Member of the Roosevelt Library and become a member of the information table just outside the door. At this time i would like to ask you to turn off your cell phones and thank cspan for covering this today and quickly go over the format for this session. We will start with our speaker in just a moment. Then i will follow that up if you have questions make your way over to the microphone so we are able to pick up the question in the author will move down the hall to the table outside of our new deals bookstore where you can purchase the book and have the author signed them. 2012 is an adjunct member of the Arizona State university and his fields of study include Public Policy, political history, latin america, u. S. mexico border land and sanford, arizona, i want to introduce patrick lukens. [applause] thank you. I want to thank bob clark and the rest of the staff and the president ial library to be one of todays presenters. And preparing this presentation and Headline News over the past few days caused me to ad lib something quick. I dont know what is happening in the Dominican Republic. It is relevant to the research, mark twain said history doesnt necessarily repeat itself but often rhymes. 3,000yearold quote, there is nothing new under the sun. What is happening there for those who might not be familiar is two years ago the Dominican Supreme Court issued an interesting interpretation of their 1929 constitution on what constitutes citizenship and face said those born to transience i not dominican citizens and they define haitians as transients. So haitians who have been in the Dominican Republic entire lives born and raised in the Dominican Republic since 1929 which means you are safe if you are 87 years old, are no longer dominican citizens. That ruling two years ago didnt make Headline News what is making Headline News is deportations have started. The reason i bring that up is if it hadnt been for the changes that occurred the night detail in my research, we may have gone that direction ourselves. The Dominican Republic is not one of my areas of research during my student days. He told me the d are in haiti have similar relationship to the United States and mexico. Haiti is a dirtpoor country, the Dominican Republic is of very wealthy country and there are a lot of haitian Illegal Immigrants in the Dominican Republic and we have a lot of the same issues we have in terms of illegal immigration. The thing i find amazing, in the u. S. It seems to me politics would not matter, leftwing or rightwing, i cant imagine anyone denying birthright citizenship, that is what they have done in the Dominican Republic is denied birthright citizenship which the International Community is quite some time. It is phenomenal to me, returning to my prepared notes. What may have been overlooked, part of the reasons they may have been overlooked is because the publishing and cataloging process. Most of the authors, there are elements of publishing over which we have no control and people who tell us you cant do that, they have no control either because they have things on your end of the process my title went through several variations. The original file i submitted to the university of Arizona Press was too long. It was a quiet victory of Mexican American civil rights and the vote restriction. You got to narrow it down. In all of the variations i had two goals. I wanted to keep the quays the phrase acquired victory because it symbolized the hidden nature of these events and wanted to keep the phrase fdr state department because it tells you which part of the administration fought the fight. I had to abandon the fdr state department. Another area where i had no input was the library of Congress Classified the book and that determines a great deal about how it is received. They do a wonderful job at the library of congress that they have their own constraints. For latino rights. Books about mexicanamericans civil rights and ethnicity. I was trained in a lot of different areas and came about to write a book that focus on a lot of those areas. Were first in chicano history. A quiet victory is as multifaceted as my background. In addition to falling under 184 is about congressional debates on mexican immigration, the influences of the government of mexico which was involved here. Especially mexican ambassador to honda. It is a book about policy of president roosevelt and state department and the administration as a whole. None of that is conveyed under e 184. I pointed out call number determines how book is received, which journals review it, or the case of journals as serve the entire discipline of history, who reviews it, most of the scholars who reviewed my work at it published. Again it was a wonderful opportunity for me to come here because one of my other fields is public history, where University Trained historians for employment in areas Like National parks and state parks working for president ial libraries. This is a great forum for me to present my work on a quiet victory for latino rights. Even into fdrs presidencies, the last vestiges of the Nativist Movement that gave the United States the instruments johnson read immigration act were still trying to close what they perceived to be loopholes in that legislation. Anyone not familiar with that legislation this is the law the placed quotas european immigration. California nativists managed to insert section 13 a clause excluding asians entirely by tying Immigration Law to naturalization law. At the time naturalization was reserved exclusively for whites and africans and that is a funny dichotomy because anyone in between was not eligible to naturalize. All called the asian exclusion a literal beating of that section would exclude all races other than the white europeans and black africans. The johnson react left Latin Americans place no quotas on mexico or the rest of south america and immigration authorities at the time considered latinos eligible for naturalization and did the terms of the treaty of guadalupe. They were not excluded as nonwhite. This was up held in a federal court ruling from the Western District of texas calls i will visit the rodriguez decision in a few minutes. The important thing to note is a District Court ruling and not the Supreme Court ruling. 1930, nativists in congress attempted to add Latin Americans and mexicans to one category or the other. On this particular issue political lines had not been drawn the way they are today. You didnt have republicans on one side and democrats on the other. It was democrats in general fighting against restriction and exclusion but one of the key exclusions in congress was Texas Democrat john box. Many of the bills were called the box build. Republicans like arthur freed of california and bird vincent of michigan who opposed his efforts. Even Pennsylvania Republican senator david read his name is on the johnson read immigration act expos restrictions mexico. With no restrictive or exclusionary legislation emerging. Arguments against legislation were not always pro civil rights. Most of the reasons for opposing restriction were either economic, before the depression any way, toward diplomatic. Even before fdrs election, the Good Neighbor policy, coolidge and hoover tried to improve u. S. latin American Relations phone not to the extent of the fdr Good Neighbor policy. Congress took that into consideration and realized placing restrictions on mexico could be damaging. Congressional debates ended after 1930. That year john box cost the nomination on the democrat side. Arguably because of his stance against latino immigration. That year the democrats also won the majority in the house of representatives and entire research and messed democrat from new york took over as chair of the House Immigration Committee and any bill that came forward after that he stifled any efforts so from that point it looks like mexican immigration is safe. Under fdr relations between mexico and the United States took a huge turn to the Better Things to fdrs Good Neighbor policy. One of the key architects was directly involved in the events detailed in a quiet victory. From state Department Perspective fighting for latina rights was not necessarily about latino rights. It was about the Good Neighbor policy. That positive relationship was being built for nearly three years before nativists would test that relationship. After the congressional nativist failed to restrict or exclude latinos elements within the california Nativist Movement sought to use the Judicial Branch to the end. They will go to the judges the various California Groups that had obtained the asian exclusion act of 1924 had merged into a conglomerate called the california joint Immigration Committee. This new organization included also the California Attorney Generals Office headed by ulysses s. Webb. With attorneygeneral webs help they developed a legal argument based on several u. S. Supreme Court Rulings regarding asian and canadian indian immigration that they could use to counter henry rodriguez. That was a District Court ruling, Supreme Court trumps any District Court. In the rodriguez decision judge maxy and ignored race in favor of the treaty of guadalupe although rodriguezs opponents had tried to argue his racial in eligibility. But racial in eligibility to naturalize had been better defined by the courts after 1897. Most important was an almost and noted footnote in a 1934 u. S. Supreme court ruling, morrison vs. Calif. That footnote red indians not born in United States are ineligible for citizenship. There is a stream of indian blood in many of the inhabitants of mexico as well as the people of central and south america, whether persons of such a decent can be naturalized in the United States is an unsettled question. The subject was considered a matter of rodriguez but not all that was said was consistent with later decisions of this court. Mexicans have migrated into california and the increasingly large numbers and they have developed racial problems which have been considered by official bodies. The offer of this ruling was justice cardoso. I think theres an irony in that name. He is generally considered ethnically white. But that is a latino name. I think it is portuguese. This is a footnote. This is not in the ruling. It is a footnote. The footnote was placed there because the morrison case was argued by californias attorneygeneral web. This was a criminal prosecution of a man who sold land to have japanese gentleman in violation of california at alien land laws. Had nothing to do with mexican immigration. This was purely a criminal matter. With that footnote cardoso had given the california joint Immigration Committee with webs help a ruling that would counter the rodriguez decision. It was a stepping stone. They could use that ruling in the 1924 johnson read immigration act now to denied the immigration of mexicans to the United States but they needed a test case. They needed a ruling. Californians found an ally in buffalo, new york federal judge john night. I am sure fdr scholars are familiar with that name. Jon knight had been president of the state senate. I believe that the time fdr was governor. So you know they had to know each other. John night gave them their test case on december 11th, 1935. A fellow who had fled mexico at the height of the mexican revolution sought u. S. Citizenship after settling in buffalo. I did a lot of tracking, he had lived in tucson el paso and now being in new york i live in arizona. I understand why he came up here. When his petition went before judge night, night sighted but morrison decision and denied petition asserting that having native american blood, he was not white. Therefore ineligible. Again, their goal was nights decision would be appealed to and upheld all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Once legal analysts argued and i agree had this happen the nativists would have been successful. Makeup of the Supreme Court was the same quarter that rendered the morrison decision. Fdr at state department kept this from happening and so doing brought about a great deal of change. I get back to what the government was doing in a few minutes but i want to give you some background on what latinos were doing and it was classified as 184. During this era mexicanamericans differed on their view of race. In mexico scholars and politicians had embraced the concept, being part spaniard and part indian, however the ideas behind that in those days was being proud of being descended from the aztec civilization and political leaders in mexico in those days distanced themselves from the indian peasant of the 1930s. They didnt view themselves as the same but they were proud of their aztec indian heritage. In the United States Mexican American civil rights activism was born out of the world war i generation. Gee is found themselves being discriminated against when returning home after having fought for their country in the great war. They had believed serving in the war would win the respect the respect they had been lacking for so long. With a few exceptions mexicanamerican leaders were fighting to be classified as white. Government officials, at least immigration officials already did that. They believed this classification would benefit demand legalize discrimination and hopefully counter social discrimination if white americans did not view them as similar to africanamericans. Suddenly members testified before congress during the debate but their most successful activities occurred at the same time as and contributed to state Department Efforts to counter the ruling. Their first major success came after el paso, texas. One of my favorite cities. Public Health Department issued an order that mexicans and mexicanamericans were to be classified as, quote, colored. El paso was trying to sell itself as a Health Resort and Health Problems among the latino population which at the time was classified as white worked against those efforts. City officials claim the reclassification was at the quarter of the u. S. Census bureau and the Census Bureau had in fact in trying to separate things out not necessarily racially but ethnically come up with new classifications one of which was not colored by the way but how el paso interpreted. They got help from congressman maverick and Dennis Chavez in getting this overturned. Part of my research what happened in el paso. The reason for the fdr administration uniform policy, classifying latinos as white. The research that i did. One aspect of my work is it deals with what if history. This is a tough history to deal with. Most people look at what if Something Different has happened like what if hitler had won world war ii. What if something it did change had not . What if some miracle fdr had lost in 1932 and the state department was not in a position to help latinos and therefore Nativist Movement would have considered continuing to move forward and this type of history is much easier to examine. In this case change did occur through the efforts of men working under core dell hole and a secret set secretary of Latin American Affairs sumner welles. They made nights ruling simply disappear to assure would not happen again. One of the fundamental changes, the election of fdr was how the government functions. The new deal saw the development of what scholars call the technocratic approach to policymaking. Some folks in the state department embraced this idea and some opposed it and it happened to fallout along the same lines as the rivalry between sumner, wells and core tell all. As i did my research on how the state department, that rivalry had a tremendous impact process. The state department, the key policymakers, secretary wilbur j. Carr, assistant secretary walton more and legal advisers, did most of the work hand the best way to describe them, introduce them in my book. When the case came before the an obvious choice to assign to the issue. Nationality and citizenship, and florida had been a u. S. Delegate to the conference on codification of International Law where he wrote one of the protocols related to dual nationality and military obligations. It was better known, he was a democrat he was appointed by president coolidge and reappointed by president hoover. He had become in 1946 one of the first u. S. Judges on the International Court of justice. They took different approaches. Floor going seem to like the of traditional of rich edson wells. Kind of ironic even though some dwells was a personal friend of fdr he preferred to follow the old approach of Congress Making the loss and the executive branch carrying them out. Hall on the other hand was willing to follow the new technocratic approach. Their efforts came in three phases. Their first efforts headed by wells and fluornoy were to simply ruled that issue a ruling that all latinos would be classified as white. They got this idea watching what was happening, the idea that maybe you should do this administration. He seems to like wells. He had written in that memorandum after the ruling relations between mexico and the United States never seemed so promising as at this moment. This is after a conversation with some wells. These were to have Congress Remove all racial barriers to naturalization or at western hemisphere natives that include only whites and blacks. He was on a committee drafting legislation, that did become law in 1940 and managed to and latinos in 1940. Having been on the committee, he thought it was over. Few judges in man hadnt had also been influenced by the California Group and a bunch of cases were left pending that they wanted to clear up but the issue rested six months. The state Department Labor Department Officials removed pending cases forward. These turned out to be beneficial for the administration agenda. Roosevelt was reelected, with labeled judicial acquiescence. And the court olfaction to appreciate their technocratic approach. Their approach was to label all mexicanamericans, latin american immigrants and petitioners for nationalization as white. It worked. Nobody challenged it. The movement was dying out. And working with the efforts in legislation and the 1940 nationality act and that was the first phase. End1990s long before anyone heard the name barack obama and even the published work which came out a few years ago was not aimed at comparing fdr policies with obama policies. However reviewers were quick to point out the relevance. Over the last year a major point of comparison, has the reason, that is parallel. President obamas executive orders regarding immigration. Most scholars would agree that 100 years ago such executive action following the technocratic approach would have been declared unconstitutional and if youre playing attention to the news, his opponent vessel trying to get it declared unconstitutional. If wells and fluornoy were alive today they probably would have opposed it today having opposed the administrations efforts. The development of the technocratic approach, constitutional of russians have changed in the last century beginning largely with the new deal that some of that occurred before fdr got elected. President obamas order has been called unprecedented. Some argue the scope might never have seemed before. Whether you support or oppose his actions, the order on immigration is not without precedent, with the state Department Actions in countering judge nights will link all those 70 or 80 years ago. Thank you. [applause] i am always interested in finding out what triggered your interest in this particular subject. What had you read prior to this that interested you . It is the rather esoteric subject. I dont know the large bibliography that is available to us on this subject. That was the great thing for me. There wasnt a large bibliography. Andrade andradepetition was discovered by a professor at asu, great man, retired bell. He found the file when he was doing other research and king mentioned it in at least one book he had published but mentioned it in passing but he knew it had Great Potential and so when i was in my second year my ph. D. He handed me the filing said bring this back to me so i read through it and it was an absolutely phenomenal filed because in addition to being trained as a a mexican historian i was on the other side in the hispanic History Program and my issue was policy. Art wanted me to do a piece on chicano history. My focus was mexican history. There is a whole lot on u. S. mexican relations. There is a whole lot on Public Policy and it was so phenomenally open to everything i was studying and that is one of the problems with ph. D. Students. They expect you to study three separate fields and write about one of them and when you do your dissertation and i thought this is great. I can write about all three of the fields i am studying which publish history, u. S. mexican relations and latin america. Having read the file when art gave it to me, i knew it had the potential to be something bullish i love art. He is one of the greatest scholars i ever met and he lit the fire under me to keep going after dissertation and get the book published. So i owe a great debt of gratitude to rose ales. [applause] your watching booktv live coverage of the roosevelt reading festival in hyde park, new york. The festival is taking a break for lunch so we will be back in a little over an hour with more books on the new deal, how radio affected the role of the first lady, world war ii and more. This is the tv live coverage from the fdr president ial library. It will continue in about an hour. In the meantime we want to show you historian eric burnss new book, talking about the year 1920. [inaudible conversations] all right, hi, everyone. Thank you all for coming out tonight on such a beautiful spring evening. A few housekeeping points. If you could take a minute to silence yourself phones the author is speaking. Get a question and answer portion. It is important come to the microphone to get your questions recorded. Full of your chairs and been against something solid. Help us get to book selling. Welcome to politics and prose. I run all our events in the storm. I would invite you to take a moment and take up power and a calendar of events see everything we have going on. We are now operating in three and busboys and poets locations and we will do locations in all those events, we are doing more than ever. I hate to miss out on any of it. With that on to why you are here. We are happy to have eric burns back with us. You have the new four times before to talk about his new book 1920 the years that made the decade roar. This is absolutely not your typical history book. He is not your typical academic sort of historian. She brings his journalists isotopic as he has done with previous books, he is a former nbc correspondent and former host of fox news watch and has won and any for media criticism. In his new book he strips away about the glamour surrounding our concept of the 1920s and is able to show more about what everyday life was like through talking more and more about people who maybe we dont remember as much in history books but were important in their day. I will turn it over to him to talk about all that but we are so happy to have him back here at politics and prose. Please join me in welcoming eric burns. [applause] i dont drink coffee. I dont like coffee. I always felt the reason was the taste. It may be instead my lack of coordination. So i would like to ask your forbearance if i stumbles somewhere. I am a flawless speaker. I may just be done in by a coffee stain. 1920 was a remarkable year in and of itself not just because of the events of that year but because the events of that year were harbingers of events that would happen later in the decade, later in this century and even two events which happened in this century, two of the major events of this century. Thursday, september 16th, 1920, Trinity Church on wall street, the final bell from the tower sounds the noon hour. At that precise instant a horse that had been standing in front of the Jpmorgan Bank which was across the street from the Trinity Church explodes. A horse explodes into so many pieces that none could ever be found. I will not be questioned. The horse had been attached to a cart and inside the card was the equivalent of 100 pounds of dynamite. In addition to 500 pounds of castiron sash weights which when the explosion occurred had the effect of shrapnel. Lunch hour had just begun. Wall street was full of hungry and hurrying men and women in the Financial Institute who were going to restaurants, who were in to park benches to sit and eat their lunches. 30 were killed. More than 400 injured and a few of those who were injured would die in a hospital with a week. It was the first terrorist attack ever in the United States and it was the worst until Timothy Mcveigh and detonated the lives of 168 people in Oklahoma City in 1995. Legislators in 1920 started talking about homeland security. They didnt call it home and security but they started talking about making it more difficult to pass through the portals of ellis island. Who set off a bomb . Why . Were they ever caught . 