how the media wields dangerous words in a divided nation. following that, luis rodriguez who has been a finalist for the national book critics circle award, his most recent book is it cause you back an odyssey of love addiction revolutions and healing. he spent several years as a member of the chicano gang and we'll be talking with him and you will have a chance to talk to them as well. after that authors will be talking about violence. bellman, kaitlyn rother, lost girls and david mcconnell talking about american honor killings. our coverage continues with beau kilmer of the rand corp. taking your calls tweets in facebook comments regarding erdogan or legalization. and then a panel on culture of wars. karen sternheimer talks about celebrity culture, aired deggans who wrote race bader and finally nancy collins talk about the politics of sex in america. then we will wrap up today's coverage with larry elder well-known former radio talkshow host and columnist with his most recent book autobiography about his early years. dear father, dear son, two lives, eight hours about his early life in l.a. growing up with his father and learning about some of the things that his father went through during the period of jim crow. that is our live coverage for today and we hope your life again tomorrow. right now we are going to go to the hancock foundation building and this is where the history panel here at "the los angeles times" festival of books is just beginning. you are watching booktv on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] >> will you let me know when we are supposed to start? [laughter] >> good morning. that is my signal. my name is tim newton on back of "the los angeles times" and i'm pleased to welcome you to the 2013 festival of books. books. more specifically i'm delighted to welcome this morning to today's panel which brings some really remarkable authors to talk about their latest work and the idea behind him. before we get going i have been handed a piece of paper that says it's critically important that i read this. please silence all cell phones and i also need to tell you there is a book signing following the session here the book signing for this panel is in the staging area number one. i am told this is on the festival map and the center of the event program so the office here will be available to sign books immediately following a program here. a final note is personal recording of the session is not allowed so if you are doing so, please stop. you're about to meet these authors but before introduced him i want to point out something they have in common. i've been doing this festival now for many years but this is the first time i've underrated a panel on which every single author was the finalist for a time spoke price. [applause] everyone but me that is. that should give you some sense of the depth and quality of the books we are about to talk about. since i've had the pleasure of reading all of them i can tell you the judges chose very wisely. to my immediate left amy greenberg has taught since 1995. she's the author four books and more than a dozen articles on nineteentnineteent h century american history. she has received fellowships from the guggenheim foundation among others. her most recent book, "a wicked war" polk, clay, lincoln and the 1848 invasion of mexico was the main selection for the history book of the month club. it's a provocative sobering account of the war that has real implications for the president and has seen little consideration until now. to her left hw brands teaches history at the university of texas in boston and the author of memorable works american history. his most recent is the man who saved the union ulysses grant in war and peace which is volume three and spans american history from colonial times to the present. i had the pleasure of reading the book and i'm getting my hardback signed by bill. to his left john berry. john is an author journalisjournalis t and former football coach. his latest book is roger williams in the creation of the american soul church state and the birth of liberty. he has also written acclaimed histories of the great influence in the mississippi flood of 1827. is a sought after speaker with expertise on the pandemic and water policy and to solicit his input in those areas. he is also a distinguished scholar at tulane university and his work has appeared in a number of applications including the influential pc writer in a presidential campaign on the importance of separating church and state. he at it appeared in the opinion pages of "the los angeles times." finally at the end of the table fergus bordewich whose literary focus has been from the nation's founding to the civil war. his latest he has written about the underground railroad and the founding of washington d.c.. he is currently working on the history of the first congress which created the federal government. he is a freelance writer just about everywhere. and one other note i mentioned every member of today's panel is a finalist and that's true. i should add one thing. fergus is not only a finalist but the winner of this year's time spoke prize in history which i had the pleasure of presenting last night. [applause] congratulations. the topic of today's panel is american history and i must say i don't know exactly what that means. they handed me the title. that said it's true it examines arguments of one type or another. fergus is about a debate and in that category and bill has written about wars. john looks at the founding questions that predate the republic itself. i thought we could tease out what this means and i thought i would start with you bill. the slavery and the civil war represent an argument. can you talk about the arguments behind your book and what they say about the country then and now? >> there's a distinction between the argument made in that last tetanus. one is the argument over the civil war the argument that gave rise to the civil war and then the argument i make in my book. in fact i'm going to differ on the second one has although it is true every work of nonfiction in this includes implicitly or explicitly an argument. i tend to be less taken by historical arguments than some other offers and less taken than i used to be. in part because the really interesting argument of history are arguments that goes to the human nature. there are philosophical arguments and as a result they really have no answer. which doesn't mean they aren't worth making that you asked the question okay, was george washington the greatest president? we can have this argument and it wouldn't really change the history of it. it would perhaps change the way we think about it. i teach writing at the university is texas as well as history and one of the things i tell my apprentice historians is that every work of history is a combination of story and argument. narrative and thesis, and i have to say that the longer i write, the more i emphasize the narrative, the more emphasize the story and the less attention i give to the argument. some of this has to do with what i talked about a minute ago and that is arguments come and go. you know the arguments. eisenhower when he was in office was considered to be the president who didn't have his hand on what was going on. i don't know that we ended up knowing more about eisenhower. sometimes we know more about ourselves when we asked these questions. i try in my books, i try not to make an argument per se. i try to focus on the story. now sometimes, and everybody up here will appreciate how we get pushed by her publishers to make a statement, to make an argument and the title of my recent book, the man who saved the union was not the original title. you might think that a title like that states an argument. it's grand to save the union and i will save that, what i will say is i didn't go into writing the book intending to make any argument at all. i maybe was willing to make some observations but i wanted to do in the book was to tell the story of this guy who until the civil war began had no observer put gifts and not much in the way prospects and then within the space of three and a half years he became this nation's greatest hero. with that he became twice president of the united states. during the time in american history when it's more difficult to be a good president than any other period and i wanted to know how these experiences affected this man as much as how this man affected the experiences. and i eventually came up with this title "the man who saved the union" which might again sounds like a responsible guy. one of the things i don't say in the book and the reason i don't say this is that i haven't decided whether it's that i don't want to signal the readers to what the point i'm trying to make or if i'm trying to make a particular point but the man who saved -- "the man who saved the union" is the title but one of the things i don't thing the book was whether saving him was a good thing or not. most readers with think that of course saving the union was a good thing. i did too and tell a move to a state of former confederacy. i grew up in oregon and went to college in california so i natively assumed that everyone who lived in confederate states eventually came around and said it's probably right that the union held together but actually one of the things they do in my classes is scheduled tentative scenarios for my students. i sketch an alternate version of history where america turns up better. i wrote a look on franklin and roosevelt and its called traitor to his country. it has a lot to do with -- the new deal but one of the things they take great care to avoid saying the book is whether the new deal was a good deal or a bad deal. that's because well personally speaking i don't want to put off readers who have politics differed from my own in the second thing i really want the readers to make their own judgment. i hope people who like grant and hate grant can read my book with equal benefit. here's the story, make it what you want. so anyway -- >> amy d. want to take the question now? >> not to take exception to my colleagues understanding of what the relationship between the narrative is that i feel like you can't make a narrative unless you have an argument to go along with it i don't believe there's such a thing as a narrative that's free from argument. in the case of my book which covers the u.s.