story? >> i can start. so, i was in '08 and '09 i'd been ol' wall street for seven years, and the crash was happening, and there was obviously a crazy time on wall street, legal man brothers was again do you and bear stearns, and the whole world was shaking. our hedge fund was in a deposit position and weren't losing money but it was a scary time for everybody and everybody around me was terrified. i had sort of been going through the process and was starting to question a lot another what i was doing and where i was stan neglect world and the crash exacerbated that ump remember being in a meeting with my billionaire boss, who was one of the smartest guys i'd ever met and it was -- we were in -- several other traders were in room and we were talking about the hedge fund regulations being proposed by congress, and everybody in the room thought they were a terrible idea, but i was starting to think they made sense, and so i said so, and i said, wouldn't this be better for the system as a whole? and it was this terrible moment. it was like the music had been turned off and my boss leaned across the table and shot me this withering glare and said, sam, don't have the brain capacity to think about the system as a whole. i can only think about what is good for us and our business. and candidly, wasn't so much -- i mean i did judge him and also recognized him, and i reask nighted myself in him and saw that for me, my whole life -- my book is really about ambition and my relationship with my dad, but my whole life had been about clawing to the top and getting this money and getting this prestige and getting this business card, and i think in that moment i sort of came to understand that there was something off about that and i at any time want that. for the first time that sort of ambition seemed to be no longer worth it. >> i'd say for me, i had read -- mcdonald's wasn't happening me with the book now was joan kroc's family and most of ray's family wasn't helping me at that point either, so i left to my own devices, and i found an item, tiny one-inch item in old newspapers, 1971, saying that joan had filed for divorce from ray. they didn't even name her. they just said the wife of the mcdonald's ceo has filed for divorce. citing violence, ungovernable temper, and joan had mott married ray until 1969. they had a long affair, on and off and other spouses involved before they finally married, and so i was curious to find out more about this, and i had to call the cook county courthouse to get the divorce records, and it was a -- quite a trial to do that. took awhile. finally the papers arrived after i plunked town in the necessary cash for copyingy ask sat on the floor of our home office in downtown l.a., voraciously reading legal papers from many years ago, and i found out the details of the divorce from joan -- that joan was alleging against ray, and hearing is, reading and it hearing it in and imagining her going through this -- because it was quite a painful situation. i realized -- i known that joan started an alcoholism education charity with ray's money, when she wasn't able to get ray help, and that was interesting, too, but knowing that moment on the floor in my office that the depth of their despair and their problems, really made he realize i had to keep going until and tell already story bus how she transcended that was so incredible and graceful. >> so, i took eight years or maybe more to write my book. it began when i went to africa with bill clinton to write a profile of him for esquire magazine, 2005. and one thing that happened there on that's trip was i got to see the beginning of the hiv/aid program he started to was to bring met sin to people suffering from aids in africa and elsewhere in the world, where it was thought that it was unaffordable to provide them with drugs. and basically that was the western world saying, we're going to let tens of millions of people die. clinton said, no, he and nelson mandela, and he started this little program, it start out small in africa, and this was in 2005. ed had been underway for a come of years. went to island of zansabar. a magical place but a lot of people were suffering from aids and they were hidden because it was a muslim country and was there stigma attached it to. and i met some familiar this getting relief, medicine and other support from clinton's organization, including some small children who were there with their parents or their mothers. eight years later, we went back to the island in 2013, i went back to zanzabar with clinton and we went to the same organization that had brought these patients to clinton's group in the first place, organization of families with hiv or aids who banned together to protect themselves against society. now it has friend, respected, out in the open, had hundreds of members, all getting medication and other support, and there was a young man there, teenager, i guess, who had a sign that he held up when clinton came and had a picture of a little child on it and that was him. had met that boy eight years earlier when he was a young child, little child, who had hiv, and probably would have died along with his mother and they were both alive, and he came up to clinton, and i saw clinton greet him and begin to weep, and that's when i knew that was the -- that was the core of the book. didn't help me shape the book but i knew this was what was essential to the story that people didn't know about what he had done and what it was about. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here's a look at some upcoming back firs and festivals happening around the country: >> for more information about the book fairs and festival booktv will be covering and to one-half preach festival coverage click the book fairs tab on our web site, book of there.org. >> joining us now on our call-in set is msnbc's chris hayes, who has written his second book called "china in a nation. ""where did the name come from. >> guest: a line from a richard nixon quote in 1968.

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