a lot of the ec in occupy wall street. it is stunningly consistent with what i talk about in this book. >> chris christie has endorsed but romney. >> yes. well, i hang on everything chris christie says. i guess i am running girl. i really am. at the good is going to be romney. i'm going to write about that in my column. i've had it with these upstarts. he is not of reagan. he is the best of senator. best of all, he has a demonstrated ability to attract liberals into voting for him. [laughter] >> next on book tv, jeff sharlet talks about the depth and nature of religious belief in the united states. this is about an hour-and-a-half. >> thank you. thank you, and thank you for coming out and joining me. it is a pleasure to be here at porter square books. i used to live up the street, and so this was my bookstore for a while. so i spent a lot of money here. i'm getting a little back. also, i would like to give a plug for independent bookstores. i have come to the end of this book tour for this new book, "sweet heaven when i die." and i decided when i did this book, which is published by norton, one of the last big independent publishers, that i did not want to go to any changes. conveniently borders when out of business just-in-time. there were so crushed by my refusal. i had not thought of that. i only wanted to go to independence. which can be sort of wonderful. great to be in a thriving, independent bookstore like this, but there is also a feeling going around the country, saw the great feel like you're taking the tour of a hospice. independent bookstores are in terrible, terrible trouble. so by lots of books from them. not just my books, but all sorts of books. keep your independence alive. don't do that thank, as i learned of this trip, some people do in independent bookstores, they go and browse books and go look up on the phone the amazon price and order it for a few dollars cheaper. you're paying for wonderful, wonderful service in these stores. and that comes to mind especially tonight because i am borrowing a copy of this book from porter square because i was just down at the reporting on occupy wall street. as you probably know, mayor bloomberg decided to a sort of in the dead of night at 1:00 a.m. send in a thousand police officers in riot gear to clear it out. one of the last things they did, which was especially sort of important to me as a writer was that they trashed the library. occupy wall street, this fascinating thing. one of the first things they did was still alive perry. lower manhattan. there aren't very many libraries. the only bookstore was the borders. that is gone now. so you would see families who had nothing to do with the politics showing up to this library to get children's books for their kids. a beautiful library, professional library. it got trashed. i'll come back to this at the end. right now trying to figure out, we know many, hundreds of thousands of books were destroyed. i think about that in terms of this function of bookstores like this and libraries like this. also the story's end up telling in this book, sweet heaven when i die, that career out of my last two books, the results of the long emersion, submersion and authoritarian subculture for american fundamentalism. it was a fascinating world, not one that gives a lot of hope or even laughs. it can be kind of crushing a times. i remember the model of one of the fundamental organizations that was rating of an old model they had was that they helped bring together political leaders to make decisions. this pretentious little bit beyond the fox spot july, beyond the voice of the people. that was their idea. i ended the last book, and this is what lure me into this book of this other line, and it comes from america's worst president in history. sitting here thinking james buchanan, 1857, 1861. a terrible job. he had this one great line. at a time when some politicians were saying let's not argue, let's agree to disagree. we will all be peaceful. and the response and says, i like the noise of democracy, the noise of democracy is really key. the noise of democracy, down in the occupy wall street libraries. and it is not always pretty. the noise of democracy is raucous, not always reasonable and well informed debate. eccentricity and downright cooking is an argument and disagreement and sharp tongues, sharp elbows. that is the noise of democracy. and out of that comes not, i think, well, i should say when you write about religion for a long time, as i have you often get, you know, you're doing media. you're asked for questions. one thing, who does the great -- what is the great common denominator of americans believe? would even as it all out. and the real answer is that there is in one. that should be obvious. democracy. we don't have a common denominator for belief. we have a common denominator of form of agreement to be in this space together, this public space to argue or to coexist. the sound of all these religious beliefs coming together all at once, that sounds what evens it all out. of harmony, that is of harmony. the sound that i am most interested and. the sound, if you have ever been in a choir, been in some kind of religious house of worship and you're sitting there and singing . the person next to you doesn't sing "is wonderfully as you do. you keep singing with them. i am committed to sharing this. this book was the sitting out to hear some cacophony after a long immersion in this sort of enforced, coerced, numbing harmony of american fundamentalism. a little fundamentalism within this book. it's so eccentric that i decided to include it, and of going to start off reading a few short passages from different stories. thirteen stories, 13 stories of people who all had this -- they're all sort of caught between despair on one end and desire on the other. this fatalism and over here imagination. and the people who walk that tightrope are not people who will settle for the middle. that takes into some strange places. an essay called the rapture. sandra shea, a real-estate. apartments. a business. let me give you her full title. when i wanted to write about the economy, the money of new-age belief. i said, cat has been some time with you. she gave me your business card. b amajd died teacher at jack member of the great white universal brotherhood and sisterhood, ritual master and the high council, ranking master, metaphysician. that is a business card. okay. that is our first died here. you have dirt excuse me, i have a case of what is now called cicada long. anyone read about this? it is because you get when you spend a lot of time sleeping on the ground in the park, which i have been doing. i got to go to a faith healer and apartment and what i discovered is every real estate broker in new york has the rolodex. someone like saundra, someone who makes a call when they hide-and property is not moving in they can bring her and and she can perform some sort of magical rituals which you can decide for yourself may or may not help in the sale. the corcoran real estate agents said with perfect calmed as sprayed holy water dispensed from a pink plastic spritzer on the carpet, ceiling, and walls. a one-bedroom in a doorman building with an open terrace overlooking st. martin's dazzling armenian cathedral and the east river. priced reasonably at $680,000. when you're doing a book tour like in iowa and use a $680,000 they gasp and laugh. oh, that's a steel. can i get in on that. it wasn't moving. so a black jacket tigress weather, of this italian. a former retail executive with the supernatural experience call sandra on the recommendation of a colleague. nashua's standing in the living room. is any of this hard to swallow? he shook his head and offered the best of a new wages and i have encountered, absolutely not. some extent a language of his own. peculiar, but the idea, the space reflects on habitants. bad energy. she had diagnosed this property. the fate goes by many names kamal rituals, true or false, you're wrong metaphors, our own creation. these ideas are perfectly ordinary. paying like a puppet on strings and left the apartment. she needed to get some distance so she could draw a magic circle around the newly cleansed space. no buyer would budge an inch on the basis of this invisible shield. she would not even mention the procedure. and hands folded in his lab waiting for sandra to return, it was then i understood, he had purchased the spell, the details of which did not concern him, for his own peace of mind. i tried to follow his lead. when i said said chandra can i show you should look me up and down and said okay, but we need to do some spiritual work on your first before you can hang around with me. she gets well-paid for her spiritual work. she sort of thought about it. i can't afford this, and she decided that she was going to take a chance on advertising. if you don't want this book but you're thinking how can i get in touch with sandra, i can put you in touch. i