-mexico war award that grant himself described as the most wicked phot by a stronger nation against a weaker one i set out in his book wanting to make the argument that grant was right. this was a wicked war and strangely enough it's an argument that historians haven't made a lease with much success. most people who have written about the u.s. mexican war have looked at it from a military standpoint and from a military standpoint it was a success in the united states. the u.s. won every single encounter with the exception of the battle of san pascual which most americans choose to pick up as a instead of a battle so they can still say we won the great battle in the war. it was success as the war but it was a problematic war. one of the arguments that i was setting out to address here and that i think i do address in the book is what takes award just? and what justifies a war? it was a debate that people had at the time and by taking the title "a wicked war" which is it titled i might point out that my press didn't like and many people would find alienating and i was able to convince them that it was a good title for the book by pointing out it was something that grant said, you know i wanted to show that we have wars in our past that weren't just so what takes award just? thisthis is a debate obviously t continues to this day. the u.s.-mexico war was the first war started with the presidential lie. it was the first war that a majority or at least a large part of the american people felt bad about at the time. it's a war that we have tended to forget and by we i mean americans in general. i don't necessarily mean those of us in this room but that americans have tended to forget and not think about because it doesn't fit into the narrative of wars that we think we like to fight like the revolution in the civil war, wars like world war ii and there's a reason why the forgotten wars are forgotten. korea vietnam the u.s.-mexico war. these are wars that either didn't necessarily work out for us or they are words that we just, it's not the kind of wars americans fight and i'm sure you all you'll know what i mean by that. the arguments that this look makes and i try to tell the story objectively but the objective truth of it is that it really was a problematic war and it was in many ways a bad war. these are things that people need to think about even today. what kind of war should we be fighting and what is our responsibility as citizens in relation to the federal government? the federal government gets involved in a war. in my book i show that during the u.s.-mexico war a lot of people got together and they start and antiwar movement and they ended the war. they continued fighting the war would have taken more land from mexico if a lot of people including abraham lincoln hadn't gotten up and said this is a terrible war. let's stop it and get out of mexico. we are done. >> john, in a sense this is a bad title for your book because this war takes place before there's in america. talk about the arguments in your book. >> things don't just happen. people make them happen and they make them happen for reasons. if you want to call them arguments and in fact all my other books were on the 20th century and i spent a decade as a washington journalist. this book started out in the 20th century. i was going to write about the home front in world war i, needing an essentially in an explosion in 1919 over race labor and red scares and stuff like that. i'd been a five half-dozen characters i was going to follow closely who collided in 1919 and one of them was really sunday who you probably all know is a big time evangelists. i was going to use sunday as a vehicle to look at the role of religion in american public life. just doing my due diligence in terms of researching the background of that history brought me back to john winthrop who made the city on the hill speech and roger williams who founded rhode island and it was actually -- on the basis of total, complete separation of church and state. i thought i was writing about religious liberty and i discovered pretty soon that i was actually writing about liberty itself and in fact a title that should have been the title of the book i argued with the publisher. i didn't want to roger williams name in the title because chiefly nobody had ever heard of him. there was a commercial interestingly they made a commercial decision that this name wouldn't work and i thought they were. never have i gotten less satisfaction from being proven right. although technically it did make the times, "the new york times" list. the argument was the same. he made the city on the hill speech which has been quoted ever since defining us as a christian nation. roger williams didn't invent the concept of separation of church and state that he was the first person to put the argument together in a comprehensive way that they should be totally separate and he was the first person to actually say that a government has no more power nor for a longer time than the citizens consent to. that was an incredibly revolutionary statement and the argument is actually ongoing. what is the relationship obviously between church and state and what is the relationship a between a free individual in the state? both of those arguments continue today and i should say that williams's winters were frances bacon and edward cook. you have probably all heard of frances bacon. very few probably heard of cook but he was important in english history and he was the guy who actually said the house of every man is his castle. bad idea ran through william spain's. this conflict between the vision that winthrop had been in that new idea that williams had i think it's a pretty interesting conflict intellectually obviously. we are still fighting it out and the story of what williams went through i think is pretty interesting as well and it involves the english civil war and cromwell and milton and so forth. very much a player in the intellectual firm of what is referred to as a world turned upside down, london during the civil war. >> fergus do you want to take the same question? >> yes, thank you. my book is entirely about argument and it's about nothing but argument. it's about men arguing in the longest continual debate in american political in 1949 and 1850 in the united states senate and the house of representatives. it's about men arguing about slavery, arguing about what to do with all of the plan that the united states has acquired in the mexican war and for both the reasons that amy already sketched. it's about men arguing over the nature of the united states and what kind of people are we and to some extent how is our government supposed to function as a result of the increasing distortion built into it via the founders over the special grants of power given to slaveowning states. these arguments eventually arrive as what is called the compromise of 1850, which forestall civil war which almost occurred in 1850. had it occurred the outcome would have been i think very different and it probably would have been a war that the free north would not have one or possibly wouldn't have even fought so the consequences of what happened hinge powerfully on the argument of that. i like to hear people argue. i like getting down in wet they say the moss pit -- mosh pit of american politics watching great men and not so great, many of them really far from great as a matter of fact but henry clay, daniel webster, john c. calhoun my least favorite american political figure, a man who did more than any other politician to destroy the united states or at least damage it, and many others whose names aren't so familiar anymore. but many who men who believed in the power of argument and in an era when political, when rhetoric was not the kind of semi-slanderous word that it is today but rather merely a high art, a spoken art. and the use of language of clinical men and they keep saying men because there weren't any women in politics. when the use of language by political men was one of the great national sports. and people would turn out by the hundreds and thousands to hear a stump speaker with the lincoln-douglass debates which come later, but orators were the great champions of the day and sports heroes and pop stars are today. in the course of those 10 months, people wrestle each other finally to the round and as i