Pandemic started and mister kaplan, i think you reminded me that was the day books and books shut down, is that correct . Thats correct peter. At that point we became a virtual bookshop. The only business we were doing was online and we were just exploring how to do our events virtually as well. Is an update five months into this. Its been like a roller coaster to be honest. Weve had up and down area we , we were able through the ppp loans to be able to bring our staff back. Unfortunately when we brought them back our stores were under, they were so shut down because of the pandemic youre in florida. But toward the end of it we were able to open around the beginning of july june or so. And actually not june, i think it was july that i think about it. It was in july we began to open and we opened all but one of our stores. One of our stores we close permanently on miami beach. Were looking forward to finding another space there as well. Whats it been like to have customers back in the store . For us its been fairly smooth. Our customers have been all very very respectful of wearing masks. Theres been no hesitation on anybody, anybodys part about that. Our staff has been very upbeat. Weve been making sure that we keep everything clean and up to cdc guidelines. One of the stores on coral gables cafc so thats been a little upanddown. We wereb her inside for a while. But were now in, we only have the ability to serve outside and gently ive been to that store and it has a courtyard to where it deserved their but of course as it would be, last weekend were just this past weekend he had ahurricane. So it seems to never end this challenge that werefacing. And have you had any of your employees tested . Is there been any evidence of transmission . I think what happened is there been an incredible spike over the last few weeks and im finding theres finally our hospitalizations are up. People are getting sick, people i know are gettingsick. The employee and our grandmother, one of our employeesunfortunately died. Its been a much in the trenches youre in miami area are employees have been fine, nobody has gotten a virus here. But its scary. We laid off, we used to have well over 80 employees. We have half that amount now. A lot of the older employees have not felt very safe about coming in. Ive said this before andill say it again. The comorbidity that a bookstore has is that we want to gather people. We want people to come in and commingle and that is something that the virus loves but we have to be carefulabout that. Though our online, all our events that we did for years and years have now morphed online as youre seeing in bookstores across the country. Book tv has covered some of your events and whats been the process of doing a Virtual Event . Its been a Straight Line up. I never knew, i never even heard of zoom prior to march 17. But we have now our entire Evidence Team now runs all these events but we did an event for instance with jim carrey that we did with jim and his coauthor dana and we had judy bloom do the introduction from key west and i was in miami. Dana and jim were somewhere west and the woman who was handling it, christine our Events Coordinator was doing it from her home and as you know you cover the Miami Book Fair and the fair this year will be virtual as well. So were a long way till we get to the other side of this. And as one loves the physical world i just cant wait. Mitch kaplan, is this the first time in 35 years the Miami Book Fair will not be held in downtown miami . It is. The first time in our, this is our 38 book fair and we did have one fair where there was a hurricanein november. We were able to just cancel the author parts, im sorry, just cancel the street there but we had the authors come. So theres a first time that its been, that there will not be downtown miami filled with booths and authors and all that. Have you ever experienced anything like this before. Ive been through it all and ive neverexperienced anything like this. I think the closest will be 9 11 but 9 11 we didnt have any direct effect. It was the ancillary effect from people nottraveling. But theres been nothing. I dont think in any of our lifetimes theres been anything quite like this. The way i see it is that lots of trends that were happening were accelerated by this and i dont know what it will look like at the endof it. Retail for instance, the bookstore business. Many of us didnt do a very big Online Business at all. Because it was given up to the big chains, the online chains. But all of us have had to become virtual online booksellers and so are Online Business has grown to where its 20, 30, 40 percent of our business now. Thats something that was probably trending in that direction but the pandemic accelerated it so that we all had to kind of confront it very quickly. And no, ive never seen anything like this and peter, its made me appreciate what you do more and more to be honest. The importance of getting information out in nontraditional ways like over the airwaves. Ive taken great solace in book tv. It brought me closer to some of the authors that i sell. Ive been able to paymore attention to it. You know, its just a very different way of living. And were going to have to i think get used to it for a while. Im hoping that some of these economic bills i see going through Congress Come out the right way. And that the safety net is stitched back together. For lots of people who are hurting , i know i dont want to get into any of the politics of it but when you have to