signed up for a special rising star workshop this exit british special forces commando who she says lives on the astral plane, but i spoke to him on the phone, so you can reach him. it was a collective effort involving half a dozen students gathered for 12 hours of instruction, meditation, visualization, and dancing, a highlight for me curmudgeonly absurd and genuinely lovely, a spirited session hovering around the rosie said to george harris. we met in a midtown luxury apartment a real estate agent named louise . plans when necessary by sandra. along with several rookies like me, there was also and they. a breathtakingly beautiful psychotherapist. she called the group trip. louise anthony and mary were veterans, a depth. so when it came time for me to graduate the let me away from the living room and into the candle at steady sounder are rated -- operating with the sword, much bigger and heavier than her court cutting. i have to back up again. the first ritual i have to go through was what she called the emotional chord cutting ceremony . $3,909. and what it consists of is you lie on a massage table, thus -- nothing sketchy, no touching at all. she may not have been in the room. i lay there in a cold room for an hour and the next day i get a terrible flu. she said, that's perfect. evidence that it is working. you're getting all the bad stuff out. the bad stuff was because she had done this port cutting, she takes up this big knife. she holds a knife. she explains that we all have these, she believes that we are all performing and healthy emotional connections. think of it like tied down by tiny people with roads all over them. sandra to the rescue. she will cut them. you know, you stand there with the incense. she says something spirited she's a tiny, tiny little elf of a person. she believes she is genetically. [inaudible] she's standing with this big knife swooping it over your head so bring it down your arms. then she explains to you, look, most of us -- i have to be careful about this. most of us form our and healthiest emotional connections in one part of our body, this one part of our body were reform these connections that we regret the next day. and so i need you to stand very still well like that these courts. she takes a big knife. you can see where this is going. so she does it. fine. i know she has a steady hand. now she has a much bigger sort, but i trust her. holding it like it's a butter knife. jesus, i whispered. she smiled. so, you're wondering if this is real. jesus spoke in her voice, but an octave lower. she instructed me to kneel and then hoisted up this word. a prayer followed as she swung it dallas' speed toward one shoulder and then the other arresting the blade before contact so that the blows became taps. i was being knighted, no member of the brothers of white light. jesus kept talking. murmuring. my knees hurt. my legs were weak. i was afraid i would not be able to get up. but jesus was saying was private, personal, the secret of sorts. jesus. i'm here to write about this. no details. she made me promise. the gist she added i could share. jesus knew that that did not believe for, and that was okay. she understood my skepticism and she knew where it came from. then she delivered an outline of my life story. nothing magical about it. simply stored every fact revealed about myself in passing and assemble them as a narrative colored by her analysis of my motives and fears. for the most part she got a right. she knew why was there. why should not a secret she said. your daughter. doubt. it's a calling. it is not unbelief. it's in between. that's your niche. your place in the chain of supply and demand. doubt is your revelation. so i should say, the subtitle of this book, "sweet heaven when i die," this fatal business and the country in between. you can guess where i think most of us live is in the country in between. you know, i spoke with that idea of tight rope, despair on one in a desire on the imagination. you can switch this back-and-forth, which one is faith and which one is fatalism, but most of us are so we're stuck in between. and i like to approach writing about people who i guess were on that tight rope with me like sandra with doubt, as i said, but i think she got it right. jesus got me right. a good track record. but gentle doubt. it is not -- i don't want to go charging in with a wise guy skepticism. that said you sometimes run into stories were gentle doubt is not sufficient. but when it happens you don't need wiseguy skepticism. your subjects really tend to do the work for you. this next piece of want to share with you is from an essay called she said yes. and it is about she said yes, from the title comes from the story of columbine, a big figure in conservative america, one of the victims of columbine who supposedly when the killers were going through found her hiding under a table and said, do you believe in god. as the story goes, she said yes. so they kill there. now you can go to a christian rock concerts', the concert on that in the story, there's an anthem. thousands of kids yelling she said yes. the complicated part is as far as anyone can tell that to happen. and moreover when we think about what happened at columbine, they were killing everybody. what were they going to do she said no. nobody got away. and then she said yes to me represents a desire for a certainty to nail things down, a desire to have an explanation to explain something like the horror of fault columbine. things more difficult than that. the movement i am describing is called battle cry. i guess you might say it is the most militant fundamentalist movement in america. the only fundamentalism i have encountered in america for which i would even contemplate using the f word which is fascism, i don't like that kind of tendency to say their fascists. they're not. in fact, they're bringing the noise of democracy, marching into a public square, and i like their noise. this movement is a little more severe. and i give you the sense of its severity. the leader said i could come along with him and right, just like cassandra. mighty good advertising, but did want to understand. unless he misunderstand, he said that that's not a metaphor. your cultural terrorist. all of you, by the way, by virtue of being in this bookstore are probably terrorists, too. he believes that america is only 4 percent christian. broccoli more than 4% christians in this room. ron ross hard lines, and thus set out to write about it. and ended up finding myself more interested in the kids. the kids are sort of wonderful. the scene of want to read to you is from one of the events called acquire the fire. this big rally that can go on for three days. the biggest what had 70,000 kids . pyrotechnics, big screens. a light show. in the process they encounter this kind of thinking. this one is called acquire the fire. two girls, october 13. at acquire the fire he tells the kids to makes lists of secular pleasures that they will sacrifice for his cause. he starts with hip-hop heartthrob. music. beneath that, friends. party. this, she explains, is a polite way of saying sex, not that she has had any, thank god, or knows anyone her age who has, but she has learned that the culture wants to force upon her. the world is a 45 year-old pervert posing as another tween online. all just sit with gentle dealt, he said he was 45 years old. a policy of letting his children chooses codes for him so that he could fit in and relate to the kids. he speaks from authority. he sometimes brings a garbage truck on to the floor. this is a relatively small event . they went over to one of the trash bins. i feel so much better. hannah nonce, smiling. i feel free, she says. later a p.r. representative takes me backstage. most kids mention music, movies or girlfriends and boyfriends or sex or surprisingly often just condoms which is worrisome. all start by giving up condoms and maybe work my way up to sex. a number of new warriors are precise about the proposed abandoning. starbucks, multiple votes. victoria's secret, ditto. encourages kids to confront their local 13 stores. breakfast cereal. one kid breath smelling amazing. 