Transcripts For CSPAN2 A Torch Kept Lit 20161107

National review institute its president Lindsey Craig and fellow trusties including here and now rich lowery and stan, if i forgot anyone, you will let me know. I would like to welcome you about a conversation, an important new book, a torch kept lit, great lives of the 20th century. My name is jack fowler and im the publisher of National Review. [laughter] [applause] the institute is our sister organization, a nonprofit educational entity founded 25 years ago by William F Buckley, jr. [applause] its mission to advance the conservative principles bill champion, complement the mission of the magazine and support National Reviews best talent and preserve and promote the buckley legacy. Indeed, the institute that is formally launched a buckley legacy project and there was literature here explaining its plans and vision, in this last year the institute through this project haskell braited the anniversaries of two important and lasting aspects of the buckley legacy. The marvelous Interview Program firing line. The buckley legacy is why we are here today. To discuss bill the writer and specifically bill the observer of men and women public and private giants and small fries, before i introduce our participants a related anecdote. Over 20 years ago my predecessor who is here today and to whom National Review owes so much. Thatll be ten bucks, ed. [laughter] or 20. Had a terrific. List have nr publish a collection and we collected them all and consulted buckley, bills beloved sister who agreed, terrific idea. Already we approached bill. He couldnt say no fast enough. For a long time ed and i remained perplexed. The idea was a short fire success because we believed then as we believe now and as we see now through this marvelous book, james rosen has edited that among bills many talents, this one where he remembered the recent dead with deep insight and elegant probes would be embraced not only by National Review readers but by the public at large. Bill was no dope, he knew what he knew so ed and i eventual deduced and he did sprinkle some including miles gone by and buckley and there are so many of the gems that the thought of a necessary collection remained valid over the years. Along comes 2014 and along comes rosen. Through a conversation about another idea, james raised this. I would like to do a collection of bills eulogies remembrances and rips. What do you think . It was like asking if i wanted a bag of m ms, of course, i said. So did chris fer buckley, who oversees the buck lee estate. We were off to the races. Campbell and the people agreed and here now we have this wonderful book. I cant help to think he knows what we all know that although he left us eight years ago, bill buckley in many ways still looms very large. The song asks where have you gone, like wise a conservative america asks the same about bill. There is a appetite for his wisdom remains very strong. Coming up next is a conversation about bill buckley, the man of pros, the man who wrote history, person by person through his particular talent. It is not a conversation about politics, the elections, or the often dismaying game of if bill buckley were alive today, what would he say about blank. So at the end of the conversation, questions will be entertained. You will find cards on the table, feel free to write down your question, we will collect the cards and hand them to the moderator who will pick and choose. And about the moderator, he is my friend and colleague, the very big brain ryahan. He is the coautoo of brand new party, he has a book coming out in early 2017 on immigration. I look forward to the conversation about that book next year. So genuine and deeply appreciated it. The only son of bill and pat buckley, christopher graduated cum laude from yale. Former managing editor of es squire magazine. He knows a thing or two about books having written 16 or so, many exceptional. I must really encouraging you to read his most recent, the relic master, a marvelous novel. If you laugh, you will need to go to confession. And a personal side, i went to bed alone last night because my wife was up till the wee hours reading and laughing at a 22yearold Christopher Buckley novel, thanks, pal. [laughter] he was speech writer to george h. W. Bush and the price for american humor. Last but not least a new friend, a man who inspired this book and contributor to it in beautiful probes as was bill buckley and thats james rosen. The chief washington correspondent for fox news, james has covered the white house and the state department and reported from capitol hill, the pentagon, the supreme court, nearly all 57 states 50 states, 40 Foreign Countries across five continents. Rosens articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, wall street journal, the Washington Post, harpers and National Review. This is not his first book, james is the author of the strong man, John Mitchell and the secrets of watergate and also cheney