tv   2015 Miami Book Fair Sunday  CSPAN  November 23, 2015 1:00am-9:16am EST

.. >> welcome back to booktv continuing live coverage of the 32nd annual miami their book festival. follow us on twitter ticket scheduled updates at booktv is our twitter handle. also the full schedule is available at our website, booktv.org. the first author event for the day is beginning. to you here from longtime journalist gail sheehy and rabbi kushner discussing their latest books. both of which are memoirs. this is live coverage of the miami book fair on booktv on c-span2. ♪ ♪

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

good morning. welcome to the miami book fair the 32nd annual celebration of books and happy sunday to everyone. truly wonderful to have all of you here. hopefully you've had an opportunity throughout the week and yesterday to enjoy some of the many sessions to perhaps purchase some books and some other of our highlights here at miami book fair. i would like to give a special greeting to my friends at miami

book fair, let's give them a round of applause. [applause] we are truly grateful for your support and friendship over the years and as you may know, this could take place without the thousands of volunteers, faculty and staff of miami dade college and its eight campuses throughout miami-dade county so many thanks to miami-dade college. [applause] >> many thanks to miami-dade college and founder of this wonderful event. it's going to be another wonderful day that we close the book fare later on this evening. and so, please -- thank you to all the sponsors as well. without the sponsors organizations and individuals,

we couldn't have this spectacular event. please turn off your cell phone and without further ado i would like you to welcome the women's fund of miami-dade county and ms. march will make the formal introduction. thank you. [applause] >> good morning. thank you so much for joining us today. i'm from the women's fund of miami-dade county. an organization that has been in miami for 22 years area we raise money and we get out to the women and girls organization. in the last 22 years we've cannot $3.7 million to 470 programs. so, thank you for many of the donors that support us today. i also want to thank for helping the you for helping the women's fund participate in today's book fare and now i have the

wonderful opportunity to introduce two amazing people and the first one is going to be going to tell you about dale, a world-renowned author, journalist and popular lecturer has changed the way that many women and men around the globe look at their lives. in 50 years as a writer she has interviewed thousands of women and men and has written 17 books. her earliest book explored the predictable crisis of the adult development named by the library of congress for one of the most influential books of the time. that's quite an accomplishment. and later books including the silent passage to place the spotlight on taboo subjects like

menopause and the sexuality of women. one of the the original agitators to the new york magazine has been a contributing editor since 1984. the leaders were writing about the character and psychology of men like robert kennedy. like margaret thatcher and saddam hussein. in the latest book, gail focuses on her own packs are just delete the -- passages as a journalist in the 1960s. in the new york magazine founder to become one of the premier political profilers of modern times speaking from experience, gail has also focused, also

found an exciting new online initiative which you should really check out to encourage women of all ages to dream, conquer their fears and act with confidence. her fascinating no holds story is a testament to resilience, smarts and offers a bold perspective on passages. not only do i get to introduce gail but i also have the pleasure of introducing to you today harold kershner a rabbi at the temple israel in the boston suburbs in texas massachusetts. he is the author of more than a dozen books on coping with life's challenges including the best-selling when bad things happen to good people conquering fear and overcoming life's disappointments and the book of joe. in his latest book nine

essential things i've learned about life, he learned that lessons from the teaching of earning a work of spiritual food for thought, pragmatic advice and inspiration inspiring inspiration for a more fulfilling life and trying times so it is my honor to introduce harold and gail to present to you today. thank you. [applause] >> thank you marilyn. welcome, good morning. >> what's traded again. good morning. >> thank you to the women's fund for sponsoring this. they've been doing work for 20 years and funded more than

2 million programs were funded to date women and girls in miami-dade. i love those organizations. i'm going to go over here to my little perch. as marilyn said i've spent many of the last 50 years exploring the passages of may be thousands of women and men and when i advanced into my 70s it was time to turn the lights on my own passages. what worked for me, what could i pass on? it took almost three years to excavate my life and pull it apart and figure out in there and figure out what was i getting at the time why did i make that move? what was i thinking? and to interview people that i i have noticed different stages in my life and get their take on what i was like at the time. so i wrote a memoir called

daring my passages because that is the theme that emerged from doing this memoir and that's why i actually encourage you when you get to your 50s or 60s or 70s to write a memoir even if it is just for your family because you actually put together the structure of your life and you still have time to make some additions and projections but you have a wonderful history to lead your grandchildren who are interested in hearing about is when they are ten and 11 to 20 or 20 they will love reading about your history. >> it's not supposed to go off but it did. first thing i have to say it's

the curiosity to take the less traveled road. it's the courage to say no. there is a better way when we are older and gray i'm still here. furthermore, i have to ask you did you ever try to do something that you have never done before? you failed at it you tried again and you tried again? until you failed forward. did you ever find a voice or give a voice to speak for the group or person who didn't have the wherewithal to speak for themselves? did to deliver cross and age barrier or gender barrier or colored area probably most of the women in this room have caused a gender barrier more than once and that's scary

because the secret is to just sit down, cross your arms and ask if you belonged there. that takes confidence and if you don't have a confidence confidence, take acting lessons. [laughter] i'm going to tell a few stories about the daring moments of my life when i will ask you to have to spend tuesday because the first thing i'm going to tell you it's about being in my mid- 20s. can we click on to that first? so i'm in my mid-20s and on the fourth floor of the new york herald tribune where i was sequestered in the women's department that's the only place that women's journalists could write and i'm about to take the longest walk of my life into the

testosterone zone, the newsroom where all the men wearing ties were able to work. i'm going to pitch a story to demand change in journalism in the 1960s. my loss to the boss would kill me if she thought i was taking my story to another editor but he was a incubator in a magazine at the herald tribune at the times and girls in the 60s wrote about beauty and thinking and being the perfect wife. we can move the slider to show what the newsroom looked like. men wrote about the serious issues but why can't a girl right about the same?

that is another slide. my first exposure to the man who would become my mentor and there he is committed was his voice. what you do you mean you don't have my reservation? i want my usual people in the whole room. i'm bringing the senator to my wife and my -- tonight and my wife is having broadway. >> i knew i had like 30 seconds to get it out is that where did you come from? estrogens found. [laughter] come on in. i got my voice and i said it's a story about loser guys that wants to attract beautiful girls to share their beach house on fire island and attract other beautiful girls and so they are having specimen viewing parties.

>> did you go to a specimen viewing party? yes. they rejected me. [laughter] great you write it just like you told me. they will collect the flypaper people. rated as a scene? up until then it had been who, what, where, why this was the beginning of the new journalism and she was daring me to take the lead. well, i did not right away. a year later, he was launching new york magazine as an independent publication having a big party at the four seasons. well, i couldn't go. my world at the time of delivery is decided walk up to and a half year child, single mother as a result of divorce, so i didn't go to parties at the four seasons.

but that's why i see a black limousine and i get a call from the lookout on the first floor a ukrainian seamstress a fancy man is coming up. okay? okay. and in barges clay. he says why weren't you at the four seasons for the party and i said i don't have a babysitter and i don't have a down. what do you know about politics. my father is a country club republican so i know it's about fighting at the dinner table. >> great. then you will understand bobby. bobby kennedy. i want wanted to cover his presidential campaign. california and oregon. i've never written a political story. now's the time to start.

i need you to leave in two days. >> but i don't -- listen, what you have to do if you want to make your name as a journalist. don't write a lot of little stories that matter how good they are no one is going to remember them create you have to grab onto the big idea something a big idea something everybody is talking about but they don't know why. that was about the best career advice i had so i went off to cover bobby kennedy scared to death and i asked my younger sisters to stay with my child and she was much younger than i part of the me generation and she had been caught up in the grand magic vitamin experiment otherwise known as and i got her out of that she was willing to stay with my child when i had trouble from work so we could both make it. one day on the campaign the senator was taking a trip up and down the cascade mountains of oregon and none of the senior

correspondents wanted to go. i finally had a chance to get on the plane. and one little town after another kennedy faced a hostile crowd of gun toting residents. men with a spare a raccoon or possum on each shoulder and always a gun and one young man stopped and talked tapped on the shoulder and said i've been waiting for two hours to tell you i will shoot somebody if i see someone like you in the white house. so, kennedy knew he was facing. he pretended not to hear and he walked upon the courts and he faced the crowd and tried to engage them in a friendly debate about limiting the spread of guns. you can imagine how popular that subject was. back on the plane they decided all of a sudden i hear would you like to sit up here?

he asked his aid to hand him his overcoat and it was five years since president kennedy had been assassinated but he was still wearing his brothers clothes. was a poignant moment. we talked about that. and then as we approached portland you couldn't see anything. we couldn't see that another plane was heading to the heading straight for the craft and it was dropping and my stomach flipped and in the middle of the drop, kennedy said either mccarthy was desperate but i didn't know that he was that desperate. that gave me another site to be coincided with the truth. he had seen so much death in his family that he was a fatalist. he knew he was a target and he kept right on daring to talk about limiting the spread of guns and two nights later his own life was ended at the point of a gun and it makes us stop and think about how far we've

come today. from the title of my book you might think i was born here list but nothing could be further from the truth. we can move onto another slide want to get off at south one. in fact i am a naturally fearful person. i had to find a way to act. i had to be willing to fail in order to take a risk trying to do things i'd i've never done before and learning from them by following bobby kennedy to write about politics and then i found out on the trip i could write about a character of positions rather than the horse race and i came to understand gradually that issues are today with character was yesterday and will be tomorrow. and those of you that were lucky enough to hear jon meacham talking about george h. w. bush heard that story of his character shines straight

through his life and actually very interesting peggy noonan also spoke about ronald reagan and how people always said i miss his optimism. she said he wasn't optimistic. he actually was rather pessimistic. what he was as confident and that is what give other people a sense of optimism because he believed in himself and the american people and in our system. when i tried to overcome my fear by taking the leap even if i didn't plan on my feet the first time, it made me stronger and so i developed a habit. when i fear i dare and you if you read about me in the positive reviews, and i hope those are the only ones you read, you might think she just sailed right through. my career almost ended before it

began. after 28 i was blindsided by tourists, my husband was unfaithful and to change my self-respect i had to leave the marriage and i was left with a two and a half year old daughter who i really had to protect and as a single mother like so many young women today are choosing to be, i found myself struggling just to make a living and strike a balance between being a mother and building a career and scrambled to play the rent. i couldn't bear to leave my child with babysitters. i thought can i really afford to launch career as a freelance writer who's been to take me seriously i'm only in my 20s. i could have given up and gotten a job selling housewares that maybe you become a c-span if become a c-span invited that spark of creativity with the self-doubt and so i walked in