993 fm. binging. probably a good idea. medication, probably not. a&w root beer. i would say this is ridiculous what they're doing to repair, wrote a boy. most of them are junior versions the note from allison, a child got. if this keeps up there will be kids to buy your stuff. the kids to have aids who are dying. i say no and the name of jesus, stop. mtv. are you really willing to risk the destruction of humanity or this? to the media, stop spreading your infectious fills or we will take action. this is a real war. this is not a metaphor. and yet he does work in metaphors. one of the things that attracts me to these characters, it's kind of a certain fascination with magical language, the spells. just like sandra, performing his own kind of magic. i think sometimes why i end up writing about religion some much, not a religious person. this is very psychoanalysis, going back to the early youth. at age seven living the high bid and lord of the rings, discovering that miller is in real and that habits aren't real, magic is in real. and so a become fascinated with people repeat that it is. people who still live as if it is. i don't mean that in a derisive way. people who take action and make things happen as if it is. and sometimes that magic is harmless and sometimes it's, perhaps troubling. the culmination of some of the rallies, he decides to illustrate the biblical story, ron, like many believers believe that the bible is a book of everyday common-sense wisdom applicable to your daily life with all the answers to your questions. just open it up. he opens it up to judges, chapter 20. a story that is so horrifying that it should be evident, i think, that you're going to need some thinking on what this one means. a story of a traveler. he has a concubine, traveling with the concubine. he comes to this town and can't go any further. he speaks to a man who says out but you're up for the night. the townspeople are not good people. they go to the house and say, you know, to the host they say, send out your guest. some dug your guest. but there going to do to him, we don't know. so instead he decides to send out the concubine. a horrible story. the killer. the killer. the next day the man does with anyone would do pretty goes out and catch her body up into 12 pieces and says them to the tribes of israel. at this point if you're sitting there, you know, every day you learn something from the bible, well, i guess he is thinking like that because he brings these rallies together with a little bit of what i think of as a dark magic. he brings a mannequin out on to the stage and says the manikin represents the secularism and is labeled with the sense of secularism, pornography across the chest naked committee may be . music on one arm. i remember one arm labeled secularism as a subset of secularism, but you don't get caught up on the details because he has 5,000 or 10,000 or even he has had these rallies with 70,000 kids, he has been chanting cut up to concubine, cut up to concubine, destroys secularism. he takes this mannequin and he dismembers it, takes apart, since the arms out into the crowd. the kids screaming. they want this souvenir. on the one hand it's like being at an alice cooper concert or ozzie osborne spitting fake blood. he's taking it a little further. cut up the concubine. i was there with a 14-year-old boy. wherever i go, you know, in the church, no matter how or synagogue or mosque or compound , there is always the orthodoxy, the official believes, and these human beings who do have common sense. i was standing there with a 14-year-old boy. this was the culmination. it was the torso, i think it was little pornography. everyone wants the price of the pornography naked torso. this boy says, who wants to walk home hugging and naked torso label pornography. i just wanted to hug that kid. a good kid. he saw through that dark magic. i want to close with one more short piece. it's maybe the flip side of the scene, the battle cry. it really is -- i think of it as the prehistory of occupy wall street. a number of stories in this book i wasn't planning this, but as i was reporting i would keep running into people that i had written about in the book. some of them famous like cornell west, already zero arrested twice in the think he will be again. to put that in perspective, a man with very advanced cancer putting his body on , doing this, he had this wonderful line. he says, the definition of dignity, human dignity, the most essential dignity, he says, is the ability to contradict what is. that is dignity. it's not the affirmation, is in addition. you say no to things as they are and begin to imagine something different. that is what gives me sympathy for people like ron and his imagination that terrifies me. he is saying no, starting down that time grope toward imagination. also, a number of chapters in here about anarchy. another subculture that fascinates me. i think writing about faith and i wanted to understand anarchists. in fact, i would run into it -- there is a story in here about a man named brad will. killed in 2006. he went down to cover an uprising in oaxaca mexico and was filming the conflict. it began as a teacher strike, but this was -- they actually took over the state. and he was filming a conflict with the police. he filled his own murder. a policeman slow down the video piquancy it on youtube if you have the technology. slowdown and there's a puff of smoke, the bullet, and then bang. he falls down. and when i was first down there at occupy wall street a kept running into brad wilson. despite that sort of grimm and terrifying and, and i had never known him in real life. talking to his friends and family, the skies lived an incredibly joyous life. and it was sad to me this could not be there to see this thing in the park, which i should say, if you haven't -- i don't know about boston, but it wasn't defined by rage. the dominant mode in that part was joy, happiness, imagination. and even i would run into all these people and some of the characters all share with you from the story, have been trying for something like this for a long time and maybe have been getting it wrong, as these folks had. a group of anarchists. many of them you can find even now back in the park. their interests. this is 2004. the republican national convention in new york city. as i said, there were trying for something big. sometimes they got it wrong. i would argue, this is one of the times they really get it wrong. a group of anarchists had set up a dragon float, like a chinatown chinese new year dragon and were all marching in cited. speakers and smoke, steam coming at of its head in the dragon tamer up front doing somersaults. in the middle of march, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. it pulls up in front of madison square garden. it blows up. this is 2004, three years after september 11th, and a blue something up in a crowd outside madison square garden. terrifying. i was right there. nobody was hurt. it wasn't that kind of explosion, but it was terrifying it was not a picture of something more beautiful. it was a picture of something more frightening. and, you know, i talked to them. even the new that didn't quite have the effect that we thought it would. they want to create political imagination and they ended up with this mannequin. they tried again, and this is what happens. close to midnight way home i stop at st. marks and the bowery, a 200 year-old church. protesters who character restlessly. it was packed for the duration of the demonstration. giving way to radical rituals and good-natured hard-core hoedowns, marching bands are naturally, any march for freedom, peace, war, whenever. when i passed by, stomping up dust in the graveyard, to to this. trumpet, clarinet, doing badly. pots and pans at the margins. they're rude mechanicals orchestra. they were playing what i at first mistook for gypsy music. there were also fond of italian fight songs and summer regionals. the latter tended toward full football stadium and bums. good enough for the men and women standing around us to break into a barefoot flamenco emulation. anarchist ninja suits gave weight to a buddy striped and tattered school team t-shirts and beer bellies, bareback, shaved heads, dreads, close cropped buzz cuts and well-trained boys shaking in the cemetery dust of a gypsy, fights on flamenco. the music was a gumbo, and the crowd ragtag with all the best and worst senses, but the specter of purity placed the air. a belief in its possibility, it's fire ability. but the door of the church someone painted a poster board with the giant green fish bubbling a command, don't vote, like the holy rollers of old. the radical theories of now, the midnight conversation was made up of, algers as fundamentalists used to describe themselves. come out from the record world. come out from big media. put away your notebooks. and then joined. we did not do this for him. we're not doing it for you. there is no story right now. later their would be evaluation of the meetings in strategy sessions. the trombone would turn against the two up. one anarchist would call another hon nark or copper tool. the burning dragon. the dancing derided as narcissistic. documentaries' would be made. history replayed and reprinted. that would come later. now was not the time for media. it was, rather, the jury crows of musical theater. the grave dust and the sleeping in a church. the big boom of the bass drum, the flamenco steps, and the gift of yo-yoing tons. a girl perched high in a tree, all believers. the entirety of protest or revolution or radical or an apple send the system or neopaganism or whenever anyone cared to call with there were doing. better still, don't call it anything. they scorned as sound