You are watching booktv on cspan2. Every weekend the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2 created by americas Cable Television company as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Good evening, thank you so much for joining us. I am a bookseller and Event Coordinator and featuring miles harvey and donovan hahn. I want to thank everyone for your support of virtual programming, we feel lucky to offer Virtual Events that this time. Wouldnt be able to do that and talk about the king of confidence a tale of utopian dreamers, frontier schemers, true believers, false prophets, and the murder of an american monarch if it wasnt for you showing up. Thank you for doing that. I want to go over our policies and ask you keep your video feed stable. If you and abel it, enabling a second time. We appreciate your cooperation during this call. I want to talk about a reading by miles harvey and donovan hahn, tale of utopian dreamers, frontier schemers, true believers, false prophets, and the murder of an american monarch which was published this past tuesday and donovan hahn reads from his book that was published in june we will hear an extended conversation. We will also have some supplemental images. Once we are done with that, audience q and a. If you have questions for miles harvey and donovan hahn send them my way and i will field those tonight. Now some bios and we will get the reading underway. Miles harvey is author of the national and international bestseller, when night falls terrorism fellowship. It was named best book of the year, he currently teaches, his interlocutor, donovan hahn, author of will be duck, a New York Times notable book, john Kenneth Gilbert award for nonfiction and wilson literary scientist award. The second book the inner coast was published early last month. A lot of us already know this but both these men graduated from the university of michigan. I wanted to show that. Otherwise i wanted to show that. If you dont mind putting your virtual zoom reactions to gather, thank you. Good to see you. It was probably why your book is longer than mine. You teach nonfiction in chicago. It is really nice seeing you. I want to be clear to everyone, sharing the stage, and your reading and your book, the antihero of the book that you will tell us about is getting crowned as king. Somehow this man managed to convince the 235 lonely souls in the tabernacle that it is a royal diadem in the wooden sector comes with energy that is for length red robe stitched together by ladies of the church, enveloped him in righteousness and splendor. We dont have 235 lonely souls in this tabernacle, you, the king with the paper crown, the impresario. I said to you before hand, experts on the subject. Something that will help us with confidence. We will get to that in a minute. I thought i would introduce the audience to the title character of my book. I am going to read about this man james strang, and the antebellum area, leading up to the civil war. You wonder how he managed to establish it and then leave it up. It doesnt look like the most charismatic guy to you. James jesse strang was a few inches over 5 feet and bald with an oddly bulging for head. He did possess one distinguishing feature, his dark brown eyes which one acquaintance described as small but very bright and piercing given an animated expression. They seemed like they could bore right through a person. Many tangible attributes, he possessed visible, ineffable confidence. In those days before electrical power confidence made the antebellum era home. Conference was black magic, good fortune and hard cash, through glittering gold, cow towns into cities, to losers, authors and millionaires. Confidence was a charm deployed by bankers, philosophers and politicians, clergymen and car charts. Confidence was the soul of the trade in the words of one financial publication. Commerce between man and man is between country and country would like a watch run down and stop. In an age before the federal government began printing paper and people had to trust him privately should bank notes, glorified ious, confidence was the national currency. Confidence in his ability to wield it, took him from being an of skewer farmboy in new york, failed lawyer, failed newspaper publisher, failed postmaster to the midwest which we call the far west where he became a Mormon Prophet and a real threat to Brigham Young and the church and ran a couple utopian colonies i will talk about, one of them in michigan but donovan, i want to talk about your book. Took a word out of my title, coasts, what is that all about . My book is called the inner coast, adjective and the noun. Here we are virtually speaking in chicago and over here on the other side of michigan, i grew up on the coast of california, i spent much of my life here by the great lakes and i wanted to make the case for the great lakes, the coast has always been in contact zones between here and elsewhere. Etymologically the word coast the rising latin for red and still offer you a coasts meaning lack of ribs. The seacoast, the rib cage of the land, a place where land ends and the sea begins and in that sense all coasts are by definition outer and oceanic waters. The usual term, the maritime geography is a