oneonone. Friends of bill and not only the 12step kind should know that this man is a walking, talking buckley legacy project. His knowledge about bill and his belief in lasting relevance and how we need to realize that powerful good resides in the buckley legacy is second to none. It has been a delight to working with him and i congratulate james not only for the book he assembled but also for his own small prose providing the context in which all of bill set remembrances are set. On that note, ladies and gentlemen, rye hanssalam. Thanks very much for the kind introduction and National Review institute colleagues for helping put together the event. You look, you know, you kid but its true. James, i wanted to ask you, what on earth led a perfectly healthy sane person to become oh obsessed with bill buckley and second to this project in particular. First of all, my thanks for everybody to coming this morning and all of my friend at the National Review and National Review institute and to christopher for hosting this event. I have to tell you that i feel a little bit like its kind of surreal for me. So i thats not just false humility, humility with an asterisk perhaps. [laughter] so i learned about bill buckley for the first time in the tonight show with john carson and treating johnny as an equal as opposed to most people on the tonight show and grateful to be there. I remember on that occasion, and i tried to find the date on the tape but no success, i think it was around 1985, johnny said to bill, why is it whenever you come to the set i feel like im at the Principals Office . I thought, i want to be like that guy. My wife who is here today and just say hi, to everybody, this is my lovely wife sarah, who is the unsung suffering heroine and she has seen that i have many obsessions and im and im intense about them and in the case of bill buckley, i know so many people, christopher, from fred barnes and other people who have said, i want to be like that guy. In any case, this book began few years ago and i was trying to find a particular piece that bill had done about him. I remember the headline, i was labeling in the misapprehension that it had appeared in National Review. I finally consulted a book, published in 2002 when bill was alive and it was an annotated election of all of his work and therein i learned that it had been in the times magazine. Some day, someone should do a volume of bills eulogies. And i thought, why not me, and im just grateful to be associated with it. Im going to jump in. I was asked to give a blur for this book and im at the height of vanity to quote ones own blurb. Its such a good blurb, i cant resist. [laughter] William F Buckley jr. Was a master of many things, this collection of obituaries and eulogy that is he wrote over extraordinary career well established as the modern of literary form. I have read, did i have read every single one of my fathers 60odd books. I do not exaggerate to propose that this may proof to be William F Buckleys finest book ever. And i mean that. Thank you so much. [applause] thank you. I had road as they came out and i was never i was never failed to be moved. What an elegant sentence that was. [laughter] but it wasnt until i saw them all in total that it came to me that, i think, this is women yum William F Buckleys beautiful writing. I think you called about 250 op obituaries and also elsewhere including forbes nyi. And some delivered as actual eulogies. On the subway down this morning. Unlike my father, i road the subway. [laughter] i once mentioned the word subway to him and he said, what would that be. [laughter] on the way down to the subway, i did a count of the 52 and the table of context and put a check next to each person that he knew personally and it came out to 33. 33 out of 52 and these are pretty, you know, pretty big people. Including pat buckley. He knew pat buckley in a biblical sense as well. I suppose im proof. We have here with us the wife of one of the people, best friend ben. [applause] how glad i am to see and its an extraordinary collection and off to a very good start. Not only i think because it is such a good book and, by the way, your introductions to each one of the 52 pieces are many master pieces. Very kind of you. You may know this guy mostly as a fox news tv guy, but let me tell you, this sun of a gun can write. Is cspan getting this . [laughter] anyway, in part because of james being a household name up there in tv land, the book is off to a brilliant start and he was on bill oreilly gave it a nice plug a couple of days ago and i did something i dont do a lot. I went to amazon to check the sales ranking. U thought i thought it was legit and it was number two. [applause] so i emailed james. He said to me, i checked. Its number one. Good for you. Thank you. James i wonder, chris mentioned a moment ago that you called obituaries from rich source materials and many, many things that you might have published in the collection. Tell us a bit about how you discipline