Attacked you. So there is that aspect of it. There is concern about catalytic for silly of a crisis between two countries and also all of a sudden one is being hit hard by cyber attack and this assumes is the other country, its rival it could be a third party. You have that kind of issue, another issue of the ability to get Nuclear Weapons and overtime they build up an arsenal at the North Koreans are doing missile flight times between israel and iran are five or six minutes. Early warning is the problem is what happens if a few of the israelis iranians confidence the Early Warning system is a corrupted that your system is an saying the israelis are attacking you have to launch a counterattack when in fact it is just a cyber war. So you know, how do you begin to supplement this problem . And it is a challenge. We will be interesting. Marshall has retired. Not scheduled to pick a new director for the office sometime soon. Its going to be done well. We can help the secretary of defense the office of net assessment will be the first to go to. On one of the enduring strengths of the offices even when some of these early assessments failed for marshall have the capacity overtime to come back to these issues and try a different approach to solving the problem. The decent way that this would go. I think that has been a real strength of the organization, simply preserving. Thank you for a great book. [applauding] thank you very much. Happy to sign books. Please check our website. Thank you very much. [applauding] book tv in primetime continues friday with books on science and technology. First, columnist and commentator Michelle Malkin on her book who bill that the all Inspiring Stories of american ticker premieres. And Margaret Lazarus dean on her book before bit of a notes in the last days of american spaceflight. Clicks coming up book tv in primetime features memoirs and biographies starting the journalist tom brokaw and his book the lucky life interrupted. Biography of abolitionist and suffer just followed by an interview with author and ghostwriter david ritz. Later Andrew Crippen average and barry watts talk about their biography of Andrew Marshall the head of the pentagons office of net assessment. Next journalist and author tom brokaw discusses his memoir a lucky life interrupted chronicling his year of treatment after being diagnosed with a blood cancer. From the musical and portsmouth, New Hampshire this is just over an hour. [applauding] good evening. It is great to have you here. I am patricia lynch, executive producer of writers on the stage amazing new director of the musical. We are just delighted that you are with us for another great author event here at the musical. Our guest tonights celebrated journalist tom brokaw visiting with his new book. [applauding] hot off the press, a lucky life interrupted. We are so large that this is actually going to be the only book related event he is doing in the country. [applauding] there is so much to say about this remarkable man, but he is asked me to keep it short and i will. You know he is a renowned author, award winner in many categories a favorite of television audiences, a familiar face, calling voice call for years and years and the anchor chair at nbc news and is the author of six bestsellers, including the greatest generation and many more also a native of south dakota and graduated from the university of south dakota with a degree in Political Science and began his journalism career in omaha and atlanta before joining nbc news. Mr. Brokaw was the sole anchor and managing editor of nbc nightly news with tom brokaw from 1983 until 2,005 i i am just giving you the bear highlights here. He still is producing longform documentaries and providing expertise during breaking news events and of course has won every major award in journalism. In 2014 he was awarded the president ial medal of the freedom. [applauding] tonight, tom brokaw will talk about a lucky life interrupted and his struggle over the past two years. How since 2013 he has had a cancer diagnose and treatment. After he discusss his new book for approximately 20 minutes, he will be interviewed by virginia prescott host of word of mouth, of course we are thrilled to have virginia and our team from New Hampshire public radio as our partner. [applause] throughout the coming hour, a wonderful house broadband band will be playing songs perfect for the night. If you have a question you would like virginia to ask tom brokaw please pass them out. As you know writers from the new england stage is a partnership between the music hall and New Hampshire public radio who will get to work right after the event producing a radio version of what you are seeing. We are grateful for their partnership and our sponsor the university of New Hampshire. Our serious sponsors are wells fargo, tree service and clipse communication. Evening sponsors are avery since and sea coast lie libraries. We want to thank our sponsor as well harvest capital. Lets give them all a hand. [applause] i want to mention cspan is with us filming for the show booktv. And i want to do a special shoutout to the transportation hospitality shown to us by our good friends. Back to tonight, truly this is a lucky night for all of us. Please welcome to the strange a very esteemed guest, tom brokaw. [applause] thank you very much. That is very generous of you. In fact, it was a little unsettling for me to arrive here in New Hampshire. My body clock was off because it has been three years since i have been here and i generally come every four years so i will be back for the first in the nation primary. I really do love your state. I started coming here in 1972 and coming every four years since then and once in a while in between. I believe that iowa and the midwest and New Hampshire in the northeast are the two Perfect Place do is launch our president ial campaign. Not everyone agrees