Accompanied by coffee and biscuits. Carmichael bookstore in louisville, kentucky will be opening early at 8 00 a. M. July 14th offering the book for sale along with complementary biscuits and tea. Downers grove illinois, andersons bookshop posting a Book Release Party monday evening that includes copies of the book for sale at midnight. And Harvard Bookstore in cambridge, massachusetts will be staying open until midnight providing customers with their first chance to purchase domes at a watchman. That is what some bookstores across the country are doing to mark the release of harper lees dose at a watchman. For more news and to stay up follow us on booktv. Holly bailey struck a tornado that struck her home town in 2013. Is the fifth storm to hit there in 15 years ended grew to over a mile wide with winds over 200 miles an hour. Thank you everyone for coming we are happy to have you. To 9 we are here with holly bailey who is a National Correspondent at yahoo news now covering the Boston Marathon bombing trial. She is a former White House Correspondent for newsweek and her work has appeared in entertainment weekly, Texas Monthly and oklahoma today. Tonight she will be reading from and discussing her new book the mercy of the sky the story of a tornado which came out yesterday from viking press and provide inside account of the deadly tornado that hit more, oklahoma in may of 2013. In conversation with holly bailey is Daniel Klaidman, Deputy Editor of yahoo news, received an editorial operation. Before that he was National Political correspondent for the daily beast and newsweek. He was newsweeks managing editor for 20062011 and before that was Magazine Washington Bureau chief for 20012006. Hes also the author of kill or capture, the war on terror and the soul of the obama presidency. A quick housekeeping note, during the q a when we open up to the audience there will be a microphone to pass around so if you could wait for the microphone to get to you before you start asking your questions that would be great. I think we will start with Daniel Klaidman who would like to say a few words about holly bailey. Please give a warm welcome to Daniel Klaidman. [applause] thanks for being here. I have had the honor of working with holly bailey on of about 12 years, mostly on. I am her editor now at yahoo news where she is of vital part of this exciting news operation that we are building. I had to give a plug for yahoo news. I hired holly bailey as an intern at newsweek she said late 2002. She started in 2003. We were stepping up for the war and we needed a great researcher. And over time she rose and rose and ultimately became newsweeks White House Correspondent. I like to tell the story about how i hired her pure lee on the strength of her cover letter, which she talked about her passion of journalism and how she grew up reading news we cant always wanted to work for a news magazine but one sentence drew my attention, it was in bold letters ended said and i am not a prima donna. And i thought she is tired. I wont say why that made her different from all colleagues. The more important reason we are here tonight, which was her unique and really special qualities as a reporter, qualities that led her to write this terrific and really important book and we are gathered here it tonight. Holly bailey was just different. She came from oklahoma from the bible belt she talked a little differently she had a different perspective on politics and the news, not in terms of ideology. To this day i have no idea what her politics are. Literally i couldnt say that about every reporter worked with. She was curious, not dated, she is skeptical but not cynical, and she always has this keen sense of the absurdity of politics. And how we cover it. Sometimes she never had not mocking tone of the way she wrote about them. Bookworks and personality. And revealing in securities to understand them. She was interested in the human dimension of stories and how public figures and ordinary people dealt with adversity and tragedy. She has always known how to walk that fine line in reporting between empathy and the attachment and that is a hard thing to do and all these qualities come shining through in this book about this monster tornado that ripped through more oklahoma on may 20th, 2013, leaving 24 people dead ten children, seven, and in the mercy of the sky the story of a tornado we see how unforgiving the weather and the fury of Mother Nature forged the identity of a people. And gave them the strange mixture of resilience and fatalism, courage and selflessness, faith and humor, sometimes gallows humor which i think is the kind of survival strategy and she also writes about the whole culture that grows up that grew up around tornadoes, these weather men who took on a kind of almost mythical status because they saved lives. And the scientists at the National Weather service who plumbed the science of forecasting and storm mitigation. Of course the Storm Chasers seeking thrills and tempting fate. As i said before through it all she always evokes the humanity, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things to survive. So holly bailey, congratulations and lets talk about the book. [applause] thanks. Why is this book . How did you come to right the mercy of the sky the story of a tornado and why was that important story to tell . I had gone to more the day after the may 20th tornado. I was sitting in my office, in 1999, there