Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20100425

.. >> we don't want tor whereby enemy. you attacked americans, and now we're there and we're not leaveing until we get the job done. >> mark, your book "talking to terrorists" is a book i can recommend. i want to say thank you for chatting with me and enduring my question. >> it's been a pleasure. thanks a lot. >> and that is book tv's live coverage of the "los angeles times" book festival. it's the largest public literary festival in the country. now in its 15 year. the "l.a. times" book festival is expected to atrack 13,000 people over the next two days. book tv will be here live covering panels and bringing authors on our set for call. ins. kick off with tim-and-a-half tally. he's the author of several books and serves as the director of the richard nixon library in nearby yorbalinda. then nomi prins. it's a book about the 2008 financial crisis. she is also based in california. then our first author panelful day. it's called history ride -- "rising above oppression." and during the short break after that panel, we'll ask you what you'd like to see on book tv. then at about 3:30 p.m. eastern time, 12:30 p.m. pacific time, another author panel, "struggle for a better tomorrow" is the name of that panel. that will be fouled by the call in with barry glassner, sociologist at ufc. and his book is being rereleased on its 10th anniversary. following that, another panel. this panel is entitled "the fight for equality." miriam pawel, amy louise wood, and martha sandweiss will be on that panel. then call in with charles kesler. now you can watch booktv at c-span2 or watch it online at booktv.org. and if you're a twitter user, you can get our updates and schedule updates from the "l.a. times" book festival at twitter.com/booktv. thanks for joining us here on the our set. what's the importance of a book festival like this in the world of of -- in the literary world. >> first of all, peter, it's a pleasure to be here. it serves a couple of purposes. to prove you can have a good literary discussion in good weather. the second is is this an opportunity for people to listen to authors talk about their books, talk about the ideas that informed their books, and respond to questions. you know, it's -- when you write a book, you're not sure who's going to read it. you put a book out there and it's -- and it moves around and it goes to public library. some people buy it. but it's nice to get feedback. so this is not a one-way street here. this is not just authors talking at people. it's people who have read their books asking them questions and sharing their stories and explaining what their books meant to them. so it's a love fest. >> well, as a presidential historian, i want to ask abouting a couple of recent books and get your take. dave remnic "the bridge." david is writing "out of this world" of barack obama. there's been four or five big books written about the 2008 election. is this -- are these important books? what do they add to the whole lexicon of knowing more about president obama. >> you know, history proceeds in stations. and there's a first cut of history. and that first cut of history -- well, both books fall in the category bob woodward fell in the category. once they give you a sense of what people were thinking and how people first reacted to the issue in the iraq war or the case of barack obama. the second thing is they are talking to people who are in the game still. so the memories are are fresh, they are fresher. there's of course some spin. but there's always spin. so there are real advantages for readers to reading the first cut. they just have to keep in mind it's the first cut of history. we're going to learn more later. we may change our mind. >> speaking of that, we'll after tim naftali we only have 30 minutes. 202 is the area code. 58 5-3885 in central. if you live in the mountain 3886. by the way if you want to send a tweet, twitter.com we'll be look aing for your tweets as well as as we go on through the day. jeff has a new book out on fdr. dave patrusa has a few book out or calvin coolidge. there are a recent best seller art james k. polk. what can we learn this far down? is there anything else to learn about fdr or calvin coolidge? >> oh my gosh. well, first of all, every generation reacquaints itself with the towering figures. we are living through an economic downturn. a lot of time -- we are watching the federal government participate and drive stimulus packages, take over banks briefly, take over gm briefly, and of course now we have a new metal -- we have health care reform. a lot of people are asking when did the welfare state start, has it been a success, did it end the first -- did it end the great depression as opposed to the great recession we are in today. there's also a political side to it. the debate again liberals and conservatives over the size of government. so people are going to have their cut on which way it should go. so go back to fdr or calvin coolidge. nobody talks about hoover anymore. if you want it to balance. who was right? dealing with the economy? so it's rather exciting to watch today's debates being played out in historical biographies. >> host: tim-and-a-half ---and-a-half -- tim-and-a-half tally is our guest. is it important to be a two time president? >> i think it's true that for people to believe he was successful, he has to be elected eight times. polk said i'm staying only four years. he won the war against mexico. he changed our northern border with canada. he achieved what he intended to achieve. then he left office a very successful. if george h.w. bush had decided not to run for reelection in '92, his reputation would have been much higher. because his achievements in his first term were superb. particularly for policy. and also what he did about the budget deficit. people forget that the reason we were able to overcome the reagan budget deficit was that two presidents, one from the republican party and run from the democrat party, worked together, i'm talking about bush and clinton to raise taxes judiciously and cut government spending. that's how we cut the deficit. so george bush, had he decided would have been remembered very well at the time. i believe over time his reputation will continue to increase him and be more popular. >> host: one final question before we go to calls. three winners of the pulitzer, david huffman "dead hang," tv stiles, and leah ahmed. do we learn history through current events? >> um? >> host: because of all of them deal with history, but at the same time, all current. >> i think anyone that's a teachers understands that there's a challenge in the web world of getting people's attention. how do you get? and particularly young people. they are the future, obviously. how do you get people's attention? well, if there's a current event that's sering, traumatic, explosive, important event you can get people to understand the past better. you know what, it's like that. analogies are not perfect in history. at least you've got a little hook on which you can hang the past. that's why you find that major moments in american history don't just produce histories of that period, but also looks at the past to look for parallels. >> host: first call comes from new york city. go ahead, new york. >> caller: yeah, i have a problem, mr. naftali i love reading history. i've done it for a number of years. i'm reading a book now by a famous american historian who goes through the period of 1932 to '72, but there's going through the book i find that there's some glaring statements that -- about sacs, and i've tried to look for verifications on the internet. my first impression. >> host: what's the name of the book? >> caller: the problems with the facts. and now i see that i can't justify if any mind, they have made mistakes in general when someone reads history, seeing this, what does the reader supposed to make of this? >> guest: well, a couple of things. fist of all, you should look to this historians footnotes. because if there are statements of fact in the book, generally speaking, you're going to find a footnote. and that's where you would look. you'd go to your public library. if the book -- generally, you can go to the public library if you didn't want to buy the book yourself and check. that's the first thing you do. the second thing that i want you to keep in mind is we all love the web. but there's no filter. you should be careful about using the web to contradict a scholar's worth. again, scholar's make mistakes. but i take them at their word, go to the source they cite. if that's not important. then if you find there's something wrong, well, you have a case. >> host: amherst, new york. good morning. >> caller: good morning, peter and tim. yes, am i going to have chance for two short questions or just one? >> host: please go ahead with your two questions, sir. >> caller: okay. we'll take them one at a time. tim, i'll submit to you newt gingrich made president bill clinton a great president, would you agree with that? >> host: go ahead with your second question caller. >> caller: okay. very good. okay. during the '08 campaign with president, i wrote -- i had a big concern and i called into c-span constantly every 30 days asking for barack obama to give his opinion about what he might do or not do about slave reparations and it wasn't just about that, it was what he was going to -- basically get to the heart of the matter, what he would do for the black folks in this country who we all knew had big problems and continue to have problems today. right now everybody and their brother is calling white folks who disagree with the president a racist. i'll submit to you if he doesn't put a stop or address that, he's a one-term president. would you agree with me on that? >> host: newt gingrich and bill clinton? >> guest: thank you for your questions, caller. i know a lot more about the relationship between newt gingrich and george h.w. bush. they had to negotiate a bipartisan budget agreement. newt gingrich was part of the negotiations, and then at the last moment when president bush was going to announce this agreement, newt gingrich who was in the oval office with him did not walk out to the rose garden to be photographed next to the president. and the next day attacked president bush for his budgetary policy. i would have to argue that in that instance, newt gingrich was not part of the solution, but part of the problem because he wasn't helping president bush deal with budget deficits. the second question, i'm not really sure. but the connection, but what i would like to mention is fiery rhetoric. i think that we are in a period of time, and it's not the first time in american history the 19th seven rehad several of these episodes. when people use very inflammatory rhetoric to express their disagreement. let's just disagree on policy. let's not disagree on personalities. so i think is is -- my sense of your second question is the more we move away from fiery rhetoric, the better our government will function and the better we'll feel about our government. >> host: next call for presidential historian, tim naftali comes from boulder, california. boulder, please go ahead. we are going to move on, folks. boulder is not there. so let's go to river side, california. about 60 miles from where we sit now. river side, you are on with tim naftali. >> caller: right, river side is building up, you know. i was wondering, president kennedy, i was listening to a preview about letters to jackie. why do you think he came off as being so popular and it's just a shame that somebody had to take his life. there's always somebody there when somebody has progressive ideas that has to stop these people. the world would be a better place if they'd stay out. i'd like your opinion on why he captivated people all over the world. thank you very much and god bless. >> guest: thank you very much. it's a great question. i have to say i'm working my next presidential book will be about john f. kennedy. i think kennedy represented an entire generation of americans who were first lieutenants in world war ii. the country -- we call them the greatest generation now or we have in the last 10 years, that whole generation was coming into its own in the 1960s. john kennedy was a charming, attractive, and strong representative for that generation. so when he was cut down so young, it was a slap not simply against a man but at least an entire generation. that is important to keep in mind. the second reason i think he's had such an iconic presence even to this day is that he learned on the job. if you look at what john kennedy was planning to do before he got elected and compare to what he was doing in 1963 just before he died, you can see of man who shared the learning process with the american people and worked them towards a different country. we don't have a lot of time. but the best example is on civil rights. john kennedy on civil rights was not progressive in 1960. i would argue that richard nixon, proposals for bill of rights were as progressive or even more progressive than certain respects in the 1960. by 1963, john kennedy and his brother are on the forefront. but it took three years of learning for it to happen. and in many years it took three years of learning for the entire country to be at the point where it was in 1963. >> host: can you draw parallels between the kennedy and obama? >> guest: it's not for me to draw those parallels. not yet. i haven't -- you know, unlike david remnic and marnik, i haven't done the research. what i can say is this, what is very interesting to watch leaders express their willingness to change. not just to change the country, but themselves to change and to learn. we've been we have short of attention where some people think you have to know what you do the minute you become president. but is that really realistic? frankly, there's no job like being president, even vice president or muscular vice president, even in dick cheney, you are not president. there are burdens of the presidency which you can only really shoulder when you are president. is it realistic to assume that day one the president is going to have all of the right answers? is it realistic to assume on any day they will have the right answers? i think what will be interesting for all of us to watch is the extent to which barack obama shares his learning process with the public. because, you know, he is after all if you look at his training and if you've read his memory memoir, he's a man that believes in self-discovery and exploration. >> host: what do you hope to bring to the table with your john f.k. book? >> guest: you'll see it when you sigh it. i will be getting more into it. i've just started the research on getting more into it in the next couple of years. there's a lot of material about john f. kennedy that has become available to the public in the last few years. i believe that within the exception of the cuban missile, they have not been fully intergrated. you can see them learning on the case on vietnam. you can see them learning on the case on civil rights. you can see them learning in other areas too. there's a whole narrative. of course, there are some beautiful books about kennedy. robert doweling. there's new material that brings kennedy to life. also i think my generation should come to terms on why he's an icon. does the kennedy presidency have questions useful today? i hope to answer that question. >> host: richard reeves in the panel. his most recent "the heroism and triumph of the berlin air lift." >> caller: hello, hello, america. mr. naftali i have a brief go ahead regarding the mckinley administration and subsequent roosevelt administration. i have, you know, been a scholar of presidential history. i do not consider presidential historian. i have a great interest in the office of the presidency. and my question was relating to president mckinley's final inaugural address in which he seemed to have solved the manufacturing labor and industrial issues that we were having at the time. while also providing for a $41 million tax cut. and when president roosevelt talked about president mckinley in his first address to the nation, he said that at the time of president mckinley's assess -- assassination he was the most beloved man. can you shed some light into why that was the case for president mckinley? >> host: thank you, boulder. let's leave it there. >> guest: by the way, there's no special training course to be a presidential historian. i think you just have to written one biography or be interested. we're all presidential historians if we live in the united states. remember about mckinley, two important points. first of all, spanish-american war. he was a wartime president. and it was at least from -- of the standards of the time in this country was considered to be successful war. secondly, terrorist. and transaction of, you know, american products. the united states crossed over an important bridge. they became a world power. mckinley arguably is the first president to walk us over the bridge. theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson would understand, but it's really are mckinley who walks us over the bridge and makes us into the 20th century global power that we were. >> host: we are here live at the "los angeles times" book festival. held in the west l.a. area. and, in fact, the c are san bus is also here. they are handing out book bags. so if you happen to be in the area, come on down and see us. >> caller: good afternoon. looks like you are enjoying yourself there. we have a little rain. first of all, i'm currently reading the chalmer thrillology. -- triggology. if you are really interested in questioning, you want to see all of that stuff. i want to ask you with regard to the if you want to perceive them as trouble, a lot is linked to lack of regulation that we are experiencing. there's a phrase, to business. and i think over the last certainly 20 to 30 years if any president or any one, any politician is perceived as being even mildly hostile to business, he or she is not going to get any kind of ball rolling whatsoever. i want to ask you, if we get to a day where real regulation, not rack extramystic, but really what you'd like traffic cop, not good cop/bad cop, how will it have a president have to be in order to see something like that come back to our country? >> host: tim? >> guest: great question. keep in mind that these arguments, you can find them in the late 18th century as well as 19th and 20th century. the point is the ground shift. the question bait shift. the terms maybe the same. but, you know, what is considered accessive regulation today would have been unthinkable in 1913. in 191, -- 1913, regulation was unheard of. part of the beauty of the country of our system, our of constitutional system is the give and take, the constant push. so i -- i'm not pessimistic because the words maybe the same, the arguments change and the ground shifts over time. so there are periods of more regulation periods of underregulation if you will. look at the loan crisis. the argument also they were underregulated and had to be regulated again. our system allows for the constant debate. i don't worry about the same rhetoric reappearing, because that's -- that's one the patterns of american history. what i look at are the results. what is the end point of those debates? where does it take us? does it take us down the road of bitterness and division? in this case, it's not good. or does it take us to a new consensus. when it takes us to a new consensus, it's the system working itself out. >> host: i got the two part question, they talked about reading chalmers johnson. does that telegraph anything about that man's politics? >> guest: oh, peter, that's not fair. because -- >> host: the second part of the question makes it a little more fair. >> guest: you know, it's not -- um um -- i'm going to be terribly optimistic and idealistic and naive. this is an opportunity to be there way. people make the arguments that readers only reader to confirm their assumptions. you -- i hope that's not true. because then we're only going to deepen the divide. i don't want to go down that road. because i don't want to believe people just read what they are believe in. i don't read just what i believe in. and it sharpens my own views about reading a very smart scholar who has a different cut or interpretation. doesn't have to be political, by the way. just an interpretation. that, i think, makes us smarter. i would rather not assume anything. i would hope that he does assume anything about his politics by the books that he chooses. >> host: tim naftali addresses the second part. last call comes from philadelphia. go ahead, philadelphia. >> caller: hi, i've been a school teacher and i've taught anywhere from a.p. courses to elementary school and some emotionally disturbed kids who had a lot of issues in their life. my question is when do we start telling children the actual truth about american history? and not just ground hog day or columbus day and those sort of things? >> guest: well, thank you for that great question. i think we tell the truth, educators, as often as we can. and i think that should be every day. but this is a question embedded, or assumptions embedded that textbooks for one reason or another cannot tell the truth. and i worry about over simplify ing. i do think that details matter. if we over simplify, we get further away from the truth than we want to. i love your question because your question implies that you are pushing and trying. i think that what we all do all of the time. we try our best. what's the truth? it's what you think it is. let me tell you something, i'm not postmodernist. i believe things happen. i believe there are facts. i believe there is a real world out there. peter, i assume you, he is here. it is beautiful out there. what the largest significance of these things maybe, we could disagree about. but the basic facts we don't. if we don't deliver the facts, we are under estimating them. it's very, very hard to understood the world if you don't know where we've come from. thank you for doing what you do. and i really liked your question. >> host: tim naftali author and director of the richard nixon library. thanks for kicking off our coverage. >> guest: it's been a pleasure. i wish you would would be at the festival. thank you very much. >> host: in an hour, "history rising above oppression" will be the panel on. coming up, nomi prins, "it takes a pillage." we'll be right back. >> we're at the conference talking with jane cook about her new book. please tell us what this battle fields is about? >> this is about 60 or so men and women from the military to really get their first-hand account of their experiences in iraq and afghanistan. and the book is formatted into 365 stories. so you can read them one every day if you want and really just get a really good glimpse at how people have live loudly for liberties on our behalf in iraq and afghanistan. >> tell us about -- i'm sorry, have you been to cpac before? >> yes, i have. it's a great place. talk about the founding of our nation and talk about what people are doing today for the cause of liberty and freedom. >> it seems like your books run in kind of a series or do they follow a pattern -- is there? >> yes, the series is called "battlefield and blessings" there are four books. one the revolution, civil war, world war ii, iraq/afghanistan, and then vietnam i think is in process. and some others. so it's very much a rich series to really gather, you know, how people have stood for freedom and displayed courage throughout the generations. and there's so many similarities, times change, but the a lot of things don't change. courage is one as well. >> how did you get started doing the series? >> well, my publisher wanted to do the s. i wanted to get started. then we had to do iraq and afghanistan. so it was just something that came to me to send like i really could put a lot of passion and energy. from this book, we interviewed so many people. just to get a variety of ranks, men and women to and get a good deep perspective and far reaching on some of those raw experiences people have had in iraq and afghanistan and how they have triumphed in the face of tremendous adversity. >> do you write for other venues or do you have a blog? >> i have a web site. janecook.com. i have a book on first ladies. i'm kind of a mixture of good american folks, sounds through the generations. >> thank you very much. >> booktv is back live at the "los angeles times" 15th annual festival of books. you can see some of the 10th and some of the booths that are set up here. about 130,000 people are expected over the next two days. we will give you five and a half hours of live coverage today, five and a half of live coverage tomorrow. author panels and author call ins. thepanus is also here. and you can see some folks are gathering out in front because we're passing out book backs and booktv pens. if you're in the area come on down and see us. 50 feet from the bus, our temporary call in. joining us is the nomi prins. it -- her recent book "it takes a pillage" written in 2009. she's currently working on financial regulation matters. what do you think about what the u.s. senate is doing? >> guest: they appear to be trying. if you dig into how banks operate, i worked at them and written extensively about them. unfortunately, the financial reform package as it stands now, the bill that senator dodd has put forth so far, will really not get to the core of the kinds of risk that banks put into the general economy. >> host: you said you used to be a managing director. >> guest: basically, i worked on the beginning of the credit derivatives. a portion of the toxic assets that blew up and blew out into the rest of the economy. when i worked on them in 2002, they were predominantly made up of high yield or junk bonds. they weren't made up of subprime loans and homes beneath them. but that's what wall street does. it takes a message. it takes like the crust of a pie and fills it with different kinds of fillings as those become available and makes money out of them. >> host: let's put up the numbers so we can get right to calls. 