Suffering much worse as we have strategic interest but it would be nice if we would stand up for our principles or at least call things as everyone else in the world would see them. The second thing i would like to end on a hopeful note some of me just observe this. We have had a situation where for 40 years the arab world was the only region in the world, the only significant however you drew the map in a world thed where there wasnt a single democracy, and now according to Freedom House i think correctly judged there is a democracy. Its transitionaits transitionas elements of fragility and things we should be concerned about. We shouldnt take it for granted. That is precisely my point. If i were an american policymaker i would be saying okay what is the economic agenda for embracing and lifting up this economy and for strengthening the state, for partnering with the Civil Society and Political Institutions . You have to start somewhere. This country is crucially important i think to the future of the democracy and freedom throughout the world. And the final thing is you know, i really do believe and i think my colleagues agree we are still in the very early stages here in terms of a process of struggle for using one of the big words dignity throughout the region coming into this isnt going away. There are many historical events that are going to unfold in the years and decades to come that i think are going to rock these regimes or reduce them to come to terms with the demands for the accountability and popular sovereignty. So we are going to have to do another edition of this bookmark. That is the one thing i think we can say for sure. My coeditor, thank you very much and all of the staff at the journaof thejournal of democrace National Endowment for democracy and the three panelists, thank you all. [applause] craig nelson talks about the history of the era stretching from the discovery of the race to the fall of the soviet union. He profiles such figures as marie currie, albert einstein, curtis lemay and comer robert mcnamara, Ronald Reagan and mikhail gorbachev. This onehou one hour and ten ms program is next on booktv. I remember going to the library when i was around 11yearsold and picking out a big beautifully illustrated book printed in 1956. It was entitled our friend, the atom by german science author. The preface featured a parable about a man that wrote to the corruptincorrupting lamp that bt forth a mighty genie that stood for Atomic Energy. He called the person he must be handled carefully for he could either be a tireless uncomplaining servant, or the most fearful and a terrible master the man had ever known. The man didnt want this responsibility. But the genie told him now that he had been free he couldnt put him back in the bottle he had to decide how to use and. Tonights presentation of the age of reagans details visit much richer digital form and tolls among its stories scientists whose interest in the atom sometimes called within and out of hitlers persecution drove from germany the very first discovery could have given him a street of the world and that in the past of the apocalyptiapocalyptic were takeo nuclear research. In this story as it is told by the speaker tonight defy him and data with disaster at chernobyl one as large. The power is like most human discoveries neither a good or evil of itself. But very much the product of how we use what we have discovered. Craig nelson has written books on many topics. Rocket man told the story of the apollo missions. Thomas paine profiled a philosopher. The first heroes was about the raid on japan in the early part of her work too. And lets get lost features the authors travels to unusual parts of the world and be on experiences that accompany them. Other things that he has written have appeared in vanity fair, the wall street journal and so on. He lives not far from here in greenwich village. Please welcome the author of the age of radiance, craig nelson. [applause] thank you so kindly. Its a thrill to be invited to the New York Public Library since ive been a patriot ever since. And of course as a historian coming it is a major part of my work. And my own personal library, my Branch Library on mulberry street and one of the first books i remember reading as a child was a dr. Seuss book called to think i saw it on mulberry street. And my labor reason the building where david bowie lives and theres nothing ithere is nothi, this dr. Seuss book as good as seeing david bowie on mulberry street. So we can see already how history holds in on itself and that is how things we are going to be talking about. Tonight, now five years ago when i first started working on this book if you asked me what radiation was i would say its dangerous and its infectious commits cancercausing and evil and this is probably what many of you think to. I think those still bu that they are tempered with other ideas. The first thing i learned about is radiation is made up caused by atom that are really sort of chubby and adorable and fat for their own good. They are so fat that they break the bond of nature that creates the Material World and spit out little pieces of themselves. That is what it is is little fat at him spitting out either little subatomic particles were gamma rays. We think of as the harley with the starlets of the periodic table. They are unstable and bulimic. So there they are. The thing about it create this charm where she used to go into her lab first thing in the morning for the sun would come out she would leave out her radiance of it would be glowing like these aquatic fireflies on the walls but then someone noticed after she put it away the walls were still glowing. One person noticed when you pick up a silver plutonium it was warm like a puppy and it was strange to pick up this metal that would be cool but instead it was warm like a piece of the solution at los alamos for holding is too long was called high amputation so its sort of a scary puppy that we are talking about here. But really the entire subatomic world has this disturbing quality. We are talking about radiation over time as a halflife and we think about this inert object sending out these dangerous