were many tornadoes hitting more, many over the years. I was watching it on television and i was with my editor who worked at yahoo at the time and i said this looks exactly like this horrible 1989 tornado that hit previously. People are gathering and looking at the screen and it is shocking. We made plans for me to go there. I remember driving down the street, a st. I had driven so many times before. I sternly at that point did not have in the back of my mind i want to write a book about this some day but we had stories of extraordinary things that happened at day. A tornado wiped out two schools and we were hearing about teachers that had risked their lives to save these kids. So many stories, in the back of my mind i wanted to tell more of those stories and at the same time i was getting emails from the east coast, why do you live there . Why would anyone choose to live in an area like this where you could literally be killed by a storm like this every spring . That was the genesis of the book and i started thinking about it a few weeks later and a larger way of wanting to tell that story. I want to get to the question of why people stay there and that has a lot about the people in more and oklahoma. As we pointed out, tell us a little bit about this monster tornado, what is it, the designation . E f 5 which is the highest, the highest it can be. Tell us all little bit about the destructive power of a tornado like this . To back up there was as i mentioned a few minutes ago a tornado that hit more in 1999 and back then it was the a few jeter scale measures tornadoes, and essentials that tornado was so strong and killed 44 people and at some point had the strongest winds ever recorded on the face of the ears which is 300 miles an hour so they literally revamped the fujita scale. Then we had another e f 5 which is the highest on the scale and at one point it was more than a mile wide, 200 mile per hour winds, the same path the 1989 tornado went. Other tornadoes went the same path why are we getting hit so much and then a 20th once again here they are. There are wonderful characters in the book and i talk about this kind of culture that these tornadoes have created. One of the characters is a guy named gary england and he is of window into the whole culture of whether men and the role they play an oklahoma and tell us about him and all little bit about the role they play. Gary england, the New York Times did a profile of him describing him as the weather god of oklahoma and he really is. It is more than just that he is this figure in oklahoma where he was basically people knew him and credited him for saving their lives. You was this guy that once he grew up in the farm, became obsessed with the weather when the birth of television was happening in oklahoma and he saw television as a way of protecting people from the storm and he was the first person to really push to have doppler radar, on a commercial television station that did not exist before gary england did it. He was the first to forecast the tornado using that and a tv station, inventing various Different Things you see across the country, a little thing on the television that doesnt interrupt your Television Show to tell you when a severe thunderstorm is coming. Everything about modernday whether technology that you see in coverage today, that is something that happened in Oklahoma City largely because of gary england so gary england when i was a kid i went to gary england for a while. In oklahoma you grow up and my mom, i remember being very young and her always telling me to watch out for this guy. You appreciate it is beautiful but it can turn on you been in in an instant. Knowing that sort of obsession with the weather. Your mother used to take you to the library when you were a little girl and you read about tornadoes. I read verys book about tornadoes and still have my copy those terrible twisters is what it was called. They i had a cloud at was telling me what kind of clouds they were. I was one of those kids. Gary england when i think about whether it is synonymous. You think about the storms, you think about gary england. As you are looking out the window or sitting on the porch with my grandmother, you would hear gary england in the background on television warning you what was coming. Very calm lee go to your safe spot, take your tornado precautions he would say he was just this person that was everywhere in every way identified with the storm. Take this back to may 20th, their briefings about this tornado that were different, that people could already tell were different. First of all it was an outbreak of weather for three days and so people who had been hit by storms settle times a day before there was a tornado the night before that skirted more everybody knew on that monday they woke up knowing there was going to be a tornado probably sat day. Gary england in the spring time told me he never sleeps because he has this anxiety of when is the next storm going to hit. That is one of the surprising things for me, learning i knew it on one level i knew how personal some of the weather man in oklahoma took storms it was their lives. But gary england really took it personally. After the 1999 storm that killed over 40 people he could not understand how that had happened, that tornado had been on television, they scramble helicopters in the sky to chase it so he was haunted by the fact that there were so many people