bites, and for the moment they desperately did not want mediation of any kind. what they wanted was a revelation, religion as broadly defined as the mouth of the hudson, not political digression. they wanted, believed they needed, and maybe even achieved before the music stopped and the kitchen closed and the big anarchist boys and the rosy cheek it curls and a half wild man all fell asleep among and on the gravestones. what they wanted was some kind of federation -- federation. stolen in a sense, free food cooked too long. a big fire in front of madison square garden. we did it for ourselves. one more thing. i said at the beginning that a bar of this book from porter square. the liberty park or occupy wall street library, consider that, the midnight dance party, the dragon that got it wrong, the dance party that got it right and a library, they really got it right. this was the embodiment of political imagination. as i said, this library, we are still waiting. last time to the city had given back a little less than half of the books. most of them with some kind of damage, some destroyed. and books of all sorts, not just political books, you know, the first destroyed book i got back was a bible. they welcomed books from everywhere. there were romance novels. if your a.m. and apart for two months you might get, believe it or not, tired. and so people wanted to read twilight novels or graphic novels or real literature or poetry. riders were coming down to this library. and at first the riders were not coming down. and then that's what i want to close with. i want to close with a piece not of my own riding, may be symbolic because i gave my reading copies of "sweet heaven when i die" to the newly reconstituted occupy wall street library that sprang up last night. it had grown by 3:00 a.m. this morning when i left. you know, books just keep coming. but, you know, the books came, at first, but the writers didn't because writers tend to be lonely and selfish people. i can say this with some authority. and what i was reporting, and you know, as you can tell, i'm not a newspaper reporter, i'm not concerned about conductivity , unconcerned with transparency and honesty. i bought this thing -- i thought this thing was fantastic. i said, where are the writers? over here i see the construction workers, the teachers, lots of librarians and chefs, a lot of chefs, laid off cokes, scary guys. nannies. here come the teamster. the artist. musicians. where are the writers? waiting and waiting. i thought, you know, someone has a letter of support. i'm going to find that. no letter emerged. and so on going to try to experiment here. i don't normally read from my iphone, but i think it is appropriate for one of want to do here. we have all heard that to rear square in egypt was one of the great aspirations, partially tweet powered, twitter powered. that can be exaggerated, but what i discovered and tried to cover this as a journalist, this occupy wall street, it did have a lot to do with twitter, partly because of the crack downs that were not just one night, but a month and a half, every night, over 2,000 occupations. if you look at twitter around midnight you will see them, and not in the big cities like tucson. every night somebody gets beat up. every night the cops come after the 11:00 news and the paper goes to bed with bulldozers, horses and riverboats. every night this happens. this, i think, is something that is important regardless of what your politics are, regardless of whether you think they have the right approach. the noise of democracy, erica, you know, as a daily news put it, mayor bloomberg today, cities don't do things they are proud of that 1:00 a.m. so the only way to track this was on twitter. i would be up there lated night. that's when i discovered salman rushdie. some of you may know, he spends a lot of time on twitter, perhaps too much. have you seen his kardashian palms? he has done a series of poems for kim kardashian or about her. but it's wonderful to be able to say, there's this writer. if there was a letter of support for the occupy wall street, would you sign it? just that in the middle of the night. sure. he has ideas and names. he came up with a short letter. i mean to our really, a sentence we the undersigned riders' support occupy wall street. we did not want to get into what it should say. we invited people to sign. he was the first, the first signatory. he was joined by -- that was 2000. five u.s. pulled laureates, national book award winners, macarthur geniuses, a lanyard -- all these prizes, but the key thing is its alphabetical, and anybody consign. if you are here and your writer, you should sign. how do i know a viscount? you decide. this -- we want to democratize the literary culture. a celebrity -- margaret atwood, all these writers. a book about zombies. it could be a good book. 2,000 riders. but i want to close by sharing with your -- and done using partly because i thought it was neat because it began on twitter and partly because i'd give away my copy to the park last night. the peace. it started asking writers, write something about what's happening we don't care if it is pro or con. whenever you want. go down to one of these things. come back and right that it was disorganized. one of the first pieces we got was from a writer named daniel handler who is better known as lebanese make it. a little too old, but now have caught up maybe would have restored my lost how bad faith. he wrote this wonderful piece. i want to share a few little bits and closing. i want to close with someone else's writing. it's called 13 observations made while watching occupy wall street from a discreet distance. i'll give you a few. number one, if you work hard and become successful it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard. just as if you are tall with blond hair it does not mean you would be a midget if you were bald. three, monday is like a child, rarely accompanied. when it disappears, look to those who are supposed to be keeping an eye and it was you were at the bridge restore. you might also look to someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around with long to sit -- suspicious explanations for how they got there. people who say money does not matter are like people who say kate doesn't matter. it's probably because they already had a few slices. very authentic cough. the real thing. someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thursday. don't tell them that they aren't. sit with them and have a drink. finally i will close with my favorite, number 11. historically a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending. thank you. [applause] a elyssa to begin their q&a, we sit here quietly . >> thought about this book. it's about one of your previous books. i guess to questions. first question is that, from what i can tell your book doesn't seem to a has slowed down one bit. i wonder if you agree and if you could speculate on why. the more sensitive question is this, you trace the origin back some ways. it gets, you know, the more you find out the more incredible it is. it's like there are these sheets coming up all over the landscape. alcoholics anonymous, uplift people. >> neither of which are a part of the fundamentalist organization. >> but they'll have sources. >> social activists. >> literally the same source. the action group. >> okay. >> it takes us back tomorrow reality. we backwind which is kind of scary. after the war there were pushing this idea of reconciliation all right. now, and then you show that. hillary clinton. >> not quite. yes. before we -- because not everyone has read the book, not everyone has read any of my books, but you're doing a good summary. >> let me get to the question. were all kind of frightened. i've read the book. that's what they would say, too. the question is, health care should we be? >> the aspects of this. you can imagine that it was -- >> let me return the question. the question, to restate the question, the question was in regard to one of my earlier books on the fundamentalist subculture and this particular organization that has been around for a long time. i would argue. and plenty of others would argue it's one of the most influential christian conservative organizations in washington, an international organization that goes back to the 1930's. and it they tend to be a secretive organization. they're not secret and there is no conspiracy, but they're not running the noise of democracy. they're not marching. you can disagree with ron. they're doing things quietly. and so the questioner says, health care should we be. you know, you know, they pled answer i suppose is scared enough to buy copies for all your friends, but the real answer, i think, is not too scared. not too scared. i think, you know, i'm not trying to lecture on fear. partly because this organization has been around for a long time, invest in the status quo as their own fundamentalist allied described, a