I think that would be pretty exciting for them. So what im going to do is im going to give you i guess what i would call a genealogy of the book. I will get into the themes of the book some but i want to start with kind of how it came into existence because its not always the case that a book thats about history and politics has a useful or meaningful personal back story but i think in this case it does, and its maybe sort of impossible to fully understand what the book is and what its trying to do if you dont understand what came from. Even though i dont show up, theres no, i i think youre in the book other than in the acknowledgments of its a personal book at the want to give it a genealogy to set up some of the discussions for some of the questions and answers at the end of the talk i will read a very short passage from the conclusion that nothing captures credible witness i was trying to do and some people think i have done this morning i discovered the National Review doesnt think ive done. So i think this book starts in a way with my grandparents walter and rebecca were School Teachers in philadelphia. And communist Party Members. Thats a fairly common story may be within a very thin slice of the sort of politically active left but is not a comment story more broadly. One of the stories my uncle rick with sony just to give an illustration of the world in which my mom grew up was telling me a story about onetenth, i think that it was on passover late 1940s comfort 1950s when there was a knock on the door and two men from the fbi came, and came into the house and sort of question my grandparents for a little while about their activities about whether they were members of the party, but who else were members of the party and what they said was we will tell you anything you want to know about us but we will not do anything about any of our friends. For some reason, and maybe it was because they answered about themselves, maybe who knows, maybe its just sort of bureaucratic issues. Many of the friends were fired during that time the communist Party Members are suspected communist Party Members. By the time i came along, that was many decades before it came along, by the time i came along and was born into this not congress but very left wing household in massachusetts, that store but more broadly the fact that my grandparents being communist was kind of our own family mythology. I would say a fairly simplistic part of the mythology, that they were communist Party Members, was a noble thing to be, that they were persecuted for the. Difference were persecuted for that. We went through this period known as mccarthyism and that was this noble and admirable part of our legacy. Not examined very much. And as i grew older i get into sort of not congress but left wing household and in this committee in springfield, massachusetts, where i grew up of other leftists and probably marxists and communists, although i dont think it would have necessary to identify themselves as an much, i think it was a simple narrative. As i got older it started to become more complicated. I remember when i was in college, i had a job, a student job with the holocaust archives at yale and wha one of the thins what i do is i would watch testimonials from survivors. One of the things i noticed repeatedly was people saying after they got out of the camps, after the camps were liberated, if they were liberated by the americans, lets say or the british, its not that that was the end of the story but at least that was the end of the sort of really imminent danger from a sort of military view. If they were liberated by the soviets it was as if there was a this whole other story of escape and danger that they had to go through. I started to learn about the history of the soviet union and the sort of horrific evils committed by the soviets and begin to complicate my own story of what it meant to be on the left, what it meant of this legacy of communist Party Membership. It was also during college that i started to dip my toe all of it into activism. When i was at yale they were sort of battles between the University Administration and labor unions that represent the workers there and i got involved with was the student labor active coalition, slack. I remember, so this was i think id useful understanding, relatively early evolution email our member this long argument i got into, when my fellow slacker members of his emails attacking one of the plans come from University Administration for wanting to pay lower workers, to bring in restaurants and pay lower wages to the new workers who were hired, hired to work at mcdonalds, and had this long argument. Most of all of which i agreed with until he got to the in what he said, and who wants to the sort of the hydrogenated meat patties with wilted lettuce and translucent tomatoes anyway . I look back and i said im with you on all of the stuff the way the universe wants to undermine the labor unions but i really like mcdonalds burgers. And i think that was indicative of the fact that sort of, it was the beginning to articulate but indicative of the fact all the group on the left with this legacy, there were also ways in which it didnt totally kosher with was and what i liked and i think some of that was just my sort of maturation and some of it was that i was a part of my childhood, the other part was very mundane growing up in america liking mcdonalds, liking television cant liking movies and as i went along the ways in which the left wing parts of me and these other parts of me did or didnt go here became more and more interesting to me, and more and more pressing in terms of the need of me as a begin to think of myself maybe as a writer to understand what that meant. So i got out of college, didnt write of things, ended up working at a newspaper and they had a very supportive editor of the to write whatever i wanted to write. And i had written three articles about people who have gone from the left to the right before i even noticed there was a pattern. And. Is that maybe should write a book. I just written a cover story for the newspaper that they would or would been himself