and i wrote my first book in novel. it failed. but it attracted offers to be a contributing editor to more than one magazine including new york magazine and that's how i felt forward and up then my life as a writer made me there. anon boots and blue suede hotpants and sashaying down the streets of new york with a off-duty police officer thing as my pimp but it allowed me to write as a violent period of prostitution in new york and later to make a movie of it called hustling with joe cleburne. and you probably think that it was brash of me to follow hillary clinton into the ladies room at a conference where we were both speaking that she let her hair down it was 1994 and she said i don't know what to do anymore being blamed for everything she was being blamed

for the loss in the midterm election so she also admitted she was going through menopause. even first ladies have been supposed to be covered -- menopause but at the time it was a taboo. mothers didn't even talk about it. totally zip the web so she thanked me for writing this violent passage of the kind of the kind of bill created a little bond so after that i followed her for "vanity fair," she and bill clinton for ten years and wrote a biography and i'm still fascinated by her. what you ever dare to step out of your comfort zone way out to discover something about yourself or about the world? but pretend i'm 32. i dare to insist that clay send me to northern ireland at the peak of the troubles and he says

what does that have to do with new york? it is the story about the women. the men are all in jail. margaret thatcher put them there. they are even showing british soldiers. >> that sounds like a story. but be careful. by that time we were the time we were living together so he had a secondary motive. northern ireland, january 1972 sunday. it happened so fast i couldn't delete it. we were just climbing down the hill from a peaceful civil rights march singing. all the neighbors, we get down to the arcades in the british switchers and we go through all rituals of the dangerous games committee for their tear gas at us and he vomited back. the drag those back to safety

and then it's all over and everybody drops back to square people grading their neighbors. but i notice that there is a ring of tanks around the outside so i crawl up on the outdoor staircase on the block to get a better view and standing next to the young boy and asking him a question how the gas canisters so far backs. all of a sudden out of the blue bullet flies into his face and it's a bloody mess and he drops it and they didn't over and i'm trying to think how i can fix it because of david cook up until that time i thought everything could be mended but i couldn't -- i didn't even have time to do that because all of a sudden there was crossfire and the man behind me shouts get down, get down and i get down and all these other people piling on us

and we are wound up like a caterpillar inching up the steps outside of this outdoor staircase trying to get into somebody's house. i wasn't about to jump out in crossfire until the bullet passed right by my nose and embedded itself in the brick wall and then i had to push on the door and we were taking it to safety. while it took about an hour, and finally it was over, i went down and the ira commander came over and apologized for confiscating my film. i said but that i'm not giving up my tape recorder. was it running the whole time, we will use it and they and be used as later in court. he directed me afterwards the pay phone and i called clay the one person i thought would be able to save me from my peers.

how is the story coming? thirteen people were just slaughtered here. hold on a minute i'm watching it on cbs news now he's exiting in new york perfectly safe. he said they they were calling it bloody sunday. outlook you don't have to be in the front line just stay with the women cost a safe. they could have killed him but how would he know what was really happening? he couldn't make it go away. nobody can. it's the first confrontation with our company. and the power powerful ideas to cooper. no one was with me. no one could keep me safe. no one would ever leave me alone. welcome back home it took me six months before the trauma, put me into some intruders shook me and shouted take stock what about the part of you that once a second child in a real marriage

and before i can even think about that, they would ask what about the sight of you that wants to contribute to the world? but have you done? just magazine articles on is that enough? have your life has already been spent. to be confronted by the first and pretty arithmetic of life was quite terrifying. it happens to all of us at some point. was rather early for me with what i would call a premature midlife crisis he didn't have those terms at the time. so when i went over the transcripts of the interviews for the book that i was working on about the couple's crisis come i was focusing on the women and men between the mid-30s and 40s and i was reading evidence of the discontent with the appealing of time running out and urgency but none of them had the exterior trauma like mine it was coming from inside. some of them made leaps of

creativity in that transition. some of them wondered if they were going crazy. and the trigger seemed to be always the first awareness of ones by comedy. and i began to see there were other turning points in adult life, some of which are predictable. going to the passage requires a thing for the period of equilibrium while you are changing ourselves, so i began writing this book. it took me three years and when i delivered the manuscript of the publisher invited me to lunch at the four seasons and i finally got their and raised questions. i closed my eyes and this word popped into my mind and i said passages. he said no they will think that it means excerpt. i said not when they read the book and i had to fight for that title the title right until the end and i'm glad i did because

it entered in to the language indicated as a way to explain something that is common to all of us. welcome to 1984 i finally dared to marry him. people say what took you so long? seventeen years? a 17 year long one night stand? [laughter] i tried to explain and i would say it's because -- you have to read the book to find out. i had to write the book to find out. but we took a prenuptial trip to asia and we were sitting on the ground of the oriental hotel in bangkok enjoying leisure to watch drifting down when i noticed he noticed i looked sad. my daughter was going off to college that fall and we never really had a home family life altogether. so he looked up from reading the newspaper and he said maybe

there is a child for you here. i never considered that option much less. but he told me about children who were stuck in refugee camps in thailand they skipped the genocide. they couldn't go back because the vietnamese communists now held their country and the ronald reagan administration shut down the pipeline to america so i said we have to go to that refugee camp. on the last romantic day i said you started it. so we took a bus by the border but we couldn't see children because there have been kidnappings so back at jfk i called the editor of "the new york times" magazine & i would like to do a story on the refugees of america forgotten. he said cambodia that is inexpensive trip. i said i will pay half. i think we need to do this

story. there i met a young girl. six different children from different backgrounds and the last one had to cancel and asked if i would entertain this other young girl. i had seen her and eyes darting beyond the fence as i went through the camp and there she was. her hair was freshly washed, she had a father and a beautiful song and she carried herself into such a beginning was clear she had been surrendered to the identity of the refugee. so we sat down in our eyes locked, we never take our eyes off each other and i asked her an absurd question that nobody had time to ask a refugee as it did you ever know a happy time and her whole demeanor changed and she began talking about her

little brother and sister she would take care of and her mother who would teach her chinese because she was half chinese and her father that would go to work on the motorcycle and then we were off and away and halfway through, i had to ask her what happened to her parents and tears came to the edge of her eyes and she put her head down so he wouldn't see her tears and i'm the interpreter of just massaging her back and weeping ourselves and she composed herself and looked up again and continued the interview and by the end of the interview i was in love with child and as we left the hut, i was trying to reach out to her to find out her name but all of a sudden i was surrounded by the adults with the u.s. embassy knowing that the commander of the camp would just burn them and i kept trying to call to her what's your name.

mom. that was the nickname given to her just a little girl so that they wouldn't know that she was from an educated family. well, i got back to new york and wrote a letter she wrote me a letter saying she would like to come to the united states and nine months later i was coming in and pushed my answering machine and there was a message mom arriving tomorrow night if:30 p.m. like the stork was just coming into my life. so i titled my sister and photographer and former ambassador to cambodia. we rushed to the airport and i said i have to bring her had to bring her a gift so we stopped at a chinese restaurant to go in and get her rice and the former ambassador said cambodia

ambassador hates chinese rice. first mistake. anyway, get to the airport and this little girl comes off, 12-years-old, tiny little lambs holding a plastic bag with her wealthy possessions into the bottom of it a little plastic suit case with my letter and it all folded up so we linked arms and began walking out into her stride exactly matched and i knew we were going to make it and within three months, i put in each and her name names we didn't have the same name she was dictating to me in english stories of her seventh grade creative writing class and went on to wellesley. so everything began to come together. after she came into my life would have married and we moved into his apartment and my other daughter -- they were both my bridesmaids and that same year

they asked me to write a political character portraits for "vanity fair" and i wrote about al gore and both president bush and president clinton, president carter also be up to obama but my biggest thrill was to write about the paymaster margaret thatcher. you can imagine i wasn't thrilled with her as the person who used the british army to put a lid on irish catholics but she was also such a daring leader and i wanted to note what was her secret. she looked deep in 20 years younger than when she first took office and now she was at the tent here at her rule. she surrounded herself with star boys and they all looked like 1930s american matinee idols into some of them told me we

find her attractive in a rather packaged way. [laughter] margaret thatcher, sexy? the soviet press called her the iron lady and i discovered she relied on a mysterious indian woman who called herself that i'm monique. some of the clients and a couple of women and the royal family had to take on the false persona to gain access to the nursing some and she directed me to disrobe and climbed the this rope and climbed the steps to the top of her electrical bathtub. she's had one and manipulating the ions and i'm standing there shivering with fear. i've gone to great lengths to get a story but i'm thinking maybe electrocute china's growing a little too far.

but i allow myself to be parboiled for the next hour and i learned about romantic attraction between margaret thatcher and mikhail bischoff. i was able to interview her after 53 interviews around her and she says in fact she was the first western leader to stop gorbachev as a radically different soviet likely to be the next premier once they finally dropped off so she invited him to london and was only a provincial party boss that she sat up half the night with him as checkers because ignoring the food and ignoring vodkas and whiskeys and maggie had already given her heart to ronnie the american president but she told me that he was a great communicator she said i found it so easy to discuss the debate with president gorbachev and neither of us getting an

inch. they insisted that they were european. nonsense. thatcher argued you will never be accepted until you lift the iron curtain. it's archaic and gorbachev asked her to explain how great britain had let go of the colonies and still maintained the status of the world power. thatcher knew now she had her hooks into them and she announced to the world i like mr. gorbachev. we can do business together. and they did. she was able to go back to ronald reagan and kelvin gorbachev was prepared to let go of eastern europe peacefully and that's about him to go to the berlin wall and say mr. kirchoff, tear down that wall so it was actually margaret thatcher who became the catalyst between a man who ran the superpowers. and the result was no less than the end of the cold war.

and finally mrs. thatcher staff was announced on the floor of the house of commons she was called the iron lady. i will stop there. [applause] >> good morning. it's nice to be here at miami for the book fare with so many of you. it's an amazing program. it's a very impressive program

it can be very proud. and whatever else it does getting books into peoples hands, communicating ideas to people, it is changing the national image of miami and that is something to be very proud of. [applause] our family lived for some years in miami. one of her grandchildren was born here and that of his especial pleasure to come back especially to compare with the enterprise has grown so exponentially. this is an exciting program to be with. let me tell you a little bit about my new book and i think the place to start with the title nine essential things i learned about life. my nine why nine? i don't know it just sounded right. i didn't want to write another ten best title. hate to sound too few and 11

sounded too many sided sign. and one of these ideas what did they have in common? they all represent aspects of people's spiritual and personal lives for which the rules changed while my back was turned. >> i started school in 1955 at the age of 20 having grown up in an atmosphere of religious atmosphere that i would describe as command and obey. religion of the strip for jews and christians religion consisted of this is what god wants you to do to be a good person. and the clergyman's job is to tell you what you are supposed to do. went to the school for five years. my professors all held onto that same attitude. it wasn't their fault for growth and were born in the 19th century, came out as a chaplain for two years with the command

that wasn't exactly unknown. then i went into my first congregation and i said this is what you have to do and they said that's interesting i will think about it. [laughter] and i discovered the essential truth of being the clergyman rabbi or minister in the late 20th and early 21st century is that the religious agenda would be set not by traditions answers but i congress and questions. my teachings would be meaningless unless they were cast as an answer to a question that people were living with. and the primary questions people brought to me, one that my wife and i were forced to confront early in our marriage was white as i treat some people unfairly?