202 is the area, 585-3776. in the mountain zone. also we are checking our tweet. if you have a question via tweet, twitter.com/booktv is our twitter address. you mention they collateralize. where did all of this stuff come from? why are we talking about that and not about profits and econ 101. where does that fit into all of this? >> guest: that's a good question. they were constructed back in the 1980s. and it dissent grated without a bailout. the importance difference between that and a couple of decades later. what wall street does with the bigger banks, the more speculative banks do or in the components of the big bank is they say, all right, what can we stuff into and reengineer and rejigger into new packages, whatever we call them. it's just a name. and make money out of them. and in iowa to little towns in iceland. basically take money upfront, throw the risk out to the world, and not care about what happens to it. they are risk-transfer products. they always were. there's a lot of money to be made. >> host: are they still like that? are they regulated now? >> guest: despite the problems the market has had, there's no exchange. there's no here's what's in it. there's so tailor-made, each time they are created that there isn't an exchange, there isn't regulation. regulators are so far behind considering. even in the bills that have proposed by house and senate, there's nothing in there that really gets to making it more open. almost anything goes. if you want to better against the weather and i want to bet against, they want to create something, goldman sachs will say structure piece here in brazil and africa, whatever, we'll stick it together, you take a bet, she'll take a bet, we'll make money on both sides. >> host: because they do the structuring? >> guest: and they do the trading. >> host: is that what happened with john paulson. he came to goldman sachs and said, i want to put this package together and i want to bet against it. >> guest: for the most part. most of that is perfectly legal within unfortunately the structure that we have. >> host: is this an important economic thing to do. does it help the national economy in any way? >> guest: no, it was purely a betting mechanism. paulson took it and said i think it might go done. >> host: is that legitimate? >> guest: it's legitimate. there are many writers like myself that were thinking problems in the market. that doesn't the problem. the problem that he came to goldman and said i want to go to structure, i want to select the thing that is you are going to buy from me. but i'm going to bet against you. that's kind of again sort of legal because the fact that i'm betting against you, you're still taking a bet on your side. you shouldn't care that i'm betting against you. the problem comes in and the fdc charge is going to try to get should goldman have disclosed that not paulson, not that he was on the other side, but that he selected some of the securities and was on the other side. that he was part of the selection process which was not disclosed in the marketing materials. that's going to be where the case is going to hinge. >> host: "it takes a pillage" firstall from richmond, virginia. good afternoon. please go ahead with your question. >> caller: hey, i wanted to ask with the huge bailout, is there a danger with the devaluation of currency through inflation? >> guest: i think the currency question is good. so far they haven't. part of the reason why is because all of these assets, all of the transactions, all of the markets was very global. so problems that happened on one side that might have emanated from the united states were most of the manufacturing of these assets were taking place and most of the bailouts and the subsidies that fix the market were given out. there's still impacts across the world from having been involved in the products. so like -- technically the dollar shouldn't remain as strong by virtue of the fact that we continue to hold so much money without knowing where they went. they didn't disappear. a lot of them still exist, they are on books. that was exactly how we got into the problem. having money behind them, having debt, having the fed put out a lot of money behind them, only works when we can pretend they are still valuable or they become valuable again. the moment that becomes less clear is when we have more problems with the currency even though it's been a globalized problem, i think. >> host: california, good morning. norco, california. >> caller: this is really important. i think americans are beginning to figure out that congress in the country is reallying with run by these big money cartels. they even of bankrupted recent ice in the seas, cdos in the like. who is, you know with them embedded in the government every term, who can come against the cartel. and i heard the money is going to crash this year at the end -- at the library all of these cites that the dollar is going to crash. did you hear anything about that? thank you very much. >> guest: well, as i mentioned to the other question, whether the dollar crashes or not depends on whether we get another revelation that indicates that a lot of these assets really aren't worth what the fed and banks are saying they are worth. which is not impossible. i don't believe they are worth what either entity says. we do have a problem. we have a problem that wall street and certainly the senior managers and ceos have an incredibly tight relationship with washington. ceo goldman sachs now, and the firm is being charged by the scc at the same time has had many meetings with obama. the president and tim geithner was involved in the enormous portion of the bailout without requiring any rules be changed or stringed attached not to the t.a.r.p. money but all of the bailout money, all of this stuff and gifts that were given to wall street. the tight relationship between the people, the real personal relationships is definitely a problem. i don't know how we fix it. i think we the people have to continue to be really missed -- pissed off what we think of the relationships in our votes and comments and everything else. because it's not going to change by itself. >> host: in fact, nomi prins writes it seems as if the culture of goldman sachs pervades the halls of washington, that's because they people of goldman sachs pervade the walls of washington. all of them were orchestrated the failures were the one hobnobbing with the administration. >> caller: that's a thing to realize, this is not a partisan. this is not bush was bad, obama is good. there's a series of years of interrelationships no matter which party is is in power in congress and no matter what party has the presidency. hank paulson, who was the former ceo when i was there. >> host: when you were there. >> caller: when i was there. tim geithner was working with hank paulson during that time. there's the consistency and approach related to what goldman people and someone wanted. robert rueben, another ceo just were i got there, just before i got there, was very instrumental in deregulating the problem that is we have under clinton's administration. they have the theories of both goldman ties as well as deregulatory actions no matter who is in control politically that culminate to create a situation where we see crisis and wonder how it happens. >> host: you used w to -- to be with bear stearns as well. >> guest: yes. >> host: what did you do? >> guest: i restructured. and i was involved. when i was bear stearns in london, and i worked on a lot of different types of analysis. i worked in giving suggestions to investors on which government bonds to buy which were better and worse. and a lot of the analytical type of advice. i think when you are in the environment, and that's why i have to look at it from outside and really dissect it, you don't think about the ramifications of the products that you are making. there's all of this pressure to make money and all of this pressure to your area within the firm for your firm to make money within the industry. and it's absolutely constant. and there's a real -- it depends on the day and firm and everything else. everyone is talking about how to get to the bonus. there's months where this is discussed towards the end of each year. everything sort of leads up to really making money. you don't have conversations like embedding and creating a structure that's going to hurt greece. oh my god, what's going to happen to the greek people? it just doesn't really entered enter into the conversation. that's a really bad part of the entire industry. and it continues to get worse. because everything that's made and all of these products and all of this risk that's been accumulated, there's nothing to counterit. the rules that are put forth again in congress really won't. so it continues to just spiral badly. ever so often, it has to correct itself for a second because the market comes down and buyers go out. but they come back in. and it goes on. >> host: next call for nomi prins from georgia. >> caller: yes, you know that synthetic cdo is nothing more than a stock future. there's always a seller on the other end of that type of trade. so regardless of regardless if it's john paulson or joe doe, they tried to upgrade the investment by putting in 14 of their own mortgages to try to upgrade. which they ended up downgrading. which they didn't know. the government chase of they didn't just close that john paulson was known is without merit. this is nothing more than a political football. would you agree with that? >> guest: as i said before, the factor that paulson is the other side is not an issue. for that to be made the issue is not a potential fraud. i don't think that's the problem. the problem is potentially this, when the deal was put together, and yes, it was on the other side, but there was a management team that signed off on the securities and on the preference things that were inside the cdo and that was five different parties, including jpmorgan, merrill lynch, and they were the selectors. they were put on the marketing materials being the selectors. paulson was also a selector. and he was specifically not put on the marketing material. the question is would this management group have done the deal? would people have invested? maybe they would. they obviously wanted to invest in the deal. but things could have turned out differently. it was not disclosed, specifically not disclosed. i think that's where the key. >> host: why is dmos and why are you in california? >> guest: it's a nonpublic partisan policy that deals with rights to financial reform, it's based in new york. it's going to have the 10th anniversary next month. i joined right after i left goldman when world come -- world com was the crisis of the moment. dmos is six individuals. they are based this new york, they are an office in d.c. >> host: george saros funded? >> guest: it's not actually funded by george saros, there are other type of funders. rockefeller foundation is or was -- a lot of the work is research based. there's a lot of data that's used for the report. i did a report on bank risk and really looking into the books and seeing the numbers. those kinds of things take time and research and effort. i'm out in l.a., really kind of to be an offchute, but also because i kind of like l.a. it's a change for other reasons and other types of writings and things as well as to be on another side of the country. >> host: was there something that happened or did it just kind of add up to leave the world of finance? >> guest: i think it was accumulation process or when i moved back to new york to be a part of goldman, i was disenchanted with everything that we were doing and how it was turning out. there was around the currency crisis and everything. it just wasn't feeling right. what i was doing. and also just the environment. the internal politics of your bureaucracy, the intensity on the money. it just seems empty. yet, i did move back to new york, i did join in the industry that i worked and i really hated it. i really thought that everything i felt about the intensity of how a firm operates and what it does and how that doesn't connect into what's going on outside and the rest of the world really hit home for me there. i think after 9/11 where i was on wall street and gold man at -- goldman, at the time. there was a lot of moments to think if it's what i want to do with my life or do i want to educate or do something else? so. >> host: this is nomi prins "it takes a pillage" but she's written "other people's money" "corporate america" "and jack, how conservatives are picking your pocket whether you voted for them or not." next call comes from philadelphia. philadelphia said you are on the air. >> caller: hello, i wanted to reask the program that i watched, i would encourage you to check it out, bill moyer's journal. you may not know he's going to retire the program next week. he had william black on. he was reacting to testimony given by geithner on august 10 before congress but it was talking about the financial crisis. and during his testimony, geithner stated that during the time that all of this was blowing up, aig and goldman and what have you, thatted feds, the new york feds and the other central banks had no author on the wall to limit risk taking amongst all of these entities. and that essentially, they would toothless and how frustrated we were. and on the same day, april 10th, that's the frustration at the scc could not do more. and when asked to react to that, mr. black said that while the reason why he couldn't do a lot of the things that they were unable today to curtail the fiasco was because they had both fed and lobby for people. so they, in fact, were architects of this finding themselves, and taking tools of the tool boxes, so to speak, and then going to congress and saying that we had no way of stopping this because we didn't have enough tools. i was just wondering -- >> host: thanks, caller nomi prins? >> guest: i think you are right. you're points to a redisengine wows on both sides. glass-steagall in 1998 and also betting. betting you have to have capital behind it. instead of putting capital behind new loans, we want to put capital against betting on packages or subprime or oil or food or whatever else we want to bet on. that's just a choice. we will move it there. the new york fed has a very close connection to wall street. it is wall street fed and the they have the ability to see information as this stuff is coming to a head. they also had information about what was going on with the subprime loans underlying the toxic assets. be as disingenuous as they are were going to come down on these securities. and your responsibility as the regulatory enforcer of the banking industry is to not sit there on your hands and say, i can't do something. that wasn't the decision that was made when the bailout decision was taken. there wasn't a we can't do anything, there was more like here'k3p1 >> hof >> host: you say that the appeal days to appeal of glass-steagall was the biggest mistake ever made? why? >> guest: it allowed the banks to have the benefit of having fdic baking backing and the capital insurance and cushion to go off into other areas and that more. what i should talk about with other people's money they are unleashed after glass-steagall the big competitiveness within the banking industry like citigroup and jpmorgan chase was full combination of investment bank, a speculative and commercial banks to do with the vanilla loans and deposits then you have goldman sachs m. lehman brothers and merrill lynch. record of those deposits but we will leverage or borrow against by what we do have to compete with the bigger banks. although they were not those banks they were investment for while that the competition against what was going on with the new kind of commercial investment banks and drove up all of the risk in the market in the bill put forth in congress don't actually repeal glass-steagall but senators that produced amendments to do that but so far they are not and have them put into the bills. >> host: what would you like to see put into the reform package? >> we should cover repeal of glass-steagall. >> host: that is not even under consideration. >> by some senators and house representatives but what is under consideration instead what they are saying that many senators and tim geithner and the fed chairmen bad to if we just increase the capital and reduce risk that way but in to that separation will be o.k. but that will not be o.k. but take money out of lending input into speculation.l make that choice. >> host: her most recent book, it takes a pillage and did you like to see more of naomi she states and afterwards program with the san sat down with a senator bernie sanders last year. you can go to book tb did your dancer attorney may come up with all of the programs and watch it on mine. booktv.org. by the way everything we're covering today we'll air tonight at 11:00 p.m. eastern, 8 p.m. eastern that will be in today's entire coverage of "l.a. times" festival of books here at tames hall on the quad area of ucla is our first panel that is history rising above oppression due to begin in about one minutes phillip kearney will be there his book is about kosovo his recent book is about the berlin airlift and if you leave us here we will die. those ofhehree authors for dissipating. it will take about one hour to watch then after that we will come back alive and ask you live what you would like to see on booktv. here is the first panel. >> there will be a book signing following this session and the book signing is located in the north signing area marked number 39. no personal recording of the session is allowed if you are on twitter please use the cash tag latfob we have phillip kearney and jeffrey robinson. i am a moderator today's panel and a professor of history at occidental college and one of the jurors from the "l.a. times" history book prize winning in 11 categories i would encourage you to do that there are great books to be had. today first will introduce our panelists then i will make a few introductory remarks offer a few themes for discussion then get over to the panelists then after that to the audience for questions. we have a fascinating and diverse group of authors each of whom approach the past in the very recent past from multiple perspectives. four phillip kearney the book is his first entitled under the blue flag my mission in kosovo published 2008 by the knicks books. it details his experiences as united nations prosecutor in kosovo in 2001 -- the international criminal tribunal at the hague 2007 merhige prosecuted war crimes. -- he has a law degree from the hastings school of law and before joining the united nations mission in kosovo he worked for 17 years for the san francisco district attorney's currently an assistant united states attorney in san francisco. richard reeves is here to discuss his latest book daring young men the heroism and triumph of the berlin airlift june 1948 through may 1949. that was published in this year. eight distinguished author and columnist and has appeared in more than 100 newspapers since 1979 and a correspondent for the near times and the new york herald and many other magazines and newspapers andy author of a number of best-selling books including three why detailed biographies of presidents kennedy, nixon and reagan. and currently the senior lecturer at the annenberg school of communication at the university of southern california. is anyone here from c-span? they are talking over us. i do not know why they are doing that. >> somebody needs to turn off the sound plays. i will proceed. our third panelist is geoffrey robinson author of an "if you leave us here, we will die" how genocide was stopped in east timor" published by princeton university press. professor of history at university of california los angeles or he has taught since 1997. he was head of research at amnesty international headquarters in london and wrote to monographs and short reports on human rights conditions in indonesia. of since leaving amnesty international in 1995 he has continued to work on issues of human rights and humanitarian aid. both independently and as a consultant. from june through november 1999 he served as political affairs officer. and has written a number of books including the 1995 book, the dark side of paradise, political violence from bali. i would like to open the discussion by raising points of intersection and common questions found in the book's we're discussing today. can everybody hear? is there not somebody from c-span? who is it? is anybody monitoring? could somebody call about this? is gone. each of these books offers a view of history from the ground up. from the experience, from the perspective of those experiencing directly -- . [laughter] [applause] >> sometimes the simple answer is the answer. each of these books offers the view from the perspective of those directly the events as they and cold. phillip kearney gives us a first-person account how to have a functional legal system and a war-torn close of voting gives us an account of a society dominated by organized crime and without stable democratic institutions. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] [applause] [laughter] and the revenge of technology. richard reeves gives a vivid and description given a large part from interviews and firsthand accounts of the daily life of those who made the berlin airlift and brings together the experiences of airmen airmen, drivers and ground crew that brought the food and fuel and supplies to the millions of residence for more than 400 days. geoffrey robinson weaves together the complex history and politics which drove the genocide in east timor. and the threat of genocide in 1999 and puts himself into the narrative with what he witnessed personally in east timor. each comes out in favor of international intervention and for the institution of international standards of justice and human rights provide think this is a very important topic for us to discuss given the controversy around american intervention in iraq and afghanistan. phillip kearney despite the frustration and sometimes disappointment he felt that the limits of his ability to bring war criminals to justice and the imperfection of united nations system, he concludes his experience from kosovo and the hague with a deep commitment united nations and international criminal law. richard reeves celebrates british intervention to brake the soviet blockade at a great moment of american selflessness. soldiers who just returned on tuesday too civilian jobs with back to germany in order to feed the very germans they had been bombing three years earlier. he presents the american decision to stay in berlin as a great ally against soviet oppression and leading directly to the formation of nato. geoffrey robinson argues the very powers complacent in the 1970's from britain and austria became the power is a 1999 work together with international humanitarian organizations to stop another genocide. a third theme related to the second is that individuals can make a difference prevent two out of three authors participated personally in the events they are about to relate proposal now i turn to them with the opening question prepare each of these books deals with recent if not contemporary history progress critical chapter in the early cold war were a number of the participants are still alive, east timor with genocide and the indian occupation and are open wounds still shipping the lives of residents and kosovo 2001 before it became a nation where many of the accused remain at large. how did the proximity of the vince shape the way you wrote about them? what were some of the challenges of not having the expense of time and distance between you and the defense? >> good morning. my experience in kosovo were completely proximate is a quick answer to your question. living and working in the courts in the capital of the province now arguably a country. and when you are on the ground in the middle not to be too dramatic but the injustice or chaos, the decisions are made on a minute by minute daily basis. and what i found it is you just have to try. the international community has to impose some order i would always kid i would say what a great thing bureaucracy is people to fill out forms to us to do things like right to a parking tickets and different things we come to expect and i will ordered society and when you don't have that was no accountability, you go down a very bad path with humans trying to live together. to answer your question, things were very proximate and one of my a big tasks was to get police officers to come to court. my first trial was the attempted murder of a police officer and his family. just to try to do his job. i was looking at the case filed getting ready for the trial and i was thinking this is a good. we will win the trial. he knows the person he wounded a friend of his sitting right next to him. no problem i sent a subpoena and the immediately fled to montenegro because the person he would testify against was a bigger thug at the time. not even a top tier inside the government but a muscle head. we were able to cajole him back into kosovo and go to trial but just little steps are important to impose some kind of order at the beginning of the society. >> is all the time of the panel my wife was in kosovo as a representative of the committee that was the largest refugee organization in the united states and became the american director of the united nations of special assistance to kofi and non i wrote this book because of the abu ghraib. by a had been around the world enough and have lived both here and abroad and was cut by the hatred that grew up about america and its role in the world and i was determined to write about the country that i thought i grew up been about what america was. i was six years old when the berlin airlift happened. and i looked for a long time for a story and finally came upon her largely forgotten by history the extraordinary adventure and story that was the berlin airlift. as mentioned, the soviets come east berlin was 110 miles on it east germany. there was say road from the british sector and real roads and canals leading to the city and that is the way we supplied west berlin from a british-american and the french. stalin decided march 191 of the few minutes