say come up with something called the compromise. many wanted it and many opposed it. i was writing this book between primarily 2008 and 2011, and it was not intended in any way as a statement about the situation in washington during that period. the political trench warfare, the unbridled ideological assaults on reason by some people in washington, and filibustering and gridlock and so on. the parallels between how congress is perceived in 1850 and how it was behaving in the years that i mentioned are pretty stark as i was writing. so this was not an argument on my part but on the other hand it's kind of inescapable. it was to me at any rate, to draw conclusions about i think how poorly they argue today, how shallow our arguments are, how a few americans in public life are able to speak coherent, much less eloquent english. [laughter] and what we as a people pay for the often unintentional obfuscation of modern speech. and i will say finally after the question that the origin of the book came from a book i wrote some years earlier that was the history of the underground railroad. and the national history of the underground railroad in which as you can imagine abolitionists play a very strong role. i'm very far to the abolitionists. they were the people who helped make the world that we live in and were pilloried and marginalized in their day but i was inevitably writing a great deal about people who defended slavery who i had contempt for inevitably. not the mid-19th century. this book is generated partly by the desire of the attempt against my nature to get into that to people who in the mid-19th century who thought slavery was the greatest thing in the world. they thought enslaving people was just fine and they thought it was principled. they thought it was moral. they thought it was part of the american dream and wanted to carry it all away to the west coast. we might ease of being in the capital of the confederate state of south carolina which had been developed by slave agriculture thanks to jefferson davis and allies of his who wanted that to come to pass. thankful that great debate of 1858 didn't happen. >> that's as his perfect segue to the question i'm going to ask which is how do you deal with this idea that we don't want to impose our values you are writing about because they lived in different time but also without full judgment either. you deal with slavery among other things in your book. how do you balance those ideas? >> it's a great question. i teach at penn state and stanford undergraduates. i like what fergus said about getting into the minds of people who think slavery was great. it's so easy to like the abolition sent to identify with them and it's really not easy to like people like john c. calhoun. or to understand them and even harder for me are the group of northern politicians called the dough faces. >> is hard to identify with the dough faces. >> the dough faces were people like james buchanan the only president from my state and sad to say. there were northerners who sympathized with the south bend bargainers who thought slavery was okay and maybe even good. it's hard to get into the minds of those people that we live in a time now when certain things or people completely unacceptable and people didn't feel that way about them then. it's hard to do but it's ultimately necessary to take people on their own terms. that said, you know it's, i don't necessarily know you have to present a story completely evenly. you can craft a narrative so that your political views are apparent to the reader. your political view is not the most ethical thing to do necessarily. so you can it's a tough question. the case of the u.s.-mexico water president james calhoun is the difficult person to like. they didn't like him at a time he was incredibly unpopular. he was only successful as a politician because his wife sarah polk was very well liked in a powerful political figure who i came to respect a lot but the two of them would have discussions about how it's god's will that slavery extend across the continent. they believe that. polk lied and did everything he could to start a war against mexico and then he pursued that one with the kind of attitude towards mexico that i think developed out of his own slaveholding and the views of other slaveholders of his class which is people who are racially inferior and less powerful should necessarily been to the will of the racially superior more powerful people. again this is an attitude that we aren't necessarily comfortable with now so it's tricky and i think it's something every historian has to do with her together the historian to deal with wars where there is one clearly good and one clearly bad side or with his time period that fergus and i are working on and also though, this civil rights area where it's easy to say who were the good guys and who are the bad guys? you don't always have a good guy. abraham lincoln in 1851 gave a speech about the compromise of 1850. he said in the speech and of course lincoln was a whig/proto- republican at this time. he gave a speech in wisconsin and he said let me make one thing clear. if slavery had been established in our portion of the country and not established in the south and we in the north would be arguing and southerners would be arguing that slavery is wrong. i think that such a great comment. it's like there is economic reasoning and it's not fair to tar one part of the country as being necessarily evil and talking to a very anti-slave audience. >> john yoo your book is in the different period but how do these play out in your work? >> well for us it's a question of ethics. to write the president into the past is dishonest. to do it consciously. obviously i said earlier the debate that started obviously does continue today. you can never know what anybody thinks, but you can stand where they stood physically. you can read what they read. you can know some of what they do and you can try to figure things out and understand and obviously read their letters and such. you can get some sense but in terms of presentism, that is not truly being a writer. that is being a litigator when you make that kind of argument and deselect your facts and respond to as an historian to do that. having said that again, the essence of what my book is about is an ongoing debate and in fact the book came out a year ago in january at the time when church and state were literally in the headlines much to everybody's surprise in the publishing house on a daily basis. the war on religion that obama was waging in so forth and so on and the reality is, the first amendment didn't emerge from the east though. it wasn't some intellectual exercise. it was, as were the other amendments, the constitution itself specific response to specific historical events. in this book really goes into many of those events and supportive grew into the first amendment later. but, as a writer, a thing to try to prevent writing the president into the past to have to be aware of the biases and as amy said, you may not have to hide them necessarily but you have to be aware of them, referring to the fact that i was a football coach and i did that for a few years after he dropped out of my ph.d. program in history. and i was a defensive coordinator at a small college and i was on the defense that has sort of the built-in weakness. it was great in many places but there was an area of the defense that we were outnumbered by the offensive players. we were on the defense anyway and actually we were quite successful but we knew that. every single day we practiced so weakness would not kill us and everybody who played try to exploit it here they could look on the black ward and say we have this again. well i mean we practice against it. and it's actually quite successful with the fewest points allowed if i say so myself. so if you are aware of the dangers you can avoid them just like you see patches of thin ice. you go-round them. that is a question of ethics and self-awareness and i think as a writer many things certainly in history if you are trying to be honest with your history you have to have that. as amy said that doesn't mean you don't in the end necessarily make judgments which have to be informed by your own experiences. >> bill, you have tackled this time and again i'm sure. >> i think people say writers write history and readers read history for a couple of reasons. one is sometimes to justify the present and to justify a particular position you have in the present. different historians can look at the same thing in the american revolution and the war and come up with different conclusions. that's not entirely illegitimate. the past has its uses and that's one of its uses but another way of looking at the pass or another reason to look at the passes to past is to try to understand it on its own terms. to understand the pass on its own terms you have to ask one question and you have to suspend something. the one question you have to ask is what were they thinking? what were those people thinking? you have to try to get yourself in their heads. in order to figure out what they were thinking the historians tool you have to suspend this hindsight. what have been -- of course during the period of the siege they gradually realized we are probably not going to come out of this alive but if you know how it turned out, then you don't know what they