our story through my previous books have a child whom he looked desperately was born with an incurable disease of one of the rarest in the world. he looks strange for the entire 14 years of his life and he died after his 14th day. >> when people ask us how do you as a man of god accept that this could happen to your family come to your child. i was stumped for a while and the answer that we came up with was that god doesn't send this affliction. god is sending god is sending us the strength to deal with this affliction. as someone said to my wife and to me on new year's day 1963 before this year was out you will have a chance to beat a child with the following problems and this is what it will mean to your life into your marriage and to your family, can you handle it. i want to assure you in 1963

please don't test us that is more than anyone else should be asked to bear. but as evidenced to so many people as i would guess this happens to everyone if you had one parameter in your lives, he came into our life without our permission being asked first. and for some source, which i can only identify the spirit of god, we found within ourselves strength we didn't have or didn't think we were capable of to be able to raise him and love him and ultimately losing in grief for him. that's where they learned the truth that has been the cornerstone of my faith and my activity. god doesn't send the problem, god sends the strength to cope with the problem. i rendered a baby got a call at the office that there had been a definite congregation. a young husband and father.

the widow says to me with tears why would god do this to such a good person and i thought okay that's something i and expert on i will try to explain it to her and i give her my answers and it doesn't help she's still crying why was god doing this to her. and then i understood that when a person in her situations is why did god let this happen that is not a theological question it is a cry of pain and the response the woman needed wasn't a theological answer but the nature of god. she needed a hug. when i understood that and i sat with her and i held her hand, that was the answer. the answer for why bad things happen to good people posted a treatise about god. it was to assure people that they have not been rejected by

sitting with them, drying the tears, holding their hands. that is the answer to the question of where is god. you are never several years ago there was a great big psychological experiment in the hospitals that assembled a cohort of several thousands of postoperative patients divided them into three groups. one group was prayed for and they knew it. one group was paid for debate to be -- prayed for and they wanted to see whether be any difference. no difference at all. they all recovered at the same rate. cnn called me to interview about god and doesn't approve it doesn't make it different? note that doesn't prove a thing. god's purpose isn't to make sick people healthy. that is the doctor's purpose. god's purpose is to make the people pray. and if i found god is a beauty

good job of that. so, now with people coming to me in their grief and in their affliction and they say where is god, i don't give them a theological answer. i read books that they can read when their minds are clear. when your best friends comes up with you even though it hurts them to see you in pain. when people bring you meals and hold your hand and dry your tears, when people ask you how argued in anti-repeat what you to told them how you are doing those are not fun things to do. but god motivates people to do that. god doesn't send the affliction, he sends come he sends the incomparable strength to deal with the infliction.

i look up at the audience at suspect that many of you are about where i am but not quite there just passed. if you remember woodstock i suspect very few of you were there. the saying at the time is if you could render woodstock, you probably were not there. [laughter] i was 34-years-old. i was married and family do not have too much a clergymen and it wasn't my kind of retreat anyway. woodstock was the response of a generation that our country was in a 1969. it was a rebellion against the garden of eden. johnnie mitchell has a beautiful song called stock to beat a woodstock i tried to get permission to quote in my book and people wrote back to say you

put one line of that in your book and we will confiscate every copy. i decided not to risk. her poem she describes if you are gentle soul one day and i asked her where are you going and she said i'm going to the garden to set my soul for a. woodstock refers to oscars garden you remember that's where all this was going on. but to me the garden could have been the garden of eden. i think and i have a whole chapter on this i think that we have misunderstood this story of genesis chapter three the garden of eden. we have misunderstood it for 2,000 years. i don't find a message of original sin. that was an idea in the second

century birth of christianity and second centuries, the birth of superseding the torah, the combination of the roman and greek philosophy. they believe that women are untrustworthy. think of the odyssey. they are trying to get home for the trojan war. every time they pull into a parking space there is a woman waiting there to seduce him. [laughter] think of the iliad to mighty nations go to war with each other because helen of troy is incapable of remaining faithful to her husband.

they are the heroines of the book. they have these greek ideas back into genesis chapter three and made eve the villain of the story. i think the story of genesis three was the story of the first human being. what is it a key to it the key to it is the name of the fruit i have a whole new rating but i think it's true to the hebrew. it's not the fruit but you're not supposed to eat. it's the fruit of the knowledge of good and bad. he acquires that knowledge and shares it with her husband and they are different from all the other animals because they know they now possess the single defining trait of a human being. and what is the single defining trait packs to understand that

something is wrong. no other creature can understand that. so our dog can understand but there's something to be punished for and they understand that there's some things that are not worth the trouble with the idea of the morally wrong but that only makes sense to human being that's what our ancestors came. they realized that they are naked and embarrassed. you read it the first hundred times i read it my reaction is of course anybody standing outdoors with no clothes on the feeling there is and then something occurred to me they are the only people in the world. there's nobody to see them it's like being embarrassed when you take a shower.

why are they in biggest? not because they had no clothes on but because they realized they are subject to judgment that has been the defining characteristic of the human being to understand that there are some things that are wrong and somethings that are right and necessary. >> a whole chapter here about the nature of god as i have come to understand that it isn't a man that lives in the sky. i remembered a 15-year-old boy came to me early on in my tenure as a rabbi and decided to me his attorney i can't believe in god anymore. i've learned not to argue with 15-year-old boys like that much to tell him he's wrong but say to him tell me about the god you don't believe in and they said there are things that there are things i really wanted and i

prayed so hard for and they told about all the good things i've done and promised all the things i intend to do and i never got it. how can i be leaving god. i said to him this god you beat me then that doesn't answer your prayers he doesn't have a speesixteen doesn't cut into happen to live at the north pole, thus he? [laughter] because you make god sound a lot like santa claus. god is their first of all to a lot of things you did not earn like being alive and like having parents that love you and a mind that works at a school that feels like finding things you can do in your good at like being able to connect with other people. those are human traits. and we should feel blessed that

we have them. god is there so that when bad things have been he will renew your spirit so you can go out and do good things that you intend to do. i was given the committee to the extent of the conservatism and at the first meeting was the committee of three men and women and one of the women and i said i don't know if i can do that. i am not going to write a sentence like in this passage god tells us that that is god's will god does the following that's not english. as if you want us to sign had to sign off on this. he said it can't be done. it turns out it can be just work a little bit harder at it.

the god i believe in and that i embodied and find is a god is both male and female. on some pages he is a father god chastising, warning, punishing, withholding and in some pages he is dot and another god god and a mother god forgiving and perishing, creating life. and god increases all of the good things in the world. i raised the question here isn't ever permissible to be creat god and i tell a true story that happened to a family that lives not far from where we are today in georgia where our grandchildren would spend their

summers. when some of the oldest boys bunk -- they were taken white water rafting is the always did. teenagers need to have a little bit danger to survive. if you don't give them something challenging to do they will find it for themselves and get him a wealth of trouble. in the societies this was the coming-of-age ritual to go out and kill the beast were live on the land for yourself. the american equivalent is high school football. >> i will tell you about the whitewater rafting. nothing bad ever happened. they were excited, they were scared. this state, one of the nicest

boys in the oldest boys bunk got up to help another camper that was a little scared stepping into the water and unexpectedly strong currents swept them away and they couldn't get him loose and he drowned. the director of the campus mini from other business to get to visit called and said we are having a crisis, can you come down and talk to the campers lax they are in shock. i went down and found out that this terrible incident had cost them their faith in god. and i said okay. i am here to help you come up with an idea of god you can believe in even when things like this happen to somebody you know. i asked them to take other bibles and turned to the first chapter of the book of deuteronomy where moses gets angry at god. the 5000 times in my life at least i figured him he's got a hard life by getting cranky, old

people are like that. and then i heard a lecture by a wonderful angle of british jewish scholar by the name if you've ever had an opportunity to hear or read something she wrote, she has been on the brilliant. ..

you shall love the lord your god with all your heart, with all your might, with all your soul. and the professor said that, when the israelites did not feel permission to get angry at god, they could not love god with all their hearts. their love for god would be halfhearted. the wife who is afraid to say to her husband that he does some things that really annoy her, she can't love him wholeheartedly. sheet is withholding part of herself. truelove is a love that knows how to express disappointment and anger, and overcome it with the strength of love. and this is what moses wants the israelites to feel towards god, and this is what i want you to feel toward god. if things happen in the world that wound you, that you don't deserve, instead of letting it cost your faith in god, find god

in your ability to overcome that. find god in the willingness of so many people to come and dry your tears and hold your hands. i've got a check and a book about forgiveness. i recommend it to you. i will not take the time now, but that essentially forgiveness is not the way of letting go your anger at the person who hurt you. it's not to his benefit. it's cleansing yourself of anger that is just poisoning you. it's poison you and your the only one who suffered from it, but that's a longer discussion. i want to conclude with the last page in my book. this is mike 13th book. as i mentioned i'm 80 years old. i don't know if i'm ever going to write another book. if i feel the need if i get the idea i will sit down and start writing. if i don't, i will be happy with this as my final word. on the last page of this book

because i thought this might be the last thing i will ever write, i wrote something different from anything i've ever written before. i call it a low blood or to a world that made or may not deserve it. and i hope when you read my book you'll spent a moment lingering over this and if you're moved, to write a similar letter to the world based on your own life experiences even if you're never going to see it in print. i would recommend it. it's a very therapeutic exercise. here's what it sounds like. the world, we been through a lot together over the past eight decades, you and i. marriages, births, deaths, fulfillment and disappointment, war and peace, good times and hard times. there were days when you are more generous to me that i could possibly have deserved. and there were days when you cheated me out of things i felt i was entitled to. there were days when you looked

so achingly beautiful that i could hardly believe you were mine, and days when you broke my heart and reduced me to tears. but with it all, i choose to love you, world. i love you what you deserve it or not, and how does one measure that? i love you in part because you were the only world i have. i love you because i like who i am better when i do. but mostly i love you because lovely new makes it easier for me to be grateful for today and hopeful about tomorrow. love does that. faithfully yours, harold kushner. thank you very much a. [applause]

>> that was truly amazing. i don't know if we have time for questions. we do, okay. anyone have a question? questions? we do have one lady. >> i don't have a question. is this on? i just have a comment for rabbi kushner, that when my little girl died of brain cancer in 1986, her name was alexa come and she was seven and a half years old. and i heard a lot of things from people and read a lot of things, and nothing made sense to me. in fact, many other things that i read anger to me and made the pain deeper and more intense, until i read your book.

