waiting for the sold leaders to move on and for young people to assert authority within these quite hierarchical civil structures where people are encouraged to defer to others and wait their turn. Its a recipe for frustration, but the book in the profiling different people taken on the challenge in a way that is mr. Do for young everywhere. One of the things you encourage us to do in the book is to drop archaic language, first world, third world, developed world, developing world and you encourage us to replace it with the word fat and lean. I wonder whether you are trying to poke us for having really bad diet or where you are driving setback is ancient. I assume moving away from developed and developing is important because we want to look at the situation from the hideout, not from the top down and if we stay developed and developing, we assume other people are amateur to reup where we have been in the u. S. Right. That is a dangerous assumption. So it is provocative. The story tell about this as i do want to say the west seems silly given how much Economic Committee is happening in the eastern hemisphere as it were. Im obsessed with maps. The book is all about maps in terms of being a way of thinking about orientation. From family to technology. Orientation has been ridiculous. Even the border since its a contender themselves part of the problem. Likewise the termite developing is very normative. It assumes that its one direction. Its linear. You start in the stone age and end up in las vegas and thats how it should be. I disagree with that. There elements of advanced economies are wealthy societies that are problematic in a sort of documented a few of them in an oped for the New York Times and i wrote about this fat and lean idea. You think about oil dependence, overleveraged households, died in consumption. Energy use. So to the extent that consumption is an issue for very wealthy countries, the slowing economy spur is constrained and where recycling is obvious, it is an offense he come and there is something behavioral to look at and learn from these lean economies and also innovation is something we talk about so much of this contemporary moment in always been to me a little miss guided when you think about American Innovation are Silicon Valley innovation where youve got super cool iphone apps, will find you a parking space or track whatever. It is innovation towards trivial issues. I wanted to focus on lean economies in the book because these are innovations for the most incredibly important issues of the time. If youre going to see Retail Solutions for off grid energy, you see them in africa first. Erasing them right now because the pain point there because energy is and cant have. Because people live in a state where they could go off at any moment. For Public Health i think finding ways of decentralizing care. We spent 18 of gdp on health care in the night stays. Its not any better. I covered the debate in washington. When you look at timeshifting because theres so few resources on the continent, nurses do the work of doctors. Community Health Workers who are trained to do the work of nurses. My people do the work of community Health Workers. Task shifting is the watchword. You see people pilot this, but it fell across Subsaharan Africa is a response to resource scarce be in an important way of bringing this sort of bowling alone problem if you are familiar with out where no one knows when another, where people dont have as many friends as they used to, where communities are fragmented and theres no local culture, sort of village spirit for lack of a better word to use yell across Subsaharan Africa terms of relationships and extend relationships are your responses and mentioned earlier to state failure, but also lean body politic. Settee enough that, you use the word cant shoot for make do for hassle. The are a couple other examples of that in practice because the other thing in this book is the exit tatian that theres only things in africa or only things in u. S. Or europe or africa and to learn rather than the other way around. Well, the book is literally only about that. It was about the specific creativity born of necessity. Something like task shifting for Public Health is a good example. Something like off grid energy solution. The paradigmatic one is Global Financial services. When you are in an environment cannot talk about kenya where this really exploded. Mobile money, the ability to use your cell phone as a bank account to send money, to become iou 10 bucks or less in it to you phone to phone. Lets try that. Exploited in china because theres 40 Million People in 2500 atms in their checking accounts and very few mortgages and no access to finance. Its a cash economy. People keep money in coffee cans and mattresses and pillows and theres no formal hand reached out from the Banking Sector to empower people who do have assets, who are not to report, but are not able to participate in the Global Financial system, let alone the regional financial system. Global money was the telecoms it actually began its mobile airtime transfers for the telecom enabled people to send minute, backing up, it is all prepaid because theres no credit reporting system and theres few formal addresses. So how could you oppose traditional telephone accounts. Because it is prepaid, people change minutes back and forth. I say dud, here is 10 minutes for the taxi ride. It was a barter economy. People realized what an incredible idea this was an use it and use it as a classic or b. Telecom realized what was happening in my 500,000 grant from the u. K. Development agency decided to pilot a real Banking System using cell phone and long story short, 86 of households and can you the system in a Stephen Caldwell 35 million a day. It is enormous. It is lifechanging. It allows people to build assets. It allows people to have meaningful Financial Lives and what is most exciting is people are layering on more complicated Financial Service is like access to credit and loans in rudimentary credit reporting scheme now. I think without that come without a cell phone nowaks us to finance, the situation like the United States should never have invented money here. We would never have thought of this. The sort of necessity driven innovation is an excellent example of something that is of the problems of Development Economist have been struggling over forever, how to improve Financial Lives of the poor. So thats a great example in the book is full of other ones like that. We are going to begin to take questions if people want to go to the microphone. Ill be due that i will ask one more. Ive got tons. I dont want to dominate the questioning. So one of the beautiful examples of a new kind of approach to media in this book is issued jaws, the comic book and radio show. I wondered if he would talk about how these new ways of reaching people with news about everything they need to know about the connection between guiding your 16th in order to keep predators from being able to go after them to investigative reporting about fraud in the teaching scheme, how that works. Explain the pete dye, too. Shoe jazzes a radio show and comic book published in kenya for use. It was generated by the release nation to use media in africa can its mostly the videos and not they were verney type about the demographics. There is an extremely Large Population that is not engaged in a way that is thoughtful and developing skills in developing the kind of capacities people are not getting in school. So it doesnt ayn rand about the defunct efficient educational system, free educational system and effort tips for making money, improving your life, participating in Civil Society and the reach is really remarkable. Theyve embraced the souls of where the young people are ready are graphic novel is so different of a textbook. Text that is alienating graphic novel, which is serialized of this incredible cast of characters about dyeing your chicken feet which keeps them from getting stolen by hawks. This is a big problem for people are trying to raise livestock, but theres all this attrition. So they put this in the magazine and encourage people to do it. They also have a radio show. Radio is the killer media across the sahara in africa. It reaches everywhere where hdtv has. I think whats really interesting is they completely ignore the educational system and try and reach those folks who have dropped items goal or who are sort of not perfectly welleducated, but so interested in improving their lives and they reach out to them in a way that is social in a way that, you know, a book is one thing, but a magazine party, but you can pass around till it falls apart. So in terms of the medium as well as message oka south African Youth and its a great model. Beyond that, i would critique myself a little bit for not focusing as much on media and focus on technology, family, commerce, used in agriculture and energy. But media, someone is a reporter and sure you would agree it is a vital ingredient of Civil Society and democratic culture and something essential for people to participate. Its as important as water and electricity in my opinion. For some really amazing Media Ventures that can reach people. I didnt cover enough of them, but its clearly an important tool for the sort of development agenda. I mentioned this part of the first question what i need in a word about africa and i wanted to ask you about the other sensational thing he did in the last year, which was to come out as a man. Theres not much in this book about the struggle about lgbt people to extend for themselves themselves probably eight years or so and im incredibly proud of him. It was incredibly courageous. It was in a secret. Thats also the thing. Ive written about the ugandan bill, david pozzi the nps sponsored. As in uganda a couple of months and during the time this is going on i read about it in the context of being one of those classically cynical political distractions. This is a place where you have young people without jobs, a president thats been there since 1986 in people who are not aired with homosexuality per se as much as these other things. This is something thats been used as a wedge issue, has been used as a crude ploy by politicians in that country to distract from other more complicated issues in the political scene. More broadly however, in africa is quite real and its quite dangerous to be out. Defense in the country or city, and a place like nairobi, cop car, cape town commandos are different in rural areas. I did note that uganda had its first pride parade this week, which is remarkable given the danger involved in that and we could quibble about whether what the nature of the danger is, whether its the population that is feeling animosity or whether its political class. Either way its a big problem. I point to my Discussion Community norms in the boat. Family is an important dynamic in Subsaharan Africa. Your shelter against everything and its the thing people look to to drive norms and to create support systems. So the discussion within the top little bit about fgm and senegal and gambia where it is illegal, but it has been practiced for centuries. So the norms in the community in senegal where they were trying to eradicate the days are that you have to do it because it was like wearing white on your wedding day. So over the course of one generation and i would say steady work within these communities for 15 years, but in one generation to norms have shifted. Its no longer a good. The problem is solved by people standing up in a grain collectively and publicly to affirm that they would not cut their daughters. So once everyone did it, they became a shared public norm but then immediately change peoples behavior. And so, to the extent people are interested in legislative solution and human rights doctors want pronouncements from the government inaction from the secretary of state of the u. S. , i am not sure thats the way to get it up in the problem of in africa. And maybe the longer complicated work of communities to collectively change norms. Its not a satisfying it there, but conforms to my general argument that the government is not where you go for a change in africa. It is peertopeer. Exactly. Why dont you tell us what your name is and where you are from. I am neck here from chicago, just down the street. You touch in your last comment part of the question is going to ask about people not looking to the National Government for help and support. To the extent theres any reporting in this country about africa, to the way that is stereotyped as primarily tribal in nature. He mentioned the importance of family or mauler social beings. What is your perception about a possibility or even how africans and cells per seat governing as the nation . You mentioned earlier the mapping is probably all wrong and that would detract from any possibility of effective governance. How do you see that evolving over time in the hope that thered be an Effective National governance in Subsaharan Africa . That is one i have grappled with very seriously in the book. You are right to the contours of states themselves dont necessarily define the way people live their lives. The region from accra on the west end in town on the way to the nigerian border to kinneret is itself an economic summer people are crossing borders, engaging in economic activity, tribes across these borders. The suwannee group is present in all 17 countries in west africa. To the extent the state borders dont describe or capture life as lived as experienced, it is a huge problem. Beyond the daytoday of how people negotiate these inauthentic orders, there are actual benefits to thinking about the region is not just a sort of nation by nation environment. When you look at a country like nigeria, which is the very biggest on the continent, it is 170 Million People in a country neighboring it is togo, which is under 6 million. When you look at echo weiss, the entire west African Economic unity, it jars to be some thing that looks comparable to the Major Economies like brazil and india and china. The east african community, which is kenya, uganda, tanzania, that starts to look like a powerful economic lock. When you look at the southern countries, the same obtains. Subsaharan africa is 800 Million People. So the attraction, at least for the investor class that these sort of big exploding commercials on this more pronounced when you think about africa as interlinked sort of economic communities. From the political level, the more granular sort of regional basis, i think people are so disappointed in National Government. It was a story mentioned over in a weekend were like citizens all over the world, people ask themselves what have you done for me lately . Fans are looking on african states is absolutely nothing. Whether its the educational system, the road in front of your house on a Public Health outcomes really disappointing. People come up with these alternative arrangements, private schooling systems. They buy generators for their houses and it can be very frustrating. I guess i would say i believe this about American Government as well. Immiscible government to much more exciting than the federal government i used to cover in washington. To the extent it relates to people where they are but offers a regional and local skin in the game, it is more exciting to see the same about Subsaharan Africa are communities of purpose that are local, they can access needs on the ground and make decisions about allocation of resources, to declare this as been going on for centuries. We sort of disrupted that with the political overlay on the traditional map of africa to the extent local is better from a political and economic to. That is my best hope for african governments, at least in the short term. I would hold out hope that the National Governments would improve in the outcome, but right now it is to be a to hold 800 Million People hostage to their leaders who underperformed. In a book you suggest for children and grandchildren of the African Diaspora have a role to play. You mentioned the move backlogs and i wonder if i have your next. And seeing what other people who have gone back have been doing whether you think there is a generational clique of recognition that comes from process. I would say yes. I think one exciting element of what had been years of export, bring trainees to call it is what i call great game, which is folks like myself who have an understanding of the incredible dynamism and Subsaharan Africa and the fact i really believe this is fact that it is one of the most, if not the most important stories of the 21st century, it might take some of my peers know for someone who has this date and spent time in africa is little more time to get to the realization. For someone like myself it is obvious. It is a slight advantage in whatever sector. If youre working in private equity or publichealth and you want to do Something Interesting and take knowledge he worked you want to start an agribusiness. I would tell the story if it somehow goes with a family friend of long vintage, someone who used to pick me up from cool when i was growing up in chicago history of ethiopia. He emigrated here after having done advanced degree in what was then czechoslovakia and was working here at the university of chicago. In 2005 im aware that ethiopia. Talk about disappointing your parents. He went to become a farmer. This ties back to the agriculture piece i was mentioning. The idea you could leave medicine in the United States and work in agriculture to ethiopia and find yourself contributing, doing and some ice at her, more alive, feeling more in charge, feeling more influential is really surprising to some people, but not to death or appeared he is 400 employees. He drives five cars. Hes gained a little way. Hes doing really well running an agribusiness in ethiopia. I think that is a really exciting dynamic for so many people like myself who are first, Second Generation to the night date to realize your opportunities you are uniquely opposition to these and not be an essential piece of africas growth story. Unfortunately, we are out of time. But i think that is a fantastic place to leave it for now. This book is full of stories like that that rhapsody and it total around analytical strand. So the book is the great continent, dayo olopade coming thank you for being here today. Its a brilliant book if you want to understand the continent better, you will buy it. Thank you, doug. Good to be here. [applause] thank you for attending todays session thank you tour moderator, doug foster and our great author, ms. Olopade. Her great hook, the bright continent breaking rules and making change in modern africa on the main lobby. She will be signing copies of his out of the auditorium for anyone interested. Thank you. Enjoy your afternoon with the lit fest. [inaudible conversations] that was dayo olopade on africa. Well be back with more from chicago shortly. Yours look at the bestselling nonfiction books at the los angeles times. I am going back through a series that ive read before in the center on our president s. I am looking forward to that. I got started pirating at the countrymen. Looking at the president in a leadership skills and how they solved problems. The reason i am doing it is because our nation faces a variety of problems right now and what people are seeking to see is action based leadership that is going to put some solutions on the table. Great. Anything else on your plate . Be my guest, as i got into this, let in a great leaders and their problemsolving abilities, i picked up something on margaret thatcher. Im looking at reading some on her and then i am doing some noodling on the own genealogy online and a little bit of research they are working through the ancestry. Com and doing a little bit of Additional Research to look at my forebears and how they solve problems. What are you begin this summer . Toles what is on your reading list. Treat us at booktv. Posted to our first date page or send us an email. What role should the government play in Housing Finance . If you want to subsidize housing in this country and we want to talk about it in the populace agrees that it is something we should subsidize, then put it on the Balance Sheet and make a clear and make it evident to make everybody aware of how much its costing. But when you deliver it through these thirdparty enterprises, fannie mae and freddie mac, when you deliver this up city three Public Company with private shareholders and executives who can extract a lot about subsidies for themselves, that is not a very good way of subsidizing homeownership. Read more with Gretchen Morgenstern another featured interviews my book notes and q a programs and cspan sundays at 8 00 from Public Affairs, now available for a fathers day book at your favorite booksellers. When the Islamic Revolution in it, they were cut off from the western part because of religious reasons. Iran has problems with using data toddies and because the west shortly after imposed action and they didnt have the resource is, technology or infrastructure to really continue with disuse Organ Donation so they decided to focus on living donation. For simpler, old fashion way to it with this was a nasa rationalized he may think because 80 to 90 of people who need organs need kidneys. So they focus on the largest part of the population that needed help while we focused on everybody at the same time and we focused on finding the technology is prepared to keep organs viable and transport them quickly and do everything we could to get them from cadavers. Getting them from cadavers made sense because why put a living person not risk if you can get them from a cadaver. The important point is we went in two different directions. He ran spent 30 years improving it Living Donor Program while we spent 30 years concentrating on our deceased organ program. Now, if you look at today, there is a real can that you can get from the result. If you need a heart or liver, better live here. If you need a kidney, being iranian. Why . If he medically qualified to get a kidney, you get one. In the United States, out of the 120,000 people who need organs, 100 senate and the kidneys. 