Transcripts For CSPAN2 Peter Finn A Guest Of The Reich 20240713

Booktv continues now on cspan2, television for serious readers. Good evening everyone. Tonight we are here with peter finn the National Security editor at the Washington Post and previously coauthor of the book the zhivago affair which was finalist for the National Book six circle award for nonfiction. Hes twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his International Reporting and hes won the Robert F Kennedy Journalism Award and the German Marshall Fund Peter R White prize for his foreign reporting. In other words, his nonfiction credentials are very wellestablished. Tonight he is here to present his latest book of nonfiction i guess to the right the story of american heiress gertrude with deborahs dramatic captivity and escape from nazi germany. Please help me welcome peter finn. [applause] thank you everyone for coming out and thank you to a books for inviting me. Im delighted to be here. As she mentioned, my book is about gertrude lesandro and the First American woman in uniform captured by the nazis. Everyone you heard as dirty and i will call her gertie. She was married to a man named sidney who with the outbreak of war was commissioned in the Naval Reserve and served in hawaii and gertie was captured in september 1994. I got a call last week from someone who knew gertie was a friend of gerties daughter and heard about the book and wanted to tell me gertie stories but one of them i will use to open which was that when she was captured and her husband sidney was informed by the military that his wife was now a prisoner of war, his first two words were poor germans. [laughter] and that really tells you a lot about gertie. She was a pretty fierce fearless individual, she was also complicated and flawed which made her a really interesting character study for me. Her life philosophy as she described it was, i dont contemplate life, i live it. I like the first sketch about her background where she came from and then lead you up to her service in world war ii and her capture. Gertie was born in aiken south carolina. She was from an extraordinary wealthy American Family that went back well into Early American History one of her ancestors was the colonial governor of connecticut. Her more immediate family, her grandfather and father were in the carpet and flooring business which was based in amsterdam new york when her father, when her grandfather died and the estate was worth in todays dollars, 1 billion. It gives you a sense of how much money they had. They kind of summered there or in europe and wintered in south carolina. In manhattan gertie had a rollsroyce at her disposal to move her about town the butler every morning left out theater tickets if anyone had a desire to go see the theater. It was an extraordinarily privileged life but gertie was not someone who was content with being a society girl from a very early age she learned to shoot. She loved to shoot things. [laughter] she started out birding but went on and hunted raccoons at night. She did all kinds of stuff. In fact, philip buried the early 20th century playwright who knew the family based a character on her in his play called holiday and subsequently that play was made into a movie and the gertie character was played by Katharine Hepburn who played her as this kind of interesting cocky abrasive Society Woman who was rebelling against the constraints of her family. She first found that when she graduated high school and went to an all girls school in middleburg virginia and instead of doing the usual coming out she asked if she could go hunting in wyoming. Her father agreed, they went out to jackson, which at that time was just a dusty little town with the post office and couple buildings and they hired a guide who took them up into the mountains and several days in she killed in elk it was her first big kill and she never really recovered from the thrill of that. For the next several years she hunted in alaska and canada and other parts of north america she killed bears, she killed moose, she killed goats, she killed sheep. You name it, gertie killed it but her big ambition in life was to go to africa. And in 1927 she was invited to go on an expedition by another wealthy new york family and they crossed the atlantic to naples and took a boat from naples to the horn of africa, disembarked and took the british governors train from there to nairobi. Nairobi at that time was set up to accommodate wealthy american and european hunters. Literally these expeditions were enormous they would hire several cars, several trucks, dozens of africans both who would scout for game but also would act as servants essentially set up the portable toilet, which they got from abernathy in manhattan and had shipped over. Put the toothpaste on their toothpaste toothbrush, clean their clothes and drive them, cook the meals, you name it, it was like hunting deluxe. Endo met first exhibition, gertie was astonished at the range of game and they literally crossed the african plains like feudal lords shooting at everything that moved. But gertie wasnt happy with it. She just found it all a little too luxurious and that there was none of the roughness or the living in the wild that she had done in alaska and canada and north america. So when she came back she decided from that point forward that oliver expeditions would have a purpose. It wouldnt simply be to kill animals. She actually tried to find a purpose