paradox. Michigan is midwestern and coastal. Shoreline in the lighthouses, and every state besides alaska, with the midwestern beach you can watch freighters slide across the horizon. Keeping the land, we can coast through the heart of north america. Circumnavigating the state east of the mississippi without laying eyes on the pacific. The word coastal is sociological as it is geographic and phrases like coastal living or coastal elites, the word collapses the west coast at east into a conjoined seaboard has supposedly inhabited by decadent sophisticates as if brooklyn werent the next berkeley, chicagoans, holiday goers on the gold coast might qualify as coastal in this sense but not residents of gary or sandusky or dearborn, through the rouge river, on the neighborhood on the northeast side of detroit, becomes popular with immigrants in vietnam. And speak a new about that word coast. Lets go back to confidence. You brought in melville who wrote the confidence man and talk about how the idea of confidence was required economically but also secret power for the charismatic. And quote the newspaper story and introduce it into the mexican. Among all the materials you are trying into the store you are doing a certain amount as i was in that passage of etymological excavation, what parts of the american vernacular, making it strange now as you do a whole thing on the idea, and the confidence man. I kept finding words that were not early enough in the oxford dictionary, the Gold Standard of etymology. In 1890, confidence man, that word comes to us in 1849. This is a period where there has been an economic crash, massive technological revolution, the photograph, the railroad, communications internation people are really displaced. It is such an important thing, new york newspaper called him the confidence man. His game was to say on the streets hey, donovan, you dont remember me . You would be very embarrassed, miles harvey, then got you. Donovan, i am hurt by that, give me a watch a show of your confidence. He would do that and people would give him that. This word spread like wildfire. It describes so many people in so many walks of life and strang epitomized this. Truth was malleable, facts were not really facts. He was able to kind of invent his own truth and pull it off with a kind of bluster that people wanted to believe. Beautiful. A little weird, i want strang as a historical figure from a writers point of view is a treasure for you, you write about it a little bit but i want you to speak a little bit about the index of your book and the acknowledgments. The way i think about how this book works is the central figure in strang almost a planetary object whose force of personality exerts Gravitational Force on the antebellum, 19thcentury, upper midwest, whole nation so your book draws into what all these marbles and wonders and obscurities from that time. I called these items american revolution, anderson, hans christian, angels, part of it, what is wonder is about that, collecting the historical figures you end up gathering, balzac, pt barnum, john wilkes booth, henry way, this guy shores who invented the qwerty keyboard. Somehow you managed this, gathering that up and in your acknowledgments you could talk about that, this is the real and pose story the man of the crowd, how there is this central figure, the man once arrested and absorbed by full attention. Tell me about, is not a traditional biography. How does it work . Three good books about strang. Kind of mormon history or michigan midwestern story, from the start, as a lightning rod for all the enthusiasm and social movements and apocalyptic fears. The embodiment of this crazy time. It is funny because i so admire you but you do something similar. Of the new york review, New York Times book review, from this guy Chris Jennings who is a writer i admire called myself wonderfully the aggressive, the biggest woman i ever had and this work looks like pointlizm, but i got to go back to you on this. I think you are one of the most wonderful nonfiction writers today and doing what you praised me for. I heard the story 1 million times, theres an essay in here, the second essay called a romance of rust and this essay, i always told donovan, this was before i knew him, was a real source of inspiration for me. I read it 20 years ago in harpers, a long time ago and it was at a time when i needed to be inspired by another writer and i picked up harpers and started reading about this antique tool collector in michigan. That is kind of interesting. I have written about collectors before and i was interested in them but the way you draw American History, american commerce, desire for commercial desires, was incredible. If you want to talk about that. Yeah, sure. That for me was an important one because i had been writing nonfiction but came to nonfiction by way of fiction and poetry which is not that uncommon, people come to it from genres that historically were standard genres for writing programs but my first early attempt is clear to the personal essay with a memoir or another essay and this is what i wanted to do what you have done in this book which is i think of it as the art of finding where to capture the nation, the analogy comes from entomology, not etymology. Like