Intellectual forum where scholars interpret the past and policymakers debate the future. What do the Ronald Reagan president ial Foundation Institute Virtual Event series. To fulfill present regulation making the Reagan Library dynamic intellectual forum hosted for Public Affairs programming offers lectures and forms presenting a prospectus of important Public Policy issues of the day. Each you would bring to 20three vince from politicians, authors, be of them needed, and more. Since of march 2020 closures many businesses across our great country the Reagan Foundation best upbringing if its on my to ensure were still delivering worldclass content even if you cant get to our hilltop to watch in person. In this weeks center for Public Affairs event we bring Chris Wallace, 2014 marks the 50th year the broadcasting industry. Hes participate in coverage of nearly every Major Political event and is also secured highprofile interviews with dignitaries and u. S. Leaders. For the past three years he has broadcast the sunday morning show live from the Reagan Library and unforced pavilion follicle Reagan Reagan National Defense form in december if you chew. Chris wallace is with us today to speak about his new book, countdown 1945. Which is an unforgettable account of the life of the ordinary american and japanese civilians in wartime as was the american soldiers fighting in the pacific wading into the order to launch a possible invasion of japan. Its a story about in 116 days harry truman goes from being a Vice President who is been completely cut out of the fdr white house to suddenly become president. Its not only his story, its a story a scientist, the flight crew and others. We invite you to enjoy our Virtual Program come to you from our air force one to the Leadership Academy oval office with Chris Wallace and executive director john heubusch. Chris wallace, congratulations. What a terrific book. As you may know weve a lot of guests come to the Reagan Library and enough able to read them all. I could not put this one down. This is a terrific book, a thriller really, historical thriller that i just loved it and so congratulations on not just a first effort but a great first effort. Thank you. Thats awfully nice. I will say this idea of the historical thriller it seems to be out there because my favorite review was one in the Washington Post that said i know what happened in 1945 but this book is a thriller here a lot of people have said its a page turner, they couldnt put it down. Im thrilled because frankly its exactly what i wanted to do. I think so much history is written, in the distant past, we know what happened, why did happen and dost thou what i wanted to do. I wanted to take you into the moment and in this case countdown 1945, 115 days to hundred 15 days to change the world, the key moments in those hundred 16 days from april 12, 45, when truman is some to the white house. He thinks to talk to president roosevelt and then you find out that roosevelt is dead and he is sworn in and Henry Stenson in the sector report them aside afterwards and says i need to tell you about an immense project to create the most devastating weapon in history which is the first inkling Vice President now president truman has of the existence of the Manhattan Project, and to take you not just truman as you struggling and making the decision but the scientists at los alamos, dont know whether the gadget as he called the atom bomb would even work until 21 days before the bombing and the flight crew of the enola gay who, on the nation during their mission to hiroshima, the 1500 miles to hiroshima, dont know if the bomb may drop it because it never been dropped out of a plane come whether the aftershocks will knock them right out of the sky. Thats what ive tried to do and the fact that you and some other people, john, have said it was a page turner and a thriller. Im thrilled. Chris, my father after it was a b29 pilot in the Army Air Force so i was riveted as you can imagine which are followed doesnt need to be in the Army Air Corps to like this book so really well done. You put us in the room for happens on many occasions and thats just a masterful job, so well done. Thank you. Thats exactly what ive tried to do. There are so many dramatic moments. Truman has has been meeting wis war cabinet on june 18, and Henry Stenson, the secretary of war is there, George Marshall the general of the arm is there, all of the top brass and their discussing now that the nazis have surrendered on may 8, how theyre going to finish in when the war against the japanese. For about 45 minutes theres a long discussion of the invasion of japan, how many troops that will take, how long it will prolong the war, how many hundreds of thousands of casualties there will be on both sides. At the end theres quite a junior men in the room, assistant secretary of war named john mccoy who ended up becoming a major figure in mid century america. He was the High Commission to germany, a member the warren commission, he was the head of the world bank but it was a junior guy there. Truman says nobody gets out of the room without telling what they think. Book lloyd asks Henry Stenson his boss at the war