what is the proudest moment of your career so far? guest: wow. i don t mean to sound snarky or snippy here, but i hope it is yet to come. i feel very fortunate in just a few days we ll start our 12th season on pbs. i m now on 15 years in public radio. i feel very blessed at start of this year to do all we ve done so far. i hope the proudest moment is yet to come. if i had to i hope the proudest moment is yet to come. if i had to pick something it would be that i am still in here and so many people that against me in so much of my life. when i started on npr some years ago i remember the complaint when i first started, that i talk too loud. my favorite was that my laugh was too boisterously last too boisterously. my laugh was too much mike haydn s was wrong, i spoke too fast, it was too big for public radio. this is national public radio and i started the bidding was i was not going to make it, 15 years on public radio. people didn t think, charlie rose had done well for yea
people didn t think it would work on pbs. charlie rose had done well for years and nobody expected for me to make it on pbs. long story short it would be i m still here. host: 25 years or so you ve been doing this. 17 books or so you ever written and edited. your different shows that you ve done, what do you think you ve accomplished? guest: i hope that what we do every day through our public radio and public television work is the same three things that say all the time. i hope, number one to challenge fellow citizens to reexamine the assumption they hold. we all bring assumptions to the table. there is nothing wrong with that. assumptions and various prejudices but i hope our work challenges people to reexamine the assumptions they hold. i hope our work helps expand their inventory of ideas. i hope our work allows americans to be introduced to each other. this is the most multi-cultural, multky racial, multi-ethnic america ever. america is still so segregated in many wa
claudia rankin discusses her book, citizen: an american lyric, a finalist for the national book award. hi, everyone welcome. i m bridget mullins a professor here at usc in the master of professional writing program and i m so thrilled to be here with claudia rankin today.an and i want to thank the l.a. times festival of books curators for asking me to be the moderator and the interviewer today because there are so many amazingly qualified people on this campus at the moment, and i m just sitting in the catbird seat. couple of announcements before we start. please silence your cell phones. and there s a book signing following this session. the book signing is located at signing area one and it s noted on the festival map in the center of the event program. and that personal recording is not allowed. so i as i just mentioned i am so delighted to be here with claudia rankin. just by way of introduction, how many of you have read citizen ? oh, great. [laughter] this will b
going to go to ray charles and talk them into let me do and authorized biography of him because i wanted to win the pulitzer prize and the nobel prize and i didn t know anything about ghostwriting. so i had a hard time introducing myself to him and getting to him but i was able to do it through my tenacity. and when i did this agent said the u. you want to do his autobiography and i said no i don t. and he said e you do. i said i don t know how to do that. i don t know what a ghostwriter does. he said you will earn a lot more money if you do a ghostwritten book because it s a much larger market for a ray charles book then there is for a biography of ray and i still don t want to do it. i want to do a biography after my own name. then my agent asked me if westin that really changed my life and the question was, which book would you prefer to actually read a book written by someone about you about ray charles or a book about ray charles with ray s voice? i said i would much pre
andrew krepinevich and barry watts talk about their book at the pentagon s office and the pentagon s think tank from 1973 to 2015. the co-authors are former members of marshall s staff. this event was held at the nixon presidential library and museum in yorba linda california. [applause] tonight s discussion is that andrew marshall who served from nixon to obama. he retired january at the ripe age of 93 years old. for his pioneering work called the hidden hand before and behind american foreign policy. his two former aides, let me back up for a second. what is significant is nixon tapped marshall to evaluate our military capabilities against that of our adversaries at the time namely the soviet union to the concept is called net assessment. his former aides andrew krepinevich and sub diver here to discuss the achievements of their mentor tonight and sign copies of their biography about him called the lost warrior andrew marshall and shaping of modern defense strategy. m