were thinking when they went in and their actions become inexplicable. to pick up on a question that informed the court conversation a bit earlier, what do we do about something like jefferson. i really admire him a lot except for those slaves and to somehow imagine that if we could just go back and whisper in jefferson's ear and say you ought to emancipate the slaves, then you would really be someone who gets admired but the problem is that if jefferson had not owned slaves none of us in this room would have ever heard of him. because he achieved what he did in public affairs because he was a successful man in colonial and early virginia and to be successful successful in virginia and that dare you have to be a planter and you had to own slaves. to wish the past had been different is really a waste of time. as to how to appreciate and one of the things i've tried to get my students to think about and i will admit that this is a ticklish thing, because if not handled carefully and sometimes even when handled with exquisite carefulness you come across sounding like an apologist for slavery. how do he get students to appreciate that the father of his country, george washington was a perfectly unrepentant slaveowner? every president from the south and most of the president's big before the civil war was a slaveowner. would you do about this? i asked my students to think about what we are doing today that 100 years from now will seem beyond the pale of ethics, beyond the pale of morality because we almost certainly are. it's just that when you are in the present he don't know what it is. so jefferson did wrestle with this issue of slavery but he didn't think he was going to go to hell because he owned slaves. it's pretty easy for us today to wonder how could he think that? i pose this question to students over the last 20 years. what are we doing today that your grandchildren are going to condemn you morally for? and at various times they have come up with different answers. one that seems to me to be the most i think the most historically inviting is that 100 years from now we are going to think that every president of the united states up through and including barack obama was a war criminal. and because if we can think that they were war criminals, that is if our great-great-grandchildren think they are war criminals that would suggest we figured out a way to eliminate war. if you want to know what the southern delegates to the constitutional convention of 1787 thought about slavery most of them thought it was a necessary evil. now the attitudes were changed by the mid-19th century and they looked at slavery is a positive good thing in part because of the abolitionists. but i would suggest there is a parallel with war. if you ask, and i'm going to ask does anyone in this room think that wars are good thing just in general? show of hands. i can identify one conspicuous individual in american history. theodore roosevelt thought that war was a good thing. once he actually went to war then he changed his mind. but the point is that i can ask this group how many of you think that war is never a legitimate tool of national policy? there certainly have been in our passings but the vast majority of view i would say are in roughly the same boat as a whole lot of slaveholders in the 1780s. you don't like war but you can imagine a world without it. so what i try to get across to my students is somehow to suspend their imagination and try to imagine a different world. that doesn't mean that they have to then share thomas jefferson's view but if they are going to understand the world we live in today they have to try to understand how it seems too smart and i would say sincere people in the past who held moral and political views that we find today a abhorrent. >> we are going to turn to you with questions and we will pass the microphone around. before we do it i want to ask a question about the craft. how do you do this? you disappear in months or years at a time in research or do you write as you go? tell us about how you write books. >> painfully, alone. >> sounds great. >> and i love doing it. frankly it's not very interesting to anybody else. a stack of looks and with a computer and photocopies brought home from the library of congress perhaps. looking out my window in washington where i live that people actually out on the street in the sun, you no? but i have books in my head all the time. my life is too short to write all the books that i want to write. i wish i could do it the way thomas jefferson did with his fascinating literary contraption with the two pens. of course he was writing the same letter with two pens. i don't think it would be especially advancing my career to be writing the same book twice. >> just to point out that that's not to books but two copies of one book. >> but if it weren't difficult it wouldn't be worth doing. it's very hard. we pick up on these what we are talking about it's very hard to get in the heads of people who have been dead for 150 years or 200 years and 2% to know them and two to ensure it way into the interior of their lives and minds. and you know most of the books i have written most of the time i feel what i'm writing is pretty stupid. i don't really get it. i don't get the person i'm writing about and i don't understand the subject well enough and figure. my wife could testify we have a storage locker in kingston new york that is filled with manuscripts and never got thrown away. tons of them so i don't throw very much away but it's mentally and to go back to try to scrape another layer off. i did want to say about the rest as well. i'm not interested in writing polemics. and arguing the present against the past on behalf of the president. it's just not interesting. i am very interested in trying to get inside people who are like me or like us but not really. and his mind seemed to work like ours but aren't exactly like ours and to know a world that is just beyond their reach. you know, it's easy to feel seduced by the people in the past who i like because they are more like me. in his recent book about the great debate william henry seward is that guy. seward he came -- he became the secretary of state was a flaming radical of governor and senator. of all the people i wrote about in the book seward is the man i thought if he walked into the room or this room and sitting in the audience he would fit right in. he would get what we are talking about and he could join in the conversation. he saw andy described and i'm not making this up, magnificently and a couple of speeches describes the world as he expects it to be. it's the world we live in. in that sense he said.dif because we want seward to win the debate but he doesn't. he is on the margins he is a magnet for opprobrium because he is so radical that doesn't have a terrible lot of influence. i couldn't surrender to that seduction. on the other hand people i find the most interesting to write about are the people who are the furthest from my own sense of values. a really crazy guy who is a senator, henry foote who pulled out of six gun on the floor of the senate and threatened to shoot somebody. and a fascinating individual because he was a ferocious defender of slavery and believed -- the lever of slavery. on the other hand he was quick and in line with henry clay and a significant troublesome and irritating individual. i'm much more interested in the complexity of the individual like that with a configuration of attitudes and behaviors that makes me want to get to the autumn of that than i am intellectually cohabiting with people who are familiar. i would say that was true with the abolitionist frankly. although i admired their values he wouldn't want to be locked in a room with most of these guys. [laughter] >> tell us a little bit about your approach. >> while i try to research a subject until i feel confident that i have mastered it, which that doesn't necessarily mean that i have mastered it that i've kitted myself into thinking that. in my case that's involved in the river hydrology and immunology and more recently theology and political philosophy. that was a little bit foreign to me although i have more of background that i did and for all a g.. so you have part of it as an intellectual talent trying to grasp something that's new to you and curiosity. the rest of it is like what fergus said. he tried to understand the figures that you are writing about. i usually finish most of the research before i start writing, but as anybody who has ever written anything knows as soon as you start writing that is when you discover all the things you don't know and you of course have to circle back. in terms of when i stopped researching a sort of, it's not just that i think that i've mastered the subject but i discover that i'm going round and round like a snake being its tail and i'm seeing the same primary sources for the same arguments who saved -- makes serve the same sources and that is when i feel i'm not going to run across something new but not much knew if i kept going. >> bill in this case i would ask you to speak slowly so that i can take notes p. i feel very fortunate in that i teach and have been haven't written about anything i haven't taught about in 15 years. it's a great intellectual exercise. i teach introductory classes to freshmen and sophomores in groups, 408 students in a classicist