religion of the status quo, and the things as they are. if you look around this world, we have it pretty much figured out. our democracy is some along. we have a quality, liberty. you have no problems. but if, on the other hand, you see something problematic you should be concerned. i don't find fear particularly compelling. you know, where it now we have the most extravagant and almost impossible to believe display of political imagination in at least 40 years. a think you can almost make an argument that goes back further than that. now there is this imagination. that is a much, much more interesting response. i say that as a person who has spent years writing about the right to. being on book tour this fall during the republican primary season and then being reassigned to go down to cicada park has been such a wonderful liberation suddenly i stopped watching the debate. i turned down an assignment to go down and spend some time with rick perry. i couldn't do it. i said earlier, the most essential to human dignity is to contradict what is and say no. when you're talking about fear i think you say no. no to the status quo. religion that sees the rich has rewarded by god and the poor has appointed to their poverty by god. say no to that. that is the beginning, but that opens the space, i hope, for imagination. >> since you have been present at or near the birth of occupy, what have you learned about other movements that you may have written about over the years from being present so early on when usually you probably come later on? >> that is a really good question. that's interesting. you know, this other social movement -- for years i have been writing about christian right, and they are a social movement. this group, this gentleman over here is asking about began in 1935 and largely a response to the west coast general strike of 1934 which is a forgotten bit of american history, kind of astonishing. this was a true general strike in america. fdr, crazy right-wing fdr moved warships and off the coast. the city of san francisco shut down. seattle shutdown, and it was a similar general strike in that they did not have exactly clear demands. there was a real small anarchist element in it. the social movement that arose in response was the christian right social movement that arose in response. it had some of the sort of the same language that you hear from people. well, the message is messy. yes, these people having defied something wrong with society, but we must have a clear program we must have it right away. no time for deliberation. we must start with a clear program. and it's been interesting seeing this one start from the beginning. you know, maybe by beginning an almost mean like the midnight mass of anarchist dancing in the church. they're having those same debates. most of the people involved in those debates are really there in good faith. that's not have any demands. like the folks in that story, the moment is now versus the people that must have a program. they have a persuasive case as well. they see -- i don't think i understood before witnessing this one, even having spent so much time writing about it, just how fragile the social movement is at the beginning. this one is interesting. the story i wrote about and the rolling stone, you go back to the early meetings in august when they started having meetings. the great lucky break that occupy wall street had with all the traditional leftist organizations either did not show up or left because they thought it was too disorganized. you know, the community organizers were not there. the academics aren't there. it was a bunch of crusty social parties ranging from the downright tricky but the workers world party that thinks north korea is the ideal state. they had their microphones, disciplined, they have been running the left for years. they marched out and said this doesn't have a chance. the only people left for artists and some writers who were there in the beginning and media makers and filmmakers. they had no idea what to do, so they made it up. you make things up. starting a story. it i think, you know, really we are still on the opening pages. we don't know. this could become a manuscript or short story. i don't think we have an answer. also kind of exhilarating. [inaudible] >> we hear a lot about the mormon church. i don't know if you have written about mormons or psychologists, but if you have maybe if you could share your experience because it is so interesting. american religions and where they are. >> years ago i was asked by a magazine to write about scientology. passed before, should i be afraid, no way in my riding about scientology. i just didn't want to deal with that. i didn't do it. a while past. a friend of mine from another magazine, janet right was writing about it. she has a book if you want to know about it called inside scientology. it's an important book. she took the risk. i think this was for rolling stone at one point. tom cruise actually showed up at their offices to try to kill the story. at think it was his sister were something like this. i haven't written about scientology. i read about it. as a person interested in religion i have sometimes blonde looking. norman is and is more interesting and obviously more credit card of politics right now. the heart of the democracy, you know, the american history, we have a terrible history, deep, deep persecution of mormons. mormons -- the mormon church does not have such a great history itself most big organized religions don't. and i have not written about mormon jeff kamala of want to do a story. i got invited to speak at the salt lake city annual conference of ex forms. i said i'm neither mormon nor x, nor have i ever written about mormons and have nothing to author. there were interested in this work had done about fundamentalism. these are people who had been disowned, drummed out of work and so on. and there are all family lived -- fabulous speakers. one of the great things about more monism is an emphasis on everybody speaking. so they get out. a drunken meeting. there were doing everything there were not supposed to before. the knottiest jokes i've ever heard. they lined up and each get three minutes to give testimony. becoming an ex mormon. i thought this would be kind of dispiriting. one of the things now know better. .. >> i had two meetings. one was in reference to many trips that i took as a child with the appearance who are academics just turning off in their career when i was a young child and took me to england and africa. and to a number of different towns where they were starting their first job. then the many troops retook after my parents were divorced my brother and i went with our mother, had to move back across the country. we were it los angeles and had to go to the east coast and travel to many new homes and places where i did not know anybody. as she struggled to get her life back contracts after my parents broke up. but it is also a metaphorical reference to the trip that i took reporting in retain this book where after the entire adult lifetime establishing my own career, my own family coming thinking all the time i was doing everything my parents had not done to avoid their mistakes did make my way in the world completely on my own, i decided to go back to piece together the story of who they were and what happened to them and how they influenced me for bad and for good. it is subtitled a family memoir" but for those who read memoirs it is different than a lot of conventional memoirs that are written from memory. my book is partially from every but largely from a year in half of reporting about what happened. that is what i was trained to do as a professional. after trying to write for a couple of weeks from every i decided i needed to report the story. that is what i did. the book takes you through what i thought i knew about my family in my parents and what i learned over the course of reporting. i will read a brief excerpt that will sell you of who my parents were and how they met that i will talk about what happened afterwards. >> growing up a ticket for granted it was my mother who was first attracted to my father. after all he was the exotic one, gregarious, the charm machine. she was shy, the one who's stuttered so badly as a child her parents sent her away to be treated by doctors in paris and was still self-conscious when she could not get her words out quickly. but when i went back in investigated it was the other way around. he became obsessed with her. she noticed him around campus as one of the few black students in the mid 1950's. he was hard to miss. she heard him perform one search rice and he played the guitar and sang fuld songs for '04 while he earned pocket money -- money by recording commercials and later she would hear jingle playing on the air to feel of a shiver of pride when the announcer said with a young man ever turned professional he would give him a contract. but that