they only put out six chairses. they told me it was a pretty good turnout for me. [laughter] it's a true story. five people turned out. one was a store manager. she wasn't going to buy any books. two more were my friends of parents who retired to pennsylvania from iowa. and had come only to find out how my mom and dad were doing. the fourth was a guy named bill bryson who had some preposterous in west virginia or anyway from out of state. driven had long way so we could stand together and look at the driver's license. [laughter] and marvel at the fact we were named bill bryson. the fifth person was his wife who didn't seem want to spend the evening with anybody named bill bryson. so this is really fantastic. i'm very grateful for you turning out ton a friday night like this. i'm grateful. there's something about getting up in front of a room full of people. particularly in such a distinguished setting that make me feel i ought to say something important to a -- i have to warn you have never been very good at this. i'm one of the people that blurts out the wrong thing. i have a knack for saying exactly the wrong thing. the example i give is some years ago i had to fill out a questionnaire for a british bookstore chain. one of the questions on the questionnaire what would you like people to say about you 100 years from now. i thought it was a tough question. i thought what would i want them to say about me? the answer i gave: the amazing thing is, he's still sexually active. [laughter] so i apologize inned advance as i don't say exactly the right thing tonight. [laughter] i have to -- there's another little true story. there's an element of vanity about these thing. i'm pleased and honored that so many of you come. like everybody, authors crave attention. we tend to be anonymous. there's not that many author you recognize if they became in to a room even though they might be famous and you admire them. you can say that about a lot of people. i'm sure john would love to be recognized. i know, i would and always have. and rarely a couple of times a year i get recognized on the street. they have the higher profile. i never get recognized in my own country. it's something i secretly graved for a long time. it so happens last month i was in colorado because our younger son got a job. there he graduated from a college in england a year or so ago and took advantage of his american passport to get a job as a ski instructor. a junior ski instructor in vail and works in the summer. these are kind of entry-level jobs. he's not being paid much. but he's having the time of his life and met some kids and sharing an apartment with them. about month ago we decided to go out to vail and visit him. we hadn't seen him in awhile. see how he's doing. while we were there he was working. we had to fill the days. the third or fourth day we were in vail i was in downtown vail wandering around looking in the store windows, and while i was doing that, i heard a voice that called out. hey, bill, mr. bryson. i turned around and a young man was advancing toward me holding his hand out to be shake. and i was thrilled. it had never happened to me before. so i held out the hand and shook his happened and said how did you know me? he said i'm one of your son's roommates. [laughter] we had dinner you two nights ago. [laughter] so when i say thank you for making me important. he has no idea how grateful i am to you. [laughter] i don't know exactly what you expect of me tonight. he said something indicated i would be talking about -- but i thought i would broad tennessee a little bit if it's okay. i thought i would tell you a little bit about who i am, where i come from, and read you a couple of passages from my earlier books. at some point i would like to tell you my bear story. i always tell it. i hope you enjoy. particularly it's where the appalachian trail starts. couldn't be an more apt place to tell than georgia. first a little bit about my myself. as indicated i grew up in des moines, iowa a long time ago. i know, i have a funny voice. people say you don't come from des moines, iowa. i go des moines, iowa people say you don't come from des moines, iowa. i grew up there. several years ago, as an effort to try to prove to the world that i really did come from there. i wrote a book about growing up in iowa during the '50s. it was such a fantastic time to grow up in america in the '50s. i think it was a magical place. i'm sure childhood whatever happens to you is kind of a splendid event. i think to have grown up in the middle of the country in the middle of the 20th century in a nice happy middle class household was a real privilege. and my job was almost totally happy. particularly adored my mother. my mother -- is still alive she's an absolutely saint of a woman. she work at home furnishing as " des moines register." she would rush home. stop at the store to get food and rush to the house and throw something to the oven and then tough the rest of the house to do the thousand chores that piled up. the washing, ironing, and so on. she was a little bit forgetful anyway. because she had so much on the mind she would tend to forget about the things in oven. we didn't call it the kitchen. we called it the burns unit. [laughter] her specialty she would often put things in the oven and forget to take them out. i was almost fully grown before i realized that the plastic wrap wasn't a chilly glaze. she had occasionally gotten things wrong. i tell you this because i introduce you to a passage when i read from my book. what happens is i came home from school one day to discover to my mortification, my mother, my dear mother, in a well meaning gesture had accepted an invitation on my behalf to go to a place called lake -- on saturday with the family from milton, neighbors of ours. and