raised in the comments party family, one of the early activists and intellectuals of the new left it in the mid 70s had a real falling out with the left because a friend of his was killed probably by the black panthers, and it sort of totally devastated him, pushing comity centered fellow for providers and came out the other side and assorted start a migration. Maybe theres a book in that, maybe theres a book in his broader phenomena of leftright. Looking back 10 years what it feels like is a minute that that was sent to me, it just kind of clicked. I was already kind of anxious by the of the book, i do have what seem like a good idea but wasnt working for all sorts of reasons. Once that was said i sort of really start thinking about it and i said this makes a lot of sense to i think i said to my wife and said what you think if i drop that sciencefiction fantasy i get and she said please, god, yes. [laughter] and so i had this id. I would have found an agent i wrote up a proposal. Though its the last chapter in the book, the first chapter i wrote with such a list of regions. I said i think i signed the contract in 2006, and i said to my agent, i think this will take me three or four years. She said well, just a two years. We both know three or four years. I said i will have a 142008. In the back of my head i said 2010. Then at kids and i got a job and then i realized how slow a writer i can be and how much of a procrastinator i can be and then finally he we are about 10 years later with the book. I think the book is a few things. So at the most basic level its the story of the six people who went from the left to the right, roughly chronologically the 20 center. The first is Whittaker Chambers who assorted very nicely for the structure was born in 1901 on april fools day. He was a communist writer, a communist fiction writer in the late 20s and early 30s. He was tapped by the communist party underground to be a spy. He ran a number of spy rings in new york and d. C. Before towards end of his get a real profound crisis, broke with the party, came out the other side for a while. He worked for time magazine, wrote a lot of anticommunist material in any wrote this great autobiography aut his journey and william f. Buckley, which founded the National Review in the 1950s, chambers was once one o of the people he tackled e of its founding editors and was a big influence on buckley and kind of on the generation of conservatives. The next one is a guy named james burnham. He thought he was going to devote his life to writing about philosophy and literature. He was kind of a product of the 1920s in that sense when a lot of artists and intellectuals were not interested in politics and thought that culture was where the most important meaning lay. So thats what it was in 1929, and then the sort of depression hit not just him but the country i get freight train. A sort of struggled to figure out what to do without any kind of forged on for a little while trying to write about philosophy and literature but the depression, kind of hitting him in the head and the in essence capitulated and start writing about politics but found himself as a writer. He was sort of, i would say almost constipated writer with his writing about philosophy literature. Something he thought he should be caring about but he didnt care about or have something to say about, and think on politics and the discussion of power and the discussion of Foreign Policy and the great global gain. Excuse me. And so he ended up come as we started wrestling with politics. Like a lot of intellectuals in the 1930s ends up being drawn towards marxism and the particular brand of marxism he was drawn to became a member and a leader in the relatively small group of riders intellectual activists oriented around trotsky and that direct conduit to trotsky. And he was that for most of the 1930s and then round about the same time and then he started to question the basic orthodoxies, and towards the end of the 1930s around the time that Whittaker Chambers was starting to break in also around the time that a lot of left wing marxist intellectuals who really beginning to question marxism but also sort of our more and more about the nature of the soviet union and questioning their commitment to that. He broke trotskyism. Without for a while i cast an invite the 1940s and 50s he becomes very conservative and has also tapped by william f. Buckley to be one of the founding editors of National Review, would have a fair amount of influence on the right in terms of cold war thinking for the remainder of his life. By merely writing for National Review inviting a lot of books. Ronald reagan who most of us know and actually i think all of us know, and i certainly but it didnt end to start researching this book. So instead you should look into writing. I had no idea that giving anything other than a conservative. But he was actually kind of solid liberal democrat for the first half of his life the his father was a diehard democrat, enormous fan of franklin roosevelt. Reagan himself during the depression really connected to roosevelt and connected to an emotionally as this sort of paternalistic charismatic father figure who assorted keeping the nation afloat during this time of crisis. And would not really start to move to the right until the end of the 1940s and early 1950s and that was particularly seminal in his turn to the right was one sort of the cold war and his sort of decreasing familiarity with communism and dedication to anticommunism, and also the way in which anticommunism became more of a conservative proverb were asked before the war, and sort of before the sort of made late 1940s have been more of a bipartisan property. The other thing was he went to work for general electric, and it happened as a spokesperson and a host of other weekly tv show. As a spokesperson for the company kind of traveling across the country speaking to workers, and civic groups. It happened be a time when ge was engaged in what was, what is probably still one of the most comprehensive political campaigns waged by an American Corporation in history and it was dedicated to challenging