in what she was doing. She approached the American Museum of Natural History in manhattan and at that time that museum had about 30 expeditions around the world collecting animals and other specimens and they asked gertie if she would collect a particular african antelope called the night ella. Which she agreed to underwrite the whole thing. If you go to the museum of Natural History today you will see you will see african mammals that have a semicircular display of stuffed animals in a setting with all the fauna and trees and grass that you would expect in that part of the world. She literally brought those back. She was accompanied on that trip by a curator from the museum to help with the taxidermy and they hired specialists in nairobi. With that, from that point forward most of her expeditions were for that purpose. On that particular trip she took a long two young men that she had met the previous summer in oxford england, the lesandro brothers, sydney and mars. She was kind of infatuated with both of them. She decided to use the expedition as a means to figure out which one might be better as a husband. Sidney won the husband stakes and they subsequently after the expedition he proposed to her when they stopped on the way back from africa at a fabulous villa on the south of france. This was the kind of life she lived. Throughout the 1930s she did many many more expeditions. She went to indochina did an eight month expedition that went up through across northern vietnam into laos, cambodia, back into southern vietnam. She did that for the museum in philadelphia and they brought back a peculiar kind of goat specimen from that museum. Typically of gertie as they got into saigon at the end of toward the end of the expedition the first thing i was to visit and abbecause she wanted to see what it was like to get high on opium. Unfortunately for her the opium was poor quality and the whole thing was a disappointment. But she did at the end of that expedition, which is the scene i described in the book, killed her first tiger. I know. But this gives you a sense of gertie. The way they hunted tiger at that time was they would place recently killed large animals along the trails in the jungle where the tigers typically hunted. They would build a small box maybe waist high or a little more than waist high the hunter in this case gertie would get inside the box and everyone else would retreat and leave her there alone. She would sit in the box and wait until the tiger came. Several people have been killed sitting in these boxes because the tiger took them rather than abshe spent two full days in stifling heat with this rotting carcass 30 feet away from her with her gun stuck out the window. The tiger came around several times and finally he started eating the antelope she shot and killed she shot him and then burst out at the little box she was in and finished them off with a bullet to the head. Of course her husband, who was half a mile or more away, heard the shots and came rushing fearing that the worst mightve happened and why had he ever left her alone in a little box in the middle of the jungle and of course when he arrived, gertie is sitting on the tiger smoking a cigarette. That was gertie. So at the start of world war ii with the attack on pearl harbor and gerties husband sidney got a commission in the navy reserve he was first assigned and they at that time were living on a 7000 acre plantation outside charleston south carolina, which they had bought in 1929. They moved to washington but i was a temporary place for him as he was assigned to hawaii and in august he shipped out and gertie saw him off and sidney later wrote to her about that last day in washington. I will read you a little quote from his letter which he wrote a day or two after i think when he landed in San Francisco from washington before continuing on to hawaii. We talked about the war and other things when we both knew that all we really wanted to say was how much we loved one another and how we dreaded departing. I thought you were wonderful to be able to wave to me as i entered the plane and wish me good luck, my throat was so choked in my eyes so full of tears that i could not say anything and only waved and then plunged into the plane. The wonderful thing about gertie for me as a writer is that this was one of about 500 letters that they wrote to each other over the course of world war ii. Gertie also everywhere she went, whether it was every expedition to africa, indochina, she kept a journal, very detailed journal, some of these trip she would come back with 150 pages of daily notes about what she was thinking what she was doing. Even when she was a prisoner of war later she kept a diary and the german strangely tall exhilarated dial you keeping back pows. All of this raw material in many ways allowed me to create this intimate portrait of gertie that wouldve otherwise been impossible. In when cindy left for hawaii, but gertie was in washington she had two daughters, len dean who at that time was about 11 and bow was about two. She wanted to do something, she first applied to the library of congress but they rejected her because she didnt have a college degree. Then she applied to the red cross but they wouldnt take her because she had two young children. Eventually she used her connections and she had many many connections through american high society and got a job in the office of Strategic Services which was the prewar it was the wartime