with me but the fact is in these two states you take your citizenship seriously, work hard for what you have and you represent in the regions you are located part of the wolf of america. The hardshores of New Hampshire where the first settlers came and the deep ridge soil of iowa as people started migrating across the country and settle first on farms and then small villages. Between these two states i think we have a representation of who we are. So i always find it reassuring to go back to iowa and then come immediately to New Hampshire and watch the great president ial process play out. Next year, of course i will have to be careful. I dont know how i will stay out of the way of all of the republicans running for president ial nomination. I honestly dont. [applause] let me just quickly tell you about the First Campaign i had to cover in New Hampshire. It was the mayor of los angeles at the time by the name of sam yorty. He was more republican than democrat but decided to run in the democratic primary in 1972. But he was determined not to put in too much time on the trail. He would campaign between 11 in the morning and 1 in the afternoon and have a long nap. I was a Junior Member of the nbc coverage time and i grew seniority. And one day i was mentally and physically exhausted by chasing after him knowing he wasnt going anywhere. When a colleague, a competitor from cbs came downing down the hall at the Head Quarters in manchester he was waving the Los Angeles Times newspaper and he said this will cheer you up. The Los Angeles Times newspaper in those days had a political cartoonist who had one three pulitzer prizes. And harry reid a cartoon that consisted of he had trees of in New Hampshire and buckets on a spigot beneath him and posters of sam on all of the trees and the caption red simply the sap is running in New Hampshire and in fact it did get me through the next 48 hours. I thought i would take a few moments of your time and tell you why i am here. It is an unexpected reason for my appearance in New Hampshire. I have had the luckiest life of anyone i know. In the last 52 years of my life and before that my friends said you were born on a lucky star. I had wonderful working class parents. We moved around a lot but my parents gave me the best attention and their goal in life was to make it possible for me to go to college. When i was 15 i moved to the Metro Metro Metro metro metropolitan area in south dakotas. I walked in and saw the daughter of a doctor in the class. She was a stunning beauty and great student. We quickly became fast friends although we were never high school sweethearts. And pardon me there were two reasons for that. She thought i fooled around too much and i thought she didnt fool around enough. We stayed close and i went off the rail in college deciding that drinking beer and chasing girls would be my major. And that didnt work out and meredith wrote me a letter saying i dont want to see or hear from you again because of what you are doing. And i went to another friend who said do you believe this and they said she is right. I did a turn around and got my grades better and computed to school. And meredith came to me saying i was out of line and reached too far. I said i had it coming and she said why dont we have a cup of coffee. Nine months later we were getting married and that was 53 years ago. So that worked out pretty well. [applause] and that was a part of my long, lucky strike that included three fabulous daughters who have their own families now. I caught the wave in network news at just the right time with the skills i had. So it has been a long lucky life and you begin to think that lucky strike will just continue. So i like to read from the beginning of this book giving you the premise of why i wrote it and what we were going through. In the seasons of life i have had more than my fair share of summers. A long run of sunny days and nights filled with lucky stars uninterupted by personality calamity rewarded in ways in the great planes. Our eldest daughter jennifer reflecting her training as an emergency medical room physician was along for the ride. But given her training she worried. Dad, she would say we never had anything go really wrong in our family i wonder if we can handle it. We were about to find out. In the year 2013 typically i let my birthday blow by i was 73 and more focused on a bike trip i was taking across argentina and chile with a group of friends. And then going to africa where my wife has a project teaching native woman to can tomatoes and sell them. And i would cover the final days of Nelson Mandelas life and going into the bush with a friend of mine as well. I had a persistent backache and that wasnt unusual because i have been a rock climbing and i am an avid bicyclist. But this ache wouldnt go away. I came back and had a doctor look at it. And he said tom, it is your lifestyle. This is not surprising to me. It still wouldnt go away. I went to the mayo clinic and the doctor there had the same conclusion. You are a 73yearold man and you are hammering hard all day long. But my primary care physician, a wonderful man from buffalo, new york city from the name andrew mica. I know many of you are familiar with buffalo and know it was the great home of tim ruser. He loved the idea we grew up in the working Class Community of buffalo, new york. When i said the dr. Mica that was the home of tim and he said i know. The two worst things that happened to buffalo. The death of tim and wide right in 91 which is when they got beat in the super bowl by the Dallas Cowboys. At any rate the doctor said something is going on and drew blood. I am on the board of the mayo clinic and had other things to worry about. I went off and got my house in order for the Board Meeting the next day and businesses we had to do that night as well. And mica said to me why dont you come to my office this afternoon after