1920 was the only year in which two amendments to the constitution of the United States took effect. The first was the eighteenth amendment which made it illegal to sell, buy or manufacture but curiously enough not to drink alcoholic beverages. Of course we know it as prohibition. It started on january 16th at 12 01 00 a. M. It ended for all practical purposes on january 16th at 12 02 00 a. M. Many people made their own versions of the beverages they used to know and love so well, most commonly of beer which people called home through. For this reason prohibition became the greatest do it yourself project in the history of this country and it brought the family closer together than it had ever been before. A poem from the time. Mothers in the kitchen watching out the judds, sisters in the pantry bottling the suds. Father is in the cellar mixing out, johnny is on the front porch watching for the cops. Americans still respected the law generally but this one specifically was just too contrary to human nature to be obeid on a widespread basis. And among those who disobeyed it were rotary Club President s pastors, doctors veterans of the great work and on one bizarre occasion in the Nations Capital lawmaker himself. In the lobby of the Office Building of the house of representatives of a congressman named la guardia invited friends, fellow legislators, tourists, reporters, newsreel camera men and even perversely the Capitol Hill Police force to watch the demonstration. Here is how his story describes the demonstration. La guardia blended two parts mauled tonic only to anemics and d. C. At any drug store. To one part near beer, with minimal alcoholic content and it was legal under prohibition call flow some reports from the time say the taste in the sink overnight. A lot of seconds passed to height and the suspense and collect his lips. The camera zoomed in. The brewmaster withstanding by to he pronounced it delicious, an end of quote. I think he was on la guardias payroll. La guardia was passing around samples of his beer and even said that the police should try it. He had people in the crowd passed glasses back to the police who work and found that about weatherization arrest this man. You was breaking the law he was a congressman everybody broke the law, they didnt know what to do so they fled. Chances are at least some of them ended up in their favorite speakeasys drowning their frustration for the embarrassment la guardia had caused them with a better quality of beverage and the congressman produced himself. In addition to near beer, industrial alcohols were legal under the eighteenth amendment because they reused in various Manufacturing Processes for various Manufacturing Processes but as Beverage Additives industrial alcohols were poison. They were blended with real alcohol to increase quantities and thus increase profits. In addition they increased deaths. In some cases to sell bootleg hooch to people who could afford better was to commit murder. In the words of some people government sanctioned murder. One of the many destructive products used at the time concocted by gangsters was called jamaica a gin or jake. If you drink too much jake there wasnt much of a chance he would die but what it did somehow was weaken tendons in your ankles so that you couldnt walk normally. You walked as if you had a clubfoot and you were called but jake trotter or jake stepper. Imagine this. In studying the various recipes for jake american scientists learn some of the principles that would lead german scientists to develop nerve gases during world war ii. The Second Amendment that was passed in 1920 was surprisingly controversial land long overdue. It finally gave women the right to vote. Despite bribes to the contrary that took place right out in the open right up to the last minute. There were occasions when in the middle of the aisles, various legislative houses, state legislative houses you could see a lobbyist give a handful of bills to a legislator who would then not his head, he was signifying that his opposition to suffrage was now bosh andthought and paid for. But momentum trumped money and the First National election in which women would vote, women joined men and they had no choice in voting out of office for a first female president of the United States. And so far the only female president. She wasnt really the president but she was the president defacto as opposed to do sure. Most americans didnt even know about it. As i look out here icy most americans dont know about it today. The Political Community in washington knew about the woman in the white house. Senator albert fall of new mexico was enraged. We have petticoat government, he said. Did to climatic community in washington and new. The french ambassador to the United States reported back to paris that he was dealing with mademoiselle president. The greatest misunderstanding about 1920 is it was the first year of the most carefree and wealthy decade we ever had in this country. It wasnt carefree because Americans Still lived under the shadow of the great war which is what world war i was called then. The conflict at once so brutal and nonsensical that we could not help but fear it would break out again. And as the case of the exploding horse demonstrated this time it might even break out on our own soil. As the case of the exploding horse demonstrated maybe it already had. 1920 wasnt a carefree year and it wasnt a wealthy one. Unless you were one of the socalled robber barons and their allies. Key in mind this a was their hero. The era of morgan, rockefeller, the vanderbilt descendants among many others with the era of men who made millions of dollars from the bent back in taking shoulders of men and women and children the era of vicious employers, helpless employees. Some of these men had recently returned from fighting a war that enrich the robber barons all the more since it was they who had manufactured some of the arms ammunition and even airplanes for the allies leave at the same time other men who were not nearly so fortunate had been part of the socalled great internal migration which consisted mostly of African Americans departing from the cotton fields of the south for the factories of the north desperate for a better life but finding a life just as punishing. The hours just as long, the pay just as minimal and the future just as depressing. It is not easy to calculate but considering the minimal income tax that existed at the time it is probably true that the earnings gap between the richest americans and the poorest of americans was greater in 1920 than it is today. Scotch and zelda and may have crashed through the fountain in new yorks plaza hotel drunk and soaking wet and laughing hysterically, but the men who worked in steel mills and coal mines for a few dollars a week, the women who worked in sweatshops for a few points a day, the young boys who got up in the middle of the night to deliver blocks of ice that way almost as much as they did. King young girls to spend 12 days a week, forced to stand up and eat their lunches so they could keep working. These people, these people were the truer symbols of life in america in 1920 than scott zelda and the flappers. Carlo gee of money ponzi, known as Charles Ponzi was an immigrant to the United States and he was determined not to live the kind of life i just described. He didnt. There were times however when he might have been better off if he did. A few people actually mage money from ponzis financial machinations which by the way were legal when he began. The initial ponzi scheme was misunderstood in silvery and other way is. So much money was being made by a few people that a law was passed that made his dealings a criminal activity and when ponzi kept selling his now worthless paper he became a crook and the ponzi scheme became a reality. Lead in the 20th century thanks to a man named Bernie Madoff the scheme was reborn in 2008 Bernie Madoff went to jail for the rest of his life. I suspect, dont know but i suspect that ponzis name might have been in the newspaper more in 2008 than it was in 1920. Most of us think the ponzi scheme is a kind of chain letter but it is in its original form not that at all. Is more complicated than that and involves postal rates in Different Countries, in different parts of the world. I dont understand it completely and i wrote about it in a book. So if you buy the book and come to that section, you may be assured the what i wrote is true. It is just that you will be confused too. Bernie madoffs version of the ponzi scheme lasted almost a decade. Charles ponzi didnt even last year. Earned the in 1920 he was a smalltime hoodlum trying to impress his mom who he loved dearly. His battalion mom back home, he wrote letters saying he was doing so well in america he was doing better, becoming more successful wall time figuratively the streets here really were paved with gold if you knew what streets to take. In fact by the fourth of july 1920 ponzi was a multimillionaire. Before the year was over he was a jail bird. In moved very quickly for this most famous of scam artists. I have the surprise for you. You wont believe in it now but just wait. If you read, 1920, the year that made the decade war, by the time you finish you will not despise Charles Ponzi, you will sympathize, you will feel for him. Charles ponzis story is one of the saddest tales of a crook, a man ever put to paper. In 1920, warren g. Harding from ohio defeated james cox a democratic senator from ohio and some years later harding was voted the 29th best president in history of the United States. You see what is coming, dont you . At the time america had had 29 president s. None had presided over an administration as corrupt as hardings. One member of the administration was perhaps, this is the fellow whose office was next to that of the attorneygeneral, perhaps the leading bootlegger in washington and committed suicide when he feared he might be exposed. A cabinet officer. A friend of hardings and a despicable man was put in charge of Veterans Affairs and east oil supplies from veterans hospitals the year or two after the war, veterans hospitals were full and needed their supplies as much as ever. Heath slocum, stole from for his own profit and with hardings approval escape to europe. He was never prosecuted. His top assistant fear of prosecution. He committed suicide. The attorney general was indicted for fraud. Albert fall, flow of petticoat government, was appointed secretary of the interior where for kick back, he sold military oil reserves to friends of his for private profits. The scandal was called teapot dome because of the shape of a rock formation under which most of the oil resided. Teapot dome was probably the most ignominious transgression against justice in American Government until 1972 when the first and greatest of the scandals ending in gate. Visitors heard something that sounded like two people banging off the walls of a tiny janitors closet next to the president s office. Mops were sliding down the walls buckets were tumbling over. A male voice joined a female voice in a chorus of muscle panting. Usually Janitorial Services do not inspire that degree of enthusiasm. The tour guide asked his group to walk a little faster. They were happy to oblige. The most important event of 1929 opinion was also the most important event of the 20th century in my opinion and it took place in a small shack on a roof of a factory outside pittsburgh pa. In that shack the american mass media of which there is no force by more influential began. Was never the same again. This stage was usually the home of entertainment that was flat fee and moralistic and in 1920 from Eugene Oneill won the first of his four Pulitzer Prize with beyond the horizon and the theater was never the same again. Poetry was the home of his bucolic scene early. In 1920. In verse was never the same again. With the exception of the word popular songs were insipid. Titles like daddy youve been a mother to me. Who wait josephine with napoleon when napoleon was away. [laughter] real titles, real songs. Out of nowhere, a woman who virtually no one had ever heard of named mimi smith, release the record crazy blues in the jazz age. Had officially have begun. With the hardened renaissance had begun music and literature and pros alike changed all the more they had changed and would never change again. The roaring 20s are the most famous decade they are thin only decade who has its own name its an adjective. Without these events another tony to jumpstart and mightve been quite a while before history heard so much as a spider. And that is the end of what youll hear from me tonight about 1920 the years that made the decade more. [applause] now it will be up to you to decide what you hear. Very interesting. I thought there were terrorist attacks or at least one ready in arcus before 1920. Elegant ladies kind back from shopping in Something Like what you pay for your gas packets for my family for a whole year. There was a wave of package bans spot. They were delivering the package. The worst injury beside that was then made handling the package lost her hands. The package bombs were sent to mayors, judges, members of the establishment. I dont know about the case you are talking about on a small scale a lot of individual is in phase. There has never been that killed or injured as many people as the attack that i told you about. My aging hearing. I will be 90 on day, may account for this, but i did not hear you mention mrs. Woodrow wilson the unelected president you refer to. Well i am sorry you brought that up. I was being cute. The format was like jokes about punchlines which was the voice of commerce in my year saying make them buy the book so they will find out. You have to the microphone and ruined. Fortunately you have just ruined one of the question. Affect one in with regard to ponzi, this may be it but i studied history and many many years ago and i reduced it to but his appeal was i understood the sales appeal was he was engaging in what we would Call International postal rate arbitrage. Thats a good term for it. Its a very good term. You said you didnt even understand that. I dont. That is a good term, but i dont think addicts going exactly what he was doing. He was collecting far more money than you could pay out. The appeal was tremendous sales talk was look postal rates are different in like 100 Different Countries around the world and available to buy these postal certificate from various countries and trade them off for the postal rate is different. I make a profit and you get the benefits. That was his pitch. My understanding and i am not sure in in my reading i havent been that is that he more than likely didnt go into that kind of detail for fear of confusing people. Maybe he never even engaged in it. I thought that was the sales pitch. Is primary sales pitch was i will give you a 50 return. Whenever you want your money all give you a 50 return. Okay, thank you. You didnt do too much damage. I would like to make a correction i believe and then a question. He said Sinclair Lewis wrote our town. I think you are referring to mainstream. We cant hear you. Use the microphone. Jordan wilder Sinclair Lewis wrote our town. Now for the question. Did you watch boardwalk empire by any chance . My question was how realistic did you think it was . You dont know. I have no idea. I am sorry. I have a question. I read somewhere not too long ago that it may have been 1920 although its not exactly that year that in the midst of all this turmoil, and you had one of the largest if not the largest demonstration actually down on the mall to date. I mean, at that time. Is that correct or was that a slightly different year . Theres so many convening meetings. Veterans and anger about the war, prohibition, all these things. Does that cannot do much . To the best of my knowledge Nothing Happened in 1920. What was the reason for the demonstration . That was quite a bit later. [inaudible] yes, it was. Protests didnt occur much bad. Interestingly enough, i didnt go into i didnt go into a labor unrest and strikes. There were 3000 strikes 20 years before that. There would have been none. It was a massive change in an indication of how terrible the working conditions were that the strike became a staple of the American Work place. This is probably a naive question, but i will ask it anyways. But with anyways. Over the political Political Forces against women voting . People were giving money because of what fears . I have no idea. I have no idea. There is no logical reason for it. I can tell you that a great number of the people who does suffrage were women and explanations that i have read about women in particular opposing the suffrage had to do with their roles. They sounded like the worst of the chauvinistic men that it is not our place to be in the voting booth. We have our places, our husbands and other men have their places. I dont think they would if he is determined like this. It is not a good idea to confuse the roles. That was the general idea. This is coming for women and laymen. File a question. The 18th and 19th amendment. A lot of women who oppose suffrage but among the women who were the most diehard activists for suffrage. You had an awful lot of time and prominent leaders who seem to be make even deals. They were very active in the Temperance Movement very much supportive of the 18th amendment as well. Do you talk about that in the book, the sort of political bargaining that seemed to be going on between the two groups to get both of those amendment the same year . I have written at length in another book about the 18th amendment. It is my feeling that was a very very minor factor. The answer is no, i dont. I dont think that has much to do with the basic problems of the 19th amendment. Yes, sir. Could you talk about the harlem renaissance and maybe a state of Race Relations in may and 20 mbit connection to the harlem renaissance which is popular among certain people. The harlem renaissance was a great thing and wonderful to read a about it. The effect it had on white generally with sonics sent. The harlem renaissance was funded for the most part by jewish burdens from manhattan who would drive up in their limousines at night and enjoyed the pleasure of an exotic culture. It was not by any means a tourist attraction. It did not draw people from other places. The people that Duke Ellington was playing for the cotton club almost exclusively new yorkers. By the way although blacks say again played they were not allowed in the door to the customers. Duke ellington was asked about that and as you imagine how do various satisfactory and their. This powerful laymen assume as he couldve said something about it. Then again the cotton club was owned by a man named tony the killer matin who is in jail at the time for various murders. Perhaps one went along with the racial addict. The harlem renaissance was not particularly widespread in its effect on Race Relations in terms of how it changed the music, literature and have not fact. In terms of how the average white looked at the average black, it did not have much of an effect unfortunately. But it is just a wonderful period. I dont know a few people share my adoration almost for hl mencken who to me is the most interesting journalists to read this country is ever produced. Believe it or not, he was the leading figure of the harlem renaissance. He was somewhat antisemitic and were among his best friends. He was prejudiced against africanamericans but he worked. He worked very hard with African American writers. What they say, james weldon johnson, i dont know if you are familiar with that name. They idolize 10. He more than anyone else took it upon himself to make sure literarily the harlem renaissance exceeded. Much more than you asked. Good, thank you. Is that if her questions . Thank you very much. Thank you offer coming. If you havent had a chance to get a copy go get one bring it back here and get it signed. [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv on cspan2. We are in new york city and one of the things we like to do when they come to new york a stock to authors and get previews of the books coming out in the fall. Joining us now, Pulitzer Prizewinning author stacy schiff. Her new book in the fall is called the weekend salem in 1692. Stacy schiff, we all know about the same on which trial. What do we know in this . That is what got me started. There was no voodoo, no wynonna rider. It is not entirely about women. Women are the accusers pigmented the m. s are men. So it is not a men on women event. It is a women on women event. Its all political cast to it thats been lost to history. Its one of the historical moments we know about because they read the crucible when we forget the crucible is a work of fiction took some liberties with the history of the south. We think the witches burned but in fact they honk. So already its propaganda which comes later from the south and against the north of the century. All the basic facts are wrong. Salem massachusetts, 1692. What was that like . This is a little confusing. The village is an outline community nextdoor is where the first girls began to come full sunrise and show what we think were symptoms of witchcraft. So you have two sam and very isolated outpost of farmers and salem town is somewhat more success to cater congenial community right on the water. Slightly more elaborate homes, slightly wealthier and a more urban focus than half the farmers. They would enter the first precipice when the girls began to develop. A very dark and primitive and frightening place. Many live in a massachusetts outpost in xt 92 you are fairly certain indians will come barreling down at any moment and there are rumors in the air the irish are about to arrive. You are feeling on the frontier you feel pretty vulnerable. What is the population and how far apart are the villages . About 500 people. Downtown is a passing. Boston is proudly somewhere between six and 8000 people. The two really urban centers. Salem village is obviously a farming community. They looked at salem town to adjudicate disputes. So theres a certain tension already between town and village. Is their religious aspect. Its hard to say. We are talking about a society where pretty much everyone is a godfearing. 10 whether he goes to meeting or does not. Is there a pentup sense of sin and evil in guilt and shame that somehow arrives in the gross began to act out. Some of these growth in the initial days in a rep Church Sermon which is not thinkable thing to do but particularly a young girl to do. So is there some kind of shame brewing under wraps as a kind of guys around their life. Much of the Court Testimony indicates people were on some kind of virtual distress at this moment. Pretty much religion permeates every aspect of new england life at this point. Who are some of the main characters in the book . You have but to young girls. One is the daughter 9yearold daughter who disappears from the scene. He becomes one of the mysterious witch hunters in the way. She identifies many which is. She attends to choose prebuilt feeling and she is the one who acts out. They named some of the obvious aspects are the first three suspects are of dubious tears if you had to vote someone out of town and these are the three people you might hit. And then the group of accusers grows larger and they reach out towards resident batgirl of the next community out there. They reach out to a former minister of the same on village. That is one of the more interesting characters because hes accused to witchcraft. At that moment he is brought back and he actually will be hung. So you get this reaching out harshly propelled by their idea of whom their parents have grudges again were the names are in the air. Many people are accused of witchcraft earlier suddenly find themselves on trial again, this time with more dire results for the first time around. The minister gets accused and at one point you have a mother daughter and grandmother each of them accusing each other of having basically introduced her to the double and made her a witch. Is this which fever or fear in the entire area . To a large extent yes. Its hard to remember how dark it was and how frightening it was and how the smudges all the while could turn and mutate into Something Else especially when you hear which is down the road. 25 communities in the end and connecticut will soon suffer and out right there with don. The community most severely affected better be called the essex county which trial better than the salem witch trial because so communities find themselves involved. Doing research on this further relevant records. The records are fabulous. Unfortunately the child records have disappeared. Conveniently no one is sure what happened. The depositions and sworn testimonies in the hearing much of what the attorney general is trying to figure out on the back of a piece of paper survived. We have early hearings but the question and imitated. The documents are chilling because you get a sense of what is going on inside the courtrooms and its a very noisy kind of trial. Everyone is in the room. Theres an enormous amount of interrupt in going on. The Court Reporter can necessarily hear what is happening and essentially they somehow try to exonerate themselves. The evidence for and against the accused for himself is an uneven playing field. You have these really chilling documents. The sense that once you know when you walk into the courtroom the case is very heavily weighed against you. Its a dramatic set of papers to read through. What is the importance of the same of which trial as we refer to them in history . I realize as i realize its a work its convenient to have a serious disgrace in your past. I think we hustle sailor mouth whenever we start to be suspicious of our neighbors come invest too much in national security. It comes up over and over again. What is interesting is how we misinterpret and use it against each other. The reason we have turned the wishes is in the 1860s the south at a position against the north by saying they may have slaves, but you all have the idea that there was something with which as well. We can keep ourselves better in line. How many people were hong . Four of them hang. He refuses to enter a plea to whether hes guilty or not. How do you pick up the topics of your books . Portrait of mrs. Vladimir. I want you to explain to the viewers. I was coming off of cleopatra and the ideas about women in power in what is so threatening about a powerful woman and what do women do with their power and why are men so ruffled by female power. The curious idea with power with things i hadnt quite worked out with cleopatra. This is an idea. And what we do know is largely mythological at this point. Its a difficult book in the sensitive documentation, though we have no documentation from the girls themselves. So what we can infer in their minds and tormented souls would get only from the hearings. So wouldve been a first choice both for anyone who wanted serious documentation. Do you work with what you have. He won the Pulitzer Prize for cleopatra . No, the question their was can you pry apart the lives of two people that basically spend their entire lives in a closed room together. Its interesting because much of what he writes she writes for him in terms of correspondence. You had this real melding and see if we can pry them apart. Were you raised . Im from a small town in massachusetts. I couldnt wait to get out of the now of course im totally fascinated. I went to williams actually. Into the business of publishing. Do you consider yourself an historian . Im a writer more than an historian and the fact my emphasis is usually on the narrative. I want the reader to turn the page. Im not interested so much here in covering the field of every detail. And the nuance on the story while also making you feel as if youre reading something something you cannot put down. What are the topics are covered in the new yorker . A piece about wikipedia. The idea you could have a cross or as encyclopedia which is mindboggling. The question at the beginning were you calling a dictionary of the shelter were you beginning to check wikipedia. But there is a sense of what is real knowledge and who are the real experts, which in a funny way has come into play. One of the interesting things is you have no price and there are no new things. Everything being broken around these people is coming to them and its a really interesting way. Theyre very convoluted. Have a lot of rumor and very little fact and you can see where that ends up, which to me you have a lot of a lot of chatter and you dont necessarily have someone saying its just rumor. That is not fact. Stacy schiff even though this does not come out until october, what is your next project . Book tour is my next project. I am not done with the subject it is a great way to feel when you finish writing the book. Theres something very enchanting and so many angles to it. I may want to play with another piece of it. Stacy schiff, the witches salem, 1692 is the name of the book. This is a tv on cspan2. Youve been watching taped coverage of eric burns talking about his newest book 1920. Now on your screen, look inside the fdr president ial library and museum, home of the annual roosevelt freedom festival. Many authors who talk about books here use the librarys resources to help write books. In just a few minutes we will be back with live coverage of the festival. We live in the shadow is the name of the book your university of california professor. Professor kaplan what was the experiment you conducted in this book . I call them kids because it is the term they use who are trying to achieve something. They were attending school after care programs. One important after care programs is the Neighborhood Academic Initiative program here on the usc campus. It is a program dedicated to preparing lowincome students for college. So i was able to talk to a group of kids in the program and i also interviewed students who are part of another afterSchool Programs, but that was a more Traditional Program and i wanted to see what they thought about trying to achieve some been as more people think of innercity kids as roaming the streets and not caring about their education. I wanted to hear from their perspective what it was like to be part of the program, and attend usc for their undergraduate work and move onto some very major schools. Berkeley and columbia university. They did quite well coming out of the program. 