For those of you in the east and central time zones 7488201 in the mountain and pacific and if you cant get through on the phone lines and want to make a comment. Facebook. Com you will see right youll see right there at the top of some video you can go ahead and post a comment right underneath it and also email booktv at cspan. Org. You can make a comment there as well and finally you can also text a message if you would like to. This isnt for calling. 20,271,791,684 and if you would just include the first name and your town so we can know that much about you before we get started. David maraniss. In your book. [inaudible] guest every life is random. Maybe more random a chance meeting of the student at the university of hawaii who moved there because of the russian language class theres so many different aspects of what caused those people to that place and the fact that it really was a romance that didnt last. The point of this book and the story is really to show how much of a product. Host how well did he know his father . When the father came to honolulu and when he was and maybe third grade and spent about ten days there with the family it was a pretty tense ten days or so and thats the only time he ever saw him his whole life inside from when he was too young to remember the father was there for the first few months of his life until the mother and her baby moved back to seattle from when she was in high school. Host what was she like. Guest very strong minded, independent, smart. They ask for barack obama, senior and she spent much of her adult life overseas and raised two children and particularly her son. Sometimes its not abandoned by her and left much of the years with her grandparents but she was in the vanguard of the micro financing movement and worked through various times in the Ford Foundation and other enterprises to try to help and empower women around the world particularly in the asian subcontinent and she died very young when he was in his 20s. Host today the president is 54yearsold. What was it like in hawaii . Guest it wasnt a dysfunctional situation in any way. I think that he had enough to overcome both because of the fact that his mother wasnt there and he was struggling to figure out who he was in the culture but there werent that many africanamericans. The few that were there were mostly affiliated with the military because of the military bases in honolulu. But its interesting. I dont in any way discount the struggles that he endured at the school he went to bed because he was trying to find his identity in a place where there werent many, everybody was dealing with that in some degree or another. A lot of people thought if they didnt see him they would think that he was japanese and that there were many japaneseamericans in honolulu. There were so many kids that were having low and a half something else, have portuguese and all these different mixes and he was just part of that and that i think had a very profound and positive effect on him as much as he did have to struggle finding his identity as a black man which he didnt do until years later growing up in hawaii introduced into this multicultural world that allowed him to have a universal sensibility which is one of his many strengths. Host you describe his grandfather as kind of a lost character. Guest he at one point we thought he was a writer. He was trying to impress the woman who would be his wife with the fact that he met john out there. They went to the trunk where he claimed they had all these writings and he was always searching for something so the family started this long search with him looking for a place to feel comfortable traveling through oklahoma and texas and then going further west to seattle where he was a furniture salesman and then out to hawaii in this sort of westward movement in the search for something and he was very confusing to good talker and a good salesmen but there wasnt that much behind it and one of them are moving scenes in the memoir dreams from my father is sort of watching his grandfather get up the courage to make the call and on a sunday night all of these calls and all that aspect and the sadness behind some of that. Host you also reveal his grandfather was an alcoholic. Guest and i knew that but it hadnt been reported that president obama in my interview with him and announced it in the oval office. Host and an active alcoholic. Guest she was still drinking. Yes she never stopped that i know of. But i have to say i didnt do extensive reporting that there was enough for me to see that it wasnt im not an expert on alcoholism but it never affected her professional career that i could tell she was a very well regarded the person in the Banking Industry in honolulu, she was the rock of the family, she was the one who brought home about money and was practical and pragmatic in helping her to grandchildren sort started helping raise both of them and it didnt show she would come home and drink. Host what was it like for these two white people from kansas to raise a black grandson . Guest well, stanley would go around telling people in hawaii that his grandson was a hawaiian friends or descendent of a hawaiian friends because he could look sometimes and that is when he was younger. He was called very until he went to college. When he was in high school he tried to introduce him to some africanamericans in honolulu and so he was conscious of that part of the need for it. Madeline growing up in kansas where they were from near wichita. It was a free state and every town had Africanamerican Community and it so it wasnt alien to them but nonetheless it had to have been a challenge for them to figure out how to raise this young man and they did essentially without focusing too much. And again there is a scene that idea within my book that president barack obama mentions in his memoir of his grandmother waiting for a bus at the bus stop near their apartment in honolulu and coming back and complaining theres a strange looking africanamerican out of out of there and hes trying to do with his mixed feelings about how his grandmother is reacting to get host barack obama was raised in honolulu . Youve also traveled to africa for the