normally going to the lake would have been fansic. it's a lake in a state park about 20 miles south of des moines. it's a delightful place. normally everyone is happy to go there. not with the milltons. they were just the most obnoxious people you have ever met. they had an annoying voices. they ate funny foods and insisted you eat them too. you couldn't avoid eating the funny foods. they were arguetive. they were stupid, frankly. and your heart sank if you had to be in their company for very long. they had a little boy named milton milton. [laughter] perhaps they have a tradition of giving the first-born male of the family's last name. and milton milton was just kind of -- it was famous for being the biggest dript drip in the school. being with him was social suicide. i couldn't agree my mother agreed for me to do this. it was going to be a dreary thing. my point to mention this, one of the wonderful things about childhood particularly back then was no matter how bad things seemed to be going how often they worked out for the best. so i went to the lake in a mood of gloomy submission, crowded to the milton's ancient gnash a car with a stylish of a chest freezer. expecting the worse and receiving it. we got -- [inaudible] sorry. we got heatedly lost for hours and went to the state capitol building something impossible for any normal family to do in des moines. we reached there and spent 90 minutes more alone in the car and setting up a base camp on the shady lawn between the small artificial beach. mrs. milton distributed sandwiches that were made with a pink paste which was the stuff my grandfather used to secure her dentures to her mouth. i went for a walk with my family and left it with a dog that had nothing do with it. i noticed later -- they seemed to avoid. having eaten we had to sit quietly -- [inaudible] is it breaking -- [inaudible] is it still going? i can't tell -- [inaudible] is it projecting? having eaten we had to sit quietly for 45 minutes before swimming or we'll get cramps and die in six inches of water. she encouraged us to close our eyes until it was time to swim. far out in the middle of the lake there was a large wooden trap which -- [inaudible] a kind of wooden tower. i'm sure it was the tallest wooden structure in iowa if not the midwest. the platform was so far out from shore hardly anyone visited it. just occasionally some teenage daredevils swim out and have a look around. sometimes they would even climb the many ladders to the high board and cautiously creep out ton it. but they always retreated when they saw how suicidally far the water was below them. no human being had been known to jump from the high board. so it was quite a surprise as the egg timer dinged the. mr. milton decided he was going to dive off the high board. he had something of a diving star in lincoln high school, but that was on a 10-food board in an indoor pool. this was another order of magnitude. clearly he was out of the mind. word of his insane intention was spreading along the beach when mr. milton went to the water and swam out to the distant dock. he was a tiny figure when he got there. even from a distance. the high board seemed hundreds of feet above him. it took him at least 20 minutes to make the way up to the ladder to the top. once at the summit, he staired up the down the board bounced on it experimentally two or three times and took some deep breathes and assumed position at the fixed end of the bar -- board with the arms at the side. it was clear from the posture and poised manner he was going go for it. by now, all the people on the beach and in the water several hundred all together had stopped whatever they were doing and were just silently watching. mr. milton stood for quite a long time then with a nice gesture he raised his arms, and ran like hell and imagine an 0 olympics athlete took a bounce and took a perfect swan dive. it was a beautiful thing to behold, i must say. he fell with flawless grace for what seemed minutes. such was the beauty of the miltons and the breathless silence that the only sounds to be heard across the ladies and gentlemen was -- lake was faint whistle of his body. it may only be my imagination, but he seemed after a time to start to go red. like an incoming meteor. he was really moving. i don't know what happened whether he lost his nerve or readed he was approaching the water as a murderous involvesty or what. but about three quarter of the way down he seemed suddenly to have second thoughts about the whole thing. [laughter] and began suddenly to flail like someone i think tangled in bedding in a bad dream. when he was perhaps 30 feet above the water he tried a new tact. he spread the arms and legs wide in the shape of an x. evidently hoping by exposing the mass amount of surface area he would stop the fall. [laughter] it didn't work. [laughter] he hit the water impacted really is the word for it. and over 600 miles per hour. [laughter] with the report so loud it made birds fly out of trees up to three miles away. at such a speed water effectively becomes a solid. i don't think he penetrated it at all but bounced off about 15-feet. it limbs suddenly very loose then lay on top of it still like an autumn leaf spinning gently. he was toed to shore in a row boat and carried to a grassy area who carefully set him down on a blanketed. he spent the rest of the afternoon on the back arms and legs bent slightly and elevated. every bit of surface area on the body from the thinning hairline to the toe nails had a look as if he suffered some unimaginable misfortune involving a sander. occasionally he had small sips of water. later that same afternoon milton junior cut himself on a hatchet. he ended up bleeding in pain and in trouble all at the same time. it was the best day of my life! [laughter] thank