the ideas of the new deal and labor. Although they didnt require reagan to believe the ideology that they were putting out there, i think the process of being immersed in their literature and surrounded other people and engaging with ideas that ended up speaking to them for a variety of reasons played a key role in his turn towards conservatism. And then Norman Podhoretz was a public intellectual, and in the 1950s, and the editor of commentary magazine from the 1960s on he was editor for about 45 years, early in that tenure he actually gave, moved the magazine, itd been a solid anticommunist liberal left magazine, he moved it to the left. Thought of himself as somebody who was sort of radical in certain ways. Then towards the end of the 60s for a variety of reasons but started moving towards the right and one of the most was like in the book at the most dramatic i dont think h commitment to the right anyway, but he wrote his memoir, his memoir about called making it count tha by his own desire for success and ambitions. Imagine this book was going to establish himself as push him and notch up in the status hierarchy of american letters. He was going to put up on power with his good friend Norman Mailer. Out with soap, kites expectation and the opposite happened. The book got totally trashed by the critics including a lot of friends and colleagues that is come including ultimate Norman Mailer himself. And after that know and adore its fell apart for a few years and went into a deep depression. And we came out the other side it really can he had not moved as far as he ultimate would really change any profound way. I think almost come in with even more dramatic than any of the other people, his temper but seem to change. Event is enthusiastic joyful guy and on and the sight the site of his depression and transformation seemed as if hed aged 20 years and temperament. And David Horowitz. And then finally Christopher Hitchens who is somebody who i probably have more of a personal connection innocents anybody else in this book when i was in college. I asked my father for it prescription to time magazine. I was so horrified of my dad that i would even want this kind of sort of vaguely centrist magazine, that he ordered a subscription to a cejka naptime magazine im going to get you the nation as well, a subscription to the nation. I started reading the nation, i started reading Christopher Hitchens and i was just blown away by him. The degree to which he was so solid on the left but seem to take so much pleasure and acceleration in insulting his fellows on the left was this enormously exciting and liberating thing for me. And then when he started to move to the right, kind of start to inch their way in the only after 9 11 and iran were really move in the direction. I dont know if he ever went over to the right buddy move full speed away from the left. That was difficult for me. That somebody come upon how the people in this room have stories of meeting or drinking with Christopher Hitchens, but i actually never met him in person. But as sort of an intellectual hero and model, his movement away from the left was pretty painful for me. So those are the six people in the book that i just want to read, to get a sense i think my perspective and how i think about, i want to read something for the very end of the book which present most of you have not been kind to get. Most have not gotten to yet. Sort of talking about, im talking about this notion i have about what kind of perspective one needs to have to do the kind of writing that i find most exciting and interesting and i guess that im probably trying to do. I might go a little bit further and say that this is almost a characterization i think of what it looks like to have healthy political beliefs. The trick, which is a trick at october the basic part of living is to be grounded in a strong sense of self but a 21 interceptions came to be passionate in ones conviction but open to the data of experience and evidence of air. Its to accept this the end of friction and uncertainty except death and stepped forward with as much courage and creativity as you can muster when the old strategies assumptions and defenses so they will not do the trick anymore. Its not the point of this book to make the case that we should all be on the right or the left. I have my opinions. Im sticking to them for now. The six men had own opinion and change that opinion and change the anthem case to productively and others less so. Maybe its the point these lives are worth approaching with interest regardless. Theres a depth of the minute they can be achieved by any of us, only when we reckon bravely with whats and conflict within a rather than run away from it or deny its existence. These are people who reckon with themselves with the most terrifyingly on the middle levels. And we dont all like what it ended up on the far side of the encounters is beside the point that it makes the point. Growth requires risks. Deterrent against, to turn against one former site is to take an enormous psychological gamble. Its to let go of the you were and very possibly not like a new on the other side. He might alienate friends, coworkers, family, community. Invited to live your life without danger that you gave it all up for nothing. And the payoff if there is one is awfully hard one and almost certainly better tasting. By paying close attention to these perilous journeys, by asking ourselves what they went right and wrong, extending our cities as far as they can possibly go, and imagine ourselves in life we can make broad choice of the practicum and something that will enable us to live our own lives come to be more aware of the possibilities, to be more bold and more humble somehow at the same time. Thank you. [applause] so, happy to take any questions. Should people come up . If you choose to answer one, fine. So first of all, you are speaking about moving from the left to the right. Is better some tendency which you see which is similar to that about moving from the right to the left . This is number one. Number two, it seems like you are a perfect person to talk a little bit about