Tories, who didnt support the revolution sided with the british, were killed or driven off their lands, and on and on through american hoyt, as each immigrant group was kind of pulled into the country for labor, the chinese to build the railroads, the eastern europeans for the steel industry. Northern europeans for farming. And we knew all along there was great deal of hatred, prejudice that they werent like us, until they were us. And all of the people in this room come from those people. So, it is happening again and again, and i ten to write books a second question how was it . How would you like living in a horse stable in santa anita for months and then being transferred into tar paper shacks without plumbing, without heat without cooking facilities. In the most warren parts of america where the ten Relocation Centers were places no one ever lived before or ever would again. Tulie lake in california, is a lava bed. Manzanar was built on the driedup remains of owen valley of owens lake. One of the kids from l. A. Who went found out she was coming to tulie lake, packed they were allow ode to bring only what they could carry, which usually meant two suitcases. But she packed a bathing suit because she was going to tulie lake without knowing there had not been water in the lake for 500 years. As i said, i guess i write books in batches. I wrote a trilogy of president ial biographies, of kennedy, nixon, and reagan and the last book i did before this was about the berlin air lift. And i wrote that book because of abu ghraib. These were the better angels of our nature at that time, as lincoln said and i wrote the book because i did not feel that the america i grew up in and the america im hopelessly in love with, was the same as abu ghraib. Then as things escalated that was the angel side i wanted to keep islams out of i wanted to write about the dark history of america which was dramatized in these socalled relocation camps or pioneer colonies. And the beginning of the book really is about the toxic mix of fear racism, greed, and fear, racism greed, put out because the californians, led by the attorney general of the state, man named earl warren, wanted the land, the fishing boats at that time japanese accounted for 40 of the agriculture in the state of california. Of course when they were sent to the camps their Bank Accounts were frozen. So that they then lost all their land to foreclosure. To their caucasian neighbors. Which is what in many ways its all about. The first driver was the press including the newspaper that paid the rent for this room to say nothing of the hearst papers both here in l. A. And san francisco, who felt, although they got the line from earl warren that a jap is a jap and you cant trust them you cant tell them apart, and weve got to lock them up. The villains this not a book about japanese, its a book about americans on both sides of the barbed wire. As john mentioned, twothirds of the people incarcerated they were not interned. Thats a legal term meaning youre an alien. Twothirds of them were american insides, born in the u. S. A. Their parents could not no oriental could become a citizen of the United States between after the oriental exclusion act of 1924, until the japanese were allowed to apply for naturalization in 1952. After they had spent the better part or some of them of their lives in prisons. So that on the one side of the fence, the villains are people we revere, from the outroar, the fear that the press much of it made up the battle of los angeles was one of the famous battles of world war ii. You may remember when after 12 hours of firing shells, we still missed the enemy, which was a navy weather balloon. So that people were terrified. The press was feeding that. Politicians, as always, would follow the press, and among the people who come out as villains in the book, are franklin roosevelt, who signed the order putting the japanese into these camps, and a strain strange fellow, roosevelt, a hero but believer in thing like eugenics and felt that the japanese were 2,000 years behind caucasians. We learn that wasnt true. 2,000 years behind because of the shape of their skull. So he wanted to institute a National Program to change the shape of their skulls over 2,000 years so they wouldnt be so aggressive. Germans, he wanted them all castrated. Earl warren was the attorney general of california, and he was the one who sold the idea of putting the people into prison to the press. He made up maps showing how close japanese americans lived to military bases, to airfields, to forts to fuel depots to power lines without mentioning, of course, they had been there for 50 years. Before the bases were built or the power lines were sent. And earl warrens theory, which he articulated many times in the press and in before congress was that the fact that there was never a single act of japanese sabotage in world war ii, that was proof that they were planning a big one and it would all be directed from tokyo. Roger baldwin, the founder of the aclu forbid aclu attorneys he was a friend of roosevelts forbid any aclu attorneys to file suits which mentioned race as being a factor. In all of this. Of course race was the factor to many people. After all, we were fighting germany and italy at the same time and if we do the same thing to them as we did to the 120,000 japanese on the west coast, we would have had to build prison comps for 50 Million People prison camps for 50 Million People, including many of us in this room. But baldwin would not let the aclu attorneys mention race and the young ones the real civil libertarians, quit and the aclu almost collapsed over that. Walter lippmann then the greatest columnist in the country, best known columnist, most intellectual columnist in the best papers met with earl warren for a