lay off 40 employees, you start looking very long and hard at what unemployment really is and in the state of florida the most you can get is 275 a week. And thats not a lot for a lot of people area and ive done what i can to keepall my folks on healthcare. As much as i can and so it makes you really understand from an economic point of view just what Small Business means and what its all about. And a familiar nature of it. Mister kaplan, what nonfiction books are selling this summer . That too has been a roller coaster with all of the black lives matter antiracist discussions thats been going on, and i thank you for running lots of those panels. On book tv. Those books have been selling like mad and i really really am happy to see it. And im happy to see also bookstores owned by black and Indigenous People of color. Im happy to see those stores get their due as well. And many of them have been adopted by even our customers and im very happy to seethat happening. One of the things we always like to ask you is book recommendations or what are you reading right now . My reading is all over the place but im really reading a lot of galleys, books that are not quite out yet and i can tell you what will be interesting come the fall right now im reading any clouds look on James Baldwin and really, really writing it fascinating. James baldwin came to our first Miami Book Fair. So to get a sense of who he was like during that period and earlier, any cloud is remarkable and were doing a Virtual Event with any cloud and the secretaryof the smithsonian. Tickets are a bunch, were doing an event with them in a couple of weeks. Im also reading a really wonderful book that was published a little while ago by brad meltzer, a mutual friend, his book on the lincoln conspiracy and that is quite remarkable i would say that the book that really has to find this period for me is getting a bit of miami history written in the style of the devil and the white city. Its called a year of dangerous days. Its all about miami in 1980. Miami in 1980 was very interesting that you had in the same year the marriott boatlift, you had a mcduffie wives which were probably the most violent riots in miami history certainly read and then you have the beginning of the cocaine epidemic happening here in miami. The Federal Reserve in miami had a 7 billion surplus and nobody could figure out where that was coming from. And it was coming from a kind of under the table kind of market. And that book was written by nicholas griffin, published by simon and schuster. The year of dangerous days and its compelling. For fans of nonfiction as well as fiction a little bit of wire in it, a little bit of eric larson. Really a marvelous book. If people want to contact send books, its the best way to do so. You can reach me personally at mitchell booksandbooks. Com or you go to book send books. Com , join our mailing list and you will never be feel lonely. Youll get a lot of emails from us forsure. Mitch kaplan is the owner of books and books bookstores in the miami area, coral gables as their headquarters. We appreciate the updates and we will check in with you in a few months. Its always great to see you and glad to know that all is well. And tonight on book tv in prime time on our Author Interview program after words from mackenzie reports on how covid19 became a Global Pandemic and thoughts on how to prevent future outbreaks. The heritage foundations Mike Gonzalez argues identity politics is dividing america and cnn legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin weighs in on the molar investigation and impeachment of president from. At all tonight on tv on cspan2 for more Schedule Information visit cspan. Org for your programguide. At politics and prose bookstore in washington dc New York Times financial editor and rick reported on Germanys Deutsche Bank and its relationship with president trump. Heres a portion of his thought. The tactics if they ever become public by not going to show some of the most important things we want to know about trumps finances. Theyre not going to show the sources of income or his business partners. Not going to get a real view of his, which assets he has that are valuable especially in countries that are outside the united states. Things that Deutsche Bank has that are much more valuable aregoing to be his other financial , income statements, any documents and my understanding is banks have very detailed kind of Organization Charts that show relationships to trump businesses and a half, where all the money is coming from. It often documents or a lot of them and they also got documents that show some of the concerns employees raise about suspicious transactions went on in the trump accounts this is something that is not i dont think not gotten as much attention as i would have thought it would but there are employees in their offices who raise repeatedly red flags about what they deemed to be suspicious transactions involving trump and kushner accounts including in the kushner case of money going to russians where their concerns were overruled and according to the government and in one casethe employee was fired about after speaking out about it. Bipar san policy center, and thank you for joining us in a Virtual Event where we are here for an important reason, the release of a new book. The book is fight house rivalries in the white house from truman to trump. And the author, tevi troy. Well be joined by tevi e as well as Kiron Skinner to make commentary on this book. Let me start