to survive in the kremlin about this march 191948t match with the leaders of east germany and hatched the plan to drive a the allies out thinking they would leave before they would let more than 1 million people starved to death in a city that was really a pile of rubble. people were living in caves 85% of the housing destroyed by our bombing and the stench of death was everywhere because there were bodies under those piles of rubble. and when stalin put on the blockade the british first brought up the idea of trying to supply the city by air. they calculated it would take 4500 tons per day to keep the city alive with food, medicine, fuel which was very important. only one hour per day of electricity and west berlin at that time. june 24 1/3 1948, harry truman called in his cabinet the new national security council and the joint chiefs of staff white omar bradley you had been a great hero in world war ii and boasted that day on june 24 is unanimously to leave berlin there was no way there was 6500 troops surrounded surrounded by 4 million the red army stayed there and thin in europe because there never paid during the war and stall and was using the worthless currency in germany's case, the wreck march to pay the soldiers. there was a real reason he wanted to be there and wanted to get this out on june 262 days later when the meeting was finished chairmen. [laughter] i have done too many presidents. he said we stay in berlin point*. and started to walk out of the room and robert lovett said mr. president have you thought this through? all the soviets need to run an truman did not answer him and on june 26, two days after that the phones rang all over the country where people had phones, western union telegrams were delivered to the pilates cruz mechanics, air-traffic controllers. transportation experts who made up the berlin airlift the airlift. edwina had been a captain with a b24 have had just finished alfred university in upstate new york kent had been accepted at the university of new mexico law school. his wife had gotten a job as a schoolteacher and albuquerque. this is what happened then. the 1090 years had a sweet voice western new guinea operator nobody called him that since flying the be 24 per you have a telegram from the air force. i will read it and send it on by direction of the president of the united states you are ordered back directive to be for the berlin airlift within 48 hours. that happened to all over. many people were from small towns and that night police spread out to knock on the doors and tell them they had 48 hours to report to active duty. the first day they were able to move only 70 tons and as one british pilot said the airlift is a collection of aircraft parts flying in loose formation. the united states have mobilized aircraft sitting in arizona of the barnyard by the end of the airlift the young men and determines i might add who in the end for the maintenance because they were carrying were flying six in seven times as much as they were designed and carrying more weight than they were designed. by the end they were delivering with the british 13,000 tons per day when staal and finally realize the price was too high. with the general had defeated napoleon and hitler but did not defeat the daring young men who gave up their lives. another year of their lives to defeat the former enemy. >> as i understand the question is about how one route rates history and admittedly that is not the kind of thing most historians do. i should say there may be some in the audience but honestly a lot of my colleagues had doubt if this was in fact, history are mere journalism but i did it anyway. there were a couple of reasons. the first was defense that was probably to of philip as well. what i witnessed would not leave me alone. the first draft that i wrote within months of leaving the carnage of the east timor where more than half of the population was displaced, i wrote to in the first few months and i must say looking back on that now it. the draft that i wrote in was pretty rot and probably served as a personal and psychological therapy more than history. i was advised very graciously by some colleagues to put it aside and to allow some reflection. in the end it took 10 years to put this book together. but there are other reasons apart from the personal i felt i had to write it and i was lucky in the sense i was following this fall place a country of the were than 1 million people who very few people in this room know anything about. the question immediately arises why bother to write a book about a place like this? one of the reasons that compelled me to do this that despite its size in a very small people affected east timor is emblematic of the most important moral and political questions of our time. of militarism, genocide and humanitarian intervention. here was an example both as a historian and my a experience, that too really open to the opportunity to go in an unusual way because it is one of the few cases that i know of where not only did genocide happen but the very same people stood on the brink of suffering a second genocide but yet for a variety of reasons that i described in the book, but it was stopped. stock bank of might well have been a genocide that seemed particularly important story to tell regardless of east timor or if one cares about east timor it is a much bigger story and as the title suggests, that is the bulk of the book. but the comparison with the earlier point*, a subject that i already knew something about that allows me to say something, i hope come in many fall about the second in year genocide in 1999 and allowed me to conclude in my experience in the field that there are many reasons and many factors that came together quite gratuitously to allow that outcome but the most important and the one i emphasize with the various acts of conscience and courage by ordinary people. it sounds like a fairy tale i don't mean to say where every act courageously are with conscience genocide will stop in the right condition, and vicky's vicky's -- the case shows that these acts of conscience collective and individual by people could change the course of history to get out at the time toward the beginning of this century with such a snide cynicism with the idea of international law toward the 88 of united nations a steering but it was hopeless with the idea of the international human rights alongside the governmental organization that it made the difference against all the great powers of the world that frankly would not have done anything about that without the pressure. >> thank you. one n. -- one more question before return over to the audience the process of reading the book the process of writing the challenges with the challenges of writing a book? >> >> i have done a lot of time it took three years and other books they took a lot longer. what i basically did was to find zero various organizations surprising american members who had worked in the airlift with the british and spend several months in germany talking to people one way or another. in situations like that, the story i wanted to tell was the one i saw america of the way i see america today and and hopefully with one small impact the way we think ourselves but i have often been a journalist or a writer most of my life and i could never get over the fact they could roam the world, particularly germany where i spend my time talking to old commies and older nazis. and they are all there. it is much more clear now than it was up the time because the american people were widely in support of the airlift and truman, one of the things not talked about the we literally ran out of mechanics so we recruited general clay, a former mechanic to service the c47 and c54. he was warned not to do that there would be sabotage but he did not think there would be. they were saving their own families lies then there was not. although it was a comment coming together of the new american army although i will tell a story first of the nazi who became that an aircraft designer and became her minister and of argentina under para loan. an old man now and a great expert on wind power. i know they can get this guy to tell me who he actually is in the worked as a mechanic and there was a point* where very strong as a 90 year-old reached over and grabbed my lapels and said i will tell you one more thing. there were no jews killed at auschwitz. it never happened. it was not a picnic but it never happened. he said my father told me who was the head guard at auschwitz. another coming together with the occupation troops, a small number were high school kids. we had to mobilized the real army had gone. when of them who now owns a liquor store in denver lied about his age. he was 17 years old, came to one of the bases where we were working out of flying 277,000 flights to berlin and he had to oversee of a german crew of 15 people come to a boom were leaders and one of them was a submarine captain. he was a lot of these people but it's the only thing he could think of which was to teach them to speak some english so by the second day when the officer of the day the nature came by, the german workers were all lined up 1q and said good morning major you son of a bitch. [laughter] >> richard reeves to pick it up there geoffrey robinson? but. >> that is not fair. [laughter] i would like to give philippe the opportunity. i mentioned and already my first draft was pretty rot and i was advised to try a to publish later because it was so personal and it was a very good history but the question that began to emerge. i said it aside and just thought forget it. it is just my diary and not worth publishing. i kept thinking for reasons i described earlier i really ought to but the question was how to combine the personal experience with my professional obligation as a historian to step back and be objective razzed possible. i have a lot of trouble with that. said is the truth is very difficult to figure how to combine those things. then i have a wonderful conversation with a publisher who said it is not difficult battle. just do it. you were there so you can write about that and you are a historian you can write about that. so i did and that was a wonderful moment of revelation. but more practically speaking, the moment of truth tammet rating this book almost timid exactly the moment my daughter was born. 2005. there is a question of how to write a book when you have an infant at home and your wife is a hard-working person going to the office every day. we solved in a very modern way my wife took my daughter to sweden seven times for about two weeks so i wrote it while they were a way of. [laughter] in a very concentrated active trading. one final thing, of course, a lot of this is based on my personal observation. but a lot of it is on the basis of documents. one of the unusual things of the challenge frankly destroyed of east timor there is no archive the documents are burned or might be in in somebody's basement a lot of the work involved tried to invoke documents. but unfortunately just before we were to evacuate on un orders september 19 levying the residents of east timor to their fate, the order was overturned a the u.n. security authority to order the burning of the entire archive. for a historian, that was a pretty terrible moment but what actually we could rescue some of the documents that were not properly stored in their location and in addition there was some very brave and local people from the ngos said as the country burnt, literally burned, something like 75% of the entire infrastructure of the country was burned within two or three weeks. they plan to running from one government office to another to the military barracks grabbing whatever papers and documents they could. through that act of courage courage, another act i am talking about secured for future criminal prosecution but also for historians an indictable record of what is going on up until that time no joke. sorry. [laughter] >> my eighth experience was a different than deco panel is. by roche in the first person and so there was not a lot of archival research. the greater challenge was reaching the first book. when i was jotting down notes, i was living under guard at a new base i was evacuated and my whole world outside of work was a single blanc and barracks and i used to joke to my friends that might choices were drinking or right thing. [laughter] both were good options. [laughter] and asp -- i started writing obviously with occasional bouts of drinking. but i was trying to understand what i was placed in a very chaotic place and time in history. i wanted to make sure i got things down on paper because they are hard to understand. someday wanted to get perspective on what i was experiencing. one quote from mark twain, i will get this wrong but he says he learned how to ski in the summer and swim in the winter. he was getting at to understand something it takes some distance and you have to think about it. narrowed down my experiences after a left cosimo i had about 80 pages. i just wanted to write some notes for children nine to not have that the time could read what i did. but then i started to research history in the balkans and to start to get more of a perspective how these things mattered and fit to recommend the book started to expand. when i came home. at the time i was a prosecutor than the organized-crime prosecutor for the united states. i had a fairly busy life outside of reading. i joined a riding club in san francisco where my wife and i live and i made a scheduled of appointment with this club to write and that is what i did it is amazing the progress you can make. as a novice author, you are a better writer at the end of the draft and at the beginning so i have the constant or will recognition at the end of my draft the book is 300 pages. by the 300 pager would look at the first page and say but for all hon insight fall levin piece of work. [laughter] then you do it again and again. at some point* you throw your hands and say enough. >> thank you. if you would like to ask a question please come down to the microphone on either side. >> what kinds of people commit atrocities like dennis cider the average people or criminals? and what instigates or sets off a genocide? direct is a simple question. [laughter] actually something i have thought about a lot in and to its your first question, i would say that the offer christopher browning has it right. writing a book called ordinary men. essentially what i founded by a study of east timor it is ordinary people who commit genocide. been searching kinds of situations. ordinary people placed in certain circumstances are capable of committing genocide. it is not psychopaths or exceptionally violent people. yes they may play role but that is one of the most worrying and shocking realities. does anybody else want to have anything? >> i would agree. there are some other components i would sit has to be ethnic hatred and a strong sense of nationalism by the person pulling the trigger. it is debated if there was genocide but there were war crimes against humanity but the one thing that's underlies everything was a sense of the hatfields and mccoys that you're on the right side per your parents are on the wrong side as a serb or dirty albanian into a large extent of fuels it. >> i would say one thing that to it is always ordinary people. i wrote about where extraordinary things were done by ordinary people and some of the very young. the american soldiers soldiers, receiving orders from washington as part of the national polity -- policy was to keep germany as weak as possible in the beginning but truman change that with the airlift but the original order is that they were to poured gasoline on the garbage bins outside the american mess hall because obviously the germans come in many of them starving were trying to get the food. and the american soldiers come with these kids refused faster order and in fact, responded by going to the 24/7 mess halls and filling one trays stacked after another then brought them out and gave them to the nine surrounding the orphanages and there was a lot of orphanages. berlin was a city -- city of women and old men. bay refused that order and a government with your. >> to read one more thing. obviously it is ordinary people but there are conditions. two important conditions in addition two of philip mentioned international support. the case for the people commiting said genocide. if you take east timor late nineties a dramatically different situation. and the late '70s uc genocide that aided and abetted by key powers including the united states with u.s. weapons, after kissinger and ford, one day after they tell the indonesia's president it is okay and give him the green light. 1999 those very powers pressured by their own populations and ngos and the church take a completely different position. it is that different stance taken by the international community which is a difference between genocide and a stop to genocide and regrettably some died but nowhere near that many. >> arrow by to offer a commendation to mr. reeves for his book. it is a story that has not been told in great detail and he has done a wonderful job. i don't know how during we were but we were quite young bride got to berlin with the occupation february 46 and i was 22 years old. resaw will thing and wind in berlin. or was a member of a troop carrier outfit providing airlift for the occupation. [applause] >> we were supporting our troops. we saw all of the things the russians started to do when berlin. the rubble of the city and the hardships. it is quite a story. but we have to salute president truman for standing up and not letting us be driven out. i like to call it the first victory of the cold war because we stood for our place in that city and it was a wonderful experience for cry was a be 17 transition when the war ended so i did not see combat and my first assignment was berlin for the occupation restarted that's airlift with the c47 that only carry two and a half tons but when they brought in the 54 we were deeply involved. it is a great story and one that a lot of people don't understand and you go over there know if they know that you were part of the air they cannot do enough for you. they could see what was happening in east berlin and it was not a pretty sight in they were afraid we would desert them. a little sideline in the c47 maintenance we were using german mechanics. they knew our systems and the props and three mechanics. there was a movement but there are lots of sidelines. barren mind one more thing that i will be done. we were flying an airplane into berlin every three minutes around the clock. good weather or bad. it went on and on and i personally made 91 trips i would have liked to have flown some more but that is 10 tons in every time in the c54 and the young men that you talk about. >> my last point*. [laughter] but the squadron from alaska from hawaii and all of the secret places came over thinking it would be 45 days briefly with those gentlemen but anyway it is quite a story you did a wonderful job. [applause] >> there actually 600,000 people involved in the airlift if you go back to maine in san manufacturing and for those who don't know the military designations, c 47 is what civilians call the dc three and c544 s the dc four. they were all built and santa monica. [applause] >> key to do mention the united patients in your comments in a general positive sense plan specifically in your comments, of east timor talking about a generic international community that help to resolve this. what is going on with her one the with united nations not giving high marks to resolve that issue? what is your feeling? is that the right vehicle or organization? what is being done to make them more effective as an organization? >> i will give it a shot. cry would say the case of east timor does suggest a somewhat more positive role of the united nations finn is commonly the case. i want to caution anybody from thinking i am making a general argument the united nations always does a good job. in fact, one of the plans to try to make in the book one of the reasons there was action by the united nations in 1999 was in part because of the memory of the abysmal failure of the united nations in rwanda and also also -- this was something on everybody's mind working within the united nations. there was an acute consciousness of the potential for this u.n. mission to go the same way to results in a genocide so that memory played on people's conscience and made them do things otherwise they might not have done. and i also want to emphasize united nations it is too simple to speak of the united nations as a model with. there are many different dimensions of the when they usually when we criticize them it is the security council because it has a difficult time to agree on anything and as a consequence the principles and ideals are not given the fact from what appears to be the case. and there was indeed the security council of some type of intervention was required and it came and stopped the violence. but what i would stress it would dodd have happened had it simply been left to the deliberation of the major powers within the united nations and have been to there we're held to account by their own citizens and massive demonstrations and media pressure and people from their own country and the heart of the storm and the political pressure from those countries from clinton and madeleine albright that forced their hand that cannot make them act in a way that stopped the violence. left to their own devices devices, without that pressure from their own citizens, i would venture to say nothing would have been done. my endorsement of the u.n. is couched in a great deal of caution. >> want to go back to the beginnings of the berlin airlift from the u.n. and the way it happened was josef stalin did not give interviews but occasionally answer written questions. the two correspondents had submitted six questions. one of those, as several, a couple refer to the airlift but the answer was they were published in the hearst papers and read by dean acheson assistant secretary of state gaston had not mentioned currency reform in his answers. and currency reform americans bringing in new currency to the old dieing currency was the trigger point* but he did not mention that one year later. back to send spotted it has the deputy u.s. representative friendly with the soviet ambassador in the men's room and just a said we notice your leader did not mention currency. was that deliberate? moloch said i don't know than four weeks later said it was deliberate. which we took as them crying uncle and then negotiated with the creation of nato and the national republic of germany but without the u.n. where else do you go? >> fell up? then a final question. >> i don't think any of us are who loving supporters of everything the u.n. does. it is really bad at war. i may be wrong but rarely if ever used force in their history of. if they are better at the cleanup after war although they are still not a great. rwanda was a horrible example of how you win in my view failed. 900,000 people were killed and three months. that is almost 10,000 per day, 90 days. even kosovo campaign was conducted by nato they've really pushed hard by bill clinton at the time. it was not a u.n. exercise. having said that there is a moral authority. i had a blue flag behind my desk in people came been certainly on a regular almost constant basis complaining about atrocities that we would try to deal with. around the world it is a begin and usually no other game in town. >> let's hear our final question. >> thank you for re taint the book on east timor. genocide 1975 there were 200,000 people killed out of 800,000. i am a little nervous. but prior to the act for the u.s. to intervene what happened? and during the conflict of 1999 i was there. if you're in the situation there is no one. 99 through 2002 un was there. was it enough? to hand over the government? and in 2006, 2008 under the current lear? >> thank you very much. [applause] thank you for your question. i suppose i should beasts start by saying i am an optimist people who follow east timor to the eighties and early 90's when most of the major powers and outlets said forget about it east timor will never be free. people who stuck with the game had to be optimistic. akin to less than 1 million people waging a campaign of resistance by that point* and a giant of a country of 200 million people indonesia and the occupying army for 24 years having already suffered a genocide yet they continue to insist on their independence. but for this outcome is with the people of east timor not primarily with the u.n. or anybody else. having said that it is true sense east timor voted for independence and have the traditional administration independence came, since that time east timor had some troubles. there was attempted assassination of both leaders. of rebel groups stood up in the hills. questions of corruption's and political violence that yet having said that i have to say i remain incredibly impressed and optimistic about the future because one considers that kind of path path, it is extraordinarily how well this country is doing with to democratic elections in the power has changed hands from one party to another. now has a system for managing the oil wells and a noncurrent way and is a remarkable achievement by the win and east timor. try have peace with the president of the can talk about that later. >> like to thank our panel for a fascinating discussion. [applause] and direct everybody to the north signing point* if you like to buy the books and have them signed. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> you have been watching live coverage of our first panel called rising above the oppression. held up the campus of ucla. you can see a lot of activity here at the festival of books sponsored by the los angeles times. 