an and detecting pheromones. Once you have that it is fascinating and your mind starts generating questions and i have ideas what the questions might be behind the king of confidence a tale of utopian dreamers, frontier schemers, true believers, false prophets, and the murder of an american monarch. I have this uncle i have great affection for, a botanist by training had begun collecting by chance, happened to pick up to wrenches that were identical and he had a vision of symmetry like two specimens of the same plant but it was wrenches. Obsessively began collecting all over the midwest factories, foreclosed farms, all of these artifacts of history and turn the barn on the outskirts near dexter but initially started with one. He turned it into a kind of museum that is not open to the public, where he made taxonomical arrays of the artifacts that looked like specimens, fossils, dinosaurs, 100 spigot handles that are identical to make one array of them. A cabinet of wonders but not natural artifacts. That to me became hugely fascinating and accompanying him into that narrative you create your own from an essay and there is a way you are doing Something Like that, your charismatic figure you are following it allows you to follow your own curiosity and make them speak to each other so that somehow the inventor of the keyboard is adjacent to the guy who introduced the tomato to the midwest, wonderful accidental juxtaposition that came up. We may be working from a similar method which is why i have such information for you as a writer. I dont make many predictions about future writing but one of them, i feel i can talk about an example, writers and curators in the digital age becoming more similar. Writing is an act of creation and creation is increasingly an act of storytelling. For me that is really cool. I love that and increasingly, this book had a 250 page single spaced timeline, what is happening in strangs life in the world and the juxtapositions are there. It is a narrative making machine but i will give you an example, another quick reading if you dont mind. If you could put up the picture, slide number 6. There it is. Here it comes. I thought i am going to read two really short paragraphs. And in between them i will give you explanation but the islands are important to this so i want to read this about the islands. Islands, Edgar Allan Poe wrote in the stormy seas of the psyche, places of perfect security, freedom from all 3 strains could be enjoyed, tiny chasms where normal rules of conduct and normal systems dont apply, frequent locales for experimental communities including the original utopia on an island in his famous sixteenth century book. I will say that there are many things we can say about the community, it is a fascinating place and somewhat controversial but i wanted to talk about the bra, this guy, what was his draw . One of the things we need to understand is what apocalyptic times, in 1848 when strang was starting this colony and push it, this was the year of apocalyptic fevers in the United States and the world and i thought i would read about those and you see why the sea monster is here. Strang described ominous signs including a series of revolutions in europe, the war in mexico and rising tensions between north and south, urging his followers to prepare for the end. Let me warn you the time draws near, prophetic events are crowding close upon each other. Strangs newspaper said mormons and local fishermen spotted a huge sea serpent, one of many such sightings around the world during the portentous years of 18471848. The 21st century perspective, hard to know what to make of such an outlandish claim but one possibility is he tended to equate his late michigan monster with the beast from the sea whose appearance heralded the apocalypse in the book of revelation. Joseph smith claimed such beasts were, quote, the degenerate kingdoms of the wicked world, strang may have hoped to underscore the idea of Beaver Island as the new site of prophecy, Promised Land where according to mormon teachings, saints would help usher in the Second Coming of christ and the end to his 1200 year reign on earth. The picture in front of you is not an illustration of the sea monster strang said was spotted off Beaver Island but was one of the many sea monsters that legitimate people thought they saw in 184748, a Royal Navy Ship that spotted this sea monster somewhere. That gives you a sense of a really intense period we are talking about. Strang, it was not his only reason for going there. He started a criminal enterprise. You can take it down now. He would send his people all over the lake to various towns throughout the midwest tuesday or says and other items. There has been a lot of controversy. Earlier writers said there is no proof strang pulled off these crimes and it was all antimormon bias. There was plenty of antimormon bias, strang pulled up these kinds kinds and one of the the king of confidence a tale of utopian dreamers, frontier schemers, true believers, false prophets, and the murder of an american monarch does is move that along a little bit. There is some pretty solid undeniable realtime reporting on strangs crimes. The chapter on the horse wrestlers in ohio, like this is new research. That is all