15 to 20 americans die every day because they cant get a kidney. And that is not happening in iran. Book tvs live coverage from the printers row book fest will be back short day. [inaudible conversations] wow, i am thinking and doing a ketchup summer. A lot of things that are not particularly new, but i sort of take out their list of them and they start with two sort of reallife rescue his tories from world war ii. One actually im reading now is a mitchells off the hook, frozen in time, about an american aviators who crashed in greenland in the Second World War to the rescue mission that went after them and also went down another one that disappeared and they finally did eventually rescued these guys who let her month and a tale of an airplane. The second part is about an expedition to go back and find the people lost trying to rescue the original clue and located aircraft about kinds of things. A great story. And we did not come of course you read the book jacket and its got another one, lost in shangrila or Something Like that. It is again about a mission that went wrong or were supposed to be a joyous light over new guinea in 1945 where the plane went down in the rescue was pretty harrowing and to months. People surviving. Surviving desperate situations is good reading for congress in an Election Year. I had the opportunity to meet recently. I may mispronounce his name. It was david von drill, lincolns rise to greatness. Peter roskam, our deputy were put together a group of about 15 of us to have dinner with them one night a couple weeks ago. I got the book for free, autographed. But i was just lincoln has always been compelling figure i think for any politician in any american, the greatest president of the most critical time in the history and i love the way his political skills, you know, had so much to do with holding the country together in holding this party together. I think theres probably a lot of lessons. This is a republican majority in the 1860s that had never been the majority before. A new president , but a new Senate Majority that never functioned that way. Not as if a then had been part of a republican majority. So how do you act . How do you relate . What is the appropriate ballot between president ial power, legislative oversight of the critical situation and just like in sheer political scale and cunning. And manipulating the various factions. So anyway, we had a wonderful discussion about that and it got me really interested in reading the book. Theres two other biographies i promised myself im going to read. One is William Mccreary spoke on grant. Were going three. Now ive reassessment of grants. Nobodys ever doubted what a great general he was in a critical he was to winning the civil war. But theres been a lot of questions about him is president. I think he sort of going three little bit of a rehabilitation right now so im interested in that. The last one i promised myself i would read a message sent and that roy blunt in missouri who is a great reader, a very good friend that brought to my attention and that is james smiths biography of eisenhower. He was a wonderful biographer and i remember reading in the 80s he had a dual biography of lee and grant those very famous. Again, ray had been telling me what a great book this was on eisenhower and i happened to catch a lecture on cspan history on the weekend its been said i think he died in 2012, but they were replaying this lecture and generalship and i was really intrigued with that. I thought my buddy has been bugging me to read this book. I just listen to this great lecture and the one other experience i had read in the work was 20 years ago. Xml going to read this eisenhower book. When you are my age come to your member eisenhower. Not quite the historical figure that a lincoln or grant would be. I was assigned reading about president s that i feel just because my lasix grants have some connection with either have elected their president or on occasion that it is a fascinating thing. On your website idea. Or sometimes recommended reading list. Sometimes well put together a think we will do link in this month and we are going to have three or four books that i think are particularly good unlink them. I wish i could take credit for that idea. A brilliant indications director came up with this when i said nobody will be interested in what i am reading. Surprisingly, its become a question i get in my district quite a bit, you know, and they like it. Interestingly, i think i kind of like to know what you are thinking about and i hope its not politics directly all the time. It is kind of refreshing. Or somebody with bad breath out, to work out that an idea. It actually breathes a little connection between you and the mcgurk teacher in, at least those engaged in a to go to your website. President call, thank you. Thank you. It was fun. Every month we have a new book for her book club in this month we have chosen the forgotten man. Either the original edition orthographic. You can buy a lot of things in today as well. Since then, the forgotten man is her clips election for the month of june. Take up a copy or digitally get a copy and join us in reading. If you go to the tv to work, you will see at the top a tab that says bookclub. Click on bookclub and beginning this afternoon we lost our posting your comments. We want to hear what you have to say about the forgotten man, our Book Club Selection for the month of june. Here is the lookout books he published this week . Todays program will be broadcat live on cspan2s booktv. If there is time at the end for q a, we would like to ask that youd please use the microphone located here to my left, this way viewers at home can hear your questions. If youd like to watch this program again, please those that coverage will air tonight at 11 p. M. Central time. Please keep the spirit of the lit fest going all year round with a subscription to the printers row journal, premium book section, fiction series and membership ram. This year were also a offering a digital bookstore through our trib books app. Take one of our promo cards outside for information about the app and for access to special book deals. Before i begin todays ram, please take a moment to silence your cell phones. We do encourage you to take pictures. However, please turn the flash of your camera off before you take your pictures. We also encourage you to post your pictures on twitter, instagram or facebook using the hashtag, printersrow. Without further ado, it gives me great pleasure to introduce our had rater for this conversation, greg burns. Greg . Thank you very much, john, and thank you to everybody whos here on a beautiful, sunny day. Its good to see you. Welcome to lit fest. If this is your first time, this is one of the great festivals of chicago, and were glad were getting a good turnout today and that there is a lot to do. Thank you for coming to this event, theres one right after it thats wonderful, and theres just a lot to do, so please stick around. And i will definitely leave time for questions at the end, so please do think of some, and if anything occurs to you, well give it at least ten minutes. Thisll run very quickly, i think, because ive had a chance to meet a. J. Baime, the author of the arsenal of democracy. Its fantastic, and i highly recommend it to you. Its a topic that covers politics, business, theres even some art and design in there, theres incredible personalities, and i learned a lot there reading it. Im sort of a world war ii buff. Do we have any other world war ii buffs here . Thin whos interested . I am, im a history buff for sure. A. J. Looks very youthful, so how did you come to do it, a. J. , and what does a young guy like you know about world war ii . Firstly, i just want to say its wonderful to be here. I want to thank my wife michelle is here, my son, clayton, who is on chapter four, im proud to say. I was not alive, i was born in 1971. And my last book took place in the 1960s, and a lot of people said what do you know about this . When they asked me the question, i always answer that i have to work much harder than anybody else who had lived through this because i didnt. So i had to not just understand the characters and what was happening and why it was happening, but i had to understand their motivations which meant going through their personal belongings and their papers and their correspondence and reading newspapers of the day, not looking for anything, but just to try this any way that i could to get inside the heads of the people i was writing about so that i could understand the extremely difficult decisions that they were making. Well, and we were talking earlier, and a. J. Mentioned that this book is almost a prequel to the book that he wrote before, go like hell, which is also available for sale and which talks about this incredible drama on the racing circuit. This one, for me, was sort of a revelation because everybodys heard of the edsel and edsel ford and not in a good light. I really didnt know much about edsel ford can and the relationship between henry ford, his father, and edsel ford is really one of the main driving narrative forces of the book, and it was extremely interesting. So can you tell us a little bit about their relationship . Sure. Its just by chance that the book comes out on fathers day. It does make a Great Fathers day gift. But when i was researching my last book, go like hell, there was this character named edsel who was one of my main characters, henry ford ii. And i found myself just so i identified with this character, edsel, who died a tragic death in 1943. Theres something about him that i just loved. He was somebody who was his understood his whole life. He was a person who was thrust into amazing amounts of power and wealth at a very critical time in our nations history, and people who live in detroit and people who though the story of the ford family think of edsel as this extremely flawed character. He was, his father who was this great pacifist refused to let edsel serve in world war i. So when edsel was at a young age, he was humiliated, he was e maas calculated. When all of the boys were going to fight in the war, he was not allowed to. His whole life was an uphill climb which seems strange for somebody who was born the only child, the only legitimate child of henry ford who was the richest and most powerful, you know, probably the most famous american through the entire first half of that century. So to me, there was this character, edsel, who his whole life he was trying to create honor for himself, and thats what happens in this book, but it doesnt happen until the final days before he dies. Its very dramatic for me and somebody i identified with. The people in detroit who are reading this book are saying theyre so pleased that edsel is getting his due. Its a little bit of a great gatsbytype story and really very interesting. Just for starters, the arsenal of democracy is the title. What does that mean and where does that come from . Historians have not agreed where the term comes from. Some people say it goes back to Woodrow Wilson during world war i. In this case on december 29th, 1940, fdr, hes in the situation where he realizes that theres this war going on in europe, and were not going to be able to escape it. Its coming our way, and theres nothing we can do about it. And he figured out something. He said this is a new kind of war, and he figured out something brilliant very early on. He might have taken a lesson from the nazis in this regard, but he realized that this was going to be a war fought with mass production. And so he gave the speech on december 29, 1940, and he called it the arsenal of democracy fireside chat. And the idea was to inspire free interrise and government to join together enterprise and government to join together and create this arse that would with which we were going to have to fight this war. At a the time it was very controversial because a lot of people didnt want to be in this war, but i think he sawinevitable. And the only way we were going to win was if Free Enterprise put all of their best judgment aside and created the tanks, airplanes specifically airplanes. But not just the tanks, the airplanes and the guns, but the tents, the jackets, the cigarettes, everything. Everything was going to go toward this war, and thats what this arsenal was. And, you know, one thing that comes through in the early part of the book is just how strong the forces of isolationism were. And the Chicago Tribune was among the players in that era that were very strongly opposed to any american involvement and wanted, in fact, our headline on september 1st of 1939 when the nazis invaded polander was poland was europes wars on. Not our war, their war. And that very much was a theme not just for the tribune or for germanamericans, but really all the way through for most of the country. I think people wanted to stay out. Wed had a horrible time in the depression, and some of the central characters in a. J. s book are very much of that thinking. Starting with henry ford and also Charles Charles lindbergh who plays a big role in this. Thats true. Ford and lindbergh were the two most famous antiwar person at the time, very honored civic beings, and they were very much against us being in this war. Lindbergh was not he didnt run it, but he was part of an Organization Called America First. Has anybody heard of America First . Anybody remember . Okay. So gerald ford was part of this group, e. E. Cummings and i believe walt disney, i think . That i have to fact check. But it was the biggest antiwar group in the country, and lindbergh was touring the nation giving speeches saying, you know, we have to stay out of this war. If we get in this war, its going to be the biggest catastrophe in the history of our nation, which in a way it was. But what i find most interesting oh, a picture in here, by the way, of lindbergh testifying before congress in a room much more crowded than this one in which he said i think that we need to stay out of this war because we cant win. And specifically, he was addressing the german luftwaffe. He said we cannot come up with air power thats going to be able to defeat this air force that germany has created that he had seen firsthand. So once the war starts after pearl harbor, its very moving to me when i read through lindberghs papers and how he came to join henry ford, these two antiwar activists joined together to create the bombers that you see here on the cover of this book. Well, it took them a while to get there, and one of the interesting facets leading up to the war was how the nazis were in some ways admired by some of the people in this book. And henry ford and lindbergh were both honored and took medals, i believe, from the nazis. Can you fill us in on just where they were there and what was known about the antisemitism and, you know, the terrible parts of the third reich that we know so well now . Sure. If i speak slowly, its because this is such sensitive material to me, and i dont want to get it wrong. [laughter] these were characters that were extremely misunderstood. Lindbergh and henry ford. They were both antisemites, i dont think theres any arguing that. But when you contextual im jewish, so im not making excuses for these people, but its important to understand getting back to the whole idea of the kind of research i was trying to do. Not just to understand these people, the decisions that they make and but why they were making them. And antisemitism was rife all over america. It wasnt just in germany. I quote one fact in the book that theres a gallup poll in 1938 that 25 of americans thought that there was going to be violence against jews here, Mass Violence against jews here in america. So these figures were not alone. So to understand, they were just the most powerful people in the country speaking what a lot of people felt, and i think that they wanted to be a spokesperson for that cause. Im not making excuses for them, again. Now, in terms of the war oh, in terms of, okay, yes. So both of these characters received a very important medal from hitler. It was a gift from hitler to both of these gentlemen for their service, and it was a brilliant propaganda move by hitler to give these guys this cross. Both of them refused to give this gift back to the third reich. And i think that they were alarmed by what would have happened if they did that. But here these guys were with their faces in the newspaper and probably on the cover of the Chicago Tribune. As a matter of fact, hitler was quoted in 1933 saying, you know, honoring henry ford, saying that henry ford was his hero. So there was a connection between these people that was written a lot about at the time that makes them so incredibly controversial. However, once the war started i think it was very clear that these two gentlemen that were is is that were so controversial and had received these medals had their hearts in the right laces, and they wanted to serve, and they wanted to win the war. Well, and we sort of got to that point slow hi which is illustrated in the book where henry ford and Charles Lindbergh were no fans of president roosevelt, and it was a struggle, i think, for roosevelt to turn this arsenal of democracy from, you know, sort of dormancy and reluctance into something that turned out to be warwinning. So how did he pull that off, a. J. . It was difficult. The new deal was very controversial. Roosevelt d when we think of roos related to, we think, well, heres this character who was so gloved and who really represented americanism all over the world. But a lot of people in this country didnt like him. A lot of people. And specifically, when he needed, when fdr needed to create the arsenal of democracy, one of the things well, the people he really needed were the people in charge of the big Assembly Lines. And these were all his enemies because they did not like the way that the new deal encroached upon their way of doing business, whether it was functioning during the Great Depression or not. So a lot of these leaders, henry ford first and foremost among them, thought that roosevelt was henry ford said i dont think that the government has too much, is having enough success running itself, so why do they want to come and run my business . Thats what he said. Im trying to get the quote right. But there were a lot of people who felt the way he did. The first thing he had to do when he had to create this arsenal was to find people who were going to help him, and that was not an easy task. The first person he called upon was the president of general motors, william knudsen. Does anybody remember william need seven . Anybody . So he was extremely famous at the time. Came through ellis island, and he was the first person that roosevelt called. Brought him down to West Virginia and said hey, you know him down to washington and said, hey, we need to create an arsenal. Another really prominent character is the b24 liberator bomber. This is this gigantic plane that at the time it was made was the fastest, most powerful, it carried the most bombs. Its a fourengine plane. And it really got off on the wrong foot, and the ford people who rused it started from who produced it started from scratch literally. Can you tell us the story of willow run and how that got started . Willow run at the time was created theory overnight. The fords tried to create the biggest factory under one roof anywhere in the world. And one fascinating fact is if you drive to detroit today, youll go through a little is right outside detroit, and you can pull off the highway, and you can see it, and its there. Now, if you do that today, what youre going to see is these giant wrecking balls that are destroying this factory right now. At the time the fords built this factory as quickly as they could in an open fear field. They had to clear an orchard and build the biggest factory under one roof anywhere in the world and try to take the biggest, fastest, most destructive fourengine bomber and make it the most mass produced of all time. Im giving away the ending, but it is still today the host massproduced military mostc massproduced military aircraft of all time. We writers love narrative arc. We love it when everything goes wrong before everything goes right, which is exactly what happens in this book. So everything did go wrong, and i found a lot of diaries of the people who worked on and inside this factory. To hear what they were saying and thinking about it inm u 1941 when everything was going wrong is really incredible. Yeah. I mean, among other things the state of the art for the Aviation Industry in the u. S. Was more or less handmadec planes. Nobody had a system for mass producing a plane. And in some ways it was in keeping with the state of the technology, because you could build a plane by hand and make changes on the next one if it didnt work out whereas in the case of ford they tried to make it like a model t where they would have, you know, steel diecast Machine Tools to make it, and then when it didnt work, youd have to redo all the Machine Tools. What sort of problems did they run into it, a. J. . This was a new airplane. They were trying to maas produce a a mass airplane. By 1940 the fords were trying to make it, build one an hour. Okay . This thing weighed 56,000 pounds fully loaded, it could go 303 Miles Per Hour and carry 8,000 pounds of bombs. Nobody at the time had ever mass produced an airplane, certainly not one this size. So basically, everything went wrong. One of my personal favorite parts of the book is theres this guy named harry truman, youve probably heard of im. He has his own arc in the book which is incredible because at the beginning of the war truman was, couldnt get the president s secretaries to return his phone calls. And by the end of the war, hes the president president of the United States of america. But in the middle of this book he has this committee called the truman committee, and they come into willow run and say what is going on here . This place is a disaster. This is supposed to be the most famous p factory in the arsenal of democracy, and its a disaster. So truman goes, and he goes through the Assembly Lines with these engineers, and hes walking through and seeing the way theyre building these bombers, and he walks out and realizes that the tasks that these people have, it was just a little too difficult, they were too optimistic. Of course, by the time truman becomes president , you know, the fords were heroes once again, and they achieved their goal of building this 56,000 bomber at one an hour. It is interesting to think about some of the problems they had because one of their test pilots, the one whos featured prominently in the book, is Charles Lindbergh. And theres a great anecdote where he takes one of these big bombers up, and hes luck key he got away with his life from the sound of it. Can you tell us . He called it the worst piece of aircraft construction ive ever flown, and thats a quote. [laughter] so thats in 1943, early when the first bomb withers are coming off the Assembly Line. They had to fix this thing, and they had to figure out how to do it. One of my favorite things about lindbergh flying these things, theres a lot of interpersonal drama in this book between the characters. So lindberghs vision, for me, in his diaries wasnt just a way to understand how they were trying to take this bomber and fix it and make it the way it was supposed to be, but also he had his interactions with all the different characters. So he, basically he was a window into all of these important people like henry ford. He had so much to say about henry. So his contribution to the book if not wasnt just the airplane, but his visions of all these characters and the way he wrote about them. And i have quotes in the book. It was just, it was a great pleasure of mine to be able to read his papers. So you have henry ford and Charles Lindbergh working together on this thing, but i think really the unsung hero in the book is edsel ford. And can you tell us what his role was in getting willow run, which was nicknamed will it run with a question mark and what he had to do to get this thing moving . It was really edsel, more than anyone else i think, that got it where it needed to be. There was a guy named cast iron charlie sorenson. He was this hero in detroit, an engineer and also an ellis island person who came to this country with nothing and ended up, you know, he was this production genius. He was a genius engineer. So i think really these two people teamed up, and they knew each other all their lives. This guy, sorenson, knew edsel when he was my daughters age, 6 years old, 7 years old. So when edsel was president of Ford Motor Company for half his life, from 1919 until he died in 1943. And they formed this bond which was really incredible. Sorenson was the guy on the Assembly Line making things happen, and edsel was in the Corner Office trying to figure out how to make this whole thing work. And not just, not just the divisions of ford in this country, but also in nazioccupied europe. So theres a lot in the book about how edsel was trying to figure out as the president of Ford Motor Company what are we going to do not just willow run, what do we do about our factories that are in europe that are in nazioccupied territory building tanks and trucks for the nazis . Like many large American Companies, ford had operations in germany and france which were expropose rated by the expropriated by the nazis and turned into nazi tools. And very awkward situation for ford. Can you tell us how they handled that . The very contra parts of that relationship happened, i think, before the war started for the americans. So, basically, we the nazi this is a very difficult piece to explain. I have been careful how i word it because its very controversial. So in the 1930s you had general hotters and ford, two Massive Companies that were expanding at really what was the dawn of globalism. Now, it was the Great Depression, 1930s. They had to figure out where they were going to put their money, and the one place abroad where you were pretty much assured you were going to turn profits was nazi germany because it was the only economy that was really thriving overseas. So these executives ed edsel ford, charlie sorenson, they couldnt take any of the profits out of the country. Now, there was no way these people had crystal balls, they didnt have modern media, they didnt really understand what was happening. And even up until 1938, you know, less than a year before the war started in europe, these people didnt think there was going to be a war. And here they had this great big investment, these American Companies inside nazi germany. They couldnt get their money out, and hitler and his cronies