was news to be all because i have no memory of my father singing. they met his junior year thanks to a play. the french instructor in her fourth year of teaching, also the faculty adviser for the french club and it decided it would be fun to help the students put on a production in the original. she chose the satirical one-act play that recounts the fans will journeys of the captain cook's arrival in the tropics. two direct sheikh in listed a junior from england named michael who had taken one of her class is as a freshman. they cast the park had nobody to play the chief, the tribal leader who greets the explorers. he said he knew somebody you have the perfect looked, his roommate. the only hitch is that he did not speak french. and he agreed to take off of the role she had to coach him so he could learn his lines and speak with a convincing accent. they met several times in her apartment where she oversaw french call for those who wanted to speak the language she was impressed by how quickly he learned and by what a good nick he was part of the left at the part with the chief to show hospitality offers his daughter to the english ran. she notices how his cheeks dimple when he smiled and the worry lines in his forehead creased when he made a serious point*. there was no mistaking how handsome he was particularly when he put on his grass skirt costume for rehearsals and bared his dark and muscular chest. but she was startled the night of the wrap party when they were talking in a corner of her crowded apartment and all of a sudden he kissed her. she pulled back looking confused. i thought you wanted me to do that he said. the other day when you touched my arm i thought it was a signal. i'm sorry she said. that is just a habit i have when i talk to people. he must have seen her blushing since her skin was fair in brought -- recalled in her hair that she would wear in a short bob. but hurt defendants did not deter him a that was part of the of the were when he fantasized as he must have done since 1955 of black student would hardly dared to kiss his white teacher on the ellipse simply on spur of the moment. would you mind if i visited you here again? i suppose that would be all right she replied. he started to come by every few-- one hour or so at a time. they would listen to music he would bring his 45 then introduce your two black jazz singers sometimes he would kiss her or hold her hand and she would consent primly but mostly they talked. he told her about growing up in pittsburgh and his parents the mortician in what it was like to live above a funeral parlor. when his mother came to visit friends in philadelphia he arranged for them to me. my mother was instant the repressed -- impressed that her elegant manner and the way of speaking. he rarely mentioned the man he was named for except to say they did not get along and his parents were divorced. he confessed his father had beaten him as a child. eventually they discovered which was a humiliating coincidence per common mother had gone to graduate school with the girl who came from harrisburg and family had employed granddad as a butler after he lost his business for about she told him about her parents and how they met as protestant missionaries in an effort that and spent much of her childhood. she described how she came to america on a boat with five sisters when she was 14 and went to live with the family of a biology professor which is how she came to attend college there then later returned to join the french department. the reason her parents had sent her away, the dangerous work that caused her to be watched and arrested by the police. she told them how much she loved and admired her father and how bad she thought it was that he disliked his own so much. that is how they match. >> a black man and a but woman in the mid-1950s when it was still illegal for interracial marriage and oscillate the teacher was pretty scandalous than and is still scandalous. as a result when they started courting they had to carry on in secret for almost a year and a half until my father graduated and they married in that summer. my mother was coming of four 10 year but when the president of the college found out about their relationship, he tried to deny her tenure. only when my father had gotten involved when he was in high school with quakers in pittsburgh where he grew up and going to those work camps in the summer had met civil-rights leaders who were connected to the quakers got them involved and also those who later organized the a bouquet watch on washington intervened on their behalf and got the president to back off and my mother got tenure. i tell the story where both of my parents came from. and night allude to it the first few pages. but they came from very different but fascinating world's. my father grew up in black segregated pittsburgh. both parents of his were undertakers. my grandfather who was born on egg farm in texas 1898 the 13th son of a former slave, had started his education and literally in a one-room schoolhouse and only educated through the seventh or eighth grade. made his way north as part of the great black migration that others have written about. going to pritzker to star as a labor there and eventually a encountered a lot of racism that i found out about with this book. but eventually got a side job driving a car and realize is more and more black folks moved into pittsburgh, he had a problem that he did not want to bury black folks that would be bad for his business with the white clientele said he needed a black undertakers and he said that my granddad in business. my father grew up across august wilson and the 6 feet under. [laughter] my mother, parents were french missionaries, a protestant missionaries meeting in france. she spent hurt early years in french ever cad in megastar and then moved with her seven sisters to france where my grandfather who was a protestant became one of the two religious leaders in the village in the mountains of france which when the germans invaded and became the underground railroad for hiding refugees from the nazis in became a famous story eventually. before a lot of this happened, my grandparents were very concerned the nazis were 29 educational opportunities to where they invaded so they sent my mother and five younger sister is to travel to the united states to stay with american family. my mother archived on a boat when she was 14 with other refugees children and placed with his family which is how she came to go to college and finish high-school and come back as a professor where she met my father. all of those elements of the story that over the years when i would tell people hong kong money would say that is fascinating. but another part of the story is what happened after my parents divorced. i was six years old at the time. we have moved to princeton where my father was the first black graduate student in the department of politics at princeton in the first black person ever to get a doctorate. then eventually to los angeles where he had job offer from ucla. my mother gave up per tenured position to follow my father and line year after we arrived he asked for a divorce. my mother barely knew how to drive. she had to support herself working as a substitute teacher in high school in a community college. she tried to get my father into therapy but he would not have any of it. and eventually they divorced and moved back to that east coast. she had no idea where she would landor prospects to find a permanent job but the job she was able to get did not pay much. we struggled financially. she was very depressed my brother and i thought all the time i started to eat compulsively and was almost 100 pounds overweight when i was a teenager. during the period of the next 56 years when my father was out of our life and he was supposed to pay child support and stopped doing that, unbeknownst to me at the time he was becoming a chronic alcoholic to the point* when he re-entered my life, when i just became a teenager to take a job as head of the first african american studies program at princeton, he has such a problem first of all, every time my brother and i would visit he would start to drink and he would have to go back to the clinic and within a couple of years he lost his tenured position at princeton which is hard to do. there was a period during those years where we fought i kept trying to reconcile with him and it would not work out. there was a point* before i went off to college and tried to visit him. he started drinking but then he asked me to come back because he wanted to try to stop. i don't know if you know, about alcoholism but what happens to chronic alcoholics when they tried to stop drinking with withdraw all i had to sit and a nurse him through that for several days. it was a rough period. i went off to college at that point*. and i went to harvard and deriving their specific leave joining the college newspaper that gave me a sense of what i