yourself and how you made your selection . Well, here thanks to the good folks at crown publishing. Everyone needs an editor and they were great in helping me focus. So we found about 200220 eulogies and of itch wares that obituaries that bill wrote. We rescued a few people and we sort of cast them into and where they went to other chapters that remained and what we wanted to do is break it down by types of people he was remembering. So theres a section for president s of the United States. Theres a section for bills own family members, eulogies for his mother, father, his wife and brotherinlaw. Theres a section for arts and letters figures. I would like to say that a torch kept lit is the only place in the world where you will find open freedman rubbing elbows with jerry garcia. [laughter] he wrote an entire novel of Elvis Presley late in his career. Some people really only to the Buckley Family in terms of readers. One of the things about this book a recurring theme is friendship. I dont think bill buckley would have caught to the term genius. In a rare moment of modesty he could have recoiled from the word genius i dont know. [laughter] there is only one expert on this stage about bill buckley, but every one that ive spoken to who knew him well has attested that bill buckley had a genius for friendship and passionate about his friends and maintained friendships in some cases over 60 years im. The last eulogy he wrote or published was for van who had been his friend, by the time they died within a short time of each other for 60 years. He invested in them and cared deeply about them. I dare say that the dare giving of this book to a friend will deepen ones friendship with those friends. Lastly, theres a section called nemesis. This is my favorite section because these are eulogies and obituaries for people who predeceased bill and had done battle. People like al western and john lindsey and spectrum of awfulness and arthur, Eleanor Roosevelt and the fun in this chapt ir is watching bill struggle to find something kind to say about these people or alternatively not bothering. [laughter] one last word about this, these are piece that is were often written on deadlines and situations where writers themselves because he knew 33 of the 52 people was himself often racked with guilt, guilt grief is what i meant to say. When he was himself suffering from grief at their loss. He was a man of devout faith as we all know and that is the eulogy which, i believe, is technically not a part of the catholic mass. The inherited corporate of truths that get past down and conservatives believe in objective truths and one of them is that people die and god endorse. I think that infused the writings as well. Chris, i had a question for you as a writer. So this is for both of you, though, i want to hear your perspective from this. Bill buckley was americas most celebrated public intellectual, yet he was also a writer and was also the architect of a Political Movement and as such it occurs to me that sometimes one might be political in how one is describing other figures and how its navigating the larger landscape. Do you feel as though he ever pulled his punches indifference to his responsibilities as the leader of a movement . Again, curious to hear your thoughts. No, but putting punches as james was talking, it occurred to me pop predeceaseed labelle. I would love to have read the obituary. I dont think so. Here is one of the remarkable things you all know about William Buckleys history, some of you have probably seen the celebrated documentary, the best of enemies about the Famous Exchange of 1968 and, you know, which precipitated lawsuits and all sorts of things, pop let go of gorvidal. The only time pop ever mentioned at the dinner table or whatever was in the context of his delight in some that gorvidal had rendered. Remember was offered, awarded election to the American Academy of arts and letters and he his reply to them was, thanks, i already have diners card. [laughter] this is about the wittiest thing he had ever heard. I purposely have not seen the documentary but apparently he was obsessed and would it came up all of the time and he would when he had friends over for dinner, afterwards, he would scream the famous debate in 1968. I think in the documentary they used a clip from the movie sunset boulevard you gloria norma played by Gloria Swanson sitter her watch her old movies. One old queen measured against another. But the to james point about pops genius to friendship, even as you point out in your brilliant introduction, even in these, you know, dozen odd nemesis, categories, you can see pops struggling find nice to say. This, i think, came from his deep, deep, deep sense of christianity, which so aanymorated him. You know, if i can jump in to the point of whether he pulled punches, these remembrances isnt strictly celebratory, even in the case of figures and people who are iconic in the conservative movement, win stone churchill who buckley had