new. It is lots of fun. There are a lot of great 19thcentury journalists in small towns and the guy who is the editor of the harrisburg newspaper was a wonderful sarcastic writer but this is important because in real time there is a series of stories, one after the other. He comes to this town, a posse sent after him, hes caught, brought back, one of strangs enforcers, the paper reports on strang coming to town and will get this guy out of jail. It is overturned on a technicality, papers in the area write about how that technicality broadly and that it was corruption and sure enough strang stays in a local jail and there is a jailbreak, hes gone and returns to Beaver Island. There is a lot more of. One of the things we both are interested in is the landscapes of the midwest. The introduction out on early june, you are right, the way i think of all these essays, have formally and somatically idea of excavating and for me, somebody who is an adoptive midwesterner, i grew up, my family was very nostalgic for this illinois prairie, i grew up on the mythic midwest, lots of little house on the prairie, the whole project, trying to do certain excavation. This is the midwest like we never imagined. One thing before i jump into my own stuff. I love the idea of islands, feels to me it is a microcosm. We can look at Beaver Island, representative man of his period. You didnt mention his career as a legislator. Amateur meteorologists at the dawn of meteorology, ardent abolitionists as the war approaches, a representative figure but the island becomes a concentrate of america in the middle of Lake Michigan. My First Experience in this country is a farm, i have two paragraphs, it was passed to generations near Lake Michigan but the 1970s the farm was no longer operational, the family held onto it is a kind of heritage site to which the increasingly scattered tribe would make pilgrimages, sharing potato salad while communing nostalgically with an agrarian past, survived in a place that was like a museum of anachronisms, exhibits including empty red barn, outhouse with the door, hand pump that drew water from a well, glistening helixes of flypaper the farm house rafters, a few chickens including one whose beheading i was made to witness as an initiation into this brutally invaluable knowledge farm life sought to impart, headless the chickens body flew a lap around the chopping block, a feat both gruesome and comical. At the edge of this farm was a shallow body of water and according to legend a logger attempted to drive oxen across it, harvested timber which comes up in your book. Heavy with harvested timber, his wagon had broken through the thin ice dragging the logger and oxen with it, paddling around with my brother in a dented aluminum canoe, shallow, you could touch bottom with your paddle but the bottom was silky and soft, would sink into it as far as you could, never touching hard ground. I imagined if you fell overboard and tried to stand, you would get sucked into the muck, disappearing, one of those unlikely prehistoric animals, horses with cloven hooves, sabertooth tigers, for a watering hole, into which is how it had gone. And the encyclopedia of prehistoric mammals with positions and although i never visited them they were a prominent future on the landscape of my inner life. The change for me one of the things i need to do as a writer is have images that become work as motifs so things you cant see below the history kind of especially essays that are like a collection of poems means a different kind of unity than you have. A theme, you have an actual plot here and i want to talk about that because i was thinking and want to make sure we have time in 5 minutes to open up for questions. Credentialed historian, you dont have a phd in history. I am curious about your method in the book about identity over many years. I was wondering if you did the kind of things that i know some trained historians do, you are trying to bring the story to life as a kind of sensory detail and immediacy, there was a moment, a wonderful moment, two dramatic climaxes in this novel, one of which was the u. S. Navy sent a gunship to Beaver Island which is amazing that proceeds on the index. A tragic story in the end but a moment, going out to Beaver Island. The warship closed in on a small channel between lake huron and michigan so they could see the densely for stood shores of Northern Michigan which 100yearold coffers, it hides the air with fresh redness, i underlined that moment because it was exemplary of the narrative history that you are doing here. Literary storytelling you are doing, so it reminded me of the historical imagination, needing to remind yourself. Would you talk about the methods . How did you go about detailed. First of all it is tricky to talk about this. In the last 40 years, dont want to get slapped upside the head by my colleagues, but academic historians pushed back on the idea of narratives. My own feeling is people crave narratives, work to make up for when i write about history. There is a book called matrix metropolis, classic book about chicagos role in the west. Michigan pine trees being cut down and settling the prairie. I call it and trying whenever you can, when someone is standing on the deck of a ship and