department, and Stenson Cisco had. He says i think were out of our heads examined if we dont least discussed the bomb. That was literally in this war cabinet the first time in this meeting theyve been talking about the casualties and the length invasion and a bloody was going to be and nobody ever said that we might have the bomb, until he said basically it was dismissed at that point largely because itd never been tested. It wasnt tested until july 18 just 21 21 days before the boms used against hiroshima, and at that point back in june, treatment did it as a science project. If it worked, right, if it didnt we had to go ahead. So many historical moments you wrote about, chris. I wonder, i know youre a student of history. What is it that made you choose this particular moment . Well, its a funny story. I had the idea of doing exactly what i talked about, to take a key moment in history and try to put you in it. At the time they didnt all these, they are faced with these momentous challenges and didnt know whats going to happen. It would be like reagan talking up what ended up in terms of arms control of gorbachev. I was fortunate to cover pictures of reagan including reagan and gorbachev summit spirit but having covered it in real life, the drama of reykjavik and his enormous discussions and the possibility they might ban all Nuclear Weapons and then it all falls apart to just say reykjavik failed is one thing. To save they went there with these hopes, creates a tremendous sense. I wanted to get but have a subject. In february of 2019 it was the day that President Trump was going to deliver his state of the union address. And nancy pelosi, the speaker of the house, invited several tv anchors over to her hideaway in the capital, this was the hideaway about the speakers have and theres a tradition in washington that if the speaker and the president are of opposing parties, this is true for republican president , democratic speaker and vice versa, that the speaker will deliver a prebottle which is basically before the president even delivers a speech to tell you all the reasons that its bad. Were sitting in this room and nancy pelosi says this is the board of education. I dont think the other folks in the room knew but i knew the board of education had been sam rayburns hideaway and this is where he would have people come after hours to gossip go to plot strategy for love of urban and water. Vice president truman was regular there. On april 12 at 3 finish presiding over the city. Pelosis telling us the story. It was in this room truman called the white house have used all the one to speak to him, and he calls and speaks to white house official who says you need to get to the white house as quickly and quietly as possible. Truman sits ten the phone and says to the room, jesus christ and general jackson. [laughing] which i had never heard before. But i thought to myself, thats it. Thats my story. Thats the one im going to delve into and try to create a historical thriller. As it turned out i didnt know then, 116 days from when he is alerted that roosevelt has died and he is president until the bomb has dropped on hiroshima. Your first book, chris, some writers report after the first book they just had a fabulous time, they loved the experience, and some found it miserable. How did you find writing your first book . Yes. [laughing] you know, it is a very odd experience. Its a roller coaster. There are times when you get a delicious fact. Thats really what is so exciting is, i didnt know that when truman, i knew the story about jesus christ and general jackson saw thought that would be a good start but i didnt know when i started the project that when truman gets to the white house and its warning he is alerted for the first time about the existence of the Manhattan Project, and there so many juicy Little Details like that. One of the details is the fact that they only have tested obama once on july 21. Im sorry, july 16. 21 days before the internet using it. For now they are at tinian island which is a launchpad for the flight to hiroshima about 1500 miles and somebody says look, if we put this 10,000 10,000pound bomb, which is very inappropriate called little boy, in the front of the plane and then we have to put a bunch of extra gas in the back of the plane so it wont fall down, it will be more weight than weve ever carried and the plane might crash on takeoff. If theres an atom bomb, we could have an atomic explosion at the u. S. Base on tinian island which will destroy all of us and wont do anything to the japanese. A suddenly study say this is ao days before the mission, we cant take off with a life. We will have to arm the bomb on the plane during the mission. They turn to the chief officer, geek parsons and they say can you do that . He said i never have but but is i will learn. He sits in the plane on the ground in tinian island in sweltering heat working on it trying to do it. When they finally do take off with an unarmed bomb, get off safely, and they are on the way to hiroshima come he gets down, cradles in the bombay next a little boy and his to take off some of the casing, do some of the wiring and then they have to take off the