History. He wins and 72 over mcgovern , the biggest landslide in history. In fact, at dec. 72 he says someone asked not to write a book about all of this. And having the most successful presidency of all time. But, boy, how the mighty have fallen. That story, of constantly looking at the interest, how someone can be the most powerful person and take that kind of cataclysmic fall, and these tapes are forming of just a part of the story. They need to be supplemented with memo, oral history. I wanted to think john dean for coming here to austin and providing your insight and firsthand knowledge and stealing the buck. [applause] and he wrote a biography of warren harding. [laughter] [inaudible question] [applause] [inaudible conversations] and that was a conversation about the nixon presidency. We will be back with more live coverage from the texas book festival after this short break. Coming up next a memoir. [inaudible conversations] interested in American History . Watch American History television every weekend. Visit cspan. Org history for more information. After reagan was diagnosed with alzheimers he said to an aged, well, it must have some positive side. I will need a new friend every day. The great optimism a president reagan. The book reveals that the reason that John Hinckley was able to shoot president reagan is that the Reagan White House staff overruled the secret service to let spectators within 15 feet of reagan as he came out of the washington hilton, totally and screamed. And the secret service did not want that, but they caved spineless lee to what the Reagan White House wanted. So ironically it was reagans own staff that really caused the assassination attempt, and this has never come out before. It is confirmed on the record both by the agent who was assigned to teach what they call the reagan attempt at the Training Facility and also by peter well as san who did a report for the Treasury Department when he was general counsel. The secret service was within treasury. The report never said that it was reagans white house staff that was responsible for the rest. He later became white House Counsel under reagan and confirmed on the record as well that that is exactly what happened. Going back, Lyndon Johnson was totally out of control. Of course, back then the press never reported any of this. He would defecate in front of aids as he was being briefed. He would hold a press conference at his ranch in texas and urinate in front of reporters, including female reporters. When he went into air force one he had this routine of a nearly stripping naked as soon as cnns in the airplane, even with his own daughters and wife there in the airplane. One day when he was Vice President s, johnson was late for an appointment with jfk, being driven by the secret service from the capitol to the white house at about 5 00 p. M. , rush hour, and he was late. And so he told the secret Service Agent who was driving to drive up on the sidewalk, get theyre faster. The agent, of course, refused. The sidewalk was pedestrians. Johnson wrote up a newspaper ended the agent on the side of the head and said, your fired. One agent said, if the guy were not president he would be in a mental hospital. It really is true, and yet we entrusted our country in the lives of our military would to vietnam under his direction to the sky who was really a maniac. And so when you really peel back the onion here, you find that we really have made a lot of poor judgments when it comes to collecting our president s and vicepresident. You can watch this and other programs online at cspan. Org. Book tv covers hundreds of of their programs throughout the country all year long. Here is a look at some of the events we will be attending this week. Look for these programs to air in the near future on book tv 91. Furthermore, go to our website, booktv. Org, and visit upcoming programs. [inaudible conversations] and you are looking at a live picture in between sessions of the 19th annual texas book festival. More from austin, texas in just a minute. [inaudible conversations] the nuance of the movie contagion, a virus that comes out of nowhere, and we did not know until 2002 that the fruit bats are maintaining a whole spectrum of viruses. We learned that when the stars came along. We knew that rabieslike viruses were carried by a vampire bats and some cases elsewhere of very closely related to the virus is being contracted as a result of debt at bites, but before 2002 that was all we knew. Then 2002 and, we think it is influenza, it is not they worked it out and about three months. In the end what it was was a virus that came out of bats, went into all little animal in southern china, being used as food and, it comes out of the forest areas, and infected humans and in those live in the markets, and chinese new year, and it spread quickly, it spread to a hong kong, singapore, toronto, and they were the main areas infected in east asia. The only area out of asia was actually toronto, and it killed about 800 people. Normally in the United States 2540000 people die every year of influenza. This killed 800 people in total. Because it was a new infection and not identified initially and people were dying horribly culpable and hospitals were dying, medical personnel were dying, there was a great deal of fear. In the end it cost about 50 billion in Economic Loss with people not traveling, using hotels, buying stuff. And so it was a Major Economic problem, and that is really what alerted the world to the fact that can be extremely dangerous. That really convinced various steps to five governments that we have to take them very seriously. It also convince the people in real power but even they could be infected in. So that was one of the reasons we took the h5 and one soul seriously. Now we have been contagion we have the same situation, a virus that infects the pig. The pig is a budget by a chef. The chef shakes hands with could post a row who then, even though she is not feeling well me, goes back to the u. S. , stops off a bit in chicago where she has something of a liaison and then she was back to the family in minneapolis. And this is worse than any we have ever seen to anyone whod gets infected, dyes, and in fact lots of other people, the most hideous virus in the world but is of very good informant about infectious disease. It is well made, and the actual control of the science was given to e in lipton, a very good and virus disease medical new at columbia university, so generally pretty realistic. A few things were unrealistic like the fact that theyre killing hundreds of thousand people dying horribly and very quickly they say they have three people working and the problem. But it shows the cdc at work, how important the cdc is, and that is a big point in my pandemic book. We maintain this statute of Public Health services because they are extraordinarily important in protecting us against serious infections. 