and your book was the beginning of my healing and being able to help other people through child loss. i never thought i would have the opportunity to thank you for helping me put my life together, and i'm very grateful to thank you. [applause] >> thank you to i'm sorry we shared that experience, but it's profoundly moving to me that i was able to help you. i do hear that quite a bit and it never fails to move me. i firmly believe this is what i was puttin put on earth to do. i do not believe that god sent it in our lives so i would change my theology and write a book that would help people. if i ever believed that i would stop believing in god. it's not worth the human life. i believe that when my wife and i joined the long, long list of

paris have suffered that way, god showed me how to redeem the worthwhile the of belief and faith, and i tried to share that with all the rest of you. so thanks very much for the compliment. [applause] >> thank you both for coming. bullfighter lectures reminded me of christopher hitchens autobiography, page 22 the complete he was in his early '20s when he had an encounter with prime minister thatcher, and he made a comment that was sexual in nature, and his version of the event was that she winked at him and said you're a very naughty boy and you need to be spanked. thatcher said to hitchens after he made a somewhat sexual comment about her, maybe, maybe saying something that he

thought, just like the men in the early '30s that she worked with, that she had a sexual aura about her. he said something similar and his version of what took place was that she winked at him and said that he is a knotty boy and he needs to be spanked. that's in his autobiography. i brought them up because he reminded me both, all a bit of both of your lectures reminded me about this story. he of course was a literary journalist before he became known for his militant, atheism. and he believed that rod is a fictional character and that as such, the bible, the torah, et cetera, ought to be categorized as literature. i'm wondering what your thoughts are on that. but also, with rabbi kushner, he

later found out later in life that he was actually jewish with a name like christopher hitchens. his mother was quote-unquote a closeted jewish woman. and for him, or two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse are jewish, militant atheist. so i'm wondering what is it in what's taking place in perhaps their upbringing or the religious experience that's causing quite a few of the leaders of the atheist movements to be jewish? [laughter] >> added jewish community center in hartford, connecticut, i took full advantage of being the homecourt. [laughter] spirit he's a bright guy and i respect him and i respect the integrity of what he believes. he certainly is not taking these positions to be popular come except within a very small circle where he lives, or lived.

but what i said to them, before he got sick or would've been more kinder to them if i'd known. i said, you know, there's so many really bright people i need to whom i would like to say, what would your marriage be like if you and your wife related to each other based on what you knew about sex when you were 12? what would your financial situation be like if you handled your money based on what you about investing when you were 12? so what is it when it comes to some of the most profound questions about life, about integrity, about purpose, about forgiveness, why then are so many bright people content with what they learned before they were 12 years old and never had to learn anything beyond that? i respect him and respect the integrity what he said. the religion, christopher, the religion you were rejecting is a

caricature of religion. i would like to sit with you for an hour and offer you the kind of faith that i believe in that i think you would find is not persuasive, you know, god has got a long stretch of a couple thousand years. i think he could manage. if not persuasive at least geeky to respect people who take religion seriously. >> yes. i think, i knew christopher hitchens because he was at the world "vanity fair" what i was there and my husband and i entertained in a moment of the people when we lived in california. and christopher hitchens was a cruncher again. that's what he did. that's the way approach the world. he was always against -- a contrary can. i take exception that he wasn't writing to be provocative. i think he was writing to be provocative. and i wasn't happy with his

challenging, you know, sister teresa. but in any case, i wanted to go to one of the things that i loved about your book, rabbi kushner, which is your interpretation of god, of genesis, your we interpretation of genesis, talking about the early christian interpreters understood the garden, even adams relationship that god originally created a double creature, a double creature who created them, man and woman. you actually quoted as being one of the interpretations. that's the way i've always thought of it. i always thought of mother god. that the gods were so jealous of this double creature that they split it in half and that's why most of us go through much of our lives looking for our missing piece. and i've always loved that view

come and i found my missing piece. you did, too. unit 55 years with yours. i-25 years with my but 17 years on the one night stand. [laughter] spent unconvinced that the original -- the difference is, by the way, if you studied plato's symposium in college, that myth, the greek myth is found that that the gods are jealous of the siamese hybrid, the conjoined twins i think is the conventional language now, and split in half. the difference is what i love about the genesis of interpretation, this is an old story but such a profound idea. the purpose of splitting them is so that the mail have would find a female have and they would make up a whole one being, the idea to join with another person makes you complete. i love that idea. by the way, part of that, one of the implications of that, you

realize human beings are as far as i know the only living creatures that when they made, made face-to-face. because only with human beings does it matter who you are coupling with. your dog doesn't care who she is meeting with. [laughter] animals out in the wild don't know each other before they made. only for human beings do we recognize each other as soul to soul, and not only male anatomy two female anatomy. >> thank you. we have to end on that note. [applause] i'd like to thank our authors. let's give him another round of applause. [applause] and thank you very much to the women. the office will be signing their book across the hall from the elevator right on this floor. thank you very much.

[inaudible conversations] >> and booktv -- the campus of miami-dade college. several hours of live programming ahead. you hear from the poet laureates, you will see leonard pitts, joy-ann reid, a couple of colin opportunities for you as well with p.j. o'rourke and joy-ann reid. be joyful work is the next office to talk about his most recent book from under the omnibus.

right now on our set in the center of the festival, we're joined by author, luther campbell. here's the book, my fight for truth justice and liberty city. mr. campbell, what and where is liberty center speak with liberty center is probably about 10 minutes away from here. on 58th and 10th avenue where i was raised at. 62nd, martin the king boulevard. >> what is it? >> what is it? it's a historical black neighborhood. like a pop in my book. it's a neighborhood in which black folks are mere when we first moved here, when we first came your everybody lived in overtown and we eventually into struggling into liberty city where i-95 was cut right through the african-american community.

so my dad, like a partner in the book was one of the first persons to purchase a home there. they didn't know he was a black man when he came, showed a. it obligate a deposit at the end of day when the sun shall provide we didn't know we were selling to a black guy. he eventually ended up moving into one of the first guys to move in to the inner city spent a deposit went from $52,500 overnight? >> exactly, exactly. >> what is trying to? >> two live crew is a group that eventually got into, do i start out dj early on a micro. i was immobile dj around here in miami and the guys came down just every other band that was struggling, were not getting paid royalties. so we said look, we want to do songs, where we will get a. i said i'll help you. i just want you to help me out

because i want you to do a song that i created, edited a song -- remember that song? it was a great dance. eventually i went from that point doing an album and -- >> rap music? >> yes. first hip-hop song done in the south. and from there we started and greater hip-hop in the south. >> what is relationship between two live crew and the supreme court? >> two live crew and the supreme court. two live crew ended up getting in the supreme court in my case between -- it was something i think i do happen. was destined to happen because hip-hop at that period of time was under attack by you name it, and will, governor martinez in

the state of georgia, my friend, judge gonzales, federal judge in broward county. you name it, everybody was after hip-hop at the time. >> what -- was at a first time in the case in the supreme court speak with yes. it was a parody case originally. it was to cases that talk about in the book. one obviously the one that i went to the supreme court, i think the most, the case that my lawyer overturned and the fourth district court of appeals. no, not the fourth district, the court of appeals where i was the authenticity case -- obscenity case. judge gonzales originally said that the music was obscene and went to go back and get it overturned because the music that you write out they would've been told different. spin at one point you write in your book, try not that you were worth about $100 million.

>> yes. >> was the money, did it come easy? >> well, did the money come easy? not really. it was tough. it was tough. just like biggie smalls says more money, more problems. the more money i got, the more problems i got. i tried to higher good people, good tax attorneys, attorneys, general counsel, have built my corporation. but when you read in the book most of those people, those were people i did put him and he stole me, in my opinion. so it was company was difficult to make money but it was hard to keep the money. >> was your work as part of two live crew, was a graphic? >> my work, my work was not graphic i think the work the other members could have been considered as graphic but i think they are right, to their

artistic doubts as well as free speech but when you listen to record and to listen to the lyrics that i wrote it was totally different. but i was stupid to take responsibility everything that's put out and given up to the general public spent from your book, "the book of luke" at the end of the day there's one simple reflect hip-hop historians and journalists don't give me the credit i can do. it's because of uncle luke. who was uncle luke? >> uncle luke, my mom and dad raised luther campbell. she raise all the but of the four brothers, all these guys pretty much rocket scientists. navy pilot, comptroller of major plants. me, you know, i was a young guy, the baby of the family. would read and heard all those guys complain about money that they need for college or whether

they were in the armed services and felt like they're being mistreated because they were black. particularly my third oldest brother, when he was in the navy. i don't think he ever got any leave because he was trying to be a father. i ended up dj'g, becoming uncle luke. uncle luke became cummins originally luke skywalker then george lucas sued me. i was dj luke skywalker. now i look out for my community. i try and do the right thing for everybody. >> so was uncle luke a stage

persona in a sense of? >> yeah, yeah, no doubt about it. luke, you have luke campbell, luke, and uncle luke. so luke on stage was a guy that gave the people what they wanted. if you listen to record, it was our responsibility to go and give people what they want, other than going into a concert or situation and toning it down at times, a particular time. and other records as more secure but pushed back, we pushed back and the records got a little more graphic. then we wanted to become but we are in this thing called fighting for free speech spent the fight for two live crew speaks blessed lyri literature e was never really about the lyrics. it'd been about the principle of fighting for the right to do the same thing white artist did without legal harassment and censorship. >> when i look at it, again, i

only operate in myself. i look at artists like lee were still at, and esther, you name it, these guys, then you looked at people like andrew dice clay. those guys already on record, i'll really a philly with major record labels. they were not getting their records take it off the shelf. so i look down from the standpoint of saying i'm a hip-hop artist can't i own my own record company, i am an easy target for the government and i just said look, if of god to take all my irony -- my money i earn to buy for free speech for hip-hop then i will do that. >> what are you doing today? >> there's movies and helping my wife out with nfl agency and restaurants. i'm just happy doing, helping

out with the committee. >> how did you get involved in being a defense coordinator for a miami high school? >> my passion has always been football. i ended up going to miami beach high playing football. i always said when my career dies down that i will go back to my youth and help out. i started coaching and ended up coaching. now got some great players in the nfl, whether it's kerry williams, dante friedman is going to be up with the redskins, and you know, duke johnson, we've got quite a few kids in the lead male. but the most important one is the one that came out of my program is the city commission of one of most important areas, which is this area as well. i'm happy to find all of them