safety plugs and put in the arming plugs, and it is only then midway through the flight that they say the bomb is actually armed and ready to go. Thats a detail that you know is just a joy. Not to go back to your question. So moments like that its a joint and then there are times when youre just trying to, how do i tell the story and how do i put all these disparate elements together . You think, man, this is hard work. My daughter is in publishing and at one point shes been a publishing for ten years, not my publisher. Theres no reverse nepotism here. Here. I said to her, boy, writing the book is hard work. She rolled her eyes and said, gee, dad, im glad you discovered that. [laughing] its tough to make a living. Chris, did it surprise you it did me truman didnt know the first thing about the building of this bomb. I read you would written that he and roosevelt and unspoken a couple of times during this fourth term of the presidency. It just seems almost inconceivable as a Vice President to not have been made into something as important as this but i guess that was the case . A lot of people have asked me about that. It does seem incredible. Even Vice President he had been Vice President for 82 days and he met privately, he been in big meetings, but hed met privately with roosevelt twice in the 82 days. The fact was you have to remember this was roosevelts fourth term. This wasnt his first or even his second Vice President. He had gotten pretty good at ignoring Vice President and i think he thought, you know, Vice President , and go. I have my war cabinet and those of the people i count on to make these decisions. And it just sort of shunted truman off to the side. I mentioned the fact that stinson takes them aside on the day hes sworn in and says im going to talk about this project. By the nose truman is overwhelmed. Ps just become the president say since im going to give you some time to settle in and then i will come back. On april 25, 13 days later, he comes into the oval office to brief president truman now that you settle in and not even quite two weeks. And meanwhile general Leslie Groves who was the real military commander of the Manhattan Project is snuck in through underground tunnels. One of the reasons was that given this a lot of thought at the pentagon. They thought if the two of them come in the front door together and people are going to wonder at what if gross, who built the pentagon, he was the big mission man, what grows in stinson were doing together. So he stuck in and they gave truman a detailed document to read, which really explain the Manhattan Project in historical detail and technical detail, and treatment complete picky said i dont like reading long documents like this here groves said mr. President , we cant say anymore briefly or succinctly. Its a complicated project. You know, thats how out of touch he was with them but, of course, by the end of the thymic and we made the decision he knew he had mastered all of them. Another remarkable fact i found from reading your book is 125,000 people, americans, working on this Manhattan Project, and not a word gets out. That just is amazing. Youre exactly right. Its one of the things that astonish me, too. People say to me, what was your cover trump and coming all the ups and downs in the ins and outs of washington today. What was it like writing this book . I said one of the things i enjoyed most about writing, researching and writing and a talk about this book is that it absolutely nothing to do with donald trump. [laughing] thats not a knock on the president. Its just to say that it took me away from all the stuff were in and it goes precisely to your point because youre exactly right. They had been working on this project for almost three years, to plus years. 125,000 people at book which tennessee uranium enrichment, los alamos working on the bomb, or enrichment and hanford washington flight crews in wendover utah and not one word leaks about the project. I thought to myself, if you had 125,000 125,000 people today working on a secret project to bake apple pie, by day to somebody would tweak this is outrageous, its immoral, im going to blow the whistle on this thing. John, it was a simpler time, a time when all of the country was more unified. Everybody went together in common cause to win the war against the nazis and the japanese, and boy, could we use that now. Youre not kidding. Youre not kidding. Another fascinating thing you wrote the book is of course you covered major, major default in the project from truman to gross and oppenheimer and the rest which also chose to focus in on stimson and and tell us, tell the listeners about those too. I thought is a great juxtaposition throughout the book. One of the things we wanted to do with this book is, i very much wanted, you know, it not just get on the top level because the war wasnt just on the top level of the scientists. It engage all of america and one of the stories i wanted to tell was the home front. We found their websites where theres commentary about the various people. Amazingly we found two people who are still alive. Obviously all of the big players are long gone. Ruth stimson was a 19yearold girl she