killed. He blamed himself in many ways so he pulled autopsy reports to find out how people died so he could inform his own reporting about storms to protect people and so as they read getting ready for may 20th he was up all night basically still worrying about how many people died from the storm the night before and he woke up and looked at the radar and there was nothing going on but he went to his front door and opened it and describe the feeling that the gulf of mexico was on his doorstep because it was so you did and you could feel in the air that something was coming. I think everybody woke up that morning thinking something was going to happen but what was different about the may 20th storm is it came so much earlier in the middle of the day when kids were still at school. They had warned about that but i dont think anybody believed it would actually happen. Because tornadoes typically touchdown in the early evening . Yes. Usually most tornadoes hit around 5 00 or 6 00 or even later when just the heat and ground interact with humidity in the air but this one, for threatening clouds started firing up at 1 30 or 2 00 so the local television stations have already been on the air for hours just waiting and watching for the storm to come. Some of your other characters were teachers. Tell us about them. In the path of the storm their retreat to Elementary Schools briarwood elementary and plaza elementary and earlier in the day the National Weather service, the local television stations had been warning that there was a possibility that some the bad weather could hit before school was out so many parents were checking out their kids and so forth but there are a lot of kids, their parents could come them teachers were is there sort of getting ready to take shelter where they could which was in oklahoma in the hallways because most schools do not have storm shelters which is something that is shocking to people outside oklahoma but again most storms dont hit that early in the day so they dont give thought to that. Tell us what happened to those teachers when the storm hit. There was one of them who was covered under rubble. Tell us about that day and what happened. The tornado got basically touched the ground newscastle, this rural area, southwestern more in Oklahoma City so basically the usual path through more so people knew it was coming so the tornadoes sirens had been warning people a tornado was going to happen about an hour before it actually got to them and the storm sirens went off and the teachers basically took their kids out into the hallways and were putting pillows on them and blankets and anything they could to cover their heads but once it got to the schools the storm did this strange thing where it sort of just stopped. It became of grinders, they describe it where it just stopped and just stood there for a little bit and then it came through and hit briarwood and stopped again. And briarwood by the way was completely demolished but no one died which is a complete miracle. Then it stopped again before it hit plaza which is half a mile away and that teachers inside the schools could actually hear it. It was so loud they could hear houses being chewed up. There was this anxiety, many wondering if they were going to see their families again. It was just talking to them about that was quite emotional and quite terrible because traumatic for them. Many stories from inside the school but one of thing i think about is the sixth grade teacher, her husband saw the storm, he was to the north of it and called and said the hallway is not going to protect you. You need to find someplace else. They ran into a printer clauses where they could barely fit and the doorknob was broken. She was holding on to the door and this kid turned to her and set are we going to die . She is a sixth grade teacher and said i couldnt lie to them. She said i dont know but i knew god was bigger than this storm so they started Singing Church praise songs as it got closer and closer, they would sing louder and louder and the group the roof was talk of a room they were in and at one point the door knob twisted her wrists because she was trying to hold onto it and it was being sucked away but they lived. Lets talk a little bit about the resilience of the people in more and in oklahoma more generally. And theyre cutting strategies and get to this question about after something as horrific as this series of tornadoes why they say. Talk about that a little bit. There is a lot of conversation about the resilience of the oklahoma after the Oklahoma City bombing. That is where people notice that oklahoma was a little different than others because that happens, and People United with each other and quite some time for people. They made sure everybody in the community was welcome and getting through that time, many people credit the bombing in some ways for the strength they have shown for these storms. You make the point in the book that it goes even further back. That is my theory. Some people dont agree with me. The dust bowl. Tornadoes are not the worst Natural Disaster to happen. There are a lot of people who stayed through the dust bowl, going to california or elsewhere who stayed and rode it out and a moment of pride and stood up to Mother Nature. That is the attitude, people dont want to have Mother Nature get the best of them. Even though they have this threat of losing their house and many do, they rebuilt and their