130,000 people are expected to be here over the next two days and coming up in half an hour is the next panel the history and struggle for a better tomorrow. a lot of activity going on in we thought we would take a few minutes to talk to you about books you would like to see on booktv. what you think of our programming, who you like to see, nine fiction authors in the east and central time zones 585385. if you the donato and pacific time, 585386. go ahead and dial in. we will be talking with different folks during this 20 minutes or so and start here. at one of one of the booths it is operated by the rand corporation and also a publisher of books. this is the director of strategy and out reached for the rand corporation. what kind of books do publish? >> we are a nonprofit physician we went to improve decision-making three research and analysis and publish 1,000 titles per year they are available as a hard copy and fried download online. it has 10 subject matter areas that health care, education, family and foreign policy and more. >> host: i want to show a couple titles. this is one of your titles dangerous but not omnipotent. >> we have the variety of middle east policy experts in this particular study looks at the extent of their brain power and what the u.s. can do to help minimize adverse effects of the united states. >> host: many different authors are listed. >> rand researchers come from a wide diversity of expertise. with our political scientist, social scientist and what differentiate three and as we use the multi disciplinary approach to tackle all of our problems. >> host: another current issue counterinsurgency in afghanistan. >> guest: seth jones based out of our washington office and is a world-renowned expert of issues on afghanistan and maybe they're right now. this particular book as with all of his books, reflects his experience on the ground and working with people in the region. >> host: he has appeared on booktv on several occasions and if you would like to watch any episodes of seth jones search at the top of the home page and you can find h presentations on booktv. another book is cyber war? remicade big topic it is anticipated morale and in the future many of these acts in the united states may be in cyberspace. it is a different war with what the u.s. can do to be prepared for that kind of an attack. >> host: many do not know your headquartered in california? >> guest: we are over 60 years in santa monica we also have washington d.c., a cambridge, brussels. >> host: how refunded? >> a nonprofit institution and clients fund our work we also have:the press to support our work. >> host: the government is one of your biggest clients? am i the u.s. government on some projects and in addition redo work for governments around the world. >> host: we want to talk to about the invisible bruno for. >> and important study by the center of house policy research with yet the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder and traumati brain injury from the men and women returning from the conflicts. >> host: we're talking to gen from the rand corporation. where's the best place for them to go? >> rand.org. you can go there and download the books for free. >> host: that show the crowds coming and we want to hear from you. what would you like to see on booktv? chicago what do you think? >> caller: chicago? >> caller: hello? i like to see author is on sunset boulevard in l.a. and we will talk to the manager here and we will get him as we take this next call from culver city. >> caller: is this booktv? >> host: please hold. we cannot hear you right now. we will move on and talk to the manager of books super proton beyer name. i am a storm managers in my tummy about it is it comparative to politics and prose? >> i think so with a shared history they are much more political but i think their reputation is the same and the customer base. >> host: how is your surviving as the independent but store? thriving were surviving? >> combination location, a great location on the sunset strip. a wonderful client base it was very loyal. we have a great books and grievance. >> host: are you l.a. center? >> absolutely we cater to music and film industry. >> host: have matured political bookseller out here? bereday are incredibly left-leaning they sell very well i don't think we have even ever sold the glenn book ever. >> host: to stop them? >> we do not sell them. not really. >> host: how long have you been in business? >> and 1975. the original owner passed away a fine year ago and the owners are around the corner to 72 dead good attendance? >> we have one every day if not more. there are a lot of books being published it is easy. >> host: books soup and the next called what would you like to see on booktv? coming from texas. >> caller: i would like to see something like that you could do a retrospective one authors who may have passed away like you do pieces on the senate or the white house may be take one hour to do retrospective of her life. >> host: thank you for the idea. a lot of the authors we have covered over the nearly 12 years of a tv have passed and they're all available at booktv.org and after our coverage we will go to the door of the heights book this civil-rights activist that passed away at the age of 98. that will be following hour live coverage. as we continue to walk down to nation's books we will take the next call from california. >> caller: thank you for taking my call i would very much like to see you review the books from -- magazine they have dozens and dozens of books that have integrity and actual history that i think people miss in the mainstream. i hope you will check it out. thank you very much. >> host: tell us what are you reading right now? >> caller: and a book -- i don't suppose you have heard of it it is very intelligent and includes everybody. >> host: thank you for calling. michigan? >> caller: you are doing a great job. you focus a lot of politics i would like to see more the foundation that leads us into the specific issues. right now i am reading the basic ratings but it really ties into a lot of the issues of the day. >> host: thank you so much. up next 40 miles south is orange county. what would you like to see on booktv? and whether you reading? >> caller: i am interested in reading a new book by christopher maritime believe he is there signing books today that the angel city press booth number 3304 per gram coming out tomorrow but he has written a book about knott's berry farm and wondering if you will be talking to anybody from angel city press? we are entering the coverage and getting prepared for a rare visit tomorrow. >> host: this c-span bus is here we are handing out book bags we would love you stop by and say high. our cameraman it is currently at the university of california bookstore looking around. that is what we tried tdo during the festival as have a lot of california-based authors, coming up we will do it call-in program and of the advantages of coming out here gives us a chance to chat with all of these authors. also charros kessler will do a call-in. indiana a good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon. i would like to see some features that you used to have in recent years but not lately. just some sure did features used to cover the printer's row book fair and intersperse some of the new book you vents also the antiquarian book show and also in "new york post" city a few years ago. >> host: applied do you like those? >> with more books becoming available if you like the google effort, 97% of the books are out of french. there is a vast library of books that are not available as new books any more. i always found it interesting and useful book dealers have a interesting perspective you would teach your books that were signed by authors until interesting stories about the books and how they found them. >> host: what are you reading right now? >> i just picked up the book called insect societies. i believe you featured him a few months ago to seven we did. really interesting? his answer to the question what should i do about answer my question is we should watch them is what he has to say. >> remember that. >> host: we will talk to hawley point* press which is another booth the word is escaping me. who are we talking to? publisher from polyploid press. >> we publish lively books on politics, current events in american culture 5750 ways to help obama's change america. >> where they can do something to change the current state of american politics and culture that is what all of our books basically do. we just go down the line making the grade talks about that and education and testing they sent famous american quotes you don't want to know what history says about as we hear from northern california, a sausalito which is a lively publishing area. >> host: this book became a big seller how did you get him? >> he came to us. he likes to execute his work very quickly and publish books relatively fast. sometimes within a couple of months with the concept of books on the show been wanting to get the books out quickly and we were the ones to do it. >> khalid point*.com. >> host: as we continue to take your calls which is starting about 10 minutes you'll make sure we get that coverage san jose california up what are you reading? >> caller: double like to see more latino scholars including education and immigration and the interplay between the two big issues. for example, one doctor has done a number of books on that topic and another run uc irvine has one called the mexican threat which is a response to the anti-immigrant hysteria with factual and substantive research findings. ucla and university washington both have books out called the crisis sinned latino education and and uc santa barbara has many books on latino leaders and others. and one said seeking refuge refuge, and one. >> host: you have given us a lot to work with we appreciate the names and the ideas. would be reading? >> transformation communication and activism by the brother and sister who are both scholars. >> host: thank you for calling and. we will work our way back. the c-span bus is close to hanes hall and as a walk through the center of the book festival, you can see the perfect california day and in just a few minutes the next panel is starting called a struggle for a better tomorrow. the union of their dreams, and cesar chavez movement and immigration and nativism and american of those of the three authors that will be on that panel and the next call comes from cincinnati. >> caller: i have a request but four years ago you ran the wants a week series on each president? >> host: the american president series? >> that was wonderful. that is just an out. >> host: our staff put that together he also did the supreme court documentary and the white house documentary. >> i loved it now i am reading 131 minute of korean war and my husband was a medic in the korean war. but i watched all c-span's since i retired i would like to see the series run again on the president's. >> host: that series is available online and american presidents and.org also good to seize banded york to find the series it did win a peabody award we hear a lot about that series done in 1999 that was 11 years ago how long ago that was done. you may remember one from last year we will ask her where she is currently reading we're getting the calls through high-tech try erase board. >> i am not reading anything right now. of my time has been spent packing boxes and moving. >> host: the first time ever you're not reading somethin >> i am going through withdrawal 27 she watches all the programs before it goes on air what did you find in treating? >> it was the almanac i was saying calvin coolidge was a president i never learned about in school. we skipped over him so i found it fascinating. >> host: and the shades are very california. or again you have been patient what would you like to see on booktv. >> caller: more on the topic of linguistics and cognitive finance but i am calling because i would like to see booktv prime time during the week it is a great alternative to other tv. >> host: have you seen it when we have done prime-time during the congressional recess? >> i think you should do that all the time or you need another channel. [laughter] it has a great variety. >> host: thank you for watching. we appreciate it. pennsylvania a good afternoon. >> caller: we enjoy everything you do. i especially like the history panels. i love the life events. this event today is so exciting i feel that i am there. it is wonderful. >> host: is an important to you that they be live? >> guest: it can be recorded but there is something about seeing you and knowing that it is taking place right now it is exciting. and condi use to get so excited when she would cover a livestock fair. i really like her enthusiasm. but i think the life of the events are excellent. and a series that the library is a run, the 92nd to library they have interesting people you have wondered to every season but i would love to see them all and i am sure you could go all of the country. >> host: did you go down to the philadelphia festival last weekend? >> no but i went down to the library for many of 30p and enjoy them very match. i saw miley -- molly ivins and eight photographed her lecture. >> host: 10 dume biography came out on malia can watch that online at booktv she passed a couple years ago it was a lively event if i remember correctly. . . >> host: we've got about a few minutes left before the next panel starts. we'll take you live. here's hayes haul, by the way. you can see our calling set. this is where all of the panels are held. portland, oregon, what is it you'd like to see on booktv? >> caller: i'd like to see more on the filthy communist and the crimes they committed. the camps and holocaust and i'd like to hear about the camps in soviet russia and more background on that kind of stuff. >> host: milwaukee, wisconsin, you are on booktv, what would you like to see? >> caller: i'd like to see books that focus on black high unemployment rate and i'd like to see books which focus on the -- how do end high homicide rates in the black community. >> host: caller, what are you reading right now? >> caller: i'm reading a buddhist book called "intimate life" called robert thurman. >> host: what do you do for a living? >> caller: i'm a preacher. >> host: all right. denver, colorado. do you ever go to the booktv events? >> caller: when the speakers come in for history, i certainly do. >> host: sure. all right. so what would you like to see on booktv? >> caller: i'd like to see tim egin and two chaps nameed dury, james charles nelson, and it's a british historian, after the reichs, called mcdonald and "darkest summer." i really enjoy the historical and military people and have them speak. >> host: i appreciate you naming those. we did cover "the big born" tim egin's book. i want to introduce you to one of the producers on booktv. he's on the phone right now working. he looks at all of the titles that are coming in and recommends coverage of them. what's an upcoming title that you'd like to tell us about that's coming up that you've seen come through your desk? >> well, we're really excited about the "l.a. times" book festival, i'm actually reading this book called "matter horn," it's the account of the vietnam war. and i'm getting a notice that we need to go away. so we are going to go away. >> host: thank you. next panel has startered "a struggle for a better tomorrow." >> and criminal justice issues. and i'm very privileged to get to interview, i'm going to talk about a little bit about our panelist peter schrag is going to be first up. he wrote "not fit for our society." it's a book of deep and telling ironies that provides background for understanding the hot button debate that we have going on right now in immigration that was just made even more dramatic yesterday by the signing of the arizona bill allowing law enforcement to stop people at will and check their immigration status. peter's book covered the earliest days of the republic up through current events. and he looks in -- he sets the stage for the immigration controversy of today by looking at how the debate over who has the right to be here has been something that we've been struggling with as a country for three centuries. we've had a debate over the same questions on who is fit for citizenship, and he finds that nativism has long colored our national history with the fear and loathing of newcomer that provides one of the fault lines of american cultural and political life. peter was the long time editorial page editor and columnist for the "sacramento b" he's a visiting scholar at uc berkeley, and an author of a pile of books that take on the nation's school system and high stakes experiment california itself. then next to peter, we have richard rayner, who is the author of "up right and guilty place, murder, corruptions and l.a. scandallist coming of age." when l.a. was the fastest growing city in the world with get-rich pick schemes. it was also during the '20s and '30s with the organized crime and d.a. taking bribes. he narrated two men that were caught up in the scandals of the day. richard was born at -- he's british. but he's lived in los angeles for 20 years. he's a memoirist who writes for the "the new yorker" among others. he has now turned his literary skills towards research, nonfiction. but he's also the author of the "blue suit" and "l.a. without a map," "murder book" and the devil's wind." next to me is miriam pawel, "power, hope, and struggle in caesar chavez union." a generation of americas became of age and were swept up in a movement that vanquished california's most powerful industry and accomplished the unthinkable. dignity and contracts for farm workers. four decadeses later, caesar chavez has postage stamps, dozens of schools and streets, i drive down caesar chavez's boulevard, but the real story of the farm workers movement, both his historic triumphs and tragedy has been married behind myths. drawing from an amazing treasure-trove of documents and we were talking about what it was like to start going through the tapes of these readings. miriam chronicles the heavy days of the civil rights struggles, and she also shows how it in a lot of ways came apart. and it didn't live up to its amazing potential for all of the miracles that it accomplished. through the lives of several team members of the crusade, using their stories, he weaves together a powerful portrait of the movement and people who made it. she was a long time reporter and editor first for news day, whereas the editor in charge of local coverage, she shepherds reporters to two pulitzers, and then reassigned and wrote a series about the united states farm workers which kicked up a lot of dust. it came very controversial and opened the door for the conversation in a way that nothing else had. more recently, she was patterson foundation and john jacobs fellow at the berkeley institute of governmental studies. so here are our wonderful panelist. i'm going to start the conversation with peter, and peter, just to open it up, i'd love to know how you came to to -- you've written about a lot of things. and, you know, and you do keep looking at these large issues. now you've taken on one of the largest issues we have in america which is the issue of immigration. and nativism, and what we're seeing on cable television is, you know, this is the -- one of the hot button issues of the day. first of all, how did you come to decide that you were going to spend the years it takes to do a book and choose this and what did you find that it points beyond itself to suggest for how we might address these issues now when you looked at the history of immigration and nativism? >> well, actually, i want to confess that five years ago when i started work on this book, i knew that yesterday jan brewer would sign that bill. so people tell me that my timing was exquisite, as you know, journalist, while the rest of the world suffers, journalist thrive. >> it helps to plan ahead like that. >> i'm basically journalism. but to get serious, and by the way, thank you all for coming, it is a very important subject. i've been writing both as an editor at "b" and then as a columnist over the last maybe 25 years about immigration-related issues, not specializing in them, but they keep coming back. to the immigration reform control act of 1986 and proposition 187 in 1994 which sought to deny all public services to illegal immigrants in california, proposition 209 on affirmative action, proposition 227 producing or trying o eliminate bilingual education in california. as i was writing about that, i kept running into echoes of the past. and the more and more i was tripping over things that were said 100 years ago, 200 years ago, sometimes 300 years ago that echoed with what was going on now. y'all know about the no nothings. you probably know -- you may not have heard one of -- two of the strongest anti-immigration voices in the last generation samuel huntington, formally a political science professor, now deceased. and hansen, and particularly hansen talks about the problem of language. are we all going to -- can we begin to understand each other when half of us speak spanish and half english and so on. i tripped over the factoid in year 1741, benjamin franklin, then in pennsylvania, of course, complained and worried about the fact that the what he called the german and swish coming into pennsylvania were going to germanize so pennsylvanians would not be able to speak to each other. half speaking german and half english. this is not a few theme in our history. -- new theme in our history. the -- and interestingly enough, franklin then later changed his mind as early as 1821, pennsylvania legalized education in german and english in the commonwealth of pennsylvania. we've had a lot of that. in fact, we had a fair amount of bilingual both in the midwest and elsewhere unless world war i when there was revolt against of all things german, and it stopped. for me the immediate trigger to make a very presize long answer a very precise question into a long answer -- >> and by the way. the fact that we had bilingual education in pockets and then it stopped, you know, the start stop of these was one of the greatest -- >> yes. and so anyway but the media trigger that really got me going -- got me going seriously in this book was tom tancrado who was name was maybe the household word once and no more. he was a congress member from the state of colorado. he ran briefly for the republican nomination for president in 2007-2008 and was the leader of the congressional caucus to restrict or end all immigration. and then left congress after tat his italian, what he called his italian grandfather who came her as what he said was a legal immigrant around the turn of the last century. but ask at the turn of the last century, almost everybody was legal. there was no restriction unless you were chinese on legal immigration unless you had some terrible disease or you were visibly crazy or something of that sort. so -- but anyway, but at that time, what was said about people like his italian, southern italian grandfather, he's actually sicilian, were exactly the same things that have been said now for the last few years about mexicans. that they are prone to crime, their children are heart to educate, that their disease that their feebleminded and that was true not of just southern italians but greeks, slavs, jews, irish, and german. all of those things began to wrestle in my mind about the similarities of the anti-immigration rhetoric and what was going on then. i think i'll stop there as sort of -- >> yeah. so but before we move on from you, peter, one the things i found most shocking in your book among a lot of revelations is the fact that liberal progressive performer like margaret sanger, the founder of planned parenthood were unbelievably conservative on some of these issues. they were interested in forced sterilization, thought we ought to breed inferior people and that gave them a view on immigration and nativism issues and savage nativism and racist guy named henry pratt who wrote "the melting pot" and "alien in our midst" what a lovely fellow. would have been a great science-fiction writer. what are some of the discovery that is you saw there were these repeating themes that all of the quarrels were having now, i mean, you know, the verbage, so but what shocked you when you started to -- that was a shocking thing to me. what was the things that surprised you? >> well, i -- since i grew -- this grew on my gradually, i'm not sure anything shocked me. it all grew on me. but to follow up on what you said -- >> you had no margaret sanger omg moments? >> margaret sanger somewhat surprised me. in fact, it's been known for some time that margaret sanger was very close to some ewe genesis. iteugenics was a big thing in the county. and the early three and a half decades of the last century. and there were a lot of eugenic sterilizations, involuntary sterilizations, and ewe eugenics and ewe againic ideas underlay the law and studies in the 1920 because we had all of these studies showing and listing ethnicities by various characteristics. and of course all of that was supposed to be inherited. and there were the genes that made you inferiors, that made you crazy, that made you a criminal, that was all, of course, then built into the big national origin immigration quoting act of the 1924. which by the way was on the books until the mid 1960s. and of course there was, of course, in california the big focus on asians. the chinese exclusion act, the federal one was passed in 1882. but then, of course, there were a whole series of things in the state, including the so-called alien land act that was passed early in the last century that sought to exclude japanese from owning land on the theory that japanese could never -- that japanese could never be naturalized. and, therefore, could -- would not be allowed to own land in the state. so we've had -- and then of course there was the glowing anti-mexican movement in the state as well. particularly in the '30s during the depression. but i'm getting too far ahead of myself. >> okay. i'm going to come back to you. but definitely, if you want a better grasp on what we're dealing with today in terms of the complexity of the immigration issues, this is definitely the book that you want to pick up. we're going to come back, i want to jump next to richard. richard, you said something really, really interesting in your book and you come back to it. i mean in addition to your books main characters, dave clash and leslie white and some of the amazing