came to these executives and said youre going to Start Building aircraft engines for us. Youre going to build trucks for us. And they had to decide what to do. So when i was writing about these people, i really wanted to put myself in their shoes and say, well, you know, jeez, what would i do in that situation . And really there was no answer. And if they said, no, they would lose their investment just like that during the Great Depression when every penny counted. They would lose these millions and millions of dollars that they pumped into these foreign arms there in germany. Then you have crystal [inaudible] andering. In 1938 they basically start to understand who hitler was. Even without modern media, it became pretty clear. And they were stuck. Now, these people when i talk about edsel ford in the book trying the figure out what to do here, he has trusted confidants at these factories, so hes communicating with these people in germany, and these letters exist be. And hes communicating with these people in france while france is occupied before were in the war and these letters exist. So you can go back and look at them and really get inside his head and figure out what was he going to do . Years after every now and then youll see an article in the newspaper where they talk about ford and general motors, you know, serving the nazi effort, and i think its very unfair. Nevertheless, in 1943 the Treasury Department sent in all these investigators and confiscated edsel fords files. And they were looking into whether he had violated the trading with the enemy act. And the idea was, the reason why was he continued to communicate with these people inside nazioccupied territory after the United States had entered the war. He had some permission from the state department. Nevertheless, to this day that treasury investigation, all those files exist at the national archives, and you can go through them and say, hmm, you know, where did this guys allegiance lay . For me, then conclusion i came to was this guy was trying to save his empire in the best way he could, and he knew there was nothing he could do. The nazis were using all the tanks that they could produce and all the airplane engines that they could produce, and there was nothing that he could do about it. So what a position. And, you know, one of the incredible things about edsel was that while all this was going on, he was dying of terminal stomach cancer. And this came up well before some of the real achievements of ford in producing our arsenal of democracy. When did he find out he was ill, and how did that affect what happened later . He found out he was ill in the 1930s, but it wasnt like it is today where they go to the doctor and they get all these computers out and figure out what the problem was. Edsels life was extremely difficult for such an extraordinary, extraordinarily wealthy, well known man. President of Ford Motor Company for most of his life. It was an extremely difficult life that he lived. He had stomach problems his whole life, so all this time hes trying to run this company he was very ill. And during the war he was working, you know, 20 hours a day like everybody else, but, you know, his health was really declining. And for me, it was so dramatic when i was trying to portray his character to understand that this was a man because of what had happened to him in world war i, he was not allowed to serve, his whole life was a quest for honor. And it seems to strange, well, why would somebody who was so envied at the time, everybody wanted to be edsel ford. In fact, one of the things i found in my research is how many people actually named their kids edsel ford in the 1920s and 1930s and everything would think thats the person they would want to be. He always wanted to be, and this is something i cover early in the book, his father was this motor car magnate, and edsel in the 1920s thought that the rise of the airplane, that was going to be his future. He wanted to get into aviation. His father wouldnt allow it. Then there was the Great Depression, and all of his aviation experiments went out the door. So as he was dying, the war gave him an opportunity to secure honor before his death by building this factory, by serving the war effort and by serving his good friend, fdr, who he loved, who his father loathed. So he died in 1943 in may before he did not live long enough to see his work achieve its goal and, basically, the destruction of the third reich. And there was another cross for him to bear by the name of Harry Bennett who was a confidant of his father and a notorious figure this some ways for his role in breaking strikes and being in charge of fords security which at the time was the largest private police force in the country. And edsel and bennett didnt get along, did they . No. In my last book, i wrote one of the haven characters was a guy namedmen sow ferrari, pretty much the perfect character because he is just so fascinating, basically darkness, just this dark human being. And Harry Bennett serves that role in this book. If you could come up with a character, a fictional character who was, you know, the powerful tough guy, gangstertype person who would have become henry fords best friend in the 1930s during the Great Depression, Harry Bennett was it. A fiction writer couldnt come up with this guy, and yet he existed. And what happened inside the empire was this dark figure who amassed the how did you phrase it . I wrote the book, but i forget. The largest private police force in the world, and it was called the service d. , worked at fort service department. They were antiunion, and they just went around beating people up literally. And Harry Bennett became edsel fords nemesis. It was as if they were two children in this empire, these two sons fighting over henry fords love, quite literally. And that was one of the things, i think, that served to kill edsel ford. But i can tell you this, Harry Bennett was fun to write about. Well, hes a character. And edsel fords character blamed Harry Bennett for edsels death because of all the pressure he put on him. Harry bennett was, essentially, trying to take over the company, and he was like a second son to henry ford. It was ahazing to me to read about some of the tactics that he used because this guy was a former boxer, really a thug. He fought dirty, and he fought all the way to the end. Edsel never got rid of this guy. He was running ford sort of in a parallel universe weed sell ford right up with edsel ford. What ever happened to harry men net. After edsel dies, henry ford ii who, a lot of people know, eventually became one of the most powerful chief executives in the country, but at the time he was just a kid. He was serving in the military, and his father dieed, and he had to come back to dearborn, try to singularly wrestle this empire singularly wrestle this empire away from this shakespe2 g and the drama, it still strikes me as amazing that it actually happened. But it did. After edselq r died, all the newspapers and all the magazines wrote here was this company, and there was this internal battle for power in this very important, not only was it the Third Largest military contractor in the country, but it was the most famous of all American Companies. And Harry Bennett after the death of edsel ford stood to be, usurp it. He had never gone to college. He was a boxer and a navy guy and a thug. And his friends were when i list in the book the people that were in his service department, they were people like joe legs he man. He was a serial kidnapper, and he would evade the law by running away. There was another guy who was called the dope king. They were basically, literally, murderers. And those were the people that harry, you know, surrounded himself with. And its amazing to think that at that time they could actually take over the most american of all companies, and they came this close. One of the climactic things that happens, you know, when i started to write this book i started to realize, because i knew all the research about edsel ford, and i realized this battle and empire happened at the exact same time as the battle in world world war world war ii. And when you put their stories together along with building this weapon, it became a very rich narrative for me. The other thing that really changed in 1943 at that point of the war was that tensions had bubbled to the in both race and gender to the surface in both race and gender. Tell us how willow run brought together this incredible collection of people. They had to sort of form their own city to provide the manpower to produce this thing. I shouldnt say manpower because a lot of women worked there, something new for the u. S. Really. And maybe you can tell me a little bit about how that developed and what the intentions were. If i were to ask anybody in this room imagine what would you do if i asked you to build the biggest factory in the history of the world under one roof and staff it with 100,000 people during a war when everybody was going into the military . There was no one to work there. They didnt have the materials to build the place. Because every, literally, every piece of copper, every piece of aluminum, every piece of fabric, every piece of rubber, every drop of gasoline, everything was needed for the military effort. Now, one of the things, of course, is the labor issue. They didnt, they couldnt find people to work at the plant. They needed 100,000 people to work there, and they couldnt find them. So what they did was they centre cuters through the sent recruiters through the south, and they gave out bus tickets, and they brought tens of thousands of people from these mountain communities. People who had never had jobs before, people who didnt have shoes, literally, were showing up at this factory to build these bombers. And, of course, one of the things that happened was early in the war they a began to staff the Assembly Lines with women. Now, everybody in this room has heard of rosie. There are many sources for the rosie story, but and i cant remember her name right now, but there was a rosie. She was a widowed woman who drove from the south with two kids, and she got a job at willow run, and she worked there. Thats why when you go to see, youll see people actually outside the willow run plant right now, they dress up like rosie the riveter and they carry these signs saying save the bomber plant. Rosie really worked there. It wasnt easy to put together this whole group of people from the south, with africanamericans, with women. It was youd like to think of it as a melting pot opportunity for, you know, the west to come through the best to come through, but really it caused problems, didnt it . Somebody asked me yesterday, actually it was friday at the kickoff luncheon for this literary festival, if anything in this foreshadows anything detroit has become with. The biggest city ever to file for bankruptcy in our nations history. And i said for the most part, the book about the most important, greatest collective achievement of any American City ever. But the answer was, i said to her, yes. The seeds for the darkness that detroit became are in this book and specifically in one chapter in which i discover cover the detroit race riot of 1943. Pretty brutal riot. I think 32 or 29 killed. It was basically black versus white. And in my research, i was able to find diaries of people who actually fought in the riot and what their descriptions were. And you would think that these people who were surrounded by, you know, an urban riot with this much p death and gore, that they would have been frightened, but they werent. What struck me about it most was that these people, what they wrote down, what they remembered about it was i dont think joy was quite the word im looking for, but how much they wanted to kill whitey. [laughter] and how much white people wanted to kill black people. So thats what happened. So, yes, i guess, you know, we all know what happened to detroit after that. Well, and we shouldnt lose sight of the fact that in spite of all the tension, in spite of everything weve talked about that this is ripping the glossy cover off of it, this was a huge success. And the b24, almost 9,000 produced. By the end of the war, this was a warwinning weapon, and it really did help to put nazis in duress forever and to help america and its allies prevail. And in spite of it all, it actually happened. One of the themes in the book is definitely the rise of american air power. Early in the war before we entered the war when the war started in Europe September 1, 1939 the airplane really became the gamechanging weapon on the very first day of the war. Now, hitler had been building this air force for years n. 1938 fdr got wind of this, and hes like weve got to Start Building airplanes. But it was the Great Depression, and it just didnt happen. We didnt Start Building our air power. So the bomber really became an obsession. And when you read churchills papers, you know, the pingpong of communication going back and forth, they thought that the bomber was going to be the weapon that a would win the war. In fact, you know, when you get. I couldnt address it with any concrete evidence. But a lot of people have said, well, the ford plant didnt get bombed. All the other plants got bombed, but the ford plant didnt. In fact, it did, but it was purchase all in one pretty much all in one piece when the allies showed up. We did bomb the french plant quite a bit, and the fords would get news of it from the state department, and those documents exist saying, you know, this is what happened, and this is who was hurt. And, of course, i dont really know at what point they learned that a these ford factories were filled with slave labor. So, you know, when we were bombing them, who were we killing . But specifically, the french plant got hit. And, of course, the germans hit the ford plants in britain. Yes. I was wondering what the economics of this were. I assume that the u. S. Tax dollar paid for all this production of bombers, although i dont know that for sure. And then did the ford company make a huge profit there this production, or did they do it sort of like at a cut rate for the u. S. Government . How did the economics of it work . Everything in the arsenal of democracy was military contract, and there was a standard military contract that said all the companies that signed these contracts would get 8 profit. And the idea was, the idea from inside the white house was if business doesnt get paid, business wont work. That was the cynical way of looking at it, but the other way to look at it was if things, if these companies were paid at a fixed rate, the idea was that theyd get paid a fixed rate. Say i ask you to build me an airplane, and im going to give you 200. Then you know that, you know, some people are going to say, well, if i cut that corner and this corner and that corner, im going to make this much money. So they didnt want that to happen. They wanted the best that it could be. These were the contracts they set out for everybody, it was an 8 profit that was standard. There was another part of your question im trying to remember. Just whether they made a big profit out of it. Well, yes, i mean, everybody did. But look at what happened to our economy between when the war began and when the war ended. That was all art part of it. I would have loved to have been an economist at the time. Where yes, sir. So, dad [laughter] hi, dad. So my question is why did you choose the airplane for the front cover . That was an excellent question, excellent question. We really struggled with this because, you know, the book this is a business, so we had to decide whats going to make people want to go out and buy it. And there was a lot of decision about whether there should be faces on the cover, would people be more interested in the subject matter if they saw faces and could identify thered be characters in the book. But we just thought that the cover was so dramatic, and i dont know, we just we all just loved it. My editors and i, we loved it, and thats what we ended up with. Well, there are some treats inside. There are photos, there are blue prints, theres a lot going on in this book. Its really an amazing read, and im so glad i got a chance to talk to you, a. J. Hes going to stay and address further questions because i think our time is up. So i want to thank you for taking all this time. Yes, sir. Id just like to thank you, greg of course, and thank you, everybody, for being here. [applause] thanks, everyone, for attending this program. Thanks to our had rater, greg burns, thanks, a. J. , for coming out. The arsenal for democracy, is on sale in the lobby. We also are selling his previouslypublished week, go like hell, and they will be available for signing right outside the auditorium here. Thanks, everyone, enjoy the rest of your day at lit fest. [applause] [inaudible conversations] were going to take a short break now, but well be back with more from chicago in just a few minutes. Booktv covers hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long. Hes a look at some of the heres a look at some of the events well be attending this week. Look for these programs to air in the near future on booktv on cspan2. Tuesday were at the Harvard Bookstore in cambridge, massachusetts, for constitutional law professor lawrence tribe and his thoughts on the Roberts Court there his new book, uncertain justice. That same evening, history professor christy makrakis looks at how messages have been kept secret during times of war at the International Club of atlanta. Then on thursday at the francis tavern museum, claudia assant recurs what happened outside the british colonies in 1776 from his recent book, west of the revolution, and on friday, Hillary Clinton discusses her new memoir at george Washington University in washington d. C. Thats a look at some of the author programs booktv will be covering this upcoming week. For more, go to our web site, booktv. Org, and visit upcoming programs. Booktv asked, what are you reading this summer . Well, im going to read, basically, two books. Im going to finish the warmth of other suns. I got about halfway through that book before i stepped away from it to finish my own. But im going to go back to it because its a book about three families in search of a better life leaving the south and where they went and how their experiences were. So im going to finish that book. Isabel wilkerson, i think, did a great job with that book. And then im going turn my attention to this book, the st. Roots of africanamerican South Carolina roots of africanamerican thought. Basically because this book is sort of a compilation of speeches and writings of south carolinians, most of whom i knew. And still know. Ive been ahazed, one of my amazed, one of my heros, mary clark bethune, Jesse Jackson jr. , and so im going to read this book and see exactly what has gone on today compared to what a lot of them saw. And still see. Now, you recently published a memoir in may. Can you tell me about the experience of writing that . Well, that book, blessed experiences genuinely southern, proudly black, is a book that i have spent 2530 years compiling. I got serious about writing it about five years ago, and its about my experiences growing up in the south andc how those experiences led to my being where i am today and how they shape my thought process, processes and how i approach my job here in the congress. Now, the book gets its title from my fathers favorite hymn, blessed assurance, and a College Lecture my sophomore year wherein the professor admonished that we can be with no more or less than what our experiences allow us to be. And so blessed experiences, as i say in the preface, all of my experiences were not pleasant, but all of them i consider to be blessings, though i had to look back on some of them in order to see the blessing. What are you reading this summer . Tell us whats on your Summer Reading list. Tweet us booktv, post it to our Facebook Page or send us an email, booktv cspan. Org. Cspan2, providing live coverage of the u. S. Senate floor proceedings and key Public Policy events. And every weekend, booktv. Now for 15 years the only Television Network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch us in hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. [inaudible conversations] more from chicago in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] heres a look at some books that are being published this week. Hillary clinton recounts her tenure as secretary of state in hard choices. In the people v. Barack obama the criminal case against the Obama Administration, ben shapiro, editor at large of breitbart. Com, argues the Obama Administration has been marked by abuses of power. Bruce allan murphy, constitutional law professor at lafayette college, recounts Supreme Court justice antonin and a lee cras scalias tenure in scalia. Dan em met recalls his career in within arms length. The cofounder of women thrive worldwide reports on women around the world who are overcoming poverty in teach a woman to fish. In obamas enforcer eric holders justice department, john fund, a columnist for national review, and hans [inaudible] senior fellow at the heritage foundation, present their criticism of attorney general eric holder and the justice department. Look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv. Org. This tuesday Simon Schuster is releasing Hillary Clintons latest book, hard choices. Recently, booktv was in new york at the Book Publishers offices to talk with some of the people involved in the production of the book. Ive been totally involved for all of the books, actually. I am not the one publishing them, im not the official publisher of the current book, but ive been involved in the process all along. Way back when she was in the white house and we first went down there to try to persuade her to publish a book which became it takes a village, her first book, you know, i was there. I was there trying to help convince her to do so. And ive just, ive been involved in every single one of her publications. Im not the editor because thats not my core strength, but i watch over the publication, and i help get it all organized and make sure things are on track. I have it started also with living history but also in this case making sure all of our best people are working on it. Were publishing on june 10th. Its her fourth book, so i was involved from the very beginning of the acquisition and am overseeing all aspects of it working very closely with all the people at the company. As the editor, is there a lot of emails back and forth between you and the author . Is that how its done . Well, you know, every case is different. And, you know, in this case ive tried to give just as much anticipation to secretary clintons book as i have to all the other authors we publish. I should mention in the same breath that were also publishing james webb whos a terrific United States senator and whose book is out right now. So we really i dont want to favor one author over another. When we acquired that book, Jonathan Karp knocked down here and asked if there were anything we could do for the ebook specifically, and we brainstormed some ideas and talked about when the right time to act on those ideas might be. But weve been thinking of that also as a Digital Product from the very beginning. My role is to liaise with National Media in partnership with the Communications Team who works with hillary. Whats an effective Media Campaign . Where do you go . Do you go, it depends on what the book is, and it depends on what the potential for a book is. Theres what i like to think of as topdown campaigns which are campaigns like Hillary Clintons which begin with National Media and break out from there. A few big hits generate a number of things that sort of create themselves. My role with the clinton title has been to work on the marketing side of that which has involved, you know, a web site for the book, dedicated to the book, a Facebook Page, production of promotional videos, the release of content on the web. I mean, my role up to now has been very much the Digital Marketing role in this particular title. And its been a fun one because so many people are watching and so many people care. So we toil away here and make a lot of videos as writers, but we dont have many that, you know, go up on the home page at aol on the day we hand it over or that yahoo picks up instantly and puts on a major page, so that