story. I want to show some video and then have you describe it. Weve traveled around this part of western kenya based in the capital part of the country because the main try it drive out here is the trailer for which barack obama and his family came. We drove down to a little town where we interviewed Barack Obamas only living and. The sister of barack obama Senior Living in a small oneroom house in the back streets of this tiny village with only a couple of couches, and about five pictures and a few calendars on the wall post of them related to the president of the United States. This is the reality behind so many things you think you know that you dont really know and its when i see vibrant life i think i am just so lucky. Host the only surviving blood aunt. Guest it was the contrast to see between the relatives that president obama wrote about in his memoir versus some other relatives who were largely forgotten who were closer to let relatives so the main character of his visits his grandmother who lived north of where we were shopping and when we got to her house, it was surrounded by fences and there were guards protecting her and salesman outside. She had become sort of the queen mother of kenya. She wasnt related to him she was married to president obamas grandfather after president obamas father was born he she had a different mother that left and escaped from the grandfather with the kids and as a matter of fact barack obama senior didnt like her at all. They didnt get along yet she becomes the major figure and that is who president obama seems in his trips to africa while president obamas fathers sister come his real aunt is essentially neglected in the story. I am not trying to criticize the president for that. It was a complicated family in kenya and establishes. There is a lot of relatives floating around in different ways and its kind of a mess but its real life and thats what i was trying to find. Host you go to the place where barack obama senior was killed in a drunk driving accident but you also interviewed his last wife. Guest yes, another american from a suburban boston meta barack obama, senior when he was at harvard during a period he was being kicked out of the United States. He needed something beyond that to change the world. Said he is accepted as a harvard then he starts his real search for power. Host is there a second volume . There will be. I have to be the interest to devote my life to one so i will wait. And i hope and that everything turns out to write the book fiver six years after he is out of the presidency i dont like books that because of the year relevant to soon. I will wait for his memoir. There will be thousands of books written about barack obama so i am not laying claim to anything special. I do the other books will but i will write one more book. Host one more story before we go to calls. You have said very patient. Who is janet cooke . I dont like talking about that but it is part of my life a reporter at the Washington Post around that 79 period she wrote a story about a eight yearold heroin addict in she won the Pulitzer Prizes and it was a complete fabrication. I had a complex difficult situation with that i did not trust the story from the beginning of was the Deputy Editor bob woodward was the metro editor. There were several people who were suspicious of the story. A friend of mine did not believe it a couple of investigative reporters but my question that is minor is i was editing those that to whereby take a serious. And that is where my commitment was. I was upset and what i considered a travesty. I was always conscious of that. But the reason i did not believe her story she said she was the Baltimore Orioles beyond a eight yearold kid would have to a redskins fan. Football. Not baseball lifted the dollar rate truth provide that. But ended the case. So is ours to unravel. And it did not surprise me. But it dkb a lynch mob mentality. As much as i take pride in my professional journalism to detest everything that harms that with lack of truth with fabrication i have been equally strong feeling of lynch mob mentality. And i was part of the group of editors to tell the truth what happened. So to call ben bradlee to say read the ticket is concocted and is not true. Many people were involved then five editors to occur in to regret the Washington Post to grow her. Not because i like what she did but she is a human being. And said what went through her head as she would with the prize bin shebas have been thinking i will be found out. That is the way i figure the way i was thinking about her. Eventually bob woodward was being tough with her and other editors. I knew immediately she would fess up to me because i was not threatening she could sense and identified at some level of what she was doing as a person is the moment she of course, ocean you did. I am the one that she confessed to. I am not proud it is just the way that it happened. I certainly regret to that she ever wrote that story and a blemished the post i did not believe then or now us sense that it could happen and it did at other newspapers thats other times it happens in every industry but newspapers it is more harmful because we do have to be based on trust and churches. Unfortunately lies are published every day of some sort just reporting on politicians or government officials are saying. That is different from what we do. And everything has moved on perlite forces done from that point. Host is your turn. Ohio thanks for holding. Caller the shows are the reason i keep Cable Television you always get their rights and so does he. It is an honor to talk to you. I dropped in akron ohio. My dad was a car salesman with the first 63 in ted work dash a good year and i saw that begin to go downhill in the mid70s. I guess that a certain age you get more nostalgic. I still go to akron to get custard at stricklands i got to win debt go down the hill. I ordered your book on to treat. I wanted to comment to you a book called the hard way on purpose sas bio man that is teaching its university of akron. A quick one sentence from the path that leads to my question to say we could embrace impossible hope or impossible hopelessness but each of us had to