>> very expensive. every day but it's occupied or not costs money to maintain. and seeberger was the chairman of that particular committee. he was at this seminar. and i was present because they were celebrating the museum of the city of new york at an exhibit. and they said do you have a question? i was in the audience and i said yes, did i do the right thing, everyone said absolutely. but i didn't. why? because the symbolic values to the black community was far more important than, i think he was actually $9 million that we saved, aside from health care. but it was the most costly hospital in the system with the worst hospital care. i could have been a hero in the black community if i had saved it. instead, they said no, medical care is bad and we're wasting $9 million. i was on several programs a long time ago, and he said what's the worst thing you did in terms of you regret. i said nobody asked me the question. i volunteered because i believe it was. from the point of view of symbolism and sometimes war -- were important than substance. now, unfortunately nobody told us what the time limit is. i think we should take some questions. >> mr. mayor, if someone asked me a close friend who left down at the end of your regime and came back in 2010, asked me, what changes have taken place in new york in terms of the pace, the social life, the problems, the general couple and visual changes that you can observe during that period from mayor koch is term of office to today? would you comment on what those might be? thank you. >> firstly, new york city, new york city is so far ahead and any other city in america as it relates to coming out of recessions and then ultimately able to resume where it was when it was at the peak of its career in a very positive way. when you look at the city today and you read that 10% of all the jobs created in the united states in the last quarter were created in new york city, that's incredible. just incredible. i think new york city's population is about 3% of the united states. and so we are way ahead in terms of prosperity, current and yet to come. but the most important thing that mayor bloomberg has done, which he gets very little credit for, is he's changed the whole tone of racial relations in the city. to the best of my knowledge, there simply is no racial problem in this city. there was, not just that which we refer to under my administration, for the reasons i'm giving you, but under giuliani, under david dinkins who was there. mike bloomberg changed it, and the question always will exist how did he do it? it's his personality. he's not -- he's a man of vision, but he's also a person who is a great technician and does not show great emotion. and that's helpful. that's simply helpful. early on when he entered city hall, al sharpton was coming out and he went over to him. and introduced himself. that was wonderful to do. al sharpton and i are very good friends. whenever we're together, the first thing he will say to people is he made me famous. he arrested me. [laughter] and it is true. in 1978 he came down to city hall, and he didn't have an appointment. i said i will see him anyway. yes, what can i do? i didn't know him well, reverend. he brought in about 25 other black ministers, and he said we are here with a petition that we want you to sign. and i said can i read it? now. i can't take it with me? read it now. all right. so i read, and it is, you promised to give all summer jobs, the federal government provided 60,000 summer jobs to the city, which were minimum wage and what i did you change what they did before me, i put it all on the computer and it was a lottery where as before i came in, he would sign the jobs to people and they give it out. and i remember a preset to me, we know that good kids are. we want to give those jobs out. so i wanted to lock them in and i said, father, there are no bad kids. of course, that's a lie. [laughter] but the fact is that i thought fairness required the distributed on a lottery basis. sign up everybody, 120,000 kids. we assigned only 60,000 would get jobs, lottery. no favoritism. so i said i can do that. i can't do that. then he said, the second one was that you commit yourself to, i think it was $50 billion in reparations to the black community for slavery. so i try to dissuade him from continuing by saying, let me know, if you don't signed i'm going to sit down and not let anybody in or out of your office, three other ministers jointed. i said you can't do that. you can pick it outside on the steps. know, he sits down. so the police officer is standing there. and i say to them, to the police officer, we moved them. well, nobody at city hall under been told to remove anybody. and the police officer whispers to me, what if they resist? [laughter] i say, have you never heard the word arrest? arrested them. and they were arrested in. then i get telegrams from every member of congress, how dare you a recipe for black ministers? how dare you? i'm saying to myself, this is crazy stuff. you can't allow lawlessness at the city hall. and the prevention of access by others who want to see the mayor and other commissioners. but in any event, sharpton and i over the years became good friends and have worked on and are currently working on a project. when he ever talks about he says one can't he made me famous, and number two, he never stopped talking to me. which was true. i always reached out. i'm very proud of that. so, too long an answer to a very short question. the cd is in far greater shape, good shape than it's ever been outside of the effects of the recession, but compared with the rest of the united states. >> all right, next question. [inaudible] >> i'm also death, partially. >> i just want to talk about that very difficult situation with eleanor bumpers. you handled it well. i just want to tell you that. >> eleanor bumpers situation was simply this, this was a woman who was behind in her rent, a recluse perceived as in need of mental assistance, who, rumor had it, was cooking light, l. y. d., to resist the cops who might be coming in to her apartment to evict her. they came in and she -- i think it was three cops they came in, and she attempted to stab with a big bread knife, and under the protocol, under the protocol there was one officer who had i think the shotgun, that was their protocol, and when she sought to stab a police officer, he shot her and he killed her. very sad. terrible. the case -- every time there is a shooting, not just a killing, the shooting by a cop it goes to the district attorney. and my recollection is, is a long time ago, there was