you. [applause] thank you. you know, in a slightly awkward position, on evening like this. i write two different kinds of books. i write a lot of stuff that is little i and to be amusing as we've heard like that. lifetime as a little kid. sometimes i write more serious books, which i are very entertaining and meant to convey information a more conventional and reliable way. to be actually factual and to, you know, i take some care to try to make them as completely accurate as i can. and that's really the case with the new one, which is any publishers brought me here as great expense to georgia, which is one summer america 1927. i don't like to talk too much -- i never like to talk too much about a book. especially this one in a way. it ems -- seems as if you're in a danger of spoiling it. i feel this way about this one. the summer of 1927 was amazingly eventful and magical. memorable summer. i think the most memorable and eventful summer any nation ever had. and for me, it was just a whole bunch of discoveries. i didn't know all the things happening, and so i kind of hoped that the reader will read them and be as amazed as i was in discovering them. that's why i don't like to talk about it too much. ly say that the foundation of what got me started on this i've been fascinated be i the fact that these two things happened in the same summer. they happened and lynn berg flew the atlantic and the babe ruth hit 60 home runs. it's vaguely fascinating of the idea of the two iconic events contrast human beings happening in parallel at the same time. i had in mind it might be interesting to do a dual biography of the two remarkable figures. with the whole narrative art meeting when they had the most memorable summer. then i found as i started doing the research that babe ruth and charles lindberg were only part of this amazing summer. you also had the great miss flood which is the biggest natural disaster in -- american history in term of extent. you had the victim -- filming of the jazz picture. and they started carving mount rushmore that summer. we executed the factual -- [inaudible] which was a huge, huge story. which is almost completely forgotten now. television happened in the summer of 1927 and so on. it goes on and on. one thing after another. it became the book. that's why it's called "one summer." it was all of these remarkable events that happened in the one summer. but lindberg, i think, is the big story. i had always thought what lindberg had somehow gotten in to his head he was going to fly the atlantic and did it and was as simple as nap what i didn't realize there was a race going on. there was something lot and lots of teams that were trying to be the first to win this award. and about eight or ten teams in europe and america that were poised to go and be the first to fly from new york to paris. that's what you had to do fly between the two cities. it was an epic achievement. the technology in 1927. it was just barely ready and potentially capable of doing that. all of the other teams were much better funded. they were experienced, they had multiple engines, they had multiple man crews, you see three or four people. and out of nowhere, before any of the other teams can get away. the kid flies to minnesota. he's been flying for four years. he's in a sing the-engine plane and proposing to fly the ocean alone without a navigator or co-pilot or anyone. not even a radio. the world became enchanted. the world was entranced by the nice, personalble, suicidally foolish young man. the flying fool they called him. and everybody particularly all the other aviators thought he was bound to fail. he got away first and off he goes and of course, e know the outcome. he made it. but the interesting thing i had thought about when he disappeared over the horizon. he banished from everybody's consciousness. nobody knew what to become of him. for about 16 hours he was completely out of touch. the only person on the planet who knew where charles was charles. everybody else was just from the edge of their seats and almost consumed with attention and worry with the poor kid. when he appeared in ireland the next day, over the coast of ireland, the joy just was gold. people were thrilled. strangers were completely em waying each other and filled exhalation. and the interesting thing is that lindberg had no idea during the course of his flight he had almost completely anonymous to being by the time he landed the most famous man on earth. and as he's coming to pass he has no idea what is awaiting him on the ground below. that's the tbokd the passage i want to read to you. >> as lundberg covered the last leg of the trip no paris, he had no idea that he was about to experience fame on a scale of an ensty unlike any experience like any human being before. it never occurred to him that many people would be waiting for him on the ground. he wondered if anyone at the airfield would speak english and if in trouble for not having the french visa. his -- it's really -- it's not -- it's annoying. me. i have to lower it, i'm sorry. securely then he would cable his mother to give her the news that he arrived. he supposed there would be one or two press interviewing assuming reporters worked that late in france. then he would have to find a hotel somewhere. at some point he would need to buy clothes and personal items. he hasn't packed anything at all. not even a toothbrush. a more immediate problem confronting him the map didn't show the airfield. all he knew it was some 7 miles northeast of the city and it was reportedly big. [laughter] after surfacing the identical tower he headed in the direction. the only possible sight he could see was ringing of bright light as if it was a industrial complex. with long tentacles of bright light. it was nothing like the airport he expected