master here to also teach graduate students but the freshmen and sophomores are in many ways the most valuable for me to teach because i have to figure out how i can tell the entire story for example of world war ii in 75 minutes. any writer quickly realizes that you leave out a lot more than you can include and you have to figure out what to leave out. you have to at some point say is interesting as it is sent as important as it might be in the right circumstances that doesn't go in the book. giving these introductory lectures is great intellectual discipline. in addition it allows me to test out ideas on students and see how they respond. they are bright students but i will call them relatively naïve in their history. a lot of them take advanced classes in american history but their average age is 19 to 20 years old so if i can get a point across to them and if one of my arguments make sense of them then i go okay maybe it's got something to it. so that is what i do, teach it first and then write it. >> at would agree with what the rest of the panelists would say but i would add three things to that. research is fun and writing is hard so i will always research before i will write. the second thing is i never know what i'm writing about until i'm halfway through the book and suddenly i realize this is what the book is about. this is why you have to start researching more at this point. oftentimes those are the same things that weren't documents that you took a lot of notes on but didn't take notes on the stuff that was important. the third thing i would say is the importance for me of going into what my husband calls look mode which is the mode whereby which you are thinking about nothing but the book all the time. you walk around thinking about the book and you wake up thinking about the book, write, write and still thinking about the books. weeks have gone by and you haven't noticed in the seasons are changing. book mode is not the favorite mode of my household for me to be in but crucial for getting anything done. >> with that, questions from the audience? please wait for the microphone before you ask it because otherwise they won't take you up on the camera. is there a question? you have to wait for the microphone. i'm not accusing you anything but please don't make a speech, just ask a question. >> my question is, there is a real parallel between the argument for abolishing slavery and the argument for abolishing war. >> it sounds like that is your spill. >> the question is, is there a real parallel? i don't know. the point i was trying to make was that i think every generation does certain things ambivalently and that we do things that make us morally queasy but we think we have to do it. i would say that for our generation as for every generation before us, war is one of those things. again i ask for a show of hands how many people think that wars a good thing and how many people think that war should be never used to institute policy. i got two hands for those who think war is never legitimate. obviously all of us are conflicted and a feel of back on previous generations to things that we can't morally understand how good honest sincere people believe what they believe? is our job as historians and our job is students of history who really do want to understand the past. if we do want to understand how this country came to be the way it is we need to try to get inside those heads and we need to passasked, what was james polk thinking in insisting on war with mexico? what was ulysses grant thinking and going off to fight valiantly and successfully in a war that you considered wicked? what's going on your? i said that my students sometimes raise the analogy about war today. this thing that we are doing that are grandchildren will hate us for. the one that has come up in the issue that comes up more more frequently over the last five years until now i would say 80% of my students say it's global warming. you saw it coming speaking to my generation. you saw it coming and you didn't do anything about it and their great grandchildren have to live with the circumstances. i don't know if they are right or if they are wrong but this is the impression they are getting and i would just say i think it's a useful exercise. or all of us to ask ourselves what are we doing that maybe isn't going to stand historical scrutiny. >> who else? here we go, over in the corner. >> slavery and the impact of that the decision-making and there would be some who says economic is strain that runs our entire history that we see today with the budget and all of the gridlock we have in congress now and the fight over money. whether to spend money on this or not to spend money or the austerity and so forth. are there examples that you have seen in your research? >> fergus? >> i'm not 100% sure that i heard your question. [inaudible] >> okay. i personally think that human beings all the time today as well as in past times two also to things that are economically irrational. i think it's been fashionable and i'm not denigrating it in a sense but intellectually accepted before quite a long time to frame economics and even in the self-interest as it is the driving force in historical trends. i think it tends one to grossly diminish human choice and secondly human rationality. people do all kinds of really stupid things. we enact stupid laws sometimes that a lot of people agree on more because certain interest groups influence others. look at the gun legislation. yeah it's for the failure to enact it is driven by the economic interest of a certain small bunch of businesses but is that really why a huge number of other individuals who believe that's a good thing to do or wildly misinterpret the second amendment because they feel it within themselves. with regard to slavery and you jumped off from that, one of the things that became and has become clear to me the more i have delved into the world of the slave owner it's self and indeed the pre-emancipation north where it wasn't really all that different, is that a lot of people really liked slavery. they liked it. yes it was profitable but it wasn't always all that profitable and a motivator particularly in the 19th century was much of the south it was up into the respectable middle class to own a slave. it gave you a status in the stature that you might not have otherwise so why did a lot of southern dirt farmers volunteered to fight for the confederacy and they were butchered in the battlefields all over the country. to say my great grandpa never owned slaves but he sure wanted to. .. >> the irish were sold to work again in glendale and america, native americans captured and were sold. sometimes if you're the wrong person you could find yourself sold off into slavery in the west. europeans, not just the islamic pirates go around the coast of england to sell people into slavery or north africa. it in the english man who went on a voyage risked that. john smith had been a slave. in the racial texture was one hedgers' cent economic. racial was different that to really address your question. >> if i could just interrupt you, we have one more quick question? >> i am currently working on of book so the discussion of not using hindsight to think about things. one interest is all the attempts united states made to acquire territory that failed. moments when americans decided not to acquire territory but i want to write a book that looks at manifest destiny and -- just need from the perspective of what didn't happen to destabilize the narrative whereby we think u.s. boundaries are after the war with mexico thinking they would take all central america and canada. but this is medic's project but i violently disagree with. but who have contempt for it is different. but i can write this same book at the same one i don't have to interview. [laughter] but i will still try to get into their heads. [laughter] i am just with initiating consequences of the war of 1970 and and part of the history of congress the first one after the constitution in which created the united states government from the parchment sketch of the constitution. you will see james madison and other favorite and not so favor of founding fathers deep in the mud is slugging it out over what this country would be. >> this brings us to a conclusion. first, the signing area number one you should buy the books to have them signed and also joining me to thank our panel. [applause] [inaudible conversations] ♪ >> the tv is live all afternoon today and tomorrow we are covering author panels as well as talking with authors and joining us now from our set is eric deggans and here is his book, it "race-baiter" how the media wields dangerous words to divide a nation" mr. deggans what is a "race-baiter"? to make good question. what i found is if you have discussions drug controversial issues based on race and prejudice people try to shut down by calling you the of "race-baiter" you try to get some sort of power by using somebody else and my whole point* is our nation is becoming much more diverse, we see a greater impact of people of color. we will see these more often and we should feel free to talk about things or differences in a way that is not judgmental in to make progress instead of trying to pretend they don't excess. >> host: where does the name come from? >> from bill reilly on fox news. he called me a race-baiter in 