an indictment and there was a trial and the cops, the one who shot him was exonerated. now, the police officer was found to have protected under the police officer from being injured, which is his job. now, why was it that there wasn't some other way to deal with this? by the way, she was clearly in need of help, the bathtub was filled with feces. i mean, it was awful. my recollection is she said ronald reagan had put it there. well, -- >> she was clearly someone who needed a good deal of help, and you know, the background of the case i think what is really tragic. and i think one of the reasons people reacted strongly against the administration at the time was because clearly the social services had not been held up the way it should have been to help somebody who was in that desperate -- >> i would say the reason was that they didn't use another method to remove her. i mean, there were some who said just let her stay there. how do you let somebody stay there in their feces and not eating? i mean, maybe that's not the humane way to approach someone who is in need of assistance, but what they did before, before they changed the protocol was they used nets and they would throw a net over somebody, and then people said that so dehumanizing. that it was safe. you to a net over some and then you didn't have to worry about how you removed them if you needed to remove them. but they ended the protocol. and now i'll bet the protocol is let them starve until they would come out on their own. >> i don't know what the current practice is. probably that's what it is. >> could you comment on the mayor having a third term and everything that -- >> i supported that. from the very beginning, i was forced term limits, but always for 12 years. and i am for that today, but it's going to revert back to two terms. now, mayor bloomberg chose to have the city council change a law created by referendum. people thinks that's terrible. it's not terrible at law. the law that we have says that you can adopt a law by the city council. you can adopt a by referendum, or you can adopt it by having the state legislature just impose its will with it often does on the city of new york. i thought that it was important that he be given an opportunity to run. and what was interesting was the outcome. the outcome was, everybody thought he was going to do a runaway election, and i think he won by four or five points is my recollection. and the reason is very simple. at least as i see it. a huge number of people were very angry that he didn't seek to have a referendum change the law, and they wanted to punish them but they knew if they went to the polls they would have to vote for him because there was no question that he was far and away the best equipped to serve the city. in my judgment was the judgment of most people, so that's a huge people who didn't go to the polls goes they wanted to punish him and deprive them of their vote. the second large number that he lost were those who said what does he need me for come he's 15 points ahead according to the polls he's going to win handily. why should i have to go to the polls? so you take those two groups. he was deprived of them and suffered a very small margin of victory compared with the dollars spent. but i voted for him. i supported him and i campaigned for him. >> okay, we have done i think the one more quick question, and that's it. >> your honor, you have a famous question that you've asked many, many years. and i think most of us you will agree, not all because it's new york, but i think that most -- >> give me their names last night. >> i think most of us will agree that you are doing just fine. [applause] >> thank you very, very much. >> that's it. thank you all for coming. >> thank you. for more information visit tenement.org. >> with you at the national press club talking with maurine beasley about her new book "eleanor roosevelt: transformative first lady." can you tell me what aspects of her life you concentrated on? >> yes. this book concentrates on the way out of the roosevelt wrote a script for firstly. ever -- every first letter says al or has either follow the script or hasn't followed the script but at least they've had to read descriptor deadhead you know about it. lots of books on eleanor roosevelt but what this book does is tell what she did in the white house to make the job of first lady more than just that of a hostess or somebody with interest perhaps in a cause or to. she'd really made the first ladyship a potent part of the american presidency. >> so was the script that she wrote giving the first lady our role to play in policy? >> the script showed what a first lady to do. description oh that the first lady makes the job of the president to live into one in which she could promote the administration. she could show the public that the presidency was interested in individuals. she was the public face of her husband, a political program, the new deal. but because she traveled so much and because she would had and made love of the people, she personalized the presidency and she made it a lot more than just passing laws. she made it a way of connecting with people. >> did you come upon any facts that you had briefly known about her in your research? >> in doing the research for the book i was struck by the way her personal life impacted on the way that she developed the role of the first lady. for example, when she first became first lady she had some reservations about this because she said i just don't want to sit in the white house and poured tea. at the time she had a friend, a newspaper reporter, a political reporter for "the associated press." and it was her who introduced eleanor to the plight of miners in west virginia they were living in horrible circumstance. so one of eleanor's first projects as first lady was to try to do something about these miners come and set up a model community called arthur dale. but she probably wouldn't have gotten interested in arthur dale had it not been for lorena hickok. similarly, before the second world war eleanor had a very warm personal relationship with a young man named joe lasch was a socialist and a leader of the student movement. and eleanor had always been interested in young people but because of this very warm relationship, she became especially involved in causes of young people and international student work and ways of trying to get young people as part of the political process. also in doing so, because he had started communism, in fact i think he was a communist at one point, she learned a lot about communism. she said she did it and the