90 of the students who attend the program go on to college, postsecondary college. That is astonishing. How do i feel about this achievement when they are also at the same time living in South Central which has favored rather big reputation of gangs, drugs and all other kinds of impoverished community. How do they feel about being in the program and coming home to a community where it may be time team and some of them can become involved with all these problems and issues. I set out to interview them, but i realize having raised a kid myself that they are not going to get them say anything. I do feel about what youre doing . Fine. Do you like were going . Yes, that would be it. As the methodology used and its a Grassroots Organization that everyone has a right to speak. We are not getting the voice of the marginal. People are on the edge of society as we see them. They believe if we give them a camera and let them go and document their lives. I gave 54 k. Of an interview cameras and i wanted it from their days. Tell me what you see about your life. That was an amazing mix. Then the most amazing for me as i learned from them. Saying i didnt know that. That was astonishing. These kid were absolutely brilliant. They use the camera to tell about their experience is from their perspective. They thought things i didnt see. They made photos that i had no sense of what was going on and i started a list i started with giving them the camera and then they take the photo and i take the cameras from them and took it to cosco and had it printed out. I would be the first to see the photos and im making statements and judge judgment for my adult stage and say in one photo taken with a Railroad Track. The slide on one side and dark on the other. Its not really clear. They are kids and i didnt trust them to do it. One of these is mai and the director of the Hallmark Center told them its a good idea. They think because they made the statement. Their friends, family. Asked if i can get something out of it. The first photo i looked at was the Railroad Track in a circuit to the kids in the focus group on campus. They all sat around and looked at the rubber track photo. Its not that clear. So i thought as we walked by the Railroad Track they would pick a photo. Not at all. They gave me a description of the Railroad Tracks some of them said was one way you could see the track out of the ghetto. You can see we have a chance and then others who disagree say that is a dirty track. So this is what we see every day in our lives. I was astonished. But i made the mistake often because i couldnt leave some of the photos i had seen. They just walked by, took the photo because they had to hand again in a week. Theres not behind it. One girl came to my office for me to interview her. She was sitting in a large chair. Shes 12 and so she is a little short girl. She had taken a picture of a toilet in her school. The back of the wall was kind of dirty. I thought heres another one. She thought it would be funny. I will take this as a professor. Why did she take the photo . Look at what we have to put up with. They blame it all on us. I thought how interesting. So i learned a lot from them and also really and portends is the way of his challenging this area type of ghetto thugs. No matter what these kids seem to do people from the outside, people who do not know them seem to think they are criminals. Just these kids doing all sorts of awful things. And so i asked them, what do you think . She said we are allowed to thugs. So no matter how hard they work to do Something Like take part in this program, people still have the idea that name resonates in this community outside of the community in terms of general good. They had a chance to challenge that in turn it upside down and say here is the way we live. What is interesting with many people in the surrounding area, they were frightened because they live next door for the dealers and gang members and according to the program, they cant associate with games. If they are, they will be expelled from the program. They like the program so much and they got so much out of bed that they wouldnt want to be seen in that way. They had many stories of being afraid of the gang members. They have hilarious stories about this kind of fear that havent been in the community. What was interesting is that parents are blamed in this community. So there is a photo in the back of the class. This is the kids who are not involved and talk a lot about the school they attended which is not part of them they are picked out with problems in terms of the teacher they seem to be a picture of them to the students. It was after School Programs so there was no pressure in terms of how the teacher gave responsibility for setting up a good model of them. So instead of the picture from the back, my question is why did she take that picture . Where did you want to tell me . Look at this. This classroom is easy to go too. The teacher told me i have to attend class every day. And what was interesting since he was upset about that. Theres the story doesnt want to become educated, his not wanting to sit in a classroom and they are disruptive in class. The student was upset he wasnt getting his education. Look at that. Make that nobody cared for them. The teachers are caring for them from the School System doesnt care for them. Theres a few stories about how the cops responded to the situation and the sanitation people didnt care. I dont see anybody. So they thought a society in terms of people, adults on the society didnt care about them. I thought that was astonishing. Professor kaplan, where did you get the name of your book, we live in the shadow . I tried to pick up quotes from people speaking to me because i think that is more fascinating than any quote i could come up with in terms of the title. There was a kid excited about the picture that was taken. We live in the shadow of nobody knows we are here. Now its a 12yearold kid. No one knows we are here. For mayo is a chance and that an opportunity to make the invisible visible and to say to the Larger Society of those people who read my book and are interested in the subject that look at these kids who are stereotypes and sometimes stereotypes can be very harmful. It will affect their selfesteem. In this case it was mostly because of mai and the Afterschool Program that they werent they were not feeling having a problem of this stereotype. People think im ghetto, but im not like that. That was just a great finding. Were the kids black white latino . Im trying to remember. Black and the tea now and there were more latino kids than what. At this moment we cant think of the number. There were more latino kids than black kids. They are coming to environments in the neighborhood Academic Program on campus and also coming from the afterschool holbrooke center and i think that is in hollywood. I thought maybe they would have something to say different from mai. They beat mai been able to intrude and because they are in this program will have Something Different to say about their environment. It wasnt true. They both made the same kind of statements. They dont care about us. What is the significance of the university of Southern California where we are today being here in this neighborhood . For these kids it was really significant. The sociologist once said this is like a haven from the heartland plan. I thought how interesting. A lot of the pictures were of the university. They came to campus. They are not coming to campus. They sent pictures of the buildings. They were standing in front of. Pictures of the bookstore and took photos of the tables. They took photos of anything happening here. They have photos of the classroom and everything on campus covered in their photos. I couldnt shame many of them, but they were so thrilled to be here. Many of the photos really establish or represent their feelings about usc. One kid had a picture taken with a pompom pier 12 years old. They wanted to go to usc. My associates my assistant in the project were students who had graduated from the program and were now in the undergraduate program here. One of the people who is really helpful in terms of this graduated from here and shes now a social worker. She said i want to go back to my community and help. So this was quiet. It was saved. It is beautiful. A place they can go feel good about themselves and they were also well respected by people who taught them the tutors and others who worked with them. They felt really respect did and that somebody cared. You use the term in your book, hyper ghettoization. What do you mean . That is a term used by Henry Jay Wilson talking about the ghetto and i still live in the black ghetto car loan. I know the term ghetto. That is where i am from originally. It was considered an awful place. They were all sorts of problems violence in the community a mouse can better to be the ghetto. He was arguing its gotten worse. In these communities, the gangs are more alive than ever. Its easy for kids to get caught up in the gangs. Theres a lot of violence here. Its changed a bit since he used the term. There is a lot of poverty in the community and the kids see that. Theres the story of a kid that had a photo of this house and said i live in this house the next door this man came over and came to talk to me and wanted to give me drugs. My father was so angry he went over and told him you cant do this to me in the next time the kid tries to get the person, not the case, but the next or neighbor tried to give his sister drugs. They have to do it this cant delay. It is much more blatant in terms of the people problems in the community. You can see it much more than you could when i was growing up in the ghetto. Its gotten worse. Much more of a problem. To kids have to apply to be up in the program . This is a cute story. The teachers recommend them. The teachers will evaluate the kid in terms of are they ready to evaluate the work. What is interesting is they are not taking a student because they claimed their programs for these students. They are taking students that the teacher has evaluated. Since people are often giving them some being, they have to do extra work. Got a regular school and then this school. One of the kid said to me you know, i dont think my teacher likes me. My teacher mexico this program and i have to do more work and she finally got the idea this would be better for you. We laughed a lot at these meetings. For my regular school to have to do work after school. So we did convince her of one point coming you are really going to have a great experience. This is special. You have to make them feel special. Teachers are going to care for you. She was just as honest. She had to do more works that could be good good is a sociologist, would it be learned about the Public Education system is kids are coming out of . In this particular community most of the schools are failing. The picture i talked about earlier about what the teacher said to them another pictures of teachers whose sad they didnt mean them. One of the pictures is really interesting because they brought a picture of a teacher standing at the board, writing notes on the board. I thought this is probably a favorite teacher. He said this is probably a favorite. So i said what you want to tell me about that . The student i dont use their name, this is not the teachers name. He said thats mr. Black and i dont like mr. Black and i asked mr. Black if i could take a photo and mr. Black said you cant take my picture right now. He said i want to take a picture with a burrito in the hand. Are you out of your mind. The picture was mr. Black writing on the board looking like the perfect teacher. Theres a group of students on campus who work for the joint educational program. These students help with tutoring in the community and maybe a few schools outside of the community and a volunteer so its good for their resume. They come back telling me first they were scared to go in the schools. Then they come back in a these children are really great. Then they go on to tell me stories of teachers who ask them could you take over the class because they have bills to pay. Do you than i was six and zero, the answer to that question and i have to do things for the school and i cant get the class at the moment when i thought back, i think it is such a failure. I dont think they are getting funded well. The teachers are in a bind teaching classes. At least some of them are 40, 50 kids. They may be having problems at home when they demonstrate in the classroom. And the kids dont know that so it makes sense to tell them theres another story here. So they are not funded well if they blame on the teachers and they see that it basically really is the larger issue that has to be about the environment they are living in and the excellent teachers really dont want to teach in this community. One person told me ill get combat pay for teaching the school. As i said, sit back and realize it is not the teachers either. They are just overwhelmed. The school has called us to do a lot. They become the Day Care Centers at night. Just everything happens it seems to me to impact the school and they cant teach. I may back up. Many of the kids talked about having substitute teachers. That was one of the things in terms of the jvp students who said i was in this class tutoring students here and this is just this year we had three substitute teachers, which means teachers are coming in without much background knowledge and teaching for that moment. Another teacher comes in but there is no background in the earlier issues in the kids are seen one, three teachers. That is not good for the teachers. That is not good for the students. If its not the students fault, why is this system not working in your view . I believe it is not funded well. There is always a cutback in programs. If you read the newspapers, you get that. There that. Theres always been made they have to fulfill. One of the things i know is the one reason the other schools like everly hills high which is a Public School they should be getting the same funding. Beverly hills high is a middleclass. So one of the things they do is hold fundraising for the school. One of the schools i looked at the parents are able to raise 240,000 so they cannot extra is. Im not sure what happens in terms of that. I know Beverly Hills high in the private schools i looked at, that is one of the things they can afford to do. Jonathan calls Public Private schools pay within the public system there are private schools for the students are welltodo and the parents can do things for them. That is not happening in the schools. It is not the teachers fault. The kids play in the ghetto thugs about wanting to be educated. They are angry hungry because they have to have breakfast in the morning because we need them because their parents dont have enough money to buy breakfast. And then its not funded well. Have you conducted this experiment again . Nightcap. Someone asked me after my presentation on saturday, come to my school and see what you get for wanting to be part of this. I will be going and see whats going on. This is a very dangerous environment the school is in. Im not going to mention the name. When you say dangerous environment, what do you mean . The hyper ghettoization. Theres a lot of problems. All sorts of problems that the kids and the police are always around. I noticed in my own community that i often see the Public School in that community. Parked right outside of the school. I remember thinking it would be a score he would go to. I dont want him to go to a school where the cop cars are. There may not be anyone in the car but here we are watch out. So thats a happens in these communities. Elayne bella kaplan, the photo on the front. Why did you choose this photo . This is the one i was talking about. That is the kid. Heres the kid taking this photo. He was the one i cited is a way out. This is a path out. I remember talking to one of my colleagues and i looked at this and said we are so out of it in terms of what these kids think. I wouldve never thought of this as a way out. I just simply thought id better take this picture. What is your conclusion and we live in the shadow . The kids are challenging the stereotype. The kids want to be cared for and they are not finding the cared in their community. They are not blaming their parents. I call them the adults of authority. Educational system and lots of problems with police in the area. So they are blaming these people institutions for the problems. Most of them said my mother in father many are working two jobs so they work all day and all night. Do you ever get to see done . No because my parents are always working and i have to clean the house all the time. I dont know. But a few of them thought their parents were nasty, negative parents. They just had to work too much. It is interesting how they see it. Most of their parents had one car. Many of them didnt have a car. If you had two cars or who do you think you are . Your parents have two cars. So they were all impressed or thought you were a feed for the new art if you had two cars. A. Coming up next we take a look at the successes and failures of the new deal. You are watching booktv on cspan2. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon. My name is herman, and i am the supervisor and curator here at the Roosevelt Library and museum. I want to welcome you all to the roosevelt reading festival. His plan for his library to become the premier Research Institution for studying this era, the Research Room is one of the busiest of all the president ial libraries and the group of authors reflects the wide variety of research. If you want to support this and the other great programs that we do here i encourage you to become a member of information table outside and click on membership. Quickly going over it, at the top of the hour we begin with a 30 minute author talk and a 10 minute question and answer period. Then we moved to the new deal sore or you can purchase books and have author signed them. At the top of the hour the process repeated itself. I want to take this opportunity to thank cspan which is doing a live broadcast at the festival. Because of this come i i ask everyone at this time to please turn off your phones or other Electronic Devices at this time. Also for the question and answer session, we ask that you use the microphone located on the side of the room. Now it is my pleasure to introduce the authors for this session, Shelia Collins and Trudy Schaffner Goldberg. The book when government helped learning from the successes and failures of the new deal provides a rich portrait of policies and programs with a new deal with special attention directed to the impact of the powerful social movements on social reform. And Trudy Schaffner Goldberg is professor america of social polity and a Delphi University where she directed the phd program. She is cochair of the columbia seminar on full employment and social welfare and cofounder and chair of the National Jobs for all coalitions which advocate the 21st century vision of the innovative Jobs Creation programs of the new deal. Sheila collins is professor of Political Science and former director of the graduate program in Public Policy and International Affairs at Williams Paterson university. The coauthor of six books and numerous book chapters and an encyclopedia entry on american politics and Public Policy, globalization, social movements and religion. She cochairs the seminar on full employment social welfare equity in the seminar on popular struggle and serves on the board as a National Jobs for all coalitions. Please join me in welcoming Shelia Collins and Trudy Schaffner Goldberg to the roosevelt book festival. [applause] thank you very much. Sheila and i are honored to be here in a place where the new deal is born. And going to begin by quoting from roosevelt who wrote unfortunately a catastrophe seems to have been necessary to focus peoples attention on the ideals and government and on its relationship to its citizens. Of course its more unfortunate if that doesnt happen. But the crisis of 2008 seems to us to be a similar kind of opportunity. Sheila and i hope that like many others we will be able to take stock and correct some of the things that maybe had caused the meltdown to reverse the course to increasing economic inequality and to put the bankers and their place and perhaps if the response was the credible one to restore faith in the ability of government to solve peoples problems and some talked about the reverse of this reagan banter which that government is in the solution but is the problem. And consequently we decided to take a deeper look at the successes and failures of the new deal and we came away with increased respect for the new deal but not without a great deal of criticism as well and particularly as failure to serve relationship to their need. The latter is really a big responsibility of a southern segregationist congress. We are happy when one of the people with critical, roosevelt, i think that the success of the new deal should be measured in terms of the magnitude of the crisis that confronted and im going to read a little bit from our books just to give you a sense of the crisis. The new deal grapples with one of the most serious crisis ever faced by the nation. Franklin roosevelt assumed the presidency after three years had a severe depression and the resources of the countrys local and state governments were spent in these deprivation and the stairs are part of the land. With economic crisis giving birth to dictatorship will swear in the world, american democracy was itself on trial. Part of this was the dustbowl that blackened the sky and polluted the air over huge stretches. Overproduction in a land of hunger. In deal people dealt with economic and security that had been established earlier in some other countries. It is up to them to create those institutions and underdeveloped state. The Roosevelt Administration rose above to deal with this crisis providing direct federal relief to people and later, of course, providing it in the form of employment which is only not jobs and dignity but also greatly enhancing resources of the country. So during roosevelts tenure, the government recovers lost ground in terms of its output. Even before the economic stimulus of world war ii happened. Unemployment remained high, but some of our authors show that it really wasnt what would have been low where have you counted employed the people that were actually employed in the work program. And so perhaps it was reflected in that landslide victory in 1936. The official record is where we didnt count the people that were on the program from 23 to 17 . In addition there were important reforms of the administration enacted not only to protect people against the insecurity of old age but banking reform and so on and so forth. We had collective bargaining rights as well. All of this spelled a new activist role for the federal government in carrying out the constitutional mandate of promoting this general welfare. And its here rationalizing this new role for the government but things are taking place. I sometimes think that our government has some success in preventing this Great Recession from becoming a Great Depression. For the role that government has played. They explained a the genus were anointing this expanded role with traditional values as well as aspirations. Security was concerned with common desires for decent homes Productive Work and some safeguard against misfortune which cannot be wholly eliminated in this manmade world of ours. The objectives themselves were traditional, but they could no longer achieve this through the interdependence of members of families upon each other as roosevelt put it where of families within a Small Community upon each other. So it was not just a matter of individual responsibility or selfreliance. This being the case we are compelled to employ the active interest of the nation as a whole through government in order to encourage the greater security for each individual who composes it. And in his rationale for a second economic bill of rights this has really shown that it was possible to provide a job for everyone and he held that this had proved inadequate to ensure the quality and the pursuit of happiness. The traditional values of liberty and freedom were simply not achievable without Economic Security or freedom from want. Summarizing briefly what current policies have learned from the new successes and failures and sheila is going to speak more about these specific programs. And faced with the deepest economic dives the Great Depression policymakers did seem to learn something important but you could not wait a long time to intervene the disastrous way that the government had been an active for three years