gone to speak personally in 1949 is not for winston churchill. He celebrates the accomplishments of churchill up through and including the victory in world war ii but then faults churchill for continue to go stay in office when he didnt have the stamina to prosecute the cold war properly with the ensuing result that onethird of the worlds people at the time wound up behind the iron curtain, similarly for Martin Luther king which in todays landscape we conceive of in terms. When bill buckley wrote his remembrance of Martin Luther king after assassination, buckley wrote a column that was tough on Martin Luther king, celebratory of his accomplishments in civil rights but at the same time condemn of some statements that Martin Luther king had maid about america at the height of vietnam war and the role in the world that he thought were utterly appropriate. He didnt always pull his punches. Even when he was discussing people who are on the right and that speaks, i think, to bills intellectual integrity. Was this a sense that some figures have become too big, too overlarge, celebrated inappropriately or purely the sense that i must get the record right . I think its the latter. One of the themes within this book is under the general the gift for friendship was his relationship with arguably the leading liberal intellectual of our time, john kenneth galbrath. This was a friendship that dated to 1966. They met in an elevator at the plaza hotel on the way to black and white ball. The party of the century. The party of the century as you point out. Brilliant introduction. You can say it as often as you like. I cannot say this enough. [laughter] if you read this book for one reason, read it for the introduction. Youve gone too far. Crazy talk. [laughter] i dont think pop and john kenneth could have agreed on the time of day but this became one of his deepest friendships and ken died, i think he was in his 90s and he had bedridden for years and every three weeks pop would get on the train in stanford and go to boston and sit by his bedside at a certain point ken was no longer conversationial to he would just sit there. The last trip i made with pop was the memorial service. That eulogy is contained in here. Their relationship was teasing on a mutually on a very grand level. When nixon resigned, pop, nixons resignation was inconvenient for pop because he had scheduled, he was going sailing on his boat with me as it happens. This is 1974. I think its just marvelous that after one of the most important events in american political history that you chose to write your column about peanut butter. [laughter] and pop replied, ken, you dont understand. When i relax, i write columns about peanut butter. When you relax, you write economic textbooks. [laughter] and, you know, i think in your, may i say one more time, brilliant introduction, you quote john kerry the conversation i had with him, yeah on pop in the context of the friendship with john kenneth galbraith. And john kerry, no conservative, i think said to you directly, i love bill buckley. And apropos the friendship be, he said thats whats missing in politics today. You know, were and it is. You mentioned in passing, james, about the breadth of bill buckleys interests including his interest in pop culture, something that would be a little bit surprising to those who only knew him as this arch traditionalist. Tell us about his encounters with the world of pop. Well, bill buckley wrote a column in 1964 after the beatles arrived in america and played the Ed Sullivan Show pronouncing them not just awful, but god awful. [laughter] and saying, in essence, they were so hour to my antimusical that they would go down in history with respect to music the way the antipopes were recorded in the history of catholicism. [laughter] be to this day, there are and im a huge beatles freaks. My two sons, their actual middle names are lennon and mccartney. If you have a girl, please dont name her yoko. [laughter] deal. [laughter] and there are, there are collection of writings about the beatles, and that buckley column is routinely included in them as a sort of jewel about the band. He later committed one of the most spectacular reversals of his entire career for which probably 99 of the credit is due to christopher. In a column in 1968 called how i came to rock in which he acknowledged that there is simply an exuberance about the beatles that is unmatched, and one cannot resist them. And when come to perhaps a little later in the discussion, i would love to know how you converted bill buckley on the subject of the beatles. But in writing that first column where he pronounced them god awful, he said, you know, i liked Elvis Presley. And, in fact, he later in his career pronounced that elvis had the most beautiful singing voice of any person on earth. There was an intelligent by buckley intent by buckley to engage with the counterculture and an earnest one. He wanted to know what it was all about. In the eulogy for jerry garcia