Good afternoon again. Please take your seats. Were trying to stay on time here. Id like to get started as soon as possible. Good afternoon. Im Malu Harrison i would like to welcome you back to this session. Miami book fair, 2017, if you are here this morning, and you know Miami Book Fair very well you know that book fair is presented by Miamidade College and thousands and thousands of volunteers among whom are students, faculty, staff, administrators, and many, many individuals from the community and from the corporate success tore as well. In fact, our corporate sponsor the main corporate sponsor is ohl, this year and were have been very, very grateful for its sponsorship and its support and were also grateful as ive mentioned in previous session to the circle of treads trends of Miami Book Fair i know youre here in abundance this year as you have been in past years, since 1984 when our book fair began and we would like to extend a special thank you to our circle of friends. And so without further adieu i would like to call mr. Jon to the podium help me welcome him from the sign endowment foundation. Thank you. Good afternoon my name is john o. On behalf of my aunt, dr. Ellen and her sister, my mother jill i would like to welcome you to the book fair event sponsored by the lilian sign memorial endowment. I have double pleasure of introducing endowment and sanders as well. Lilian was my grandmother. The intense of the endowment is to offer a presentation on a work of literary quality. It is a goal to enhance the l love literature as state of love of books and calming as a teacher many my grandmother treasured book she is kale to the Miami Book Fair every year. Since its founding, and often volunteered to work here. Shall have her background briefly in the 1930s she came to new york city to get her ma in education are from Columbia Teachers College with my grandfather, dr. Benjamin form oar education editor of the New York Times and their four daughters they moved to rockville center, then down to cane in 1971 born in milford, massachusetts a tough young life of a farmer a practical earth yi side one reason i knew know she would treasure sanders novel through the graveyard character mr. Sanders task us with deciding not just whether suffering, grove, regret, crippling regret or even warfare are goods or bad but whether these things are practical are they purposeful do they serve us . Will we take action . Roger the third instructs us all we can do is what we should. Sanders gives us additional gift of visiting lincoln a president upon whose shoulders these moral questions could truly rest. Reminding us what it looks like when it president could serve as moral compass of a nation. [applause] my grandmother would have loved this book mr. Sangd rs, im sure her ghost does. Even more she would have loved piecing it thank you on her and a half. Mr. George sanders is author of thine books including tenth of december which was a finalist for the National Book award, and won prize for best work of fiction in english and story prize that short story and guggenheim and excellence in short story elected to academy arts and sciences in 2013 named one of the worlds 100 most o influential people by Time Magazine teaches in Creative Writing Program in syracuse, university latest novel lincoln in the bah is winner of a 2017 man booker prize. From a seed [applause] from a seed of historical truth george spends love and loss that breaks free of its realistic historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying please help me welcome to the stage mr. George sanders. [applause] hi thank you so much for being here. I just i came here i called my wife she said where are you reading i said Miamidade College oh, i went there. Youve been after 30 yearses you can be surprised. But she often tells story she was a dancer in new york city and had sort of thinnish high school in a regular way made her way here and this is where her intellectual life opened up and first novel is come out in august so she sends her greetings to miamidade. This book was my first mofl but actually it was my First Published novel. Theres yeah. [laughter] theres this many years ago my wife and i met at syracuse students will, and many that romantic syracuse ambience we gotten engaged in three weeks married seven or eight months pregnant on honeymoon and then she had trouble with her regulate city and had to go to bed for five months of the pregnancy and happened with second daughter as well so by the time we had known each other two yearses are he had morphed from groovy beatnik to trembling aspiring suburbans failing. So in this period, you know, we were really broke and i was working at the tech writer, and during this time, a friend of mine got mard in mexico. And we scraped money together and i went down for the wedding and it was every young writers dream. It was in this beautiful part of mexico on the coast. The priest was a radical Catholic Priest from chicago. There was a male model surfer many many the Wedding Party which is, you know so i came back and to any shame i said this to my wife dont ask, dont tell worry youre sitting on a gold mine. Yeah using a big novel so i worked on it pretty much for a year straight and go to my job during the day and at night i would come home to drink this magical writers combination of a pot of coffee and half a bottle of boons farm if you [laughter] yeah. People still know that brands and work late into the night and i said this is how you do it and break out from this life into a better life. So at the end of that period, i had this novel, an just to let you you know in on its literary merit the title was eduardo, wedding so it was 700 pages. Yes. And i because i was at that time