the supermarket or on the street is, so, what s your book about? it s a fair question, and a good one. and often extremely challenging to answer because you have spent thousands of hours writing thousands of words, you have a ton of information if your head in your head, and you re writing one story, but that one story includes many other stories. and suddenly you have to figure out how to condense all this information, all these stories in a 15-second sound bite of ten words or less. well, i ve got it down to three. well, seven, actually, if you include american phoenix is about. and one of the things that helped me get there was someone asked me, so, if your book were made into a movie, how would you pitch it? and i answers the titanic meets rocky. [laughter] american phoenix is about, in essence, disaster and survival. it s about disaster of epic proportions that involved a lot of water and engineering failure, the failure of design that killed a lot of people. and i
think you. thank you for your support of american phoenix. thank you for coming out tonight and also c-span and booktv. is an honor. i am thrilled to share with you american phoenix the remarkable story of william skinner, a man who turned disaster into destiny one question every writer gets when people find out if you re writing a book. cocktail party or supermarket or on the street, what is your book about? that is a fair question. it is a good one and extremely challenging to answer. you have spent thousands of hours writing thousands of words with a ton of information in your head and the right to one story that includes many others that do have to figure out how to condense the information into a 152nd sound bite of the 10 words or less. i have it down to seven words if you include american phoenix is about. people ask if your book was made into a movie house would you give it? the titanic meets rocky. american phoenix is about in essence disaster and a surviv
out, my share of the path. and dick cheney on coronary disease. his book is also coming out in 2013. sarah weinman of publishers marketplace and bob minzesheimer of usa today, we appreciate your time today on booktv. sarah kilborne recounts the crew of her great-great-grandfather, william skinner, a textile manufacture in the mid-19th century. the author recalls skinner s immigration from london and his career ascendancy from a worker and a silk mill to the owner of his own factory, the mill village, skinnerville. in 1870 for a dam burst near skinnerville and destroyed the town and forced william skinner to rebuild. this is about an hour. thank you, bill. and thank you for your support of american phoenix. and thank you all for coming out tonight. and thank you and thank you, c-span, and booktv for being here. it s a real honor. and i m thrilled to be able to share with you american phoenix, american phoenix: the remarkable story of william skinner, a man who tur
doing so-called low-level kinds of crime but eventually became the crime boss of new england with his headquarters on federal hill in providence, rhode island. sometimes people think mob guys are that s not true at all. they have people are incredibly intelligent. they pull some scams for example, on wall street that would make bernie madoff look like a piker. but, of course, they had a traditional kind of so-called organized crime which were shaking young people, extortion. of course, they viewed as just protecting your business from other guys who might try to shake you down. of course, murder-for-hire, et cetera. the repertoire grew and grew as a result of their trying to protect their way of doing things. more from rhode island state capital as the booktv, american history tv, and c-span s local content vehicles look behind the scenes at the history and literary life of providence today at noon eastern on c-span2 s booktv. you don t always find many newspaper edit