70s costcutting times of the things that we all do as citizens, but particularly in the u. S. , is to make sure that the Public Health services are fully maintained because their the sorts of things that can be knocked off by cost cutters and people dont even know this until something goes wrong. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Here is some of the latest news about the publishing industry. The cia took issue with the content of former director leon panetta memoir. Mr. Panetta allowed his publisher to start editing the book before receiving final approval from the agency. Book publishers simon and schuster has agreed on a multiyear deal with amazon of the pricing and Profit Margins of its books. The New York Times reports that simon and schuster, with some limited exceptions , will control thebook pricing. Bin bradley died at the age of 93. He oversaw the watergate coverage and author of the mark a good life published in 1995. Stay uptodate on news about the publishing world by electing s on facebook at facebook. Com booktv or follow us on twitter booktv. You can also visit our website, booktv. Org, and click on news about books. Book tv live coverage of the 2014 texas book festival continues with columnist and Television Commentator charles blow. He will be speaking about his new memoir, fire shut up in my bones. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] so let me just start and then move on very quickly. So thank you very much for joining yes at the 19th annual texas book festival. Please make sure that your cell phones are off. It is a great privilege to be on the grounds, so be respectful. Immediately following the session charles will be signing it books purchased at the festival at the signing tent. For those of the he did not get to take a picture with him on the podium, that might be your moment. Hang around long enough. He did not promise to stay as long as anyone was to, but im sure he will take some. It is a privilege for me to be moderating this panel with charles blow. Just quickly, i wont give you a lot about me, but to give you a context i am a writer living in austin and have a book coming out next year about people who have gone from the left to the right of the political spectrum and i am affiliated with the university of texas at austin in a variety of ways. Anyway, enough about me. Charles blow, most of you probably know this that is why you are year is a new york columnist and cnn commentator, a former art director of the times, a graduate of rambling state university, father of three amazing children and taking your word for that, but i believe you. They are amazing. A resident of brooklyn command possibly if you read the book may be the only has to person in the history of the New York Times who singlehandedly convince them to take a position entirely designed around yes. Is anybody follow that . I dont know. I dont want to know. I want to call on to it as long as i can. I wanted to read you one kind of a quotation about the book from a writer who i admire a lot. It is kind of meaningful. This is henry louis gates, a professor at harvard. He says, fire shut up in my bones is a profoundly moving memoir of the coming of age of charles blow as a black boy in the deep south, of the way his gifted and sensitive intelligence slowly begins to kindle becoming a blaze with wonder at the world and his place in it. Above all this is the story of a courageous leader honest man are rising at his decision to stop operating at the river and just be the notion, a vast, deep, and exactly where it was always meant to be. Many of you have probably read the book. For those of you that have not, that is an apt description. I think we will start, charles will read a short passage from his book. We will do q a for 20 minutes and then open it up to questions from the audience. You want to set it up. Sure. So danielle and i just met. He was giving me suggestions for what he thought i should read. I thought they were great. They were, like, very dynamic. Hazing, trauma, guns, which i think our fantastic only i have not read those and what i have been reading. So when i get a chance to read i read things that, for me, are more provocative of language and growing up in the south and the way that i considered it. And i am going to read the passage probably right after wears is where he suggested, chapter one, and i think it just says so much about the complicated web of family. It says a lot about poverty. It says a lot about pain and longing, and it also struck a point right out of the gate for the book about the fallibility of child created memory, which i wanted to make sure that you understood that from the beginning that i was investigating the memories themselves. So the first memory i have in the world is of death and tears, that is how i would mark the beginning of my life, the way people mark the end of one. My family had gathered at poppa joes house because the increase was slipping away, only i did not register it that way. For some reason i thought it was her birthday. Poppa joe was my great grandfather, a man graced with his late up wife who passed the days in a hospital bed squeezed into their former again and looking out through a large picture window that faces the street watching the world that she was leaving, literally passing nearby. We were in the living room when he called to us. I think she is about to go. That did not know what that meant. I