very much a fan so i i have to cut this down. Cut it down to 300 pages and then i said to my wife, i think you would be pleased with your results if you wouldnt mind reading it. So at your leisure she took it into a reading i was outside the door an honestly she must have been in paragraph four, and i looked and she was sitting like this [laughter]. We both knew how much that had cost our family, for me to do that for a year. So i started writing short stories and had some success with that. But right about so that was my first novel which i still have in my basement in syracuse if anybody wants to see it. [laughter] but, so about the same time that we were down in d. C. With our daughters who were maybe 2 and 3 or 4 at that age, at that time, and we were driving by Oak Hill Cemetery in georgetown, and my wifes cousin pointed up the hill to a crypt that was up there. And she said did you know thats where lincolns beloved son willie was buried back in the civil war . I had i didnt even know that hed had a son or that the son had died. Then she said, and, you know, the newspapers of the time wrote that lincoln had actually gone into the crypt on several occasions to somehow interact with the body. Some accounts said he actually held the body. So this stunned me, you know, and i thought, oh, god, that is that would be a great book. And then i thought the word novel and got cold shivers. But honestly, i had a writing teacher who said once if a young writer could know the difference between the book she thinks she should write and the books she should actually write, she could save herself about 30 years. [laughter] i had a little instinct that was not a book i was capable of taking on at that point, and actually i was right. If you know my work, its kind of scifi, a little edgy, and i just didnt see an intersection between the set of things i could do and things this book would require. So i kind of just backed off. And then, you know, many years went by. And every time that i would get into this place of artistic happiness like if i sold a story to the new yorker or something went well, that book would sort of come off the shadows, like [laughter] get thee behind me. [laughter] and finally about 2012 i had sold a book called tenth of december, a book of stories. It looked like it was going to do pretty well, and i just kind of had this midlife talk with myself. And i thought, you know, this lincoln idea has been bothering you for 20 years now. I tried it as a play for a while, i tried it as a thirdperson narrative one time, didnt work. But even so, it wouldnt go away. And so i thought, well, why am i so afraid of this in and the answers were sort of like this its too hard, its got too much potential to be a disaster, its too potentially beautiful, its about all the things that you actually think about every day, you know, your love for your family, your approaching death, all those things. And after a while, this voice was making a pretty good case that i should be writing it, not that i shouldnt. And i had this kind of vision of myself, you know, my own grave. And on the grave it said, you know, failed to do that which hi most wanted to which he most wanted to. Not so good. So i decided to give it a try. And, you know, im sure there are a lot of writers in the audience. And what you know is that a book always starts off in your mind easily accomplishable. Ill just type it up, you know . [laughter] but that book sucks, actually. [laughter] the book thats in your head that you know, you know every facet of it, if you just type that one up, its a disappointment. Now, why is this . I have a little, a little trio of mantras that i like to talk about this. One is by the great donald [inaudible] and he says in an essay called not knowing, the writer is that person who, embarking on huertasing, has no idea what to do. The second one, which i hope are there any kids here . Oh, yeah. Well, youre a little anyway, ill clean it up just for you, sir. Gerald stern said if you start out to write a poem about two dogs making love [laughter] and you write a poem about two dogs making love, then you wrote a poem about two dogs making love. [laughter] think about it. Not too much. [laughter] and then einstein, einstein all the the smarty pants did the elevated version. He he said this very profound thing that applies to science, certainly to art. No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception. So what this means is if you have a great idea about x and you march into your book confidently and write that book, everyones bummed out including you, including your reader. So youre hoping the book will confound you. The way it does that, in my experience, is through obvious obstructions, through inability to proceed past a certain point. In this case, the very first obstruction came very early. It was, okay, im doing it, im writing my lincoln book. And, again, if youre a writer, you know at that point something goes in search of a voice. Whats the voice i want to use. Well, the first choice, the obvious choice is ill do it in first person lincoln. Because hes the only one, actually the only living person in the story, really. Theres two other, but i didnt know that at that point. So lincoln, yeah, yeah. And instantly that little voice goes four score and seven minutes ago, i did enter yon graveyard and [laughter] so that didnt some writers could do it, but im not good enough. So thats not good. Then you think, wait a minute, who else who can narrate this thing . Its a guy alone in a graveyard late at night, youre like, a gravedigger . Practicing . [laughter] you know, wow, look at that, thats a good one. Ill have to do that again tomorrow. So anyway, that didnt work. And at that moment what