american Espionage Service forerunner of the cia founded by wild bill donovan the subject of a wonderful novel by Douglas Waller who was a raleigh resident. I recommend it to all of you. Gertie got a job in the Communications Office. Basically all of the incoming and outgoing cables would pass through her hands and she would make sure they had the correct classified grading and they got to the right people so a lot of topsecret material pass through her hands. But gertie hated washington. I think she associated washington first with her separation from her husband which she found totally intolerable and heartbreaking but secondly, she hated it, this was her first time in the workforce. She is now a woman in her late 30s shes never had a job in her life. This is the first job and so she had to reconcile herself to the workplace and also the place of women in the workplace, which was something she had never experienced before and she wrote to her husband about her supervisor. I do all the work that he does all the talk. What burns me up the most is the unbelievable lack of confidence in a womans ability. Men cannot bear to have their world encroached on by more efficient women, men hate to give women power. So that pretty much summed up her attitude to that workplace and washington, which she found supremely bureaucratic hugely distant from the actual war fighting and the place where she would for the first time in her marriage, separated from her husband. For all these reasons she started to agitate to get out. First she tried to go to hawaii to join her husband but the navy had a strict rule that that wives could not join in their officer husbands in hawaii. When that was ruled out, she spoke to donovan and the head of oss and inveigled the transfer to london. Gertie left for london in mid 1943 took a boat from philadelphia to lisbon and then a flying boat plane from lisbon to southampton taking a wide arc around the bay of biscay to avoid german fighters. It had to make an Emergency Landing which was a fairly typical arrival anywhere for gertie. She also left washington without her daughters. Both of them were placed in the care of longtime nanny and governess and gertie, frankly, her husband said in some letters, do you not feel that you might want to stay with them . The youngest is two, she might need you. But gerties position was, i have worlds to conquer as i have places to go i have things to see. Frankly, her relationship with her daughters remained fraught throughout their lives. I dont think her daughters ever quite forgave her for the absences and her approach to mothering. She took the same job in london in the Communications Office moving the topsecret traffic in and out and london was the center of all oss operations in london. They were the liaison with the governments in exile like the dutch and the checks. They were planning for dj and postdday operations and they began to infiltrate people into france in advance of the invasion. There was a whole lot of topsecret stuff going on and a lot of it was passing through gerties hands. But then gertie came and went and gertie was still there and board stupid could not believe that all the men were gone and she was still stuck in this office they were given a five day leave so gertie went to the bar at the hotel ritz and she was having a drink when she crossed paths with a guy called bob jennings naval aviator also in the oss that she had known from london. Gertie socialized all the time in london. At house parties, went to other peoples house parties. Played golf, went hunting. This is mostly in the evenings or weekends. She hung out with general patton and the u. S. Ambassador to london and with lots of general officers. Gertie knew everyone. And she knew jennings so they started to talk and they were a bunch of war correspondents and other officers there. The war correspondents were telling them they were going to head to luxembourg the next day to get close to pattons headquarters and get closer to the fighting. So gertie and jennings, said we should go to. So over the next two days it was a pretty eventful trip because the car kept breaking down but eventually three days later they made it to luxembourg city. Jennings said, we had hoped to hear or see or experience a little fighting but doesnt look like its going to happen. And then asaid im driving up to this Little German village called the waldorf, which is the first German Village captured by the allies it was just over the border from luxembourg and if youd like to come with me we can all go. You will be back by lunch. They had a private called doyle dixon who was the driver and all four of them sped off. Dixon, jennings and gertie. What they didnt know was, the americans had taken waldorf and in fact had pushed further in when orders came to vote because the american command was concerned about u. S. Forces getting too far ahead of the supply line. Papert generally believed the town was still in american hands. They drove right in. They barely had they seen the sign waldorf when the first shot ring out initially they were a little quizzical about this asking themselves why would someone shoot at us . Papert jumped out they looked around nothing abthey decided to push on which was a really unbelievably bad decision. At that point you really shed light pull back and figure out whats going on so they push on just a tiny bit and machine gun fire breaks out. They all jump out of the jeep pepper is hit in