he recounts there was a young man who worked for National Review who was an out and out deadhead, and he begins the column, and heres where im going to slip in the impersonation, which i vowed not to do go ahead. If i ever heard a song by the grateful dead, i was unaware of it. [laughter] not bad. He saw the deterioration in this young man not only in his upkeep, but in his work. An account of one week in bills life that, hugely entertaining, published in 1971, he recounts going with pat buckley and another couple that was a friend of theirs to go see gimme shelter, the documentary about the Rolling Stones and the horrific concert at at month. Altamont. So he cared about it. And he engaged with it over a long period of time. And when john lennon was killed in 980 1980, he began his column about it, his eulogy for lennon, of whom he had been critical in the 1970s when lennon was spouting off on this and that, by quoting christopher who said to hum, pop, imagine how if arturo tuscanini. He wrote john lennon didnt speak to me, in essence, still we gaze upon the crowds of 100,000 people weeping in central park holding candles, and we must acknowledge the grief is real. So he had a real interest in pop culture even if it didnt always speak to him directly. Two footnotes. In 1964 my father and i were on a commercial flight from copenhagen. No yeah, copenhagen to geneva and we were in the front row, coach, and guess who boarded the plane just before takeoff . The Rolling Stones. And im 12 years old. I was [laughter] to quote my 28yearold daughter now, oh, my god. And they were sitting right behind us. They were heavily perfumed. [laughter] the cologne of the era. I said to pop, the Rolling Stones. And he sort of, he went [laughter] youre missing the point. Footnote two, yoko, i believe i have this right, yoko do you remember at one point the United States was going to expel john lennon. They were going to revoke his green card on, i think on the grounds that thered been a drug bust somewhere in the past, as there always is. [laughter] its so rare with rock groups to have a drug violation. Yoko came to see pop and asked him if he would write a letter to the relevant authority, i guess the ins, on john lennons behalf. He did. Did she come to see him at your house or no, no. I believe it was National Review. And she, and i dont know if pop was the tipping point. There were, obviously, other letters. But, you know, a letter from bill buckley to a nixonruled Government Agency would not have been uninfluential. Timeout to. Okay, timeout to. Cspan, timeout. Im a news guy, thats what i do for a living. We just got news, folks. Yoko ono visited the offices of National Review. [laughter] thats worth the price of admission today alone, id say. [laughter] thats actually embargoed for me. [laughter] but the, i guess a footnote two and a half, when lennon was assassinated, i like many of my generation, you know went into an actual depression. I mean, this was a staggering event. Pop noticed my, i mean, id sit there at the dinner table and sort of not speak, and pop be had to write a column that night. And he came over to my garage apartment and said why dont you write my column. And i said i couldnt do that. Im sorry, i couldnt do it. And if you well, what he wrote is in this splendid and very attractively packaged and reasonably priced book [laughter] but it concludes, it concludes he says, he says john, what i now realize is that john lennon had gravitas. And gravitas was a quality pop greatly esteemed. So here was there you have the evolution, the education of william f. Buckley from the 1962 to 1980. I add one more footnote to this . I wanted to include this to the introduction of the john lennon eulogy but ran out of space, so i had to excise it. In 1970, john lennon gave a massively long and billous interview to Rolling Stone magazine, probably a point where he was at his most bitter. And its a landmark in terms of the literature of the beatles. And he was very negative and called the beatles the biggest bastards on earth and, you know, he was just full of acid comments about paul and everything else. Bill buckley read the entire interview from start to finish, and i think it was Something Like 50,000 words over two issues of Rolling Stone magazine, and he devoted a column to it. And i think he said that john lennons autobiography should be titled how i wrecked my life and how i can help you wreck yours. [laughter] i think if john lennon had lived to ripe age, he would have looked back with regret at a lot of the comments in that interview. But in quoting various things john lennon said, at a certain point the way buckley put it, he said something to the effect of john wrote all the good songs, not so for paul, semicolon, and what struck me ab about it was even bill buckley fell prey to beatle mania in a sense, because he was referring to them by their first names the way the rest of the world does. Paul [laughter] you know . I dont think theres any record of