happened and here it gets a little tricky. I dont want to go on too long about this, i want to take some questions. But often when were called upon to explain our books, we have to simplify. The form of the questions that a writer gets are a lot like the way we thought about writing when we were in school. Whats the theme . What was the authors intention . [laughter] why is the color red such a prevalent motif . [laughter] these are good questions from the critical standpoint, but from the creative standpoint my experience has been that they dont really hunt. Thats not really the way you think of your book. So let me try to be honest about the way the solution to this formal problem came, and its a little complicated. Basically, ive had the experience on stories of mine where i had some sort of breakthrough. In retrospect, there were always three or four or five parallel movements going on at once in my sub conscious or subconscious or my something but then at the moment in question, it would cross in some weird way. Now, in this case i can tell you a few things. One is during that 20year period of not writing this book, i wrote another graveyard book, believe it or not, that was set in an upstate new york graveyard, and the only good thing about that book was i had sort of stolen a format from aol messenger [laughter] and in the early days, i thought it was so beautiful the way people would get on there and crosstalk. Youve got a name, you know, starboy 962, and some ungrammatical, weirdly punctuated, misspellingladen text. And at the end somebody goes to respond to him, and then suddenly they would start breaking up. You know, theyre not really even talking to each other anymore. I thought that was beautiful and very much like what we do in real life. So i had written a book about maybe i got 2 the 00 pages into this 200 page into this. It didnt go anywhere. There was no forward driver. But at the moment of the lincoln book, i remembered that. I thought, ooh, what if the ghosts were just monologuing with attributions . That could be kind of fun. So that was one thing. Then i have a former student of mine, adam levin, who out of nowhere said if you ever wrote a normal, it would be a novel, it would be like this story of yours. I think a novel of all monologues, thats what you would do. And then i had that most coveted artistic feeling, sort of a little bliss. Like, ooh, you know . Would you like some ice cream with chocolate . You go, yeah. [laughter] thats the kind of feeling i sometimes get. Maybe not quite that pronounced, but Something Like that. And i go, yeah, i could do that. And at that time i was just reading infinite jest for the first time, and when you take that book apart, it actually is a series of monologues. He gets everything he has to have done accomplished just with people speaking passionately from their own experience. About that time i also was talking to my editor at the new yorker, and i told her about this comical, terrible lincoln play id been working on for ten years. Because im working class, when i write a play, i write a play. And when i write a poem, i write a poem. [laughter] so that play was really not good. [laughter] and i mentioned it to her, and she just said why dont you do it in fiction . Deborah and i have such a close relationship when she said that, something went open in my mind. I thought if she thinks theres way this could be done, there must be. So ill try it. So those things all happened at once. And the final thing that came in a little bit later, and if youve read the book, you know that one of the things i do is im actually using quotes from history books that i take verbatim. We used to call this ladies and gentlemen carrization, now we call it curating. [laughter] but the reason for this was very simple. I had the thing going with all these ghosts crosstalking, and i was having so much fun. Because when you write, when you write a ghost, they can do anything. The ghost did a back flip. The ghosts head flew off and turned into a pumpkin. Whatever you want, its all fair game. So in that way with, a ghost is a bit like a dream sequence. Totally up to you, ms. Writer. And i had a teacher, tobias wolfe, who told me once, george, in your writing career youre allowed three dream sequences. So dont use them up, you know . [laughter] so about halfway through this book i could feel that my imaginary reader was starting to look askance at me, theres too much ghosts, too many ghosts, too much sort of free energy. And i also thought back to that first day when i saw willie lincolns crypt, and i thought why did that move me so much . Part of it was because i did, after that incident, do some research. And you find out such heartbreaking things about that. For example, willie was abes favorite. He was his favorite because he was the most like him. He had the same, you know, beauties and the same problems. Also the lincolns had a Party Schedule at the white house. The party was set up to reduce costs. It was all in place, the invitations were out. The two boys got sick with what we now know was toy find. They typhoid. They consulted a doctor, the doctor said i think itll be fine. So they had the party, and it was that night that willie took a turn for the worse, and he died weeks later. So the lincolns definitely had the feeling that this party had, you know, all the excitement and the noise, the marine band playing downstairs, had hastened their sons death. How do you live with that. When i asked myself in what form do you know it, i knew it from five or six history books. So i thought, wow with, hmm, could i just put that stuff in there directly . And i answered myself, its your book. [laughter] so i went through this period of cutting up the, you know, typing up all those texts. Elizabeth connectly, theres another one. I forgot the names, but typing them up and cutting them up with scissors and spending days on the floor of my study moving them around like a puzzle, you know . And i started to think, one, im just doing this to avoid real writing, which i kind of was. [laughter] also it did seem a little bit, you know, invalid in some way. And then one day i had a certain arrangement of that party scene, and i took this out, put that in, and suddenly when i read it, it came alive for me. It had been sort of 1. 