lunch. I will have one of my colleagues and there are things we ought to go over. I really thought i probably had a parasite which i pick up from time to time when i travel in the third world. I went over and dr. Mica did have a startled expression on his face when i look back. And this chicagoan came in who is a head of the clinic and sat down in front of a computer screen and began reading off numbers that sounded like an sat test to me. I didnt understand what he was talking about. And then this is what happened as he finished his play by play, he turned to me and uttered a phrase i was completely not prepared for, you have a maligancy, saying i had a cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow adding you know others who have died from this, Frank Reynolds and the first woman to run for Vice President of the United States she lived with it for 12 years when the Life Expectancy was shorter. It is treatable but it is not curable. You are making progress. 50 of the progress that has been made has been made in the last five years. I want to review your order overnight to make sure we have this right. Life expectancy i asked . He said well statistically five years but we think you can beat that. Frankly i appreciated that unconditional, straight ahead style. As a scientist in a difficult discipline he was a numbers guy. He may have been absent the day they had a seminar on bedside manners but that was not so much an issue as it may have been for others. I was a journalist. I was looking for facts. Not a cheerful demeanor. I think all of us have wondered what would happen when he hear that kind of diagnose. Well, i quickly learned. I stayed calm and my initial thought was my family is going to be okay. We just had had a review of our financial situation and i had the good fortune to be in a career that paid me well my children were in good shape all having their own children and embarked on careers and meredith was in very good health. I wondered however, how all of this would end. I knew i wouldnt get answers that day. The doctors wanted to review the test one more time and we will talk to you into the morning. So i walked out of this office calm as i could possibly be as a journalist looking in on tom brokaw the person wondering shouldnt you be more angry . Shouldnt you be more terrified . Shouldnt you be more puzzled . But in fact i felt i was in the hands of the best hospital in the world the mayo clinic my family was going to be okay and whatever it took i was confidant i could get the resources to deal with it. The next day they confirmed the diagnose. I did have a bone marrow disease where the plasma sells run amuck. I didnt understand what i was in for still. I got on a charter plane and went back to montana and didnt arrive until midnight of the second day. I have not told meredith because i didnt want to tell her over the phone. We drove back to my ranch house and i poured a stiff drink and sat at the bed side and said there is something i havent told you. I have a cancer that is going to change our lives. Meredith gave me what i always called her steely hard stare as if she could not quite absorb it. I went on to say to her well get through this together as we have Everything Else but i have no idea how it is going to end. We hugged. And with that long life of emotional connection and calibration, 53 years of marriage we fell asleep in each others arms. The next day i did one of the dum dumbest things i did. I made plans to go fishing with friends 155 miles away in montana. I jumped in a car with a bag of ice on my back and drove to the fishing spot. By the second day i was curled up in a cabin in pain and couldnt really breathe. We made our way back to the ranch. I didnt tell our friends yet still. I was in the bed upstairs so immobilized by the pain i would roll out and crawl on my hands and knees not wanting to wake everybody. And everything the mayo clinic threw at us in terms of pain pills did no good. I had to be med vack out of montana. We have great cowboy emts in montana. They came up to our bedroom with a narrow starecase and shot me up full of demerol and loaded me into an evacuation chair and hoisted be down the stairs and we had a 60 mile gravel road. I was not in the best shape mentally but i do remember my gps system. We are coming out of big timber now. You know the railroad tracks. It will be bumpy. We are going in the upper grade out of livingston. We are not far away. They got me through the trip and to the mayo clinic. Then i was transferred to new york and handed off to a brilliant young doctor and a group of senior residents came in. With doctors, they want to be reas reassuring but i would rather have the truth. They said nine months you will be back out doing our old thing. That was kind of uplifting for me. It was dead wrong it turns out. I went through a really difficult time. I had four compressions in my spine that the doctor missed and they are repaired with something where they put a needle in your spine and fill the fractures with cement. That was tough enough but when i came out and the nurse said remember being six feet and 511 . You are now 59. You lost two inches in height. That was tough on my vanity but we have a wicked sense of humor in our family. My daughters came back to new york standing eyeball to eyeball and said dad, you are still the man in the family but you a lot shorter than you used to be. That began a process that went on all through the winter months of 20132014. I was in and out of the hospital every week getting additional chemotherapy and ken anderson was one of the great specialist in the world. Then i had a terrible fall in upstate new york and opened up an eight inch gash over my left eye that went all the way to the skull. What kept me going is our youngest daughter gave birth the first grandson in the family. I was around meredith three daughters and two of thos