It is a great honor to give this award to ebram. [applause] [cheering] i have some prepared remarks but i dont know how im going to open these up. Give me a second. Of course i would like to thank the judges and the National Book foundation. I would like to thank all of the co finalists and my family who is here. My mother and my father who from the moment i could see were reading books. I would like to thank my brother who for me represents the beauty of humanity and also my fatherinlaw. This book actually came out of a conversation that we had. I of course would like to thank my wife who spent many days listening to the early drafts and what always encouraged me and has always encouraged me to be my biggest advocate. I am truly thankful to be her partner in life. [applause] i of course would like to thank nation books. [applause] of course with challenging power, one book at a time. I would like to thank my editor who of course weve spent many hours talking and she o of coure be peeved in my work and i would like to thank clive of course far from the beginning believing in me that i could produce this history of racist ideas. I would like to thank my agent who [applause] i think when we first met i was 29, 30yearsold and she believed that i could produce this. I of course would like to thank the newest addition to my family. Some of you have seen her tonight. My six monthold daughter. [applause] and she truly is the best award ive received all year, no offense to the National Book fair. [applause] her name in swahili means faith. Her name of course has a new meaning for us as the first black president is set to leave the white house and as a man that was endorsed by the ku klux klan is about to enter. Faith. I just want to let everyone know that i spent years looking at the absolute worst of america, its for a at indiana i never lost faith. The terror of racism, i never lost faith that the terror of racism on one day and. I never lost faith because for every racist idea, there was an antiracist idea. For every color of the mind can every care killer of the mind there was a lifesaver of the mind. And in the midst of the human ugliness of racism, there was the human beauty. There is the human beauty in the resistance to racism. That is why i have faith, and i will never lose my faith without you and i can create an antiracist america where Racial Disparities are nonexistent, where americans are no longer manipulated by racist ideas and wear black lives matter. [applause] and so i want to thank my daughter for that and all of those in history, all those people across the nation who are learning to be antiracist and dedicated their lives to this work. I dedicate my award to all of you. Thank you. [applause] the National Book foundation has awoken. That was very nice, shout out to the baby and the wife. Youve got to do that. You can find out the hard way. [laughter] to present the National Book award for fiction is james english. [applause] james english is a centennial professor of english at the university of pennsylvania where he directs the humanities for amanda price lab for digital humanities. His books include the Global Future of english studies and economy of prestige. The award in the circulation of cultural values. Selected as the best Academic Book of 2005 by new York Magazine so it gives me great pleasure to introduce james english. Hello, everyone. What a celebration. Im starting to feel good for the first time. [applause] my thanks to lisa and harold and the nationaatthe National Book d foundation for giving me the opportunity to work with a group of very distinguished writers that are also strong and thoughtful readers of fiction. My fellow judges are back there at cable 60. Two other judges couldnt be with us. One threw her back up this morning and the other is home of a really new baby just a couple weeks old. [applause] so it is a real honor to work with these great writers. Judging the National Book award requires the commitment of hundreds of hours. As an educator, ive got a day job. Identify students called double counting. Arranging things so that the work is demanded in one domain and fulfilled something required in another. Im teaching a course called novel of the year [laughter] that focuses rather narrowly on the 2016 National Book award for fiction. [laughter] the students in this class have read all of the shortlisted books and studied the authors and agents and editors and publishing houses. They are learning about the ways that you work to support literary fiction in difficult times and its been a really fun class. Students formed juries and decided their own winners and attempted to predict the outcome here tonight. Theyve even applied a Computer Program model to try to predict the winner algorithmically. This was developed in canada but here not so much. [laughter] there has been a more strenuous disagreement in the classroom than among the official judges. Karen geronimo, julie and i have in fact found ourselves strikingly close accord throughout the process. We whittled down 400 books to arrive at a place of no compromise where every one of us loves everyone of the five finalists. They are the throwback special ww norton co. [applause] [cheering] the underground railroad, doubleday. [applause] [cheering] and doubleday. Differing greatly from one another each of these is a great read and constant work of art. Taken together they test