parts been really fun. Watch for Hillary Clinton to appear on booktv soon to discuss her latest book, hard choices. Booktv is on facebook and twitter. Like and follow us for book industry news, booktv schedule updates, behind the scenes looks at author events and to interact with authors during Live Television programs. Here are a few of booktvs posts from this past week. We tweeted on the content of Hillary Clintons soon to be published memoir, hard choices. On facebook, we posted a washington article about the swearing in of u. S. Ambassador susie levine on an ereader with a digital version of the u. S. Constitution. We tweeted and posted our author programs on Tiananmen Square in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the protests. The author talks can be viewed at booktv. Org. And we want to know what youre reading this summer. Send us a tweet, post on our facebook wall or send us an email telling us whats on your Summer Reading list. Also watch all weekend long to see what prominent washingtonians are reading. Follow us on twitter booktv and like us on facebook, facebook. Com booktv, for more news about the world of publishing and whats happening on booktv. [inaudible conversations] our live coverage from the printers row lit fest will continue in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] what you find from the larger corporate sites typically are the things that would appeal to the broadest audience or the things that are generally perceived as most profitable, and most profitable being the key thing. And what aye discovered is that ive discovered is that that isnt the stuff that actually feeds us, its not the stuff thats going to uplift us. So if were going to be with able to share information about things that really enrich us, all of you are going to have to help do that. Because the large corporations simply will not do it, its not in their interest to do it, and they havent demonstrated propensity for doing it. But one of the things i feel is lacking is lately our willingness to promote our stuff. And we are losing, were hemorrhaging platforms. Now, theres a good side and a bad side to this story. You know, actually, i brought a list of the bookstores that have closed not since i started my web site, but since i started keeping track of em. And its, the list, actually, if you do me a favor and just hold this, this is a list of bookstores that have closed. Now, are those brook bookstores . These are all independent bookstores across the nation. Whats the count, do you know . Approximately. Over a hundred. I mean, honestly are, i dont know the count 300 . Oh, well, this is, this is how many are left, and this is counting the schomburg, this is counting the studio museums bookstore, this is counting the hub at howard university. So if we were to look at the number of blackowned independent bookstores in this country, theres less than 50. And when we talk about the number of bookstores per black person many this country, were looking at in this country, were looking at numbers like 800,000 to 1. You know, states like alabama doesnt have one. The last one closed i think last year. The cradle of the Civil Rights Movement i mean, im getting upset just thinking about it, and i dont feel this anger anywhere. You can watch this and ore programs other programs online at booktv. Org. [inaudible conversations] next from chicago, journalists bill and willie geist talk about their book, good talk, dad the birds and the bees and other conversations we forget to have. [inaudible conversations] hello, hello . One, two, one, two. You got it now . [inaudible conversations] should have something now, one, two. Excellent. Good afternoon, everyone. Were going to go ahead and get started. My name is john dudley. Its my honor to welcome you to the 30th annual Chicago Tribune printers row lit fest. I want to give a special thank you to all of our sponsors who helped make this great event special. The authors book, good talk, dad, is on sale currently in the main lobby. The author will be signing copies of the book today in the cafeteria after this presentation is over, not the usual booksigning table, but downstairs in the cafeteria. Todays program is being broadcast live on cspan2s booktv. We have a microphone set up in case theres time for q a at the end of the session. If youd, please, use this microphone located to the left of the stairwell here, this would allow the viewing audience at home to hear your questions as well as the author and the moderator. If youd like to watch this program, coverage will reair tonight at 11 p. M. Central time. Please keep the spirit of lit fest going all year round with a subscription to the printers row journal. This is the tribunes premium book section, fiction series and membership program. This year we are also introducing a new digital bookstore through our tribune books app. Please take one of the promo cards located outside for information about the app and access to special book deals. Before we start, if i could ask you guys to, please, turn off your cell phones, or put them on silent. We do encourage you to take pictures. Just please turn the camera flash off on your cameras, please. We also encourage you to post those pictures on twitter, instagram and facebook using hashtag, printersrow. Without further ado, it gives me great honor to welcome the Chicago Tribunes very own Senior Writer and columnist rick hogan to moderate todays program. Put your hands together for rick. [applause] p. M. I am assuming you know which is which. Fellas, this is a funny book. You might expect that from these two men if you know their tv work. It is also filled with a lot of heart and a lot amazing honesty. Bill, you used to be a reporter here in town. And when you were they didnt let me downtown. One of the many great mistakes the Chicago Tribune has made. It is very, very long list. I want to read something. I am going to do some reading from the book because i like the way these two guys write. Bill writing to willie until you were 12 i had been a newspaper reporter saying his parents owned a paper in illinois. But i guided you away from newspapers. But because they were becoming extinct yet but because i had bad experiences like being trapped for eight years in an Office Writing about sewer board refre refre refrendem. Remember when i had a column anybody remember that . He could not move up from the suburbs. Here is one reason. Mike rick likeded my column so much he put his hands around me neck at an Christmas Party saying you young punks are trying to steal my job. Bill was flattered by that. Willie, do you have any membery of your dad as reporter for t tribute . I was born at [ applause ] i was born at evanston hospital in 1975 and we moved when i was five years old. The New York Times came calling. The Chicago Tribune, the downtown paper didnt come calling, but the New York Times did. We moved to new jersey and i grew up around new york city. My dad likes to say he was providing a service because raising a child in chicago as a cub fan under illinois law is child abuse. So he said the yankees are won a couple world series so he had a chance. I used to tell him winning and loosing wasnt important. He would eat everything and fall asleep in the six inning which is a good policy for any cubs fan. But still watch this how many of you are still loyal cub fans . Why . Why . I am still a cubs fan, too. But i dont know why . For someone who moved at the age of five i had a lot of allegiance. My parents met at the university of illinois. My second senior year. He said it was a good thing he flunked his classes oh he would not have met my more. I had people on my wall from chicago. These two never had the talk of sex in this book. And there is a great deal of it. As willie writes i was thrust into a version of eyes wide shut. People were having parties and spinning the bottling and disappearing in the closet for seven minute increments. I know the book was seeded and the idea came from a mutual agent. But it seems like something you would say no about. I think we did. A lot of people said because we are in the communication business they said you caught ought to do something together. And my dads longterm agent had the idea. We thought it sounded like a hassle. And a couple years ago my dad went on cbs sunday morning and announced he had parkinsons disease. That was to get attention. It was the same week Anderson Cooper came out. [ applause ] about that moment, willie writes that he did do this it was your proudest moment as a son. I was proud of him because i knew how difficult it was. My dad has had parkinson 22 years and for the first ten he didnt tell me or my sister. We thought he was slowing down and probably too young in hindsight. But we have family here who can relate. When you grow up in 1950, campagna illinois, there is not a lot of hugging and touchy feeling. There are so psychologist there. They keep opening and closing and running away. My sister and for years said just tell meme. Viewers, Family Friends who you have not officially told know. I knew how hard it was to do. We were sitting in the living room when it was live and we watched it together and i was incredibly proud and there were a lot of tears in the room. Bill, you are a private man. How does a very private man deal with that very public role of being on television . Even though you are telling stories, it makes you a public figure. You can appreciate this, rick. As a newspaper reporter you are with the person you are interviewing and i dont have to face many. This is the biggest audience i have faced in years. Be nice, everybody. It is very much just talking to a camera and over the years you try to forget about camera being there. Everybody with all of the videos are comfortable now. Everybody is used to it. You come from a vastly different parenting time. Here is just another bit and i am reading so much of this because the writing is very, very good and compelling. Lets be honest, sometimes the job of parenting is too big for any two people. This is you writing willie. Sometimes you have to call in for backup. We call it third party discipline. Anybody in a uniform does. Police man, fireman, lifeguards, gas station attendance, movie ticket takers and anyone wearing a hard hat will do. Bill, you were not particularly your father wasnt at all an emotionally outward sensitive fellow. A couple of my cousins are saying no right now in the audience. He took photography so he would go down and there. He would close the do if you have opened it it would ruin everything. He was a High School Teacher so i think he had enough. I have a 4yearold and 6yearold. And our 4yearold boy george is great but he acts up. He will throw things around the restaurant and at the diner they have the window where the food is coming out and we say the chef is watching. And in the neighborhood my son worships the new York City Police department and loves firefighters. There is a restaurant we go in and down the road is the 20th prestinct and we go in and they give him batches and equipment. And 120 times we take him in there when he has been bad. We talk walk in and she senses something is different. And the cop comes up with the badge and uniform. And we say george has been hitting his sister and i know you have bigger fish to fry. And the cops are like george, dont hit your sisters. No vegetables. Lets go george clean it up. And he is back pedaling against the wall and it buys us like a month of good behavior. Hes going to be seeing one of those psychologist. He will need therapy but that is done the road. Yes, it is not today. It is obvious if you are watched or read them these are funny men. You say laughter was a daily bond between the two of you. Is it genetic . I dont know . I had not thought about that. Yeah probably, but it was also the tone in the house. My dad wasnt a heavy handed disciplinary man but he was funny. He worked hard and came home and there was laughter and it was funny. I think you pick up a world view which is not sure and you have a bs detector and you are curious. I dont know if it is genetic or the feel in the house. The read jeep story must have been influential. Bill what did you spend our advance on of 10,000. We put a list up and the kids put down private planes and yachts. So i went out and blew 7700 on a red jeep. There were no seats. Options were passenger seat, windshield. The red jeep, for you, willie had a once family it is worse than dad describes. It was a cj 7 and it was our family car. It wasnt we keep it in the garage. It took us on vacations, grocery store, drove us to school. And the floors rusted out through the bottom by the time i was driving age. And first year didnt work and now power steering. Your foot would go through the floor because of the rust and you had to start it in second which on a hill can be exciting. And it was actually my mother who taught me how to drive and she would take me out and teach me how to drive on the hill and i would be cursing the car and she would be laughing. And she told me if you can drive this car you will me able to drive any car for the rest of your life. It wasnt that hard to drive. In that state it was. Driving on a manual jeep cj 7 with no power steering is like teaching a child to read on a toll story. Your wife and willies mom has one of the most suspect quotes and endorsements i have ever read in my life. Are you sure you want to publish this. I would like each of you to talk about the importance of your wives and they are in the book. The importance of that long term relationship not just for you but that notion of family. It is great. It was expressed in unusual ways. We didnt have the big talks. We got a lot through osmosis. I tried to teach him the things i young man should know but i hadnt been taught that. I would take him fishing and golfing and i could not do it. That is where my mom stepped in. She is from barrington by the way. She was a cheer leader and they added an extra letter in the cheer to make the cadence work. They didnt know it until i corrected it 50 years after the school. They were the broncos but it became bronchos. She didnt know it was wrong. They met at the university of illinois and she has been a social worker every day of her professional life. She worked in the Robert Taylor homes and it is what see loves to do. She is a social worker to this deign day in harlem. I think i got from her charity and emathy and all of those things you dont also get empathy you would not get from me. Exactly. That is where i was going with this i wanted to get there first this is a fatherson book but as you read through the lines you see my mother is the biggest influence. And your wife. Childhood sweethearts. I met her at 11. Got married at 12. That is the kind of father he was. Reporter the other interesting characters in the book and it is about a father and son but there are other interesting characters. The grandfathers are fascinating. One is in the hockey hall of fame. My mothers grandfather played for the red wings in the 1930s and won two stanley cups and was the captain of the team and enducted into the hall of fame. None of those genes were passed on. I am still the kid with the figure states on grasping to the wall we have a picture at the enterance saying keep this guy. Perhaps that is the most impre impre impressive thing about me and my great grand father is in the hall of fame for hockey. Bill your son was a very talented athlete in high school and beyond that. Not beyond that, no. You were a raucous father watching the games. Yes, i was one of these people that should be sent to a mental hospital. Have you seen Dennis Hopper in hoosiers . My dad would get on the ref and he was often the only voice in the gym. He was clever in his insults so he got away with it. Was there pride in seeing him excel in athletics . Yeah, it was fun to watch him. I always said i am his biggest fan and i still am my first basketball game i scored 16 points. My dad had an assignment for the times but he raced back to time square and wrote a game story that is in the book and it is great family hair loom. You did try to teach him you left his drinking . We talked about that two weeks ago. Finally had that big conversation. I like the uncle who comes into the book. A functioning alcoholic counseled me drink scotch and water and you will not get sick. It was a tip for teens and in that fall i was the only 16yearold in town who drank scotch. Do you ever remember having a kind of first formal cocktail together . I dont remember the exact cocktail but he said we are going to do it under my roof. But it was okay to have a drink and friends over. We are not throwing a party but you can drink and watch the game. So a hundred people would show up. The police came to one of these functions. Well, they came to all of them. We got to know them very well. A guy walks out the driveway and i run out and say we need to turn the music down. And he said it isnt that. It is the bus was left on on a neighbors lawn. There was a charter bus idling because we brought in people from out of town. Out of state. We took project ad venture in high school where you repel and rock climb and we took it as practical as 17 year olds because my friend had a third floor to himself. It was a great place to hang out for teens but the second floor was where the dad was and he was tough. So you were not getting up the stairs with anything. So we started a system with pole up the house and we had people repelling up and down. The father called me and said there are ninjas going up the side of the house maybe you learned that kachlt. Your camp experience is great. Camp served not just a place for carefree boys to spend a magical summer but a safe wooded refugee for convicted gang offenders to serve out their sentence as camp counselors. His mother and i wanted him to go to real camp up in the northeast with pristine lakes and the pine scented air and they make lanereds and so we found the place we went to park camp expo and looked at 200 different camps. And the guy came over and gave apressa presentation in the living room and a 25 off coupon. So we dropped willie off at the perfect camp. It was me and another friend because the others went to a camp. It was the lake, activities and we were identifying leafs and fantastic. But the Counseling Program there, the counselors were rehabillitated gang members and they fought a lot. One night they slashed each others tires in the parking lot. That was a banner day at the camp. At any given moment a couple different ones were having relationships with the nurse who was the only woman at the camp. God forbid you skin your knee and knock on the door and it was always locked because they were busy in there. A lot of paperwork in health care. And then one day an an outbreak of empentigo and they didnt know how to treat it. So they stripped us down and power washed us off. And i still have a scar on my arm. This was 1988 from this because they dont recommend Power Washing for such disease. My father had great intention and send his son to camp and we get it wrong in the end. And when you were a senior it maybe the influenced of your bodies at camp but when you go to your dad and say you want to get your ear pierced i say that is something pirates do. This is supposed to be a great act of rebellion and i told my mother and she said if you do it i am taking you to do it stow is done right. Others were jamming the needle through the ear on ice. So when you mom takes it takes the rebellion out. At the nail saloon. It is true. She took me to her nail saloon. She said lets get your ear pierced and i sat there next to the women and got my ear pierced with the rest of the team. Much of this book is based on the charming memories and would you in the writing of this book, would you trade chapters . What was the process like . We were in different rooms that is for sure. We started out the best part was sitting down with my mother and wife and the four of us and hashing through you come out with the best of your best. It is long process. Thinking about your entire life is a daunting process. The camp chapter my dad started with this is what i intended to do. We edited each other. That is a fascinating process. It is like selfpsychiatry. It was. I said about the project whoever buys or how many few copies it sells the idea that we are going too in a bound volume all of our stories and i can hand this to my kids and they will know who i was and their grandfather and it will be on a shelf somewhere priceless to me. There are universal stories no matter how functional or dysfunctional your own families were you will find something in here that mirors that or evokes it for you. Before i could read or write i knew elvis birthday of january 8th. Why is that . My dad was obsessed with elvis. I guess it would have been his 40th we are assuming he is long gone. He is in buenes aris with tupac maybe. So we dressed up and there are pictures in the book. To give you idea of what the house was like. And you dont realize it was strange as a child. We had a ceramic bust of elvis on a ped stool in the dining room as though it were high art. He deserved to be on a ped stool. The other thing is my dad was a steak and shake free. I didnt know this was strange either until i went to other kids houses. The art in the dining room was the three stock photographs of the food they hang in the restaurant. We framed the steakburger with the fries. The other was the milkshake and the other was the chilly fries. That was our art. I didnt realize until later how strange it was. If andy worhol did that he would have made 10 million who is the late film credit who is obsessed with steak and shake . Roger ebert. So they should stop writing and stop being doctors. We just got one in new york and it is right next to lettermans studio because he wanted a steak and shake. Bill, you have done more books than willie. Talk to me about the different joys in writing for print and television . You are a Brilliant Television writer, too. Thank you. I always write something too long where the editor should have gone shot. Most editors should be shot. There are not a lot of words in a television script. 