thought it was time to give her a gift. With that, my family filed into her room, surrounding her with love, hearts have the. Mine was light. I thought we were about to give her Something Special. They knew Something Special was about to be taken away. She peacefully drew her last breath as her head tilted and she fell still. No dramatic death rattle, no lastminute concession. She drifted quietly from now until forever, a beautiful life, obviously surrendered, but i recorded it differently. I thought she had turned to see a gift that was not there and something went tragically wrong. She took the air with there. No one could breeze. They could only scream. My mother was overcome. She ran from the house, and i ran behind her. She threw herself to the ground, her back rocking. And i issued the hawks away. I was too young to know what it meant to die, but tears i knew, sarraute flooded out of my mother like a dam had broken. She would soon rebuild. As a child i would never see her cry again. I spent most of my life believing my 3yearold version of what happened that day and tell as a adult i recounted the story to my mother, and she said this sort set the story straight. Are gathering was not to celebrate the day she was born but to accept it was her day to die. [applause] i will try to restrain might tabloid sensibility. One of the passages i had asked charles to read is about him getting haze fairly violently in his return. I am trying to restrain. [laughter] listing to that passage brought something up for me, something personal which is just, the book is so obviously deeply personal. A vulnerable. Youre talking about things in the book, child abuse, complicated section malady that most of us are not super comfortable having out there in the world. One of the questions is, what prompted you to us write the book . Not even in the slightest. One year i was having drinks with editors, and they knew that i was a single dad. Well, you have to write something for our fathers day issue. I wrote this short thing about having to learn to do my daughters hair. Then i thought to myself, i have a million stories from my life. I should start to write them down and maybe sell them to another magazine to publish. I started to write. I did not get around to selling. But it was wanting to see them written. One of the great lessons about writing is that people say you write the book you want to read. I was just writing things i wanted to read. Is there a moment where it becomes something that you know that is the book, that you know youre going to write as a book. Their is a moment like that. In 2009 there were 211 yearold boys, one was in boston named carl, and one was in georgia named charlene. They had both endured years of homophobic bullying, 11 years old, and within ten days of each other they both hung themselves and their own homes know the pain, know what it feels like to be bullied, ideas of suicide , and it cannot continue to be this im kind of pain in the world. And maybe if i read it i will be able to explain what that feels like. The thing about small children is, they do not always have language to explain or express what theyre feeling, to ask for help, and i thought, as an adult, i have that language. It is the one thing that i have. The other thing about small children, particularly those who commit suicide sadly is that they do not always even right suicide notes, so you dont there is no way to even know what led them to the point. And i thought that the book, in a way, would be there suicide note, their swan song, there eulogy about what the other half looks like, what it looks like when you walk up to the precipitous but dont go over and walked back from it and it may not be easy, and it may not be always neatly wrapped, but it can be beautiful. You can learn to love yourself, and you can love others. And you can have a family, if you so choose, and you can live a life that is full and rich and leaves a mark on the world. And so i wanted to write that. The other side was, i was apparent. And, you know, at least one of my kids was about their age at that time. I just could not understand the kind of overwhelming sorrow that a parent must feel if you are in your own home and call a child to dinner and they do not come, go into the room, and you have to cut down the lifeless body of an 11yearold child. I dont know how you even go on from that. It is such an overwhelming feeling. I thought, no parent should ever have to feel that. Every parent needs to understand the depth of pain and sorrow that a child can feel. If they cant, i can. One question i had on that topic, was it difficult for you to write, i guess, either in this sense that it was painful to go back into some of these memories, dramatic memories or in the sense that these were things that you have processed but had not been public with . I think youre right in the sense that they were kind of settled issues for me, but because they were settled issues it was not painful. It was very easy to write about. I have so much distance between i mean, this book ostensibly in is when i am 21 years old, two decades ago, a difference between me and the little boy i am writing about, so i can write it as i remembered it and the feelings i had but also with enough distance that it is almost representative tosh, i am reporting on myself as much as i am writing of of the feeling of being in those moments. So i think that, you know, if i had tried to write i am not sure would have been able to because it would have been so raw and so present in my mind, but now because i had enough distance i could write about it easily and then not the passion not overtake me. I sort of have one thing the struck me. You are talking in provocative terms about your childhood. Youre only six years older than me. I grew up in a small city in the northeast. Felt like you were talking about a different time, almost a different country, and i guess the question that i have is, and maybe you can describe where youre from a little bit, but did you ever have a feeling was there a moment, a time warp that you felt you were stepping into a different in to sort of the 21st century or the late 20th century, or