Thing to 12 are sponsors. [applause] before we begin we ask you silence your cell phones turned off your camera flashes and please welcome miles harvey and ann dwyer. Thank you so much it is a delight to be here. My name is ann dwyer and the editor of crane chicago business. Today my more important credential as i happen to be good friends with miles harvey. In fact weve known each other, thought about this yesterday, for more than 30 years did you know that . [laughter] yes i guess i did. Went miles asked me too come with him today to talk about his latest work and celebrate its publication in paperback i was of course thrilled to do it. Because over the 30 years ive known miles ive watched him with astonishment and amazement transform himself from a journalist, to a writer and thinker, to teacher. And no one works harder than miles. He has worked so very hard on this latest volume, king of confidence. It is meticulously researched. It is beautifully written. also rippling through the atmosphere on the 20th anniversary of 9 11. Where were you that day, miles . Its funny its the unofficial launch of my paperback version of my new book a tale of utopian dreamers, frontier schemers, true believers, false prophets, and the murder of an american monarch and 20 years ago i was doing someone. So why. I was doing a radio book tour and there was no tv and no cell phones at that time and my job was to call and to radio tv stations all day like every 15 minutes. I was supposed to call someone and when i had the hardback edition they had somewhere fair to say this is soandso involved and i had to do it myself. So i got into into the office at 6 00 a. M. And started calling into the station and it all went well and then i remembered id there was a station in boston i couldnt get through to another station and i called random house in new york my publisher and i was panicking thinking what have i done wrong and whats going on and finally i got through to this one station and its producer said dont you know whats going on . A plane has flown into a building in new york and of course like a lot of people when i went into that office the world was different than when i came out of it. It was such a big transition. Ive been watching the great documentary work and im just struck at what in upending event it was to our culture. Seems it the themes you bring out in your story are things that have parallels to today in the era of posttrump and what we just lived through not to mention all the 20 years since that terrorist attack. So much of what fuels the protagonist success at being a con man was his mastery of the mask media of that i think. Civil war antebellum have a lot in common with the United States today. For us 911 was the first series of upending of our culture and the way we lived. If you think how different the world is we didnt have facebook then and we didnt have twitter. We did not instagram and we didnt have smartphones so we have these huge cultural upheavals political upheavals and i think what happened was that the truth becomes porous better ideas a reality become offended. We have now where i think one in six americans think our government caused 911 and one in five belief that microchips are being planted into them with the vaccines. The world by right about is very much like that so this was the period before the civil war where there was this incredible technological revolution, the telegraph which just short in space and time in unbelievable ways. The photograph that stop time and for the first time america was incredibly transient place where you didnt know your neighbors. It was a world of strangers and you had to count on confidence and the guy write about is a guide named james strang knew in 1850 he says spanos mormon cult leader ended 1850 moved to an island in michigan declared himself king of birth and have an aunt had hundreds of followers go with him there. We can talk about it but the u. S. Government took him seriously enough that hes they sent the first navy warship to oust him so its a really fascinating story. I love working on this book. Strang as such and complicated and interesting moderate con man idealist and it echoes with today. You describe him as a con man a note in the book the name con man was centered around that time. The. We know where comes from. 1849 in new york and the new york newspaper and as word spread like wildfire in the United States. Its really stunning if you go to Old Newspaper databases which i often do and follow the spread of the competent confidence artists. There was a play in new york called the confidence man and the reason was this was a time when there were so many people running rampant this was the time of pt barnum who we think of as a circus guy but he was a great hoaxer. He had a place called the American Museum in new york where he would put a movie on display in tens of thousands of people would come through and see the mermaid and a lot of them would say thats not a mermaid, its a dish. And barnum was brilliant. He said that truth was so fluid then. Barnum would say oh you think thats a fish . Why dont you bring your grandmother back tomorrow take her fishing and asked her what she thinks so he took advantage of that but there were all sorts of con men. With strang one of the interesting things about him as this mix of utopian idealism which i think yet in droves and i dont always agree with utopian idealism and absolute cynicism and they are both very present from early on. We have this journal from the time he was 19 until he was about 23 and is very religious place in western new york and the rights and journals. He is an atheist and he writes about it in code but he also grew up in and baptist upbringing and the rights when i talk about god and the bible people listen. Im really good at that. Certain percentages in our political world lately have a similar neck for the con. I shouldnt name names but it raises the question and i dont know to what extent its true about strang but at what point does the con man believe . Thats the great question with strang. I think my own feeling is my hunch is that there was a double consciousness going on. Strang thought he knew he was conning people. He had to know he was coming people. If something