following the crash of 1929. They learned that they also learned that you have to intervene with a certain degree of force in a big way. And of course, they did a bank they allow it. But the combination of a Democratic Congress and the Republican Administration did this bank bailout. And that was a big thing to do in a big hurry. It was one thing, but to leave them relatively unscathed and unpunished. Essentially if you compare that with the Roosevelt Administration, you will remember that they did this in almost biblical rhetoric and then he politically encouraged the hearings that exposed the banks. And it essentially led to very important thinking reforms among glasssteagall. By contrast there is her little and short hearings following the Bank Failures here and it really had much to do with us and essentially the bankers continue to engorge themselves while the ordinary people lost their houses and so on. And secretary tim geithner was most interested in the banks having a soft landing. Also if you contrast the new deal, the new deal also helps people that really lost their homes and who have lost their mortgages. The bottom mortgages and refinance debt. They made it possible for people to be able to keep their homes. One of our authors call that a public auction and it was really not available. And we think that there have been huge losses for homeowners and it could go up as high as 13 million before this is over. But the new deal also broke precedents by employing the unemployed and putting them to work as i mentioned earlier, increasing their dignity and she will talk more about what that meant in terms of creating this for this country. That did not happen at this time. It did essentially use that by the new deal with the Unemployment Insurance which was disbanded in one mostly and that had a great deal to do with keeping the recession from becoming the Great Depression. And in fact its estimated that unemployment wouldve gone up to 60 instead of 10 . So the program helped that the government expended them and used them and there was some success against intervening a Great Depression. Where is the new deal employed people. That option was not taken. Putting them to work was not taken and people remain on Unemployment Insurance which is totally other than nothing. Where this country may have used them to do a great deal to improve our infrastructure and that option really wasnt taken. Especially if it had been used indirectly creating jobs, it could have reduced the official unemployment and that may have saved 4 million jobs. We think that thats a big auction, learning that the Obama Administration could have taken us from the new deal. But they did not. And we have been working with the popular movements at the time. We call it a decade of dissent. It was a very complicated relationship with the Roosevelt Administration that did not give in completely at all. I will just concentrate a little bit on labor rights, which was expanded during the new deal. And later that was made more permanent and controlled [inaudible] one of the more important things about the relationship is the administration. The Roosevelt Administration. Is that that they really did not believe in suppression of dissent. We are very against the use of armed force. And he supported the governor for not using force. The result was one of the greatest victory of the century for labor. But the Obama Administration they are supporting free choice which wouldve made it easier and they made it harder for business to suppress that. So i think that that is an important difference. So i wanted to talk a bit about the intercession of the Roosevelt Administration. Even though they spent a lot in 1937, they cut back. The result was almost a depression in the depression. [inaudible] in 2010 at the point of the deficit reduction with people that were totally antiSocial Security for the welfare state but its interesting. Its sort of like some other things that are half learned. While theres a talk about deficit and a talk about cutting back, essentially the cutback has been really slow. So you might say that that was half learned a little bit like the intervention. So for now on shell is going to talk about some of the programs. I was going to talk about the programs and infrastructure that they built for the country which was tremendous. But since that piece of the Roosevelt Administration has been covered by a great extent by other historians, i am going to concentrate on two programs that have been receiving a little bit less attention. And the first one is the Environmental Programs of the administration. Teddy roosevelt is thought of as the environmental president. In our reading of his contributions we have argued that Franklin Roosevelt really belongs to that honor. After all, times of economic disparity existed and there were dire crises during the time of complete economic collapse. By the time fdr had taken office seven eighths of the force of the country had been decimated and one sixth of the nations top soil was about to blow away in the dust bowl. The country had suffered massive floods in much of our wildlife was facing extinction. The Appalachian Region experienced conditions close to what we see with third world. We were blessed with the president that not only had an economic understanding but one whose words felt the scars and exhaustion of the earth. Fdr would build on his cousins legacy and give the environment a new meaning and significance. His approach to the environment is more complex of Natural Systems and thus closer to aldo leopold and Rachel Carson and teddy roosevelt. It would take time to recognize human patterns of evolution. Franklin was a more modern environmentalist than his predecessor and is still ahead of any of his president ial successors. As an approach approach to the environment he translated traditional values and aspirations into an ethic of conservation and this includes between humans and the Natural World that evolved over time. The result of that relationship had often been destructive. In the land had to be carefully part of this effort was to be able to regenerate itself support human inhabitants. He created a definition of liberty and freedom to the community as a whole. Thus viewing timehonored values with new meaning. In a speech as early as 1912 which is very in terms of what were facing today there are many persons left that can see no reason why if a man owns the land he should not be permitted to do what he likes with it. They care not what happens after they are gone and i will go even further and say that they care not what happens even to their neighbors and the opponents of conservation will argue that even though they do exhaust all the Natural Resources the inventiveness of man and the progress of civilization will supply a substitute when the crisis comes. We hear much about geoengineering today saving us from the climate crisis. I have taken the conservation of Natural Resources is the first lesson that points to the necessity for seeking community freedom. Because i believe it to be the most important of all of our lessons. For roosevelt, the health of the Human Community with wired not only the piece of land on which a particular community lives be handled sustainably but that americans have a National Responsibility to care for the land whether in hyde park or texas. They also had a responsibility to care for the win so that it could nurture the future generations. Thus prevention and recovery and restoration of this land space as well as conservation were placed on the public agenda. This represented a watershed type of shift from a public beat those in which decentralization and shortterm decisionmaking had led to tremendous waste and efficiency and environmental destruction. They also differed from the progressive era in which the wild nature was to preserve as much as possible in its pristine state so that human beings leaving the roman civilization behind could partake of its wonders. This includes changing nature and humanitys role to the environment. And it demonstrates a modern character is the idea of claims, such as disappearing wildlife, flooding, loss of soil, poor health. We are seen not as related issues but those requiring that they be treated together. The Tennessee Valley authority they were restored to life. The National Park system became a National System with the addition of hundreds of state and county parks there was improved and a new generation of people who had participated in these programs were prepared to be leaders of the environmental movement. In the second set of programs i want to talk about other programs undertaken by the new deal. Fdr had no particular knowledge or judgment about it but artists were starving and he knew that they needed work. But he also had a feeling that the arts could revitalize its commentated traumatized population. It not only puts the soul of america back to life but they did much more than that as well. They the commodified culture which until then has been part of the urban elite. For the first time people who could never afford to enjoy this could now participate in both the making and the enjoyment of the arts. This includes graphic artists and writers and dancers, circus performers and photographers and filmmakers hired by the new deal including diversity of the American Population in landscape into popular consciousness. This includes recording them for posterity. And what is more is that americas real and unmitigated problems including racism and poverty and disease are part of this. Public support for the arts began to decline. Much of what the new deal had accomplished was either neglected or destroyed. The future of the arts as both a heritage of democracy and a contributor to it does not look very hopeful today. A significant segment of Congress Views arts programs as a waste of taxpayer money. Funding not only for the National Endowment for the arts but parts in the schools is being slashed. Museums are struggling for funds and tickets to large theater, dance, opera and symphonies are beyond the means of most people. Perhaps there is no more telling symbol of the modification of the arts than it affect the New York State Theater for the performing arts is called the koch theater. Halley flanagan director of the w p a federal Feeder Program thought that the arts contributed to the ability of a people to participate in a democracy. New research has shown that the arts provide benefits in many other fields, reading and writing, math spatial temporal reasoning, empathy happiness and wellbeing but most importantly easy arts remain critical to the Spiritual Health of a people. They are essentials to the development of a collective imagination that is needed if we are to resolve the enormous challenges facing us in the 21st century. We neglect the lessons the new deal has to teach us to our peril. [applause] could you comment on Pope Franciss recent cyclical about Climate Change . I think it is wonderful. I hope it can galvanize popular support, and very much needed. And he is putting it in a moral framework. Is so necessary. Scientists were reluctant to take a moral stand. Can you tell us what you think Franklin Roosevelts greatest accomplishment was as president and what his greatest failure and theres no question, his greatest failure was what you alluded to he didnt spend enough too obsessed with deficits and he always used to brag that he balanced the budget in terms to start with. He always used to brag that he balanced the budget to the extent of the regular government budget and only the emergency expenditures the drove it into a deficit. I dont think i could disagree with you. I havent really thought about it. The deficit was obsession was something but it was something he shared with other new dealers like wagoner. It was helpless to talk him out of it after the disastrous failure of the cutback, but premature cut back the lead to the depression with in the depression and really halted the new deal reform for all purposes, not essentials purposes with the exception of the wages and ours, 1938. I think the Social Security was a great accomplishment but also his Environmental Program was perhaps even greater because if he had not done what he did i think this country might have faced Climate Change and species extinction long before we have. Okay. I think his articulation of the responsibility of the federal government, the idea that government can make a better life for people and the whole notion of the way in which he expanded our notion of what government can do and its responsibility the notion that Economic Security is essentials to freedom. You cant have liberty and freedom without it freedom from want. I came in a little late, i dont know if you covered the civil conservation court, because right now we have a terrible hidden crisis with young people who are unemployed and have no goals and we need that so badly and i wonder if you covered that and its impact. I had to raise through my speech because i had little time. We do have a whole chapter in the book on the ccc and the Tennessee Valley authority. I actually did speak about not really the tremendous impetus to the development of our resources but also our failure to employ people and to not use what they could do to for the environment the infrastructure, social services and so on. The failure of the Obama Administration to do this direct job creation and does so much more in keeping them on Unemployment Insurance however important that is. After reaching fear itself. In return for their votes. To produce any benefits for africanamericans. And home care, talk about that decision please. The failure to serve, and the segregationist congress. He quotes the head of the naacp i cant even support this lynching bill because i have to save america and i will lose them. [inaudible] we have time for one more question before the session is over. A question, a couple quick comments. I dont think the nazis would never have won the war against the United States fdr or no fdr because once they went to war with britain, the soviet union and the United States the war was over. It was only a question of when. That is number one. Number 2, the gentleman just touched on the lassitude by fdr in the face of africanamericans and civil rights which is an obvious fact. Fdr for all his greatness and i think he was a great president did not live up to what he could have when it came to three groups of people who were helpless and the president of the United States more than anyone else was in a position to play a role in helping them, number one, africanamericans, number 2 jewish refugees from the nazis and number 3, the internment of japaneseamericans following pearl harbor. I will leave it at that because we are pressed for time but those are the comments. [applause] do you want to address that . No question about it. Given political realities of the democratic self perhaps he could have used the bully pulpit. [inaudible] one person with the the most ability. In arkansas the Senate Majority leader was from arkansas. All the committees were headed by southern democrats. Hard to tell whether he could have. We are out of time but thanks to the wonderful session and thanks to the authors. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] you have him listening to Sheila Collins and Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg discussing the new deal. More live coverage of the roosevelt reading festival in just a few minutes on booktv. You are watching the tv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers. Booktv visited capitol hill to ask members of congress with their reading. I am a big reader and i am reading boys in boats which i recommend and i went to dead weight, about the sinking of the lusitania, then king some of ice which harry reid had recommended and i am just wrapping up a terrific novel called all the lights we cannot see, moving into the road to the deep north which is another novel and the sixth extinction by elizabeth colbert. Those are the last two i am reading now. Booktv wants to know what you are reading, tweet as your answer at booktv or you can post it on our Facebook Page, facebook. Com booktv. Now booktv cuomo we introduced jennifer baumgartner, publisher and executive director of the feminist press. What is that . What is the feminist press . The feminist press is a regular independent nonprofit literary press. We really focus on work by women not just women but voices that have been marginalized. It was founded 45 years ago. Works that have gone out of print because theyre written by women like the yellow wallpaper and it went on to the women engender studies movement, and now the every publisher has published some feminist books, we publish the most petty, the others are not covering, or too controversial so all of the books have admissions and urgency to them but might have new and cutting edge as well. What is your background . I am a journalist and a feminist born 45 years ago. A lot of feminists things have happened. I have written six books, i traveled the country, i know firsthand it is very mainstream but the word feminist is not the word people would label, probably is feminist, i dont get hung up on the word. I love the title but we were really expensive, definition of that, and my career, the way i practice it, the mainstream magazines, books that i write in the mainstream commercial audience. What are some of the books the feminist press have coming out . It shows what we do. In fall and september, they recover and retrieve something we published first is some of us are brave, the last feminist studies some of the most important feminist in collectibles are in this book and it was a touchstone for some important authors from alice walker to roxanne day. Of very important. Next book in october is the feminist utopia project, a collection by Rachel Potter and alexander bronze king, the editors. Alexander brodsky is a wellknown activist, rachel also 23 is in new york. They are pretty turbo and put together this collection because they wanted to say we know we dont believe and what we are mad about but what do we believe in . What is the world supposed to look like . Is all affirmative, imaginative 57 pieces and in november, we are doing a literary memoir she is so she is hilarious. The work is going into and the way she writes about food is so unpretentious and there is a way in which i love it and feel i am part of it is kind of elitist. Really American Food and nonetheless food is love and when we make food for people with his success in love and she wanted to be more love in the world. Have bacon sandwiches here but i have to say it has been popular here. What is your connection to City University of new york . It is interesting connection. We are fortunate because we are affiliated but not really part of it. They give us our office space and support us in a variety of ways. 34 end fifth avenue in manhattan. Very supportive been tainted them to target their values. People are interested in your books, what are they . Young women, feminism and the future, grassroots about activism and the third one, about sexuality. Abortion and life, but if one is a collection of my journalism and the most recent one is we do, a project published over here somewhere and it was about gay marriage. What is next . For you . For me . My children have but recital and what else . Work life the next thing. And something they care about. Another book called slut. And you are trying to find something in red lives. And attenuating some times. Had a variety of different ways and will be done with the book. The feminist press. This is booktv on cspan2. Library of congress is the Largest Library in the world. Here are a few history and biography books the library suggests. Also on the list is a net cord and reads examination of the having family who were slaves to Thomas Jefferson and their role in early america. In american lion, john mecham looks at the light of andrew jackson, his time in the white house and his role in shaping the executive branch. The list of suggested meeting in history and biography continues with the american future which attempts to place modern debates on board will begin, raise integration in a historical context. In lift every voice Patricia Sullivan portrays a history of the Civil Rights Movement in america and the development of the naacp. Finally David Taylors soul of the people which tells the story of a group of journalists working on a federal writers project in the 1930s and their chronicling of the Great Depression. That is a look at some of the books in the library of Congress List of suggested reading. To see the full list check their website at www. Read. Gov booklists. We have three more authors coming up from coverage of the roosevelt reading festival. This annual event takes place at the fdr president ial library and museum every june in hyde park, new york. In a few minutes Stephen Drury smith talking about the first lady of radio, Eleanor Roosevelt. Booktv on cspan2, live coverage. Booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. This last weekend i finish the book about churchill and roosevelt during world war ii. The exact title is forbes and work, Roosevelt Churchill and the Second World War by Warren Kimball and i found it very fascinating because most of the books i read our history and even though i was a teenager in world war ii, you kind of lived it again but get into real detail when you read something about roosevelt and churchill. You think you know both of them because they are outstanding people but you dont know much about their details until you get to reading it. Then i want to say to you is that i started now on a book called heart american medical odyssey. It is by dick cheney and dr. Reiner the doctor who has been chaneys heart doctor for, i suppose about 25 or 30 years and was involved with his heart transplant. So in this book you learn about dr. Reiner as an outstanding heart specialist. You will also learn about dr. Reiner taking care of cheney who had several heart attacks over of period up until now and he is still living but during katie, you hear about how he reacts to his health, which also relives the times i served with him in congress as a congressman, secretary of defense and the ceo of a major corporation. And lastly been Vice President of the United States. Booktv wants to know what you are reading, tweet us your answer at booktv or post on our Facebook Page, facebook. Com booktv. An offer from the university of washington was going to pay his way and he had been invited, he had a conversation with his father his mother was washing dishes, talking it over with his dad and said i think i might go to the university of washington. His father kind of didnt come down on him but said i would be kind of disappointed if you made a decision like this. Craig containing himself said i will think about that but he was elated because he wanted to go to princeton and he said it was the most generous act of kindness he had seen in his life and he went to princeton. His parents paid the difference sometimes with a credit card japan he loved actually being there. He was great levers since. Was a story does tell. The couple years later, like to go to princeton too. Recounts the others said the graves were too low and spikes too high. When greg gut in to princeton i can get into princeton and show them. And if you say that, the counselor Whitney Young said you might want to be thinking a little more modestly about where you can go. And an essay, kind of talked her way in. She did feel she talked her way in and a lot of people looked at the story about the graves and scores. This is the ear of affirmativeaction and people looked at michele going back to that, and got into affirmativeaction but you say there is something to make her own case. She argued her own case, had done very well at school and as with many africanamerican students getting access to these institutions for the first time she not only went to princeton but did extremely well. She did well. Was she happy at princeton . It was the very interesting remark she made as my angelos Memorial Service last year when she said looking back on her recent career she talked about what it was like to be on the campaign trail when she was criticized and she mentioned a feeling of loneliness in ivy league classrooms. She had a bit of a struggle when she got there at age 17 and worked her way through with the help of friends, patented michelle ng mama theymichelle obama determination. How did that affect her career at princeton and a sense of herself and living in two worlds end being judged as something other than just michele . She wrote in her senior thesis that princeton made her, she said it made me more away of my blackness than ever before. In chicago. Because of the nature of princeton at that time where black students were very much in the minority, we also should remember there were not so many women, and class was the big question. I got to princeton and saw kids with bmws. I didnt even know adults with bmws and it was a place where many black students not welcomed and this was something, she and her friends talked about. Micheles. Days on campus in her dormitory, the first roommate. Her mother for freshman roommate, a student katherine donnelly, this is a story she herself could tell with some chagrin at this point as you and imagine, shes in the dorm room, everyone is moving in and Craig Robinson says is my sister around and she wasnt and Catherine Donnelly went to see her mother and said guess what i have an africanamerican remain and her mother went ballistic and tried to get her daughter pull out of that room. She complained to the princeton and 0. 