own city. One of the kings that is hard to understand, these tornados are occurring at a greater pace, there are more and more of the man the lot of people assume that is Climate Change. What do Scientists Say about this . You spent a lot of time talking to scientist with the National Weather service. What did you learn about tornados . Why they happened and why they are happening as much as theyre happening now . Going back to my childhood, we are talking a few hundred yards wide, now they are a mile wide or more. I asked a lot of scientists, all of them based in oklahoma because they are there to study the storm, why is this happening and they literally dont know. Howard bluesign at the university of oklahoma inspired the movie twister with one of his inventions and something in the path of tornadoes and hope sensors would be sucked up into it. He has spent his entire life studying tornados and trying to understand it. He describes tornadoes as this last frontier of atmospheric science. He described tornadoes to me as like an iceberg where you only see the final but theres so much more going on in the clouds and they still dont know why certain storms create a tornado whereas some dont. I asked him point blank joy you think is Climate Change . He said he didnt know. On some ways it would suggest that Climate Change has something to do with why tornadoes are bigger and occurring with more frequency but at the same time he pointed out to meet that a drought which has been happening in oklahoma, you would think that would curb the committee would curb these storms. How are people in Tornado Alley adapted to this situation . I assume they have storm shelters in schools . A few. People there, more people in oklahoma especially up lose a city and more, storm shelters at their home. I was surprised to learn after that storm that many people to rebuild after that tornado did not have storm shelters. I was stunned by it that but after this one everyone got a storm shelter. Several thousand in more now. There is a cute debate in oklahoma about the role of storm shelters, theres limited education, the parents are in favor of more the Elementary School that was destroyed at a safe room to their schools, there are so many other schools in more and largely in oklahoma the dont have shelters. Sort of extraordinary. How do you explain that . You would think when Something Like this happens, seven children die in one school there would be an enormous political will to do something about it. Oklahoma is a conservative state and they talk a lot about money and last year governor mary fallon said she supported the concept of it but legislators and other parts of the state that were not prone to tornadoes say why we spending our tax dollars on that . Should be a local issue. People in more say we think this is a state kyushu said there is a future battle, bureaucracy. Reading the book what comes through over and over again is this ambiguous relationship with tornadoes. There is this sense of as you put it the beauty of this weather. You talk about how there is almost a kind of narrative arc to these stories people almost watch them like entertainment. I think you used the word entertainment. What is that about . It goes back to oklahoma is fascinated with the weather. It used to be when i was a kid it took a lot to interrupt television for us form but now if there is word that there is even a wall cloud, usually stations go to back to that coverage and deploy Storm Chasers and Storm Chasers have cameras on their cars, i described it in the book as a reality show. In many ways it is because they get these videos. Average people go out with their own i phone and start shooting at and sell that footage to station after the fact. There is a lot of amateur video that showed up after rid of the may 20th tornado. Made me think a little bit about war and people who cover war, the phenomenon of becoming addicted to the adrenaline of war and i dont know think about Storm Chasers, think about people who go out there because they want to see it. Is there an element of that do you think . Yes. I think there is definitely an excitement. I have a strong feeling about tease people and care for them and worry about them. And its funny every storm season my mother and i have a routine where she lives in Oklahoma City, near the path of most of those storms, and every time something blows up, i call her. Are you okay . Happened twice last week. She was in the shelter. Host interesting to me i dont remember which storm it was, maybe this one. You were at conference in new york. Guest it was the week after the moore tornado. Host and you called your mom because there had been another one, right . Guest yeah. I got a text from a guy id been dating. He said theres another toward tornado on the ground, and i literally pulled up on my app on my phone pause i have a weather app for Oklahoma City, and lo and bee behold a huge toward watt tornado was coming,. Host it was 11 days later. You couldnt reach her. Thats understandable. She didnt call you and she loves you but it made me think well are they so used to this, is it so commonplace that you dont immediately think to call your family to let them know youre okay . Guest theyre very plow blase. And i couldnt reach her for quit some time, and that tornado that hit was 11 days after and that tornado was a monster. It was wider than the island of manhattan, which is i cant even imagine seeing