500 words or so. They are both gratifying. It is fun to work in tv with a group of people working on a project but i dont like other peoples opinions so. Who does . All exjournalist dont. Will, what about for you . You had jokes for conan. Did you want to be a writer . I think i got it from my dad. He has been on the tv but he was in the papers first. A producer used to read his column called him and said you ever think about tv and he jumped in. Bill, did you say that looks easy . No, he called me, i had never met him. He called me on a weekend morning and said have you thought of tv and i just read an article saying andy roony got a Million Dollar advance and i said yes, i have. It came to me recently. And the rest is history. Charles crow called me at home and said come do it. It will be fun. And i said if you talk to me about the dental program i would not have gone. And it turns out i am a sucker for fun. And willie is that way, too. No question. Willie, how did you you sent jokes to conan, right . I went to vanderbilt and i was a fan of conan. I sent a package of jokes. I was working at a liquor store and i remember the mailbox i put it in. I was 22 years old, put this packet of material and sent it to the address where his show was and waited to hear back. I did get a letter back and i remember holding it and i was like i am going to preserve this moment because this is when i got the job. I opened it and it was a form letter saying we have not used your material but we have not read your material. And they had to say that for legal reasons because if they did a joke with something i wrote i could sue them. That was my first whiff of rejection and then is a long story but i moved to atlanta and started working at cnn after that. Bill, watching from the sidelines as the guy who shouts and screams, have you found yourself doing that as willies career has progressed remarkable well . [ applause ] or shouted in private and given advice . I think when he first started i gave him tips. I am still a newspaper reporter on tv. I was never told what to do with my clothes and air as you can see for yourself hair but he got on tract and was great and as i say i am his biggest fan. He was on tv too early for me. Thank god for dvrs. I had a show on at 5 30 a. M. You may have missed it. And after about the first two days i noticed my parents stopped commenting on it. But he didnt sit me down saying get into journalism but just his example and watching how much fun he had and the places he went and the people he met i could see it was a fun career. That is kind of what the book is all about. It is like the birds and the bees. Sgr it is also about the shadow a father with pleasantly cast not on just one child but all of your children in ways that you dont realize you are casting it. I will end this so we can get questions. Havent these guys been amazing . [ applause ] i am telling you thing. There better be more people than buy the book than cub fans . How many are going to buy the book . About two hands. It is Remarkable Book as are some of bills other books. I have not read yours willie. One of the most touching and real and honest portions of the book, bill, is when you write about and you never did that before or spoke about it, your experiences in vietnam. He said i have never talked about that or anyone even myself but you do it on these pages. How hard was that . It was hard because i denigrated people that came back and told war stories. I think people do it in bars for a free drink or to be entertaining. I didnt want to be enter taining or trade on the problems like death that some of the people over there willie, what was it like reading this session for you . This was the one piece, you know someone 40 years, and you think you know everything, but i knew nothing about it. He was a combat photographer. And i have seen the pictures and i wanted to know the stories. And it was just something ever time it came up he would drift away and it was clear he didnt want to talk about it. And i said dad, it would be nice for us if you would write a chapter about vietnam and he blew he off and one day i was walking down the street and get an email and it was the chapter that is in the book. And what strikes me about it is for someone who said he put it away and tried not to remember it he remembered everything. It is unbelievable. And tell me the writing can get more honest than this. I dont know if i killed anyone in vietnam. I shot at lethal bullet spewing bushing trying to kill us and enemies were later found behind them. And he ends this by saying when they announced the fall of saigon i went into another room and cried for the 58,000 who had died for nothing. Not even to serve as a cautionary lesson to never make the same mistake again. We already have. How many of you want to buy the book now . [ applause ] it is quite a remarkable story. You can laugh your head off with this book but it exist for me on a number of levels. Many of them terrible heart felt and serious. You are the role model of what a father and son should be and you make a lot of money in tv and it isnt as hard as delivering babies. It anyone wants to ask a question, step up to the microphone. No state capitals, please. Since no one is stepping up, willie, what is matt lower really like . He is an old fashion gentlemen. He shakes everybodys hand, he is good to everybody. You look up to certain people, my dad, and matt and Brian Williams and you watch how they conduct themselves and you sit back and watch. He knows everybodys name, shakes hands, holds doors and he is a good guy and a role model to me. That is great. And willie is matt lowery tomorrow. I am filling in tomorrow in new york you must also know these two gentlemen landed at o hare at 1 20 and made it down here. The taxi from the runway to the terminal was as long as the flight. We thought we landnd in per. Bill, how do you feel . Ups and down. It is draining the energy you put out. When they said i had parkinson i told willie i was going to write a book called i would shoot myself but i might miss. I thought that was dark. I cannot believe anyone has a question. You know what it is . I am doing a great job with the noort interview. How many wish the tribune hired bill geist when they had a chance . How many think now they should offer both of these guys a sindicated column . [ applause ] yes, sir . [inaudible question] in the same manner as matt lowary if Joe Scarborough was here you would be laughing and impressed by how well he understands politics. He is a good friend and why i am here today. Morning joe started because his radio show was on msnbc for three hours and when he got in trouble for talking about the rutgers Womens Basketball team and he was let go. And they were pulling people off the street to host . You got an hour in the morning to get an nbc idea. Joe had a primetime show at night and it was his idea to take the morning and turn it into politics. He was watching me and he plucked me. I didnt know him well. And dad knew micka better. I owe joe a great deal of gratitude. Morning joe was the first time i hosted a tv show. Willie, i want to know if you have ever tried to Parallel Park in chicago because i understand you are one of the best in the world. Top five. I said in an interview years ago someone said what is your special skill . And i said i am one of the five best Parallel Parkers in america. And sure enough the first day they had three cars and they made me on Live Television i did a little love tap and cracked under pressure. I dont think i have done it in chicago but new york is tough. Chicago they tow you away first. Tow them away i will end this. I have enjoyed this. And i enjoyed the book. And willie has something in the epilogue that gets this. It is half a paragraph that is funny and touching and that is what this is all about. The great gift of writing this book, besides the opportunity to teach you dad over the phone how to attach a word document to an email still doesnt know how to do it. It allows us to sit down and review ow life together and not many people get that chance. You guys did. Bill and willie geist. Thank you. [ applause ] i hate to be the guy that breaks up this party. Another round of applause. They did a great job. Bill geist and willie geist, thank you, gentlemen. They are going to be signing copies of their book good talk, dad and they will be downstairs in the cafeteria so head down there if you are interested in getting it signed. Have a great afternoon and thanks for coming to the lit fest. [inaudible conversations] we just heard from bill and willie geist on the many conversations between father and sons. More from chicago in a couple minutes. Booktv is on facebook and twitter. Like and follow us for book industry news, schedule updates and behind the scene author events and to interact with authors during live event. Here are a few post from the last week. We tweeted on the consent of Hilary Clintons soon to be published book. And we posted on article about the swearinging of susie levine. We tweeted and posted our author programs on tianam square. We want to know what you are reading this summer. Send us a tweet or post on facebook or send an email. Watch all weekend long to see what prominent washingtonians are reading. Follow us on facebook booktv for more news about the world of publishing and what is happening on booktv. What is the d in dday stand for . It stands for nothing. Soldiers joked it stood for death. Or it stood for day. Dayday. It is just a code. And you know, people are tried retrospectively to try to figure out what it stands for and it has no meaning. Why june 6th, 1944 . About 69 years ago today. That is right. It was supposed to be june 5th. That was the date that was picked by the president and it is very tricky to invade the norman coast. The tides are amazing. 23 footswing in the tides. The moon has to be right to go at night to allow paratroopers to see and the pitlelots taking them. The wind and weather has to be wrong. And the weather was wrong. They never had good luck with weather. Stormy for the invading of mu c muroc moracco and sicily. He had a narrow window in which the tides would be suitable for this invading. If he had delayed it much longer the next appropriate period was several weeks later. There was anxiety that the germans would find out. If they had 24 hours of warning this force was coming to normandy it probably would have been catastrophic. So the anxiety level is unbelievable when the decision is made to post pone it but they did and got away with it. Number of troops . Number of deaths . There are five divisions that go in. Two american and three british and canadian. And then three air borne division. So a couple hundred thousands troops going in. Most of the deaths the worst beach was omaha where one of the two american beaches. There were several thousands deaths there. There had been concern that the number of deaths could run into the tens of thousands but this didnt happen. The deaths were not light but they were less than anticipated. At utah beach, the farthest right, they had a tough time but by the end of june 6th they were 600 mild inland and at omaha they were no more than 400 yards. So there was a disperry in the resistence they found and the availability of pushing inland. You want to push the enemies artilly out of range so cannot shell the beach. At omaha beach it took several days to get to that point. But nevertheless, it turned out to be successful and the deaths, 3,000 or so, they are lighter than many feared. You can watch this and other programs about dday and world war ii online at booktv. Org. Search dday or world war ii in the upper left hand corner of the home page. What roll should the government play in Housing Finance . If you want to subsudize housing put it on the ballot sheet and make it clear and everybody aware of how much it is costing. When you deliver it through third party things like fanny may and when you deliver through private shareholders and executives that extract a lot of the subsies themselves that is not a good way. Read more from our book notes and q and a programs on cspan sunday at 8 00. [inaudible conversations] this is a look inside Jones College prep. One of the sights of the lit fest here in chicago. We will be back in just a couple minutes. Here is a look at books being published this week. Hilary clinton recounts her tenure as secretary of state in hard choices. And in the people versus obama editor at large of bright bart argues the Obama Administration has been marked by abuse of power. Then we recount the Supreme Courts justice life. And dan emmit relives his career. And then a report on women overcoming poverty around the world. In obamas enforcing, eric hold holders justice department, present a criticism of eric holder and the justice department. Look for the books in the next week and look for the authors on booktv and booktv. Org. Hilary clintons book is coming out on tuesday. Hard choices we were in new york to talk with some of the people involved in the production of the book. I have been totally involved through all of the books actually. I am not the official publisher of the current book but i have been involved in the process way back in the whitehouse and we went down there to persuade there publish a book which became it takes a village. I was there trying to help convince her to do so. I have been involved in every publication. I am not the editor because that is not my core strength. But i watch over the publication and i help get it all organized and make sure things are on track. It started with living history and making sure our best people are working on it. We are publishing hard choices on june 10th. I was the editor of the book and i have overseen the aspects and working closely with the people at the company. As the editor, is there a lot of emails back between you and the author . Every case is different. You know, in this case, i have tried to give just asmu much attention to secretary clintons book, buts we are publishing james web as well who is a terrific United States senator. So i dont want to favor one author over another. When we acquired the book Jonathan Karp knocked down and asked what we could do for an ebook and we talked about idea and when the was the right time to act. We have been thinking of it was as it digital project from the beginning my role is to work with the media team that works with hilla hillary. What is an effective Media Campaign . Depends on the book and the potential for the book. There is top down campaigns which are campaigns like Hilary Clinton that begin with National Media and breakout from there. A few big hits generate a number of things that sort of create themselves. My roll is working on the marketing side which has involved a website for the book, a Facebook Page, the release of content on the web. My role up to now has been a Digital Marketing role. It has been a fun one and so many people are watching and care. We toil away and make a lot of videos. We dont have many that go up on the home passenger of aol on the day we hand it over. Or yahoo picks up and puts it on a major page. That part is fun. Watch for Hilary Clinton to a peer on booktv soon to discuss her latest book hard choices next live from the Chicago Tribune printers row lit fest a conversation between our guest and the book essays and dispatches from the rust belt. If you could i have a particular passion for the kind of books will be speaking about today. Narrative nonfiction, creative nonfiction, particularly about plays. Ive named this program a sense of place, rural and urban. I am powerfully drawn to books about land and culture and the south in the way we live here those are the types of books we will be talking about today. Tulane bear to my right brags about her life on and off her families kansas farm. Her first book was the awardwinning essay collection one degree wise and her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune terminator times in several anthologies. Julene bair is out of the university of wyoming and iowa in her new book is the alcala wrote, and a mark of love and reckoning. [applause] and david jeff willes is here from akron ohio. Its his hometown his whole life and the subject of both of his books, his first book was all the way home and a second book, which well talk about today is a hard way on purpose. Essays and dispatches from the rust belt. Its appeared in places including their times in the wall street journal. Thank you for being here. [applause] i thought i would again with a subject that might not come to mind when you think of plays and that is bad acts, namely our sense of beauty. This does attach us to things in many cases. Julene at the start of your book you search for the battersea creek did she remember from your childhood and you describe the hydride planes landscape as it once was any right our sense of beauty is a survival instinct. Of course i just lost my place. Telling us they can sustain us for generations to come. Not everyone thinks about the high plains is exactly beautiful. Can you tell us about the landscape and why its a matter of survival to find beauty. Okay, first of all, like any western wideopen place, it you cant really see it from the interstate. It is important to get off the interstate and drive down a gravel road at the very least, not asphalt and then get out of your car. But of course, it also helps if you are a native grass, which is harder and harder to find these days. The native grass was its own ecosystem in support of 50 to 70 million days and along with the water that flowed in those days. The grass was very beautiful. It was a mild green color and when he looked out across the grass, it has this sort of eternal aspect to it. It seemed eternal life sky. These two complement each other aesthetically, but the grass once it was found under his longer able to sit and life as it had passed and same with the water. Once you come to groundwater out from under a place, the streams can no longer flow. Exactly. Well talk more about water as we go along. David, you read about akron, the rubber capital of the world, a place built on tires basically. The industry has posted there. It epitomizes the rust belt. Many buildings have been abandoned and yet throughout your book utility somewhat rhapsodic description averments basically. Wonder if he could talk about that. Is as important as the places to a raiders sense of what hes writing about is the time you experience it. There is a word i use in my book as a kid from another source. But it was useless to describe akron admits industrially heyday which is a word i really love because its a word that doesnt mean ugly. It means a different kind of beautiful. Does the city i therein came in to an understanding just at the moment of collapse. Though, as a young person interested in exploring my city for the first time in my college years, akron was for a short time almost like a root, just a completely abandoned downtown full of buildings into k. For me to be young enough that naive enough not to recognize economic and social complications that he abandoned playground was like happening to the back lot of hollywood studio. Semifriend and i would break into a factory thanks for the old can now in the alleyways behind the building overall empty. To me was full of possibility and you could do anything here and we can have all of the spirit of i lake this reclamation, early reclamation for us. To me that was nothing that exciting and i still think of those landscapes is beautiful in and on dutiful way. Very interesting. Were talking about places that have undergone serious chain. Akron was built and abandoned by industry. Western kansas, which for millennia underway assist tanning life, including farming and the most industrialized and ran into all kinds of problems. I wonder if you can talk about the changes that have been made. The other theme you to share his adversity. Really have to struggle to lebanese bases. If you talk about that. When i was going on, we were livestock ranchers and dryland farmers. The word drive and firming according to this historian Walter Prescott webb who wrote about the great thing is the science of finding the ring always efficient. Because the 19 inches of rain a year where i grew up. So they had to be really scientists and artists it containing the moisture in our soil. So that combination of grasslands and dryland winter beach, those two crowds were quite beautiful. One was not really a crime. It is what it always anathema to what we grew on it was a crowd that in our case is a thousand head of sheep which you have 1200 lands there about the new is a very sensuous or sensory existence of a lot of wildlife around us, much of which we would catch and try to tame and every domestic animal into the sun and our own family, which we had around her idea of wildlife within our family. So i grew up in a way of life really. When Irrigation Development came to our area, farmers realized they could make three times as much because they could get three times the crop with Irrigation Water to it they started mining the Ogallala Aquifer, which is to groundwater under the great plains from southern south dakota to north texas and i watched the landscape become gradually industrialized and more prairie guys formed under. David, you write a lot about living the hard way. An interesting part of your essays is what difficulties do in terms of building there. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the carrot do you find inspiring. Theres a time every year around this time of year when we believe for real but the invincible when the world theories and just if that starts to fade, they start training crammed, so theres this terrible cycle of life for people whove lived in that region for the past 50 years, which is how long its been since we want any aim. This hope that comes from the cycles around. So theres quite a bit of sports in the book its not really about sports at all. But it are great metaphor for the kind of people who stick it out in places like that because akron, ohio in the 1960s, the decade i was born, its population peaked at nearly 300,000 it is not just under 200,000. So a third of the population has left. People who stay and commit to a place like that commit with this kind of hardscrabble hope because the title is the hard way on purpose on purpose. Its much harder to move to chicago. He migration from the midwestern rust belt 80s, the scrape chocolate is this ambler five of an industrial midwestern five. Those who stay take a pride in doing it out for and i think you can be prouder to be a perennial fan of the Cleveland Indians and even the chicago cubs. So i think that becomes its own if you can do in things are hurt by becomes its own aesthetic. An interesting example. It had a real challenge when he found out what was going on with the aquifer. You have inherited part of the family farm, and the deep roots and all of that and very sent it to the community they and the attitude people have towards firming and yet he felt duty bound to kind of raise the alarm of bit about the water situation. This very interesting themes for which i attacked people about this. I wonder if you could describe a particular scene where you go to a meeting, which sounds like some form of torture actually and i guess it was. And you find a way to talk but is there further polarizing. Actually, it did not talk when i went to the water board. When i went to the water Board Meeting i was there is the next use to try to be in the area just in case i would run into ward who was the man i had fallen in love with at the opening of the book. At the opening of the book i go out to the watershed to explore it because i feel guilty about the aquifer. I want to make sure that theres still some water on the surface that we havent trained every last drop and indeed i did find one of those rare springs that they, but i else a mantis rancher who have read my first book and it turns out he liked it and even consider writing to me through my publisher. I certified a story handed to me on his love of platter in a sense. As the story evolves, there becomes a moment where bored and i are estranged and i find an excuse to go with water Board Meeting in western kansas, which would be the first time ive been to this building because i interview the director of the water board before. I would put back at the meeting and regret i hadnt been while poking because he refused people who were all themselves irrigators. They were in charge of their own water and they kept looking at me. They would make these jokes and then they would look at me. I got to send that maybe they sort of asked her to someone to call them on what was going on and someone to raise real issue is sort of the elephant in the room and begin to talk about that yes we are using a water that our grandchildren will be in order to have a life here. This doesnt make any sense. Since i didnt actually speak at the water Board Meeting, i got courage later when there was a symposium on the Ogallala Aquifer and they really spouted off at that meeting. I just told people what it, which would have been too saying we are talking about the firming mentality here. My father was a farmer. If he could have harvested the stars come even if you let this charge and love talking about infinity and how the universe was created in all but the committee wouldve done it if you could make a profit. I was struck when youre just scraping talking that you spoke personally. You didnt have a power point. I wonder if that goes back to what inspires you to become a writer in the first place. When did writing come into your life in the idea of writing so personally about your life yet when did that begin with . When i was a child, i think i was as natural born transcendentalists. I would write poetry about the prairie and may be ready my horse with this use and reach out and grab a tumbleweed and it would become part of me on the wind would care me a long. So then i went away to the bay area and together singing for a long time. At one point i reduced every my child land cruisers and into the Mojave Desert and i refurbished in my plan was to become this modern day hero. Id be a successful writer supporting myself. I was sent to receive the new yorker in the atlantic like mike about this rejection of such a paper of my outhouse wall switch. And then i wound up back in western kansas, which is all part of the story about how that happened in setting my sights on iowa a graduate program and i did manage to get myself there did manage to the program and the fiction program. When that happened i began to learn how to write. And you were doing it here the personal is very essential. If you want people to identify with your story, you need to tell a personal story that a person can identify with. Indeed, its very powerful. David come you sell a about it looks toward akron and your love of looks. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your early breeding. I am curious, you describe a reading on this fiction, but you went toward sternal is in. Maybe you could talk a little about your love of stories. Yes, i loved to read and i loved books when i was a kid. As soon as they learned how to read a new i wanted to write. Thats like saying you want to become invisible. It doesnt seem like a career, but that location. The thought of love books and there was this used bookstore in accra that my parents would take us to an address must be basement and office bookstores. A fairly physically identify that place. An alternate school and in growing up i knew i wanted to be a writer, whatever that is. The only thing i knew for sure is they didnt want to write for a newspaper and a week later i started writing for a newspaper and did that for 18 years. By this weird connection if they come in the i began my hometown paper. And solid phase locked plume of smoke as im trying to finish a less lovely dawned on me. My childhood bookstore where i fell in love with books is on fire. If you ever have the opportunity to watch a books were burned to the ground, it is tragic, but its an odd firing site. Nothing burns like a bookstore. So i watched it turn down and there was this strange sort of deathlike akron, youre pretty much watching remember how when the popeye cartoon sleepy with wind down and everything falling apart behind in and thats what its like to live in akron ohio where he watched the whole world crumbled behind you and you feel like youre trying to stay one step ahead. Did i answer your question . Yes, better. So speaking of avoiding gashes barely avoiding disasters, to continue your story, trillion, when he started writing about turns and your personal life, what are the challenges involved in that and how did you sort of want that line between meaning to tell the stories you need to tell them dealing with family and loved ones in the whole story, which is quite intimate. Well, people tell you you should just write it and worry about it later and i did do that. My mother died in 2009, so it didnt have to worry about her anymore. But i guess i feel like it is a story if you are brighter, theres a sacrifice that you make sometimes. You are a worry to the people who have the most somewhat. They have to make a certain sacrifice unfortunately. You try to always be fair minded. You try to let them have the last word sometimes. Theyre certain lines that wont cross depending on your relationships with those people and its up to the individual writer with those lines are. As far as ward, i fictionalize 10 and almost entirely. I gave him new family members. I didnt change his occupation. I made a fictional town for him to say then. I did actually change his occupation to reassert extent. I did everything i could to camouflage his identities or he would not have to pay her by telling my half of our story. Buy gas, it is something you commit to when you commit to writing. If you are going to write you have to write and so you just find a way to make peace with all of these relationships and how youre handling nonin the story. Do you feel your work has helped open the conversation up about water . Yes, i think it has been a matter of fact, later this summer im going to have an opportunity to talk to kansas legislators about water. I really want to be part of that dialogue, so its giving me an opening. Im really one of the only people out there that i think its saying the obvious, which is we need to get the federal government to stop subsidizing through the farm program the growing of crops that are way too thirsty for their preaching. And we need to reverse the ethanol mandate. You have written that if things continue the way they are going that water will be gone and 85 years. Those under our lamb. Some watery surrogate on. Basically all the farmers on the high plains are headed for a crash landing. Some of them have heard it crash landed. What we need to do this engineer softly in team for the farmers and its just a question of political will asked whether that will happen. You know, that is a big quandary when you have peoples livelihood and way of life from the same in the city that we all have such respect for and its absolutely crucial and you have to look beyond the Environmental Concerns in the chemical pollution is really terrible for the aquifer as well. I always feel the two books you have written, that workups the dialogue continue. David, the way you write about akron, you talk about hope and loss and sort of the idea that things can be remade. You describe a lot of these ruins and Creative Ventures that first writing of them at the site. Some of those that claimed city. It vibrates to the. Wonder if you could talk about this example is the rejuvenation. Yeah, i think the one word that akron is aware of specific entity because the book is about loss of identity and the whole rest fell city really underwent this loss of identity where you are known for some thing and you have an easy way of explaining yourself and other places to stay akron retirees than a certain area of the 20th century was an easy assist the nation. As though, you look for something new that is true, that is not just some inventive new identity, but its true to your core. In akron, the word is reinvention because it is the city very much built on invention and in very much built on reinvention. In akron in particular, because all of the aspects of the tire industry where they are and not anywhere else, it was each are center. A lot of the research and development, which came at the university of akrons engineering programs is still there. That has been a big part of the rebirth of that city in particular. Im trying to use akron as a model for other cities like that. Im interested in for instance how pittsburgh has rejuvenated his love, building what it has. If water is beautiful and the bridges are a beautiful part of the personality. The city of the city has used those things as a physical infrastructure to build on. Detroit is trying to do this right now. To see how to treat is taking what is true about detroit and try and save and rebuild from that is interesting to me. So akron has like some of the things that just happened, theres a lot of music in the book and i cowrote a book. It could not have come from any other place except akron, ohio, which is a uniquely weird city. The truth is they couldve come from anywhere. Because they came from there, it starts to define a certain lineage of an ascetic of the singer from the cramps this from name and not the black keys who comes straight from that legacy. He starts to build on those things and say these are like our calling cards. For instance, the first essay in the book a long essay about lebron james and its not basketball at all. It is about how you seize on your new sort of ambassadors and make them part of the truth of who you barred under the telling your story . Its interesting that david is talking about loss of identity and if anyone asked me what my book is about, its also about that. One day when someone asked me just popped out of my mouth. It is the hardest in for a writer talk about what her book is about probably. But this came out of my mouth and its about how we destroy what we love and then won it back. We didnt know consciously that wed love to land. As a matter of fact, that is to freeze we could never use few people in that area would never use a phrase like you to the land for a man of the soil. They would think it was corny and psychobabble or something. Basically we were told to hang onto her land. As my fathers name to mehmet lespinasse of the narrative of the boat as to whether we are able to live up to the expectation. But the reason we needed to hang onto it was yesterday taken a lot of work to build it and would be kind to be ways sell it, but mainly because he was realist day. It was real. If you invested in cash or if he sold it, take cash, investments docs, and a number of things could happen. The land would always be there. So it was this value that we corrupt ways. It is because it was profitable that he wanted to hang onto it. Ultimately he was profitable so there was this tension in me between loyalty to the actual land, to what it really was coming to the ascetic had given the growing not, the beauty, the wildlife, the history of the native americans, everything that to me was real about it. The way we made our living on it, which became increasingly invasive and abusive. Very interesting. Very powerful stuff. Listening to you talk when you read books about specific places, you wonder why should other people care. Why should people in chicago carrier about western kansas are sitting in ohio . I wonder if you could talk about what youre hoping to tell people that know nothing about either of these place is. In my case, that was an overt instinct because when i was working on this book and i started to see whether this really about, a sort of relay something is a journalist i carried a lot of one of the biggest problems in ohio in the larger rust belt region is the loss of talented young people of my generation. I wrote a lot about the brain drain effect. When i look at the demographic numbers i mentioned earlier, the city has lost basically a third of its population in the time ive been there. But what about the two thirds who state they are and what about all the people of my generation who exceeded our rust belt cities. Is to miss their story . So i never read about myself unless i feel like its representing about bionics areas. Buffalo in gary indiana and where in ohio we are ignored or misunderstood except every four years and they come and wait for to decide. So what i wanted to do is try to tell my story of the people who say and theres millions of us. Its about a place i hope represents a much larger set of very particular places. Im trying to decide which thing to start with. The biggest thing for me is that i think the planes, the wideopen center of this country i think american identity is very much rooted in that open, hopeful center of our nation. When the destroyer very center, you have a problem and its metaphoric for everything this country is doing in every way we are going wrong when it comes to how we are finding our land and what we do to our air and water so on. Its sort of takes the heart out of you. This is the heart of the heart and we are talking about here. This is the water being pumped on the surveys make it impossible for life going all the way back to paleolithic times in the center of our country. Beyond not, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us how we are going to need our groundwater aquifers in order to stay in the dry land crabs come and wants at the grove without the aid of irrigation in the past. We are talking about the breadbasket here. We are talking about the grain for the additional, the 9 billion people that were supposed to have on the planet by 2050 we are being told. So is deceiving the people we do have now with our hearts in green, we are putting we are now told it takes as much fossil fuel to make a gallon of ethanol has figured out. We are putting another 40 in two lives. The cala process protein weight at 22 not one, so we are based on the protein by fatty piece of cotton fessing gives us hard and cancer and diabetes. So those servers, but also this is just a story. Its worth of relationships. Why should you care about any relationships between a mother and her son, looking for my son to have a father like i had, trying to carry on the family lineage. About my relationship with my father. Its a love story so as much as you relate to any story you would relate to this one. Theres other reasons, but i cant remember them all right now. Thank you as that was very beautifully put. David starts his book with a quote from a local hero here, said terkel. Its very short. He just says its practical to hope. You dont address the practical matters. I wonder if you could talk about hope a little bit. D. C. Evidence that a quick spreading it up as a hopeful act. I think the best communities are the ones that realize that they need to be tended to. You know, i think the instinct that i saw and a lot of people in my generation who left and never blamed anybody who left. I do resent anyone for leaving because i understand why the maritimes than i thought i could leave. The instinct was suddenly go somewhere where i can make it, and make it easier and make it here. The realization is that replaces its own struggle and the mature realization is the circle is oval point. The hope and struggle become intertwined. If your life is based on hoping your name and things that could happen that means once they are accomplished from beneath the next one for your life to otherwise it just becomes this empty Howard Hughes in a hotel room trying to find something to worry about because youve got everything. I guess thats the core of notion and hope in life shows that quote. I really like the hardscrabble industrial midwest notion of it being practical. But its not a romantic thing. Its a practical thing to do because we come from practical places. Factly. Julene, a lot of what you talk about is the sa factly. Julene, a lot of what you talk about is the same. Those people at that point will be beginning to do things differently on the planes. People going back to organic farming for instance, which is what we always did before we had chemicals are we just didnt it that. Other people are raising alternative crops and summer farming without the use of Irrigation Water and shipping merry yak and merry yak meat in their free range chicken. They dont have a market locally so much that they ship it to the front range, which is only a couple hundred miles. But their anger is being made there. To me, the act of writing and any activism that you are at least doing something yourself and thats hopeful. You can live with yourself if you are trying to do some thing. Eb white who is a very well known sas and who many may know as the author of Charlotte Web talked about when he got up in the morning he was torn between whether to dave were savored the world. any of us have that same sort world. Many of us have that same sort of pushed all within us and we could be tormented by that. If they got to thinking about it, got to thinking this is actually a false dichotomy because if you really have a relationship with nature for a particular place, it is like having a relationship with a person. And if her mother, for his sins, or your brother were in the hospital and say, would you try and make a choice about whether to have a cape with the doctor and try to save their life were between favoring those moments that make last within. It comes naturally if you truly have a relationship with the place to try to do both. There is hope that not too just without eyes. For your own soul i guess. Thank you. Dutifully put. I hope theres questions out in the audience here. Theres a microphone over here if anyone would like to ask a question in our last few minutes. Meanwhile, i am actively searching my brain to think of an opportunity as the phrase the yak meat next time i sit down to write. Im not sure theres telling yak butter. You and i cannot yak butter quite i guess. We will negotiate later. I know you touched on a little bit so you may advance are part of the question. That is i guess it is at six. You need permission to use real names with people or is it a lawful name . Speaking of memoir writing. Just because he said he changed his occupation. Bush is what you to do unless you get permission, right . When you change a name, i never feel comfortable with it because i know them by this name. How do you go about the process either one of you . Theres actually legal formula with a certain number of identifying features have to be changed so that legally you can say you are being sued. So theres that. I think it goes much like all questions about eggs more beyond the lot is what is right and what is for. For me, i would never chain the name or i would never its a matter of trends. The. If you do it and first of all your editor knows an somehow i dont know if you have a disclaimer that says can change. Thats where it begins. But then the question as was the reason youre doing it and whats truthfulness . When i write about people i know, they irrigation off in the process that they know im doing it and i offer them the opportunity to use the interfax check with an understanding ive written my version, but i also am i hope humble enough to realize that memory is fallible. So i tried to use those people as resources. My friend john is a big part of a book and and i talked constantly. So hes very aware of my process and how you would be portrayed by virtue of being apart from the process, which is a different case than youre doing. Yeah, different circumstance as in my case. Once i changed the characters name, the person named to ward, over time he became more to me. That was to come will either verse because he was obvious a very distinct individuals to me. He became sort of an amount from any sense of these fictional characteristics that i had made in the original person, but to me he became ward. If i were ever to speak about him now, i would probably just slip into word. I have done that at different times. When you think of the real ward and the version of word that exists in your book coming to think of them as sea monkey dance and first maladies to you . Like i said, they are sort of an amalgam. They have different physical features, characteristics. So when i think of ward in the book, i think of the ward i described in the book. I guess that the answer. Which one do you like better . Which one do i like better . [laughter] its a tossup. I can answer that youre a good question though. Throughout the book you are constantly equating him with plays. He really does become this embodiment of the canvas you are sort of wrestling with. Its very interesting and kind of wonders to your really pushing. One of the reviewers said he was almost metaphoric in the question being could can we work out our political differences as a society if these two individuals, ward and i worked in three different politically. He was very everyday then i was very liberal and so becomes a question of candies to find a way to his elder difference is and if they can, perhaps that is hopeful for what i am saying about working out the differences on how we farm the planes. Any other questions . [inaudible] i was asked i wrote a very complex narrative with lots of different dreams to it and she wanted to know how i will cease altogether. I was just asked this question recently in an interview, so i really think about how i did it. I figured out what the two most important narratives were. Those two most important narratives were ward and julian and their romance. More important than not a familys relationship to their land and whether we could live up to my fathers edict that we hang on to it. Once you have a fourtime narrative, other things you can string a long as not story in central to this is to write unit way like youre watching a movie, a story unfolding before your eyes. If youre doing that, sort of like a locomotive pulling a freight train. You can pull along some of those other seven narratives so to speak. The other thing that really works for me i think his unity of aim. Absolutely every relationship in the book goes back to that land. Our relationship with the land was more important probably than any of our relationships with each other. That defined who we were because everything we write about, native american history, they drank in the same stream that watered us, do we manage to live there because we were thinking the same water. I was when i read about the native americans, i was sort of out of water always tied to the spring for it came to the surface of the water sustain our lives so i was able to write about going to the Mojave Desert and living there and just relishing the spring that i found to because water was central to everything. This is a question for david. Ruth has become the fascination for scholars. We hear terms like bruins, people who go to detroit and new orleans try to wonders and is crumbling infrastructures. Im curious these pictures come in these stories are not about people. There is no people in the scholarship. Your work seems to approach the topic from a different active. Would you say a few words about that quite theres a whole chapter in the book in the Biggest Issue i have with it is a lot of the work, especially about detroit. Detroit has been such a death nation, especially for photographers as its been in a state of profound decay. The edges of those photographs seem like the end of the story. The cbc pictures were up like a Salvador Dali painting works internally melting in the book depository for the abandoned books are growing out of them. Books are growing out of them. The truth of detroit is the next neighborhood over, somebody put in a Community Garden in somebodys trying to make something new. This dont make it into the photographs. In a way it is this superficial profoundness for official in interesting to see. But its not the whole story of so much has been told that it become the narrative and the truth of detroit is that if the dying city. Other than a city that was called dying and it didnt die and i know a lot of other cities that died. I think it is probably impossible for an American City to die in the way it seems like detroit is if you look at these photographs. So every other book that came out of the last two years was about detroit. So some of the story thats been told is the way there is this fight to bring it back in the investment going on in downtown detroit where there are real bargains to be had and things like that at those pictures are so dramatic that they make it harder for the subtle work thats been done to kind of rice up to the same level of drama. Is so interesting to compare that to the fact we are completely oblivious to things like the aquifer. We seem to be drawn to the wrong things so often and that is why we really need writers to help reorient. So i think we are out of time. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you off her questions. [applause] thank you everyone for coming. Thank you again tour moderator and to our authors, ms. Bear and mr. Giffels. There are so the bobby. Everyone have a wonderful time. The authors will be signing copies outside the door if youre interested in speaking with them, go outside. Have a great day, everybody. [applause] [inaudible conversations] nostrand three and David Giffels from the Jones College prep in high school in chicago. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] every month we have a new book for her book club and this month we have chosen so they, either the original edition orthographic edition. So if you would like to read along on economics, depression, antia lot of things in today as well. Amity shlaes, the forgotten man is our book club questioned for the month of june. Pick up a copy digitally get a copy enjoin a state leading. If you go to booktv that overcome at the top youll see a typist for to set up card. Beginning the fact her name, we will start posting your comments. We want to see what you have to say about the forgotten man, the Book Club Selection for the month. Well, i am hopefully going to get to three books. Zimmerman telegram by barbara tuchman, and a book that senator levin just sent over to me, the jewish pirates of the caribbean by edward kirkland. The first two books, workbooks that i found the Zimmerman Telegram when i was at the l. A. Book festival speaking on my book and was just really intrigued by this story. For me is the first jewish woman to refuse in florida in congress, historical depictions and stories about the jewish experience really just intrigued me and i think the past is prologue to have an opportunity to learn from the experience is the jewish have been through and in that story is really, the Zimmerman Telegram specifically is an interesting story because those that telegram did by Great Britain to essentially try to get texaco into the war against the United States and the story goes through the balancing act that Great Britain had to do to not reveal that they had cracked the code, but at the same time, notified the united dates of the impending danger. The jewish pirates of the caribbean is really the book that focuses on the past been prolonged and the history we been through. There were jewish pirates who are fighting the spanish inquisition and you wrote the high seas and napa, senator levin told me tells the story in their ventures and antics in the outcome of those. In the 12 tribes of hardy is a story about black migration throughout american history, but particularly the great migration from the south and the struggles of africanamericans have gone through and the tough life that theyve lived. This is a fictional story that depicts the family and a mother who prepares her children, her nine children for the difficult challenges will face throughout their life. What are you reading this summer quite tell us what is on your Summer Reading list. Post it to our Facebook Page or send us an email. Booktv spam. Org. [inaudible conversations] more from chicago in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] is [inaudible conversations] what does the d. In dday stands for quite it stands for nothing. Soldiers joke is good for dad or that it stood for a day, day day. It is just a code. People have tried retrospectively to figure out what it really stood for. In fact, it has no other meaning other than d. Watching six, 1944 about six to nine years ago today. Yes, that is right. It was supposed to be june 5th , the David Eisenhower picked. It is tricky to invade the norman coast. The tides are extraordinary. 