2008. i am not sure why but he cited the media monitoring committee but all we try to do is have said -- but when cnn said one of the boston bombing suspects was a dark skinned male we reminded folks we have a whole set of guidelines about when to use race and had to identify people of color or those in jail and budgies think they have a better way to do that. that does not make me a race-baiter he was insecticide uncritical how he talks about race on his show. i feel like fox news channel especially they're reflecting the fears of their audience quite often and. of their audience is mostly older and space more conservative obviously. there is a high concern there being marginalized as people of color get more power in society. he reflects that was what he talks about but sometimes with the stereotypes and i assume that is why he called me a race-baiter. wrote of peace for the tampa bay times and the huffington post is bill reilly calling me a race-baiter maybe i am doing something right. i told a story to friends and they said you should write a book cow when you to talk about issues people will try to shut you down for rice said that is a good ideas of basically it took 10 years of writing on race and bridges in stereotypes in media pulled together in one book to use the unfortunate circumstances as a way to start it off. >> you write this as it attempts to decode the way the media outlets profit to segment america. you call it the tyranny of broadening what happens the biggest pieces of the fragmented audience are courted at the expense of others. >> there is this idea once upon a time we remember three years for their works and media made many to draw these huge audiences. but in the modern media environment people target small nations and how do i get young males or the latest women or black people? and some have decided to use prejudice, stereotypes to draw the audience to keep them on that platform. so what i try to do is explore that a little bit and describe what that is happening to help people diffuse these things so they can recognize and they see it on fox news, a msnbc or the drug report they have a sense of what is going on and they're made more media at aliterate and can respond in a way that made sense for growth. you made the term coded language? >> one of the great successes of the civil-rights movement be reached a point* where our racism is marginalized and demonize, rejected. when people want to talk in these ways to invoke prejudice is that they often end news coded language. they say something that comes close to what they mean. if you see newt gingrich running for the said g.o.p. and the one double talking about how more people on food stamps during the barack obama presidency and you can dispute that figure or not. but there is another meeting on top where black people associated with welfare programs, both are considered undesirable and current welfare is considered undesirable of you can connect the black president with the idea he is standing a bunch of free people stuff to get their vote that is the association that can work. indeed journalists to interview folks to put it in the south carolina primary where newt gingrich won the contest said the idea was strong in the association was the thing they agreed with. even now politicians use the code of language to reach the people they want the also not that they're using that tactic. >> host: booktv coverage you at university -- in the and the use of diversity is in the largely african-american audience and what dr. rock conservative republicans such as human -- herman cain would of the questioners used the term of cocom. is that fair talking about conservative republicans? >> i don't like that term. i in the stand also would get a angry and it has become a star but i feel that that type is counterproductive. i am sure i have written in the book, trying to reach into somebody's head to figure out if they are racist or not is a counterproductive. all you can really do is so what i say as conservatives seem to like cain because he talks of racism in the way that they do. a lot of conservatives are sensitive about being accused to be racist but they believe how race works in society than other people find objectionable. so if you say racism doesn't hold black people back anymore or say black people have been brainwashed into voting for the democratic party, hurricane said those things. if you were white conservative you could say there is a black conservative who thinks these things he cannot be racist out and i? item even like to use the term racist because i feel that is too extreme. words like bridges, bias, those are little softer and they describe stereotypes as opposed to outright racism where you are overtly bigoted and we've reached a point* in this conversation we have to figure out how to talk about stereotypes the don't have a level about right racism. >> host: the media critic for the tampa bay times also the author of t. levin, mr. deggans. patrick, you are the first caller. >> caller: your book is very pertinent and america unfortunately, i dunno why we avoid having this conversation about right -- race. it is troubled history unfortunately but we need to talk about it instead of saying they are complete the racist was no biases we need to have a national dialogue about how we can get past this and grow because america is a wonderful country that can build on ideas and not solely about a race against another. what are your thoughts on this? >> i totally a understand. i agree. there is a hesitancy. but i do understand why because people are afraid to be accused of being racist. and especially white people and what i try to talk about is stereotypes are stuck -- seductive and that explains up world in ways other comforting over the situation before you walk into then you've taken walk-in and no one ever betty is about. i understand why some stereotypes could be seductive view have to say even those with the good part can fall prey to stereotypes so let's talk about these ideas to make sure we are considering every option in the full scope of the argument. and if they can have those conversations that is where the like the term of cocom because i feel you are automatically denigrating someone and slapping a pejorative term on them i would rather say i disagree with your ideas. here is where and let's talk about it. we can have a discussion then people are less concerned to have that discussion. >> host: you talk about nbc news after katrina. >> guest: was lucky enough to interview brian williams a few days after katrina had hit. he had made katrina a priority and was there for weeks and weeks and did a lot of great work and was passionate about starting a national conversation then i talk to him that conversation didn't happen because people would rather watch on tries. i and stood it is the uncomfortable conversation and media doesn't cover poverty enough. one of the reasons why we saw candidates like mitt romney and other g.o.p. to say 47 percent of the country who wants to get things for free or i don't think the media has done a good job to describe the pork. what are their lives like? when there are people working at wal-mart wal-mart, mcdonald's wal-mart, mcdonald's, ups, not necessarily making enough to make ends meet, and maybe to jobs cover riding the bus or by can people right very hard and they feel they tell their story better for them to understand that 47 percent better. >> host: north carolina you are on booktv on c-span2 do with eric deggans. >> caller: i grew up in the greater cincinnati area and may 2008 and went to dinner with some friends. i am white and two friends are right and the other is african-american. all of the white linen was served on a plate and what her's was served with the to go box. this was devastating. my african-american said that we grew up in the area and it is horrendous. level think seriously about getting your book to look at the situation from your a goal to see what you have to say. thank you for taking my call >> guest: nine no talking about these incidents can be emotional. i feel sorry for your print and what you went through but it is important when we see stereotypes in regular conversations that those of us speak up because that to be the most powerful faction. for example, if i am in a group than somebody says something awful about somebody is gay or within gum i will speak up to say i know you think i am part of the audience but i don't tolerate that talk around me. i am not but my recommendation for people is to find a way to politely but firmly say our friend got a to go box? what is the meaning? when data understand how the white people have a problem then they understand people who are like me have a problem with this. that is the way to combat it be polite but firm to show even though you think i am a part of this i am not. >> host: the next call comes from sacramento california. james, please go ahead. >> i voted for him twice and i am still trying to figure what is the situation where we cannot give the president to be more inclusive with many of the of blacks in our neighborhoods. we don't get a chance. but they don't give the kind of leverage in my neighborhood like we should with our president. i want to see more of him. we did our part. >> host: this is something that mr. deggans writes about. >> i feel as if it is in a position whenever