Something Like that coming toward you and a lot of Storm Chasers were killed including a leading tornado scientist in the world. So finally i reached her the next day and she was so blase. I reached her actually because my exboyfriend went and drive by her house to make sure it was still standing. I figured it probably was. But he went by and took a picture. Then i finally got in touch with her. She was just so blase. She said i just drove down the street and awe a trampoline in a tree. Host i love this. Guest this is why you never boy buy a trampoline in oklahoma because youll always end up owning someone elses. I was like, okay, glad youre alive. Host you described the trampoline as impaled guest on a tree. Last week i saw after one of the storms, there was a picture of a trampoline that was in someones yard. Shes right. Host i want to open it up to questions. This made my think of one thing. Some really wonderful writing in this book, and some great images. One of them you talk about how the storms can in a sort of bizarre, almost surreal way spare buildings or and you have one image of it hit a bowling alley. What happened. Guest a direct hit on a bowling alley. So complete rubble, and then you would see inside on one of the lanes all the bowling pins were standing there. Host neatly lined up. Guest lined up ready for a strike. Yeah. Host last question for you which is there are going to be more tornadoes. Its inevitable. Is do you think that oklahoma that moore what have they done to make this place more physically resilient and do you think theyve done enough or has politics gotten in the way of it. Guest politics actually has worked very well. The city of moore one of the things that is great about them, they are and sad at the same time theyre professionals at rebuilding and so they clear the rubble away really quickly. After this storm they passed a really strong one of the strongest building codes in the country, establishing that houses have to be able to withstand a tornado basically of at least i think its 150 milesperhour, but one of the strongest codes in the country. So they are Building Back stronger but its sort of funny. Last year when i was there for the first never, theyre rebuilding the hospital that took a direct hit. And the mayor at the time joked were this is so great this is happening but we know well get hit again. This is moore oklahoma. They just know another storm is coming. Questions . Hello. I was wondering you talked a little bit about being in touch with your mom after storms, and i was wondering what she thinks of the book in general and what your family thinks about you being a tornado expert now. My mom is really excited. I sent her an early copy of the book and she called me, beyond thrilled which is really great. I the first chapter of the book is all about my family, and my aunts house got hit and crazy things happened at her house. The storm the night before the moore toward, the tornado public up her animals he farm animals her cows, and took them across to another pasture a half mile away and they were alive. Its crazy. And so the storm deposited a cat on her doorstep, which is now her pet. But she talked to me my aunt told me about watching the tornado come to her house and the crazy things she was thinking. And she was running to the basement. They already had the important papers but she kept fixating on this bottle of perfume she and my mom found at an antiquing thing, and she was obsessed and couldnt complainie, and she was rushing around, trying to find it. This 1990s perfume and she found it and took it in the basement with her as she saw the tornado coming, and she said the tornado was like boiling black water coming towards her house. So it damaged her husband richmond ripped the roof off. And i thought what was it about the perfume . She said, i dont know. I guess they can sprinkle a few drops on my dead body and id be okay. So that explains my family is strange when it comes the weather. Host i have a great followup question. You said before that you really care and love these people, but youre writing about and i know because you are empathetic, i know you were also worried about their reaction to the book. What were you worried about and what kind of response have you gotten so far . Guest one of the things i really worried about whenever i went back to interview people in moore they were so gracious, even though they had been through horrific, horrific things and they still struggle. One of the teachers has to put on headphones wherever the toward sirens test or whenever the wind blows frankly what she told me, and because she is still not over that day. When i interviewed a lot of people there was a lot of emotion, and i didnt want to traumatize them anymore. I didnt want them to have to relive this horrible day in their life. But i have had its been pretty positive. One of the people told me it was easy to me to talk to about it, it help me. So that was is no to hear. And everybody that i have heard from in moore theyre happy and excited they have been written about, which makes me happy. More about this culture of resilience in moore. I think i know its been hit more than ten times and a certain period of years its the Tornado Alley and people expect it and people have this pride in sticking around, but i wonder about anyone who leaves and if you interviewed anyone who made the tough choice to move away and how that is viewed in