speaking let's bring it all back to liberty city, your career, the trajectory, what you went through. was pure with liberty city now? >> my roll with liberty city is to try, you know, to stay it and just everything i possibly can to help the people who do not have a voice. whawhen i look at politics in liberty city and miami in general, other than our black elected officials, our own black special interest groups that don't have an interest of the african-american people here in south florida. my job is to stay here and fight, fight for them, fight for the school, fight for jobs, you know, the unemployment rate is horrible. every day is a challenge of taking their property and putting condoms on their

property every day. that's one of the reasons i'm happy i did move to hollywood when others doing movies and happy i did move to new york. very, very successful in the music industry and stay here and fight for my people. >> you talking about with the fact he ran for mayor at one point. >> you. >> how did you do speak what i did do. i came in fourth place. i came in first place with all the living voters. i came in fourth place with all the dead voters. and the living people i came in first place but the dead people i came in second. >> you got 11% of the vote overall. you also talk about how you look at it as one miami. has that anyway and achieve? >> it's still a struggle

because, from the outside looking in, the people of miami want one miami. there's not a day that goes by that semi-latin friends or jewish friends, you name it, came to be and see what can we do to help these communities ask what we do to help these schools? not a day that goes by when you see folks. doethere's much more to politics that are controlled by the special interest groups. those are the ones who try to great is a diversion and the separation of our town. we have some great people here in miami and the people, they want one miami and i think that's going to be my slogan, one miami. >> in your book, "the book of luke," you talk about the fact that the explicit lyrics labeled that's put on, that was put on a lot of albums and cds, you are partially responsible but it was

a put out into the white kids started buying rap music explicit rap music it is okay you say when black kids reminded. >> you. just like i say, we've been going on in the book i talk about it in detail because i want people to know what i was going through, figure out why i was going through all of this controversy. why is the government and vice president and tipper gore and everybody was coming after me. i went outside to start thinking about about, okay, hip-hop has been around. you know, rock 'n roll is being phased out a little bit. a lot of white kids in this community. that's when the controversy came. we ended up on tipper gore's list, al gore's wife, the top 10 bad guys. so at the time i just figured that's what it was really all about. it was all about white kids

navigating the music. .. explicitly directs inside here in the book. the book of luke. luther campbell is the author. booktv live coverage continues. we are going back into the hall

which is one of the larger holes on the campus of miami-dade, and humorous and political writer is being introduced and after a little bit later we will have a cold in opportunity call in opportunity and you can find the full schedule on booktv.org. >> i hope you are all enjoying your holidays in hell are at the very least your holidays in heck. after driving like crazy to get here i'm not here to speak eight mr. o'rourke. that wouldn't be modern manners. after all this isn't a politics of war. by the way the session should end around lunchtime so after we are here you can go ahead and eat the rich. for those of you that don't recognize the titles i just spewed, you should look them up

and read them. you won't be disappointed and you will both laugh and think at the same time. as someone who leaned on the era it is an honor to be here and no one had to threaten to shoot a dog to get me to come. it's my pleasure to introduce pj o'rourke and his publisher and editor for over 30 years the president and publisher. gentlemen, the stage is yours. good morning. thanks for coming great to see you all. we were backstage and remember when we were here for the first year or something and said i think that was just you on your own. we have known each other for 38

years. my memory of the first meeting was at some restaurant near the department you lived on mir the tunnel. much is lost in the fog 38 years ago. >> we have done 16 books together and morgan is both my publisher and my editor and authors do not stick with the same publisher or editor anymore anymore than one or two books in most cases because the industry is fluid. >> we are very 19th century literary relationships symbiotically relationships

that's been through enormous benefit. my agent who wasn't much use anyway retired and somebody introduced me to another prospective agent and i told him about the relationship and he said he will never hear this from an agent we don't need an agent. we've got this relationship i cannot possibly improve upon i will just get in the way. the person i was going to cheat with that you don't want to do that. this doesn't happen very often in any kind of relationship that alone publishing. but morgan had been in new york for ten minutes and we met within a few weeks you had convinced me to do the book.

>> you did a spoof of etiquette about intoxicating substances for rolling stone and we are sitting on a lame on the upper east side in new york the writers and journalists hung out and you are trying out some of your jobs from the rolling stone at the time and i said we started to talk about how we've had a collection of etiquette books and from that i said why don't we do a whole spoof of the etiquette. >> it wasn't really the spoof of an etiquette book it was for a period of time of which we still live where there simply are no manners. it's a pickup that emily post that he will see nothing in there exists any more so we decided we would write an etiquette book for a really rude

age. so we were ahead of the curve on this -- some point during the evening elayne was a wonderful. many of you may know about the rest of many writers hang out a big woman with big drinks and i don't know how big the writers were they all thought they were big. every now and then she would say you should turn that into a book and i think she said that. >> we had already been planning to turn it into a book or a >> she would say that about anything. she would see woody allen scribbling on the map can and instead turn it into about eight or ten really boring movies. when you left the lampooning or

freelancing t. want to talk about that? a >> this is the old literary work of. as i went up the food chain at the national lampoon of the national lampoon from the editor to managing editor to editor-in-chief my belt would keep getting higher. i would have the state and the fettuccine alfredo at about nine scotches. so when i started going at doing at the national lampoon is like 50 bucks, not even. it would be about 35 or 40 bucks. by the time i was editor-in-chief, it was pressing $200 for my dinner. i would come in and say i quit. she would say are you sure that is a good idea.

what are you going to do now? i don't know, freelance work area i get my bill for dinner that night expected $45. and for a while when i wasn't doing very well coming elayne would, elayne would come up and there would be a bunch of people at the dinner table and she would say you collect the money for dinner tonight and pocket the money and put it on the tab. for while i was a while i was living on the float from elayne's and then when i finally made some money i would pay plane back that i was publishing as it was back in the day. >> what you also what you also told me when you told me the story as he sits now every publication party we ever have, we threw it at elayne, which we did until it closed. another friend of ours used to

work for the "washington post" and the new york and when he was running low on funds he did the same thing and told me she let him run up a five figure bill that she would float him on and that's the old days. that's why all the writers were such great friends of hers. >> she helped. and then the other book that we came up with was when i was an editor when we did the first book that i signed up by this point you have to get over taken over the job at rolling stone and it was called the rational affairs editor i think that's what it was. >> hunter thompson had been the foreign correspondent for rolling stone but it was in his head.

you didn't actually have to go anywhere. just things got really foreign. as hunter was exiting the rolling stone basically because they couldn't get him to write anything they brought me in as an actual foreign correspondent so i think my title was a rational affairs editor but i was the foreign affairs desk chief and also the only foreign correspondent for 15 years. it was the first book i signed up when i started my imprint with atlantic which then became the grove atlantic part of the story pj writes the copy that is

as clean as any copyright ever worked with and i'm sure many of you out in the audience have read it and you are fans and it's not easy to write. i remember one time we had our number one best-seller parliament is a great thing as a publisher where you are seeing the book everywhere everywhere in iran number getting on an airplane and seeing that person over there and as i said at the back of the plane plane i did hear a would hear a laugh coming from over there in from over there.

spread out from the different books we kept laughing out loud reading this stuff and my wife looked at me and said how can you still be laughing at this stuff and i said it's probably 15 sixteenths time i've read some of it but it's still really funny. but anyways we got the collection together. this is the first book i did and i remember he didn't need it so the kind of editorial relationship is more like suggesting a couple of the books we've come up with together may be shaping a little bit. but i remember the title of the republican party have we got to that the remember that at all

blacks >> we never know what to call the book. >> we were calling it a rational affairs. the whole thing with 50 shades of gray. you're going to read this junk? everybody has their guilty pleasures. but read it? that's an extra problem. so in those days i despicably still up for any but for any reason i'm listening to one of those incredibly upbeat sort of

howard stern type of morning disc jockey people when you have -- i don't know why i didn't turn it off but all you party reptiles out of their. >> then we eventually had to be reissued the book the great thing about our symbiotic relationship is still in print. don't let morgan give you he is a hell of a line editor it is

fantastic. the whole idea of an author is to be an author to create things come to create a little world exactly the way you want it and then some of the comes in and pisses on it and you say i created this world exactly how i wanted it. so you created exactly the way you want it and we had been acting up ever since. scrubbing up for him and morgan manages to do that without ever seeming to do it. we have been together for so long that in certain ways we could read each other's minds about this stuff. what were we talking about? >> one of the stories was about how we did after the reptile we did highways in hell and that is what broke us out and about with

the collected peace environment for the owner and editor and publisher of rolling stone basically subsidized up for us because -- he was getting great stuff out of it, too. we collected the rolling stone journalist of the foreign correspondents stuff and that was the sort of breakout book that moved you to a different level where we could feel that we were getting a big readership. >> weren't you back with something fundamental about business but just publishing that all businesses that everybody thinks businesses competitive. people think that writing and publishing his competitive area that is a whole lot more cooperation that goes into any kind of business success then there is cooperation that there is competition. which was cooperation. it's about finding out where everybody benefits. that's the sort of idea business

situation. the customer benefits, the vendor benefits, the wholesaler benefits benefits, the manufacturer benefits. and morgan and i created that kind of situation between ourselves and when publishing, when magazine publishing was still a viable industry, we would triangulate this notably at rolling stone where he was paying me to do these places morgan couldn't possibly get me a book advance to go to places like mogadishu or go spend three months covering the gulf war or do any of the other -- i filed from 40 some different countries and it was expensive and he had the money from rolling stone to send beyond his assignments. which gave me the material to give to morgan to shape into a collective book about his experience was shaping required for each of these things like

the overthrow of ferdinand marcos and the philippines and so on and how did that relate to the lebanese civil war and in return how did that relate to albania because all the peer mentor schemes that they had over the collapse. so, we created a situation where everybody benefited from this from the publisher and editor and the bookstores when they existed they benefited from this, too and so if anybody is like the audience is an inspiring writer or aspiring business or bookstore owner or anything come it's always nice to sit up in situations where mutual benefit. but what i was wondering is how we came up with the idea and i will tell you my memory of it is that you have returned 40. we had a dinner that went late

at our friends. you had bought a sports car to separate your 40th birthday. and we were going to go race it on some roads that you do in staten island, and so we were on the staten island ferry fairly early in the morning for us in those days. and we started talking about -- i hadn't worked in washington in the summer of 1973 as a page in the house of representatives and it is interesting because it was watergate etc. but the interesting thing about it was you saw close-up these bozos that ran the government in the south i was like ever since i have been following it was like we should write it about how washington works works into the exhibit had exhibited the late 70s called the legislation and i was talking talking with us on the staten island ferry and then there was a book that had just been published by simon and schuster called a showdown by two wall street journal

reporters about the reagan tax reform thing and i'm saying who could we get to do this come and they just published a book called the power game which was about the size of a telephone book that made for just about as engaging as a reading. and as we were thinking you look at the end at me and it's like a lightbulb goes off and he does well what about if i do it lacks and that was more or less where i think the parliament of the war came from. >> i think you're right. my memory is a little more foggy but possibly fumes from the a-alpha r-romeo. i have been doing this for an and correspondents stuff and i would continue to do that but there's a lot of wear and tear involved in being a foreign correspondent and i was a little tired of it and i thought you'd know it would be stamps here.