anyone driven into the upper zones of michigan knows what it is like to get out of the car and smell the pine. Just to get that moment it is startling. Some friends build a log cabin, in an airconditioned car, more of green bay and the smell would hit you. I have a lot of work to do. Im so respectful of the academic historian. Something i Pay Attention to, you do credit them which you think is more than a courtesy. You honor their titles, the book you quote the most often was the one on pantaloons. Before we throw it open to questions, i was astonished, how people are doing that, a whole story about female attire on Beaver Island. Tell us about that. It is about michigan so it will be about fashion. It is gender roles. Women on the island started wearing pantaloons, pajama pants tied at the ankle. 10 years before Amelia Bloomer started wearing them as a symbol of the womens rights movement. They were so far ahead of the times the numbers dont look shocking to us. They look like big skirts that are shorter in front and some nonsexy pants but at the time they were shocking and eventually strang set all women on the island must wear pantaloons and this became the outward point of rebellion that led to his assassination. My feeling it was much deeper than that. The way masks have become a symbol of loyalty or nonloyalty. If you wore pantaloons or your wife war pantaloons you are with china. Masks were okay, not Wearing Masks was a symbol of loyalty, and aside from health and safety, at least trump beliefs people on the other side where Wearing Masks to show opposition to them. One of the great joys of this book, i have not read margaret cooler fool are. She is a great writer and when we talk about validity now she was writing about that in 1840, completely manner completely woman, a huge range, interesting stuff. One of the many interesting aspects of this period i love writing about. It is close to strangs household, his second wife of this polyamorous household. Travel safely and with freedoms of a man. Lets put up number 5. Can you hit slide number 5 . This is strangs wife out of iraq over ira, charles j douglas, strang for many months, the east coast in 1849 as the word confidence man is coming into fashion. Introducing this young man as his nephew and personal secretary, charles j douglas, a young woman named l fire a l elvira unexciting aspect of this book, a very progressive woman for her time. Thanks for that. I hope we peaked some curiosity. Lets throw it open to questions for miles if we have any. We have two. Thank you for those readings. The first question coming up tonight, wondering i loved the book and wonder if can tell us what you liked about an obvious charlatan like strang . Thanks. Good friend and wonderful writer. People like strang thrive in certain times. Those times are when theres a lot of change. People dont know what to cling to and when the truth becomes porous, strang survived in his time and i dont mention the current president or present times, ive got to say my time working, overlapped with trumps candidacy. I went to sleep every night thinking about trump and strang. Trump really helps me understand strang but strang helped me understand trump. It is useful. Strang was brilliant at manipulating the media. He understood newspapers. He cannot only get on the news from Beaver Island through the information superhighway, how he could control the conversation. I was struck by how many like him are ahead of the times with mass communication. This guy in the 20s and 30s who implanted goat gonads in men who worried about their virility and tens of thousands of people did it and this guys name was brinkley, an early radio pioneer. In mexico, among other things, invents country music, he is like a Brilliant Media guy. In 2016 in a Little Office building outside moscow, they have an impact, being one step ahead. Thanks for that. Chris was asking a similar question about the parallels between strang and everything going on. Our time is rife. How much did you feel about now . It is interesting. In the last question i didnt want to write a book about now. By mentioning trump or current times. And have hopes the book will be read 10 or 20 years in the future in vain hopes. There you go. It is interesting, thanks for the question. From the start early readers, when i sent out for blurbs, and critics alike, seen it as kind of an allegory for our own times even though i dont mention our times. I am a Firm Believer in the humanities even though humanities are getting cut everywhere. This will save us and by studying the past to understand the present, i hope my book does that and donovans will. You must have been cognizant when you wrote these two passages how they would be shadowed by the prison but in an era of sudden transformation when you can be broke one day and rich the next, Anonymous One day and famous the next, fantasies can quickly metamorphose into hardened facts. Such a precarious time nothing felt stable or certain anymore, favored chameleons like a man who is no longer there. It wasnt all just unconscious. It was conscious but i guess in answer to your question, it would have been a different book in a different time. If i feel lucky about writing this book it is only because of the