had volunteered to work at oak ridge at the uranium enrichment facility. She didnt know what it was. She just knew it was a big factory and there were these giant machines called electron machines. The women, a different time, they were called the hell a tron grows. At a bunch of knobs they had to keep the meter in the right place, not go into the red. They had no idea. They were just told keep the meter in the rich and you help win the war. I had no idea what they were doing was enriching uranium creating you 235 235 and plutom to fuel the atom bomb. What made her story especially special was not just that she was in the home front but she had a boyfriend, laid her husband, lawrence, who was in europe cohabitant army medic and survived all the fighting. On the eighth the war in europe ends. The nazis surrendered and like a lot of other people she is delighted because her boyfriend has gotten through this but shes terrified because hes not going to come home. The expectation is hes not going to be shipped to even bloodier conflict in japan. What she didnt realize, you know, kind dramatic irony of this is she is helping create the weapon that if it is used could save her boyfriends life. Thats exactly what happened. Even more dramatic story and again its one of the great things as you know as as a stut of history, oftentimes history, there are plot lines you would never dream of in thinking yourself if youre going to write a novel or do a movie. Parents worsen their children out to the countryside so if there were a bombing they be safe. What they thought was a score ended up being a work camp and the lieutenant hated it but you couldnt send them home because the school censored it. I think they were saying to their parents get me out of here so shes snuck into town and she mailed a letter in the post office saying get me out of here. Her mother shows up to rescue her and hideko is thrilled and she says thank you mom and the mother says, hideko look, theres a lot of fear in the city, lets stay out in the countryside for a few days and hideko says absolutely not, i want to go home so they spend the night and they go home and on august 5 and of course that means they are in hiroshima when the bomb drops on august 6 just amazing and in fact i had a chance to see a clip of you and hideko bone to the smithsonian to see the presence of that massive day front of the ruler. This again is the kind of thing you never would have imagined so we did a documentary for fox news for anybody out there and i assume a lot of you subscribe to fox nation, you can find it there and its all countdown 1945 like the book. I sent to her, we just talked on the phone up to that point. I said would you consider coming to washington for an interview and she said i will under one condition. Whats that . I want to gosee the enola gay. I never would have guessed asking her to do Something Like that but she wanted to do it. Dont we went about one day and we got permission to go there for the museum opened. And we went to see the enola gay and i hope had no idea what her reaction would be and as you know from her dad, their enormous, really and its big silver and all shiny and we walked up to it and she was just taking it in and i said no, i just feel deeply grief stricken. And she thought for a while and she said i want to say a prayer for peace. Which she did and then she said i think that hes an old man, i think that plane is an old man and i think he needs to leave this using them and go to sleep. Which i thought was interesting and she went silent or a and that was that and i think on some level, it provided some closure. Thats great and it was such a great moment for us. Lets go back to truman. I know its not easy but some of the dilemma that truman faced was the dropping of a bomb, his rationale because as hedescribed so well in your book , there were going to save a lot of lives but take a lot of lives as well. I think there are a couple of points i would make an obviously this has been one of the great world questions for the last 75 years, this of course is the summer, the 75th anniversary of all these events of dropping the bomb on hiroshima, should we have dropped the bomb or not and i guess i hadnt really studied and thought about it. It wasnt a choice between dropping the bomb or doing nothing. It was the choice between dropping the bomb and invading and if we invaded as i said, the top experts. General marshall, secretary George Stinson and all the top people at the pentagon said this isnt the summer of 45, you can expect the war to go on at least another year and a half until the end of 1946 and you can expect 1 million japanese casualties and a half 1 million american casualties because as they got closer and closer to the japanese homeland, instead of the japanese soldiers getting to lose spirit, they in fact fought more fiercely. When they went to okinawathey thought they were going to take it over in two days. It took them three months and ended up having to kill 100,000 japanese and the 20,000 that were left, none of them surrendered. Some of them committed suicide. Some of them kept fighting. Some were taken prisoner but they didntsurrender. So they knew