choose. With regards to a detroit, do you want to give us your crystal ball 10 years in in 25 years from now . Rigo they are trying to reinvent themselves of their. What is your guest come what is your guess . As an author and orange journalist my disposition is to be optimistic but skeptical. That is where i am. Eidenshink uc it moving in the last year or two to the symbol of the city of hope for i have spent there five times in the last couple of months because of my book is everytime i see a little more buses buzz. It is like one of the citys to travel to in the United States the you could not have met and management ted years ago but downtown is starting to bloom. That midtown area and the Detroit Institute of art is filling up with young people. If you want to start your life moved to detroit there is a momentum of musicians and artists to of the other hand out large swath was still left behind and forgotten. The workingclass black and white beads to be restored to have a real renaissance. But i am hopeful. Caller how are you today . First of all, faq for taking the call. I have a very quick question i am republished of blood dash author bristles but i am a politician for u. S. Congress. But what you talked about it struck me for the American Public that you read a statement regarding the roles that hillary has chosen to run her life to a career. What you state parole of life to former president bill clinton will affect her role us say president ial hopeful . Guest honestly it will affect her role campaigning of the election more then if she became president. All the wood is hard to imagine if she is the president what in the world will they do with him . But once she gets there, id she will be liberated from much of the attitudes she has had to carry over a long period of time because of the very complex relationship with her husband and has served her for better search of the adult notion would have gotten as far as she has without him this or he did without her but what is the dash to be defensive in and protected because of activities over a long period of time there are parts of her if she was involved was someone else but a simple matter to kim paid her compare her campaign abilities that is unfair to compare anybody over the last quartercentury because of the Campaign Talent and with her speaking abilities with that authentic phoniness. When using that somewhat lighthearted way but that is in the situation that unlike any politician i have never seen before and to compare her with that is difficult as well but with his pluses and minuses and i dont think it will be the same. Host your right to the view toward the future and the history was evident in the partnership from its formation perpetual the infatuated with the new idea or a fresh face. Hillary was a rare constant her ambition was always there to equal him when he thought about marrying her it wasnt the site of the woman but the image of an older version of hillary though one woman he could imagine growing old and not getting bored. Guest i n uncomfortable talking about marital relationships because nobody really knows the truth. Though whole world knows the basic subject. But nonetheless is in to audit, who would have guessed after what they went through in the 1990s . It just shows that you never know and they have a very complicated symbiotic relationship that is deeper than just a convenience and there is much more to which than that. I cannot predict what will happen but. Host have you thought about writing a book on Hillary Clinton . Guest no. Dray specifically about her in that book i am thinking i will write another book about the clintons to do in my 70s. [laughter] maybe to go back to those stories one more time but i cannot write about her now have to wait and see what happens. Host jackson wyoming goahead. Caller hello. I have a fantasy and you are the master of the nonfiction form i still find it even in years away a remarkable play so many threats of American Life seemed to have intercepted culturally or politically i dont have to tell you back through the 19th century the father of american in conservation you have one of the big superstars. Host reply did your life to a queue to madison . College. Host what is your idea . Caller the book is called american crucible. I am giving you the title. [laughter] they are going home again to reveal this place that played in so many ways so may times as the american story in a very real way that someone who was at that riot who became a grass roots voice you have the father of progressivism. Host what you do when jackson wyoming . A jack of all trades. [laughter] thanks for calling. I appreciate that i get a lot of people with suggesting ideas for may and to they have to come organically out of my soul. Medicine is in my soul so there is some possibility Something Like that would come out of me i write a lot about medicine in various ways in that book is about medicine and he writes that as he plays an interesting role in American Life over many decades. That is a possibility. Host you still spend your summers there . Yes. In 2003 we left madison in 1975 we would come back occasionally then my parents were in their last years i. R. A. Realized i could go home begin they moved to go walkie andrew wanted to be closer to them. So i bought a house there and we spend our servers in medicine through the early fall. And it has been our very eyes three connection. A very nice return action. I love the university. We have a lot of Close Friends is a comfortable place to be especially in contrast with washington. But there is such a nice difference between the two it has a healthy perspective newport news virginia ago was ted. Caller hello. What do you think obama is president ial legacy maybe if he is retiring from Office Rather young. What will he contribute to the world . Guest thank you for the question. My own sense is depending on who writes history they will be much kinder to him than the way he is treated during his presidency. I think he has accomplished a lot certain aspects are i disagree with in terms of Civil Liberties or his policies if anybody had an answer to solving the problems of the modern world. But has made some