the range and fertility of fiction. The others remain in accord even when earlier today we made the difficult selection from these extraordinary books. The work that impressed us with its breaking ethics committees formal inventiveness, its use of fiction to eliminate a history for the sake of its troubled present our novel of the year and winner of the 2016 book award for fiction is the underground railroad. [applause] [cheering] i will buy that for a dollar. [laughter] the last four months since the book came out had been so incredible. I guess the model for acceptance speeches is the first one i saw was like 77. I was crushed and i never thought that i would become a writer. Ive been with doubleday for 18 years. [inaudible] [laughter] is my sensibility to the readers and booksellers and critics and i would like to thank alison rich, Susanne Mayer for translating my dear ms. Weirdness. I had an agent that sh but she e then i talked to gina and shes like we should talk to nicole. [applause] so then she was taking it out of the garbage and met me halfway. Thank you. [applause] she edited and then i started working with bill thomas. [applause] over the years i have these ideas for books. Its like black hawk down. Thats always been the case and hes like we are going to get it out there and publish it no matter what it is. He was very excited and i was like dont fuck it up. [laughter] thank you for all of your feet over the years. Its meant a lot to write and throw yourself out there and have someone in your corner like bill. So thank you sir. [applause] my daughter is at home watching on the screen. Youre 12yearsold and i started living on the day that you were born. [applause] i would like to dedicate my book to my wife julie. Its okay writing good books when you are unhappy but its better reading books when you are happy so thank you. [applause] we got the word out and usually people read my copy like i dont know. This time last year i was finishing up a book and was like dont mess up the 20 pages. You never know whats going to happen and now the book is out and i never thought i would be standing here. Who knows where we will be a year from now as the wasted land would inhabit who knows if this is going to happen a year from now. People were like im sort of stunned and then i hit upon something that was making me feel better and i guess it was the kind, everybodycome and make art and fight the power. That seemed like a good formula for me anyway. [applause] if you have trouble remembering that come a good mnemonic device to tell your self is they cant break me because i may bad mother fucker. [applause] [cheering] okay. All right. [applause] this concludes the et presents the National Book awards. [applause] [cheering] with special guest robert caro. [applause] [laughter] thank you so much for coming and to all thdo all the work you arg keep reading and writing and in the words of kendrick lamarr, we are going to be all right. Its hard for the media to debunk some of his statements in ways which the people that believe the statements will find convincing. One of the things i talk about in the book is its about a movement that is a sensual ea reaction to enlightenment nationalism if it focused on the voice of reason and arguments based on evidence and facts, a reaction to that that is part of the reaction that says now, when we talk in public to each other, theres the identity and solidarity in the community what happens is my relationship to you that quickly becomes the key to this with authentic language with the nation and national community. People that want to leverage our exploit the idea of office and authenticity of course the fascists across germany and italy, alternative system becomes central and they tried very hard to distinguish themselves in the way they speak from traditional rational politicians and so they focus much more on stories. We are together, im like you, i speak thank you, i understand what youre going through and together we can ward off the threat from whoever they might be, today they might be the elite, but [inaudible] [laughter] but today it might be the elite technocrats, anagrams and in the context of this we are the middle classes have been left behind by globalization whose contribution to the country isnt properly reworded or accepted or understood and whose values are being undermined by multiculturalism or Political Correctness. You dont have to mention the phrase Political Correctness there is a sense of the culture and values being broken so in that context, what matters to the audience is the story rang true and the speaker that is saying does it feel emotionally true, and if it feels emotionally true, its kind of a textuality that it may not matter so much and i think that debunking the individual statements by donald trump may well absolutely convinced the readers of the newspapers were the viewers of cspan but they never believed in the first place probably where they think its the elite media trying to shut him u up or damage him because hes telling the truth. You can watch this and other programs on linux booktv. Org. I will say it was based in the counting of the economy and creating the aggregate data that we now see that hasnt existed so that creation and understanding of how you generated the best quality data was having gotten its start and then the building of the mathematical connections between those planes