they were going to have to terrible battle on their hands if they did invade. Some people say okay, so what they would havesurrendered anyway. To which my response is we dropped the bomb on hiroshima on august sixth and the Japanese Military government has not surrendered for 30 days so the us then dropped a second bomb on nagasaki and the Japanese Military government still does not surrender and it has only been at emperor hero vito decides to go over to japanese government and directly to the people and he gets on the radio and literally the first time the vast majority of japanese have ever heard the voice of their emperor and he basically says we have to surrender. And that was it. But it took two bombs and an emperor going over the heads of the government to get the japanese to surrender. I think one issue for truman and honestly i dont know any president would have madeany other decision. If you had invaded and if you have lost and thousands or hundreds of thousands of americans died or had grievous injury and later it were to come out that you had as a president access to a weapon that conceivably could have ended the war in a flash and you had said to use it, i dont know that any president could have faced that orwould have wanted to face that. So i leave it to others as to whether it was the moral thing to do or not. I think its a real practical matter, i dont think truman had any choice. I think youre right. Chris, one of the ways that it feels like you take the reader right into the moment on some occasions is the material you got was just excellent and i wondered what were your core sources particularly as it relates to internment. I wonder if youre doing this as a commercial. Maybe a little bit. After i read all of the histories and theres a lot of histories out there that are very good, you want more. So where did i go . I went to the Truman Library and independence missouri and i spent a few days there with an archivist and im sure so many fellows have with writing going through this and the treasure trove was the diaries. Because i often think to myself i covered reagan in the 80s. As i covered not as directly because i spent six years in the White House Press corps as i covered from now, what are theythinking at that moment . Whats really going on in their mind . Now we have access to reagans diaries and we have a much better sense of that. But trumans diaries were terrific. He really was first of all a very good diary keeper as was president reagan and also a very good writer as wasreagan. He said a lot of things in the diary that give you the innerconversation. One of the things i found very interesting is that , and its different and i think most peoples perception of truman because these famously thought of as this very decisive man. He made a decision and he never looked back on it. He never looked back on this, he always defended himself and said i can do it again but as hes making the decision in pop stamp germany in a conference with churchill and stalin in july 1945 , he was really struggling with this decision. It was having trouble sleeping at night. She complained of fierce headaches which he had whenever he was under stress in his career and in his diary, he keeps talking about this terrible weapon and he describes it in apocalyptic terms. He describes it as fire, destruction, prophecy to end the bible so he made the decision and as i say he never looked back but this wasnt in normas decision and he gave it all of the inner turmoil and struggling that i think he should have. He wrestled with it. Tough job. [inaudible] im sure there asked our extensive books written about him but what a man. I thinkas you describe him , hes a genius really. Absolutely. I thinkhalf dozen languages , learned sanskrit so he could read the buddhist writings. Fabulously learned as a physicist but also, and people had questions about whether he would have any executive skills at all because he was a very skilled administrator. He was a scientific director at los alamos and one of the things he had to juggle was he had general groves who i mentioned before , this military man and then he had all of these frankly premadonna scientists who rebelled at the idea of deadlines and military order and he kind of had to keep both of those things going. We talk about second thoughts, another one of these great nuggets in the book is after the bombing and afterthe war ends , truman never looked back. These always asked about it for the rest of his life but he keeps saying i had to make the decision to end the war and if i had to make thatcall i do it again. All these people on the flight crew had the samething. All of them, it and the war, where military men. This was the way to defeat the enemy. The people who did havesecond thoughts were the scientists. Albert einstein really started the whole Manhattan Project in 1939 when he writes a letter to roosevelt and what his concern is the concern of a lot of the german refugees who left nazi germany and in the west, either in england or the us, they were concerned that the nazis were going to get the atomic weapon before the us did or god for bid, that adolf hitler had a monopoly on the first weapon