didnt fit him hed have a revelation from god. For instance he was completely against the practice of plural wives until he wanted one of when he had died he had five wives at the time. But i think there was a double consciousness there. I think he thought you know i am kind of the savior so its okay for me to lie about this stuff. I think that maybe a complex dynamic that relies on skill and demagoguery. The question in my mind at least not only was what the con man believes that what the followers believe and why they are magnetized in someone offering what he holds out as all the answers and the path to salvation . Then as now. Life was very difficult and there was a sense of loss of the old ways like we see now. Things arent the same and theres this incredible upheaval. Strang offered simple answers to complex problems. That was one but he also, i think for us looking back to the mormon movement which was one of the amazing and most powerful movements in u. S. History i think we dont, we can see its a relatively new religion but i think we are what strangs followers thought they were doing was bringing the Second Coming to the earth that fever island and those of you who have been to fever island might find this a little improbable. Its still one of the most incredibly beautiful places and i didnt look about it this summer, all over again. Its one of the places you can go on america and you really feel isolated but strang followers were utopian and a lot of them were losers in society but i think what that utopian thinking allowed them to do was he also had a. As you do. He was very farseeing about timber one of their main resources but one of the things that the king confidence does is moves back to earlier writers. Theres ample evidence and new evidence but for those people he surrounded himself with some of the most infamous con man of the 19th century and there were a bunch of cynical people but the true believers they thought for instance they. Chicago. Hard to imagine now. It was a smaller town than. Yeah but i think for them there was a sense we dont have time to deal with the laws in the state of michigan nor the state of wisconsin or the state of ohio. We are bringing around the Second Coming so this is important stuff and we can do with these petty human laws. If you were to become a strang ite and there are still strangites. If you were to become one what would you expect people to believe them buy into . Ive met some of those people and their lovely but i dont know much and certainly i read a lot of mormon history but i would not pass myself off in any way as a member of the Mormon Church but i think you would say you would swear your total allegiance to strang and in fact did swear your total allegiance to strang and what he said you accepted and if he said the opposite thing today that he said yesterday you would accept that as true. Sometimes i see that today, right . I dont know what youre talking about. Yes you might believe the most absurd reality, i mean its interesting. This is the period were calls were just Getting Started and i didnt have a word for it then. Historians look at early 19th century history and another thing that led to it was and many things it cuts both ways. If youre a woman on the island you would wear pantaloons. That may not sound very shocking to us today. Pantaleos are basically like turkish pants or pajama bottoms. Very comfortable. Indeed and comfort was part of it. A woman who wore them wore hoop skirts very much this feminine display but the people at the time the progressive part a year before i mail you bloomer wore them and they were a sign of feminism or what they called feminism. The bad thing as you know from various cults versus control cult leaders do and one of the way to control people is through clothing. You must all we are the so eventually strang said all women will wear pantaloons because i said so and some people said no and his assassination was preceded by a pantaleo the where. It sounds so absurd to us that we are going through so much now with masks. So in strang siphoned leading up to his assassination if you were a strang supporter you would ask your wife to wear pantaloons or if you are woman you would wear pantaloons and if you are against them you would say dont wear pantaloons. Or youd say im not wearing those pantaloons, right . I think its a lot like masks. Masks arent just masks. One of the things that struck me about watching the films of the 9 11 aftermath is everyone is wearing a mask after that awful dramatic smoking tiles at the trade center and they are wearing them because there is toxic dust in the air so you would just wear them. I wonder now if someone came along and said no masks, its about freedom for the firemen not to have to wear a mask. Things that sound absurd to us in history if you look at our own times human beings are quirky. Thats my conclusion. I dont want to ruin the ending for you. Human beings are quirky but i wonder if you given any thought to other americans who are particularly prone to this type of quirkiness and behavior . Not just strang and his followers but even to present day. The air of the Branch Davidians in that situation. The sinkhole like behavior and obviously the World Trade Center and the pentagon were from another culture so its not that it only happens in america but is there something that makes us vulnerable to this . Is such a wonderful question. I dont have an answer. I do think in good ways and bad americans are about reinvention. I think its something we are really good at and one of the things when i travel to other countries i start appreciating americans ability to talk with a pass to a certain extent and see themselves as new beings. I think thats one of our strengths and i think it also leads to a kind of scary thing. Charles dickens came to this country in 1942 and he did not love the United States. But he made some really prescient coach and observations about it went to cairo illinois which is very much like island this place that speculators the swampland and people went down there thinking they could loosen their bonnet and it was this messy place. In other places you might have a con man but america it was kind of celebrated. He said send the guy whod