massive bad luck we are feeling, a lot of us are feeling about a time when someone who creates his own truth like strang can not just take over Beaver Island dont get elected to the state legislature but have much more power than that. Obviously trump influenced this book and our world influence this book but that is true for writers all the time. Are there other questions . The mic is often. One from caitlin. A lot of people know it. Its very beautiful, beautiful place. One of the things that struck me is how remote it still feels. We were on south in of the island. We couldnt get cell signal so is like for my teenage kids this was like trauma, the worst possible moment of their lives. But from wife and it was just great. We set out and just laid out on the deck when that and watch this incredible meteor shower. Strang has that much left in term of architecture after was murdered in making 56. Dont give away the ending. [talking over each other] the mormons got wiped off the island. This may be one, baby jude but what are really see strang is in st. James billy will town on the island. Thats st. James street. King cyber is the only really blacktop road on the island that was the kings highway he orders his people to do. You really feel it. More than that, and you can see this in don evans book because donovan is a go there and experience that kind of writer in the best way possible. I just dont, like i wanted to go there and see it. It didnt affect the book any profound way but i wanted to be in that spot. Shirley you had like when youre putting yourself in your historical imagination into the place maybe a little subtle ways, you have since of the distance between the north end of the island where st. James is in the south end of the island where the fisherman holding revolt, a sense of scale. And and i just think its liy to did with moby duck, bestseller highly acclaimed book which is amazing. Its about i dont know how many ducks, rubber ducks to get released into the ocean and whether all wind up but its about many other things in the way donovan was talking about. Its the writing we both do which is the wonderful holy if you dont like it its awful. Why dont they get to the point . Donovan goes so many places in the book and see so many things just to bear witness. I think bearing witness is such a powerful thing in our culture and something we dont do enough of. Another maybe other questions but a want to make a movie of this because it does feel cinematic. I know you have ideas who should play straying. My 18 year old go ahead. Else want to know if you have any ideas who . I was thinking unlike a lot of American History theres actually a kind of tween the inhuman. You almost need like Charlie Kaufman or spike jones to adapted it to get to it. You have to get the talent right because its serious, a lot of serious stuff but youre trying the strang, a genre of the tall tale almost play with that element. Well, i think voice is important. Youre such a wonderful voice writer, donovan. This book i just thought of it in the back of my head as the barn and voice. Anything i ever arvida pt barnum sins but i just always thought about it was voice filtering like the barnum voice, the phrase was always of their. Who would play strang . Bennett, if you could call up slide eight. I dont know who would play strang but heres what my son julian, beijing else suggeste. Here we go. There we go. Thats jared leto. If you look at the nose of these two guys and the eyes, i find it uncanny and jerry lehto has a kind of chaotic charisma at a think strang mightve had. I really struck. I feel like theres a genetic tie here, that only needs to be traced. Are there any other questions . Donovan and i want to get some before we close out tonight. I have a few more here that it been coming in. Im hearing that the coen brothers, some good directing. Coen brothers would be perfect. Questions on the connections between right now in democracy and simply that time and what conmen were doing. Theres one question that has yet to come up that a really like you to talk but in this regarding his abolitionist beliefs. I was hoping you could talk about how there were other things that he held that best in and that is coming from your wife if i read that correctly. What a can we just say but my wife, shes, shes a wonderful, wonderful chicago actress. She did the audiobook for this book, and it was really fun to work, kind of work with, mosty give her suggestions and shes had actually im a professional and i got this. Its great. Im listening to a low bit of it, just so much and im proud of my name associated with errors anywhere but the mortgage. So what was the question again . Oh about his absolution is him abolitionism. From a very, his days as a young lawyer in new york he expresses an interest for this. One of the things i did to push her understanding of this along was i kind of found out what might have influenced him. He took a trip virginia for a corrupt father. His fatherinlaw was a a very corrupt kanell contractor who taken the money and ran. He sent straying down there to clean up the mess. Theres a letter from strang back to his fatherinlaw when hes just shocked at what he sees. When he sees his slave labor. Here you have no other going