of mass destruction. In any case, about a month after the explosion, oppenheimer comes to the white house and he sits down with truman and by this point hes just lax with second thoughts and he says mister president , i have these terrible regrets area i feel i have blood on my hands and truman says dont worry about it. I gavethe order. Ive got the blood on my hands. And oppenheimer leaves, and truman says to his staff i never want to see that sonofabitch in this office ever again. It was such a moment. You also tell a story in the book and i had not heard before. I want you to tell the whole story about the pulitzer and its reflective of warrants with the New York Times and the opportunity that he had in this project in how all that turned out. Again, this is with joy, you talk about the days and bad days writing, this is a good day. William Leonard Lawrence was a science reporter and a very distinguished science reporter for the New York Times. And he had won a Pulitzer Prize with a couple of other people in 37 for writing an article on the scientific project. And this military man, but he also talked to himself this is going to be an immense story and i want the story told right. This is another example of the difference between the unity of that time and what we have today. So this military general walks in to the New York Times and goes to see the editor and he says i would like, because he knows about lawrence, i would like to get William Lawrence and i like you, i would like him to basically disappear off the face of the earth and i want him to go inside. Hes going to get the great story. Im trying to remember, i dont think he told the editor what the story was, im almost sure he didnt. But you basically, so the editor said okay read can you imagine that today if the general went to the editor of thetimes . He is told, hes basically told her going to have to write this but youre not going to be able to tell it until we tell you you can. Of course any news man worth a sense would jump at that but theidea of this story , he essentially did so he then was brought inside the red he was part of it all and he was there at alamogordo when they tested bomb on july 16. And he had a genius and we spoke at great length from some of the dispatches he wrote, none of which appeared until after the bomb exploded. And truman announced the whole project to the world and his writing is fantastic and become came up with the phrase maybe youve heard of it before, the atomic age. That was written by William Lawrence. So be there for all of the testing and i wish my writing were as good as William Lawrence is but you get to read some of his in the book. And then he is there with the cruise, he is not allowed on the first flight because its obviously the first flight and they just had 12 men and they werent going to spare an extra seat. But he does end up going on the second flight, the nagasaki flight so he is there and describes the firstperson witness the detonation of the second atomic bomb in warfare and hes a great character and is a delight to read. Think about how do you describe the first atomic bomb blast, how do you describe seeing an atomic bomb takeout a city . He does it masterfully. The surprising thing, its almost like a postscript that i guess there was a movement several years later to pull the Pulitzer Prize from him and the New York Times because an arrangement had been made at the time, its an interesting story. What had happened was was during that training time he was behind the scenes it was on thegovernment payroll. So and again, it was just a different relationship in terms of people, the media, the country, there was much more a sense of were all in this together. That obviously has ended. So at a certain point i think in the 50s, maybe it was the 60s but they went to the times and said it was basically writing Government Press releases and he should get back to pulitzer, the timesand William Lawrence did not. Theres a bit player that you mention and i think maybe only once it just left left off the page to me because i didnt know this is a piece of history but this fellow cost fuchs i think a german that was a scientist on the Manhattan Project. He actually turned out to be a russian spy, can you tell that story . Just real quickly. One of the big issues for churchill and truman bought them because the british and us and been involved in this whole work together, roosevelt and churchill and adam truman so when the bomb explodes, truman gets word and churchill gets word almost at the same time but one of the things theyre discussing is when do we tell stalin . Because stalin doesnt know anything about thisproject. Just before the conflict ends, they dont want to tell them too early and they dont want to tell them too much if we dont tell them anything and were supposed to be allies, hes going to resent it and its going to create even more problems and when theyre in pot stamp there already are major problems between russia on the one side and the us and britain on the other because of course russia is from the east and takingover most of Eastern Europe and is not going to give it up. So late in the conference after one of the