sold all of these people this fraudulent land. Isnt he corrupt . Hes a terrible man, terrible. Why do people appreciate him and like him . Hes a smart man was the expression. Hes a smart man. In other words its pretty cool that he cant so many people and i think if i had to guess i would say americans are more prone to it or theres a part of us that is like that was really impressive and its kind of fun to think that way. Is why my husband and i are bench watching you look at him and objective when you say this guy is a jerk but you cant help but love him. Theres a lovable scoundrel quality. There are so many scoundrels in the world today. I dont know there are so many. It would be hard to convince people in various countries but given the number of demagogues i do think kind of out there scoundrels of a certain kind. I forgot to mention this at the beginning we are open to questions from the group so will have time for questions at the end but if anyone has a question i want to raise go ahead and raise your hand. [inaudible] thanks for that question. The question was about how the idea of american exceptionalism plays and all those and i think it did play into it and this was we have had many periods but this is the great age of manifest destiny and a certain way and i want to be careful here because this is not a criticism at all of the church of jesus christ of latterday saints. Whats fascinating about that movement is whether you think he was a fraud are not as a literary event the book of mormon and is completely fascinating. What he was telling people was the bible is ongoing. Its not like something that happened. P playing out on north american soil and south america to but its playing out here and now and i think thats a very american idea and its very attracted to people at that time. It was kind of i dont want to say hypnotists but it was really exciting to think its part of the bible so strang imitated a lot of that. At first he forged a letter well they think of was a forgery. Its a very good forgery from smith saying im handing the church over to you. Strang by that time it converted to mormonism but just barely and it would be like making me the mayor of chicago miles harvey is in charge and people really did believe him. He dug up some brass plates and burlington a couple hours north of here like the plates that smith uncovered from a guy who was never heard from again. He was a historical figure that was never heard from again but basically he said the great profit is coming. But again its easy to laugh but those times are really exciting. Its something that makes sense out of your life. Also that touches on something ive been thinking a lot of about is his conversation around the nature of in order to see him as a believer in any number of religions were schools of thought. And you say its easy to laugh about some of the things the strangites were embracing and yet reflecting on my own up ringing as a catholic and you are a fallen away unitarian. I dont think unitarians can fall away. Like building up a library fees. Or someone did make the coffee. The donuts had too much chocolate on them. Where did that guy go . This applies to unitarianism but it doesnt apply to catholicism and some of the stuff that i believe growing up. I believed in transubstantiation like the body of christ that you were given and you are asked to believe in a and billions of people around the world believe that embrace those ideas. Just thinking a lot about this as we are judging strang where is that line between what is normalized belief in what we would call a cult . I think sometimes the more broad and absurd the belief that more you are inclined to embrace it. I would say im fascinated at a large percentage of americans who think that microchips matter. Microchips are being implanted in us or that we are being magnetized whatever that means. But you are rejecting mainstream culture. The bigger story, the more fun it is to embrace it and the more exciting and a more fulfilling it is. That might help explain this qanon phenomenon that we are living through right now . I think that there are times again strang was in a time when he was brilliant at manipulating the media. I read in the book about how he understood the world of the telegraph in a way that other people didnt understand. There was a famous new york editor writing this explosion of newspapers an early version of the internet highway. People in new york understood you can get get news out to the provinces really quick. Strang was the first guy i know that said hey i can get this out to the province. He was a very good writer and a diplomat among other things and that was one of the things i liked about him. I can control the message from island and in doing that i think he thrived and theres another guy dr. Brinkley from the 1920s in the 30s. Theres a good book by diane and i think pope brock is his name. He was a guy who convinced tens of thousands of american men to transplant goat into their private parts and it was totally fraudulent and many people died but he was great at he had these huge stations first in kansas and then on the Mexican Border for hewitt advertises products. Hes considered a great early pioneer. Country music started with the Carter Family so i think sometimes these guys are a step ahead of us but they understand the shifting in the environment in ways that may be wouldnt occur to us necessarily. They think how can we game this . One that is fueled, spread by the Mass Communication means you just been talking about. And yet it is happening minus the magnetic personality of the Center Entrance center pushing the star we have theories about hugh queuing on is, it is purely anonymous for. In this decentralized medium i dont think you need it. I have an old friend from high school who appears to be in queuing on. Ive gone back and forth with him on social media. When i ask them to cite sources, when he rejected Mainstream Media when every newspaper, tv or Radio Station you formerly listen to is telling you lies, then where do you get your truths . I said where to get this information and he will give me, a site from some dude in kansas that put up some video for. On the Mexican Border. Or, i forget the name of the newspaper pu