rays. But really the entire subatomic world is like that. So im going to give you one example. Lets say you are flying in a plane and you look out the window and see a bunch of specs and because you are a worldclass physicist you take out your rule and start to create a portrait of the way the specs appear and disappear from through the speed of them and after a while youve created something of an idea of mathematics of the specs and then you take out your binoculars and realize you have been flying over water and sea whitecaps and you know they are powered by waves. These are worldclass physicists and do know that there is a music of the spheres of nature but there isnt a lot of rhythm and it is the polls. So you take a whole new set of calculations based on the waves. And this is however some atomic world we can use to things arise and are binoculars in this example to noticed particles, the whitecaps are the invisible forces powered and this is how something in the subatomic world can be both a particle and wave. So all of it is creepy and disturbing. But before we get too much of the science, i want to back up a little bit. When this great man was born and when he died, the day that the battle, but the one that started history has a different idea altogether. He said history is about one thing and one thing only. And that is have i got a story for you. Once upon a time there was a little girl who was the youngest of five children in the family that had once been prosperous but had fallen on hard times and when she was 17 vista sister said that they gave you. You go work me and separately for two years while i go to the university and then i will turn around and do the same thing for you. And this is an especially bizarre idea at the time because in that moment and in that time and place it was illegal for women over the age of 12 to get an education. And they were getting around that by attending something called the Floating University. Which floated so the authorities could track down who was running it and this Floating University to do fantastic job because she got into medical school at the university of paris and off she went and off she went to becoming a nanny to support her. The first couple of jobs she gets she is very unhappy and terrible and then she starts working for them and they are a fantastic family that run a sugarbeet plantation about 60 kilometers outside and they love her and the six kids are just adorable and then the oldest son comes home from school and hes kashmir and they folded over here and they folded over heels in love. Im going to tell my parents we are going to get married. And he goes and does that. In fact the parents say no way youre not marrying this little nobody. You are marrying up. They see each other secretly for six months and the parents find out and they fire her. So now she goes back and is living at her Fathers House and she is heartbroken. And the letter comes. I finished school and im engaged in now is your turn to come to paris. But she is so in love she cant do it. She cant give up the first half of her life and then finally, the letter arrives. Forget it. My parents are never going to let me marry you. Just forget it. Decades later he would become a famous mathematician. And he would be frequently seen in the main square of the city staring up at the enormous statute of the National Hero of poland which is who she grew up to be because she left. Succumb i love the story so much because it really shows you first of all dont always follow your heart especially if you are 19, but it really shows you what would have happened if she had stayed with him and never left poland have a future would have been changed. Because she would go on to discover the fundamental forces of radioactivity. She would discover that plutonium and she would realize that radiation was a force that didnt come from the outside it came from within and they would discover that because it has such an effect on the fastgrowing cells you can use it to treat cancer. But now i know all of you have heard the wonderful story and what a fantastic couple they were for each other. But lets forget about that and talk about somebody else. Here is the only woman with einstein. They were now being dressers. Hes so important in th into sig next to einstein in this picture they had a white house into the letters back and further so passionate by this beginning early that he was run over by a car for probably addicted by working with radioactive material. But anyway, so they are madly in love and its like she has a whole second life except it is a problem and that of course paul is married and even though his wife doesnt mind if she minded that his mistress is the most famous woman in france coming into the wife has a brother and he runs a newspaper and they talk about how she is english emigrant and shes jewish. He says what should i do . Ago gets the prize . But anyway that relationship falls apart as all of you in the audience guess he goes back to his wife and before that relationship ends and he breaks her heart all over again he says ive got this gogetter and you should hire him to work in your lab come and she does hire him. And after about a year you will never know what happens. And he has a heart attack and desist you are not going to marry. In fact, she makes him one of the first prenups in history. If anything happens they are going to keep all of the radium. But she was wrong. They have a fantastic marriage and in fact they are more important to us today because they discovered artificial radiation which is a fundamental element of Nuclear Medicine and its important medicine in todays microscope and the reason i told you this long giant story is because the end of the story marie was the first woman to win the prize in iran and her daughter was the second. After they discovered artificial asia and everybody around the world starts radiating everything into one group that especially becomes good at it as a villain chemist and his partner and none of you have ever heard of them even though she is of this history and modern times and i would like to let you her story. She was the first woman Professor University