to find. what he didn't realize all the activity below was for him. the tentacle of light were the headlight of tens of thousand of cars respondent usely drawn there and now caught in the greatest traffic just a minute. car -- jams. cars were banded -- abandoned. at 10:22 paris time. 30 hours after taking to the air. the spirit of st. louis touched down on the grassy spaceness. in that instant a pulse of joy swept around the earth. withinn't miss america knew he was safe. he was -- as tens of thousands of people rushed across the airfield to the plane. and eight foot high chain link fence was flat end and several bikes were crushed under the has of charactering feet. a measure of the pandemonium is the next day cleaners would gather up more than a ton of lost property including six sets of dentures. [laughter] for lindberg it was an alarming circumstance as he was trapped in an actual danger of being pulled to pieces. the throngs hauled him from the plane and began to carry him off. i found myself lying in a prostate position on top of the crowd. in a center of an ocean of heads that extended to the darkness as i could see he wrote later. it was like drowning in a human sea. someone yanked the leather flight helmet from the head. and others began to pull at the clothing. behind him to the greater alarm the plane was being ruined by the swarms. i heard the crack of wood behind me when someone leaned against the bearing strip. then a second snapped and the sound of tearing fabric. somehow in the confusion he found himself on the feet and the crowd moving past him. in the poor light, the focus switched to a helpless american bystander who bore passing resemilens. they now carried him off. [laughter] protesting veemently. a few minute later officials in the airport were startled by the sound of breaking glass and the site of the unfortunate new victim being passed to the window to them. wide eyed. the new arrival was missing his coat, belt, necktie, one shoe, and about half his shirt. a good deal of the rest of the clothing hung in sleds. he looked like a survivor of a mining disaster. he told the benewsed official his name was harry wheeler and from the bronx. he come to paris to buy rabbit pelt. now he just wanted to go home. lflt i'll leave this there. thank you. [applause] [inaudible] i want to tell you two stories quickly. one is the bear story i promised to tell you. i always tell it wherever i go on. i love the bear story. the bear story is an experience i had many years ago now when i tried to hike the appalachian trail in the company of a slightly challenging companion who i named stephen katz in the book. the appalachian trail, as must surely know, starts in northern part of the state and runs for 2200 miles in maine. and it's really hard. if you wrote the book you'll know i grew preoccupied with the danger of bear attack while hiking in the eastern woods. i know, bears in eastern united states don't attack very often. the thing is with respect to any individual, it only has to happen once. [laughter] so i was concerned about the danger. and i was gratified to discover after the book came out that lots of people all over north america shared these concerns. because i got letters by the sackful from people giving me advice on how to avoid bear attack while hacking. here the basic advice seems to be to go hiking with someone who can't run as fast as you can. [laughter] but there was one letter i got from a lady in new hampshire that pleased me. when you go hiking out west in grizzly bear country. two things they tell you you should do whenever you go. first, you should wear bells on the clothing. because this alerts the bears you're coming and don't overtake them by surprise. the second thing they tell you you should do everywhere you go look on the ground in front of you for grizzly bear dung. the way you can recognize it has bells in it. [laughter] it's one other story i want to tell you. it's on my mind. when i say i'm happy to be back in america. i'm happy for all kinds of reasons. but one of them because it's the world series. it's the playoffs of the world sugary series. i know, it's slightly a touchy issue in atlanta. i'm excited. [laughter] i'm excited. living in england, the one thing that is the one experience that cannot be replicated abroad. it just doesn't work over there. so to be here, and i'm here through the whole world series has gotten me excited. i'm hoping i'll be to be watch some of the playoffs in the world series games. whoever is in it, if will be exciting to me. you see, the other person who was extremely influential to me for obviously reasons growing up was my father. i was close to my dad. and he was a sports writer for the "des moines register ." it was a minor league city. one of the treats every year for 40 years they sent him to the world series. every year he got to go. it was by far the biggest event in his whole year. he would get the suitcase down a month before it was time to go and he would pack it and be thinking about the word robe. it was obviously very important occasion to him. would be gone for three weeks. and when he would come home he would tell us not just about the baseball which he had seen which was tremendously exciting. it was a great era of willie mays. but he would be telling us about the exciting places he had been. where the world series was that year. from des moines, iowa those places seemed exotic to us. he would talk about san francisco or new york or los angeles whenever he happened to go. so i got the impression that going to the world series was the single most exciting thing that any human being could do. i always ached to got world series. all the things i wanted to go going to the world series was the most important. i have never gotten to go. i have the wonderful