faction learned so much about communists prepared her later on in the united nations to know how to deal with them. >> thank you very much for your time. >> booktv is on twitter. follow as a regular updates on our programming and news on nonfiction books and authors. twitter.com/booktv. very that people are now startingo >> thomas, what do you think about hip-hop now? collee >> sunk to new lows. the inspiration for this book started thinking about the ideas [laughter] >> the inspiration for this book -- i started thinking about the ideas -- >> sunk to new lows, you say? >> i do. i started writing this book -- well, i wrote the op-ed in 2007. and i believe the dominant artists at the time -- not the sole artist but the artists that were really driving the media coverage of the genre and that were really setting the cultural tone were soulja boy and others. if you compare that either to like the so-called gangsta rappers of the early '90s or jay-z or biggie that's such a decline in artistic quality. >> so you're cool with biggie. >> i have problems with biggie but i think he had a lot more complexity than what you see right now. i am kind of interested in watching -- in watching a guy like drake. but i don't think that, you know, one artist guides an entire culture. >> so you say it sunk to new lows. explain to me why you feel that way. i mean, these are our street poets, okay? why do you feel that they've sunk to new lows if they are expressing their reality? >> well, it's debatable if they're expressing their reality. a lot of them are simply propagating some of the worst stereotypes about black people. that ever existed. [applause] >> but if that's their reality, should they be silent? >> it's not many of their realities. some of them do have pretty gritty realities. >> but there's been a movie about biggie and we can clearly see that he rapped in the streets. >> biggie was a guy who observed more other realities than he rapped about his own. i lived in the fort green area of brooklyn for a few years and the part of clinton hill that biggie comes from is quite nice compared to the parts of the rural south where a lot of -- it's much nicer than what james baldwin grew up in and ralph ellison grew up and far more -- >> the guy was a drug dealer. >> i grew up in the suburbs around guys who chose to deal drugs because it was very cool. >> right, right. >> his mother was a school teacher and he didn't to have deal drugs to feed himself. >> right, but that was his choice -- >> it was, exactly. >> so let me ask you this. what is good hip hop to you? >> well, i want -- i want to be very clear about this. my book is not about music. it's not -- it's not a critique of the artistic merit of hip hop which i don't dispute. >> well, let me repeat your title. losing my cool: how a father's love and 15,000 books beat hip hop culture. >> it's about a system of values that the music doesn't create but it provides a soundtrack and an echo chamber -- it magnifies often and it glorifies and romanticizes these things i'm not -- a lot of older black critics of hip hop have a problem with hip hop on a musical level and find it inferior of black music. that's not my feeling at haul i'm trying to attack ideas and cultural values and critique them and talk about what i really see as the secular religion of hip hop which is it's a way of living. it's even a way of reaching for a cup of water. it's a way of greeting someone in the street. it's a way of dismissing certain ideas that's not real. i'm not talking about whether an artist like andre 3000 has ability because clearly he does. and i think that the music -- i wouldn't even need to critique the culture if the music was trash because one of the reasons the culture is so powerful and seductive and the music -- the culture is aesthetically pleaseing in a lot of ways. >> but that's the history of african-american music in a sense -- >> well, not really. i mean, if you listen to a love supreme by john coulter there's no similarity in something like gucci mane and the burr print, too. [applause] >> so -- am a john coltrane fan. >> me too. >> i am. so i want to go back my question which i want you to answer directly. what would be good hip hop? >> i could -- we could spend the rest of the panel listing good hip hop. >> what would be good hip hop since you're saying it's -- >> good hip hop music is like reasonable doubt by jay-z. it's ready to die by biggie schmaltz. now, is the content and the message that's involved in some of that great music poison, yeah, it is. if you try to live your life the way jay-z instructs >> to watch this program in its entirety go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name at the top left of the screen and click search yo your. >> up next retired major general ira hunt recounts the u.s. army's 9th infantry division's operations in the mekong river delta region of vietnam for several months in 1968-1969. major general hunt former chief of staff of the 9th infantry division recalls the divisions mission and details plans that were used to combat guerrilla warfare. he presents his book at the 2010 association of the u.s. army meeting held at the washington convention center in washington, d.c.. >> thank you for coming. in my book, the sort out the ninth division by employ all sorts of intelligence coupled aggressive innovative operations was able to compete in combat operations. that also include examples of the bravery and dedication of the ninth division soldiers. the ninth division is operations research, we concentrate on obtaining results, the key is results, of all activity. each activity had a result. so the ratio then of the input to the output were normally measurable and we use those and then to measure how effective we would be. the war in vietnam was always about lands and people. the north vietnamese and all other papers that we want to have land and people. the government of vietnam, south vietnam water land and people to maintain their sovereignty. and so if that's the case, it was, been the focus of the north vietnamese its primary focus is always on the delta. the delta is a flat bit of land where we were covered with rice, water everywhere. you could walk 400 yards without crossing a stream. inundated completely. in 1965 the government of south did not do things are going bad in the delta. the north are taking our rice crop. we want an american unit there. that was approved by the government. they said with two simulations. one, you have to locate these unit deep into the territory and has to be on the water. on the water because they had heard the french a