40 at my daughter did not come to princeton to be living in a room with a black student. Princeton to its credit did not move her. Later this semester she did move out but it was a very dramatic sign of the times. I am the supervisor and Museum Curator here at the president ial library and museum. On behalf of the library, i want to welcome you all to the roosevelt reading festival. He planned for his library to become the premier Research Institution for studying the entire roosevelt era. The Research Room is consistently one of the busiest of all of the libraries and the group of authors featured at the book festival this year reflects the wide variety of research. If you love the reading festival and want to support those in the other programs that we do here, i encourage you to become a Library Member. And let me quickly go over the format over the sessions and it begins with a 30 minute author talk followed by a 10 minute question and answer session. Or you can purchase books and have the author sign them. And i ask everyone to turn off when you earphones or any other Electronic Devices at this time. Also for the question and answer time, we ask that you line up on that side of the room. Its my pleasure to introduce the authors for this session. He will be discussing a new book that he has edited, the first lady of radio Eleanor Roosevelt s historic broadcast. It examines her career as a radio broadcaster and places her most influential audio shows into historical context. The book provides a fascinating window in the power and influence of a pioneering first lady. Stephen smith is very wellpositioned to examine and analyze this work. Many of you know him as the executive editor and host of american radio works in an acclaimed documentary series from American Public media. He has covered a wide range of issues including human rights science and health, and American History. They have been awarded this and please join me in welcoming them to the reading festival. [applause] and good afternoon everyone. And we have this radio documentary on franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and pioneering broadcasters and this is a commercially sponsored thing while she was first lady. It is about first family of radio. And especially what had happened with loads of the Radio Broadcasts. We have a documentary about as well. And so a show of hands im not saying how many have heard the original of the radio broadcast and how many have of the commercial radio broadcast and so we have some things to learn about until we have a clip of the speech that was not a broadcast by the speech. But it gives you an idea of what she was up against [inaudible] and he never had any training according to Eleanor Roosevelt and he seemed to understand how to work a microphone and the thing that she quickly learned is that if they work this very differently than they do if they are on a stage in front of a lot of people. Radio has just begun and it is the first truly mass medium that everyone could listen to at the same time because there had not been National Networks of radio programs until the late 30s. Previous individuals had been using this as a technology. Especially when youre yelling at a big crowd. So no first lady had used any mass medium like Eleanor Roosevelt. In addition to being on radio she had her popular column that was syndicated across the country. And she gave thousands of speeches and eventually better than the one we started out with and eventually she was a pioneer of television. So she touched them all. And so when franklin was elected in 1942 and this was in march the following year. In the following winter of 1932 we are going to hear an actress read recording to provide for this particular radio broadcast including reading a little bit by Eleanor Roosevelt. And so let me just read you a little bit more. And no one was certain what we would find american culture. The year that he was first elected president , 65 are over the radio. And he spent more than four hours a day listening to radio broadcast. Franklin roosevelt was the consummate broadcaster but eleanor was a radio professional. During her years she made 300 radio appearances and for dozens of those broadcast she got handsome fees by advertisers. Back then the radio programs were actually produced and created by the advertising companies. Its very different today. The programs that were produced by the network that did not have those sponsors were called sustaining programs which tended to be the stuff we see on public tv or public radio. Her shows were sponsored by the makers of cold cream typewriter, Building Materials and beauty. It was a novel and controversial career and she was criticized for commercializing her white house role and for meddling in Public Affairs left to her husband. But she was also praised for making thoughtful observations on world events and helping unify the nation during the depression and world war ii and bringing americans into more intimate contact with the president ial family. So here is the first broadcast. From december 9 1932. And the democratic platform had run on repealing and she supported this and she was speaking to a National Audience on topics about women. Very few drink anything beyond a glass of wine at home. But this seems to have changed back to a certain extent. The girl today faces the problem of learning young how much she can drink like whiskey engine and sticking to the proper quantity. That causes a national outcry. Thousands and 10 thousands of letters pouring into the white house. How dare you say that theres any possible amount of a whiskey or gin that a girl should drink. Then theres a bunch of others that say good for you we have to get out of this staff and thank you for knocking sense into the heads of the American People. She felt like and those people didnt hear this radio broadcast, a lot of the response was to newspaper accounts about what she had said. Like any good politician she said that she was misquoted. Were that they didnt quote her in full which is true. So she never went back and tried to fight them. That was something that she would not do. But occasionally she would fight critics on the radio. But in this case she developed a form letter that she took back to many of the people that wrote in, saying this is what i really meant to say is that no one should have to do this but prohibition kind of forced us to deal with things that we are too young for her. So its very controversial when she started doing these commercial broadcasts. She was paid more for a single appearance, about 3000, then the average American Made all year long. The equivalent that i put into one of these would be 50,000 for what was usually a 15 or 30 minute appearance. I would be happy if he cspan2 wanted to pay me back for this. Im kidding. But she donated the proceeds of this work to charity mostly to mineworkers which was a Relief Community that she sponsored and was very engaged with. Then we will hear mrs. Roosevelts actual voice and this is what a q a session sounded like, its very scripted. She invited the American People to write to her. And here she is with Genevieve Harris talking about the most single requested information which is what its like inside the white house. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] one woman takes all of that flatware and the other takes the other. [inaudible] i can see that you have more questions and we will get to them in a moment. You know that there is a tremendous difference. It is in a custom ovalshaped that its goodlooking and is only one of the big advantages. It has changed a bit. This is the extent to which they kind of did invite the country into this and this includes the knowledge of how to use the various mediums, they made the white house more personal. And i think that radio was a critical part of it. And there is a lot of interference, and he really had to get close to be able to hear them. That is where all the classic photos of people gathering. They are gathered around the radio and it was the first electronic firestorm. These are some of the most important Radio Broadcasts as the nation has gotten ready for war in the early 19 worries him as she was hired by the pan American Coffee bureau, which is a coalition of seven countries that were friendly neighbors with the United States and for a Primetime Program on nbc and she spoke to a lot of serious issues that were developing at the time. At this when she was speaking about isolationists. And she never really went after and they are the ones who didnt like and she was kind of needling the administration where she was endorsing things. She was helping to prepare the nation for war in the runup had been going up for a while and kind of a homeland isolation. Could even come as you had said. I was in michigan and i think that this is probably one of the strongest things. Because of the leadership and partially because its hard to visualize any attack and youre telling me that some did it take this threat to security very seriously. And this includes superimposing russia and our own right. [inaudible] [inaudible] mrs. Roosevelt, what would be your answer to be geographically secure from europe or asia. And they are able to do the whole of europe including great britain. That includes the ability to produce this far beyond our own ability to do so. She goes on to talk about how with the longrange bombers the idea of the war in the middle of the country also takes on a brandnew sensibility and we are now accustomed to an informality and part of the problem is that they also needed to end on time. And so that is her with the isolationist speech. The next one im going to play as the most important of her career which is december 7, 1941. Its a sunday morning. Franklin roosevelt working on having some coffee with one of his aides who was a friend. And that is not the usual. Shortly before 2 00 oclock the white house and the president gets a call. And it doesnt go over and talk to them because there could be all kinds of officials and cabinet members pouring in. He starts working both on what the response will be in the broadcast that he is going to make the next day to a joint session of congress. And we have coffee cups programs at 6 45 a. M. , so what to do remap what she does and we talk about it. He will get on and just to deal with this upfront. She reaches over, she helps him kind of like put this on his script. And you know, she goes over here. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am speaking at a very serious moment in the cabinet is convening. The state department and the army and Navy Officials are part of this all afternoon. And in the meantime, we are already prepared for action. And preparation [inaudible] and there is no more uncertainty. We know what we have to face, and we know that we are ready to face it. I would like to say a word to the women in the country tonight, for all i know, he may be on his way to the pacific. Two of my children are in coastal cities on the pacific. Many of you in this country have voice in the services who are now called upon to go into action. You have friends and families who have finally become part of this danger zone. You cannot escape the clutch of it and yet i hope that the certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above these fears. This includes the ordinary things that we are doing as well as we can and we found a way to do anything more in our community to help others and to build morale us and give us security and we must do it. But i am sure that we can accomplish it. We are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of america. To the young people of the nation, i must speak the words tonight. You are going to have a great opportunity and it will be high moments. I have faith in you. I feel as though i was standing upon a rock and that rock is my faith and my fellow citizens. Now we will go back to the program which we had arranged. Okay, so imagine on 9 11 that the nation heard first from laura bush instead of the president. It was just a different time and it also reflect upon the incredible Political Partnership between eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. She said that she never asked her to change anything except for one script in which one word was suggested would be a slightly less incendiary word. He claimed that he would never prove anything and im a little bit skeptical that perhaps anything that the communication staff or anyone else in the white house should be a part of this. But she was never prevented from really saying anything and i believe her. And the other thing is that she wrote all of her own material. She would get scripts that had prewritten stuff and you could kind of tell because as wonderful as she was, she wasnt the worlds most amazing wordsmith. She produced a lot of material and words and were Franklin Roosevelt and the team would work and his script writers would work for a couple of days or a week, she was just turning it out. And that is the last that i will be able to play for you. I just want to reflect a little bit more here. These broadcasts were not always from our perspective singing the right note were the right tune and she was certainly hated by a lot of people at the time. But she went on to do a broadcast endorsing the internment of japaneseamericans and she was dense with the policy when it was being discussed. Once it was endorsed, it went on the radio and she said that we need for the safety of ourselves and these people to have them put in an organized place and we really need to make sure that we dont let them read their gardens before they go because we dont want to waste their effort so that they can plant their gardens and have food to eat and help us support the war effort. Later on in her life she says that she regretted this position, that it was not something that she formally apologized for to my knowledge. And so over the course of her time in the white house, she made about more than 300 radio appearances and it is impossible to count them all. There is no central repository. Upwards of 300 is keeping the count, the same is true of fdr his central is the Roosevelt Library is its not a comprehensive list and most of the broadcast was not commercial. Then she stays on the air she stays off the air for the rest of world war ii when she finishes the coffee cups programs she makes many broadcasts, but shes not doing commercial work until the end of the war and then she goes back on the air and broadcasts with some of her children. In the later a series of broadcasts where radio has really changed in this timeframe after the war. Television is taking over. Before long all of the stuff that people did on television including talk shows interview shows variety shows and etc. It ends up on radio and radio becomes a jeep box. So shes always had to the scene and shes on tv that were either programs of her own or that she appeared upon like whats my line. If you havent seen it, i encourage you to go to your favorite browser and type in Eleanor Roosevelt and frank sonata 1959. It is the most charming Television Show where Eleanor Roosevelt is there. She is like the queen and the peoples first lady and Everything Else and franklin is kind of fawning over i mean frank sonata. And so as i said her radio career has largely been forgotten because historians have not paid a lot of attention. Television kind of took over with the importance and the vast power of radio in the first part of the media has been a little bit underdeveloped at the top is a topic. And the other problem is that the majority of her broadcasts were not recorded. The reason that you couldnt hear her talk about the squirrel of today in 1932 is that they didnt start doing regular recordings until the late 1930s and part of that was because of Technology Part of that was because it was expensive. Part of it is they were ever recorded that is also part of why the story was lost and misplaced a little bit. What it reflects in my view is that Eleanor Roosevelt has an extraordinary desire to be heard. As well as to do meaningful work and speak for the people who have fewer advantages in america. I would like to remind you that if you would like to hear the full broadcast of the first family where you want to hear anymore of her recorded broadcast you can go to our website anytime. Thank you. [applause] if you have any questions please step up to the microphone and i will try to take it. I am wondering if in your research if you have come across any information in terms of the commercial broadcast what the interaction is as its truly controlled in radio. And was there anything that you saw like that. And also what were the ratings like for a commercial broadcast when she continually being dropped or were they successful enough that she maintained the same sponsor for a long time remap. She would go on and off the air depending on what was happening in politics. It it is hard to put together by virtue of when the shows were repeated. In 1936 she didnt do any broadcasts because of the election year. The advertising agencies were happy with her because they kept signing her up and paying her more money. And the correspondence between the agencies and mrs. Roosevelt there wasnt any that i could recall sort of a discussion that you should do this or that. And they did send her a proposed script on whatever topic it was that they had mutually agreed upon to do. But she really took them she took them and rewrote them in her own voice. I was not able to find any existent ratings or any other ratings, but i think that the ratings are in the repeated element. Sometimes during the week but often this is what it was like. Did you go through a lot of sponsors . You know, she went through Issue Company sponsor her at one point. Which led to the final stanza of anything goes. [inaudible] if they can broadcast this, franklin knows, anything goes. [laughter] thank you. Thank you for the help. [laughter] [applause] any chance that your work could end up as an audio book . It is sort of an audio book. The companion to this book which i did does have an audio book version. The problem is that again we didnt use any actresses for the scripts, scripps, we didnt think that that made any sense. So the number of speeches that are available do not really get very satisfying to the late 1930s. But it does have a lot of them from the 1930s through the 40s. How did she get from that first to her later voice . And i know in albany, she was coached and he told her to smile. So how did that happen reign. You know i think that he also told her not to giggle because she had kind of a squeaky giggle that told her they can get away from her. She hired voice coaches for at least the first 12 years of her time in the white house she worked with professional voice coaches and i also think that she listened to her husband and i think that she got a good deal of practice. If you heard me when i was a reporter on the radio, you know it was practice being on the air. And i think becoming more comfortable with her place and role in the world. Having said that, she was always mocked until the day she died. She was mocked for her voice and i once met a guy who said oh, we all had accents that we liked to do. We would do foghorn leghorn and Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. My other question is during did she broadcast during those days as well remapped. She was on the radio but she was not doing it as a host. She appealed for the United Nations and other languages in which she was semifluent and she was on many radio programs supporting the u. N. Declaration of human rights which she was on the committee to create and one of the first delegates. Oftentimes people say the first, but there were more than one. Its hard to know, it might have been someone with an alphabetically lower name. Did she ever stop being mocked in her later years . Oh i dont think she ever stop being mocked but she was the most popular woman on the planet and remains so as one of the top people at least a decade after her death. She was enormously admired and still quite vilified by the people who did not like her. There were plenty of them. But the Public Opinion polls, if she wasnt the most admired person, she was right up there. I remember. That was the late 50s or early 60s. [inaudible] and so at some point she got the idea that she was talked into this idea that maybe she could make more money by endorsing product. And so good luck to margarine. And i believe that i was the only television endorsement that she did. Thank you for joining and thanking the gentleman. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] you have been listening to the author talking about Eleanor Roosevelt. During that presentation you also heard from the Eleanor Roosevelt radio broadcast. We will continue to live coverage from hyde park in just a few moments. If you would like to get updates on booktv throughout the day and throughout the weekend follow us on booktv. You can follow us on facebook as well. More live coverage comes up in just a moment. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] on sunday july 5 but tv is live with Peter Schweitzer on our live monthly callin show he is the author of nine books which often take looks at government and politicians. The founder of the Government Accountability institute and a Senior Editor at large in his most recent author. This includes extortion in which he argues that the president and congress solicit donations in exchange for political favors. He also wrote architects and he examine how members of congress use their position to financially benefit themselves and slow them all out. His previous books cover topics such as liberal hypocrisy and profiles of the bush family and the fight against communism. He is live on sunday july 5 on indepth and you can participate by sending questions or comments boreham to facebook. Com booktv is on twitter or call in. 21 years ago that is when the knife went in. And it was a curious phenomenon that i was interested in this via the prison where i worked. Virtually all murderers who stab someone to death had said that of the relevant moment that the knife went in. And i thought that this was a curious way of describing what had happened, implying as we did that the knife had a mission of its own. It was the knife that guided the hand rather than the hand that guided the ninth. My wife was also a doctor thought that i was exaggerated. And of course, i absolutely never exaggerate. [laughter] that one day she was in her clinic and she had the patience and she asked about her husband and she said that the knife went in. And this way of putting it is significant and it suggested that the perpetrator was by his regular peculiar locution distancing himself from his responsibility for this. And he was turning into some kind of natural event, rather like an abruption, rather than a motivated world action with human intentions. But of course, its not murderers that use this device. And im not going to ask for a show of hands. But i doubt theres anyone in this room that has never resorted to it. And the human mind rarely displays flexibility so brilliantly as for rationalizations of having done this. So even someone who has never had an original idea in his life instantly becomes wonderfully invented the moment he is accused of having done something. And this is an important is not necessarily creditable fact for us to human psychology and nature, that is surely available to anybody who will either Pay Attention to or think about the words and acts of others or to what the doctor caused the motions of his own mind. And its my contention that honest attention to the words and deeds of others reveals to us infinitely more about the human condition. Then the formal study of psychology has ever done or will ever do. And so in fact it is my contention in the book that that psychological query, whether it is neurochemical or whatever it is, certainly any theory explains all or a very large path of our human existence and experience and that includes a barrier to Human Understanding rather than advancement of it. In so far is that it encourages people to think of themselves and others as objects rather than subjects. And this inevitably leads to an increase in intellectual and moral dishonesty and innovation. Because try as we might we cannot experience this. There is a limited tension that is created. President ial candidates often release books to introduce themselves and promote their views on issues. Heres a look at some books written by this declared candidate for president. Jeb bush argues for new immigration policy. And ben carson calls for one nation in his book. And Lincoln Chafee with recounts his time serving as a republican in the senate. And Hillary Clinton looks back on her time serving in the Obama Administration in hard choices. And a time for truth, ted cruz recounts his journey from a cuban immigrants onto the u. S. Senate. And the former ceo of hewlettpackard shares stories and lessons she learned from her difficulties and triumphs. Senator Lindsey Graham released an ebook on his website and he details his childhood in career in the air force. Mike huckabee get his take on politics and culture in his new book. And in 1998 the former new york governor released his book where he looks on his pass to the governorship. And rand paul called for a partisanship. And in his book, fed up he explained the government has become intrusive and must get out of the way. And marco rubio outlines his plan to restore Economic Opportunity and his book is the printing of his eight hour long filibuster of tax cuts. And Rick Santorum says he must focus on the working class in order to retake the white house. Donald trump has written several books and he criticizes the Obama Administration and outlines his vision to restore american prosperity. And others who may announce president ial candidacy. And in leadership in crisis, bobby general explains why the conservative solutions are needed in washington. More president ial candidates include Ohio Governor john kasich and he calls for a return to the traditional american ellie was. Scott walker argues that republicans must offer Bold Solutions to fix the country and james webb looking back on his time in the senate in i heard my country calling. [inaudible conversations] our live coverage from this reading festival continues in just a few moments. This is booktv on cspan2. [inaudible conversations] heres a look at books are being published this week. Recounting his time as the israeli ambassador to the United States in his book. And how to catch a russian spy. These others talk about the time spent as a double agent working for the United States. And these authors examine the innovation taking place in the realms of internet pirates and bootleggers and computer hackers and how to adapt those innovations in this traditional business. Also arguing that the downsizing of u. S. Armed forces puts the country at risk in strategic failure. And Jessica Jack Lee shares her story an online lending platform for the working poor. Look for these titles this coming week in bookstores and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv. Booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. I am reading several things. And we have awardwinning books. I have also been reading the works that have been compiled called this is a man. Its an astounding account of his experience as an italian jew that survived auschwitz and one of the most important accounts of that to come out of the war. Its very sobering and it makes you think about the rule of law and just because something is legal does not necessarily mean that it is humane. There are some pretty weighty things to consider there. But it is certainly a reminder. I am reading through proverbs and printings right now in my morning devotional