the community, i lost my house three times now and i cant do it again. Are there people who want to stay but cant . Actually, i only know after the 201 storm there was only one family i know of that actually left. Everybody else rebuilt. Including people who lost their kids. There was one horrible story of a baby being sucked out of a mothers arms, and she and her husband chose to stay in moore because they had other kids and didnt want to disturb their stability. There were some families that chose to go elsewhere. In fact i actually interviewed one woman who rebuilt her house right across the treat from plaza towers and she told me after the storm is was never going to go back to moore, then next week when the second tornado came, they actually happened to be right in the path of that tornado too and she just was like, i dont i think anywhere you go youre in danger. Especially in oklahoma. Then she sort of made it as, if i were to good to california, im in danger of earthquakes and go to the east coast ill have a hurricane hit me. Thats part of what the feeling is. This sort of thing something bad can happen to you anywhere, and they really cast it as a couple of days a year at that time are really bad but the rest of the year is great. You spoke a little bit about the weather forecaster and how he was a huge star in the area. Im curious if there were any other quirky areas of, like, microeconomy that was just based on rebuilding tornadoes or being warned about them or tourism or something. Yes there is tourism. Been those that chase tornadoes after the movie twister that was really big and still big. Thats a real big concern the reads are so clogged right now with people that are chasing the storm. After the may 31st tornado that hit a few days after the moore one somebody theres an app which Storm Chasers use which looks like pacman. You can look and see where other Storm Chasers are and they litllly pulled up this map is and was crawling, almost like tetra, so many Storm Chasers in that storm. There is this sort of people that chase storms and they go out there and shoot video and then they try to sell it to other people or put it on their web site. Theres that happening. And then after one of the things in terms of rebuilding, moore has become pretty savvy since theyve been hit so often about keeping people from coming in and gouging people in terms of replacing their cars or homes. Theyve gotten a pretty good handle on that. One of the things moore has actually done is that they have this existing contract that they passed decades ago to have people come in and clean up because they know another storm will hit. They dont have someone coming in saying ill charge you this outrageous x amount of money to clean up this area. They have it all ready to go for the next storm. Question in the back. Were learning about tornadoes or living with them, and did you also look at the earthquake situation in oklahoma now, the way in the last 15 years its i mean, think its gone from its less than 15 years. Yes and its so dramatic. I lived in oklahoma for a while and it is i dont understand, i guess the idea that people stay there because the weather doesnt seem like a place to stay. Yes. So, then i think they sort of denial of what the oil industry has done and how the conservative political there are wealthy people there but they have not taken care of the native people, the situation just seems odd that this is fraught with problems, i would think. How did you see the tornado and the earthquake did you study the earthquake issue i wrote a story last year about the earthquake for yahoo actually because you not only have tornadoes but then you have these earthquakes happening and now they are blaming it on oil and gas and the drilling there and so but a year ago they were still some mystery. They didnt really have it for sure if it was that. So there was a lot of joking about, you know, end times in oklahoma because people are so have so much faith and they were like, well, the next thing is going to be the playing of locusts and that actually did happen a few months later. It gets back to people kind of joke about this stuff in a way as a coping mechanism in a way. So one of the lowest thats right part of the debate over storm shelters, because the schools in moore have such limited money and want to put it towards education and they dont necessarily spend that money to build shelters. So thats why have been asking the state for help in that. But crazily hasnt happened. One last question. Talked about resilience. And also talked about trauma. So my question is, do a lot of people who go through who experience these tornadoes and all the destruction and death and violence, is there a ptsd issue . There are people who get psychological help, get counseling . Is that a big deal . Something they resist . Guest after the tornado particularly there was a lot of counseling. Even people at the National Weather service had counselors come in because they its their job to keep a cool head when these things happen, but people forget that the National Weather service is right there in Tornado Alley and some of these people have family there. So its so much stress so they had to bring in counselors. There was a lot of counselors that descended on oklahoma to help the teachers and the kids, and throughout the school year, the followup school year, the kid did things like art cryotherapy. Imy simpleso son who was i