pop ever having uttered the word ringo. [laughter] now heres a scholarly project. So i want to get to questions from the audience. Before i do, however, james, might you have any questions for christopher . Yes. Can you tell us again how brilliant i am . [laughter] have i mentioned how brilliant you are . [laughter] so christopher and i have only met once before today about 10 or 12 years ago, and that was cursory. I should point out, too, that at no point after providing his assent that the project may go forward did he seek any input or control until the very end [inaudible] and there was one eulogy that we had looked at and, again, for space reasons not included that he asked be included, and we did so. So there was no attempt at control here. There is a lady whos written half a dozen wellregarded biographies, and then she wrote her own memoir, and it was kind of a lesson to aspiring biographers, and the title of that memoir was complete with an explanation be mark at the end, shoot the widow. As the very first piece of business that any aspiring biographer should do, shoot the widow, because with yoko to ono perhaps as the archetype, they seek to control the narrative, and christopher engaged in none of that. So this is really properly speaking my first meeting with christopher be which is a great thrill for me x. There were a couple of questions sort of fan boy questions that i had, and i have not shared these with him in advance. But let me just take out the no. [laughter] first of all, bills handwriting was terrible. Pops handwriting was so bad that at yale in the late 1940s he actually, he sought and was given permission to type his exams. Remember the blue book, the blue exam books which the mention of which still makes me break out [laughter] yes, for god sakes, let him so he would go into an adjoining classroom while everybody else was scribbling and bang out his exams. Heres another, toward the end pop became very casual in his placement as he would say of his fingers on the keyboard. He would just sort of put them down anywhere and start typing. [laughter] with the result that his emails resembled the enigma code. [laughter] no, i did you not. And i dare you to put together a collection of those. That would be a challenge for your brilliant introdoug. [laughter] introduction. But quite literally, dear chris would be spelled jkx4 [laughter] and id have to call him up and say, pop, you know, i really want to know what you had in mind here. [laughter] youre just going to have to resend it. Well, i actually exchanged emails with bill a few times, and they truly were, they looked like something, you know, sort of like one of those jumbles youre supposed to unscramble. And at the bottom he said, be p. S. , im not drunk, i just type this way. [laughter] i cherish that email. Did he ever once explicitly give you any advice about the craft of writing . Oh, sure. Sure. His first bit of advice i think i was 14. He said christo, dont ever become a professional writer. He said he was, it was a saturday, it was a weekend, dipper was over, and he was heading back to his study to, you know, bang out a 10,000word article for esquire that was due monday. I did not take that advice. He was a you know, it occurs to me another theme with pop aside from, you know, his gift, his genius for friendship was his genius for mentoring. I think its accurate to say that the two great Magazine Editor mentors of our time were Charlie Peters of the Washington Monthly whose list of alumni jon meacham, james fallows, Michael Kingsley and be william f. Buckley. If you look at the people who started at National Review, david brooks by the way, do you know the david brooks story . He told it in a column after pop died, it was called, i think, remembering the mentor. Pop in 1983 wrote a book called overdrive which was a sequel, if you will, to one of his best books which was cruising speed which he published in 1973 which was a week in his very busy life. It was a marvelous way of doing pop never did a memoir, but he did two memoirs of two weeks in his life. Overdrive, 1983, was [laughter] was not particularly well received. There was a little bit too much about, you know, the splendors of his limousine and, you know, all the famous people he knew. And a scathing but brilliant parody of it was written by david brooks for the university of chicago newspaper. And pop happened the next week to be speaking at the university of chicago. And so hes up there on stage, and he reads this scathing parody of his book aloud in toto, verbatim. And then looks up and says if david brooks is in the audience, id like to offer him a job. David relates that story. Now, im going to shame david brooks. [laughter] now, david brooks is a well regarded New York Times columnist and author in his own right. I have a friend in washington who collects all kinds of memorabilia and gives them to me often, and he recently gave me a beautiful, handsome copy of the hard cover edition of one of bills