peripheral characters, the city of los angeles itself is a character if not the main character in your book. and you write that this period of the late 1920s and early 1930s is when the cities personality was fixed. i love that you kind of applied development psychology to the city of los angeles. but it's such an intriguing thought. i wondered if you talked to the audience about why you feel that fixing happened and what it says about the personality of los angeles then but also, you know, now that theoretically to continue to use the developmental analog that now that we are more grown up, what is our -- what does that say and that shaping say about the personality of los angeles now? >> just to -- how i got into writing about this stuff is that i was invited by various magazines to do reporting on current issues and that started with writing for the l.a. riots which led to doing a lot of stuff for the "new york times" about police scandals and ramp heart, and riding around in the back of cop cars and spending months doing that which is great fun and doing a series of pieces in the "new york" magazine about illegal immigration. all of that awareness of being what los angeles is like now and getting to know the place which had come to, obviously, as a foreigner and the great thing for me about all of the disasters about the riots of the earthquakes or watching someone die in your front of eyes and which is ghastly but it seems to make the city real for me and to help explain to myself, you know, how it is that los angeles kind of makes me feel very uneasy in some ways. and the term -- >> even after 20 years and raising your kids here? >> right. and in "bright and guilty place" i tried to trace back the origin of that unease. and whether the census that you read from the book is true or not, i don't know. i do believe that something was fixed in l.a. as the boom of the '20s faded into the depression. and i think that's because if you look at the kind of growth, the population growth of l.a., you're talking about 300,000 or so in 1910, 550,000 or so in 1920, 1.2 million or so in 1930. so at that moment in time, los angeles is the fastest growing city in the world literally is true. and it sort of comes to -- the economic boom of the '20s, obviously, and if you go downtown to the flight, everybody has the idea that the past in l.a. isn't there. but actually, it really is if you look for it and lay it over in the same way that it's laid over in london or new york or whenever. if you go to the top of angeles point, you'll see all of the buildings, hundreds and hundreds of them that were shot up in the economic boom of the '20s and the biggest downtown as city spread out tentacle like from it. essentially it remained architecturally the same. what i was looking for was really to try to trace back the kind of mood of unease and ask does that have something to do with the nature of the play? and i think that it does. and what i got into in researching the book or going into the kind of background of the characters who were in the foreground is the certain sort of -- it's sort of obviously discovery in a way that certain structures of patents of types of things that happened in the los angeles back then still occur today. in other words, that the civic structure -- and it's because the city grew so quickly. and i think in many ways it has that kind of small town political structure still. and if you look at these powerful organizationlike the dwp or the lapd the problems that they have now, that all began back then. it was all put in place in the 19 teens and 1920s. >> say more about that. by the way, i always tell my journalism students that l.a. county and city is like high school but with a lot more in stake. >> well, to take the lapd, traditionally, the lapd has always had a smaller man power than other big urban areas so sort of far fewer cops per square mile or per head of population than new york or boston or chicago. and i think -- if you look at the -- >> so command and control became the model? >> right. and if you look at the '20s, city hall and the cops and the underworld and those kind of lawyers who represent celebrities who get involved in nasty things which celebrities still do then as now. still did then as now. they were all very, very close together. and that meant that in the case of the lapd, the lapd had corruption problems. which is to say that, you know, one kind of moment in the 1930s, if you wanted to -- if you were a gangster and you wanted one of your guys to become an lapd police captain, the price was $500. >> and yet the -- the one thing that, you know, for all of our scandals and the mcarthur park, the one thing that lapd is not known for is fiscal corruption. as one member of the staff said to me, we might beat you up, but we are not known for taking your wallet. but what you covered, just, you know, phenomenal scandals. and yet we do send -- sense that there is stuff going on under the service that there is corruption, i mean people are starting as we talked about before we came over here, that people had never really thought about the dwp pass in china town or paying their utility bill are now starting to go wait a minute. something is going on here. what are you seeing in terms of that odd -- the sort of dark and the light coiling together in los angeles city and county government that, you know, where are you seeing echoes of that today? >> well, i think, you know, and the cops are always when you ride around with them, that was the thing that you'd hear. yeah, we maybe violent, but we are not corrupt. the reason that's said until 1940, the lapd was very, very fiscally corrupt. it was the most kind of entrenched system of graphed in the whole of the united states. and the reform reaction against that then led through, you know, chief parker and chief gates to the sort of well, we're going to model ourself more on the military try to put all of us behind us. i think that statement is really kind of defensive and -- >> thin blue line. : wetter and we are just noticing it at this moment. >> this is just a quick question and then i have one more after this. did you like los angeles more or less after what you discovered in writing a bright and guilty pleas? stifel more in love with it or did you become -- you know, did your uneasiness growth? >> more. there is certain as you find out more about a place you feel warmer and the history of l.a. has become a part of me and i love the kind of goofy stuff, just the sort of one of my favorite things this really could only be here that robert blake after his wife is murdered in the restaurant his alibi is that he couldn't have shot his wife who was actually killed in the car because at the time she was shot in the car he was going back into the restaurant to get the gun that he left there. that is his alibi. >> you couldn't make stuff like that up. if you get people would be going know. >> how can you not love that. >> absolutely. which brings me to my last question for the moment which is you know i was at a dinner party the other night and once again somebody says well, you know, l.a. isn't really a city and i avoided trying to throttle him because he was larger than i was, but just we hear this so often and particularly here some out of towners who mostly seat los angeles in terms of the entertainment business and certain wealthy enclaves and yet you seem to have grabbed onto something and we talked a little bit about how that viewing it through the lens of who you are even in a bright and guilty pleas some of the sort of phraseology that you tone, it allows you a handle to start getting a hold of los angeles in a way that is so of some. i feel like you are writing about los angeles so talk about that realization where who you are pleased to a clear definition of this very city that when we don't have a lot of traffic it looks like paradise still even now. .. back to the 1920s, a situation like any other american city at that moment in time, just a bit smaller and the city is downtown and because of the growth and the noticing of all the space and the need to connect downtown there really has no need to be there to the ocean which obviously is there, you get the boulevards and the freeways and the automobile happens. all of which is to say the argument that los angeles has with itself and many of the reasons it is a unique city and a fascinating city and problematic city is it is at war with being on the one hand a small nineteenth century american city which then became the kind of city that no one had ever known before. the fascination of what l.a. is lies in the arguments about historical phenomenon. >> what the panel's address either specifically about los angeles or california and even though i know peter is out to the whole country, and in tents problem. is it here in l.a. the personal social problems for all the countries facing, if you can make here it is anywhere but if you solve it here. with that, i will segway over to miriam powell with union of their dreams to hold up books. here is richard's fabulous guilty place. before miriam worked on this book she did a very well-known, will receive, badly received too series in the los angeles times on the present-day united farm workers union. and in the book, you did this series that made people really mad and it is a wonderful series. then you plan to grab on to this book idea and give this moment when you went oh my gosh, what have i discovered. [talking over each other] >> the common denominator will be unsolved problems. the problems of the farm workers which were the focus of so much that became the cause in the 60s and 70s, and the l.a. times, 84 part series about how united farm workers is today and what it has become and what it has not be, and what it has not become is large scale union farmworkers. i came at this with a northeast baby boomer perspective. i thought the usw grew up in the boycotting great area and a lot of people today on the east coast who say we boycotted grapes and fill those problems and all the farm workers are under contract and everything is ok and i will tell you starting off that is not the case. united farmworkers today have a handful of members and they are not in good condition and in many ways they are as bad as they were. [talking over each other] >> you have two things, existing uneasily. >> part of my role as a journalist was to talk about reality and peter frag encouraged me when i began this reporting to look at the current state of affairs. [talking over each other] in order to understand what had become of the union and why it was not doing much -- that is the question i started within a story. if you are a student of history. history is valuable, its role in explaining the present, curious about how to -- it was writing about history and old enough to go through it viewed it as history and we are able to talk about it. it should be told. we are still alive. they are trying to recreate history. >> the series, any problems in the current, the book links, amazing story, that was stumbled upon. this is the story. [talking over each other] to have an e. epiphany and say there were events in the 70s and 80s directly connected to explain that. it is just about what happened 30 years ago and in researching those stories. the small piece of history in the present. >> it is a sound crafted. >> as i got into this, we came to see the book, a historical account and narrative and collective biography of people in the social movement and people who came to gather at a remarkable point in time, astonishing that it is a very inspiring story, the changes were short-lived and fell apart. the people around him and drawn to this movement and and what he inspired as a leader, from classrooms and ministers, put together the people, they were literally haunted by things that happened 30 years ago which they had not talked about for the most part. the question to them was what went wrong and why did we fail to achieve what we thought we could. could i have done something differently? could we have changed the course of history? what was really going on? it is like the blind man and the elephant where each person feels a different part of the element is a different animal. as i met people i realized that was very much the case in terms of the history they lived through so they each saw their part of the story and they really had no sense of how it fit into the larger picture. it was a role i could play to give police to their story and be the person who found the answers to how this fits together. the other thing that struck me and made me want to write the book is i have yet to meet anyone who works in the 1960s and 70s even for a brief amount of time who does not view it as the most important thing in their lives which transformed them. they will say uniformly, if the' up a couple questions. >> you could have just done a chronology where you show the chronology of the development of the united farm workers movement and where it started to run its trouble and the victories and problems but instead you did an interesting thing. you told this story through the lens of eight people, like a lettuce cutters, farmworker, teacher, administrator, so you got the blind men, each one of them described a part of the elephant and it is an interesting structure, something that is underused. how did you decide to make that -- use that structural strategy rather than the more expected chronology? >> the people who draw you into the story, that is what i thought would draw readers into the book and my hope was to use my journalistic training and my narrative writing skills in order to really make you feel these people's wives and experience it through them. and each of them has a trajectory as a young person, goes through thing that emerges as somebody different and shows two other things, it shows a different world that came together to make the movement and that collaboration is important in terms of success. that you had the church, lawyers and farm workers, all of those combinations. that combination was what allowed it to achieve success so each of that is a great story. things happened to them. they are dramatic stories and they are an archetype for the kinds of people who came into this world. the other reason i did it that way was i wanted to preserve the blind man and the elephant ideas so you see each person fought from their own perspective and as an omniscient narrator reader you see how the pieces are fitting together and the way they do not is a piece of story. >> it allows us to go through this journey of discovery with you. you said the people were dying to talk after 30 years because they didn't quite know what happened. at the end of the process of working with you, did you find they had a better feeling of what happened to them or -- we are not self reflective about our own process. in the course of questioning people people start discovering things about their own thought processes, it was put together. did you see that happen? >> for a lot of people who shot this off and not thought about it, they start their own peace. all of the quotes in the book are taken from tapes, were written at the time. all these wonderful archives and private collections, and they were able to go back and have -- figure out what it was. they went through this, and a godlike figure. [talking over each other] >> children of the people in the book, and almost to a person, major characters, and parents never talked about this. >> you have given us the guest. >> it is perfect. go for it. >> did you talk to cardinal mahony? >> i wonder if he would be available to what extent his own attitudes about immigrants and latinos came from that experience. >> secretary to the -- and the farm workers movement. and government farm worker elections and unionize in a way that no other state -- [talking over each other] >> his experience and involvement with the movement, the view on immigration. >> a quick question. it is interesting that you are someone who said go for it. she got a lot of people mad. >> that was part of my job as a journalist, leverett people mad. [talking over each other] >> why did you push her and what was important. >> i read the places, a were terrific pieces. there has to be a book in some way. they were not a book at that point. i had the sense that we it was an incredibly important chapter for lots of reasons including another -- jerry brown. jerry brown comes back again -- [talking over each other] >> may trade on this. [talking over each other] >> i watched it go on. california events in the 70s, we watched some of this going on and i was a great boycotters at that time. [talking over each other] >> you still look at suspiciously. [talking over each other] >> it was a hard thing in modesto. >> our relationship -- >> they were terrific pizzas. may be represented a major chapter in california. >> in looking at what you looked at in a bright and guilty place. corruption and one of the other big pieces in california history is our immigrant movement and it is very much a part of all the other things you dealt with including police and special authority and the mayor's relationship with immigrant community and when you look at the perspective that you have been exploring, this other element of our immigrant community, how does that figure into the character of the city that you have been exploring and to a great degree defining? >> this is getting into that question for an anecdote. the story for new york times, the subject was new york times magazine gives you big ideas, they want questions answered. the question was -- [talking over each other] >> is illegal immigration a good or bad thing? that was the question they wanted answered. i am sitting with the photographer who worked as a porter regan guy. when we did the cop thing was the good cop bad cop routine. i was the bad cop. then we moved on to doing immigration and we were at the border and with an immigration officer, one of the cops. a hole in the fence were clearly the place has been warned by hundreds and hundreds of guys coming through this particular spot where there was a groove in the dirt. >> just short of paved. >> and someone pops through. and the cop gets him. slaps the handcuffs on and joe says hang on a minute. >> wonderful photographer. >> do that again. >> that is exactly what he said. >> i got to get the shot! >> and the new york times reports what he had better obey take the handcuffs -- >> we don't feel -- >> [talking over each other] >> under again, joe gets the shot. and new york times magazine. here is the enemy i see at that moment coming fruit offense though we took a pro immigration stance. the irony of this is we are all standing there. now what do i do? >> what did he do? >> he lets the guy go. as far as this particular mexican immigrant is concerned he got lucky. >> good news, got let go. bad news, picture on the cover of the new york times. >> all that i took away from this was that we need them, we abuse of them the way we think about them, and use them, is endlessly conflicted and confused and for me -- >> like the city. >> it was all crystallized in that weird moment. >> i wish i had known that story. >> i have a lot more questions but i will open it up to you all because i bet you have a lot of questions for our panelists. if anyone does have questions please come up to the microphone. or wave your hand energetically. come to the microphone. i am told by people who are wiser than i am. >> otherwise they will be back over. >> absolutely. since i am not seeing people screaming towards the microphone -- >> could i ask -- >> right after this fantastic gentleman. >> i look forward to meeting them. i have known your reputation for many years. i am surprised that this material you are talking about is not really published by academics and when your pieces come out i asked around and many of them said we cannot touch @@3 material. if you talk to volunteers they will say we sent it to wayne state. wayne state in detroit has will walter luther labor library that has the archives of many unions. there are thousands of boxes, hundreds of tapes of meetings. i listened to close to 1,000 hours of tape recordings the board meetings and the book is meticulously researched as well as any historian i would venture to say and has been very well-received by historians and some of my blurbs are the most prominent historians in the field. friends of mine who are historians have said nobody wanted to touch this particularly to tears, the historian. i am proud that those who endorsed the book are two of the most prominent historians in the state of california who have done work on the subject themselves. i was very careful to research it in a way that it is foot noted. every quotation in the book is foot noted. people can go back and check. it is all there. i think that is important because it is a history that needs to be told accurately. one of the reasons i didn't quote anyone in contemporaneously times is people probably know this but memories are very unreliable. i routinely would talk to people and ask about meetings which they would tell me they were not at and i would listen to the tape and they were at the meeting. people block things out, people forget things that are convinced they remember things in a certain way and i ultimately felt i couldn't rely on what people were telling me so it is drawn from historical documents. i talked to people about the context of what i was finding in the archives or what it looks like. i drove around a lot to look at places to be able to write in a descriptive way but all of it is research and one of the reasons nothing has been written about this for so long is nobody really wanted to touch it. i would take issue that i don't think the stories were a hatchet job. there has been -- it is an interesting response by the growers who figure in the book although the book is told from the perspective of a story of the people in the movement but the growers are in the book. growers really like the book. i have been invited to speak to growers. i'm the only person invited to speak to the american trade department of the afl-cio which is the port unions of san francisco which is the most aggressive labor group and the great and a tree fruits and lead which is the preeminent group of growers. the growers recognize that i am pro labor but they respect the book because of the way in which it is told and the historical documentation and because it says things that have not been said before. it says -- the hero has flaws and somewhat more significant flaws that need to be -- [talking over each other] >> a very well-known mexican american historian in amherst spoke about the launch of his book as well and said you go to mexico and no one has heard of caesar chavez and the line is in the field if you ask farmworkers, they think you are talking about the boxes. there is a boxer by that name. until people write about him in his fullness, warts and all, he will be relegated to historical oblivion and that should not happen. he is an extremely important figure and in order to restore him into that role which he should have is necessary he be written about in all of this complexity. .. responsible for the way that l.a. got shaped. [laughter] >> interestingly enough they are giving me a time frame him the answer that in the week. [laughter] i'm sure -- >> of course in the early history of l.a., the chandler family were vastly powerful and what they were mostly interested in doing is making loads of money and the paper until world war ii was an instrument at that and -- one of the great things about researching bright and guilty pleas is planning through all of the press from that period and the la times was a noticeably less well written paper at that moment u.s -- estimate to what extent it tolerate in of the corruption >> it was the what with it at that time. sprick and tolerating construction beginning writers paper but still wants to shed light on how money. you know, we are going to have to have party to delete the -- part two of the panel. we will see what we can range but thank you to the wonderful panelists you guys were great i would have us to questions for another hour. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> if you would like to do the dee dee to -- meet the authors you can do so at the signing area. >> and we will be signing 3:00 of the north signing every. [inaudible conversations] >> the panel you were just watching was called the struggle for a better tomorrow. coming up at about 30 minutes is the last panel of the day called the fight for equality, three authors, miriam pawel, martin sandweiss and amy dee dee to amy louise wood. we are back live here on our site outside of speed hall with dr. barry glassman who is a sociologist the southern california in the los angeles area and one of his books is caed the culture of fear. dr. glassner, you wrote this book in 1999. 1999 what were we afraid of? >> in some ways a was different than now and some ways the same. if you think back to that period what will be afraid of? we were afraid of missing in terms and of shark attacks. if you look at the cable tv news that is the kind thing you would see and we were still at that point also agreed in bigger ways of school shootings. school shootings were the big issue and if you listen to what the discussion was at that time you would have thought that just about every young american male was a potential mass murderer. there was so much noise going on. there were some terrific shooting is no question about it of was serious business but the notion that every school was in danger and this was rampant was prevalent at the time when actually they were very rare and actually right after my book came out was the worst school shooting at columbine which truly was the worst in the nation. >> so you wrote this before but include the school shooting? >> a lot about the school shooting and in the early edition of the book because there was a lot of fear mongering. >> you updated now. it's the tenth anniversary edition put out now. what are we afraid of today? >> i think the big thing that has changed is if we look back to that period there was a lot of talk that i would call the sick society story, the notion that american society was sick and in that story there were no hero's. all of the philippines were domestic. as i said mostly young american males and the story was about the decline of a great civilization. that all changed in the american public conversation and discourse, it all changed in one moment. september 11 when a 2001 and then after that point you start hearing that story so much. >> why is that? >> i think a couple of things happened. most dramatically of course we were attacked from outside of the u.s. and that event was such an earthshaking event that the old fear faded away and now the story became we are in danger from outside and everything i just mentioned changed so now the villains of being a domestic or foreign, there were heroes in the new york fire department in the military and the whole story changed but some things stay the same which is a lot of these little dangerous blown out of proportion, those continue. >> since we only have about 30 minutes with dr. glassner what's but the numbers up. 20 to is the area code if you would like to purchase a bit in the live program. 