could do with my life coming out of all of that. i fell in love with journalism and the crimson and the people i met injury most of that period i had no contact with my father within to the end of my junior year he contacted me to say he finally stopped drinking and i learned later he did it by finally going to the aa facility in rural new jersey where the director of will then become the made people promised to stay for a minimum of six months and did not take insurance because she did not want them to say they had to stay less. it took that. and finally we could establish a relationship again. but in the 30 years after that, as i developed a career as a journalist with "newsweek", and that the woman there who i eventually married starting a family of my own a fair amount of success causing such an unhappy childhood to be a successful adult. i thought i was doing this on my own. and by avoiding all the mistakes of my parents and to show my father in to be a responsible husband. but then he died. two days after thanksgiving 2008. by the time he died, we had developed a better relationship. but it took along time and it was still little wary. and then writing his story are much negative story that then on the exact same day one year later i said i want to try to write the story now and that is where i began. but within this by my parents actually was deeply rooted in my family story. with all of the unhappiness there was consistency going back on both sides of a love of learning and writing. said desire to set off to concord to world's. with the theme of survival and resilience that unbeknownst to me had given me the strength to make a successful life for myself, with the parallels to the barack obama story that a lot of people are assuming is a story mostly about race and identity but even more than that is a story about family, faith, with quakers in judaism after i met my wife and as we raise our children with the faith that we were shipped. then i talk that the end of the book the interplay between the understanding and forgiveness but let i fund run is to a certain degree i had to forgive first and that allowed me to embark on the journey and then understand i would be happy to answer any questions. please wait for the microphone. [inaudible] >> what i knew to some extent before i started to report the story that i found much more about was the relationship between what is my father and his father's relationship. my granddad had suffered a stroke when i was a small child so i remember him as a sad figure in a wheelchair. but what i found out is what a formidable figure he was. and her husband sunday that might interest you. rioting in autobiographies he went to search the door and found a document that my grandfather must have dictated because he could not have written in his condition on his 75th birthday after one decade after he suffered his stroke talking about how he was born on a farm in his early-- coming to pittsburgh, encountering racism and starting in the funeral business. to realize what a dynamic man he was but he was tough and very hard on my father as is on the sun. my father hated him. i don't think that is too harsh of the word. of my father well is named after him. my dad hated the name probably because it sounded like a slave name which it was. and he insists that people call him syl short for his middle name. i always thought growing up in a think i became more convinced when reporting the book that a lot of my father's problems came from his deep anger. even though we had a lot of conflict was determined at least to come to terms with them. to show some compassion towards him because i felt if i didn't i could repeat the pattern because my father hated his father rejected everything he stood for but yet became much like him in a lot of ways. and this is just a final phase of that trying to partly so i would not like him. >> [inaudible] >> he did. his name is paul and his two years younger than me. he was born into a very different vermeil and they say every child is born into a different family. i had the benefit although i don't remember but i could reconstructed in the book of that the years when my parents were first married. when i was nine months old, my father had just finished his doctorate. for african politics and was the brilliant man. but then to be far more distinguished but then finished the course work and embarking on the field research in africana and number nine -- northern nigeria my parents took me for one year to do research to go to northern nigeria then to reconstruct this in the book. it was an exciting time. then my mother was born in france then brought us back to america my father stayed in africa and did not even see my brother and tell he was probably nine months old or so. it was when my father came back that when things started to get worse. so he never had the benefit of those have the ears. we fought severely after the divorce and frankly once we became adults, had a respectful relationship but not close in a way that pains us both but finally when i went to interview paul for the buck we talk about it but he is now a psychologist and living in san diego there is a lot the scientific psychological work that when siblings fight as savagely as we do that they are angry at their parents. so that is something that brought us together. i just came back from sea diego to see him and if nothing else it was worth it for that. >> talk about the feet of reconstructions also a love of writing novels sides of your family aside from the autobiography of your grandfather what do you have in a way of writing? for letters are diaries? >> let me talk about how lead to report the story. first of all, so a lot of the sources those who were quite elderly to people insisted they could not remember what happened. if you want to talk to me that is okay but i just remember. i always make sure it was early in the day and they didn't have a lot of things to go to so if we had to start a good conversation it would not be pulled away. and day would correct me and they would say no, no, no this is where really happens. people get very sharpen a correct do. but then i asked if there were letters are other things written or other scholarly papers were the diaries that had been kept and sometimes they remembered that they did they would say i don't know then there would find things and send them to be. of course, there were all kinds of clues to things that have happened. it was piecing together those clues that i could go back to say what does that mean? and actually a probably the most profound secrets in the family what comes between my parents and the grounds of the divorce what happens with child support i found out through the letters to follow-up and corroborate. but it was powerful this autobiography was unbelievable. he said that he it -- his father my great grandfather was born a slave but then taught himself to read and write with a local historian for the good you it messenger from where he lived. my french grandfather kept diaries when he was in madagascar are and french africa so there was a lot to draw on. i have to say one of the things that made me realize is the fact that people don't write those kinds of letters and a more will be a disaster for historians and memoir writers. >> prior to using your journalism skills did you ever use your story consciously in the crimps then in the magazine? >> i did not talk about a for a very long time those people even now people who know me pretty well and work with me are surprised to learn the story. i the ink is because i was ashamed of the circumstances. one of the things is that i don't feel ashamed personally but for my parents for there is a lot of painful stuff but it to find out how admirable they were in many ways to share that with the world. in terms of being biracial, no question that was a factor in my career. is an additional thing that made me interested to become a journalist because you see both sides of things in makes you appreciate that there are various sides to the stories to see the different perspectives. i think frankly because i was raised largely by my mother she kept us in contact with my father's family even after the divorce. i had that part of my heritage in my life as well. but i was raised in a largely white environment of a college town where my mother lived and as a result i felt quite comfortable around white people and no question if you are a black executive in the media world these days it is still an overwhelmingly white and fire me in in order to succeed you have to feel comfortable so that is a benefit. there are other elements of perspective to my parents. they were both brilliant people but also cahal this skeptics who taught me to accept nothing at face value and that is helpful when you are a journalist. >> there are some parallels between you and barack obama. he is african-american but has no connection to african-american parents to