reading and i always cruise different topics. I finished a book called the patriots. Its a fascinating book and a look on how we not only came to have a nation but the importance of samuel adams and the importance of all of these men as well as the tales that are woven and what it cost them to give the country. So i have read all over the map and im also producing some german books that i bought on a recent trip to berlin. They were firstperson accounts about berlin life from 1933 to 1945. So you never know what youre going to be read in various. Booktv wants to know what you are reading this summer. Send us a tweet or you can post it on our Facebook Page anytime. We are a company that participates with nonfiction titles in history military history entertainment and sports. Where does it come from and what does it mean. Thats our motto in a lot of ways. We think of our company as being the whole gamut. Is it advantageous . I think that it is advantageous and its a life more conducive to books and solitude, two at 80. And so i think that this is a good thing. Tell us about some of the books you have coming out this fall. We have a book coming out he is a favorite of ours. And henry clay was part of a kentucky lawyer that changed american politics forever. It is subtitled americas greatest statement, making it clear that that was what he was. And perhaps there is something to be learned from henry clay. What else is there . We have a book called Winston Churchill reporting by a young author named simon read. And its a fascinating book and look at at the years that churchill spent as a foreign war correspondent. And he was putting himself in harms way. So later when he went on he kind of had more of a feeling for what that is all about than most people give him credit for because he was a war journalist. Its interesting to come up with new aspects. Yes interestingly enough it is also tough to come up with new ways of looking at president s, including George Washington. The we have another author who has done that. And its about how George Washington, when he learned to manage his estate, good practices like transparency being willing to take risks, how he learned it this end it became the president of the United States. He ran the country like a business and he was our first president and he was also one of the only president that has really run this country like that. As a pr person when you put Winston Churchill or George Washington or abraham lincoln, does that get people to stop enact. Yes, it does. But it also is attention grabbing for magazines, American History magazine for readers who have shelves are full of president ial biographies or books that have changed our country forever. We are proud of our history. We do Current Events and politics as well and we really enjoyed doing a history as well, we have this amazing executive editor that does all of these for us. If people are interested what kind of poetry do you write. And then where can they find it a matter. I tend to do free verse. You can google and take this word out i have an mfa in poetry and a lot of people who work in publishing our writers on the side and they have secret lives as writers. So i know what its like to be an author and how to work with your publicist. [inaudible]. Our Research Room is consistent one of the busiest of all of the president ial libraries libraries. Let me go over the format. A session begins with a 30 minute talk, followed by a 10 minute question and answer and then the authors move outside to sign books. At the top of the hour it repeats itself. I want to thank cspan for doing a live broadcast of the festival. I ask everyone to turn off their phone. For the question and answer period i ask you line up at the microphone. Molly guptill manning is here to discuss when books went to war. Molly manning grew up north of al albany so welcome back it the area. She graduated from the university of albany earning a masters in American History. She is an attorney for the University Court of appeals for the Second Circuit in new york city. In 2012 she published her first book that tells the true story of one the most elaborate hoaxes in American History. Her latest book tells the story of how the United States government and americans librarians educated americans on the home front about the importance of books in war time and organized program that led to the distribution of over 140 books to soldiers serving in world war ii. Please join me in welcoming Molly Manning to the roosevelt reading festival. Thank you for that wonderful introduction and thank you for coming. What i would like to talk about today is this extraordinary storey of how books played an essential role in world war ii. It has been forgotten but i think you will see they were an important part of world war ii and defined that generation and the generations that came after. 140 million books were distributed to those in world war ii. That is an extroid extraordinary number and the undertaking was extraordinary as well. What i would like to start with is why books all of things that could be provided to servicemen why did the government select reading materials. Really we have congress to thank for this. Due to the disastrous timing of the selective training and service act and the allocation of funding for Training Camps to train the people drafted in the military service the army faced an ex an ex an ex an an an expense. Most americans didnt want to join what they considered a foreign war and thought it didnt concern them. America was still reeling from the Great Depression and they felt like domestic problems really should have been the main focus of the government not the war in europe. But fdr realized if america were attacked, the current state of the military could not possibly defend the United States. The American Army was only approximately 174,000 people in 1939 that was really small. And so he asked congress to please pass legislation to allow for a draft and Congress Worked on it over the summer and in 1940 they finally passed the selective training and service act. They also realized they needed to have funding so that the army could build adequate Training Camps for the new people coming into the military. So what ended up happening is people were drafted into the services before new Training Camps were built for them. Instead of going to a Training Area with barracks and cafeterias and classrooms and bath bathroom and things of that nature for training they ended up having villages of tents. I am assuming most of you are from new york and are familiar with what winter feels like. Unfortunately the draft occurred over the winter so living in tents during the winter time in the north was really a miserable experience. So that alone made many people feel less than excited for their military service. On top of that many didnt understand why they were drafted. America was not at war. It didnt make sense why they would have to train for military service under those circumstances and a lot of people were young who were drafted into the military and were used to living at home with their parents. This is the first time they were taken out of their home to live with strangers. The military had not yet received uniforms and didnt have guns. The men were stuck wearing uniforms from world war one that were very itchy because they were made out of wool and use broom sticks pretending they were guns. Under these circumstances, it was a perfect recipe for miserary. The army had a motto that happy soldiers would be better soldiers. They faced miserable soldiers and didnt want to know what at a kind of soldiers they would turn out to be. After a full day of training they could relax and enjoy themselves. The men had facilities in fort ben benning they had pool halls and they could watch theater coming through and give a show. And they had libraries so the men could take out books and they had tables so if they wanted to write a loved one to a letter at home they had a private place rather than being crowded into a tent with strangers trying to pour out their heart to loved ones. The army realized the men who had the amenities were dramatically happy and the army felt they should duplicate that. But the only problem was they could not stop construction on the structures to build a movie theater. They tried to think what kind of entertainment can we provide that would be small, not necessarily have to be housed in a structure and they realized books would be perfect. They were not expensive, they could distribute the books in their tent and each night they would have something to go back to entertain them. Once they made the realization, they faced a problem. Congress had not thought to provide a giant book budget to help boost morale. When civilian librarians heard about this they thought if people wanted to read books they should have them. So they hosted the largest book drive in history to donate to americas camps for the army and navy. The effort was called the victory book campaign. They planned the campaign toward the end of 1941 and right before the camp pain kicked off pearl harbor was attacked. Suddenly everybody in america, as isolated as it happened they decided this was a war they all wanted to fight in and everyone wanted to do their part and if people wanted books for Training Camps americans wanted to donate books for Training Camps. Librarians started plastering posters all across the United States so everyone about the book campaign. And on the steps of new york library there was a twoweek fanfare event where they tried to bring in celebrities, and politicians to explain to the American Public why books were so important during war time. Each day thousands upon thousands of books were donated. His is the basement of the Public Library and you see two people with stacks taller than them of books donated. Catherine heprin came out bringing sacks of books for donation and signed each one and wrote an encouraging message on each of the front covers of the books. This campaign wasnt just by adults and for adults. Children got involved. Librarians worked with boy and girl scouts who organized door to door campaigns and organized events with a collection point asking people to bring books and sorting them. From dawn to dusk they collected 10,000 books. The campaign was going well. After a few months, they collected willians millions of books. They ended up turning to president roosevelt for a little bit of help. He was happy to help. He declared april 17th 1942 was victory book day asking allamericans to go to through their books shelves and select books they enjoyed reading and donate them. President roosevelt and his wife were fans of book reading. If you visited their home nearby you know they had shelves full of book. He felt books played an Important Role in the war. As the german army spread across europe, there was a concerted effort by the german army to destroy books. The idea was getting control over ideas. Any ideas that didnt support the nazi platform and what ideas existed were considered dangerous. Those books are being removed from libraries and burned. Some libraries contained so many dangerous books they had to be locked and no one was allowed to go. Fdr didnt think that was the best policy and he thought americans could combat that by trying to read as many books as they could. The work of the victory book campaign, in collecting all types of books regardless of view point, and sending them to the Training Camps for americans that would face combat and the german army he thought was a genius idea. He gave a speech about the power of books and talked about the book burning. You can see this poster made with an extra from the speech and he concluded that we know books are weapons. After the speech, harry reid he had a press conference and one report asked mr. President , what types of books should we ask americans to donate and fdr jokingly responded anything but algebra. On a serious note he said really, you should donate any book you read and enjoyed. With the president s support, in the next month or so the campaign met the goal of collecting 10 million books in 1942 which was a huge accomplishment. What did you notice about the books being collected . They are all hard backs and this was find for people in stationary Training Camps where they would just be reading at their leisure at the end of training. They were not so ideal for people who were sent out to the front. So this is north africa actually. You can see the people appear have been marching for quite a time and have packs on their backs and all of their personal possession are in there. The items they carried were precious and necessities. Food, water, ammunition their weapons. It was very important things that would make the cut that went into the bag. As the men marched a miles, a few more miles, they stopped sometimes to go back through their pack and see if there was anything they could eliminate that wasnt necessary because their feet were blistered, it was hot they were uncomfortable and wanted to do anything they can to lighten the load. Many of the men carried books off the ships because they knew nights would be long and boring there was no entertainment there is not movie theaters in the north african desert. So if they were going to have entertainment they would have to carry it with them. But unfortunately many books had to be set aside because they could not care the weight. Paperbacks would be a huge improvement but the problem was the american paperback industry was in its infanacy. In 1942 10 billion books collected would be a small portion for paperbacks. Librarians couldnt do anything about paperbacks or hardcovers were being printed. That was on the publishers and they didnt want to print paperbacks. A hardcover book cost anywhere between 2. 36 2. 56 and a paperback could sell for 20 cents. So they got much more money. The same was said for people running bookstores. They could make more profit off hardcovers. But they realized it was a special circumstance and they will have to print a special book for troops just for distribution overseas and decided they would have a special program with the army and navy selling the books directly to them and the army and navy could distribute them around the world. But they had to redesign the book. It had to look like a book that never existed before. First of all, they got rid of the hardcover and sided with paperbacks. They reduced the size. The smallest were three and a half inches by five and a half inches and larger paperbacks were four and a half by six and half. Book pressess couldnt print books this tiny. Publishers had to figure out how to print them and turned to magazine presses printing two books on top of each other and sliced them in half. Magazines are printed on thinner paper. So publishers decided that is great because we can make thinner books. And they went up it the magazines using paper about the thickness of news print. Both of these books are copies of a tree grows in brooklyn. The book on the left is the hardcover and the book on the right is the thickness of the Armed Services edition. To show you how small they are and pocketsize i have one in my pocket right now. This is mark twains mysterious stranger. It fits in the pocket. It is light weight. These books didnt have to fit into a backback because they fit in the breast pocket or the back pocket of a standard uniform. They published 30 different titles each month and then went to 40 books a month. I want to show you a little about the inside of the books because it is remarkable the changes they made. The back cover of each book had a short summary so if a man wanted to figure out if this was the book he wanted to read he could figure it out quickly, if it wasnt for him he could pass it along. They are printed with two columns of text and this was extraordinary because publishers realized soldiers wouldnt be able to read in ideal lighting conditions. They didnt have a lamp they could turning while stuck in the fox hole and men in the navy were swimming from hammocks below decks without adequate lithe lighting to read a book. The research showed if they made the columns of text shorter it was easier to read. The double columns made it easier for soldiers to read. In the back side cover of the edition, printed all of the books that were printed that month. And so if a person had a favorite title, a favorite author, and they wanted to make sure they didnt miss it all they had to do was check the back of each book and if their favorite author was there they know someone in the unit had that book and they just had to track them down. There was a strict unspoken policy to swap books. As soon as you were done with a book you had to pass it on to the next person who wanted to read it. Poplar books had waiting list. So you could sign up to be the next person in line to read a specific title if you heard it was a good one. Now the books are incredibly poplar poplar. I like to have the men themselves tell you how they felt about the book rather than me paraphrasing because i think their own words are powerful. I want to show you a few books printed as Armed Services edition and tell you what the men said about them back into the 1940s. So the first book i want to start out with is educational high simon caplin. This was the first Armed Services edition to be printed and you can know that because there is an a1 printed in the corner. The aseries was the first 30 books and book number one. This is a book that basically has a bunch of short sketches of humor. They are stories that arent difficult reading, meant to entertain and make the men laugh. One person wrote to the author to talk about what this book meant to him and his unit. And what the he said was i want to thank you profoundly for myself and more important for the men in this god for saken part of the globe. We fry by day and freeze by night. What we are doing near the persian golf no one knows. All we have to recreation is a pingpong set with one paddle only. We received your back last week and i read it and simply roared with laughter. As an ex experiment i read it at camp fire and the men howled. I have not heard such laughs in months. Now they demand i read only one story per night. It is our ration on pleasure. For the men that first received the aseries of books it was a total surprise. No one told them they would start receiving monthly shipments of books. The first arrived in december of 1943 so most people assumed it was a christmas present. They received the bundles of books, ripped them open and distributed them among themselves as fast as possible. In january of 1944 they were surprised to find they received another shipment of books. Word started to spread this was going to be a monthly phenomenon and the men start d looking forward to it. Stars and stripes, a poplar army newspaper, started printing book list to let the men know this is what is coming next. One of the next book after the series of the education of caplin was chicken every sunday by rosemary taylor. This book was pretty much a whole some book. It was the story of a young girl who grew up in her mothers boarding house and reports on what is happening. The mother is booking guest that are crazy and asking for strange things to happen and the mother is always trying to appease the request. She happens to be a fabulous cook as well and there are descriptions of the mothers cooking and that is what did it for most men. When they are eating tin cans of rations reading about the dinners drove them crazy. One man wrote even the talk of ice water was enough to set him aquery. What was great was the very vivid images of mothers cooking reminded them of their mothers and what they cooked. This book brought many back to what it was like to be a civilian. One man wrote reading this book took him home a couple hours and alleviated my homesickness. A final book i want to highlight is betty smiths a tree grows in brooklyn. This is told from per spectfspective of a young girl growing up with an impov impoverished family and her father dies in high school and she is forced to get a job and support the family. It was her dream to go to college and she did everything she could to eventually get to college. She ended up succeeding in that and i think a lot of men saw this example and as they faced the war and they faced possible death and felt they were facing trumendous odds against them they saw the example of the young girl in the book and they were inspired. Betty smith received over 10,000 letters just from members of the services. She was good enough to write back to most of those men. The book was compared to reading a good letter from home or taking a leave home because the men felt they were transport d back to their childhood. What is amazing about this book is many wrote to betty smith and talked about how the book helped them survive the war mentally and emotionally. There is one group of letters that stand out and they are from one man and the first letter he wrote it seemed like the unit kept facing missions that were Suicide Missions and none of them should survive and he would be in the middle of the battle and just feel like this is it. This is going to be the end of me. And then there is something about this book that popped into his head and he would start thinking about this young girl and the odds she faced and somehow he would find courage and he would fight and survive. And so the first letter that he wrote to betty smith was ad admiration and he said you helped inspire be in the most trying tay days of battle with battle fatigue and depression. He went into the battle again and thought about the book and wrote again saying once again you have saved me. A few months later his final letter arrived. He told betty smith he had gone to battle again and this time was wounded and the wound was so bad he was going to be discharged but wanted to tell her one more time what that book meant to him. He said he and his wife were plan to start a family when they got home and they were going to name their child betty smith if it was a girl in honor of the woman that caused him to live. Between 19431948 over a 123 million of the Armed Service editions were distributed. When the war ended and the Program Ended its effects didnt end. There are two main things you can feel today from the distribution of the books. First of all the american paperback industry exploded. Publishers saw there was a whole segment of the population that would never buy hardcover books but would by paperbacks. A 25 cent paperbacks reached a different part of the population that wanted to read. In 1939 200 paperbacks were printed. By 1947 95 million printed. In 1952, 250 million were printed and in 1959 for the First Time Ever in america more paper paperbacks were printed than hardcover so i think theyigate theyigatetheyigate theyigate they got the message they could make money off the paperbacks. And the second impact was the gi bill. The average soldier didnt read books before joining the war. One man at west point insisted the only reason he went to a library was because Harry Reid Reid he had a direct order to do so. With the gi bill suddenly everyone who was discharged with honers had the chance to go to college. These men realized they enjoyed doing something as scholarly as reading and when this opportunity opened up for them to go back to school and earn a skeej education they decided to take advantage of that. Over two Million People got an education, many being the first in their family to get a college education, and succeeded generations continued the going to college. I think the books changed the way we are as readers in the United States and also changed the way we are educated. For many people they learned if they could read shakespeare and dick dickins in a fox hole they could ring nonfiction swinging from hammock in the bottom of a ship they could succeed at college and succeed at life. That is my presentation and i will be happy to take questions if anyone would like to ask one. [applause] have you done any research on ebay . I want to make sure i heard right. Are the books Still Available today. The answer is yes. The idea was they were supposed to stay overseas but most people brought a book or two home because the ship ride home took two weeks and it was going to be boring because there were no military maneuvers happening. They kept them as momementos and some people loved them so much and wanted to have access after the war they took a whole group of book and mailed them home so the books would be waiting for them when they got home. You can find them on home. I have looked at flea markets and had luck sometimes. Some of the titles that are less poplar can be as cheap as a doctor dollar and ones like a tree grows in brooklyn goes for much higher prices. Any other questions . Were there any titles that were proposed but indecided not appropriate . There was a debacle with congress. Senator taft who was a republican, was worried fdr would win a fourth term and concerned they would send political propaganda to people in the service and that would swing the election. So legislation was passed that said any material that had a political vowiewpoint was prohibited. So all of the Armed Service edition editions are purchased by the government for distribution to the troops. So all of a sudden all of these books that were wonderful histories and short stories, they could not be printed as Armed Services edition because if you violated the law you could be fined 1,000 or implies for a year or both. They didnt publish them but didnt think they should have to censor themselves. So publishers decided to wage a war on censorship and used their Publicity Department that knew how to get press releases out there and had major newspapers and radio stations talk about how it was Insane Congress was passing legislation to censor reading at a time of war. Within a matter of months they got this legislation overturned. It was amendment so they no longer were going to be prevented from publishing books with a political viewpoint and they ended up being able to publish any books they wanted. That said, some books did upset certain groups of people two books in particular that came under fire were strange fruit by Lillian Smith and one by kathleen windsor. These books were controversial because they had sex scenes. The publishers thought if they want to read books with sex scenes lets give it to them. But certain religious books didnt want the books going to the servicemen. One of the books was considered so indecent boston had banned the book. One of the publishers ended up thinking this was greater that the army was going to distribute banned books to their soldiers. They were quoted in the newspaper saying it looks like what you have to do to get publish as an Armed Service edition because to get banned in boston. So there was an attempt to ban some books but they were not successful. Ms. Manning will be signing copies over by the new deal store after the presentation and thank you for joining us. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] and now the final author of the day from the roosevelt reading festival begins soon. It is the key note speech of the book called timeless this is booktvs live coverage from hyde park on cspan2. We visited capital hill to see what others are reading. I plan to read the house. A buddy of mine from the air force who works in the state department has been deployed and good friend from new york gave me the book when the first came into the office. And i started to read it really interesting an dotal stories about the history of the house, but obviously things got busy so i am looking forward to catching up. I have most of it ahead of me. It is good Summer Reading to understand the history of the house of representatives of the capital. There is a lot of history. You go to statutory hall and see the spot on the ground where lincolns desk was during his oneterm in congress. That makes washington, d. C. A place worth visiting. When you are here it is good to read up on the histories who appreciate it more. Booktv wants to know what you are reading this summer. Tweet us your answer at booktv or post it on our Facebook Page. Facebook. Com booktv. As the Publishing Industry continues to change in this time of digitalization and ebooks, etc, there is a new service out and it is a Subscription Service for book and several competitors are working in this area. One is called oyster and matt chef is here from that organization. What is oyster books . We have the goto reading app for for people that like to read books on their mobile devices and either want to spend 9. 95 to read unlimited selection of over a million titles and also now for people that prefer to buy ebooks one by one. We are available on the iphone, the ipad and all Android Devices and any device with a browser. You started off as a Subscription Service. 9. 95 and you get books from who . We work with many, many pub publishers and distributers. In a sense, is it like a library . We are focused on something we dont think anybody else is which is recreating that great corner bookstore experience. And bringing it to mobile devices which we believe will be the most common way that people read. We do that with an emphasis on beautiful design easy user experience, and great book recommendation recommendations from a dedicated Editoral Team that drives our recommendations. Where did the idea for oyster come from . The company was formed in the signup summer of 2012 introduced our first app in the summer of 2013. It was formed by two guys who didnt see any reading experience they thought was a great mobile reading experience. Phones, tablets, the devices people have are a natural platform for reading and the agency gave reading experience they were happy with. They looked at what was happening elsewhere and how powerful the subscription model was and saw it wasnt happening in books. At the core, the Subscription Service lets the reader try the book without deciding if they have to buy the book and that has an influence on what people read. Why havent all of the major publishers signed on to this . First of all, we are working with all of the major publishers today, if not on our subscription business on our retail store we launched last month and we ask all of the leading publishers to work with us and we didnt get a single no. We have the entire ebook catalog for sale so it is fair to say the Publishing Industry has been receptive to oyster and is happy with what we are doing. We have three of the big five publishers with all of the harry potter books and 18 of the top 20 publishers. You are competing with book sellers, libraries, and amazon. Is that fair . Yeah i guess in a way that is true. In the way we think about it subscription and retail and libraries will coexist nicely for many years to come just as print and digital are going to co coexist for many years. Writers want to reach as many readers as possible and there is not a onesizefitsall answer into how that is going to be done in the future. We think oyster is going to be a major force in part of that connection going forward. If a reader goes to oyster and takes the book off the digital book shelf how does the rider get paid . Is there revenue . We deal with the publishers so i can speak for that piece. Generally the way it works when a reader reads past a certain point in the book and that is negotiated and that triggers a sale and we pay the publisher for the sale and i think it is safe to say the publisher pays the author in the traditional way but that is between the publisher and the author. Can a reader keep a book on his or her book shelf digitally or do they have to oyster . As long as they are paying the monthly fee there is no time on the rental component. If they start paying the Monthly Subscription fee there is no permanent ownership. We have Retail Stores now so if you want to buy the books or have permanent ownership you can do that in ioyster as well. Why did you go to the retail store . We want to serve all readers and we can appreciate some love our model and some are not sure about it. We want to build the best reading experience on the mobile device and want to serve all of the readers that want to use that device. And we can appreciate there are books that have a builtin audience and authors with a builtin audience and for them as a new book comes out retail makes perfect sense as the model and we are happy to support that. There are other books that dont have a builtin audience and dont get a lot of support or have been around for a long time. They need lot of help to find the audience and we think the subscription is a great way to do that. We see readers in the subscription model are reading a breadth of books that are not typically being sold in the quantities like they were in retail. What is your background . How did you get into this . My background i am an mba from a business guy as opposed to the classic lit major usually involved in books. I was asked to join random house, the largest of the Book Publishers to oversee their Digital Business that was emerging. I ended up spending five plus years there and then several years at nokia launching ebooks in europe and now i have been at oyster for two and a half years. I have been involved in the ebook industry and enjoyed watching it explode. Do you read via digitally . I am a pure digital reader at this point. I just finished the book my promise land which is a balanced history of israel. I recently read a book called the financial lies of poets by jess walters and that is a book i read on oyster and i cannot say i would not have read it if it were not for oyster and subscription. It is not something i would sought out to buy in a retail department. Matt chef from oyster books. This is booktv on cspan2. The roosevelt reading festival takes part in hyde park every year. The final author today is Lucinda Franks and she will begin in a few minutes. [inaudible conversations taking place] booktv is live with on indepth this weekend with the author of nine books that takes a critical look at politics and government. He is the founder of the Government Accountability institute and a Senior Editor for bright bart news. His recent bestseller is clinton cash looking at the money made by bill and Hillary Clinton since leaving the white house. Other titles include extortion in which he argues president and congressman solicit donations in exchange for political favors. He wrote architects of ruin contending that liberal politicians caused the 2008 financial crisis examining how members of congress used their position to financially better themselves in throw them all out. His books topics like profiles of the bush family and reagans fight against communism. You can respond to comments on Facebook Twitter or call in. One of the things i love about these three women is how different they are from one another. And it is a little startling. In fact maybe they would never have been friends except for the fact they deployed together. Michele is the youngest of the three women and she is very unusual, i think, as a soldier in that she describes herself as a left leaning, pot smoking hippy to me. She was 18 when she enlisted. It was the spring of 2001. All she wanted was College Tuition and certain she would never want to be a soldier but thought she would join the National Guard being a parttime soldier for the College Tuition and sure she would never go to war because she knew the National Guard didnt deploy. Then of course in training 9 11 happened, and she did understand right away that maybe the commitment she had made was going to be much bigger than what she had been envisioning. When she goes overseas in afghanistan she becomes close to two women with opposite political views. She didnt vote for gore or bush but nadir. And she is sure no one else in her guard unit was a nadir supporter. A woman she shared a tent with and became her best friend voted for bush during the election. And during the day time michele is working with the oldest woman in the National Guard unit debby. Debby didnt vote in that election at all because she doesnt trust politicians or want anything to do with politics whatsoever so another point of view that is different from micheles. Debby wasnt originally chosen to go on deployment and was upset. Michele would have done anything not to go. But debby argued her way on to the deployment because her father was in the army and she wanted to serve overseas. She worked as a beautician in a beauty salon back in indiana when she was not in the National Guard and she found the idea of putting on a uniform and serving her country far more exciting and fulfilling and closer to her dream than the work she was doing in the beauty salon. Even when the got to the question of how they felt about going on deployment or supporting the war they were on totally different sides in terms of their feelings. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Booktv visited capital hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. I am reading several things right now. I am reading chin shakes the world by james cringe who is a financial time writer. Award winning book and fascinating look. He is a lucid writer at dealing with what you would think is not an interesting topic but it is. I am reading primo levys works that have been compiled into a book called if this is a man and just asn astounding account of a jew who survived the camps and one of the most important accounts coming out of the war. Very sobering and makes you think about you know the rule of law and you know just because something is legal doesnt necessarily mean it is humane. You know pretty weighty things to consider there. It is a reminder though. On the reading through proverbs and corinthians. And i always peruse different topics. I finished very good books lately. I finished aj langetz book called the patriots fascinating look at the early framers and founders and how we came to not only have a nation but the importance of samuel adams and all of these men and the tale woven from a handful of them and what it cost to give us our country. I read all over the map. I am perusing german books i brought on a recent trip to berlin and first accounts about berlin life from 19431945. You never know what i am going to be reading. I have varied interest. Tweet us your answer of what you are reading this summer. Or post it on our Facebook Page. Facebook. Com booktv. [inaudible conversations] good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the key note address my name is bob clark, and i am the acting director and head archivist here, and this is, as ive said before today, this is my favorite event of the year because its the opportunity for those of us who work in day in and day out, its the opportunity for us to see the fruits of authors labor. Before we get started, just a couple of housekeeping matters. One is a final opportunity to thank cspan for broadcasting todays reading festival live. Theyre such great supporters of everything that we do here and its an honor to have them with us again this year. Also if you would please turn off your cell phones and portable devices so that the discussion today isnt interrupted. And if you love the roosevelt reading festival like i do, as well as the other programs that we do here, i encourage you to become a Library Member by stopping at the table just outside the hallway here or go to our web site and click on membership. Our speaker will speak for about a half hour after which shell take questions from the audience. Because cspan is broadcasting live we ask that you queue for questions at the standup microphone, and our speaker will call on you to answer your question. And now it is my great pleasure to introduce Lucinda Franks, the author of timeless love, a memoir of her marriage who we are so honored to have here, mr. Morgenthau. [applause] her other books include waiting out a war, wild apples, and my fathers secret war, which is another memoir. She has written for the new yorker, the New York Times magazine and the atlantic. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the life and death of a member of the weathermen. A graduate of our own vassar college, Lucinda Franks lives in new york city with her husband, the legendary longtime District Attorney robert m. Morgenthau. Lucinda. [applause] thank you, bob, and thank you, everyone for coming out on this rainy afternoon. It is such an honor to be here and to walk in the footsteps of the greatest president the nation has ever known. I spent many wonderful hours with robert clark unearthing different letters between the roosevelts and the morgenthaus and so there was a time when i felt this was my second home. I was brought up in a republican enclave called wellesley massachusetts. There was not a democrat in sight. [laughter] the John Birch Society had its headquarters there and Eleanor Roosevelt was suspect to the population of wellesley and considered secretly dangerous. [laughter] i was a little bit of a renegade and Eleanor Roosevelt became my hero. By the time i was 10, i was reading every book i could find on her in the privacy of my closet. [laughter] in the department of one degree of separation, i fell in love with the man Eleanor Roosevelt considered like her son. While i was reading stories about eleanor, robert m. Morgenthau was being read to by Eleanor Roosevelt herself. Bob loved eleanor or mrs. Roosevelt as he still calls her today. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met and she was to be his surrogate mother for the rest of her life. I want to tell you a little bit about the premise of my book timeless. Its a love story that explores how an unlikely relationship like ours has endured for more than three decades. When i met the new york District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, in the 1970s, he was an icon of the establishment dedicated to upholding the law. And i was a radical hippie, determined to destroy it. [laughter] moreover, he was almost 30 years older than me. We were totally different. That we should come together was almost an oxymoron. But the book is a story of how we realized that sometimes people behind their facades are hauntingingly alike. Hauntingly alike. Timeless is unsparing in revealing our foibles and our illusions, our highs and lows, how we developed strategies for reinventing our marriage when it floundered. But one of my favorite parts of writing timeless was the revelations i found out about the close connection between the roosevelts and my husbands parents, the Henry Morgenthaus. They both lived in duchess county. Franklin and eleanor, of course, lived here at springwood in hyde park, and the morgenthaus lived not too far down the highway in fishgill. East fishgill, actually. Franklin and eleanor spent their young adult franklin and henry spent their young adult years together becoming fast friends and political allies. When fdr first became governor of new york, he appointed henry who farmed 300 acres of apple orchards which are still existing today. He appointed him counselor, and then the conservation commissioner of the state. After fdr became president henry became secretary of the treasury. Now, this isnt widely known but henry jr. Was perhaps fdrs closest adviser really intimate adviser. He helped develop the new deal with fdr, and he rearmed helped rearm the country ordered the rearmament of the country in preparation for world war ii. The two men loved hatching novel ideas. When war broke up in europe broke out in europe, they wanted to help england but they wanted to do it behind the back of congress who was, which was dead set against u. S. Involvement in world war ii. So they assembled many war planes and tanks brought them up to the Northern New York city of platts burg and rolled them over onto canadian soil. Then they flew them to england. They were technically obeying the u. S. Neutrality act of the congress of america but only technically. After america entered the war at least one secret meeting was held between churchill and roosevelt at the morgenthau farm. The two powerful men drank, laughed, talked gravely all of which was captured in a home movie taken by henry. One amusing scene in the movie depicts my husband brightfaced young ensign in dress whites making mint juleps. [laughter] he served a mint julep to churchill who, with his protruding belly was sitting back like an oyster on the half shell. [laughter] when he took one taste of poor bobs mint juleps grimaced and went back to his glass of whiskey. [laughter] as i mentioned Eleanor Roosevelt and my husband had a very close relationship. When bob was a small boy, he had a series of mastoid infections. And back in those days, there was no pencillen, there was penicillin, there was no cure, and many people died of them. During one terrible bout of infection, his parents were away on a roundtheworld trip. Eleanor roosevelt took it upon herself to visit him every single day soothed him reassured him when he had a gas mask or a mask that gave him laughing gas over his face in which, you know, at which point he was screaming because they were draining his ear and they were trying to put him out. Eleanor held his hand and talked quietly to him. When she brought him a kimono that she had gotten from japan he wore it constantly, even when it was too small. [laughter] later, Eleanor Roosevelt showed her amazing humility to bob. Bob was in amherst at that point. He was he formed something called the Political Union which was a Rebellious Group of people that were trying to oust the president. He asked his friend, Eleanor Roosevelt, to come and talk to the students who mostly in those days were american firsters. And eleanor was going to make a speech that would change the college, which she did. However, when bob picked her up in his car she said, oh bobby, i am so nervous. I am just so nervous about speaking. And bob thought if the first lady of the United States is nervous about speaking, then i can be nervous too. The two families would attend each others birthday parties and fdr was in the habit of writing witty poems to Eleanor Morgenthau. He knew that eleanor was a superior strategist in real politic and kept henry, the visionary, on the straight and narrow. Thus one of fdrs poems to eleanor read eleanor, i want to know what makes henry argue so. Dont he get a chance at home to make his opinions known . [laughter] what i found fascinating and what a lot of people dont know, how intimate the relationship was between Eleanor Roosevelt and Eleanor Morgenthau. Eleanor was one of the bright lights in. [applause] roosevelts in mrs. Roosevelts coterie of women friends. They were similar in nature. Both were very independent, but they functioned as powers behind their husbands. They were women of their time who counseled and positioned their men, but did so with an iron in a velvet glove. Although mrs. Roosevelt towered over mrs. Morgenthau eleanor was six feet tall, and Eleanor Morgenthau was 54 the two looked like twins. They wore similar dresses, matching hats, and they rode horseback together. Their connection was so deep that in pictures they wanted their horses to look alike. So the body of mrs. Roosevelts horse was transposed on the horse beneath Eleanor Morgenthau [laughter] so when you see these pictures of them, they both the horses have these white streaks could down their noses look exactly alike. When they all went off to washington after fdr took office as president in early 1933, Eleanor Morgenthau was the only friend who traveled with mrs. Roosevelt. They drove around the country visiting the disenfranchised and the poor to see exactly how they lived. They went to the Tennessee Valley to inspect wpa programs started by fdr and henry jr. They went down into a coal mine in West Virginia and came up smudged with black dust and shocked at the terrible conditions the miners worked under. You can be sure that mrs. Roosevelt as she was want to do, marched right back to the white house and got franklin to do something about it. Once when the press was decrying the plight of underpaid illtreated orange pickers who came up north to work on apple farms and other fruit farms mrs. Roosevelt proceeded to ceremoniously inspect the morgenthau orchards. She pronounced the workers extremely well treated. Ever after, Henry Morgenthau jr. Was able to say mrs. Roosevelt has given fishgill farms a clean bill of health. Eleanor roosevelt had the uncanny ability to go to sleep as soon as she got into the front of her car. [laughter] this preserved her formidable energy. Unfortunately, Eleanor Morgenthau did not go to sleep. She was in the back of the car. She couldnt sleep. But she kept up with her friend although after their trips she took to her bed for at least a day. [laughter] the rarelyquoted letters between the two eleanors unearthed in the Roosevelt Library show an unusual emotional bond between the two and they also give a rare glimpse of the character of Eleanor Morgenthau. She was a mysterious woman. Her husband henry jr. , refused to talk about her to his biographer, and shes rarely spoken of by her family today. Here in these letters a hidden eleanor beneath a hidden eleanor is discovered. Beneath her iron fist, there is a vulnerable woman who seems to be depressed about her Health Problems which led to her untimely death in 1949. She was envious of Eleanor Roosevelts other friends and felt beneath her confident facade, sometimes up loved. Unloved. The library has many letters from Eleanor Roosevelt to Eleanor Morgenthau, but only one has been preserved from mrs. Morgenthau to her friend. Where the rest of the correspondence went nobody knows. The eminent robert clark speculates that mrs. Morgenthau was so smitten with the first lady, she preferred to hear her voice over the telephone than write. I have a few letters which i left in the green room thank you. [laughter] sorry about that. [inaudible] [laughter] black bag. [laughter] well go back to that in a minute. I have some letters written by Eleanor Roosevelt to Eleanor Morgenthau which are kind of revealing. But back to timeless, its not only about relationships its also the political history of an era. Its bobs and my journey through nearly four decades in the public eye as seen through a private lens. Robert morgenthau is unarguably one of the great men of his era. Hes the only prominent statesman left from the kennedy time. As da of new york, he accomplished changes such as almost singlehandedly wiping out the Death Penalty in new york. Hes made new law, indeed, changed the face of the law in america with many of his criminal cases. And hes invented prosecution of White Collar Crime as we know it today. He has seldom stayed within his jurisdiction of New York County and has gone after sacred cows that the federal system hasnt dared to touch. His long rubber arm has stretched into foreign waters, cultivating a network of global espionage partners including the mossad the British Intelligence and the cia. He has unraveled International Money laundering and indicted Bank President s who were funding terrorist organizations. Just before he retired at age 90 five years ago bob caught two huge banks Credit Suisse and lloyds of london who were conspiring to help iran build a nuclear bomb. In spite of the sanctions against iran the banks had laundered a billion dollars for the rain grabs iranians who ironically, used the money to buy uranium and other material from america. There is much more to bobs investigations into International Terrorism which have remained unpublicized until now. Just to give you a little teaser from the book, 40 boxes of instructions and blueprints for 9 11 came into the possession of bob sometime before the tragedy. He tried and he tried and he tried to warn the fbi and the cia and they didnt listen. The fbi said they didnt have an arabic translator to translate all this inflammatory material. I did research of my own after hearing this and after 9 11 and put together various documents that pointed to the role of the intelligence agencies in supporting alqaeda until they were ready to undertake their greatest attack on america. Since i have the letters well just backtrack a minute. These are letters as i said, that were written by Eleanor Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt to Eleanor Morgenthau. Dearest darling eleanor i have always felt that you were hurt often by imaginary things and have wanted to protect you. But if one is to have a healthy normal relationship, i realize it must be on some kind of equal basis. You simply cannot be so easily hurt. Life is too short to cope with it. Much much love always eleanor. Dearest eleanor, i didnt want say half what i wanted to when we were talking the other day. Ive grown to love you so much, though i cant take away the feeling you have. It makes me unhappy to feel that it is worrying you, and i want to put my arms around you and keep away all the disagreeable things that have made you feel this way. Dear cannest eleanor dearest eleanor, it worries me to have you tire so easily. I wish i could give you some of my toughness. Your children will all come out of any phases, just as bob has done. They are such grand people, but then you and henry have been wonderful parents. My dear love i must run to some wpa projects. Dearest eleanor more love than i can tell you devotedly, e. R. I first met Robert Morgenthau on a stormy day in 1972 with my hair in strings and my white knit poncho dripping all over his office. I had been assigned by United Press International to interview new yorks