585-3885 for those of you in the east and central time zones. 585-3886 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. the head. we will begin taking those calls in just a minute. so, barry glassner, are we terribly afraid of terrorism today? ten years, nine years after? >> i think there are good reasons to be concerned about terrorism and the appropriate government agency police departments need to deal with it but i think the fear is out of proportion in certain ways. certainly domestically. more americans over the last four decades have been killed by being struck by lightning than by terrorists. so for us to be thinking that this is an eminent danger and especially in our kind of politics and political discourse to go so far overboard sometimes i think it is just like what we have done in the past with other scarce whether it is the communists, whether it is crime in the streets, the drug crisis, we have one after another and this is the latest one. we need to be prepared, no question about it this is a real danger unlike some of the earlier ones but yes i think it is very, very intense at certain periods and there is something that contributes to that like the color code. >> cultural fear what are the chapters in here? it's called black men. >> one big change many people would say over the last decade is now we have an african-american president and what some people say is so that year, the inside about african-american men must have vanished but if you actually look at it unfortunately that has not happened and even if we focus on the election, president obama won by a decisive margin but he lost the white vote by about 12% and in some southern states he received about 10% of the white vote so the notion that there is a change even in that election is misguided and some of the consequences of the fear of african-americans get played out routinely so when we talk out of the crisis, the banking crisis and the mortgage crisis, primm mortgages were disproportionately marketed to african-american men, african-americans more broadly. we know that. we know that there is discrimination in jury as areas that continues. there has been a lot of improvement but there is still high levels of fear among some sectors in the society. >> barry glassner economic fears a 1999 economic fear today or any time in history have we ever not have economic fear? >> well you know interestingly when i wrote the first edition of this book economic fear of the sort now we are almost nonexistent. people felt quite secure. they were not worried they were going to lose their home. they were worried some sector of losing their jobs but a different reason. there was a lot of downsizing, the term we don't@@@@s@!÷ then as i started looking at it was just a tiny piece of the story. we get afraid of so many things we don't need to be so many small dangers are blown out of proportion and anxiety is the number one psychiatric disorder, psychological disorder in the country so i thought how does this happen, who is benefiting from this, how does it happen and can people calmed down a little bit. >> in the next ten or 15 minutes if you would like to send a tweaked to barry glassner twitter.com/bookt is a reporter address. let's take some calls. austin texas you are on first with barry glassner, author of "culture of fear. >> caller: below, thanks for taking my call. i have a question for you obviously it's been awhile since the book originally came out and i'm curious how you would encapsulate how americans are fearful now in light of the fact we have as you mentioned the economic crisis, black president all that i'm kind of curious the fact we also have a much more broader internet presence and multimedia community which she would think would mean we are more informed and capable of suppressing those some unrelated fear but in addition to that there is a new-found populist sentiment which seems to be looking to the old fear he mentioned your of immigrants, fear of teenage pregnancy and it's kind of capitalizing on that. so the more things change the more they stay the same but i guess just to clarify do you think that there is -- to your brand this year in light of the fact we are more connected and more -- >> all right. things, dr. glassner. >> that is a great question. one thing that changed in a big way from when i first read the book to when i wrote the new edition is exactly the internet and on-line phenomenon and that has changed in significant ways and other ways hasn't changed anything because on the one hand you still have the same fear and on the other hand they get blown way out of proportion very fast so a story often false camps led the league could spread quickly and far. one place i think about in that regard is scare about vaccines if you think that during the flu epidemic and all the stories about how the whole society was going to be wiped out by the virus that didn't happen. a lot of those fears were countered very quickly that a lot of the scare about the vaccine had stories about consequences of the vaccine were able to spread very quickly on the internet and this happens with a lot of things. so on the one hand you can get a lot more information both reliable and unreliable very quickly but skiers can spread very fast. as blackberry glassner cannot, in case you would like to see the other seven books that he has written. next call from springfield missouri. >> caller: hello. i wanted to share personal coping skill. i get tired of being afraid so i just quit listening to tv and quit reading the fearful stories but i wanted to hear you talk about just the concept of fear and change as i grow older i just am very uncomfortable with the speed of change and i don't want anything to change and i am fearful of the future because of this changes and i wonder if that is at the root of the lot of anxiety. thank you. >> thank you. that's an interesting question. >> yes. one thing i want to say right away and out that is that -- and obviously i don't know the callers age range or group but one thing we find in a lot of research that is interesting and i think really important is the more scary tv, especially local tv news we're still the motto is if it leads it leaves, it could be a crime story the beginning, the community will some scary if you watch the show is very often the more that older people watch that kind of television the more afraid they tend to be and there is clear evidence people isolate themselves more in their homes and to go to the caller's point become more afraid of change, more afraid of all sorts of external realities and some actually the advice, while i would never say to turn off booktv there are some scary shows we probably should turn off if we are being made of freedom necessarily to switch the channel, to get a good book and do something else. >> is fear a bad thing? >> fear is a complicated thing. so we have -- you know, as animals we have an instinct, we are programmed to be fearful for good reason. for our ancestors of there was a big animal coming in would be a good idea to get away very quickly for example. so, the response is a good response. mauney question always about that is when should we have it and who is manipulating it. so if to go to the to play gave a minute ago if cable news channel or a local tv news channel is trying to gain ratings by hyping a scary story blown out of proportion that isn't a good use of fear. if a politician is trying to get us to vote for them and against another candidate out of fear mongering that isn't a good use of fear. that isn't why we eat salt to be fearful. >> but those are very common uses aren't they? >> extremely common usage of fiercer by and large if we want to talk about why are we afraid of their own thing so often in this country we could get the answers. the groups that raise a lot of money off of the fear mongering. i don't know what your in box looks like in e-mail or from the paper mail at home with the various groups i am on when i get a solicitation they're telling me if i don't send a check something horrible was going to happen to something i care deeply about. i subscribe to ones i don't care about so i can see how they are doing it as well and then certain sectors of the media, not broadly because actually a lot of the deep on the close on an immediate but some of the sectors i mentioned before and then politicians and campaigns. >> very glassner are you teaching this semester? been ekimov right now i'm doing some administrative work. >> what course is your favorite to teach? >> my favorite is any kind of course on american society so teach a variety of courses of american society but i am also interested in why americans believe and act the way they do. >> next call for barry glassner comes from san francisco. good afternoon san francisco >> thank you, peter. actually it was the question of the spring to ask about how can you use fear positively so maybe perhaps mr. glassner could talk about incorporating his other books of the gospel of food and how we are afraid of food and food additives and pesticides and how that plays out in the culture today. >> thanks scholar. >> thank you. and i have to say i don't recognize the voice but thank you for mentioning my other book. i'm always interested in why americans are afraid of things they shouldn't be so in the gospel of food a lot of what i am concerned about is why is it that americans seem to treat every food as a possible danger to our health? you know people walk through the and look at restaurant menus constantly afraid of anything they could be sold whether it is carbohydrates, fat for another group, salt, sugar, additives, no additives, it goes on. the list is almost endless and i think that it's part of the same phenomenon and the same reason in that case largely because of marketing more than some of the factors i talk about in the culture of fear. there are whole sectors in the food industry that rely on us being afraid of one sort of food rather than another to sell the alternative. >> should we be afraid of those additives, carbohydrates, saltzman velt? >> if we are free of all of those we are not going to be achieved anything so the answer is clearly no. whether we should be concerned about any particular ones really depends on our own health patterns so there are some people who should definitely be concerned about how much salt intake for example they have, how much saturated fat intake. on a population basis as we say for the general population most of the scarce are pretty much clearly blown out of proportion of depends on the particular person and particular profile but what is often left out of the discussion is that the anxiety and fear itself isn't good for one's health. ischemic as the "los angeles times" about culture of fear barry glassner has written an expos the of one of the most widespread delusions of our time, misplaced fear. next call for the guest comes from palm springs california. >> yes, good afternoon. i was wondering if you see the correlation between the primaries in the 20's to the rise of mccarthyism and what historian richard hofstadter called stalin of american politics up to today seem kind of the wedding of the conservative right media to fox news and government officials using the instrument to public policy and all of that of course is still surrounded around a big style of fear that seems to take over the society. if you have any comments on that, thank you. >> yes i do think that there has been a lot of fear mongering in politics as you are suggesting for a very long time. it is not new. there are some things that are different now though. one of them is the important of the sound bite which wasn't true that much even in the fairly recent past. but to run a successful campaign these days especially in some local areas but also some national campaigns it's all about getting the right sound bites and the sound bite that attracts voters that actually motivates people. a very effective way to do that is with something scary. fear is motivating site think it is much more common in that regard now. whether one side or the other does more fear mongering i would be very cautious about saying. all sides of the political spectrum engaging fear mongering. it is certainly true in some elections, some period one side does it more than the other. i think in the last presidential election that was true objectively because one candidate ran on the campaign of hope the was the model and a lot less fear mongering on that side but there is tremendous fear mongering in politics and that goes we back. >> on the reverse side of the clan ronald reagan ran on a very hopeful campaign did he not and there was some fear thrown at him and what he could possibly do. >> that's right. to imagine is only on one side of the political spectrum, fear defeat could here or elsewhere is from. it goes back and forth and it depends upon who mostly who is organizing a campaign, police strategizing. >> have you discussed this the core issue with your students as a professor at usc what are they afraid of? and is a rather elite university is it not? >> no, not really. that is somewhat of a misconception. a majority of the students are more and financially but it is the case that they have plenty of fear of their own and i haven't taken a survey in a while so i would be cautious about trying to say what they are afraid of. the glib answer is they are afraid of the final exams coming up but it is true that for young people in college the fear tends to be immediate and proximate and their immediate lives because they are still engaged with their media environment and college work but then the national scarce that are out there they tend to also respond to very quickly. so i recall for example after 9/11 is very fearful student population. >> very glassner teaches sociology at essey and he's now the one the campus of ucla, doesn't need to get a passport to come over here or anything. indiana university and plumbing and indian and that is where the next call comes from. go ahead. >> yes, my question is why is the government, samet and our congress not having term limits when the same people are coming in as has been in there for 30 or 40 years? why is it there are term limits and in the congress and the senate and why shouldn't the american people be able to vote for that? >> i don't the if there is an answer you can extrapolate from that fought. >> that is a little far from the work i do. i think it is an interesting point. but i try to stick to things that i've studied. >> as congress react in fear? >> absolutely. any scare that is out there that is prevalent -- >> financial regulation. >> if you are a smart politician, you are one way or another going to respond to that and my concern is not that they do that brought the but when they do it with fear and danger that really are not anywhere near as big as they are made out to be. so an example that i get it is important in this regard is missing children. one missing child is serious, normal situation. i do not minimize it in any way but we go through these patterns of the nation being terrified where you can't turn on cable tv news without hearing about missing children and you get all these numbers turnaround. the last time i saw one of the cycles, 100,000 missing children was the number three or not. the actual numbers between 100 to 200 each@@@@@@ @ @15 is to really try to be very non-partisan about this but we had a big problem. i don't think that any sane person would disagree. yes, they should respond to that to get should they then, however as is sometimes going on even with a serious matter like that make people even more afraid of the financial situation and they already are that would be a bad idea. >> next call, washington. he wore on with barry glassner, the head. >> caller: one other problem is similar to you there was another look written called 1984 doublespeak where we get the idea that one thing is right and in the next day it's not. we get that from the fda concerning food. we did that about the war. it seems like fear is constantly fed to us because we can't be certain about anything and that seems to be where our country seems to want to be is on certain. and it's common knowledge about the one first in the bible that is repeated over and over again is if you're not. so why are people using fear so much especially from the religious right and the bush administration? >> if of questions packed in there. first, let me thank you for comparing my work to "1984." i wish i could do that kind of work. but very seriously, yes, it is the case it is very confusing to try to get the facts. with those it often feels like we are told one thing one day and something the next day or two different things by two competing groups who both of whom seemed knowledgeable. to go back to a previous question we are in a great position most of us these days because we have good access if we use the right through the internet coming especially throughout really reliable information sources. so you mentioned the fda. you can go to the cdc, for example, for very clear information about the actual dangers from almost any kind of disease scare that you are hearing about. you can go to various reliable medical sites like mayo and choose another one for medical conditions. you can get a government side project information before i mentioned how many essential for our there. we hear a large number. you can go to the justice agency. there are various .gov's for that and you can get the numbers. what people too often do is to go to an advocacy group that wants you to be afraid or to a political campaign that wants you to be afraid but we don't have to do that. these days, unlike even just recently ten years ago you could get the real information pretty quickly. >> last call for dr. glassner comes from fairfax, virginia. >> caller: hello? professor b glassner, i was disappointed by your statement that the supply -- sob cspan: problem in the country is primarily and substantially one where black homeowners or potential homeowners were the purchasers were responsible for the issue and the problem of supply and loans. that is absolutely false -- >> all right, fairfax, we have to get an answer from dr. glassner. >> thank you. if i gave the impression i certainly didn't mean to. what i say is it is disproportionate, which is different. they were promoted disproportionately to african-americans compared to others but it is absolutely a national problem that comes across every racial and ethnic group. >> "culture of fear," is one of barry glassner's five books. hear the latest of books, l.a. festival of books last panel of the day coming up. this is the struggle for a better tomorrow. richard rayner, miriam pawel and richard schrag. .. .. >> and thirdly, i think the idea that african-american women and white males could ever forge a relationship that led to mortgage, children, and so forth, was almost unheard, i think, for a long period of time. and so to start off, i want to say that marsha sandweiss has written a terrific book called "passing strange." just terrific. it tells the story which we'll ask about and talk about later on. then miriam pawel, a late starter because we had a couple of people on the panel who had family problems, couldn't come, one -- there we are, they just weren't here. miriam stepped right in and helped us out. but it helped us out in a great way. the story of chavez and the farm workers and the people who worked with him is untold story in many ways. interesting to talk about that. and then finally, how do you describe this? this is just remarkable. i mean those of us who are old enough to member who it was like 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago would know what happened in the south and what happened in the area between white and black relations between lynching was unbelievable, unreported in the press. and amy louise wood has done a marvelous job of uncovering the story, telling the story, and raising some questions about what has happened to race relations in this country. as you know, we're goingly a tremendously tense period of time in the african-american president and symptom of the unspoken but obviously connections coupled with the economic hard times. and the fact that we had a african-american president and race is an issuing. whether you like to talk about it or not, it's there. this book tells you what it was like 100 years ago. amy has done a wonderful job. i must say she's followed in the foot steps of another great historian. she stepped into the shoes of, maybe he won't like the shoes, of gordon wood, a great historian, who's been honored here at the los angeles times awards before and who's books i have on my shelf many times. it's a pressure having her here. i thought we would start off by having martha tell us something about the unique relationship that she's uncovered and read about. >> thank you, and good afternoon. i thought what i would do today is read to you very briefly from my book introducing my listeners the same way i introduce my readers, and talk about what's really a remarkable story. let me just read for a few moments from "passing strange" a guilded age tale of love and deception across the color lines. edward brown moved down north prince street. knocking on each and every door in the neighborhood of queens new york. it was june 5. 