7 dimensions, and it suddenly became threedimensional in my mind. And i thought, well, if that isnt writing, i dont know what is. In other words, my job is to, when youre reading that scene, to make that party seem real to you so yo dont quibble so you dont quibble with it. It enters your mind as something that actually happened. Well, that happened to me that day, so i thought, okay, this is a valid thing to do. Now, not long after when the book came out, one of the reviewers said like the book, but isnt that fake news . [laughter] because what i did after that was i also made some up. [laughter] once i started putting in these historical bits, i felt as if it was okay if i just invented some. So the quarrel was this was fake news. And i just would like to close with one very important idea, i think, in our time. Our the political age were in right now is one in which so many fundamental values are getting kicked around. Whats really being lost is subtlety and nuance in public rhetoric. We are constantly saying things that we know arent true. I say we to be generous. [laughter] but this is one of the reasons that art is so essential. And i would argue that part of the reason we got to this path in our history is because weve been insufficiently reverent toward art. Why do i say this . When i write a book about lincoln and i put in some true historical bits and then i make some up, you and i are in a very intimate relationship at that point. You came into the tent labeled novel, and you said make it happen. By any means necessary. I know youre lying to me. I want you to lie to me, just do it well so i believe its true. And what were doing together is were discovering a more transcendent truth than we can get at by Walking Around the world with every day. Its almost like i have a vision, im working and revising, and in that mode i stop being this dummy and start being for a couple minutes a day a better person. Funnier, smarter, more insightful, more empathetic. You on the other end reading, hopefully, are doing the same thing. This beautiful being is rising out of the normal you up, and im coming up, and its in the Perfect World were like two fish that kind of come out and risker you know . [laughter] and and kiss, you know . And go back to our life. So when i make up a bit in a story like this, its a little bit like when youre a kid and someone says im going to tell you a ghost story, and it happened in this very room. It didnt. [laughter] but if you believe it did, its a better story. So in a sense, now, this is quite different from being, for example, in the White House Briefing room [laughter] [applause] and a cat comes in and would say, hey, look, a raccoon. [laughter] so let me pause there. We have a little bit of time for questions. Id be happy to answer any. Thank you very much. [applause] you know, ive been traveling for this book for almost a year now, and one thing i notice is some darwinian thing. The person who asks the first question is always turns out to have the highest Sexual Energy in the room. [laughter] i had a feeling about you, sir. [laughter] my question is the book is unusual. Yes. As you said. You fudged a lot. And the question i have is how did you sell this to your agent, your editor and the publisher when it was so, like, i have this idea yeah. Thats a good question. The truth is i didnt sell it until i had it. I mean, i had, i had a contract, and i just worked on the first third for about two years before i showed anybody. So by that time i kind of knew, you know, as i said earlier, part of your job as a writer is to know the obvious problems with what youre doing, you know . So, you know, for example, if im, if i am going to decide that tonight when i interview Vice President biden, which im doing, that im going to wear a tight pink silk shirt, lets say i decide that. [laughter] well, okay. I feel strongly i should do that. All right. Youre going to want to think about that, and you going to your going to want to take precautions. In my case, that would mean wearing two windbreakers over it. But in art, theres always a problem with this beginning. With this book, i knew it was going to be a hard sell. So my responsibility as a writer is to all the difficulty is earned difficulty. In other words, the idea of just making difficulty because you can, im not interested in that. The main goal was emotional, so anything thats weird or hard about it, it has to serve the emotion of the book. And what i started to feel was if i could get that first third shaped just right, and i spent so many hours on it, then your reaction might be and i think a lot of people have this i dont get this. But im intrigued. Im going to keep oh, i still dont get it. [laughter] no, wait, im getting it. And i think right around page 30 people kind of make a decision. It weet it east works for them, or they go review it on amazon. The idea is if you do something at the beginning, itll pay off in the end. I showed it to my wife, which i show her everything first, and weve been together 30 years, and she knows me. She knows my b. S. , she knows my virtues. And usually if she doesnt like with that mexico book, she wasnt mincing