experiences. i was sent to the olympics in 2000. and i went the soccer world cup in korea and japan. lots of other important global sporting events. i was delighted to go. one thing that eluded me was the world series. it happens that almost exactly ten years ago, in 2003 season was coming to an end, a very good friend of mine, a guy named keith black moor, the sports end or it of the london times called me up at home. i was in england. he said have you been following what is going on in baseball? i said have i ever? because what was happening at the 2003 season was coming to a close, was the two teams that had the most momentum going to the playoff period were the chicago cubs and the boston red sox. i know, the red sox have had a lot success in recent years. at this time in 2003, they still hadn't won a world series since 1918. the cubs stilt haven't. they haven't won won since 18980. in 2003 they had something like 180 years of collective failure between them. it looked as if they were the two teams that were likely to get to the world series. if it happened you could imagine it would be the most exciting world series. one team or the other would to break a decades long drought. and the joy in the winning city would be indescribable. so keith, my friend from london times understand baseball said, look, we've been talking about it at the office. we're thinking for it happens to be the cubs and the red sox and the world series this year, would you cover it? we think it would take an american to explain to a british readership the improbable glory of the particular period of two teams. would you be willing to go? i've been dreaming for my whole life! i'll go for free! you don't have to pay me! get me tickets to the ballpark and a hotel in each city. i'll take care of the rest. what i'm going go now, keith, i cannot let you change your mind about this. i'm going to get my pen and record this in ink with your on the other end of the phone and confirm you never ever are going back on this. you would break my heart. you understand? he said absolutely. i got my stuff and came back to the phone and open to the right page and i made a noise and said, keith, i can't believe it. i can't got world series this year because it happens my daughter is getting married that week. [laughter] and he was quiet for a long time and said, look, bill, your daughter may get married again. [laughter] so i didn't get to got world series. the cubs and the red sox didn't get in to. it he sent me the next year in 2004 when the red sox broke the curse. it was the most joyous event in my whole life. outside of childbirth and all the other things. [laughter] and actual, it was pretty close to childbirth. [laughter] it was fantastic. and on that note of happiness, i'm happy to open the floor up to questions if anyone has any? do they have to come up here? [applause] oh, thank you. [applause] [inaudible] i didn't meet any interesting scientists. really. the whole idea when i did the book i was going to -- i was going to go spend a lot of time with scientists watching them work. that was the initial thought. and so i went out with a few and i realized very quickly that scientists are very boring when they're working. they are. almost without exception. a few kind of are agreologies and people got field dos interesting things. a typical scientist sits a the the computer screen all day silently tapping keys and that kind of thing. and doing desk work. they -- i couldn't stand there and keep asking them questions. what are you doing? what does that equation mean? and anyway it wouldn't be interesting. it wouldn't translate to anything interested. i realized early on i would have to approach the book in a different way. the whole idea of the book, i should perhaps say, that i was terrible assigns in -- terrible assigns in -- science in school. there ought to be some level i can engage with science and scientists. was fascinated to know not just what we know but how do we know what we know. that's particularly interesting how do we know how hot it is on the surface of the sun or where the continentings were 350 million years ago. i think it's amazing scientists can figure it out. my thinking i was going to go and look over their shoulder while they work figuring it out. when they figure them out it's not interesting at all. they are point -- doing very kind of accountant work. i had to read a lot and interview scientists when they weren't working and tell me what it is they were doing and explain to me why it was they interested were in their particular field and what was that fascinated what drew them to the particularly usually some extremely area. and i was interested in that. what made you decide to spend your whole life looking at liken or just, you know, some cluster of stars. and they were almost delighted to have somebody be interested. it was very happy experience. but i had to approach the book in a completely different way from the way i had expected to. when you started to hike the ap, was it your intent to go the whole way? my youngest son hiked it. before he went up, a neighbor gave him the book, "a walk in the woods" and said it was great but he didn't finish. why did you give me the book? [inaudible] all the way. >> that's amazing. >> i wondered if you intended to finish. >> i sincerely intended to finish. absolutely intended to finish. we realized pretty early on that we weren't going to make it. [laughter] i can remember clearly when was dawning us this is just way beyond us. and the fact is that, you know, that's a moment that comes to 90% of the people who set off on the appalachian trail intending to hike it and end. 90% of them don't make it. most of them get a little further before they realize what utter failures they are. [laughter] for several days. i didn't