have connection into slavery. you on the other hand,, you know, that your parents were slaves and he had a conflict with his identity to be raised by a white mother after the african father abandoned him. he found his identity when he went to a church but on the other hand, you became a jewish so that it is interesting. >> a lot of people have commented on those parallels. but there are a couple of things so that was billion but very troubled but one big difference in the story that as we say, obama and never knew his father. and encountering him a couple of times briefly and his story which he tells beautifully in "dreams from my father" is about the struggle of 70 who grout -- group without a father to figure out what it is to be a black man on his own. in terms of the relationship with my father is a very complicated relationship but it is real and my father is a real character in his book. and then s you say was a bomb and having no real contact with the black america 10 experience, i decides fairly late in life after law school that to to move to chicago meets michelle bob and sen to become part of the family and joins said jeremiah wright church to raise his identity as a black american. to my feeling of racial identity there is no one way to the black. society will tell you anybody who has black blood that is how a society defines us to say e will lease the black in this of day do you and i talked about the pressures that i think people of mixed-race but even those who have to black parents grown up in the integrated world after all of the advances to self defined that you are authentic the black obama's himself encountered this when he started to run for president and i don't get on my soapbox about that but it is the rejection of the premise i always felt that was sent the full story. but my wife is white and jewish cannery made a decision to raise our kids as jews because i tell them e the addition and though their light skinned, if folks want to decide if they come after the black told they will come after you. but by the similar token if your mother is a jewish, you are jewish according to the traditions we wanted to raise our kids to have a consciousness of both of those traditions. i believe very strongly we should not be judgmental and in the end part of the story of this book is a universal theme of family is are much more important altman leave than the issue of your skin the color. >> i wonder because as you read you very rarely used the word i. me and she and there was one line it when you said comment one question is about the lowered i and when you said i had to sit with my father as he went through his detox, why did you have to? who could not be there or why couldn't somebody else be there? i am just curious about that. my father was also an alcoholic but he died as a result. >> let me first answer, there is more in the book as it goes along but as i said, i want to part of what i write about in the book is a narrative threat to is to tell you this story from a point* of view of a journalist who lives through these things, remembers certain things this way but then found out what happened. and it goes back and forth between the two. first of all, i am not a terribly confessional%. people are shocked i would go so far to write this book and the people who know me over here are laughing. but i want to tell the story in a way that was not overly emotional or sentimental so people could make their own conclusions about my parents , grandparents and me. some people have found it to detached but others have found it more moving because of that. but i will leave you to judge that. zero 1/2 bid in the episode where diners my father, i was 17 years old at the time, i had actually left high school early probably in the unconscious desire to correct the past. not to very happy there and left as i found myself that 17 i just dropped out of college after a sinister. what i decided i wanted to do is to go try to live with my father. it did not work out so well. he agreed to have me come live with him but then he fell off the wagon and i had to leave and i came back then he fell off the wagon again and i had to leave. at that plane two i thought it would not work out to zoete me in lived here on the upper left side i lived in a spare room then in the international youth hostile hostile -- hostile and then worked at the bookstore then saved my money so i could go to the movies that the new york theater i would live off of candy bars and the occasional trip to the steakhouse then all of a sudden i got a call from my father asking me to come back. he was living in jersey at the time. and i asked why and he said want to try to stop drinking. again. for the 100th time. and i want to use the drug but in order to take that it you have to get the alcohol out of your system. he said he was living with the woman named barbara calle but she was away at the academic conference so he asked if i could come to help him to make sure he would not suffer from seizures a few are in severe alcoholic you could die from withdrawal i knew enough about it that was the case but not enough to know that i was not medically qualified to really stay with him in that condition but i felt i had no choice and he asked me to do is so why did. in three days, he was in his bet, voting, said twitching, i was premium ice cubes, wiping his forehead, until finally he was well enough to get out of bet at which point* i told him goodbye, i was waiting to find out i applied to other colleges to find out what happened and then after i left i did not talk to him for three years. >> delving into your black history it affect your ethnic sensibility and what about this becoming confessional? >> my mother, who actually turned out to be a very good source, she just turned 85, she actually remembers the law but also it turns out she was a very prolific descriptive letter writer. so what she gave me are what she had written to other people helped me to conjure up the early years. but my mother is also french protestant as a literature professor sonat until the third draft that i sent her that she finally said this is pretty well written. [laughter] but i think she was very helpful and supportive and ultimately it is her story to an even though she was much less flamboyant i think she is a hero and number of people have told me that is the conclusion that they reach and i do not disagree with that. i don't know, it was always clear two me and it took awhile, i struggle with my identity and the part about being biracial is your florist so maybe i did it in a more intense way when it was a little bit younger than some people. but i had become very comfortable being someone who was proud of being black, proud of my heritage but fell clearly i would not be completed the defined by that. before i undertook the project. but it was fascinating to discover we are in great detail where i came from. i knew nothing about my great-grandfather. as a former slave. i knew very little about my granddad and he turned out to be an incredible force of nature. and i appreciate it what my father was doing. later in the buck we talk about the other disagreements about race and also how he interpreted things very differently there were things that happen to that he interpreted with more of a racial chip on his shoulder assuming things are racist. when i got married he interrogated my future mother-in-law about how she felt about her daughter marrying a black man. he was convinced when i became the editor of "newsweek" that people would be out for me because i was black. and i realize as the report the story comment that at the time i thought he was being paranoid and unreasonable, come on. but i realize when he grew up with the circumstance is that he did come i have to say, i talked to a lot of my black friends who say the same thing. when they talk to their parents it is a totally different frame of reference. >> when you think about your identity, coming from your experience are on your father's side, where you grab your identity from? >> again, i think that what i thought for many years was i was establishing a new identity i knew i was mixed race so forth and so on giving them a turbulence of my childhood i thought the ways in which as a professional and a father and husband in terms of my friend, my interest, it is what i was figuring out on my own because i did not have a proper father, my mother was two 1/2 p and depressed to be there for me and i was doing it on my own. like i said earlier, what i discovered is that i was very much no man is an island i was very connected to the mainland that was my past. on a personal level i hope you enjoy the book when you read it and i think ultimately it is a universal family story. but for me, feeling much more firmly rooted in my past, i think has been liberating that i don't have to run away from it any more. i can embrace it in be proud and share it with all the audio. [applause]