>> we now return to our live program. >> another question? >> we were just talking about millionaire factory farmer guaranteed incomes, huge crop insurance subsidies all paying people not to grow things and all sorts of paying people for growing things they didn't grow and all it's just garbage. so, after spending months wrestling with this and develop self is that high and the explanation of the bill would fill this room, so i'm interviewing all sorts of people from interviewing like practically two thirds of the congressmen have farm constituencies. only 3% of americans live and work in agriculture anymore for the future political weight because of the way the districts are distributed. so going through all this stuff and i have this crazy friend total city slicker who's going

to raise cattle so he buys a farm in new hampshire north texas. it's time for the cows to get in a family way. it's not done the way that i thought it would be done like a bowl bull and a cow and a heart-shaped skull beyond the tapes. now the way that you read cattle it's sort of like teenage pregnancy times ten. not only is the board around to help raise the the capital isn't even there to get a cow knocked up. instead what they get is a liquid hydrogen thermos bottle full of seamen and let's not even think about how they do that. okay. then there is this gigantic freezing cold hyperbaric sort of

thing and what we do is you go out in the barn so i get a hold of the cows had and my buddy george is the crazy cattle raiser gets ahead and we get the farmer to come in and actually do the honors what he does his sticks a syringe into a personal private face of the cow and then what he does as he takes his arm squirt liquid dish soap and sticks it into an even more personal private part of the cow will be up to the elbow. now he does this not in order to get on the world wide web with a site. no. what he's doing as he is feeling through the cows and test them all. feeling that this incinerator syringe so that he can insert the tip of the syringe into the cows were on duty for -- womb.

and this is what he really goes something to watch by glad to see this since i was at the other end i did not watch it. but i will never forget the look on the cows face. [laughter] and that is the look that i got on my face when i finish reading beyond this farm bill. the book that became a number one bestseller that changed their lives because at the time i had a print with the atlantic press and the whole story is too long but basically, my friend that owns the press one to two solid and he offered it to me

happened to be in new hampshire staying with pj and i said to him what should we do, should we stay independent, should we buy this? and i i had the next book which also became the number one bestseller under contract i settle you need to do us just say we is just say we will keep that under contract with us and much to the chagrin of his agent he said not only will i keep that under contract i will sell you the next one beyond that for a dollar and that is a great standup friend he is to me so i went ahead and i took the risk enabled the atlantic monthly press with some other investors and my family and a couple friends and from that we created grove atlantic which is one of the few independent midsized companies because we are not a small press publisher hundred 20 a year and now about 202,500 in

printed alongside a don't think there's a lot of authors that that would have been enough. >> it wasn't all hugs and love. i made a cultivated decision that this was really important to have independent booksellers and publishers. it gives a pretty good insight. the other thing is when we were working on the deal for the parliament but my agent insisted i go around and talk to other publishers and i don't remember what other publishers to talk to but i do remember the lunch i had with a woman editor at simon & schuster and she said i know, i know just how to do this book. you do 24 hours of washington. you wake up at six in the morning and you follow everything that happens in

washington for one day. who cares what happens in washington? it's washington. it's like an organization that can wreck continents including our own. every -- a very competitive and sometimes thing sometimes beneficial sometimes otherwise often out of control and really opaque and she wants to do 24 hours of washington. so they got up and talked and that is one of the things that made me think now morgan must survive in the atlantic monthly press. ..

>> no, i read the whole damn thing. all 10011 pages of it. plus pretty much everything else adam smith wrote. it was, i promised this book in six months. it was about three years before i actually delivered it. three, you know, two and 3/4

years wading my way through all adam smith wrote. it is great. i recommend i had. theory of moral sentiments, if you have a slow year. >> if you have a normal life i would suggest reading p.j.'s 1 is -- 130 page book that tells you the whole sorry story there is great line. when you set out to legislate buying and selling the first thing to be bought and sold are the legislature. i thought that was a mine from adam smith. it's p.j.'s line. >> oh, the insight. but, you know, it's been a great partnership. they have told us that we should leave about 10 or 15 minutes for questioning. >> i was going to say one more thing. the next thing is small. i'm working on larger project. this is morgan's idea. i have a small project.

i hope he stays small. we were asking ourselves very simple, non-partisan political question, which is how did the u.s. federal government, how did it get so big? how did it get so big? the thing is so big. i googled this and googled several different sources, not just wikipedia, nobody really knows for sure exactly how many government agencies there are. they don't know how many government agencies, they are. you count this one twice. is that half an agency? nobody really has a count on how many -- there is 400 and some they think. wait, how did this happen? i think george washington stated out with him, his horse, martha. some kid from down the block. [laughter]. jefferson, whatever. it is not, i'm not saying it east good. i'm not saying it's bad. i'm wondering how it happened.

how in the pursuit of that, does this happen with governments period. from the initial research that i've done, looks like this is kind of inevitable thing with governments, that stick around for any length of time they put on weight. and, you know, but what does that mean? i haven't gotten that far. does it mean they griped to halt can it go along for a long time? i don't know yet. that is the next thing that, just an example of how, how we work together, and now, we've told you everything we know. but make up other stuff if you have questions. >> i think there is a microphone people have to use to ask questions. >> just to embarass you further. >> simple question. do both of you either of you

vote and if you do, why and if you don't why not. >> i vote. i live in new hampshire. sort of required by law. we have to go to up dixon's notch to be first people -- i vote, i vote for least worst. [laughter] >> yeah. i vote and rarely, i would say, least worst is my party also. >> p.j., what is your analysis of why a secretary of state would have a private email server for all official business and then all of sudden they're like, half a billion dollars in donations to a foundation that she alone controls? >> i was asking my daughter the same question last night when i went in to her room at the hotel where we're staying and she had, i believe six electronic devices working at the same time. she had the ipod. she had the ipad. she had the phone. she had the laptop. i think she also had the tv on

and there was some other device which, you know, i know not a purpose. so, all i can say is, for a woman who is spot on my age, hillary clinton and i are exactly the same age, she, for good for for ill, she is way more hip on this stuff than i am. whether that, whether that causes me to give her credit or to give her blame, we'll have to wait until least worst time next year. >> did you know that condoleeza rice had the same setup as secretary of state and other secretary of state, secretaries of state had same setup, private email for government business? >> you're talking to a guy who still has problems with his rotary phone, okay? what's thing you dial before you dial long distance number? is it one, is it eight, is it 10? i don't know. >> hey, p.j., how did you go

from left-leaning hippie to a, republican party reptile libertarian? was there some can that is rightic moment? was there a man at yale experience over college, how did that happen. >> no. it was, it was a steady state situation with a blip in the middle. i was born and raised republican. really, really, republican. my great grandfathered was county sheriff in down state illinois. a friend of president mckinley. regular delegate, perennial delegate to republican conventions, et cetera. my grand mother started going to republican conventions when she was 10. i was asking my grandmother when i was kid, i was being a smart ass, but i was being serious, what is the difference between republicans and democrats. my grandmother said, democrats rent. that was it. [laughter] so i, i go off to college and

i'm walking down, first weekend at college. i'm walking down this little aisle and there are two bars in fronting on this little alley. one bar is full of fraternity and sorority type kids. sorority girls are cute with the flip haircut and skirts creeping above their niece, this is 19656789 fill out their sweaters very nicely, adorable looking girls. i look over there, gee, i'm not pledging a fraternity. i don't have money. i'm not a sharp dresser. i'm not good-looking. i'm not an athlete. that will be work over there. on the other side of the alley there were a bun. of beatnik kids, hippie kids, call them hippies yet that type of thing. there were girls over there equally cute with long ironed hair, strumming on guitars. drinking beer right out of the bottle and smoking unfiltered

camels. i looked over there, i thought, i hope that they do it. [laughter] and they did. so i was over on that side of the alley rest of the time in college. naturally, besides the guitar, you know, the smoking and drinking and guitar playing i picked up politics. so i come home from college with hair down to wherever a big red fist on back of my jean jacket. pat, i'm worried about you, are you becoming a democrat? grandma, grandma, of course i'm not a democrat. lyndon johnson is democrat. killing all innocent vietcong. he is fascist pig. of course i'm not a democrat. i'm a economist. [laughter] and my grandmother goes. well, just as long as you're not a democrat. and i never have been. went from republican to communist and back to republican. the way i got back to republican

was very simple. i got a job. somewhat belatedly, like middle 20s. i get a job and i get paid $150 a week and, i get paid every two weeks. i'm really looking forward to that $300 paycheck. and i get the paycheck and i net out at like 168.25, something like that. after state taxes and city taxes and income tax and social security and union dues and health care -- all that stuff. i net out at like 160 something. and i go, i'm a communist. and i finally get my first real job with a big capitalist corporation, and i find out we've got communism already. they just took half be my pay be, i'm not rockefeller. i was right back to republican. ma'am. >> have you ever thought about writing the outsourcing of government services, private

companies that has made a lot of money -- for the opposite of large government, has been this reaction of, oh, let's privatize everything which hasn't worked so well for taxpayer. >> if i were writing, parliament of wars again, and unfortunately the fundamental dynamics behind the book would make writing it again a task because i would have to cover a lot of same territory. one of the areas i would cover is just that. one thing different about writing the book now, i wrote that before the outsourcing much much -- of government m north theory, i covered lebanese civil war. i have seen privatized military sources. not a great idea. not a great idea. i believe isis is running privatized prisons.

not a idea as far as i'm concerned. that would be a subject. if i were to return that subject, wore me out. >> if you look for ideas, i think our governor knows a little bit about privatized health care. might want to check that out. >> sir? >> yes. >> i wanted to thank you for your wonderful work at the national lampoon which i read religiously when i was in college. >> religiously is not the adverb you're looking for. >> it was phenomenal publication back in the '70s. do you have any personal feeling about its decline of popularity since you left? >> decline of? >> national lampoon. >> certainly there was no causal relationship with my leaving and national lampoon declining. what happened, the magazine work, publishing work, morgan can speak to this, the whole world we're in right here, today pays crap, let's face it.

i mean like, you know, look around us. we are not investment bankers. the g5 does wait outside miami-dade airport. pay is always. always has been lousy. it is lousier now than it once was, and but it is lousy. national lampoon made a movie. it was enormous success, "animal house." everyone at national lam got offers to writing a movie. writing a movie that fails or never happens, pays 100 times more than writing a magazine article that does happen. and so they all just evaporated. even by the time i left at beginning of '81, they were running out the doors, rats leaving a sinking ship. >> i think -- >> i think our time is over. let's have a round of applause, please.