sessions truman goes over to stalin to tell him about it and he practices what hes going to say and he doesnt even bring a translator, he uses the russian translator, the translator stalin and truman by themselves and truman says i want to let you know that we have an enormous indescribably powerful weapon that we have developed and stalin says something basically, well i hope you put it to good use with the enemy and thats it and he turns away and truman is dumbfounded. He doesnt ask a question . And churchill comes up to him and says is not there but he can see that its a conversation, what happened and he said i dont know, i told him and he didnt seem that interested. And even trumans russian translator, not the russian but the american is wondering whether the translator translated it properly. The truth is that stalin was interested, he just wasnt surprised because exactly as you say was this german scientist who had become a refugee and had ended up in the United States. Hed been a member of the German Communist Party cause he saw the communist party as being the only force inside germany that was resistant to hitler riyadh now he leaves and hes in the United States and hes working in the Manhattan Project but his loyalty is still with communism so he gives a carrier named raymond all kinds of information which goes back to the russians and the postscript to the entire story is later that night, stalin and molotov, the Prime Minister and the the russian compound together and somebody overhears them having a conversation in which theyre discussing the fact that truman has now told him about the bomb and the bombworks. And stalin says i guess we need to get going and historian would later say that at 7 20 5 pm on that night is when the Nuclear Arms Race between russia and the us officially began. What a moment. Chris, do you have another book in you have to mark it seems like you must because it seems like you really enjoy this area its turned out to be a bestselling book so whats your next one left and mark you have any in mind . One of the thoughts i had was to not only do what i said, create a historical thriller but to be able to replicate it. So when i came up with the compound idea, the idea of telling it not just in history but were going to count down thedays , i can say we can do countdown 1945, countdown whatever. I have a couple ideas. I havent settled on one yet but as i said, writing a historybook there are ups and downs. Highs and lows but there are enough ups and one of them, im just getting the chance to talk to you out about this book but there will be another countdown. I cant wait to read it. Youve got a whole other career ahead. Its just wonderful to see the work youve done. And thanks so much forjoining us today. Best of luck as you do this bookstore virtuallyaround the world. Yes and you know the virus is going to end and ill be out at my Favorite Places in the world, the Reagan Library as you know ive been there many times including with mrs. Reagan when she was still alive and i look forward to coming and talking to all you folks. Thank you, youre welcome anytime. Thank you for joining us for todays programming event. We hope this conversation has inspired you to show you what youve learned with your family and friends and that youll join us again for an upcoming event. All great change in america begins at the dinner table. So tomorrow night in the kitchen , children, if your parents havent been teaching you what it means tobe an american , you ought to know and nail them on it. That would be a very american thing to do. The Senate Taking a break for their weekly party lunches. They will return to 15 eastern for the confirmation of james now to the court judge for the Northern District of ohio. The conference is facing a midnight deadline december 11 to extend the current government funding to avert a Government Shutdown and when the Senate Returns we will have live coverage right here on cspan2. Book tv on cspan2 as top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Saturday at 1 pm eastern from the recent virtual festival of books author sarah marsh, Thomas Burton and wayne manfred reflect on life in appalachia and david pilgrim discuss the chimp ohara in the south. Then at 7 40 5 pm new yorker staff writer discusses his book joe biden the life, the run and what matters now. On sunday at 1 pm eastern from the southern festival of books, journalist Matthew Meador talked about his book the Delta Justice about a civil rights case which helped to reaffirm the right to a trial by jury in most criminal cases and author Stephanie Gordon and chris hanby offer their thoughts on Investigative Journalism and its role in a democracy. Then at 9 pmeastern on after words law Professor John fabian way talked about his book american contagion epidemics and the law from smallpox to the great plague. What book tv this weekend on cspan2. Every year book tv asks members of congress about the books theyre reading. Joining us once again on book tv is congressman gerald connolly, democratfrom virginia. Give us an update on your reading list, congressman. Peter, as you know re
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