her words. And she was absolutely right. So with this book, i showed it to her, and she wrote me a note that was so nice that i will never tell anybody in this world what it said. But i went, all right, then, she got it. And then i just went on. And then i sent it to my editor, and he had also a positive reaction and was willing to take the chance. Hi, mr. Saunders. Hi. I have a question about i guess this is between the fact and the fiction. And its like the theology or the, like, the religious beliefs that underpin it. Id never heard of a bardo, you know . I know bridget bar doe [laughter] and the thing that shows up, the matter of the light bloom, can you help me with those words . The light bloom phenomenon thing that happened. Yeah. So would you be able to tell us if all of that was fictional or if some of it was based in some kind of religious theology . Sure. Well, my wife and i are buddhists, and in tibetan, bar, rdo means transitional state. The one the book refers to is the one that starts from the moment of your death to whatever comes next. And in buddhism, of course, they believe its reincarnation. So i started with that. And for a long time, i thought i will try to read and learn the city bet tan book of the the tibetan book of the dead and make everything match. But then at some point you realize that its a novel. And the novel has things that it does. It makes beauty, it makes truth, it makes propulsion, it changes your mind, all those beautiful things. It doesnt it really isnt the very best instrument for recounting fact, actually. We have books for that, you know . So this is kind of like if you had this beautiful ferrari, and is youre like, oh, a paperweight, you know . [laughter] well, you could. At some point i thought im not going to worry too much about being faithful to the tibetan text since im not a scholar in that area. So im going to use what i want to use. And what i loved about, what i love about the buddhist epistemology is a couple things. One is they say that whatever your death is going to be like, its just like right now. In other words, your mind is our minds are in very strong habituated places every incident of our life. We dont even notice it after a while, were so used to it. But we have inclinations of mind the i am understanding the text right, its not going to be different after. With one exception. The texts say that your mind in your body is sort of like a wild horse, you know . Our neurotic minds are so active and so crazy, and they make the world. Well, when were alive, thats actually tamped down relative to what happens after death. They say its like that wild horse tied to a pole. You cut the rope. The wild horse goes crazy. So whatever tenets we have now, multiply it times ten million. God help us, you know . So that was intriguing, you know, the idea that your habits of thought and worry and covet, covetousness wouldnt actually go away when you die, but they would be exaggerated. So the book is set in a place where people have such intense regrets or hesitations that they cant actually go on to the next thing, and they stay there. So that was really about all that i, you know, took literally. Yes. Hi. Thanks for coming thank you. Had to modify sort of my question because i was going to ask about the theme of ghosts in your stories [inaudible] and the novel just sort of how the idea of a ghost evolved. But im going to sort of modify it. And its funny you mentioned infinite be jest, because its another sort of ghost story, i guess, to an extent. But where do you find influence in this theme, in the theme of ghostly sure. Where does that for you you know, flannery oconnor, one of my favorite writer writers, she said a writer can choose what he writes, but he cant choose what he makes live. I teach as syracuse, we have 600 applications a year, and we pick six students to come study there. That oconnor quote is so important because most writer writers start out with a love, of course, for other books, for other writers. We tend to imagine ourselves in a lineage of writers, and we start out by imitating. Thats one of the first things we do. But we soon find out that the thing we want to do might not be the thing we should do. So like if you im going to the write [inaudible] and whenever you wrote one, everyone fell asleep. But whenever you picked up an accordion, people danced. Youre like, ah. [laughter] so for some reason i dont really know, i like ghosts. Ghosts make my books come alive. I can justify it. It, you know, reminds me that this reality were in right now is not the only one. I kind of like that idea. But really i just do it because i love it. And i think with all of us we start out with an intention of who we want to be, and we start out imitating someone. For me, it was hemingway. I had this medical affliction called the Hemingway Boehner [laughter] many writers get it. So for many years hemingway is up on this mountain, and i just want to be his acolyte. I want to stand up on his level. So i clawed my way up there over many years, working class kid, writing in hemingway voice, you know . Nick went into the walmart. It was pleasant. [laughter] you claw your way up there, and when you get close, you find out that guys standing on a 6inch pedestal. Youre always going to be at his armpit, you know . Forget him. Why am i imitating that guy . Im a working class guy. Ill never imitate anyone. You get down to the bottom, care Back Mountain [laughter] after many years including that mention mexican novel, i realized that i knew some things at that point in my life, and i didnt have a form or a style in which i could express those very small, very precious things, many of which had to do with class. So i wrote this little story, crazy