[applause] thank you so much to both of you. the autographing area is across from the elevators on this floor. ♪

[inaudible conversations]. >> may have your attention please. we need to empty the room. [inaudible].

>> you're watching live coverage of the miami book fair on booktv on c-span2. now p.j. o'rourke, who you just saw in the chapman hall here on the campus of miami-dade, will be joining as you little bit later for a call-in. you will have a chance to talk with him as well. in just a minute msnbc's joy-ann reid will join us for a call-in. her new book, "fracture." barack obama and the clintons and the racial divide. she will be here in a minute on the call-in set on miami-dade. coming up we have live coverage of the u.s. and former u.s. poet laureates. that is a little later this afternoon. live coverage of leonard pitts and joy-ann reid talking about their books. also a presentation by animal rights writers and that's tracy

stewart and gene bauer. that is coming up. you can find the full schedule at booktv.org. you can follow us at twitter. @booktv is our twitter handle. we send out regular updates on the handle. in just a minute we'll have live coverage with joy-ann reid. she will be taking your calls and we will be back live to miami in just a minute. booktv.org. [inaudible conversations].

>> booktv live in miami. and, on our call-in set which is at the center of the, of the festival here, on the campus of miami-dade, joy-ann reid is our guest. "fracture." barack obama, the clintons and the racial divide is her book. joy-ann reid, what is the current relationship between the democratic party and african-americans? is it a marriage made in heaven? >> well you know i think for a lot of african-americans it is not so much a marriage but per pent wall dating scenario where you're out on dates but not being brought home to mom and dad. i think you definitely still have a certain sense among african-americans that the democratic party knows it needs african-american votes but doesn't necessarily highly value african-american issues. and so you saw that play out with the "black lives matter" movement. where you had a party that is

1/3 non-white, enter into its primary race unprepared to address this movement, with all three major candidates completely flubbing the issue on their first attempt. so i think for a lot of african-americans, there is puzzlement why the party doesn't still seem to understand its real primary base voter. >> so what is the flub when a candidate says, all lives matter? >> the thing with the all lives matter it was, kind of a confection of those who are opposed to "black lives matter." it wasn't meant as expansion of "black lives matter." it was meant as rebuttal to it. it was meant to demonize the movement as if "black lives matter" was saying only "black lives matter," rather than saying "black lives matter" too which is what the movement is really about. >> how would you describe president obama's relationship with african-american voters today, seven years out? >> i think he enjoys tremendous respect and affection from african-american voters. black voters were tremendously proud of achievement of having

first african-american president in office. very defensive of him with even certain disappointments under the radar. whether ore not they will defend president obama against his enemies, whether political enemies or any other enemy on issues of race or on issues of policy, black voters will defend this president they have turned out in huge numbers to reelect him. beneath the surface there are family issues within the relationship. by and large he still enjoys tremendous support and affection. >> will the democratic nominee in 2016 enjoy that same affection? >> i think if the nominee fully embraces barack obama, yes. but that is really going to be the big test. i think there is always this question of whether the nominee of the democratic party will find some way to distance from the president on whether it is foreign policy or on domestic policy or economics and how they will pull that off. the question for black voters is not how to distance from barack obama but how to embrace him and that's what i think the challenge is for the democratic

nominee. >> one of the issues that you discussed at length in "fracture" is voting rights. from your book, for the time-being and for the foreseeable future particularly for african-americans, the democrats are the only ball game and with pressing issues of economic, health and educational disparities, and with voting rights hanging in the balance, failure is not an option. >> yeah. i think for african-americans the democratic party has long been the party of last resort, not necessarily the party where they felt fully whole and embraced but when democrats -- when african-americans, first essentially broke into the democratic party in the 1950s and 6's in large numbers, particularly in the south, they were breaking into hostile party, a party didn't want them there. almost akin to accusations of block busting and african-americans would move in and non-african-americans would move out. that happened the in democratic party in the south. black voters fully engaged with the party because it was only game in town.

there was no other way to wield political power in the south was democratic party. the republican party didn't function in the south. african-americans finding themselves in this party where during certain periods they have been in and out. they have been in it really with fdr. they have drifted in and out because there was lot of support for dwight eisenhower. there was substantial support for richard nixon. 1/3 of african-american voters voted for him. by the time the barry goldwater nomination happened in the republican party, african-americans went all-in with the democrats. that doesn't mean they're always on one accord. >> we'll continue our conversation with joy-ann reed, talking about the her new book, "fracture." we want to get you involved. this is opportunity to talk with an offer. we'll put numbers up on the between. 202-748-820000. live in east and central time zones. 748-8201 if you live in mountain and pacific time zones. many ways to get ahold of us if

you can't get through the phone lines. you can send a text message. this is not for phone calls. this is text message. 202-717-9684. and if you would, include your city and your first name so we can identify you that way. couple other ways to get ahold of us today, via social media. you can make a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. or, you can send us a tweet @booktv. so, those are, a variety of ways to have the conversation with us and with joy-ann reid. now, ms. reid, tell me if i'm reading this wrong, you're a little critical of the president when it comes to supporting voting rights. is that a fair assessment of what you write in quote fracture"? >> i would say there was a lot of criticism from the civil rights community particularly his stance voter eye deal. there was a sense of many activists in the civil rights

community there was lack of urgency on voter i.d. when it started to do crop up. 2010 election for a lot of activists was opportunity for the white house to use bully pulpit to fully support and robustly oppose that kind of what republicans call voting reform. but white house didn't really do it. think there has been a fair amount of criticism that the president seemed to have attitude if you want to vote badly enough you should be able to do it. while he opposes ideas of voter i.d. he is not really robustly actively campaigning against it. i think a lot of civil rights activists wanted him to. >> when you look at democratic hopefuls for president, where do they stand with some of these issues you discuss in "fracture"? >> interesting if bill clinton succeeded pushing democratic party to the substantially right or send arer-right, in obama years the party moved back very demonstrably to the left on number of issues, whether criminal justice reform and undo

ing many of the legacy of clinton and gay rights and voting rights. you see hillary clinton embracing idea of universal automatic voter registration at age 18. bernie sanders embracing same thing. both of them pushing for really robust reinvigoration of the voting rights act which was really gutted in that 2013 decision by the supreme court. you're seeing democratic nominees, all three of them, substantially pushing for broadening voting rights and voting access and putting their foot on the pedal for that issue. >> let's go back to 2008. from your book, "fracture." friends said clintons took attacks on african-americans who supported hillary personally and were angered that long-time african-american friend didn't feel free to stand by their preferred candidate without reaping retribution from within the black body politic once it was clear obama was viable. >> yeah. i think clintons were so taken aback by the support this

relatively unknown young senator was getting from african-americans who long been bill bill clintons base. they were taken back by his electoral success but substantial draining of their own african-american support. by the way their comments were being received by african-americans. they just weren't prepared for it. when you found substantial numbers of african-americans band donning the clintons and going for barack obama i think the clintons had resentment. the other piece of resentment, the clintons, particularly bill clinton have longstanding relationships within the african-american community. whether civil rights leaders, whether jesse jackson they have a love/hate relationship with bill clinton. many came to washington with bill clinton in 1992 and 199. of course they supported hillary. they were her friends. but reaction they got from african-americans, once it was clear that barack obama could win was swift and furious. even legendary figures john

lewis facing huge backlash from african-americans for not supporting barack obama. the clintons resented vociferiousness of their reaction to their african-american friend and supporters. >> when you started this book project, where did you start, what was your goal? >> when i first started book in 2013, i'm a history buff so i kind of wanted to write a history because we were sitting first of three jubilee years of civil rights movement. 2013 was 50 years on from the march of washington. 2014 would be 50 years on from the civil rights act. 2015 would be 50 years on from the voting rights act. heroic achievements of the civil rights movement in between. i wanted to write something that would mark the 50-year period and this incredible character arc it represented for democratic party which gone being rejectionist party, racial rejectionist party to the party that produces first black

president. broad sweep of american history would be more logical for republican to be first african-american president based on abraham lincoln and some of the other things republican party represented even in the '60s. but you had this party which had appendage, southern appendage was so anti-black, so anti-expansion, so anti-integration, that it is kind of remarkable that 50 years from that period this is the party that produces barack obama. i wanted to write that history and fill it in. >> do you see an avenue where republicans can increase their african-american support? >> it would really take such a marked tonal shift that it is hard to see it happening in the next couple of election cycles. there are african-american and non-african-american figures within the republican party over the decades who have had real reach into the black community. i think they don't have he many now. colin powell certainly does. but it's really difficult to imagine many other figures like him that kind of have that kind of reach and that kind of tone. the tones of the republican

party has been sharply nativist. the makeup of the party has become overwhelmingly white. hard for them to expand into non-white groups as long as the tone of the party feels negative to african-american voters. >> joy-ann reid is our guest and augusta, georgia, you're the first call up. hi. >> caller: hi, i am absolutely bowled over to get access to the line. ms. reid, i admire you greatly. thank you so much for being there. >> thank you. >> caller: i would like to ask something that is hopefully not too, too bitter but i want to ask your opinion on the, just blatant display of violence toward black young men and women by the police forces in this

öcountry, and a lot of the verbl animus that comes to the forefront in the production of several of the republican presidential candidates that are before us now. do you think that has, do you think it comes from the distillization of, just this great sense of resentment always existed because mr. obama is in charge of managing this country, there is so much resentment that it manifests itself and other aspects of our culture? thank you. >> i think we got the idea. let's get an answer from joy-ann reid. >> it is interesting. public religious institute do a broad survey every year called the american values survey. it talks specifically resentments and reactions particularly white working class voters very much aligned right

now with donald trump and that soar of strain of republican party. what you find among those voters, particularly white working class voters, one high degree and support of trust in the police which is opposite of african-americans which have high degree of mistrust in police. when one of these policing incidents happen you have two separate conversations happening. african-americans look at incidents, see brutality and even murder. white americans look at instances either one-off, something not a normal occurrence but one-off once in blue moon occurrence or bad apple situation, or a situation where the deceased person or african-american somehow triggered or is to blame for the situation. these opposite reads of police incident are so common, that the polling shows that when one of these incidents happen you have almost an immediate racial polarization people's attitude towards what happened and people's thoughts why it occurred. we have such polarized attitudes towards everything, including policing produces that result.