the legs and he screams at dixon try and get the car started again, dixon jumps into the car, his badly wounded. Eventually because they are in essentially an open area they decided they have to surrender. So they put a white handkerchief on the top of a rifle, hold it up, the germans come down and gertie becomes the First American woman in uniform captured by the nazis because she was wearing Womens Army Corps uniform. She was commissioned, she had to have uniform entering the theater of operations. Thus begins gerties very strange time as a prisoner of the nazis. She initially was bound from place for place but ended up at castle in western germany in dietz, which was a special error marked Interrogation Center for prisoners of special interest. The place the castle was populated by interrogators, german interrogators all of whom had lived in the united states. When they arrived they were greeted by people in german uniforms speaking with american accents. Some of these guys prewar had been truck drivers, some guy who interrogated gertie ran a lunch counter in brooklyn others were children of diplomats but they were a loose line due to this Interrogation Center and they all initially believed that gertie and the others might be spies and they ran a series of parallel interrogations to try and break them. They all had discussed their story in the period before the germans came down and gertie played kind of did see file clerk at the embassy who just didnt know why she was here and had accidentally stumbled across the lines and she pulled it off remarkably. They never learned that she was oss and that is to her enormous credit. She was interrogated several times and not just at the castle as i will explain, what did happen at the castle, however, was they realized who she was. That this was no ordinary woman this woman was for once from a very wealthy family she would new patent she knew the u. S. Ambassador in london she and the u. S. Secretary of war she knew all these people in the germans thought to themselves, we can use this person. Initially there were some squabbling about who would control her whether it would be the abwhether the German Foreign office or whether it would be the gestapo did the Good Good Good stopple with hitlers specific blessing, got her. She was moved to dietz from dietz to berlin and i like to read you a small excerpt of her trip from frankfurt which was near where the capital was they moved her there to berlin. To gertie frank abher escorts drove her to what appeared to be the only intact building for several blocks. Gertie was immediately alarmed when she saw afrom the st the sick hearts. Gertie was brought to a third story room lit by an oil that where she was given the glass of. [indiscernable] wine and potato salad. Her stay was brief and 12 11 pm her escorts took her to the frankfurt train station. Reduced to ribbon shells. The station was teeming with soldiers and many seemed sick or lame as they held their equipment onto trains. Gertie buttoned her unmarked raincoat to her chin to cover her american uniform. Her caution was warranted. Other pows had encountered angry mobs while being transported and as the bombing of germany cities intensified, there were reports of civilians assaulting and in some cases killing prisoners. In there all of us no private cars. The pedestrians wore masks of defeat and apathy. He walked through the streets with her cards to eight. Gestapo headquarters. The high stone entryway was a fermenting is over pretty flags of hitler decorated the central passageway of the building, the former school of Industrial Arts and crafts. Let the large windows will covered with cardboard and inside it was dark and frigid. Draft around the ankles. Part of the staff have evacuated from the bombing of berlin intensified. The opposing marble lobby no longer richt of fear and malevolence. But was prevalent of the coming debate. Even though the remaining officials strut around with the old pomposity. So that was bernies introduction to berlin. It was its been two months there. The villa in the neighborhood was run by the gestapo. It is technically the headquarters of what was previously interpol. And in that house she would see senior nazi officials the head of the right security main office and heinrich miller, the head of the gestapo. Even though she was not allowed to speak to either of them. And eventually, as she was shifted from their and to begin this strange journey across germany, and saw the war in ways that no one else did, she moved as i described from frankfurt to berlin and then in late december would move from berlin to cologne and from cologne to vaughn and from vaughn that go to spurt, just south of bonn. She arrived there in the middle of the night and at what looked in was a hotel. But surrounded by armed guards with ss at the reception desk in the front. She was brought in, told for her guerror room was brought up to her room lovely room, soft bed. The view outside and was told to be downstairs at united a. M. So united a. M. She walked down and there will soldiers on each floor. She came down and she could hear the buzz of all of this talking and then she followed the sound and walked in and was treated by french man in kearney was a french speaker and writer will 795 frenchmen and one frenchwoman. The one frenchwoman was his sister. And gertie had essentially entered this parallel Nazi Detention Center for socalled special and honored prisoners of the