dwell on it in the book. for several days i was quite gloomy and disrespondent about this. i thought i have to hike it. i promised publishers i would deliver a book. and in interviews i announced i'm hiking the appalachian trail. so i sort of publicly committed to it. i a book contract in the back pocket. my sense of failure was really profound. believe me. and yet, you know, i also realized simultaneously with all of that i'm not going to do it. i can't do. it's not the physical side of it. which is hard enough but it's the mental side of it. and the idea can you go this? can you be separate for your family for five months. put up with the sort of endless repetition and the kind of roughing it. going night after night without showers and hot meals and those kinds of nights. it's hard. it takes a lot. your son, i'm full of admiration of him and anybody who does the appalachian trail from end-to-end. whether they walk it in one stretch or section hikes. it's an incredible achievement. you can't imagine how far 2200 miles until you try to walk 2200 miles. it was a disappointment to me i didn't do it. but after a kind of agonizing over it for a few days. i decided what we decided jointedly we still enjoy walking. we're never going do the whole thing. we don't want to quit. we're going to -- we'll just what do what we want. it we are doing it apart and whatever reason we don't like that part if it's boring or, you know, we think have more fun in the smokey mountains or something. we'll go on ahead and move elsewhere. that's what we did. and we a fantastic experience as a result. and at the point i try to make in the book was that, you know, it's the greatest thing in the world if you can caulk the appalachian trail from tend end. it's also great thing to walk it as much as you can. and as much as you want. this is a sort of -- i think, with a terrible notion in the walking community. it's either an all or nothing thing. and i think that's really wrong. if you can do it all fantastic, if you can't do it all you should do what you feel like doing. and we had a wonderful summer. i can't remember exactly what the mime age was 800 some miles. we walked from the equivalent from new york to chicago. that seems like a pretty good hike to me. i never apologized to anybody for failing. i feel people who fail shouldn't feel like failures. you can still succeed in all kinds of other levels. another point i always make in these situations is that you are so lucky in this country. we're so lucky to have something like the eastern woods, you know, all of you here just there it's north of the city. it begins. and, you know, you can go out there and just experience a little bit of it. you really ought to. even if you are not a great hiker. you taught go out there. the thing that is amazing about the woods along the appalachian trail. it's like time travel. you are going to a landscape that is completely divorced from modern life very often. you're so far out. you are in -- in a time that would have been completely familiar to danielle boone or george washington or anybody from the 18th century. early 19th century. it's an amazing thing. we have it right here. you have it on the doorstep. it's something that should be valued and should be used utilized. but pure will toy the extent you are comfortable doing that. sir? [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [laughter] [inaudible] >> okay. what i did was that all of my books and it's important to distinguish between me and historians is that i'm a reporter. that's all i've ever seen myself doing. what i'm doing in the books is saying -- i'm saying here is what, you know, people have said. so i was talking about the way people talk in the 18th century. i'm essentially relaying information. it's not stuff i found out myself inspect is stuff i'm relaying the scholars, historian, various academics and people like that. this is, you know, they have found. really i'm doing the same thing i did if i was doing a newspaper or magazine article. i'm finding out what others have done. what the real brains of the world have done and relaying in it a way i hope will be acceptable to people. so the answer, you know, nay couldn't call me an authority on things like that. oiment not an authority of things like that. the people they have to call in are the people that i was citing as my sources response i'm sorry to disappoint you on that level. [laughter] >> the way you wrote it -- [inaudible] that was me fooling you. [laughter] yeah. you do. i get acquainted with the topic. not the level i'm in a position. i try really hard to make it clear that, you know, my sources and where it's coming from. if i don't state it in the text itself. i try to provide cop use footnotes. for the very reason that almost, you know, almost all the -- i'm not qualified to make the judgment. to say this is, you know, an academic at ucla or, you know, a respected historian of princeton said that kind of thing. i like to thank you for your writing. i've spent many hours reading and laughs history -- i would like to know, i think we would all like to know if stephen katz is really real. [laughter] >> if he is, are you still friends? [laughter] >> yes. he's real. he's the most terrific guy in the world. his name is stephen katz. i gave him dignity of a pseudonym to hide behind it. if so you hunt around on the internet, you can find i think a des moines, iowa register interview he did from years ago. he confirmed his existence he's not some purpose i came up. it's a person that probably not more indebted to any human being other than any wife than to him. because, you know, he was there purely voluntarily. he went out with me. we had a really tough time particularly at the beginning. not only was it sort of staggeringly hard for us. we were