Good evening, everyone. Im just so so glad here tonight. Im going to say a few words about the strand before i welcome tonights guest. For a moment of history, the strand was founded 93 years ago by my grandfather, benjamin bass [applause] he founded the store in an area that was known as book row along Fourth Avenue just around the corner from here. It was the storm of the depression, and he defied the odds by surviving while all the other 48 bookstores in book row shutteredded. The store was then passed on to my late father, fred bass, who grew the store to a scale and popularity he never thought was possible. Now im the owner, and some critics said as a woman its hard, going to be hard to run the store, and id get wiped out by, in this digital age. Right, ha. [laughter] so i want to thank you and the book Loving Community in this audience for helping us not only survive are, but thrive through the agings. [applause] so its impossible to realize tonights book, watergate girl, without
San antonio is the gateway to latin american couple hundred miles away from the border and we think think about san antonio, we often think about the worlds heritage missions of flesh the alamo is a vital part and we also sit on top of the worlds most prolific, is fuel t this community for generations for hundreds of years. And really waterways is why this region was settled in first place today even though we are burdening interpol is in areas and seventh largest city in the country, you can see our riverwalk which is one of the top tourist destinations in the world. And be part of a great urban revitalization that also includes ecosystem restorations. Under 25kilometer with riverway and course of the am very proud of is that here we are on footsteps one of the largest fossil fuel reserves in the entire world we just ratified a Climate Adaptation plan and make first day in office as mayor, we chose to declare in to the paris summit accords we ratified the plan is few months ago to hel
Booktv was scheduled to be live in tucson and los angeles and cover festivals in new orleans and san antonio as well. All canceled. We know the effect its having on book fairs and large gatherings but is it having an effect also on bookstores and smaller businesses. Mitchell kaplan runs a chain of bookstores in based in coral gables florida called books and books mr. Kaplan has coronavirus affected your business . Yes, unfortunately it has. We been holding on as long as we could it looks like it looks like tomorrow will be closing down all six doors we have in the miami area and trying to move our sales online. And encourage people to buy at our website this is happening i believe across the country with independent bookstores everywhere. Like normally happens independent bookstores are very representative of whats happening with Small Business. There are many many thousands upon thousands of Small Business people who are suffering the same way we are. Are you doing this because the st
Lettie for organizing this event. I want to thank my agent, gail for being here, you have probably already seen one of the 10,500,000 Mike Bloomberg ads, the tagline is mike gets it done, no, gail gets a ton. So, thank you for being here. What an admission also, another great book that you have to re, my friend, Melissa Rogers who is a visiting scholar here we Work Together for 20 years. Her book, religion in public life and faith with the American Public life which has a nice double meaning is a great book to read. And i cannot resist honoring my entire doctor Mark Sheppard who came here today. I honor him because he is an awesome dr. Because he is a great sports fan, kids play sports together but he was actually the dr. To about half of the people in my part of bookings and there is enormous morning in this building that you decided to retire but also so many other friends here come i want to thank you all for coming. But, this is one of the coolest events brookings has ever had. And
Statement good evening everybody and welcome. I am the coowner of the store along with my wife and we are delighted to have joshua hemmer back with this at p p. Joshua was here for his last book, about four years ago, and i would of course was the bad librarian in timbuktu which told the riveting story of how an art you fist in timbuktu managed with a very brave helper to smuggle more than three or 50000 historical manuscripts out from under miltons to safety about 600 miles away. The book was a best seller and established josh as someone and i truly believe it was a great story. And he said to begin, with his new book, the falcon thief which has another true and gripping tale of adventure. But this one about wildlife. And josh is a journalist by training and had a pretty adventurous globetrotting run himself working for newsweek over nearly two decades. He joined newsweek in the late 1980s as a Business Media writer and within a few years, he was asked to cover the rest of the world,