ss. Thanks nazis, before and during world war ii, kept these special prisoners in special locations inside of the death camps. Also in villas and castles and Hotels Across germany. This wasnt through any sense of benevolence on their parts. It was deeply cynical. They were holding the missteps. As potential propaganda tools, potential people they could swap for people they wanted. And hostages, when things got bad as he understood the things might well get very bed. The loose piece about the system that she had entered was that keeping some food compared to most prisoners. They had alcohol. And theyll play, its all like an old peoples home. Most of these president prisoners will will elderly and ill play games everyday. The play some tennis, and different people lectured on different subjects depending on their expertise. You take language classes and gertie became the english professor. But you could study german or russian or french or whatever you like. And gertie continued and eventually was forced to retreat but continued the system as of the end. The germans decided to essentially let her stay. Escape. The view was that if they could indoctrinate her with the anti soviet propaganda, and there was a nazi fantasy for conflict the allies angloamericans, might ultimately side with the germans against the socalled nazi propaganda scope. It was offensive to suit reached told the lady in work and see people like that. Made some tentative efforts to see if they could do. And hitler was totally opposed and obviously on the other side. He would accept nothing but unconditional slander. There will be the height of the soviets. Nonetheless, because of fear fantasies, this was a little time trying to indoctrinate gertie before finally allowing her to escape at lake constance. In a city in southern germany that bordered then switzerland. And it was also puts in a very initial plays that because it was never its border with switzerland in the town of customer was so tight, they could tell either city apart. So i mostly germany meeting of blackout, plus kept his flights on the middle with two slides. He knowledged plumbers would not get into differentiate between the two cities. I wont go into exactly how gertie escaped except to see that it was many adventure. When she got to switzerland, she was debriefed by the cia director. Then she was sent to parents. And of course, she could stay in paris. China hang out with friends and have good time. But then they sent her the first plane home. Transmit arrives in manhattan, to the apartment where her daughter was and bo had not seen her in two years. She was now four. Juice to angela. And the nanny came out bowling both on hand and said, local, shimon, she is home from the war. That was essentially the story of gertrude i will leave it at that. Thank you for your attention. And more. I am happy to take questions. One second, she will come with the point. What happened to the driver hate to give everything away they were both killed. They were killed in hospitals they were being treated for the ones. And involved accidentally by the u. S. Or bleach flames. In late november 1944 and dixon had been moved east. The germans separated officers and enlisted men and he was moved to a hospital facility for enlisted men in the ace. It was then subsequently is the vast transfer from there, 200 minor medical facility and brandenburg. And dixon story, is particularly tragic because of all of the four people, dixon had no choice. As the driver. Was told where to go. Season three people will officers. They had some responsibility for their own actions. Dixon was killed in the bombing in late march 1945. He was buried in brandenburg and through a series of events that i described, his body was not really found until the early 1950s. Much to the dismay of parents in los angeles. Initially, as the war ended, so that he was what alive and coming home. To them, from that we believe he is dead, do we believe he is dead only based on reports from others. We dont know where his body is. Ultimately finding his body, and he was very in san diego. I think in 1953. Who decided to all of his journals in the letters and how come you have access to them. Excellent question. When gertie died, oliver papers and they included hers letters and journals, or photographs, but opal also the letters and above other relatives, her head has been cities and books in his journals, and is, they were all donated to the college of charleston. All housed in the special Collections Library at the college of charleston. It was a tremendous resource for me. They allowed me complete access. Along with that there will a number files and gertie at the national archives. And oss files all of which have been declassified. And that you get the reaction of the oss leadership that they discovered that britney has been captured and they are fair is going to reveal secrets that could compromise operations. They also had a deep fear that it seemed think might happen with cafferty. Even more than gertie. It is about altar, the fact that the british have broken German Military communication. And not describes all of that. The 1947, gertie published a memoir at the time as is her work. Unfortunately, i didnt get a whole lot of attention. For me it was a wonderful guide. And critically, and the national archives, one of the most important things are fine for me was to have the gestapo news interpreters, who will there for the interpretation of gertie in