long lunch and then repeated almost word for word in two columns warrens arguments why the japanese should be put in concentration camps. Two days after the column. Roosevelt signed and gave him real cover with liberals roosevelt signed executive order 9066 which put the japanese behind japaneseamericans behind bashed wire. Edward r. Murrow, from the state of washington, gave a series of speeches arguing that when the west coast was bombed by the japanese, if you looked up a lot of them would be wearing university of washington sweat shirts or wearing university of washington rings. And finally, the cartoonist, the most liberal newspaper in the country, p. M. In new york, did a series of cartoons the most famous of which showed bucktoothed japanese coming down the whole coast and picking up dynamite and saying with telescopes looking for orders from tokyo. His name was dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss. Wow. Ill just finish the one thing. The living considers were horrible by any standards. They were worse than prisoner of war camps oregon camps, on the other hand, the americans deal with problems we, by moving on, and we did move on, and theres no doubt in my mind that brown v. Topeka which was written by the same earl warren desegregating public facilities in the south, was a direct effect redemption, of the incarceration. In his oral history berkeley does gigantic oral histories of california governors. In the sixth day of questioning amelia frye, the woman doing the questioning, at berkeley, finally said to warren, after talking about all his triumphs and i want to talk now about 19 what happenin 1942. Warren broke into tears walked out of the room and never came back. Richard reeves. [applause] well have a lance to come back to this in the question period. I would have thought it was impossible at this point to come up with a new store about Abraham Lincoln and the civil war. But Scott Martelle has succeeded. The author of four other books, including blood, passion, the ludlow massacre and class war in the northwestern west himself new book is the mad man and the assistant the strange life of the as sane of Abraham Lincoln. Welcome back scatter martelle last tuesday was the 1 other anniversary of the anation of Abraham Lincoln. Everybody know who killed him what John Wilkes Booth but the man who killed John Wilkes Booth would be the ultimate footnote to ahead. If a grad student told me they watched to write a ph. D dissertation in history on your subject, your topic week have said its impossible help was famous for ten minutes, not even 15 minutes, maybe it would be nice to know about him but youll never be able to get enough material. But you have done it. You have filed this guys life is immensely revealing about a lot of things in the American History, starting with the civil war and religion in the 19th 19th century, politics in the 19th century. But we didnt know any of that. You didnt know how it would be possible to write this when you started it. What made you think there was a whole book that could be written about korbet and how were you able to get enough material on this obscure guy to write this excellent book . I didnt really know i could at first. I just finished my previous book, which was about a guy who went to find John Paul Jones body in paris, missing for 100 years, beginning with the french revolution, and i was looking for another idealism had a couple of dry holes and my editor at the chicago retrue press send me an email and asked if i ever had or boston korbet. He castrated himself and killed John Wilkes Booth. If anything know anything about him, thats the only thing they know, he castrated him. So i thought im a journalist i can run with that. The rest doesnt matter. Right . But it wasnt quite that easy. It took a lot of digging around. Before we knew we had enough material for a book. I had a year to do this book, quick turnaround. So i researched, 40 years in the Daily Journal and i discovered that in 1878, he had done a homestead in kansas. He moved to kansas well after the war and while he was out he was porn in london, moved to new york, raised in new york city so he was a city kid and went to kansas to be a farmer and that worked out about as well as you expect it would. And he had spent nearly five months in the andersonville prison camp. That is an absolutely horror of a place and ruined his health. He decided to apply for a government pension military pension, and to do that you have to file all these affidavits and get people to write affidavits about what you were like when you were healthy, which is before the war. About the nature of the injuries and what his physical life was like now. So that was a treasure trove of material. The Pension Bureau record inside the national archives. And spoiler alert. Cocore bette disappeared from an insane asylum and a man claiming to be Boston Corbett saying get me declared uninsane, and the guy who was appointed guardian of his estate, realized this wasnt the real Boston Corbett so he began filing complaints and the government began investigating the guy and the big investigation came up who is the real Boston Corbett and the lawyer traveled to new jersey at one point to talk to people who knew corbett in the early part of his life and so the treasure trove of material from that stuff. And as corbetts guardian he had all of corbetts letters. So theres self hundred letters people had written to corbett. He had the pension file affidavits the investigator stuff. I knew him when he was in new york and healthy and 20. Little stories, and his ten minutes of fame was actually more like three hours. He was an early celebrity. So you read the newspapers from that era and there are stories all over the country about Boston Corbett, most wrong. So