1900. a mild and sunny day in the first spring of a new century. the federal census agents had done more than 100 years, he was counting americans. painting a portrait in fact nation. as brown made his one the street, he made his way with immigrants who worked as machinist and clerks. he took note of her black housekeeper. he counted 72 white residents. peterson was the first black person he had encountered. but then he walked next door and knocked at the large and comfortable home at 48 north prince street. two black servants lived here. 33 years old widow and just 14 was scarily older than the children she's been hired to watch. grace age 9, ada, age 8, and sidney, age 6 were home from school. perhaps playing with their 3 year old brother. who ever answered the door, took him into the room. edward brown entered the home to talk to the lady of the house. her husband, james, was away, she said. so ms. todd sat down to answer the census agent long list of questions herself. brown hardly needed to ask her race. with a glance at her dark complex, he noted her color of skin as black. mr. todd reported that her parents came from georgia. she informed mr. brown she could read and write. he was born in georgia in 1862. if brown remembered his history, he might have remembered if she was born a slave. that question was not on his list. mr. todd told the census man about her husband. she had married her husband james 18 years earlier in 1882. he was a black man some 20 years older than her. born in the west indies. he later had become a naturalized citizen. now she had a job as a traveling steel worker. brown noted that the house seemed mr. todd had done well. even if his job kept him away. ms. todd said there had been five. four still at home and a child who had died at a toddler. edward brown took pride in the accuracy. in the neat way he filled 1050 blank boxes, recorded into being a portrait of the neighborhoods springing up in the settled borough of queens. he would have been stunned to learn that almost nothing ms. todd told him was true. she had knocked two years off of her age. a gesture of vanity. she and her husband had married for 12 years, not 18. a fact that ms. todd was aware. a lie that was hard. since the children aged raised no questions about her legitimacy. but the other untruth were more stunning. her husband was not black. he was not from the west indies. he was not a steel worker. even his name, james todd, was a lie. ada todd was in fact married to clarence king, a celebrated public worker and someone once called the best and brightest man. he was a larger than life, western explorer, an accomplished writer and story teller. he counted some of the nations most distinguished writers endearstist among his closest friends. his physical aguilty and bravety combined commanded near reverence from those who knew him best. with king, the historian henry adams wrote men worships not so much their friend as the ideal american they all wanted to be. but of all of this, of her husband's true identity and even his real name, ada had not a clue. not until he lay dying in phoenix in 1901. his last hope of a desert tour going did james todd write a letter to his wife and tell her who he really are was. that's the beginning of the book. and i thought i would just step back from a moment and talk about some of the larger issues here. this book was a challenge to write. because of the celebrated clarence king we know much, of cope ran, very little. born into slavery, she had few records. clarence king fought very, very hard to be assured no record of his life would survive. most 19th century americans managed to leave some trace in the records. that's the historian's job to find. the story of@@@ % haired and blue-eyed. how could we pass himself off as a black man? well, he was exposed about the racial classification that sprang up in the wake of emancipation has southern states struggled to define black people and deny them their rights. these new laws thought to make race fixed. they specified if one of your eight grandparents were black, you were black and you would be assigned to ride in the jim crow cars. by saying one ancestry matters more than the color of one's skin, these laws actually made it possible for a euro-american like king, a man who had no ancestry whatsoever, to claim a black heritage. he could pass the wrong way across the color line. in a era where many light complex people disguised or hit their heritage, clarence king moved the other direction. into ada copelan's world. king secret marriage came to light in 1933, more than three decades after his death when his widow went to court to claim the inheritance she thought was hers. in a sensational trial, she read her husband's love letters outloud. because she needed to prove to the world that she was married. for 32 years she involved a monthly sty pent, now she wanted the body of trust fund. she learned in the courtroom, there was no money. the money she had received ever month came from kung's close friend, the secretary of state john hayes, once the personal secretary of lincoln. it was hush money to protect the representation of his friend. finally, i would say the biographers never did anything with this. this aspect of king's life upset them. they wanted to focus on his distinguished scientific career as an explorer. so those biographers missed an extraordinary opportunity. because ada copelan todd king lived the century of civil rights, she did not die until 1964, at the age of 103. no one ever sought her out to tell her story, though she had lived in the same home for more than 60 years. i think i'll stop there and we can come back and talk about the some of the issues of race. [applause] >> martha, weren't there children? >> yes, there were four children. the two girled married as white women. they had to leave their mother at home to swear they were white. their two brothered registered for the world war i draft and both put in all black jim crow regimens. so the story of all of the story was classified changing over of the course. >> it's a remarkable story. just a remarkable story. miriam, you talk about chavez in almost saintlike terms. because at the time when he was farm workers union. i mean it didn't have to be just in california. i remember doing to meetings within the chicago. and all over the country. and he was liized all over the world in the great strike and so forth. tell us something about who caesar chavez and his friends. he was not alone in the campaign that he launched in favor of the farm workers. >> my book is untold story of different kind. it is more recent history. i had the advantage of being able to still talk to many of the people who lived through it. i am a journal isby training, unlike my two panelist who are are bona fide historians. i am practicing history without a license. but i came very enamored in working on the book. as the journalist, you go out and see things and you cover them as you cover the civil rights and you go back and you write about them. as a historian, i found these sort of remarkable change which is that you not seeing -- i did not cover this, i did not ever meet caesar chavez, i knew about the boycotts as a child. so i didn't have that first-hand experience that i'm used to as a journalist. but i had the privilege of being able to have access to documents and to an incredible wealth of information that no one who covered it at the time ever did. so there's an archive of materials that was preserved by chavez, because he wanted the story told, warts and all. that includes tape recordings for many years and just hundreds of boxes and documents and records and letters and tapes. so and i did do a lot of history interviews for the book. but i relied on primary source documents for all of the quotations in the book. i listened to about 1,000 hours of tapes. it's as if you were a fly on the wall in the meetings. so i was some appreciation of the his storians craft and art. -- historians craft and art. my goal of the book is to tell a story that has not been told. to the extent that chavez has been written about, he has been written about as the latino hero, which he is. i in no way take away from that. but i think that heros, one the messages of my books is that heros have flaws too. to not recognize that is to not learn from their stories. and the book that i wrote is a history of the farm workers struggle that beginning in 1965 when some people remember the great, great strike that began then that led to the boycott. the rest of the book takes place through the '60s and '70s and in the '80s. i meet people and say i boycotted grapes and a lettuce. i still don't drink wine. we saw those problems. no. since the plan has called a struggle of something, for equality, -- identical for those of you who are disappointed for whoever was supposed to be here. i'm happy to be here in the sense that i think the struggle for equality in this country is far, far too often told as the story about blacks and whites. and the latino civil rights struggle is given short shrift in that story. i think it's important. i think to give voice to some of the people that were involved in the that struggle. >> miriam, i think your portrait of these individuals is just remarkable. even those people, including myself who covered the farm workers didn't know a lot of them. we knee a few people that were upfront and quotable. but i told -- you give us a portrait of some of these people. they are wonderful. >> i chose people who were incredible stories in and of themselves. also archetypes of the worlds that came together. the protestant minister, chris hartmeyer was responsible for really marshaling religious support across the country. chris who was one of chavez's closest aids from day one and got stucked into the movement deeper and deeper and deeper and did a lot of things that he has since come to regret and took action that he regrets. and ultimately, he was personalled as most of the people who were close to chavez were by the 1980s. so his story is a very -- he was a very important figure. the catholic churches often gets most of the credit for the support of the boycott and the strike. it was the bishops who were there at the signing of the first contract which was almost exactly 40 years ago this morning. this catholic church was moistly controlled by the growers and certainly in california and agriculture real region. and it was chris and support of protestant gnome nations that were critical to the early years and to chavez's ability to continue. so chris who kept records and literacy files, his transformation as he becomes more and more involved in the movement and as it becomes his life and the sacrifices he makes for that, it was one the story. >> it was the falling out with caesar something that was just built over time? was it sudden? what happened there? how do they confront each other when some of the people fell away? >> there's sort of a rise and fall to the story. there are these -- it's a tremendously inspirational story. i -- anyone who's interested in social activism and causes and empowerment, i think there are a lot of lessons in the book about what works and what was successful and how the movement took people who had no rights and very few rights to the day farm workers in the country are not covered by the national labor relations act and do not have the same that farm workers have. so the incredible iningenuity was sent on his first plane ride was $100 in the chicago to stop the sale of grapes and the remarkable thing is that it worked. i mean, you know, it's really the first half of the story is the quite incredible story. and it's also a lot of terry brown, the once and potentially future governor of california played a very key role in one of the major accomplishments in his administration in 1975 was the passage of the agricultural labor relations act which to this day is the only law in the country that give farm workers to right to unionize. it is considered the most pro labor law in the country. it gets a lot of the credit or blame, depending on your point of view for enacting that law. and it's in 19 -- to me -- that is a water mark. the passage of that law. because chavez is a brilliant strategist. he was a wonderful fighter. he is creative. it's a charactermatic leader. as long as there's a enemy and he's leading the fight, everything is great. after the passage of the law, it's suddenly a completely different ball game. there are elections. there are hundreds of elections. if you win a election, there's a contract to negotiate. if you negotiate the contract, there are members who maybe demands who want the medical plan to work well. and chavez had a very consistent vision and his vision was of the poor people's movement. and what he called the nonmissionary work of administering contracts was not what interested him. this is a round about answer to your question. over time he found enemies when the growers and other just wonderful villains that existed in the early years of the struggle were no longer the enemy, he began to create enemiesed. -- enemies. and he turned on almost everyone. >> a couple of those people were key in the operation. came from mexico. i said that was rather -- i didn't not know that. >> the farm workers in which -- in some ways the most inspiring and the most tragic part of the book is the story of the some of the farm workers who -- for whom the union became what they call a third way. so workers will tell you that in the 1960s when they had no control over their working traditions at all, the only options that they saw were to be a worker or to be a foreman. that's what you could aspire to be a supervisor. the choice was to be the exploited or the exploiter. and that was it. and the union became for them the third way. the idea that for some people it was a way out of the field to learn how to do other things to organize. but more than that, it was a way to be a farm worker with certain dignity and rights. to this day if you talk to workers, when it meant to@@m and he lived the life of sacrifice. he believes that was the ultimate goal. he talked about the need for workers to be educated. and you can't turn the union over to them until they understand that's the most important thing. obviously for workers who join a union from better wages and working deny that's run by professionals and volunteers and all sorts of other things, the tension developed as the union begins to grow. he's not the first leader to be able to build something and not necessarily be the person to administrate it. his inability to let other people do that and to move on created this tension. >> as i read the book, i thought back -- i had some experience with the farmers in mexico. i often thought that what he was doing was almost not heard about in mexico. they did not report on farm workers at all. there were not reporting on any of the mexican press. one the other things as a skilled journalist yourself for 25 years, news day in "los angeles times" what about the rest of the press. were they on to the story at all? >> you know, there was some good reporting in the '80ed. in the '80s as people became disenchanted and left, there was some reporting. for example, chavez had an affiliation with a drug treatment program that morphed into the cult. ultimately the leader was charged and pled guilty to helping put a rattle snake into the mailbox who successfully sued him. there was a very close working relationship between chavez and him. some of that began to come out at the time. he was a larger than life person. he must have been wonderful to cover for reporters. and he was brilliant at controlling the media and controlling access. there are penalty of times when he's said things and he's certainly not the only figure of leader who has done this that were just simply not true. he denied that they did certain thing that is they absolutely did and so on. i think that there was some effort by the press later on. the other thing that was remarkable that people did not -- people when they left the union did not talk about what happened for the most part. with very, very few exceptions. part of that was -- most of -- part of it was because it was painful to them. mostly it was because it was a cause that they believed in deeply. they still believed the bmw was the best possible root. they did not want to be in a position of saying anything that might be counterproductive. so they kept all of this stuff inside. that was one of the remarkable things for me was to find people when they were ready to talk about this and find they had been haunted by what had happened and haunted by the failure of this movement to turn into a lasting, viable, and effective union for farm workers. each of them had even a little piece of it. like the blind man in the elephant story where everybody saw a different part of the story. the reason that i wrote the book in part is because i thought i could be the person to find some of those answers and to piece together the story by going back to the original documents and the primary sources and sort of working back and forth and thinking this was what you thought was going on. but in fact, this is what was really happening. >> and you're digging for sources. and another remarkable aspect of the book itself is how much you were able to find and where you found it and how you led on it with because it was the hesitancy on the part of some of the people who were active. did not want to talk about the short comings they had with chavez. what was it about chavez himself that was hidden from the public? >> i think it was his -- even -- not even the publish -- not just in the general public but people who worked with him closely, i think for many years believed that they shared a common goal. that that goal from their point of view was to build a union that would have contracts for farm workers. it would be a national union. and what i found in the recenting and listening to him is that this was never really his goal all along. the union was one stepping stone for him. and something much larger that to him was what he called the poor people's movement. he talked about creating community and all sorts of issues that become sort of a split later on. they were there for him all the time. i mean, there are people who believed that everything was good up to a point. caesar was great. he listened to us. this was a democracy. that was one of the things that frequently gets portrayed. and something happened. he went nuts. something -- he cracked. something happened. because they cannot reconcile the early years in which there was sort of a united front in fighting against the growers and the teamsters and all of the forces of evil with the later years where there was so much internal struggle and strife and difference about the direction that it should be. i understand why they cling to the idea that something happened. but in fact the historical record does not support that. >> it does seem to be a problem that we have lionizing pretty figures where they are. they turn out to have flaws like anything else. gandhi being an excellent of it in india. >> and the fact that martin luther king, there are there's many things that have been written that have spoken to his flaws. that does not detract from his place in history as the hero. i was argue the same thing is true for see car -- caesar chavez to write about it or study it does not do him any service and does not help in terms if you believe it's important to understand the past in order to move forward. it does not help to address the problems to gloss over the failures and the difficulties that were inherited in that generation. and i would also add in some parallels to what we were doing that martha was saying in the sense that there's no good reason that none of this has been written about until now. the material has been there. it's been open to the archives had been there for historians. but there's been a real reluctance on the part of people who are sympathetic to the cause as i am to explore it because to this day, there are people that don't want to know about the book even because it just to them opens up areas that are better left unsaid. better to preserve the mythology. chavez who was a prominent and amherst spoke about the subject recently. you talk about no one in mexico has heard. certainly in the fields today, they think you're talking about the boxer. because there is a mexican boxer by that name. the same thing is true in mexico. chavez's argument was that is because there has been no critical examination of him. the way to maintain and restore the position as true, heroic and important figure is by examining him in a critical way. >> was there anybody at all within the organization who was able to confront chavez directly before some of the people who fell away? is there something that other people came to him and told him what the discontent was that the kind of bubbling beneath the surface? his brother, actually. his brother richard who was a board member and was consistently the person at meetings who really -- he felt he was the one person in the position to be able to say to him caesar, everybody thinks this, but they are afraid to tell you this. so i will. he made a real attempt to talk about the issues that were undermining the union. in the end, it was his brother. >> what happened after? >> yeah. [and you haddable -- inaudible conversations] >> okay. we'll get to that. what happened after his death? >> it fell apart even more quickly. >> okay. amy louise wood, you have a story to tell, i think that most americans are not very conscious of. because it's uncomfortable. and it was -- there's something about what had happened here in 19th century and early 20th century in the united states to people of color. lynching was unreported, unrecognized form of torture. tell us something about what you found, how you found it, what turned you on to the whole story? >> thank you. yeah, my feeling about lynching is america is the most striking met fore for racial violence and racial oppression in this country. you can probably think a lot of the example where the term gets thrown out as the symbol for racial oppression. it's one of those things that a lot of americans have conscienceness about and there's a lot of historical amnesia at the same time. a lot of you might have been aware of the collections about sanctuaries and published in the book and it's not on the internet. it was exhibited about the country of lynching photographs. you asked how i came to this project, i was -- this was years ago. 15 years ago. i was living in mississippi and working as a research assistant for documentary. it's a documentary that never got funded. but they sent me to atlanta to find images to go along with the documentary. i came across the photographs. this was before the sanctuary, before these images have come to the surface. and i was astounded by them. i knew the history of lynching. the idea that people would take photographs was a real puzzle to me. when i started my program, it became one of my goals to short of unravel that puzzle. and then i soon became interested not just in the photography, but the rituals that surrounded that violence. a little bit for those that might not be aware, between the years of my study 1890 to 1940, over 3,000 african-americans were lynched in this country. the numbers even probably higher because so many went unreported. and many of these lynchings victims were tortured and mutilated and some of them there were hundreds if not thousands of witnesses. these were the public spectacles. many lynching were not public spectacles. i think those get the most attention. even smaller private lynching, i found, were often ritualistic, and were sometimes photographed and souvenirs taken. they had the qualities even if they were private. so my question in the book a lot of historians have written about how and why the violence became to be. i was interested in -- and, you know, they look at them as this violence coming out of the ashes of the civil war. it operated alongside systemic disenfranchisement and jim crow segregationism needs to terrorize african-americans to keep them at their place at a moment where black advantagement and black political advantagement for real possibilities. but i saw this violence as more than just a political act. i saw it as a cultural act that conveyed powerful messages to its participates and its witnesses. in particular, it em parted messages to whites about their own racial dominance. and in that sense, it didn't just reflect, people tend to see the violence as reflecting white supremacy. it was something that helped construct white supremacy, in particular attached individuals to a group mentality or ideology of white supremacy. so the book is about the -- and violence itself is unlike disenfranchisement, it's unlike segregation. violence was -- so my book was about that visual sensationalism and the cultural that it thought to -- that it performed. and i thought to try to make sense of why -- not just how or -- not just why the violence occurred, but why it occurred the way that it did. why these rituals -- what did it mean for the participates? why photograph? i also found that there were very, very early on in the beginning of motion pictures. there were motion picture sinmatic representations of of -- cinemamatic representation of the film. what i did was try to understood the silence by@@ & pictures and criminal pictures. and part of my goal was trying to get the violence within the context to try to understand how ordinary people in the people who made up these mobs, you know, it's easy to think about them, but they were family members, they saw themselves as members of the community. how they came to accept and even participate in and rebel in just extraordinary acts of atrocity, to try to understand that. not sympathize it, but try to understand that kind of mentality. i also then look at because i'm talking about sensationalism and speck call and i also try to look at the relationship between lynching and modernity at the turn of the century. most people see it as air cayic that these mobs were backwards. they were out of step with modern progress. what i found was that these lynching tended -- they occurred in response to the process of modernization that was happening in the south after the civil war. on the one hand, they were reactionary against changes in the south and you can see that in the ways that lynch mobs saw themselves with public executions or in terms of religious rituals. at the same time, they are relying on modern technologies and media and film. but i don't necessary want to go and sort of make the statement that these were then -- there was just a modern phenomenon. because i found it much more complicated than that. because what i found is that the participates and witnesses to lynching or the witnesses to photographs or the witnesses to these films they often interpreted them as received them through what was happening in their own localities through their local concerns through specific crimes and offenses or racial and social disorder p their communities. so i look at that tension between the modern and traditional. and then i end, you know, this panel struggled for equality. and so i was also interested in the anti-lynching movement and those people who were fighting back against this. i was interested in the way that is they used the spectacle. that they used sensationalism to combat lynching. so i have a chapter on the anti-lynching activist use of photograph and the ways that they were able to take the photograph that were made for the purpose of celebrating a lynching and affirming the righteousness and using those to strike the moral conscience of americans. >> was the anti-lynching movement? >> yes, there was such a thing. >> were they respond for ending the lynching? >> the ending of lynching is complicated. it haded to with eventually modernization of the south where the state sort of takes a larger and larger control over justice or criminal justice. where there's a lot of fear amongst the whites that they are losing their labor force if blacks are fleeing the south. but part of what i see is the contribution of the public shift in mood in the country where most americans by world war ii, lynching is declining through the 20s and 30s. certainly by world war ii, most americans find the violence appalling. white southerners start to see lynching as this public regional embarrassment for their themselves. that has a lot to do with the media. and particularly, i actually would think that what happens is hollywood, my last chapter on hollywood, hollywood takes up the argument of the ncaacp, and they sensationalize it and put it out for a particular audience in several films that end up having a larger impact on public, you know, popular perception of lynching than what the black press is able to do. which has a much smaller audience. >> whereas the birth of a nation, the great film with character, it didn't really talk about lynching very much, did it? >> birth of a nation, no, lynching is at the center of birth of a nation. there's a lynching of a black man who is accused of assaulting the young, white, pure, innocent virgin who's the daughter of the hero of the story. and he forms the clan as a way to avenge what's happened to here. >> there were two things, the lynching of a white man. leo frank, businessman in atlanta who was accused a murder of mary fagan. they lynched him and tortured him. >> yeah, he -- leo frank was jewish. and so there's a lot of -- there's a lot of really good work on that lynching in terms of the role of anti-semitism. but also it's that lynching that fits in perfectly with southerners pushing back on modded earnization and industrialization. frank was the manager of this company. i should add that i've been talking about the south. lynching did happen nationwide. and there was actually a lynching of two white men in san jose, california in 1933. i spent some time on that lynching because of america's kind of shock that two white men could be lynched in california. particularly because the -- focus on the south because the large majority happened in the south. but also because i'm interested in cultural representation, most americans by the 1910s, '20s, and '30s associated lynching. >> what is the incredible story of emma till? in which the lynching came up. tell that story. >> emma till is later. i end the book talking about emma till. that happened in -- god, i'm forgetting. 