berlin and will interrogated and debriefed after the war and gave a detailed account of how gertie was viewed by the germans. So that was particular perspective that they could never get from gertie or from the oss. But i wanted to understand how did the germans look at her. And then look to hers a special prisoner that they could exploit because of her wealth, because of her connections, and because of her background. So those will basically good. That small archival material from germany and switzerland and i think as substantial as i found here. Could you comment briefly on her postwar live as far as her marital scotus and her children. Jerk. Sadly, sunday died of heart attack in 1947 at a burried young age. And gertie was left heartbroken. Sitting was the love of her live. She subsequently had a brief five year unhappy marriage. That ended in divorce and subsequently, she was a single woman who continue to travel in the world and continue to be involved in scientific expeditions. And she died, just short of 98. In 2000 and that her estate in south carolina. One of her two daughters would now attend the funeral. Thats about the well have was. And he remained bad for their lives. The other daughter bolted but ultimately both sold the estate outside of charleston which is still intact but held by another private owner. Gertie never quite had an experience like world war ii again but she had a rich and full live and she continued to live live with great enthusiasm. To have you had access to her journals and diaries. Did any of her relatives or family members who are still leaving when you are writing the book, talk to you. Yes, i spoke to grandchildr grandchildren. Gertie may have, her daughters may not have been or felt much of her as a mother but her grandchildren adored her. So spoke to two of her grandchildren. And by the time i came to the subject, unfortunately volker was ill not in position to talk to me and she subsequently, then died. Then been who lived in connecticut had declined to talk to me. In burried forceful term. She felt she just didnt want to about her mother. Mostly, the book is built on primary source materials from the diaries in the letters, documents from the archives. In sydney for husband books and sunday wrote about several travel books based on expeditions. And then, there will other people knew her. From philip barry, the playwright, holiday to others who wrote about her. The nazis, do they think she knew anything. And they just treated her as a special person but they didnt think she knew anything. Initially they were suspicious that she was a spy. And they were all spies but they managed to pull it off. I think apart, nazis Knowledge Based on postwar analysis by the americans another burried little about the oss. So gertie, which is convincing. And she had essentially worked in an office. So she was quite convincing about and describing herself as a file clerk. Because in some senses, she was about four. Except she was filing topsecret materials. The girls will estranged from her mother. They feel about the father. He died in 47. Did they look in that been left by him is it too. That i know less about. I think they were in particular will not happy with either of them. And blame to think both of them for the sins of the abandonment. As a child. Obviously though with sydney did, they were still burried young. So a lot of the focus of their live was turning. What happened to the name rank and serial number. She was listed as an officer. She was actually lt. In the Womens Army Corps. You can see, name rank and serial number but in the moment, its hard to pull that off when you are subject to these kinds of multiple interrogations. And when she said initially dealt have to tell you anything. She was verbally threatened. The threat may not of been railed. They do not torture her. American or british prisoners. With some exceptions obviously let the most part people believe this was a possibility. Severity, also was well she did talk. She parked talk about things she wanted to talk about. She did not provide any secrets. And at one point in berlin when she was asked frankly, in some military phrasing in which she was asked about, what trip she had seen in around luxembourg, as you. Like refused to discuss the subject. Severity, is happy to talk about her high society their friends are their parties. General patton will be here any day now. She would not do that to her credit discuss real military information. How did you find gertie and decide to write the story. Or by accident. Id written a book that was coauthored book that was published in 2014 called chicago affair. The book was about normal doctor chicago. I was an instrument in the cold war and the struggle over that book. The cia and secretly publish it in russian. Snuggle back into the soviet union. And when he won the nobel prize, was vilified and nearly destroyed by soviet repression. So i came out of that book and was a year later maybe looking around for another subject. It took me three years to get the documents from the cia. It was a long process. I knew that all oss documents and been declassified. So just thought maybe some oss, topic will pop out at me. So i started read books about the oss. And i was reading detweiler news book. Theres a small section maybe a page or little more, will gertie is mentioned. It triggered some interest in so i started looking at other books. In her capture was also described by robin link. So if