books called on the firing line which was his memoir of firing line, the show. And it is autographed by bill buckley to david brooks. Now, i dont know how that happens, but davids got some explaining to do. [laughter] one last point i would make about bill buckleys mentorship as a Magazine Editor, im very grateful to have with us today, rich lowry, the editorinchief of National Review, and im sure he too [applause] my last question for christopher you know, unfortunately, we need to wrap up soon. I want to briefly ask two quick questions from the audience all right. One of which is a practical case. It practical question. To butch wares are pre obituaries are prewritten, is that something that bill buckley would do from time to time . Yes. Yeah. Ah. So, for example, to obituary of Dwight Eisenhower was written as eisenhower was dying. And hillsdale, there are a few places i really should mention. National review opened up its digital. Arthel kentucky to me. Archive to me. The Hoover Institution maintains the firing line archive out in california, and i relied on their transcriptions of various episodes. But also Hillsdale College has on its web site the complete works of william f. Buckley jr. , each column, and theyre in pdf be form so that you can actually see the typed manuscript that went off to newspapers. And there are instructions in the one for eisenhower, for example, where it says if eisenhower has not yet died by date x, then run this. If he has died, please correct paragraph three or so where hes speaking in a different tense and that sort of thing. And, in fact, for Alistair Cooke who was a great, towering literary and broadcasting figure and a friend of buckleys for 30 years, he wrote three eulogies and to bitch wares, and one of them he wrote before cooke had died, and he actually sent it to Alistair Cooke who returned it to buckley unopened and unread. One more question. Right, you are. Is there one obituary you absolutely hate your editors at crown for forcing you to leave out of the book . Hate a is a strong word. There were so many worthy people that we had to excise and for whom i prepared preparatory enter ductions like introductions like Patrick Daniel moynihan. As a matter of fact, i had wondered why that wasnt in there. William sloan coffin. The correspondence between the two was hilarious. Clare boothe luce. Again, why hubert humphrey. Well, now here i must interject and say if enough of you go out and buy this book [laughter] you increase the chances of there being a sequel. Yes. All the obituaries and eulogies that will be called james did not have room to include. A torch flickering but not quite dead. [laughter] please join me in thank james rosen and chris buckley. [applause] thank you all very much for coming. Im lindsay craig, president of National Review institute, as jack said, were so grateful to all of you for your support so that we can bring programming like this. Thank you to james for writing this book, we really appreciate it, christopher, of course, we love having you come to our events and participate in them. Obviously, youre a dear friend, thank you. And another great moderating job, we appreciate it. Thank you all, have a great weekend. [applause] there heres a look at some as recently featured on booktvs after words, our weekly author Interview Program. Columbia University Law professor tim wu explained the way society has been affected by advertising. Former Goldman Sachs Vice President described her experience as an undocumented immigrant. And Temple University professor sarah rabb explained possible solutions to Rising College tuition costs. In the coming weeks, Harvard University economist george boar has will talk about his research on the impact of immigration on the u. S. Economy. Gary younge, editor at large for the guardian, will discuss his investigation of gun violence in america. Also coming up, Washington Post columnist sebastian mall by will talk about the career of former Federal Reserve chairman alan greenspan. And this weekend bain capital cofounder Edward Conard argues that income inequality contributes to economic growth. Those synergies were created gradually over time through successful risk taking that bubbled up from a pool of failed risk taking, so i think we always have the option of we can tax and distribute more in the short run, but we slow down the growth and in the long run look at the difference between the growth rate of the United States and europe, look at the difference between the income levels of the United States and japan. They get bigger and bigger and bigger, and the differences get bigger and bigger, and the ability for those countries to catch up now that theyve fallen behind, its unlikely that they can catch up unless we have a major shift in technology, say, to biology or Something Else besides really what i think were heading towards consciousness with computers and the internet, and we have a big advantage that maybe we cant sustain forever be, but we