23foot swings in the tides. It has to be right in order to allow paratroopers to be able to see sufficiently and the pilots who were hauling them. The winds have to be right, whether has to write. The weather was wrong as it turned out. As in our never had good luck with this weather. Its survey for the invasion of morocco and the invasion of sicily and was tormey in the comment. Unusually in june 5th, 1944. He can usually count on benign weather in the coast of france. It was awful so he posed on it for a day. He had a narrow window in which the tides in a minute and all the rest would still obtain in a way that was suitable for this kind of invasion. If he had delayed much longer, the next appropriate. Its going to be several weeks later. There is extraordinary anxiety that the germans i find out if it had even 24 hours of warning that this invasion force is coming to normandy rather than some other point on the french coast. It couldve been, probably wouldve been. To the anxiety level is unbelievable when isenhour has to postpone it, makes the decision to postpone it. So june 6th is the day we celebrate as dday. Number of troops, number of deaths . Well, there are five divisions ago when over the beaches basically. Two american in three british and canadian. And then there are three airborne divisions. Altogether you talk about a couple hundred thousand troops going in on june 6. Most of the deaths the worst beach was omaha, where one of the two american beaches. There were several thousand deaths there. There had been concerned that the number of deaths could run in the tens of thousands and this did not happen. By no means were the casualties light, but they were less than anticipated at utah beach, which was the furthest right invasion. The british and the canadians had a tough time of it, the ibm of june 6, theyre a canadian troops as far as six months in length. There is quite a disparity between the resistance that these allied leaders found and their ability to push inland and that is the trick in innovation. You want to get in as far as you can come as quickly as you can, fivemile smore you want to push the enemys artillery so they cant show the beach. That is when you are most vulnerable coming across the beach and a omaha beach it took several days to get to that point. But nevertheless, it turns out to be quite successful in the casualties while talking 3000 or so deaths altogether, they are lighter than many had feared. [inaudible conversations] or final author presentation of the days sure greenberg. He begins out live on booktv in the 30th annual printers row lit fest. [inaudible conversations] okay, everyone. Good afternoon. Hope everyone has had a good day at the greg lit fest today. Very special occasion. A quick moment to thank all of her sponsors who made this event possible. The author spoke, a Feather River across the sky is on sale now in the main lobby and book signing will take place immediately after the program. Todays program is broadcast live on cspan 2s booktv. If there is time at the end for q a, we ask you guys used a microphone located in the stairwell. That we the viewers can hear your question as well as the authoring moderator. If you would like to watch this program again, please let our coverage will reair this evening at 11 00 p. M. Central time. Please keep the spirit of the sudden im going all you apply with a subscription to produce her journal at the premiere book section, fiction series of membership program. We are producing a digital book store or out. Take one of our promo cards for information about the happen next special book deals. Before i begin this program come i would ask if you could turn off your cell phones or at least put them on that note. We encourage you to take pictures, but please turn your flashes off. You can post your pictures on twitter, and scram our facebook, using the hash tag printers row. Without further ado, it is my pleasure to turn it over to Chicago Tribune barry allen. [applause]. I want to start, joel, by asking you about the bird itself,q because pigeon. Some of us havexd a negative association with thee1 wordt pigeon. And so i want toco ask you, whaa exactly is or wasi] a Passenger Pigeon . Well, itt t started out Passenger Pigeon is not a messenger pigeon, its not acoik carrier pigeon. Those aret euphemisms for theqq eurasiant pigeon. 300 species, so i like to illustrate this by referring to a familyjf of mammals. The cats,i] the felines. To say that all pimg johns are alike is to say that the tabby curledxd on yourq sofa is the se as a tiger, as a lion. nndc kdtq. So the Passenger Pigeon was endemic to the eastern part of the United Statesq an canada. It looked a lot like a Mourning Dove. I call it a Mourning Dove onw3r lp y colored. Even though it looked like a Mourning Dove,co more recent Research Shows itsfa more closy world pigeons, one of whichnr is the band be tail thats found o. The pacific coast. But the Passenger Pigeon was, in my view, unlike anyw3 other bird three principal reasons. First, it had a huge population. Probably in the billions,4÷ but undoubtedly the most common bird in this continent and perhaps the world. Qfa second, that population was not evenly distributed across the landscape, and it was not cryptic. Mice,ni whitefooted mice are a adapt, but you dont abundant, but you dont see em. John audubon saiow3 a flight tk three days to pass. n literally for the duration of that period. And he said the droppingsxd feeo like snowflakes. The third is that despite thatxr abundance, as late as 1860 there was an account of birds nearnr torontoko that probably exceedr tw yillion birds. From the wild. Xd and on september 1, 1914, the last of the species died. o[ and that was axd devastating scene, which well get to in a little while. My but i want to talk a little bit more about what these aggregations looked and soundedd like, because we have never seen it. Xd in our lifetime. But it sounds like it was an incrediblenit event in much ofs country, andxd people would comd out and gaze at thise1 in amazement. And i dontok know, maybe sometimes in fear, ii p uup ly have 4 impression. Absolutely, sure. Tell usco a little bit about what this looked like. So one example is something that happened inni kilometerco n columbus, ohio, in the spring of 1854. People were running errands, doing their work, and they began to hear aq hum. Sky,q and they saw wispyq cloud. Over time the clouds became closer, and they realized they were passengerok pigeons. A little bit later the birds plunged intoni darkness. People who havejf never seen the phenomenonq bet before thoughti dropped to their knees in prayer. Xdq the most powerful forces in nit so ite1 was and3 American Culture in thet t 19th century. If you saw Something Like that, youre not apt to forget it. nr writers, manyi] of them incorporated thisjf into their work. In fact, it led to the development of anea underground seed disdisperser. So where were they going, these huge clouds . Where were they going and what for . So Passenger Pigeons moved across the landscape primarily in search really of food. I mean, they moved generally north in the spring and south in the fall, but not under the strict patterns of, say, warblers. I dont know how many of you are birders and have an interest, you know, going north in the spring. These birds were known, there were large numbers one year around christmas at the Southern Shores of james bay in canada, and one year they nested in mississippi. So these large flocks were largely attracted by concentrations of food, particularly acorns and beechnuts. So how did they spread the word amongst themselves like, hey, we all several millions of us are going thataway where we hear theres good food. We dont know that with certainty, but when the birds would migrate, they formed broad fronts. So there were, you know, thousands of birds, and so they were able to survey the landscape as they were going. And if they knew, for example, that last year a certain place had lots of acorns, which oaks do not produce a surfeit of nuts every year, they probably would have avoided that. So they were able to see. They had some memory. And if a flock of birds were seeing all these other birds going in one direction, it was probably a good idea to go with them. So, you know, a combination of those cues probably enabled them to find where the abundance of forage was. And so they formed these huge clouds when they flew, but they also formed these enormous cities where they landed to either roost or hang out, breed, i guess. Can you tell me a little bit about what that looked like, their roosting areas . Sure. Now, Passenger Pigeons nested in, by pairs, by tens, by hundreds. So any configuration occurred. But they are best known for these giant, what, aggregations as you describe. So in Central Wisconsin in 1871 near the dells, the largest nesting ever recorded spread across 850 square miles and probably involved 136 million birds. These are, as i said, theyre a little bit bigger than a Mourning Doves, but enough of them would land in a tree where branches, big old branches of big oaks would break. Trees toppled at times, and so often, again, the description of a forest after the birds had been there was likened to the aftermath of a tornado. Roosting areas also, though, the nesting areas, i mean, obviously, theyre laying eggs, the birds, and theyre raising their young, so the birds had to be present for about maybe five weeks or so whereas, you know, roosts they wouldnt have to stay as long. So these numbers and these sizes of flocks and roosting areas sound like the last thing that we can imagine would go extinct, the very last. So what happened to the Passenger Pigeon . Well, as my friend david said, we happened to the Passenger Pigeon. They became a commodity. The attraction was they were cheap. They could be sold for pennies apiece. Sometimes they were fed to livestock, and there was even one instance in northern michigan, pataski, where they were nesting, they were used to fill potholes in the road. So what with the railroad and the telegraph, the expansion of those technologies, the railroad meant that you could ship birds where wherever you could get them to a station, and the telegraph meant their location could be monitored. And that also allowed the development of a class of hunter, probably anywhere from 600 to 2500, who did nothing but chase the birds all year round. They shot them, they used nets, they asphyxiated them, sometimes they burned them. I say in the book few things sparked the human imagination more than figuring out how to kill. And in this case, you know, they used a whole plethora of techniques. And so that constant erosion. So when the birds were think about what a bird has to do to survive. So two adults have to breed, produce fertile eggs, the eggs have to hatch, the chicks have to fledge that is, be able to fly and start the process over again. But with the pigeons when people, as they tried to nest, people went into the colonies firing their guns, and the birds often just abandoned the nests, or they were killed. The squabs, the baby pigeons, were highly desired, and they were targeted. And they were shot throughout the year. So just erosion through all phases of their lives resulted this their extinction. In their extinction. What was their value . I take it the using in the roads was an exception to the rule. What was so, what were people doing with them when they sold them and bought them . What were they doing with this major amount of pimg johns . They ate them. So as the american, you know, urban areas were burgeoning in the middle to late 1800s, you know, these birds, as i said like with the railroad, they could be shipped to st. Louis, chicago, markets in boston, new york, philadelphia, toronto. So, you know, there you are some poor person, you could buy them. Now, they also appeared on menus of some of the great feasts of the 19th century. So the wealthy ate them, the poor ate them. Sometimes they were so Common People just, you know, got tired of em. Some of the, theres accounts of servants demanding that their employers not make them eat Passenger Pigeon more than, like, three times a week because if they were in the area, you know, they would be breakfast, lunch and dinner, and itd be easy to get tired of em. They sound like a really impractical source of food because theyre so small, and theyre covered with feathers. I mean, surely you had to work really hard. Well, i mean, again, think of the size of a Mourning Dove. Youd have to eat quite a few of em, but if they were a penny or two apiece, you know, you could do that. And back in the day too people were used to having, you know, food wasnt packaged in little plastic containers, you know . They were hanging from the market stalls with the full feather skin fur that the animals had. So, i mean, clearly things were different in how you received your food. I see. So the other thing you write about is there were the pragmatic things about the marketplace, that they were sold. But it also sounded like, like hunting pigeons became kind of a frenzy, that a frenzy took hold in a city. People would stop working, people would kids would leaf school. It would leave school. It became a thing to do. Can you talk a little bit about that . Yeah. It became a real problem in urban areas when the birds would come over. You know, people would be firing so much that the pellets would rain down on children and pets, and back in the old days guns had watting. Youd in wadding. Youd insert it into the barrel. That would become hot, and when it was discharged, fires would actually break out. So cities like quebec city, st. Louis, minneapolis, they banned all shooting of the birds. But it was described as, hunting pigeons was beyond human restraint. I mean, when they came, you grabbed your gun, and you went shooting. And it doesnt sound like it was difficult. I mean, you have written you basically pointed your gun up and shot, you know . It didnt take much skill. Well, somebody actually gave, described gave you instructions on how to shoot pigeons when they were roosting or nesting. Youd go into the colony, youd take your gun, youd point the muzzle up. Not down, up. Squeeze the trigger, and pigeons would rain down upon you. And when they were in these big flocks, you didnt have to be a very good shot to, you know, bring down something, you know, that was a mile long or something. So, yeah, absolutely. And tell us a little bit about some of these other equally nonsportingsounding ways that people hunted them. In particular, the use of a stool pigeon. Yeah. So the backbone of the Passenger Pigeon industry was netting. I mean, guns are expensive, you have to buy ammunition powder. So what they would do is they would clear an area, put grain, and they would attract the wild birds by using stool pill johns which were pigeons which were live Passenger Pigeon decoys. And so they would put these on like a teetertotter. The hunters were in the blind, and by moving up and down they would create the impression of a peacefully feeding bird. The birds flying over would look down and see it so then oh, in order to insure that the stool pigeon didnt panic, they sewed its eyelids shut frequently. And so when the pigeons landed, they could catch hundreds at a time, 1200 at a time. Problem was if so many landed, they could actually raise the net, and they could escape. So the hunters would bolt out of their blinds, throw themselves on the net to weigh it down, and with one free hand reach in, grab out, grab the bird and chomp down on the back of its neck. One hunter claimed he was chewing so many pigeons, his teeth got loose. And i asked the dentist about it, and he said given the prevalence of gum disease back then, he thought that was plausible. So that was the principal way really even more than shooting. So there was killing of pigeons going on on a very massive scale. Did anyone worry about this . Did anyone start to say, hey, you know, were killing too many of these . Very few, and it certainly wasnt organized. The most extravagant attempt to protest the killing was an effort by junius prove discuss booth in 1830. Booth was a great actor of his day, more famously the father of john wilkes but unlike his son, junius really had a deep aversion to killing. So he reached he was performing in louisville, and thered been a big flight of birds, and they were being sold on every corner. So he reached out to a well known minister, James Freeman clark, who was one of the leaders of the Unitarian Movement people still know his name to do a funeral, a protest. And, you know, clark thought about it, said, nah, i think ill pass. But booth did rent a hearse and bury the pigeons. What happened, i mean, as time went on, you know, by the 1880s it was clear that the birds were decreasing. And whats interesting and kind of scary is the industry was making up facts, encouraging people, discouraging people from worrying about the birds. So the Passenger Pigeon laid one egg a year. So people in the, there was a guy named martin, actually, from chicago that said, oh, dont worry, they nest four or five times a year, you know . Theres still plenty of them. And, in fact, he wrote an article when the birds finally diddies appear, he said did disappear, he said, yale, ill acknowledge yeah, ill acknowledge the birds diddies appear, and i dont have any clue why. So this denial, a common human propensity when dealing with inconvenient truths to deny it. And, you know, thats, i would argue we see that today in certain areas. So. So as they started to decline, were there any protections in the law, or is this, it was just a legal freeforall . Now there are all sorts of laws that protect birds. Was there any Legal Protection for these birds . Well, actually, the very first law that pertained to Passenger Pigeons was passed by massachusetts, and it was designed to protect netters from shooters. I mean, pity the poor netter who patiently waited, some guy with a gun would be shooting, and hed scare off the birds. But eventually, there were some laws. And, in fact, by the 18 50z there were some laws to protect songbirds, okay . Theyre pretty, and they eat insects. But Passenger Pigeons kind of fell through the cracks. And in ohio in 1857, they created a committee of the state senate to look into the issue of Passenger Pigeons. And they said Passenger Pigeons were so abundant their numbers could never decrease. Three years ago the Ohio Historical society list that as listed that as one of the ten most embarrassing moments in ohio history along with the oning of the cuyahoga the burning of the cuyahoga river. So, you know, people started thinking about it. The only state that totally banned Passenger Pigeon hunting of any kind was michigan. Thats the good news. Bad news . It happened in 1897 when there were hardly any left. So law came too late. But the loss of the bird, the decimation of bison, the fight over the use of heron featherrers for fepters for hat decorations helped spawn the first environmental movement. And out of that movement came the lacey act which makes it illegal to engage in the interstate commerce of illegallyobtained birds. And more importantly, the Migratory Bird treaty act. So these laws still today are the principle bulwark, legal bulwark by which we manage our birds. So the loss of the birdied, you know bird did, you know, lead to the protections we have. And another use for people capturing pimg johns, they were the pigeons used in trap shooting, right . It was actual pigeons . Back in the day, you know, if you went out, the the pigeons would be made out of flesh and blood. So live pigeons were caught. Some of them were kept. And chicago was a real center for this. They would be fed grain. So, you know, they would be fatter and tastier than wildcaught birds. Some number of those birds were also used in trap tournaments. And some of the bigger ones, there was one in long island, one venue. 