he talks about raising is an unfavorable ratings go up precipitously. resaw of this meant he was arrested when brady's long dash when he talked about it the unfavorable rating went up with the white voters and in the sense he was pressured to find another way to talk about the issue and we remember the some of the same thing happen in to talk about trade on margin in that the unarmed black teen killed in the subdivision by the neighborhood watch and he said that helps to show the conservative backlash simply because the president's vote in terms that could be related. there is not a lot of upside but there is a lot of downside for democrats and i cannot wait to read the book that rock obama writes about race when he gets out of the whitehouse. i dunno if it is so feared country but consumers and the public have more control over these situations than they realize. if you talk about race and it was but the popularitpopularit why with the white voters, frankly i would rather see our president, whoever he is focused on the issues to make a difference. then to talk about race to make data harder on the pressing issue of the day, i felt that he could better address when he have more freedom and when he can zero in on the subject of the way he can do and has to do with every crisis. >> is then had a rehab that national conversation. >> we looked at those surveys and found a huge percentage favored it was not a ewell to pass even in the democratically controlled senate. even though we know we need to have a conversation for president may not be in a position to have a conversation in yet. not long before he is out of office and really know he is a great writer writing to gray books already to see what he has to say when he is in bill clinton's position and out there on his own budget shame the sole happy to get on the agenda after years of trying. 17 years but i just have to say you for this because i was listening to use cnn and i am a retired teacher so i would hear the comments in the faculty lounge or you would hear it teachers say the city kids and you knew exactly what it meant and you try. first half to call myself down then try to figure out a way to introduce the concept without fielding a text and they said something to the effect of the. >> there is something that just won't work unless you could build a friendship between the gap seems to be greater and i appreciate and also to my local news station. this was 50 years ago. >> give somebody did something but they never identified any other way. [laughter] but to be the white woman italy reflects people of color. i am looking at you and i say a. i will get the book for my nieces and nephews. thank you. >> host: before you respond i want to include sharon's comment on facebook. >> even when they had since the to give the actors identity but they are immediately followed with a disclaimer of helping racial or ethnic intendants. >> to be lined up with the description said i know people will find this offensive that i will say that is incredibly inaccurate and be -- big and there's a reason why journalist and i t says it is the poynter institute and i am on the media monitoring committee and there is a reason why we tell leon was not use those descriptors. number one we found out to center identity that they've were not we are caucasians and name to for it and servings of principle. it encourages racial profiling and we want descriptions to be accurate, we want people to have accurate information they need. but debt ed. >> host: but if they focus on the wrong suspects anyway, what is the point*? >> not about doing the right thing or social justice but being accurate. that is what is lost in a conversation. people take it is not about feeling badly bent the descriptions to help find people instead of misleading them from those who don't deserve and missing the people who actually committed the crime. >> it is life on the campus. they stormed the container note go ahead with your question or comment. >> guest: name to win back a few years with the republican party which has the of up rachel one told you over the years that headed off has become a republican but spanish. >> did you coordinate your conflict? >> tried to connect questions with the dog. >> i have not studied that particular incident so i cannot tell you for sure what is going on but i do remember the press coverage at the time and there was concern i'd like to sing to it is a coincidence and that what reagan really would do is this is affected. >> i think we will get a key component with office men down during by the democratic president. we feel. >> we are the party that will stand up verses those that clear the air routes but unfortunately one reason why we have increasingly united states. we have to use day vigilant that there were some candidates who seem to end close to that language even in the 21st century. phoenix, arizona your the last call. go ahead. >> caller: the pressure is on. your first get on negative person acting my clubs. that race-baiter from the left with jesse jackson i want to hear what you have to say about that. thank you for taking my call >> there is a bit in my book about al sharpton and his dual role of spokesperson for the family and the anchor on msnbc. i have always criticized that that to even said u.s. staffer rounder be king get your around so there is room to criticize the way people on the left and i don't want to you do but happening what happens on the left denouncing fright to bet thinking is more need to have a son traveled west some feta os there is a lot of trouble laying books. the name of the book is "race-baiter" and eric deggans is our guest and we will cover him later today on the panel with the "l.a. times" book festival. one hour from now or next call in opportunity with luis rodriguez says about his life in gaining santa from the hancock foundation a room here and this is a panel on discovery. his book is the story of yellowstone and take it from day. >> host: this is put to be on c-span2 live coverage. >> montana. but scott lind and detroit now hails as far as new york on one side am barbara on the other, they bring us stories to overlap an interesting ways that will be fun to explore explore, particularly on the idea of exploration and expanding boundaries including those of the sea, the rocky mountain is it even your own backyard. maybe some intended and maybe not so much. >> but i found going through the biographies is they all three have reported from all parts of the slope working as field archaeologist and so they bring a much broader perspective to the topics with my efforts. again we're in for an interesting discussion. we will follow the straight forward format asking each do talk about their books to have a chance to interact as a panel then open end of microphones to see if you have any questions and after words if you have ideas ideas, feel free to join us. so with that we will introduce you to the three writers. we have a professor emeritus university of california's santa barbara the phd from cambridge and he is an avid sailor to explore those lands to bring a lot of those experiences to this story. george black works for the national resources defense council and chronicle civil war in search of america his most recent book here empire of shadows is sensibly about the history of yellowstone but looks at what i consider there pre-history of yellowstone and the antics that were going on in the area around montana. my state's darker history. that significantly was a finalist for the 2012 "l.a. times" prize of history. then we have jim who has also been a foreign correspondent, war and national correspondent for more than 40 years. first in "the new york times" and now for "the wall street journal." and was a finalist for the book prize and current affairs and for those of you who live in a suburb to fight the influx of white tail of the year in canada geese you will find his discussion protected to the intriguing. i thought today we would start with a bright and who has written a fascinating account of early explorations along the eighth challenge post lines and in his book you'll learn to appreciate the see as a living entity that unites rather than divides. think that is the one thing that i took away from reading this book i did see it as a separate entity. he portrays it as a human environment which i think is part of the attraction and has his own personal experience to that. that is a good place to store how you came to write the book and we will go from there. >> you take a long time to state. in my head when i visited a fishing boat there was an artist there who painted thin norris but those to launch a fishing boat offshore trying to weather the point* but the point was will you make a point*? but it is memorable for one thing was it etch into there fake guests -- focus? >> i think there realized that sailors. >> the columbus caught of sailing the ocean blue or red alone spartacus. what this book says the via nothing to be seen that there is much about this and as to what to do or hash to approach it mix. >> a personal perspective sailing since i was the eight and guided it in the days if we cannot be to over you were orphans who so he was clearing his throat because of gps. ended with a compass and i scare the living hell out of myself. but i got across the atlantic in a sailboat after 24 days and made a