terribly out of shape. and having not really prepared ourself for the mentally. we were lucky with the weather we did it. it was sprinkling very late in the year. it was really cold and rained chilly rain. we were soaked to the skin a lot of time. and it was pretty horrible. then we got caught in a terrible blizzard. things were not going well at all. if he said, look, bryson, i can't. i'm sorry i can't do this anymore inspect is -- had this is crazy. i'm leaving now. i wouldn't have blamed him at all. i couldn't have blamed him. he didn't do that. he stood by me. he stayed there as a loyal friend. i'm really am hugely indebted to him. and then when i wrote the book, you know, i portrayed him as this sort of large difficult, challenging, lumbering baa foon. that's what he is. [laughter] i'm joke. he's not. but he was challenging on the trail. and he would be the first to admit that. i had to use him for comic effect. and sometimes in your life you really, really desperately need to rely on a funny human being's good nature and he's one of those. i mean, he has remained a good friend. he hasn't held it against me. he was happy to be the butt of a lot of jokes and, you know, he was extremely good natured about it. i've done events like in des moines, iowa where he's signed more books than i have. [laughter] so he's just a fantastic human being. and i can't, you know, begin to express how much in his debt i am. but he was a real hard work out there. he really was. everything i write in the book was absolutely true. believe me. it was -- but it was a challenge for both of us. ohio. over there about to be over here. sorry. i just want to -- [inaudible] [inaudible] [laughter] thank you. [applause] i don't really have a question -- [inaudible] [inaudible] thank you very much. thank you. [applause] i'm grateful to you. that's very kind. are there anymore in the balcony? [laughter] [laughter] i'm aware that the time is marching on. i don't know what time we have to be out of here. perhaps a couple of more questions. because it's already five after 8:00. [inaudible] >> well, i've never wanted to be -- i've never wanted to do one kind of book. i ended up for some years writing a lot of travel books. i got pigeon holed in to that. the books were successful, especially in britain and the commonwealth. so i was strongly encouraged to keep doing them. then i realized i didn't want to spend my life doing the same kind of book. i think it is, you know, it's a matter of diminish returns if you stick with the same kind of book and doing it over and over again. so i wanted to do different kinds ever books, and my publishers very reluctantly in the begin allowed know try other things. they thought it was crazy when i said i wanted to do a book about science and trying to understand science. i was lucky that did well. it got, you know, it was pretty well received and it sold well. that encouraged them to allow me to do other thing. now i've gone soft i can't stop. thing a lot of ways they would be happier if i did the same kind of book all the time. and the kind of books where go out and get drunk or frightened or write comical episodes. i like to write toes those kinds of books. i want to keep doing that kind of thing, but i also like to do things that are slightly more serious that involve research and trying to gather information. and trying to -- i find a lot of pleasure in taking things generally perceived as dull and see if you can't make it interesting. on this side? >> really want to second what the gentleman in the balcony said about the amount of joy that come through in your book. you talk about writing two kinds of books. i think your voice is the author of that joy and some of exuberance come throughs through. both of those. i'm wondering in term of your voice as a author. are there other journalists or authors that influenced you? >> yes, there's lot. there's lotses. i have often some -- -- and there they were almost book of the month club hardback he accumulated most in the '40s and '50s. biment -- by the time i got to be 14 years old i remember going to the living room there two big bookcases that were filled with the hardback books. i knew nothing about the books. none of them i know anything about. i remember pulling them down at random having no idea what i was going to find. that was the most wonderful experience because it was totally discovery. i had no idea -- [inaudible] and i saw my dad had eight or ten of the books. he's so funny. he's just wonderful. all of these novels and everything. i love those. besides them there were a lot of essays by robert benchly almost completely forgotten now but funny essays who wrote a lot of stuff in the new yorker in the '20s and after wards. and i think my favorite of all the people i admired the most was sj plume and largely forgotten but funny but elegantly funny prose. so in term of -- in term of making me want to write words that make people laugh those are the guys that did it for me. there's lots of books by other people that opened my eyes to the joy of read and the idea of what books can take you to places you wouldn't go otherwise. and that was true almost all the books my dad had. most was pretty much fiction and non-fiction. it wasn't very challenging purchases adele for 13, 14, 15-year-old. and that kind of sucked note world of reading and writing and made me really absolutely made me. to back writer for, you know, professionally when i grew up. so now that i've just implanted lot of other writers' names in your heads. i should suggest you buy all of those books after you have all of my mine first. [laughter] on that note, let me saw -- say thank you very much for welcoming me here tonight. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] the we would like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback twitter.com/booktv. >> i'm surrounded by a few of the items that kept her on the ten best dressed list. she worked with one of our favorite designers for suits and day wear. this is the outfit where they met queen elizabeth. another custom design dress is this referred to the eisenhower 12. the print the cotton fabric with many of the houses that the eisenhowers lived in during the marriage. it include the five-star symbol for the five-star general eisenhower. these are a few examples of her day dresses. she was very fond of the color pink and wore it in many dpircht shades and styles. jacky kennedy is well known for the little black dress. here are two examples of her favorite little black dress. she said she would never dress like an old lady. the gowns she wore well to the 70 and 80s show her love of bright colors and wild fabrics. >> first lady eisenhower live on monday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. in the week after september 11th, the week of the attacks, congress passed a bill called the authorization for the use of military force. the aumf. basically what that did is gave a blank check to the bush administration to wage a global borderless war. and it authorized the u.s. to send forces in to any country that it deemed had a connection to al qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. and that they could hunt down any individuals who were even connected to the 9/11 attacks. that is still the law that president obama and his administration cite when they are bombing people in yemen. in some cases, targeting individuals who were toddlers on 9/11. the law was written to target the people responsible for 9/11. how were the toddler responsible for 9/11? how are they still use that law? it was a blank check and still being used to the day. now there's discussion about rewriting to make it permanent. prawment said in the second inauguration address he didn't want the u.s. to live in a state of perpetual war. his policies indicate that he wants the exact opposite. that's exactly what he wants. he wants the u.s. to be in a per perpetual state of war. there was only one member of congress that voted against the aumf. imagine what it was like. we remember what it was like in the days after 9/11. the fear and history -- gripping the country. there was one congress member barbara lee of california. i think young people should watch that speech. you find it online. bus barbara lee was trembling when he gave the speech. imagine the courage that took to stand up and what she said in the speech was that we cannot use these attacks to engage in retaliation across the globe and engage actions that are going to undermine our democratic prince. s. and we cannot wage a war that doesn't have an end game. and you know? she was right. she was prothreatic in the vision. saw something that so many of their colleagues on capitol hill either were too blind to notice or willfulfully chose embrace a rollback, a massive rollback of our civil liberty. to have a courage to ask tough questions at the time whether there's calls for mob violence takes real backbone. it takes real courage. we're in one of the moment today where we have popular democratic president who won the nobel peace prize. it's easy to oppose policy when you have cartoonish villains like dick cheney in control. i imagine him in the lair plotting the destruction for the world and hall burten stocks to go up. i'm only slightly kidding. when you have the actual courage to stand up and say that the same principles that apply when those guys were in power. when bush and chaib -- cheney were in power apply when president obama is power. that's where your principles are tested. and so we have an expansion of the drone strikes, we have the use of secret prisons not being run by the cia but being run by other governments and human rights abusing force and shipping prisoners to be tortured in secret prisons like somalia in the basement of the national security service. i document it when i travel to mogadishu. here is change under president obama. we close the cia's black sites in poland and thailand. we use somalia's where we are interrogating prisoner. we have cia operative and military intelligence interrogating prisoners. some of whom who have been snatched off the street in young countries. i documented a young guy from ken a ya who was snatched out of the home, taken to wilson airport, shackled and hooded, and flown somalia where he was put a bedbug infested underground prison with no access to light or the outside world, no access to lawyers and could not tell his family where it happened. it happened under president obama. when i called the u.s. government for comment they said that sounds right. why wouldn't we do that? it's natural we want to cooperate with the somali and kenya authorities in the fight against terrorism. i think most americans were the under the impression when obama issued the three executive orders he did a couple of days he was going to be dismantling it not rebranding and recast it as a more legitimate form of running the same program. that's largely what happened. renditions continue under president obama. assassination has been normalized as a central expoant not as though we haven't had the history before in the country. it's been normalized by this president the central component of what is called america's national security policy. up next on booktv after "after words." this "how cancer becomes us." in it the former cancer not financial interest of the country to find a cure. she argues that each cancer patient generates millions of dollar in revenue for the health care industry. and other industries benefit from the high incident of the disease as well. the program is about an hour. .. i wrote about cigarettes in y