30 or 40,000 Passenger Pigeons could be shot over the course of a three or fourday process. And when you think about how many birds died in the process of shipping them from oklahoma, new york or chicago, mortality was high. It wasnt as great as, you know, the food issue, but it certainly contributed, it was a major, a major type of mortality. So as these numbers are going down, the birds start to become rarer in the wild. When was the last sighting of a Passenger Pigeon in the wild . Thats kind of tricky because they look so much like Mourning Doves. You really have to rely on a specimen. So doer roosevelt said Theodore Roosevelt said he saw some this 1906, but the last bird in my research i found a couple, the last wild bird for which there is a spes many was shot in illinois near springfield in 1901. Its now in the collection of Milliken University in decatur. The last wild bird shot was a year later in indiana. So by 1902, 1903 the birds were gone from the wild. And thats significant because there were three captive flocks, one in milwaukee, one in chicago, one in cincinnati. A bird probably born in chicago in the backyard of professor Charles Otis Whitman of the university of chicago was sent to cincinnati. It was a female. She lived there with other pigeons. Eventually, as time went on, they all died until there were just two. There was martha and george, the zoo channeling the washington family in their naming of pigeons. And in july of 1911, george died which left martha the last of her species. And, you know, time passed, she became weak. They lowered her perch to a few inches above floor of the cage. But she was an attraction because people knew she was the last Passenger Pigeon, and stories have it that on weekends people would crowd around her cage and threw sand at her to get her to move. So they cordoned off her cage. And finally about 1 00 in the afternoon on september 1st, 1914, she was found dead. She was put in a block of ice and sent to the smithsonian in d. C. Where shes been ever since. And whats interesting is martha the only migrating she ever did was by train. Whitman taught in chicago but was the director of the woods hall lab in massachusetts, so every year she went to massachusetts and back. The only flying she ever did was on a first class flight to san diego and then later to the cincinnati. So to have a bird, i think, really adds poignancy to the story. It does. Its such a sad scene. I just and also to know the exact date that a species went extinction is extinct is remarkable. Its rare. Yeah. Remarkable. The last wild bird, i mean, if martha had died seven to eight years earlier, you couldnt be as sure. But because there were no really credible sightings anywhere, you know, near that time, its a very high probability that she was, indeed, the last. And so, you know, this is the hundredth anniversary, and thats what spawned a lot of the activity. Did people feel bad . Did anyone say look what we did, or has it taken decades or a hundred years, i guess, until people started to say that. No. When they were cuts appearing disappearing, a few people started. In 1892 there were people in wisconsin who sent a petition to the governor that he had the national have the National Guard protect this nesting. But it was mostly after the birds were gone. Since you and i spoke last, i was talking been giving talks everywhere, it seems, and i was at the Detroit Lakes burning festival in western minnesota. A gentleman came to me, and he was 90 years old, and he said when he was 16 in 1940, he met a guy who was 80 years old who used to trap Passenger Pigeons as a youth. And as he grew older, you know, the realization that he collaborated in the extermination of this bird really caused this guy to be sad. So to be, you know, one degree of separation from somebody that actually knee live birds knew live birds, that was quite moving and touching to me. That is remarkable. Well, so if this bird is at the smithsonian and there are other specimens of this bird, you have one and there are others, would it be possible to, like, take its dna and somehow in the future recreate it . Or is this Science Fiction . Well, i mean, certainly some smart geneticists think that its worth trying. There are more Passenger Pigeons in museums than that of any other extinct bird. Theres 15002000 of them. So what theyre planning on doing is taking dna from, well, from Passenger Pigeons and putting it into a bandtailed pigeon, one of the closest living relatives. Whether, you know, theyre going to create theyll create something that looks somewhat like a Passenger Pigeon, you know . What point does it become one . And even if they succeeded in creating this mostly Passenger Pigeon, theyre never going to recreate the hundreds of millions of them. And another thing is that more Mourning Doves are shot than any other game bird in the country. So if you want to create a flock of 30 of these, lets say, youd have to really watch em and make sure they dont go very far, because if they were to fly to a place and a time where people were shooting Mourning Doves, they would surely shoot these. New york times had an article which some of you may have seen, it was a sunday magazine, and they interviewed ben novack, the young man whos working on this, and he thought it would be 25 years before they would get a bird. And, of course, you know, to create a flock would be well beyond that. So somewhere in the future there might be something Passenger Pigeonlike, and i dont think its really the same, but its a powerful story. I mean, its a powerful idea of trying to bring these things back. Although i guess it asks the question, at what point are you messing with nature. I mean, humans are a part of nature. Were a predator, we destroyed it. Maybe thats just a natural cycle, and were messing with it if we attempt to bring it back and undo what we did. Almost a philosophical thing. Yeah. I mean, stan temple who was at university of wisconsin for many years said if extinction is no longer forever, a lot changes. And i think one danger and, i mean, i think we may all have heard this, people are talking about pollution and all the other degradation were heaping upon this planet. Well, we can always build a space station, you know . I mean, obviously, not a real solution. So if it makes us less careful, we can just correct any mistake, that would be unfortunate. So i think really time will tell as to how successful this effort is. And theyre working with mammoths, theyre working with tasmanian wolves and other species that have gone extinct or nearly extinct. What do you see as the importance for people to know this story . You started something called project Passenger Pigeon which maybe you can talk a little bit about, but why its a very dramatic story, but in addition to the narrative drama of it, why is it important for us to know this . Well, one way that i put it is its a cautionary tale. What it tells us is that no matter how abundant something is, and it doesnt have to be a bird, it could be water, it could with could be fuel. If any of you were here at the previous talk, there was a discussion of the aquifer underneath the great plains. All of these things, i mean, theres seven billion of us on the planet now. So if were not careful, if we dont proceed with circumspection, no matter how abundant something is, it could be lost. And if you think in terms of biodiversity which i, for one, and i think many, it certainly contributes to the richness and beauty of the planet. Something like the Passenger Pigeon with that abundance can disappear in decades, you know, something rare can go like that. Yeah. What youre a birder s and youve written about the Natural History of chicago. If i might ask for your tips on where you like to go, speaking of not extinct birds but very much alive birds, where do you like to go birding in the chicago area . Oh, maybe a couple of places. One, i love to see migration. Because when youre watching migration, youre not just seeing birds, as wonderful as they are, but youre seeing these messages encoded in their dna. Youre seeing birds moving. And a place thats really splendid to watch that is at miller, indiana. Lake michigan is the only great lake on a north south axis. A bird flying south on Lake Michigan literally runs out of water in gary. And ive seen birds flying south, and its almost like they suddenly realized, oh, no more water theres no more water, what do we do . So its a funnel, and if the weathers right, you can see lots of birds. Illinois beach state bark in zion, illinois, south of the wisconsin line is quite lovely as well. And you knew about the Passenger Pigeon pretty young, because you were a birder, right . I mean, isnt this story known among birders . Well, it is. And beyond that, because, i mean, i actually grew up in scoping key and went to college hill junior high, and theres this wonderful book by t. Gilbert pearson called birds of america, and i took it out three or four times in a row until mrs. Kelly, the librarian, said, you know, there are other books out there. So in that theres a story, i mean, theres an account of the pill john. And, you know pigeon. And, you know, its funny, if i had the resources, i would have done a poll. Most people probably dont know that story of the Passenger Pigeon. You know, a fair number of people do. Some, if you live in wisconsin or michigan, youre more apt to than if you lived probably in chicago. But it appears in Popular Culture. The very first star trek episode made reference to Passenger Pigeons, because they went to a planet devoid of life, and somebody made a reference to the Passenger Pigeon. To it being extinct . Exactly. Really . Its out there in Popular Culture here and there. Since 2010 there have been four books written about the Passenger Pigeon, one of whom by amy timberlake, and amy was here today at the festival. It was given a high award by the newberry for young adult readers and also won an edgar for mystery for juvenile readers. So, you know, its still a story that holds power to authors. Clearly. Clearly. Well, we have time for a few questions, so id like to ask anyone who has a question about the Passenger Pigeon or probably birding in the chicago area or anywhere since joel has traveled extensively to step to a microphone and ask a question if youd like. Otherwise ill keep peppering him. While youre up there, i would like to invite if anyone the World Premiere of our documentary on Passenger Pigeons from billions to none the Passenger Pigeons flight to extinction, is this tuesday night, june 10th at the peggy nodebart nature museum. The receptions at 5 30, the film is being screened at 7, its about 56 minutes long. Were hopeful itll be aired on public television. But if you live on the north side or can travel there, therell be live music. I would encourage, youre all invited. Theres no charge, so hope to see you then. Yeah. I have a couple questions. When i think of those or try to visualize those darkened skies, it kind of reminds me of the almost extinction of the buffalo which sometimes covered the plains so much that it took days for a single herd to go by, but they say, they were eventually saved from extinction. Are there similarities between that, or are there other species of not just bird species, avian species, but other mammals that have a similar sort of pattern of ex2006 . Because extinction . Sure, great question. So, yeah, i mean, the bison were this abundant mammal. There was an interest in saving them before they died out. They were easy to breed. So they were saved. I would say, too, that, you know, in 1860 if you wanted to see those herds of bison, youd have to schlepp out to colorado or western kansas. The pigeon darkened the skies over the major cities of the United States and canada. So, you know, it was a lot closer. As terms of other animals, i think the closest analog that is currently happening is to languagic fishing. Theyre removing all life from the ocean from the surface to the bottom, all life thats bigger than the meshes of the net. And with sonar they can identify where the sharks and where the tuna are. The same Passenger Pigeons arguably went extinct because the federal government had not assumed jurisdiction over migrating animals. And it took a nation, it took a sovereign. So the open seas, the only way you can regulate fishing is through cooperation because no one country can dictate what, say, chinese Fishing Vessels can do. So unless theres cooperation, you know, tuna and shark are probably on their way out. And with sharks, theyre killing them for their dorsal fin. So you have a 400 pound animal maybe, youre throwing away hundreds of pounds of meat pause its not worth keeping it because its not worth keeping it onboard because of the high price some people will pay for the dorsal fin. Was there something ecologically out of balance in terms of their not having predators that made them so abundant, and that abundance eventually led to their extinction . Because, you know, because of all the factors that you talked about . But, and sort of a related question, if there had not been that amount of killing, would they still be able to thrive today, because would they have enough to eat, you know . Would their migrations, you know, would they be able to pass over all the parking lots and shopping malls . So the first part, um, i dont think there was anything out of balance. I mean, the fact that the forests of the eastern United States and canada were rich enough to support that amount of life, you know . There was balance. If there hadnt been the food to support them, the flocks would not have been that size. And when you think about a bird like a Passenger Pigeon, years would go by before they would return to a site depending on the availability, say, of acorns or beech. So the point is the only predators that could really go after them had wigs. So those were had wings. So those were a couple kinds of falcons and two birdeating hawks. Now in a given spot where they were nesting, you know, rah coons and cougars could get em, but those cougars couldnt travel hundreds of miles. It took modern homo sapiens with modern technology to wipe them out. So it wasnt anything, you know, i mean, the birds were perfectly adapted to their environment, and it was only because of a voracious, highly Technical Society that did them in. Now, if i agree. I mean, at the time they disappeared, the best evidence in my view is there was plenty of food for them. There were fewer places for them to nest that facilitated the hunting. It made it easier for people to find them. But if the birds had maintained their numbers, you know, for another several decades, then they probably would have had trouble, you know, surviving at those numbers. In my mind, theres still an open question as to whether they needed huge numbers. A bird, one of the last wild birds was shot in 1900 called buttons, because the taxidermist ran out of glass eyes and used buttons to fill the hole in its head. It was born in the spring of 1899 when there were, you know, the pair that raised it was probably alone. So in my, you know, i dont think we theres a lot we dont know about the bird because they were never studied in life. I mean, you know, the techniques werent there, the interest wasnt there, the resources werent there. So there are things about the bird we dont know the ecological implications of its presence and its absence. I mean, theres some fascinating conjecture, but we dont know with certainty. Be. Did awed bob paint the audubon paint the Passenger Pigeon . He surely did, and his picture, his painting is surely the most iconic, although its wrong in certain technical details, but it is one of the, its a lovely, lovely picture. I mean, audubon said they laid two eggs, and they only laid one. I mean, he, he had some things wrong about the bird. He also didnt think they would ever become extinct as long as the forest he thought it was a habitat issue. But again, he thought they laid two eggs and that they nested multiple times a year. Well, he had a lot of company in never thinking theyd become extinct. So absolutely. Are there any other questions . Yeah. There any other birds that, like, flew in these giant clouds like the Passenger Pigeon . Good question, and there are. Some of you, i mean, something that comes to mind not nearly in the numbers are those starling access rations that you see access rations that you see on youtube that are just these clouds in all sorts of shapes moving across the sky. The most abundant bird in the world today, and i never quite get the name right, maybe somebody knows it, its a small finch in africa, and there are tens of millions. Theyre being killed as well. I ask birders and ornithologists, you know, whats the largest number of birds youve ever seen . I think for me i saw 250,000 snow geese in nebraska once. And thats a lot of birds but just a fraction, you know, of what it was. Blackbirds roost by the millions. And so there certainly are, you know, birds that still flock in large numbers, but, you know, just, again, a fraction of what the big flights of pigeons represented. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Again, joel greenberg, author of a feathered river across the sky the Passenger Pigeons flight to extinction. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming. [applause] thank you, everyone. Hope you guys had a great day today at the printers row lit fest 30th anniversary. Pretty spectacular. Thank you very much, ms. Brotman, for moderating this conversation. Thank you, mr. Greenberg. Again, his book, a feathered river across the sky, on sale in the lobby, and hell be signing at the table right outside this auditorium. Thanks, everyone. Have a great afternoon. [applause] [inaudible conversations] that concludes our live coverage from the 30th annual Chicago Tribune printers row lit fest. You can watch all of these events tonight starting at 12 a. M. Eastern. [inaudible conversations] cspan2, providing live coverage of the u. S. Senate floor proceedings and key Public Policy events. And every weekend, booktv. Now for 15 years the only Television Network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch us in hd, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. Booktv is on facebook and twitter. Like and follow us for book industry news, booktv schedule updates, behindthescenes looks at author events and to interact with authors during Live Television programs. Here are a few of booktvs posts from this past week. We tweeted on the content of Hillary Clintons soon to be published memoir, hard choices. On facebook we posted a Washington Post article about the swearing in of u. S. Ambassador susie levine on an ereader with a digital version of the u. S. Constitution. We tweeted and posted our author programs on Tiananmen Square in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the protests. The author talks can be viewed at booktv. Org. And we want to know what youre reading this summer. Send us a tweet, post on our facebook wall or send us an email telling us whats on your Summer Reading list. Also, watch all weekend long to see what prominent washingtonians are reading. Follow us on twitter booktv, and like us on facebook, facebook. Com booktv, for more news about the world of publishing and whats happening on booktv. Up next from booktvs trip to salt lake city, utah, we take a tour of the book collections at ken sanders rare books. You know, i dont, i dont recall a time in my life that i wasnt immersed in books. I dont know that when i was a child you would, could accurately say i was in the rare book business, but i was obsessed with comic books as a kid in grade school, and so i would, like, hustle and trade em and barter em and buy one for a nickel and sell it for a dime even in grade school. Just not the idea to buy and sell em, but to get more comics for my collection. The bookstore that were in downtown salt lake now we discovered and moved in here, my daughter and i, my daughter melissa and i moved in here some 17 years ago. We are offered books every single day. Most days we buy from a few dozen to a few hundred books, though i can definitely get out of control when buying books. I did a recent house call a month ago and bought 45,000 books. Took me about a week to haul them all out of the house. At some point the physics of it all, hauling in ten times more books than i sell into this store, is going to catch up with me. And probably this whole place will just sink into the swamp or something underneath. And therell just be this empty, vacant hole here. Well over 90, probably 95 of the material thats offered to us we turn down. The single biggest reason is condition. You can have a thousand dollar book in poor condition, and getting 100 out of it is difficult. If its falling apart, if its incomplete, theres just we dont go there. Its the hardest thing to learn whether youre a collector or a dealer in the Antiquarian Book trade is condition is the most important thing. So thats a big one. And, you know, the general public, they think a book depending on your own age and perspective, a book from the 1950s or 1900 is considered old. Well, age unless youre talking about books printed prior to 1501 age has got nothing to do with value. Just while weve been talking, a gentleman came in here and showed my rare book man, kent, a old family bible from, you know, 100, 150 years ago. I can tell that just glancing at it while were sitting here chatting, and theyre worthless. But people think theyre great treasures because if a books a hundred years old, it has to be valuable, doesnt it . You know . We have been printing, producing bibles for more than five centuryies. The best selling book in the world. And then i try to find a nice theres not, theres only, at this point ive given up on creative, but a nice way to tell them that their family bible is going to have a hot more sentimental a lot more isntmental value to them than Intrinsic Value in the marketplace. People bringing unusual and unique books in here doesnt happen every day, but it does happen. And being in the book trade, its something that you live for, to see something youve never seen before. Thats what partly this is all about. And it has happened a number of times. Probably one of the most memorable ones is with an obscure mormon book called the book of commandments. Its an 1833 precursor to one of the three mormon books of doctrine and theology. The week the book of mormon, of course, 1830, is the first x. The second is the 1835 dockman covenants. This is a precursor to the dnc, as we call it, called the book of commandments. It was destroyed by an angry, antimormon mob, and the type, the press and the pages were thrown out the one doe. Out the window. And the story is some mormon girls gathered up the pages under their long skirts and hid in the cornfield with them, and the surviving copies of that book to this day are made up from those blownaway pages, if you will. To date, 1 70plus years later, there are 29 known copies of that book that have surfaced. The majority of those copies are incomplete, and a young 20something man and his wife came in here many, many years ago, in fact, at the old store before this one, so 20 years ago, and he had three books from, that his dad had given him from grandmas estate, they were this a little drawer. They were all lds books, mormon books, one of them was the book of commandments. I said, i dont want to get your hopes up, i need to take this and colate it and make certain its authentic, and but the if it were, and i simply told the young man and his wife that it was a sixfigure book, and he left the store. A couple of days later, he came back with his father who was somewhat incredulous, and i said, well, again, ive got to authenticate it. But, yeah, this book is worth 100,000 plus. They left it on consignment. I researched it, i made certain it was authentic. Turns out it was we coallated it collated it, it was only 60 complete, and we sold it then, that many years ago, for a couple of hundred thousand dollars. The book of commandments today is the rarest mormon book, and its worth well over a Million Dollars. I found it in a flea market in upstate new york, and i really dont know much about it. I looked it up online, and i couldnt find much information. I think its in german. That could be why just pictures, and they all seem to feature the same guy. I thought it was really cool looking, pretty much the only reason i bought it, especially for 2. The book that you found is called das werk, this is the 1928 First Edition in german of a masterpiece. Its in really beautiful condition. Its value at retail would be a thousand to 1500. Wow. Antiques road show, eight years ago i think this is my eighth or ninth season with them. I think 1997 was the first one. A few weeks this was their second time antiques road show had come to salt lake city. The producer, sam farrell, called me on the phone and interviewed me about coming and being a book and manuscripts appraiser for them. He said, ive been calling around trying to find someone to do this, because they had learned, i think, from their first time in salt lake that they really needed to have somebody aboard that knew something about a mormon material. Theres three appraisers at the book table. Antiques road show appraises in approximately 25ish categories, theres about maybe 7080 appraisers per city. And they give maybe four, five, six thousand pairs of tickets out. So collectively were seeing 12,000 items possibly. And collections too. Most of it is just run of the mill, remarkable material thats never, ever going to get gill med or aired filmed or aired. So just like daytoday here in the store, you just live for somebody sitting down thats got some extraordinary item that you know something about, and between the two the guest and the appraiser, you can have a conversation and tell a story. And thats so much fun. Some guests can be very difficult. The vast majority of them are absolutely wonderful, and theyre very understanding when, you mean, im not going to be on tv . Every once in a while you get a surly one, and i learned early, early on there is no percentage in arguing with a guest be on the antiques roadshow. Only bad things will come of it. So i just try and find a work around. I had probably a teenage boy one time hand me a paperback of to kill a mockingbird. It was a First Edition, 1962. Well, you know the old saying a little knowledge is a dangerous thing . The young man was absolutely right, harper lees famous novel was published in 1962. And that would be the correct First Edition. But rather than try and explain to him that the First Edition is a hardbound in a dust jacket, i asked him, i said, you know, youre right, harper lee, blah, blah, blah, 1962. So open your book up. I try and get them to do it. I say look at the copyright page for me. Read what it says here. Copyright, 1962. Okay, below that. Oh, published in 1973. See . You have the 1973. Now ive gotten him to verbalize it. So now ive got him on my side. This is the 1973 edition. Oh, and by the way, this is a paperback edition. The First Edition of the novel was a hard bound in a dust jacket and would only have the 1962 date. And that way i get out of arguing with the guest. Let me say this about Antiquarian Book selling, we live in this far distant corner of the universe that almost no one inhabits, and those of us whether were institution ally brains, private librarians, private collectors or