landfall on an island 38 feet high with than one-quarter of a mile. but i have learned quite a bit about the ocean. the reason i tell you is this book is not really about the poison but the book about people's relationship with the ocean and the relationship of the ocean of people who spend their lives living on the coast and exploiting its and very long dash with those territories and northern australia few think of the ocean or the touch try a over a. pay and not afraid but the fed did they through yet then it just changes the rules because these people knew the ocean in the ways that you don't. many of you have probably been on a cruise ship. you have really no relationship with the ocean at all. you have a closer bond desk closer relationship with the nightclub's but going in the ocean with the canoe this part of the water you discover every nuance of the ocean and the people who first went off short to believe this was 50,000 years ago in southeast asia had no problems going because they knew the zero wins and also about him boarding the pacific that this individually we know nothing or invariably to have some computer modeling modeling, with a when negative headed view to be guaranteed to come back. but there was another question not the sort of watercraft i would talk about. >> stock may. [laughter] i will. >> this is fundamental had you know, where you are when there is no land? series is enormous told -- worst lew sure the worst is academic. [laughter] the worst is post modernistic planning literature it is about as no states, whatever those are. [laughter] all human relationships with animals 0mg if they make'' twitter. [laughter] i bore you but the literature everybody talks about the accidental drift back in the '60s david lewis apprenticed himself and navigated his yacht from polynesia to new zealand without using a compass but traditional law. the one passed from one generation to the next. courses in the discovery of the polynesian islands was a complex than social issues and due to the fact these people know the passage of the heavenly bodies and they also do. let me give you an example. this is straight up from the old tradition if you approach an island you will get the regular ocean swell then the waves off the cliff and these pilots are so into and that when they stop suspecting it they would stand up, lean over and since the direction that their testicles would swing the. [laughter] you laugh but they were so into with the ocean and their bodies they did it and david the was once told me but they said the land is over there and it was. they found it one day later. that is the intimate knowledge i am talking about the other thing that is startling is how little was very known but there is a huge literature of the lee did of the odyssey they don't describe them here is a cave and if you do this, it is all one to the other. the other thing that i did not want to do was write a book on shipwrecks or on boats you could fill the room with books about traditional boats. but most remarkable thing is they are a vehicle for communication and one of the things i got was the skin and kayak from the aleutian island. the first time you have second one, of living -- scare the living hell out of you. i started paddling and i said old mg, he said relax. and the boat looked after me. it just reflects. and these were built in just gave them to capitulate you but out to ofs diller sees light and hide a very tough hide around the neck of the sea lion these people went all over the place. with the lovely accounts how the new the ocean to bring to kayaks together but about 1200 a diva sea lions that love cold water finished. global for being had for mercy temperatures. what happened? the people gave up living on the coast and moved. five centuries later this see lions came back and they were back with their kayaks and but the fact of living in the pacific northwest you have the inland passages, a crucial, to it in a small ship. not the big one. but paddling up and down but some have pointed out that could do would meet another in and stop and gossip this was the facebook of the time [laughter] an important way of communicating that were widely separated. trading took place and you say things about gossiped but. >> will the in the 17th 18th century they began to have informal ceiling directions. and today you see these yachts with the equipment in the you press a button it will tell a were the nearest bar is or how many miles you are away from a buy house within feet. they even tell you the water temperature. we have forgotten there is a pitcher at the end of the book of the ocean liner in you will see traditional fishing boats because of the in the last half century we have begun to lose 50,000 years of accumulated knowledge about the ocean. knowledge of our bodies bodies, feelings, observatio ns. and they only say to my fellow people what happens if it goes wrong? the ocean is terribly precious and so is our knowledge and ultimately that is what this book is about. i have given a tiny fraction it is full of delicious lee satanic stuff. [applause] [laughter] >> george? >> follow that. [laughter] telling you why i would never write a book about the ocean one time i went out in cenacle and first of all, went to find the local fishing beach to find local fishermen and to agree to take the on their boat then i scoured this city to find a fishing rod. finally end to this battle of the spending riper grier arrived at the beach the next morning and the fishermen took a look at the assessment, what is that? and i said it is a fishing boat. [laughter] they said throw that away. so we went out to him and a line barracuda. we got about 6 miles offshore and i have never been sicker in my life. they do the traditional look at the horizon. [laughter] date almost fell off the boat laughing. no white man can do will be due in no white man in understands the ocean. [laughter] but wanted me to the yellowstone book was the love of fishing. i love to fly fishing was working on a booker that is on a very esoteric subject in a random house agreed to publish but i become enamored to make bamboo fly rods that is an intricate and wonderful kraft. and there were very obsessive and then i became fascinated with what they did and have ruinous it was for their lives in most cases ended in divorce, of bankruptcy but they still got to go fishing with these beautiful objects that ticket anywhere from 40 through 100 hours of craftsmanship to make. you have to put in 10 years of sweat equity that is good enough for a one to buy the you may get 600. the best ones note heard three or 4,000 for of that i was thinking at the end of the lineage of the family of fly rod makers from maine to migrate to other parts of the mainland and they said you have to see the dead teen who lives in twin bridges montana. so we went fishing and became friends then when i went to southwestern montana it is a natural thing to go to yellowstone. like people whose here i was written but almost everyone eyes knew that settled and did not begin by arkansas and illinois and michigan and new york pa. etc etc they had all been drawn by the same thing. getting fed job and the idea to write about yellowstone but when things that has never been done but if any of you were at the panel earlier on history, a it was from that period. in.was the period where this country was invented or reinvented before the civil war was done and with the west was all there and i sense something never done before but who were the individuals and:'' because it does deserve heavy marks discover this place and they indeed were drawn by the magnet of the west. the three main characters of my book one came from upstate new york, one comes from illinois where his father followed the cool fresh so there was the odd mix than one was the ambitious politician and businessman and self promoter to become the first superintendent and the sec and was he followed the gold rush was the soldier the lieutenant also was self-taught scientist a brilliant man and a phenomenal writer with the exploration of yellowstone hailed at the time by the leading scientist of the day since lewis and clark and the third was bookish bookish, frail, hypochondriac scholar who became like many of the men who settled in the west driven by fear in many ways, a fear of the others walking from independence i went to the montana gold rush and like a lot of white man who's settled there, he became an extermination as. i a think the conversation was about the problems of how you impose the moral high use of the presence on the relatively distant past when assumptions word debates. like i believe deeply into of virtues but other people felt they did and needed the extra ration. what i found, one of the pleasures of researching a book like this is the combination of the extraordinary physical reality of being out and hiking and fishing getting to know people intimately and if you know, yellowstone or plan to go the country around the park is actually more raucous than the country within. people see old faithful, the geysers and hot springs that are fine and well but the countryside of southwest montana and in particular the of wyoming side the indian trail, 1877 coveted free did a and they fled surat area called the sunlight basin on the eastern side of the parts that i think is the most extraordinary landscape in america. . .