little story in my first book, and it was so much like me, and it was so minor. I was so disappointed. It was a very bittersweet thing. You look over and theres a shit hill, and it says saunders mountain. [laughter] saunders is misspelled. [laughter] but i think in a nutshell thats ever writers journey, you go from imitating to being the little clod that you are and hoping the shit hill will grow over the years. I can take one more and then have to say goodbye. I am tired, sad and exhausted student who is worried my degree is about to be derailed by this tax bill. So what advice do you have for young writers and scholars in light of the current political moment . Do it more and do it better. I have that advice for everybody, you know . The enemy right now is that despair that we felt a year ago. Oh, im quitting. This world sucks. Its not what i thought it was. I think the novelistic standpoint is, huh, the world isnt what i thought it was. How interesting. Lets figure this out, you know . I think we also have to remember that every, that the fabric of the country is being held together by the tens of thousands of decent acts that we all commit every day. Thats the real culture. The real culture doesnt come from on high. And were finding out it never did actually. It comes from each of us. So i think its an exciting time to be an artist, and i think the i tell myself every day two things. One, i dont know whats going on. You know, we play you watch tv, and Everybody Knows whats going on, and every day its different, you know . I think its actually very healthy, spiritually healthy to say we dont know, this is something new. And the second thing is to say i forgot what it was already, what was the second thing . Darn it. Oh, well. [laughter] no, the second thing is that despair actually is the enemy. I, im convinced that our country is on the brink of a beautiful breakthrough. You know, our vision of ourselves that were going to actually live into our creed, all people created equally, all people containing god or buddha or whoever equally, were going to see each other that way. We are almost there. I really think we are close to it. This is kind of a last minute spasm, but well endure it. And whatever we do the in our lives if we do it the best we can with a smile on our face, well get through this crap a lot faster. So thank you very much. [applause] youre watching booktv, television for serious readers. You can watch any program you see here online at booktv. Org. Heres a look at some authors recently featured on booktvs after words with, our weekly Author Interview program. Retired astronaut scott kelly will discuss his recordsetting year aboard the International Space station. White house reporter and Washington ExaminerSenior EditorKeith Koffler explored the life of steve bannon and his future in american politics. And gold star father khizr khan recalled his immigration to the United States and offered his thoughts on what it means to be an american. In the coming weeks on after words, federal judge john newman will reflect on his career first as a prosecutor and now as a federal appellant judge. Former Clinton Administration official Peter Edelman will argue that u. S. Courts are using fees to exploit the economically impoverished. Black lives matter cofounder patrice colors will discuss the birth and growth of the movement. And this weekend on after words, christopher scalia, son to have Late Supreme Court justice antonin scalia, will share selections from his fathers speeches. He delivered i think i know the stump speech youre referring to. Its a speech he delivered about originalism and why its superior to whats called the living constitution approach right. To jurisprudence. And i heard him deliver that speech too in madison, wisconsin, in 2001. And its one he delivered very often. It was his stump speech. I was looking forward to finding a written version of that because i loved that speech. I thought it was great. Right. It included a wonderful passage where he compared the living constitution approach to a its commercial from the 1980s where a a prego commercial where somebody is making pasta, just heating up storebought pasta sauce, and the husband says to his wife, what, youre using this storebought sauce, youre not doing it homemade . What about the oregano . And the wife says, its in there. What about the pepper . Its in there. The garlic . Its in there. And my dad would say weve got that kind of a constitution now. You want, you want a right to an abortion . Its in there. You want a right to die, its in there. Anything thats good and true and beautiful, its in there. No matter what the text says. After words airs on booktv every saturday at 10 p. M. Eastern and sunday at 9 p. M. Eastern and pacific. Youre watching booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres our prime time lineup. First up, robert merry, former ceo of congressional quarterly, recalls the presidency of william mckinley. Then at 7 40, Harlan Ullman argues that the u. S. Has lost or failed to accomplish its stated mission in every war its started since the end of world war ii. At 8 50, Leslie Berlin describes the growth of major Tech Industries including personal computing, video games and biotechnology. Then on booktvs after words at 10, Second Circuit court of appeals judge jon newman details his career in the judicial system in an interview by connecticut senator richard blumenthal. And we wrap up at 11 with Daniel Ellsberg talking about his experiences as a Nuclear War Planner in the early 1960s. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. 72 hours of nonfiction authors and books this weekend. Television for serious readers. First up, robert merry on president mckinley