in their great resource called google. [laughter]. I discovered that all of her papers were in the college of trust i started reading the letters which i can bring the money. Theyre digitized. And he can become a monk. Not all online but a lot of them are. Enough for me, when it began to look at what materials are held at the library, to realize that well, theres a lot of great material here. When i started to search the national archives, it became clear there was a lot of material there. So some. Average Critical Mass where i decided there is enough material for me to do this discrete and particular subject based on this limited rich but limited amount of material. Frankly, and a fulltime job. And it could take time off the coast book writing has brought a substitute for a salary. And so this became a kind of weekend for me. And it took me a while, three years. We know that permit is cooperation from the college of charleston and i was able to assemble and bring home a lot of copies of all of this material and go through it slowly and then start to build the book. So thats how it happened. Right on the top. And as anybody else had a question. We would just like to see thank you again for visiting us. We definitely appreciate it. This was a great informative discussion. Thank you for cutback. [applause]. Thank you. You are watching book tv from cspan2. Top nonfiction books and authors of a weekend, booktv, television for serious readers. This weekend on our Author Interview program afterwards. New york talks about race and identity with New York Times columnist anthony appia. Also National Review editor chris lori makes his case because the contributions of nationalism. Computer and Information Science professors Michael Carnes and aaron roth discuss algorithm designs. Provides an inside look into the trump white house. It is a book to be a. Org for more instant information. In recent talk at Miami University in hamilton, ohio. Former ohio governor, and 2016 publican president ial candidate john hasek, argued the solutions to americas problems, need to come from the bottom up. In most politicians. And listen to us. And im going give you a couple of examples. The civil rights movement. You think that they asked out civil rights laws on oath. Martin luther king, went to see john kennedy and kennedy, he left the white house and since kennedy didnt hear it. It was really upset about it. What happened over time, because of king and some of the people i mentioned, people began to see that we need it justice. And the pressure came from the bottom up. The marches, the castings, the dogfighting news, the jailing, it didnt square with us. As free people. We wanted justice. We demanded justice. And the politicians ultimately after a decadelong struggle, began to pass the laws. Womens suffrage, do you think those guys wanted to give you your power. They did it. Can you think about how long it took for women to get the rights to vote. And if you are an africanamerican, you had even wait even longer to get the right to vote. Because you are favored. And how does it happen. We demanded it. From the bottom up. I am convinced that if we why not have the protest on our college campuses, we would still be in vietnam today. But if some reason as to why we would still be there. He got ended by the students and the adults who finally said enough of this. And the same is going to be true about environmental awareness. In some is going to be trail about guns. This just talk about that for a second. When i was governor, i try to pass this law. I want you to think about this. This law said that if somebody in the workplace was a threat to fellow workers, or they were a threat to students on a college campus, that there wouldbe a judicial proceeding along with maybe input from Law Enforceme enforcement. In the gun wouldbe taken away from somebody who was unstable. Taken aback whenever they were stabilized. And thats we do become law. So we do take those long time. And people are going to demand it. Love getting tired of this. It will only happen when it comes like this. So folks, couple of things joy movement, start a movement, give somebody a hug, put yourself in somebody elses shoes. Have a smile on your face, be patient, get out of your silo, and this is whats going to heal our country. Because the great news is we are in charge. Not them. We are in charge. And if we come together, all across this country that i speak and i see all across this country, people are hungry for this. They just want to know what to do. You dont have to climb mount everest. You dont have to be greta. You dont have to do all of these magnificent things market with the sikh king news income if you can do great things, do Little Things in the right way. And together we can end the fighting in the victory and we can start to do the things that we want out of our government and our community. Theyll allow us to have a healthier and a more together, nation and neighborhood and family. [screaming]. To watch the rest of this program, visit our website, look to be. Org printing and search for john hasek, or his book title, its up to us. Using the search fox at the top of the page. Hi, welcome. We, the entire staff are so happy to have you all here and is such an honor to host this event. My name is linda childs and im the owner of the bookshop. We are so happy to be in Community Supports local businesses as well as our local nonprofits and this one is the special one today