mafiabusting u. S. Attorney who had just been fired by nixon for investigating the president s crooked cronies. [laughter] i asked so many questions that morgenthau thought i was either dumbest or the smartest reporter hed ever met. When the interview was published, he decided i wasnt dumbest, and he couldnt get the rug i had been wearing as he called it, out of his mind. He wanted to ask me out, though he had compunctions about preying on an innocent lamb, especially one who was an antiwar revolutionary. But he pursued me anyway. Though there was a little problem. You see, i was harboring a draft resistor and roger the dodger never would tell me when bob had called. Finally, bob got me a job on the New York Times where i would have to answer my own phone. But to me, Robert Morgenthau was strictly a news source. I never had a clue wed be anything else. After all, i was in my 20s and he was an old man of 54. Besides, i too was rising in my career doing stories like red dye number two. If you remember that the red dye permeated our food supply, and i found two Lab Assistants at the fbi who gave me printouts of how the experiments proved that rats got cancer after ingesting just tiny amounts of dye. There was a public outcry, and fda banned the dye. Bob would usually call me with story tips. But one day he got up his nerve and called me for a date. He said, after i reluctantly accepted he said we are going to Arthur Schlesingers home for a party for jimmy carter. Well [laughter] i dressed up in my best silk blouse, peasant blouse, my bell bottoms, my platform shoes and i thought i looked pretty spiffy. [laughter] we walked into the schlesinger home and there was a ghastly fairyland of silk and satin and feather boas coiled around swanthin necks. [laughter] i turned around and was going to walk out the door, and instead i walked directly into Jackie Kennedy to nasties onassis. [laughter] now, she hadnt been seen for several years, and the Society Ladies dropped their jaws and smiled at her and couldnt stop smiling. I looked up at bob and he was smiling too, but not at Jackie Kennedy. He was smiling at me. [laughter] eighteen months later, we were engaged. Our friends and family went into shock. [laughter] it was as though the pope had asked for the hand of squeaky frohm in marriage. [laughter] professional women and men some 30 years apart didnt get married in the 1970s. His cousins urged him to see a psychiatrist. [laughter] so faced with all this opposition we, of course, got married. There is a question people dont ask me about timeless, although i can see how much theyd like to. There was a time i prayed this question wouldnt be asked but we just celebrated our 38th anniversary, and tomorrow is fathers day. So let me answer this question before you cant ask it. [laughter] did i marry my father . [laughter] do we marry people similar to our mothers and fathers . Id like to reply by reading a short passage from timeless. I believe that love is no accident no whisper from a random universe. It comes from deeper channels of longing and recognition, a collection of tiny lights that gathered forth long ago. The boy with long fingers sweeping the keys of a piano, an uncles laugh, a teacher who always listened and the one who precedes them all, the father. The things about him you never forget his hand circling your waist, flying perilously in the air, sunblinded grains of sand rubbing against your cheek your chubby hand smoothing back the soft bristles of his hair so they spring up again like soldiers. Then, in a flash you stand head to head, face to face, and he walks away, for you have become too mature, too near a danger. A longing takes over you and then eventually is forgotten. The years go by, and one day you meet him again. The chin the bright smile and behind his glasses the love that was always there. Hes not your father, but hes everything you wanted him to be. Bob and my dad were sweet kind are and were sweet kind loving men. My late father had been my first teacher. He had laid the path that led me to the man i married. Bobs moral values were dads moral values which were inevitably mine. This makes me unaccountably happy. There is a beauty in it a fulfillment. Our husbands redeem what was once lost help mend the circle of unconditional love that was broken long ago. Both men had experienced crippling traumas in the war which they would not talk about. Both were emotionally closed, hiding their feelings sometimes even from themselves. I would chisel away at my dad can, trying in vain to learn his secrets. When i fell in love with bob i knew i had another chance. Those of us who marry enigmas want to crack the puzzle. I spent 30 years trying to get inside bobs mind, and once again i failed. What is it like to write about someone you love . A reporter doesnt usually live with her subject. I agonized, how could i be honest but do bob justice . How could i risk revealing his quirks and weaknesses . How far should i go . After all my marriage was more important than this book. On the other hand, i didnt want to write a love letter but an authentic portrait of him. I didnt want him to go down in history as an enigma, a onedimensional man who in spite of his half century of Public Service wasnt really known by his people. The people. Until now, he had refused to talk to reporters about his personal life. Most thought him a stern unapproachable man who issued indictments with a biblical fury. I wanted to show bob in all his complexity; his kindness and generosity to the Little People his wicked sense of humor how he came home at night as he walked in the door and began booming out give my regards to broadway. Bob had wanted me to be his memoirist. That way he didnt have to look back, which he hated to do. Nor did he have to do the work. [laughter] i really knew most of the story. But i still felt uneasy about the responsibility. I knew his laissezfaire, take it on the chin attitude. Write whatever you want, he said, but i wasnt going to let him off so easily. I insisted he read my journals chronicling our relationship and every draft of the manuscript. Even then to find out what this very private man really thought was almost as hard as writing the book. Typically, i had to look for clues. How do you like that passage, sweetheart id ask. And if he said its your memory, i would know [laughter] that he didnt like it. [laughter] then it was necessary to watch for the slightest twitch in his facial muscle or the double sniff to discover exactly what he didnt like. I learned a lot from writing timeless, but most important i learned to relinquish Unrealistic Expectations that bob gave me what i thought i needed. I was on the wrong hunt, a blinding mission that was just that blind. I didnt need to crack bobs shell. I didnt need i needed to appreciate what he did give me and give to him the Little Things he most desired. I learned that love looks different to every to each of us. For some, like bob it consists of doing. When he brings me blueberries in bed, calls someone on my behalf, he is giving his love in the way he values love on both our parts. But he knows now that i perceive love in my own unique way that its about showing. And if he cant always access his emotions, he has learned to show affection. What he loves to do now is to shout, hug, and open his arms until i come over until i slip between them. Thank you. [applause] thank you, lucinda. We have time for a few questions before she goes out front to sign books that i know youre all going to want to buy. So please, queue up here and ask your questions please. Come on now. There has to be a brave person. [laughter] i just wanted to tell you a story that you may not have heard about eleanor and eleanor. As many here are aware, everybodys aware Franklin Delano roosevelt died on april 12 1945, and the last person from the cabinet who had the opportunity to see him was Henry Morgenthau. Henry was on his way back from florida because eleanor had just had a heart attack. And he stopped at warm springs on the way back up to new york. Well the next day Franklin Roosevelt died and eleanor was informed late in the afternoon after speaking at the salgrave club about the death of her husband. She came back to the white house, was informed that he had died and gone back, and had to go back down to warm springs to, in order to supervise the funeral arrangements. So in the time that it took for eleanor after she was informed to get to the plane to go down to fort benning georgia, she took the time out of her schedule to call Eleanor Morgenthaus nurse and inform her that the president had died and to turn off the radio so that eleanor may not have had a reversal from hearing about the death of the president. I just thought id like to tell you that story about friendship. [applause] thank you so very much. On behalf of both bob and me. I do not like to speak publicly, but i have to tell you i read your book, i loved it. Its one of the greatest love stories, and thank you for opening up the history of Robert Morgenthau, which i was not aware of and i am now. What a truly great individual. I love your book. Ive recommended it many, many times. Thank you very much. [applause] shes not my Public Relations person. [laughter] [applause] thank you. We live up here in cold springs, and fishkill farm is a major resource for the community. What role did the farm play in the familys life both with the roosevelts and why have the farm in the first place . Probably bob could answer this better than me, but ill take a stab. You can yell some answers to me, love. Henry morgenthau i, who was ambassador to turkey under president wilson, bought the farm and it was much larger than it is today. It was a dairy farm as well as a fruit farm. He bought it for his son. From what i am told, he bought it for his son, henry jr. Bobs father, in order to keep henry jr. Near him. He was devoted to his son, and his son was devoted to him although sometimes he was known to want to take a little break. But henry jr. , indeed, threw himself into farming fishkill farms. The dairy farm was sold off at some point, and only the apple orchards were left. Bob, i think bob is a farmer at heart. Just like his father was. And one of bobs sayings is theres no better manure than the footprints of the owner. So every weekend since weve been married for almost 40 years, we have gone up to fishkill farms, and bob has gone around pruning the trees examining the apples, you know, getting depressed if it was a bad crop or we had a freeze and getting elated if the crop like it is this year is pointful. Bountiful. And our son, joshua whos 31 has just taken over fishkill farms, and he has made it into an organic enterprise. He has been using clay to spray the apples instead of pesticides, hes growing organic vegetables he has free range chickens that produce really delicious eggs. Stop by sometime. We have a huge farm store. And theres pick your own. Every month we have newlyripened berries blueberries, rasp berries strawberries. And then in august even in july july apples we have the apple crop beginning. And then there are pickyourown people that come and spend the day and have picnics and pick bags of apples. So its really part of bobs blood. And after almost 40 years its become part of mine too. All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you lucinda for a great talk. Thank you, mr. Morgenthau, for honoring us. Thank you all for a great day. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] and that brings to an end our coverage of this years roosevelt reading festival in new york. Now, if you missed any of the authors from today, watch booktv tonight starting at midnight eastern time to see the entire event again. And as always, check booktv. Org to watch them online. [inaudible conversations] damon tweedy, whats your day job . Im a psychiatrist Duke Medical School and i divide that time between treating patients psychiatry and teaching medical students and residents. Host what made you go into psychiatry . Guest great question. When i was in medical school i was deciding between psychiatry and cardiology, which are two very different fields. And i actually was leaning toward the cardiology part initially. So then as i was just, you know, getting to see patients and really getting to the nittygritty of being a doctor, i found that i really liked the idea of just talking to people and helping people through their problems in that way more than the more mechanical side of treating heart patients. So thats how it all unfolded. Host youre also an author now. What possessed you to write a book . Guest well, this book ive written, basically its a memoir of my journey through medical training, but its written through the lens of race. There are a lot of physician authors out there, but i feel like race is a really important issue in medicine, and these authors really largely overlook the subject. And so i think thats a really, thats an omission because so many of the leading medical schools and Teaching Hospitals all across america are situated in communities with large black populations. And in many cases theres been historical tensions between the communities and these large institutions. So thats a story that really hasnt been told in a narrative way. And so thats so writing this book i was really trying to tell two stories; my own personal journey of becoming a young black man from a working class background scaling the accidental medical ladder, but at the same time telling the stories of everyday black people facing serious Health Problems and trying to weave those two stories together. Host what is your background . Guest i grew up in maryland suburban maryland, kind of on the corridor between washington d. C. And baltimore. Working Class Community all black, you know not segregated but thats how it played out. That was my background growing up. Host were your parents educated . Guest well host did they support, did they encourage your education . Guest yes, they did encourage my education absolutely. So my parents grew up in a time of segregation in rural virginia. Dad didnt get a chance to finish high school. He went into the military and worked at a food store, a job in a typical Grocery Store and worked as a meat cutter for several years until he retired. My mom didnt finish high school, didnt have a chance to go to college. Family couldnt afford that, and she worked for the federal government for many years. I did have an older brother though, and he was really like the first person in our family who went to college and graduated from college. So he was that sort of role model in a way, because the community we grew up in, it was almost like the way to get out was to be an athlete. And as is the case in so many africanamerican communities. So he was a living example of someone who could succeed in this other way and that really was an important part of my development. Host at what point in your life did you decide you wanted to go into medical school . Guest probably high school. I was a good student at an early age. And when i got to high school i was able to test into this Magnet Program that was in our school district. It was a science and technology program. I almost didnt the teacher basically made me do it. I didnt want to do it at first and that really was transformative. I was able to get exposed to people who came from different backgrounds, whites, asian people, and it really helped me see another world and another opportunity. And as i was seeing that i could do really well, i said, well, medicine seemed like a good way to really give back to the community and make a difference in a positive way but also help people in my community. I certainly didnt have examples in my own life until then. Host on page 3 you write being black can be bad for your health. Guest yes. Thats very true. Basically, any Health Measure number that you want to look at whether its Life Expectancy which is considerably shorter in africanamericans, particularly in men infant mortality rate death rates from all sorts of cancers, all of them are considerably worse in black people than in white people. And really any other group that you can compare them to in america. There are a lot of reasons why that is. I would say theres probably three ways of looking at that. Theres structural, kind of systembased factors thicks like things like black people being less likely to have health insurance, more likely isolated in geographic areas where theres less access to good quality medical care. Thats one factor. Then theres the sort of doctor patient relationship factor where black people often for many reasons of history are kind of more wary of seeking treatment and also they present to health care much later, and preventable diseases are now more advanced. And thats certainly a big factor. And thirdly, theres communitylevel factors in terms of individual health choices, in terms of diet and exercise and these are all factors as well, larger problems. So there are many ways of looking at i. Host how many black psychiatrists are there in america . Guest i dont have an exact number, but in general there are probably about [inaudible] as a whole are africanamerican. In psychiatry its a little bit less, anywhere from 34 . Its pretty small. Host your patients black your patients white, your patients a mix . Guest mix. Mix. And that leads to some interesting things. So in a place like as i mentioned earlier many of these medical schools are located in these commitments that have large black poppations communities that have large black populations. Durham is 45 black and johns hopkins, which is closer to my hometown in baltimore so you have large groups of black patients and very small numbers of black doctors. Theres no doubt about that. Host so whats the reaction you get from a white patient, from a black patient . Guest from a white patient, so when i was younger and starting out, most people had very positive reactions, but there are many people who are wary of you and theyre not sure what what to make of you. There are some people who i would say maybe they harbor some prejudices. In some cases i had pretty frank or overtly prejudiced. But on average people are a little wary, but after you get to know them and caulk talk to them, they come around. So theres idea of trying to prove yourself. Maybe an expectation at first that youre not as good as another doctor, and you have to kind of work with that. Host and thats something you get from your white patients or patients across the board . Guest id say across the board, but its more pronounced with white patients. Ive certainly had that same issue with black patients. Its happened, but its more common to happen with white patients, but its happened with all. Host has it changed over the years in the last 20 years the perception of a black doctor . And how people view them . Guest i think there actually, are more black doctors. Because if you go back 40, 50 years ago, there was very, very few black doctors. The numbers have increased i would say over the last 30 years or so, and i think that has affected perceptions some. Its still a battle though because in many parts of country ors theres still very few black doctors. People may have never seen a black doctor in their life. Host whyd you write the book . Guest i felt like there was this untold story, you know . Actually, theres a lot of talk about disparities and inequality but not as much about that in the health realm. And even more so not in a way thats sort of accessible where youre telling it through the story of everyday people. Certainly one important way of telling information, certainly a story is what that really means to people on the ground. Host give us one example from the book of a patients reaction to you positive, negative whatever. Guest one story that i think really kind of stands out, this is when i was an intern. This was my first year as that brand new doctor, that really most difficult year as a young doctor. And i was on a medical team medical service in an elder and an elderly white gentleman came in. When he came to the hospital, he saw black nurses black nurses aides, several black staff in the hospital. And he made a comment in not so uncertain term that is he did not want a black doctor. He didnt use that word, but he did not want a black doctor. And it just so happened that he had the misfortune, if you will, of being assigned to the one team in the hospital that had a black doctor, which was me. It already worked out that way. And you could imagine thats probably not the best way to start a doctor patient be relationship. So he came because he had that perception, i in turn had negative thoughts about him, as you can imagine. This gentleman was very sick and he was old and towards the end of his life. And his family had similar terms in the way they responded to me initially. Over several weeks in the hospital hour by hour day by day i was able to chip away at this huge racial divide we had, and by the end he was really very receptive to me, his family was receptive to me. It was an amazing transformation, and it made me think about how when someone is really sick, you kind of strip away some of the superficial barriers that we all seem to have and really make a Human Connection and allow it to flourish. I think thats a lesson that we can learn for everyday life. You know its a lesson from the medical world but it can be applied to everyday life. Nowadays were in a time where theres so much racial discussion that is often so unpleasant. Host isnt there unfairness to that, that you have to work at chipping away the prejudices before you can treat the patients . Guest sure. I mean, i talk about that in the book. Theres a lot of aspects of it, and thats part of why i wanted to write the book, because very few black doctors have written about this perspective and this experience. There are certainly theres unfairness to it, but i think its more important for me to focus on how to deal with it and how to overcome it. Its certainly not fair. Host black man in a white coat comes out in september of 2015. The author is dr. Damon tweedy. Youre watching booktv on cspan2. Booktv is on twitter and facebook, and we want to hear from you. Tweet us, twitter. Com booktv. Or post a comment on our Facebook Page, facebook. Com booktv. President ial candidates often release books to introduce themselves to voters and to promote their views on issues. Heres a look at some books written by declared candidates for president. In his book immigration wars, former Florida Governor jeb bush argues for immigration policies. Neurosurgeon ben carson calls for greater individual responsibility to preserve americas future in one nation. In against the tide, former rhode island governor Lincoln Chafee recounts his time serving as a republican in the senate. And former secretary of state Hillary Clinton looks back on her time serving in the Obama Administration in hard choices. In a time for truth, Texas Senate Ted cruise recounts his journey to the u. S. Senate. Carly fiorina is another declared candidate for president. In rising to the challenge, she shares lessons shes leshed from her difficulties shes learned from her difficulties and triumphs. South carolina senator Lindsay Graham released an ebook on his web site. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee gives his take on politics and culture in god, guns grits and gravy. George patakis also running for president. In 1998 the former new york governor released pataki where he looks back on his path to the governorship. And kentucky senator rand paul calls for Smaller Government and more bipartisanship in his latest book, taking a stand. Another entrant into the 2016 president ial race is former Texas Governor rick perry. In fed up, he explains that government has become too intrusive and must get out of the way. In american dreams, florida senator marco rubio outlines his plan to restore economic doesnt. Independent Vice President senator Bernie Sanders is a candidate for the democratic nomination, his book the speech, is a printing of his eighthourlong filibuster against tax cuts. And in blue collar conservatives, president ial candidate Rick Santorum argues the Republican Party must focus on the working class. Businessman donald trump has written several books. In time to get tough, he criticizes the Obama Administration and outlines his vision to restore american prosperity. Others who may announce their candidacies for president include Vice President joe biden. In promises to keep, he looks back on his career in politics and explains his guiding principles. In leadership and crisis, louisiana governor bobby jindal explain as why conservative solutions are needed in washington. More potential president ial candidates with books include Ohio Governor john kasich. In stand for something, he calls for a return to traditional american values. And Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker argues republicans must offer Bold Solutions to fix the country and have the courage to implement them in unintimidated. And finally, former virginia senator james webb looks back on his time serving in the military and in the senate in i heard my country calling. Booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what theyre reading this summer. Well a number of books. The first one on my list is something called the right of boom, it talks about Nuclear Terrorism and the aftermath. I serve on the Armed Services committee and also on emerging threats, so to read a book like this and we hear all the time what were facing in this world of ours, it should be an interesting read. In addition to that, the second one is i am fascinated by how things are made and engineering so the best American Science and nature writing talks about how we came about as the technology has evolved and theyre set up in short stories made perfectly for Attention Span of a congressperson. And last but not least because i would be tortured if i didnt read it is a book by my brother called changology. And on a very serious note, talks about how fundamentally people are able to make changes and the best way to go about doing that. So im really looking forward to that, and this way i can tell my mom i read the book. Booktv wants to know what youre reading this summer. Tweet us your answer booktv or post on facebook. Com booktv. Welcome to key west, florida on booktv. Only 90 miles from cuba, its the southernmost city in the continental United States. With the help of our Comcast Cable partners over the next hour well speak with local authors and hear about the literary culture and history of the area. Key west is often brings to mind hemingway. But the other author who lived here longest and was known nationally was tennessee williams, the playwright. We start out with a visit to the home of ernest hemingway