mistakes were made by a the president before him. So that is in terms of domestic policy. Is specially considering everything he has had to work against that i consider a very sick political culture. I read yesterday that hillary would pull the Supreme Court . [laughter] i cannot imagine that it just depends on where clinton or the other former president in terms of international travels. But i will be in chicago what a lot but he could do some teaching aha yes madison is to meet but he does not go there is often i am sure he will never live there but every christmas or maybe a little more than that as he gets older may be in hawaii as much as any place. Maybe chicago stock and hawaii made him a person again. Host which candidate interest you most as a person with a complex truth . I have written about hillary that i feel a compulsion to explore i am not the least bit interested but as a vehicle of other expression for the american situation but then edited at the post for a while. But there were certain aspects of that that were interesting and i have written about the other candidates but there was a from john boehner about his constituency that was driving the Republican Party crazy but one of the larger characters is john kasich chairman of the House Budget Committee and he was not afraid to take on certain aspects with the pentagon budget and is a little bit of a maverick in many ways. And has certain complex with the Republican Party as it exists today but i find him an interesting political character. Host ohio you are on booktv. Caller hello. Lets talk baseball and a cold january afternoon. To talk about Branch Rickey and howard brought him to the Pittsburgh Pirates was anybody knows Branch Rickey was one of the larger characters and then he left the dodgers and at the National League for a long time and to be ready for that to be the head of the dodgers. And then would assign him to the dodgers contract. And they tried to hide him city cannot be stolen by another team because he was not on the roster. Flow put by the time this season is over the pirates took clementi from the dodgers the you cannot take someones man on the protected roster so rickey went to the dodgers in clemente to the pirates. Really he did not excel over the next four years which is important to remember he struggled the first few years and finally blossomed in the 60s and help to the the pirates to National League championship series over the yankees he thought he should have been the mvp but that was the beginning of his incredible speed and of the pure hitter in baseball Branch Rickey got him to pittsburgh and he deserves tremendous credit. Baseballs last hero. The front page blurb from a baseball fan about that book. Here is some video from october 17, 1971. Congratulations. [inaudible] debt is one of the most moving moments in baseball history because he would think his parents in spanish. What that is an incredible statement of his pride of food he was in and where he was from. He loved p. R. And over the years has become the patron saint of latinamerican baseball and i cannot tell you how many people from latino origin from florida or p. R. Or venezuela to say their father was crying when they listened to that on the radio. Was his body ever found . No. He was delivering humanitarian aid to nicaragua as there was an earthquake there. The blade was diverted and clementis and i will go to the people he boarded the plane he should not have been on it was overloaded by more than 3,000 pounds the pilot had not slept in 27 hours it was owned by an odor he broadened out of cockroach corner in terrible condition. Everything about that said do not get on this plane but it crashed shortly after takeoff into the addiction into the atlantic ocean. They found different parts of the plane and all they could find of him was his one and red sox. She is a wonderful woman she never remarried. And carries malaria every possible way. A s and roberto, jr. Was also the Spanish Language and there were great athletes. That is a very difficult thing to do. It is hard to find a player today that matches clemente as a human being. Has he was getting older his skills never really diminished. But he was outspoken in the way that some athletes are starting to be again. The commercialism dominated clemente was never afraid to speak out about any issue or his pride of place and language the Sports Writers would quote him and in the headlines would infuriate him. He rebuild against that notion. He was a hypochondriac but he played more games in and he played hard. He had to combat that stereotype. He is still beloved today but applause and quite like that then. But in terms of his skills skills, to the most beautiful bright dorm or marco right arm. And how theyre all a judge i have said you can feel the homerun hitter in did you go home and forget it but if you see that you will never forget. Host you said he would place Martin Luther king, jr. At the top of the last he believed in his philosophy but yet this sensibility brought him closer to malcolm x to test the response to jim crow segregation. You have been very patient go ahead. Thanks for taking my question regarding president of, in columbia. How did Genevieve Cook describe barack obama with the time they spent in new yorkfuo the three of us over the course of one in your wit to find out who this woman was. First we found out someone had a letter that said barack broke up with the genevieve than we had a name. Bid over many months putting into the computer variations and eventually it took me to name of the records in connecticut and i found Genevieve Cook. She struck up a conversation with me over the course of many weeks at one point she wrote to me in email that said i have been reading about how you wrote a book on vietnam in by the way i kept a diary. So i got the diary. In that the Central Branch of that that she knew he was in a search and would very of black women. But she understood that. But she also saw the of the deal that aspect of barack obama that is hard to penetrate the only is a distance between what was outside what is projected to the world is you understood that at a very early age. Host your first book the first underclasses 95. Then the clinton enigma. 