people were tracking him during that time. As that happened, there were these interesting memoirs and recollections, people who had been at andersonville with him. So as the historian that once you find where that little thread is to pull, i was amazed how much material was out there to get on him. Except for his early life. I sort of struck out london years. You told the Los Angeles Times in an interview you found yourself sympathetic to Boston Corbett. I wonder why that was and whether you thought that is important to making the book a success . If you go online and look at Boston Corbett you see the guy was a crazy religious zealot. I mentioned the selfcastration. He his wife died when he was young help was stilt a healthy young male. All in the book. But he had a sexual young mans libido and was a street creature and his libido kept getting in the way of his pros the tieding so hi took a pair of scissors one day we are on live tv here family hour. Not looking for a demonstration. And even worse is dinnertime on the east coast. Sorry about that. But after doing this, corbett went out to dinner and then went to a prayer meeting and then he came home and decided he ought to see a doctor and spent a month in a hospital in boston. And that is the ludicrous extreme because of his religious faith, and im not a person of faith but i began to build sympathy for him. He genuinely thought if he lived every minute of every hour of every day of every week of his life he could lead the perfect christian existence and he was living in new york, working as a finisher making no money and he was an alcoholic after his wife died. So we find drunks in the streets, pick them up, bring them back to his room, and dry them out, clean them up, get them sober, get them a job push them out, go find another one, and he lived his life like that you. Have to admire somebody with that kind of devotion to not saying im other christian but to actually living that daytoday. Liked the guy. Thank you scott mar tele. [applause] Edward Larson is win of the Pulitzer Prize in history for this book summer for the goads. The scopes trial and americas continuing debate over science and religion. He is University Professor of hit history at pepperdine and received the Richard RussellTeaching Award from the university of georgia himself new book which we are talking about today is the return of George Washington, 1783 to 1789. Please welcome to the l. A. Festival of books, ed larson. Scott wrote a book about a person nobody knows anything out. I looked in amazon, how many books with the name of George Washington in the title, 65,261. You have written one more. You are brave man, and we salute you for that. Most historians would regard this as impossible finding something new to say about George Washington but you have citiedded magnificently in this book, as the constitution, not a small thing yet somehow neglected by 55,261 other historians. How did you come up with this, and what exactly is new in your book . Well, thank you. Im glad you agree theres something new there what i do with my books the book you mentioned, the one that won the Pulitzer Prize, the scopes trial, fit that standard. What i do is i try to take a subject that people know a lot about, or at least think they know a lot about. This widely known, and find gaps in the historical research. So with the scopes book, for example, as much as we all knew it from the wonderful play and great movie, inherit the wind and from reading only yesterday. A classic book of the 1930s, no historianed a ever written a book about the scopes trial. So i was able to brick historical message to and it up pack it as an historian would and two of my biggest fans became bob lee and jerry lawrence, who wrote inherit the wind. He said we were really talk about mccarthyism and we used that vehicle. So i followed that up with a book on the galapagos island. But i dealt not focused on darwins work there but all the other scientific work done, and a lot of it i researched wright in this building because this is named for Allen Hancock and Allen Hancock, and the early usc was the main funder along with stanford, of research in the galapagos island and Allen Hancock would take his ship there every year, and so i got to read about that and learn all about that. And then similarly with the 1800 book the 1800 election book, because no one ever unpacked the 1800 election book as a current event, such as making of the president in 1960, and doing it that way rather than in a broad scope. Looking for gaps in the literature in the historical literature was and thats how i came to the washington book. I never thought id write a book about George Washington but what it was for years i taught American History at university of georgia for years, some when you teach American History as the survey card, you spend a couple days on the American Revolution and its all about George Washington and then you spend a couple days talking about the cob Confederation Period and the country was going to hell in a hand basket. The british had not evacuated the forts in the west and the frontiers people were making deals with the spanish to flip that way, and how vermont was conspiring with the british to leave america and join the join british canada, and of course, the rebellion, which frightened washington greatly in massachusetts, and the radical printing of paper money in rhode island and georgia, where there was chaos and then see the native americans armed by the british and spanish retaking most of georgia. Literally the country was physicalling apart and each of the states were sovereign unto themselves because we were under articles of cob Federation Confederation which gave no power to central government. They cant raise taxes they couldnt have an army. They cant ef