professor in the diversity. She was the second to receive an advanced degree in the history of the university of vienna and was running the Physics Institute in the most Important Research institution in the world when she was kicked out for having jewish ancestry. She ends up in sweden in the nick of time and there she is at the age of 60 all washed up area she doesnt speak spanish, her boss is jealous of her and hates her, she has no equipment, no help, she isnt being paid anything and feels completely washed out and alone and cannot believe this has happened to her. Her nephew comes for a visit and they have something called lutefisk. For those of you that havent eaten at its like when you go to the gas station and buy beef jerky that its made out of fish and has the consistency of jello. Its the worst thing theyve put in my mouth and ive put tarantula legs in my mouth. So they have this lutefisk and all she can talk about is her test ex partner and his findings. Because what hes doing is hes putting a stream of neutrons that uranium and hes getting bizarre results that no one understands and they think that maybe they are instruments that are wrong by the chemistry is wrong, they dont whats going on. And finally, lisa sits down on a log in the middle of a snowfall on a Christmas Day and she takes up a pencil and a piece of paper and she takes the uranium and how much it weighs and she takes the stuff that they are getting out of it and how much it weighs atomically. And then she applied einstein in the middle and it fits. She discovered fission. When he goes back he asked his neighbor biologist with a college when bacteria split and that is where fishing is discovered. What this triggered is an incredible sensation among the everglades who are fleeing because in the United States especially all of the sort of thing below american scientists are working on the radar. They dont care about fis fissi. What if they ge get an atomic bb and we dont have a . Said, normally americans were told the story of the making of the atomic bomb as being that einstein and oppenheimer notes and observations on the board. But in fact it took three of the most terrifying experiments in history to make these into the first one happened in the middle of the city of chicago. He was supposed to create the first atomic reactor but the people building the facility had a strike so the university of chicago president said we dont have football here anymore so no one is using our stadium. You could use that. This is where he created the First Nuclear reactor and i call it the third most dangerous experiment in history since the something had gone wrong with the reactor . But nothing went wrong. It was the most perfect experiment anyone had ever seen and he has that happened to take a patent. One thing happened on the soviet spies there was a translation issue so where he was for almost three decades the soviet union thought the First Nuclear reactor was spread in a pumpkin patch. [laughter] i know that some of you came here because you heard there was going to be a reading and i know that some of you are angry that i havent read anything so i will read a little bit for you at this time. In 1921 a young woman catherine was told that soon she would die. Catherine decided to spend the rest of her days as a chicago millionaire and the southwest on the page family ranch that late played in the desert of mariposa between the pecos river into the mountains named for the sunset where it peaks during incandescent. The following year with such a serious cough as the suspected tuberculosis but not his chainsmoking showed up at the ranch and she taught him how to write a course through the canyons and across the mesa and every kind of way. Bob returned with his brother frank and this time catherine and page whose death wouldnt come for decades and took the 9500 feet to a cabin with a fireplace stood at 154 acres of alpine meadow, fields of clover and heart stopping views of the river near the mountains. Hot dog, he said no catherine z. The boys convinced of their data to print th rent the place at lt robert would continue as an adult until he could buy it for 10,000 in 1947 he and frank went there every chance they could living or great dreams of the american west. Riding horsebac horseback thousf miles away to colorado, living on the vienna sausages, chocolate covered raisins cheese and whiskey. Now ladies here we have a lesson history can teach us. If you have a man that is the object of your interest and youryournot paying attention ty teaches you should consider trying chocolate covered raisins cheese and whiskey. [laughter] during one of his states out west, oppenheimer wrote back to a friend by two great loves are physics and mexico. Its a pity they cannot become mind. One of the areas he took a writer, catherine was a naval cannot create her and through the canyon with a stream along which cottonwood forest the canyon was named for the trees los alamos. And you know i grew up in a jungle town filled with swamp people so i just thought this was beautiful. So i certainly get to this part of the story. Now two kinds of bombs were made at los alamos. The first one was made from uranium coming and it was so simple engineering that they never tested it before dropping it on hiroshima. The first time it is tested as when it was detonated. Basically this bomb is a gun inside. With a shot of uranium from an super bowl of uranium and in order one problem they ha has they didnhaveis they didnt knh uranium they needed at each end of the device. So, although robert, the one that helped discover fission went off to the canyons and he created the second most dangerous experiment in American History where he created a guillotine device with a set of washers where he could change the size of the plug and another set of washers where he could change the size of the bowl and then he would drop the washers with his guillotine and they would pass through the bowl for a couple of seconds to create a very split second if super criticality. One american physicist said we are trying to come as close as we could do an atomic explosion without actually blowing ourselves up coming an