1988. Prize still mattered. The prince of tennessee. Clemente. The summer olympics that stir the world. Barack obama of the story 2012 once in a great city 2015. Whenever we have a writer on we ask about their influences of what theyre reading in those types of questions and here is what he had to say. In a very sexist way because she is right. [laughter] id she has a photo in at least every one of my books and has traveled with me to vietnam. It started how would you like to move to green bay from a the for the winter . But we did. Every river was a Little Cottage the day froze we watched it frees in the Christmas Card that year we were standing by the frozen day in the snow and i have on a cheese head and she had a sign that said help. She was trapped but she was fabulous and has been an important part of every book i have written. Any advice for authors in this and advice about your writing process . Lead is a pretty general question. The advice is to write to in to read. I talked about the four legs of the table for my writing process. The first leg describing is go there. Were ever there is too absorber the culture and geography of the place. Second, the acquirer archival documents. The my first book with bill clinton i went to arkansas to check into the motel eight and it turns out the night clerk said she was his great thats probably have the claims that they were related but she took a liking to me because it was a springtime the trees were blooming im incredibly allergic asthmatic. She said if you come over i have a magic potion that will clear your allergies. She gave me this potion it made me sicker but she said in the attic i have all the boxes of grandmothers defects she took down a big Cardboard Box the first thing is always stationery that said georgetown university. A big stack of letters from Hillary Clinton. It was incredibly eliminating of that political infatuation. Is awaiting you cannot get through the interview. The last book 2013 archives in their range from the Ford Research center or in dearborn or Duke University has the greatest in the world the ad campaign in the walter reed Library Archive had all the documents for one of the major characters in my book for that walk to freedom for the i have a dream speech but that is the second leg. Third each book has ranged between 300 and 400 interviews. Find that wherever it is. The first interview is the least important other than to set it up the fourth lady is look for what is not there. To look beyond the stories. Host larry you are in washington. Please go ahead. Good morning. And noticed the uprising from students but cheney was also there but kept his head down he didnt want the Staff Reporter to notice him i think. But how did you go from antiwar in vietnam to pro war for iraq . Does money have anything to do with that . They give for the question did cheney was at the university of wisconsin fall 67. He was in graduate school she was studying english. There were living in student housing. In a sense he was getting as many deferments as he could but he was not against the war. He supported that. May be the chicken pox he wasnt fighting but he was a supporter. In that period was fairly instrumental to shape him especially Lynne Cheneys hostility towards the left in American Life that push them to do though rates in reaction to the demonstrations so that is the reality. He was avoiding the draft but working on his Political Science degree. They key so much for once in a great city and i just completed it was a page turner i grew up in detroit in with too high school there in to my father operated a Grocery Store there. In the time period you focused on just happened to be when i was a junior in senior in high schools there are specific memories that i have in which you invoked including the introduction of the mustang i attended a couple of motown reviews and i have great admiration and appreciate what you did with luther in the book. I just want to ask you what most surprises you about detroit and then and now . That maybe you find things that are not on the surface what of this Exhaustive Research surprise to . Tried to approach the book where everything surprises me. Where everything is fascinating and new. What is the burst of music in the energy coming out of detroit at that time . The obvious answer is the founder of motown to develop the record industry to find talent with that happenstance of Smokey Robinson and Aretha Franklin the temptation from the supremes all of that doubling of the people of that great migration to the industrial cities of the north especially detroit with that oral tradition but there are two other things that surprised me. One was the presence of a very popular Piano Company and because of the geography with the affordability of the disposable income every musician and talks about the piano that they had the Second Surprise is should not have been that the impact of Public Schools im sure they had a Great Public School system and every musician to talk about the influence. Literally a couple hundred comments on facebook , moved up one dash people move from detroit as a hightech says sen terrible School System another says it is because of the Democratic Party of lot of the same comments. Edits the traditional response because of the corruption in the riots that is a traditional conservative reaction to blame everything from the Great Society and the control of cities. You can argue that forever. But what i will lead like to say is the structural problems are before that. Before the riots. Before the large labor contracts in the bankruptcy and before that you can see that massive migration by the Auto Industry first with other place is nationally and internationally so that in the middle of my book some sociologists said they would lose those in this space and you are right that is before that was predicted with that urban renewal and the Shopping Centers around the city it is easy to make these political attributions but it was a lot more than that. What is the interview you did not get . To make i did not get a read the franklin. Aretha franklin
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