1954. '54, yeah. and that -- you know, you might have heard of the story that emma till's mother. emma till was a young boy who was from chicago sent down to live with family members in mississippi. and a he was accused of wolf whistling at a white woman in mississippi. he was taken by two men, the husband and brother-in-law who mutilate his body and he's killed. and emma till's mother takes, there was a photo of his body of, you know, his body was bloated and tortured. she publicized in "jet" magazine. there's a lot of misperception this photo was all circulated in the mainstream media. i found no evidence. it was published in the black press. but it made national headlines. i use that case as an example of how much had changed since 20 years earlier. because there was -- there was an event that helped galvanize the modern civil rights movement and the kind of anger that was unleased about emma till that was not unleased to thousands of victims, you know, in '20, -- 20, 30, 40 years before. >> here we have an element of conflict in america over two centuries. and it's remarkable as to how little people understand, i think, that's still the case. people are not fully versed on what had transpired 50 to 100 years ago. what does that tell us generally, do you think? with the marriage described in your book, and the problems of the farm workers, and the problems of blacks generally in trying to reach equality? because the lynching was a symbolic aspect of blacks trying to earn their way and cause the attention. create the attention among white americans. >> i'm sorry. could you ask a question? >> what does this say about america's recognition? of the racism that prevailed in the south and certainly lynching was a symbol of what had happened and a warning of what could happen? >> yeah, yeah, well, it operated of a symbol. it was just even as something that african-americans were aware of that becomes its way to terrorize african-americans. richard wright talks about this, about not even having to see a lynching to just -- it's a means to sort of make him immobilize him to some degree. you wanted to -- >> i might add one thing. i hope everyone in the room filled out the census form; correct? a lot of the evidence from my story comes from the census form and how the federal government tried to classify americans. it is the case between 1920 and 2000, you could only check one box on your census. you could be black or white. you could be hispanic or white. or you could be black or indian. and americans of mixed race fought very, very hard to change the census option through the year 2000 and we see that in 2010, alonging all of us to check multiple boxes to reflect the complicated history of this country. i happen to see that as an enormous step towards in the ways we think about race. i see it recognizes who we are as a country. you walk around the streets of leek, and you see why we need the multiple boxes. i have to say i'm a little disappointed that our president, as the newspaper reported, checked only one box. i think the change on the census forms speaked to the question about how ideas about race are shifting and the boundaries between race has been rigid as the period of amy's lynching book, those boundaries are just breaking down. there are not walls anymore. there's lots and lots of gates. >> i think these questions are really true main. but i want to know from the public whether any of you here have some thoughts of your own that you'd like to request before we close this out for the rest of the afternoon. here's one. >> yeah, i'm actually glad this question came up. because i sort of want to ask it from the other side. in some ways to me, emma till is kind of an interesting story because here in the wake of mainly the end of lynching, clearly, you know, black people are still being horribly oppressed. and now -- in a certain sense, the same thing is on the horizon with this new law in arizona. it's there in terms of demonization of lesbian and gay people. there's a whole lot of different elements of it. and then there's the tea party movement. and the question that i guess i wanted to raise or the issue to discuss is, is it true that this is a problem that mainly has been solved and is in the past or is it there in fact a real battle in society between people who very correctly and very justly are horrified by this and by it going on around the world and by people who actually think the only way they can hold this nation together is to go back to those kinds of attitudes whether it's, you know, white supremacy or male supremacy or america number one or whatever. >> yeah, can i just -- yeah. i wanted to qualify. i didn't want to give the impression that emma till was -- that was the change. what was interesting is that people's attitudes against public demonstrations of that kind of violence shifted even as people were very strongly defending white supremacy. i think what's interesting, you mentioned the tea party, what we're seeing as a form of right wing populism that has a long history. i mean i really see the people, the white people in my book, these mob members, they are the same types of people who are part of this kind of reaction against we want our america back kind of thing, you know? >> why don't we try one more question from other here? those of who are going to the book signing have an opportunity to question the authors and talk to them about it. i think they are worthwhile thinking about. and considering it. >> i wondered if you would address the what we were talking about equality and short of legal immigrants who are long-time residents here in the united states because i have close relationships with people in agricultural all over the country, i spent a lot of time in places where there are@@@@@ , would appreciate it. >> that's true. in the fields probably 90% of the people who work in the fields do not have legal documentation. and in any ways they and their children lives lives like anyone else. this is a hot political issue. i would like to say i'm optimistic. but i'm not. i would say to tie back to the previous question that, you know, the races in the 1960s, you had growers who said mexicans are only -- why should mexicans get unemployment? because they can't do anything other than pit crops anyway. so there's no reason. they would go on the radio and say these things in the late 1960s. clearly, there has been a change in what's publicly acceptable to say. i do not think that means racism doesn't surface in more sophisticated and other forms. certainly, the situation of the illegal immigrants is very good one. >> i think i want to close with an observation or an experience that happened to me. i come back fromkey after the korean war. and -- i come back from korea and the korean war. all of the wounded americans were brought home on hospital ships. i was assigned to go out to the dock in san francisco to meet the hospital ships. and when the plank was lowered down, the first 30 or 40 wounded people were either african-americans or latinos. i was standing next to the commanding officer of the 6th army. he turned to his aid and i heard it with a clear shot. he said what do you expect, a bunch of gigs and spics. after resigned or retired, guess what? chairman of the national -- chairman of the -- well, i can't make up my mind here. the original naturalization service. it was just bizarre. and he lived out his life that way. he was the judge. he was the judge. anyway. this is a fascinating conversation that we've had here. i think the three wonderful authors for the three wonderful books. please go get and go out. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> if i would like to speak with the authors, please feel free to meet with them at the book signing. at this time, they have been assigned to the book signing area. [inaudible conversations] >> that was our last live author panel that we'll be covering today that the the "los angeles times" festival of books. still lots of people floating around. about 130,000 are expected here today and tomorrow. but our live coverage has not endedded. -- ended. we are live here with charles kessler who is sponsored by claire month college. what is the claremont review of books? >> it's actually a publication of the local think tank which is the institute for the study of statesmanship and political philosophy. which just turned 30 years old this year. it's been unusual think tank in that it takes a conservative view of the world. : >> how far are the claremont mckenna campuses from where we are here and ucla? >> the campuses are about 35 miles from here. they are basically the last city going east in los angeles county ascendancy passed through claremont you arrive at san bernardino county. >> in the winter edition of "the claremont review of books" you have an essay by steven hayward called the enterprise institute, somebody we know quite well in washington but this is what you right. this is what he writes, sorry about that. he writes that conservative intellectuals in particular are in eclipse at the moment. the leading public figures on the right today tend to be the media celebrities of talk radio and cable tv the makeup and decibels what they lack in rigor and depth. we have created build buckley for glenn beck, irving kristol for ann coulter. >> there is a lot of truth to that diagnosis i think. conservatism has always been both an elite intellectual movement and popular movement. it became popular beginning in the 1960s and certainly with the election of ronald reagan and the aftermath of the. but you have to remember that will buck he himself was famous for saying he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the boston telephone directory than by the faculty of harvard university. that was not on his part and undiscriminating populace because he thought in those circumstances in the 1950s and 60s and 70s, and they think still true today probably that there is more common sense and more good sense into people than there are in the intellectual elite or at least in the academic version of the intellectual elite. >> charles kesler's i guess. if you would like to dial in and talk to him them you can now. 2025853885 and in the eastern central timezones (202)585-3886. go ahead and dial and. we are going to be talking about books in general. you got a flavor of what professor kesler talks about and what he writes about. i want to read another quote from steven hayward. it is about the conservative ideas and personalities throughout american history. steven hayward writes that that book has a the great virtue of treating conservatism as an american phenomenon rather than as a transplant or derivation of european thought. ways that important important? >> conservatism has been confused for most of its life in america because it was never quite sure what it was -- some conservatives thought of themselves as traditionalists come as burkean's. they thought the world ended with the french revolution and we have been living in they after times ever since. libertarian conservatives are opposed to the state of government in such to some extent but it seems to me, and it seems they think to steven hayward as well, that if you really want to understand where liberalism came from, you have to look at american. conservatism really is reacting alternately to the intellectual and political forces that is progressivism unleashed on the country at the turn of the last century. and, the peculiar domestic sources of american liberalism lie in the thought of woodrow wilson and herbert crowley and john daly and that generation. in a way the left has been living off those ideas for 100 years. >> what is your favorite conservative look? >> that is a tough one. i will tell you, i knew bill buckley for 35 years so i suppose not unexpected my favorite conservative book would have been written by bill buckley but actually there are two. i think his books i think are nonpareil and one of his last books called miles gone by which is his own assortment of autobiographical writings. the other is a book called, a book of his features over the course of his whole life called let us talk of many things. those are excellent, excellent introductions to the history of conservatism and the mind of a very special and gifted and brilliant polemicist, my old friend bill buckley. >> duque glenn beck and ann coulter and sarah palin, are they important to the conservative movement, the books that they write? >> they are important provocateurs, as popularizers of conservative ideas. i think the media celebrities and conservatives today get something of a bum rap because many of them, and certainly the best of them are actually quite -- if you look at rush limbaugh for example or even glenn back. these are people who are not winging it. these are people who were taking ideas very seriously, who are reading conservatives books and can-- conservatism and us-backed gift for taking the ideas of intellectuals and retailing them. along the way of course they have to pump them up a bit and entertain. there are millions of listeners, but i think on the whole that is a bargain that conservatives should be happy with. of course, the popular idea is not a substitute worth generating both research and philosophical types of scrutiny about politics. and they are, there is something to the criticism that conservative books have not been as profound as they were in their periods from the 1940s to the 1980s, but i don't think-- i think that is perhaps more of a generational and cyclical thing and i am not a pessimist that great conservative books lie behind us entirely. >> have conservative books been selling more since the obama administration? >> well, of course the obama administration has been a great boon to conservatism but not to the country i would say, but to conservatism. there are all kinds of people on the right now examining obama and obama is a myth there is such a thing. i am writing a book on obama and the history of modern liberalism. i think phoenicia sues is working on a book as well. yes there are lots of depends busy on the subject of obama and why not? conservatives made the mistake of letting down their guard i think, and persuading themselves that liberalism was a spent force or at least that you know, the radicalism had gone out of liberalism, retained by the reagan revolution and even though clinton did eventually come around to this view when he announced with the era of big government was over and began triangulating his way through the election. i think obama, part of obama's genius was in recognizing that liberalism was not a spent force, and that it could be revived with the right kind of magical incantation, which he is certainly done and conservatives i think we are really caught flat-footed. >> charles kesler is the editor of "the claremont review of books," senior fellow at the claremont institute and in fact he was coeditor with william f. buckley junior on keeping the tablets and charles kesler two years ago hosted and after words or for booktv where he interviewed christopher buckley. the first call up for him comes from gordon, virginia. good afternoon, you you were on with charles kesler. >> caller: good afternoon mrs. kesler. i am one of those evil liberals. i want to issue a challenge to you and all of your viewers, since you've you mentioned the founding fathers. [inaudible] donations made at 127 east 58th street new york, new york that is 126 east 58th street, x x they are gone so let's go to the other coast, to washington d.c.. good afternoon washington. >> caller: high. i have a question about glenn beck's comment on social justice that caused such a firestorm in the religious community. and i just wondered if you would like to comment on that controversy that seems to be going on. >> caller what it glenn beck say? >> caller: he said people that go to churches where the term social justice or economic justice are used should leave them where they preach social justice because their code word for communism and not see is him and socialism. >> thank you. >> mr. kesler? >> guest: i think the term social justice is susceptible to many meetings. it is true that it is a term that comes out of a gospel movement in america, the liberal protestant division but there is also a catholic, much older and developed tradition of catholic teachings as well and i think it is an exaggeration to say that any thinking along the lines of social justice is automatically a stalking horse for liberal thought. on that question i would certainly disagree with glenn beck. >> host: as we get deeper and deeper inte digital age, is "the claremont review of books" published in paper form? >> guest: if you are subscriber you can get it instantly at a pdf and eventually it will be on candle we hope another electronic forms as well. for us, part of the attraction of the claremont review on paper is that it is a kind of anti-blog. it stands for books, the serious consideration of books, the appreciation of the history of the book and the history of the geniuses who have utilized the book in the past to teach us so much. and also, we are very fond of the arts of the magazine. our magazine is illustrated by one brilliant illustrator from new york city, elliott stanfield, in a sort of 18th century, early 19th century sort of style, which is deliberately neoclassical and meant to remind us of our ancestors, of the newspaper and all of the literary review and all that is meant to the culture of america and of the west. >> host: two was angelo kota via, why we don't win. >> guest: he is an analyst of international-- who taught at boston university until his retirement recently, and he is almost sui generis. he is a critic of the bush administration's foreign policy from the right. >> host: the next call for charles kesler comes from fort myers, florida. >> caller: good afternoon peter and mr. kesler. i want you to join his first-time caller. mr. kesler i want to ask what, abortion is an issue in the conservative movement. how did that come about? when was that co-opted into the movement? i am a catholic myself as mr. buckley was an that maybe you are, and went to prep school and i was in school and catholic high school in 1973, when roe v. wade came down the pike and i don't remember hearing one word about abortion, no yearly demonstrations in washington are anything like that and then sorted closer to 1980, it sort of came on the scene and there were lots of trips to washington, red ribbons and everything else having to do with abortion. when did that become part of the conservative ideology? >> host: charles kesler. >> guest: it was the supreme court made abortion into a national issue. before that time, before roe v. wade in 1973 it was essentially a state issue and many conservatives, but we among them, cautioned in the 1960s that conservatives should not run headlong into a moral crusade against abortion, but the supreme court eliminated the state-by-state politics of abortion when it nationalized it with that decision. the religious right sprang up almost immediately after that decision of roe v. wade. it can be prepared by a series of supreme court decisions in the 1960s, which had expelled prayer from public schools, liberated obscenity and pornography in the nation's media, and had offended religious conservatives. but the final straw you might say was the abortion decision. >> host: is abortion central to conservative thoughts? >> guest: well, the issue, the issue of abortion is central, is a central part of conservative politics. it is not purely the center of conservative politics. the reason it is important is that it is, the principles that implicates, the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to the pursuit of happiness are central to the core of america's moral self-definition and central to the defense of american traditions and american public philosophies really. so the different conservatives, of course there is a difference within the conservative movement about abortion. there are some members especially on the more libertarian side, who take a different view but to respect roe v. wade or something like roe v. wade but i would say they are a minority of the conservative movement at this point. even libertarians have a significant number of critics of abortion in their ranks. >> host: we are the campus of ucla at the launch as-- los angeles times festival of books. when you think of ucla as a conservative point of view what do you think of and is claremont mckenna a conservative college? >> guest: claremont mckenna was founded relatively recently, 1946 and it was founded in part as a place where the chivalrous of the new deal could be questioned. the faculty was not explicitly conservative or are overwhelmingly conservative but there were a number of conservatives in the economic faculty, and the government faculty and ever since then, it has prided itself on being a balanced school, in which you have those liberal professors and conservative professors, in which you have liberal they love the road in conservative students dumm. in fact have the body's opinion parallels the country pretty closely. but on the faculty, we have always had i would say maybe one in five professors who are conservative. that is really enough to make cnc unique among high-quality liberal arts called -- my colleges in the country. we don't have any albums with political correctness i would say. probably the critical mass of conservatives would not permit students to be punished for the expression of heterodox political opinion, so the culture of the campus is i would say considerably to the right right of say ucla's political leaning while still being essentially a moderate rather than a conservative campus. >> host: i hope i am getting this right but didn't barack obama start out of claremont? >> guest: no, barack obama started out at occidental which is a small liberal arts college just down the road in eagle rock >> host: i should've known better than to go down that road. los angeles, thanks for holding. you are on with charles kesler. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i would like to know compassionate conservative, was that coined by the liberals as a way to control the party, the term compassionate conservative? did they use that term to try to influence the conservative party in the direction of liberalism? thank you. >> host: thanks caller. >> guest: the short answer is no. i think the term was actually coined, at least the first time i was familiar with it being used was in a book i am engineer , one of the founders of jacobs engineering and mr. jacobs used it in a book to describe himself. i think it was essentially an autobiography called a compassionate conservative but it was george bush, who took that term which was sort of in the air, marvin oleski had written about compassionate conservatism too and turned it into the creed of his campaign in 2000 also his administration. i don't think myself that it is terribly coherent idea. as david frum said a long time ago it was his attempt to combine the left favorites adjective in the right's favorite noun, compassionate conservatism. but it doesn't amount to really a genuine school of thought within conservatism. i think it was more of a political gimmick than anything else. it is not that conservatives aren't compassionate. it is simply that compassion is strictly speaking not a virtue. compassion is passion in the form of dealing with or having sympathy for others but it doesn't answer the most important question, which is whether, why or to what extent others deserve your sympathy. what could obviously make a distinction between an innocent man suffering and someone who was a mass murderer suffering a punishment by the law, let us say. one shouldn't feel compassion equally in those cases if at all in the second case. and in particular i think it was a mistake to believe that compassion would be, should be a passion that moves the government itself. george bush famously said once that, when people are suffering, government has to move. that i think is too indiscriminate. the purpose of government is to do justice more than it is to render compassion to people, so for example the many beautiful speeches denouncing slavery, abraham lincoln does well on the compassion or the suffering of the slave's purse way-- per se. that is really the virtue that government is concerned with. rectifying injustice to the extent possible. >> host: in the current edition of "the claremont review of books" you have a review of the book, the antidote to obama carries the title of the article. >> guest: well, it is a brilliant indictment of obamacare, and it is to be followed by a sequel, the top 10 list of obamacare which gregory will be issuing later this year or early next year but the full disclosure, sally pipes is my wife. [laughter] >> host: she had a good review. [laughter] >> guest: her writing is an obligation of mine to recognize so i'm recognizing what is truly there. >> host: the next call for charles kesler, philadelphia. >> caller: hello mr. kesler. how are you? >> guest: very fine, thank you >> caller: i have had discussions with people who finally admit that they are conservatives and i yet have had ones to admit that segregation for example was a conservative philosophy rooted in let's say property rights and rights of free association and the governments need to enforce those rights and attitudes. would you not to say, would you be able to admit or define where segregation fit in the conservative philosophy? >> guest: well, no. i would say segregation is very nearly the opposite of the conservative philosophy actually. i mean, segregation was after all historically an invention of southern democrats, who were sore losers in the civil war and wanted to repress and suppress blacks and their legitimate exercise of their newfound constitutional right a

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