down to the south were slaves are working on this canal and strang sees on his father laws bit of the canal the most horrific conditions and he is clearly shocked and upset by it. He carried that within his whole career. Wings in the Michigan Legislature he worked hard against his own party because strang was a democrat, and working with the new Republican Party which is brandnew that had Abraham Lincoln on behalf of africanamericans. He also ordained a black elder into his church more than a a century before the mainstream movements did. This is one thing that really, really interesting about strang. Just in general whats a great is his wholly contradictory threedimensional figure who is so much fun to do. Donovan, did you want id love to. If you could go to slide nine. Donovan and i would like to talk about some of the books you should read. You should buy our books i want to talk to you more about that, jim lynn. But he did go to slide nine. We each have some books would want to recommend to you. Because bookstores are not fully functioning now and we just dont have browsing capabilities so these are three books, like love is a a collection of essas by michelle marano. This got a start review. Its the last sexual taboo shes writing about. Shes writing about series of essays on of essays on unconsummated passion. I find that to be one of the most interesting subjects. I read several of these essays. Its wonderful. Avalon is the new poetry collection by a great and prolific poet Richard Jones who runs poetry east and is a great colleague and friend of mine at depaul. And cargo falls is a wonderful novel. Bill and i went to a program in ann arbor together, and this is his latest novel. Hes such a beautiful stylist. This is such a great comingofage story i wont ruin it but its about a group of boys who find a gun with live ammunition in the forest. Its a kind of a quite book with intense intersection every second. Donovan, what have you got . Can you go to ten, please. Let me move this over. There we go. So ive also been thinking a lot about other writers publishing into a pandemic, strange time first for some going to recommend scorpion fish by natalie i have my copy, too. Wonderful novelist. Her newest novel is set in contemporary greece of recent history during the greek economic crisis. Think of it is almost but by a young writer who also went to michigan and tedious at wayne state. I cant recommend it highly enough. This is the debut by young essayist named gerard kisner, thin places. I First Encounter in the pages of the believer which is a terrific essay about a strange Debutante Ball that takes place on the texas border. Doing wonderful things with the essay. My last one is avoid the day by a writer named jay kirk. This book is so hard to describe. Im going to read my blurb for it. It goes like this which is avoid the day is a marvel, half mad detective story that is also a dream of a memoir. Its a hunt for ghosts, lost manuscripts and the truths hidden behind our symbols. What kerry says loan from a neogothic child from the mountains of vermont to the backwaters of transylvania to the ice fields of the high arctic. Coming out any day now, july 2020 publication. Those are my three. If i could say one more thing before we close, and its sort of like the arts are so in trouble right now because of covid and bookstores are so in trouble. And authors are so in trouble. There are people in worse shape. My wife is an actress and theaters are shut down in chicago and going out of business but i want to urge folks in listening to this to support literati, and also to buy donovans book and buy my book. Like i wouldnt buy an event like this but we dont have the ability to browse like we used to. So if you think about buying both of our books, and i insist you buy both of them, please do it now and please do it through literati. We are in a time when we are going to see massive cultural fallout from this thing. Buying my book is not proving that youre fighting that but i just think its really important that we support bookstores can support authors come support the arts. I will do an amen to that by emphasizing literati has been an amazing host threat suspended for many writers and bennett has been the wizard behind the zoom curtain. So thank you in particular to literati. Thanks to literati. Donovan, thanks to you. What an honor to share the computer screen with you and bennett, thank you. And thanks to the huge crowd of people who showed up tonight. Thanks so much. I see so many friends names, its a little intimidating. A big thank you to both donovan and miles. Thanks so much for stopping by joining us. Thank you all at home for tuning in. We had 60 people tonight, thats fun. I wouldnt be able to fit you all in my apartment but i can fit you in this zoom meeting so thrilled exciting to get to welcome you all. Hopefully we will be seeing you again soon but otherwise have a good night, stay safe and stay well. Weeknights this month were featuring booktv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight we focus on covert operations. That starts at 8 p. M. Eastern. Enjoy booktv this week and every weekend on cspan2. You are watching booktv on cspan2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americas