>> you know the police issue has been in the forefront of our national political discussion for the last year or two. but it's not a new issue. >> no. >> we talked with luther campbell a little bit earlier today. remember back in the '90s, there was a song, f the police. a lot of trouble and shootings there too. >> yeah. >> so why do you think it has arced up? >> mcduffy riots in miami, liberty city, still see the scars of it if you drive through that part of this town. there have been police-related riots, policing related riots going back to the 1960s. nearly all of the mid-century riots this country had some spark that involved a white police officer and a black citizen being harmed or killed. and so it's not uncommon at all. i think what's changed is that african-americans have been telling this story of feelings of brutality and disrespect of police for hundreds of years. no one ever really believed it. the sense with the video camera, with the cell phone, now

african-americans feel they can be believed. they can show evidence these ongoing occurrences are real. and so i think that you have from african-americans a sense that you have to now push forward and get reformed based on what they see as now evidence these stories are real. for a lot of white americans, still seen as one-off occurrences so there is some resistance. the good news we're coming together as a country, finally a shared believe something has to be done about policing and reforms are needed. that is actually incremental step forward. >> here is cover of the book. "fracture" it is called. isaiah, new jersey, you're on with joy-ann reid. hi, isaiah. >> caller: good morning miss reid. hello? >> hi, good morning. >> caller: first i of all i watch you from time to time on msnbc and we are very, very, very proud of you have. and you just keep up the good work. >> thank you.

>> caller: my comment is this. as a, as a black wild of southern parents we were raised with the idea that the dred scott decision of 1850 that says that a black man has no rights, that a white man should feel compelled to respect his grown up in us and we have seen this time and time defend. the problem with most white folks that i have privileged to meeting not that they're bad and they just don't think it happens. it does happen. it happens too often. and my thing is this. you have to keep and open mind. all blacks aren't good and all whites aren't bad. you have to judge each individual on the merits of the individual. and until you get to know them, you can't do that. blacks are more giving in that

way. whites are not. your comment, please. >> well, thank you very much. i go back to every poll, i talk a lot about book of polling after these incidents like the trayvon martin incident, like the skip gates incident, like the michael brown incident. even after katrina. there is sharp divide black and white interpreting what happened in these incidents and who was to blame. who was good guy who was bad guy. in part just white americans have good reactions with police and positive ones there is lack of belief that these things are systemic. there is belief if police-involved incident it is one-off it isn't systemic issue. african-americans have substantially negative, constant interactions with police, see incidents as sort of another brick in the wall. as long as these experiences are so divergent, people believe in core what happened, establishing facts of these cases and who was

right, who was wrong, makes it impossible to come together. >> trace is from columbus, ohio, this is text message. do you think african-americans are losing their influence in the democratic party? can you tell me if there are any african-american future candidates that could run for president of the united states? >> yeah, research i did for this book led me part of the reason you don't see sort of next level wave of democrats run something because the field really in lot of ways was cleared for hillary clinton. a lot of other candidates, kristin gillibrand, elizabeth warrens, kamala harriss up-and-coming stood down for hillary clinton to have her opportunity but i do think there is a wave finally, very belatedly of of african-american candidates, donna edwards, united states senate in maryland, to kamala harris's sister is advisor to hillary clinton and running for united states senate in california. you're finally starting to see a crop of democratic african-american and latino

candidates sort of coming up in this post-obama wave. what has been amazing and sort of stunning it hasn't really happened up to now. really the wave of non-white candidates that happened on national scale has been on the republican party, not the democratic party. are african-americans losing influence? what is wrong i think with the democratic party sort of formula, african-americans tend to wield congressional level influence and mayoral level influence. they have not been able to get to the level of statewide influence which puts you in that bullpen shall we say of president. only seven, eight african-american united states senators. that's shocking in a country and in a party so dependent on black voters. >> joe is calling in right here from miami. joe, you're on booktv. go ahead and make your comment or ask your question. >> caller: yeah, hi. i would like to say all my friends and very good friends are haitian and dominican. they're my wonderful black friends, very intelligent.

i love them very dearly. we all have the same comment. it is really about, not about race but it's about religion. i see that, our president never gives any, any, when he talks about, whatever he is had the opportunity to prays god, he never has. always backed down from that. i wonder if he is not a christian like he says he is or if what is going on. is he muslim? is this the reason why he frees muslim murders and allows these christians to be murdered like -- that is just my question. i'm very worried for our country's sake. >> joe, before, joe before you hang up, give us a little bit about yourself, if you would. what's your background? >> well, i'm a christian and i came from cuba after my dad was put in prison for 13 years, for believing in something, for believing in freedom.

for believing in christianity. for believing in good things. a lot of other candidates, kristin gillibrand, elizabeth warrens, kamala our ce created on. in our bill says god a lot of other candidates, kristin gillibrand, elizabeth warrens, kamala >> you do hear -- >> go ahead, joy. >> you hear from members of the religious right that kind of thing. sort of ironic, because the president is being, both has been accused of being a secret tions. >> my point is, as much as i love and, you know he, our first black president i think that has left african-american community

behind. had hillary clinton won in 2008 i think we as a community would have be far more aggressive about the conditions that are happening in african-american communities across america. so thank you very much for your time. >> thank you. and i think a lot of after can american leaders i spoke to did express collective resistance to go after the president publicly because the opposition to him was so vociferious and seemed almost hysterical, you had a lost african-american leaders like caller felt he wasn't doing enough for african-american community. really reluctant to criticize him in substantial way and feed into, aid and abet his detractors seen, as almost hysterical opposition that wanted to destroy the president, make him an asterisk, erase him from history, not just oppose him they would any other politician. quickly on bill clinton, the interesting thing about clinton he comes along at a time when the democratic party's main project is to win back white

working class voters away from the republican party. pushing african-americans away is big way to do that. pushing jesse jackson away is a big symbolic way to do that. but clinton personal style pulled black people in. he pulled african-americans in with familiarity he had, friendliness showed, and quite frankly the friends he had and appointments that he made, visible friendships and visible relationships. so he did have very ironic tenure as so-called first black president. >> all kuhl-in with joy-ann reid continues. i want to remind you if you can't get through on phone lines we have text line as well, just for text message, not for calls. 202-717-9684. and, the next call for joy-ann reed, we're laughing all of sudden rain is coming here in miami. >> it's miami. >> carolyn in culver city, california. hi, carolyn. >> caller: hi, there, miss reid, i love your commentary on msnbc.

my question is about the backlash against young african-american students at the university of missouri. the students have drawn fire because of accusations of there is an anti-first amendment underpinning to the demonstrations there. i wonder if you believe the students have hurt their cause by associating themselves with anti-first amendment views or if the media just simply conflated the two issues? >> that's a great question. there has been a debate campus speech going on for 50 years, about whether or not campus, campus speech mongering or that young people are becoming anti-free speech, closing themselves off from ideas they aren't comfortable with. you had comedians don't want to play campuses anymore because the students don't want to hear anything that might offend their ears. they don't even want to have debates over ideas. they want to wall themselves off from unpopular speech. so i think that is not a new

debate. not just about the students at mizzou. they're caught up in larger debate, particularly being waged by the right which believes college campuses are bastions of anti-conservative bias and conservative views are essentially being ridden off of campus and locked away and outlawed almost on campus. but i think the mizzou case was different than that it wasn't about free speech. it was about what those students saw as abuse. free speech does not permit you to abuse someone and verbally someone and i think they felt abused. it is interesting when you go back to barack obama was at harvard law, at same time in harvard college, i was at harvard at the same time, there were all campus protests over lack of diversity in faculty even in african-american studies department which at the time was headed by white woman who was expert in french lit at that rush. there were all debates everyone was calling for this and that administrator to resign and this and that president to resign. that didn't happen. you had a movement that brought

henry lewis gates to the campus. these sit-ins, demand for change have been happening a long time. brought skip gates ironically he would be arrested out side of his home, barack obama and friend and colleague could get in trouble for defending him. >> next call for joy-ann reid is chase in liberty, texas. chase, you're on booktv. go ahead and make your comment or ask your question. >> caller: okay. hello? can you hear me? >> we're listening. please go ahead, sir. >> caller: i apologize. >> one more chance. >> caller: yes, sir, my question is, if you could focus more on the economics and what is your opinion of the larouche wing of the democratic party and how it has grown in numbers? i think as american we don't need to be so thin-skinned and always be offended. and this whole industry of being offended, we're not producing

anything in more, producing anything else in this country but a culture of constantly being offended. we've got to focus on getting rid of derivatives. why anyone would let the clintons back in there under larry summers and removing of glass-steagall. it absolutely crazy. the future, in my opinion can be bright but we've got to start producing. i'm talking large-scale projects and my number one issue is water. if we do not focus on the future of water in this country, you can forget being offended. thank you. >> well, there is a lot in this question. i don't think there is substantial larouche wing of democratic party. i will leave that aside. part of what the caller said that rings really true to americans across the idealogical spectrum is this fear that the country is losing its will to produce, its will to be great in terms of being a manufacturing power, being able to produce good jobs, that an average american without a college

degree can live, work, retire on have a good life on. you can pass on a better life to the your children than you had for yourself or your parents passed along to you. at that an my mates bernie sanders voters. an anna mates the trump voters. the information economy is upon us. competition for wages and workers is global. it is not national. that era is gone. i think a lot of americans are dealing with what that means. we're also a more multicultural country. a lot of americans are dealing with what that means. if you look at insecurities of really shrinking white working class population, think about it, during world war ii, something like six in 10 americans were white working class voters. most workers were working class. it was very uncommon to be college educated. that is started to flip. white working class voters are shrinking in numbers. they're shrinking in influence. they're shrinking in cultural

influence. there is a lot of fear there. these issues not being offended that is about political correctness. substantially broadly felt among the same group of voters that they're boxed in rhetorically what they can say, who they can be, what they're allowed to post on facebook. i think a lot of what you're seeing with the donald trump phenomenon a sense wanting to free themselves from political correctness. african-americans, non-while latinos, that doesn't mean you can call me whatever you want or call mexican migrants rapists or use n word. there ask fine line removing what political correctness means and what just being offensive means. that is the past problem. >> a few minutes left with our guest. her book is called, "fracture." barack obama the clintons and racial divide and specifically comes to:clip, joy-ann reid what is her relationship currently with the african-american community? that is like asking -- >> it is on the one hand she is

the best-known of the democratic candidates and one of the things i do write about a lot in the book that utter pragmatism of black voter. they aren't voting necessarily on emotion except with barack obama, when you combine pragmatism with emotion because he could actually win. with hillary clinton i think she has tremendous advantage with black voters because they feel they know her, warts and all. she repaired her relationship with barack obama being a good team player. the fact she is seen as team obama is great for her. now what she has to do is two go beyond having african-americans pragmatically believe in her to want her mt.. she needs long lines around the black. needs african-american woman turn out at 72% for her the way they did for obama. she has support and enthusiasm. she has percentages. she needs volume. >> if you've been watching program, you notice we've gone off the air a couple of times.

that is because of the weather. as joy-ann reid said, it's a miami. it was sunny here five minutes ago. it is now raining. no thunderstorms where we are but i guess satellite had a little bit of trouble. but we're back on the air. we're live from miami. and we're talking to sam in chicago. sam, go ahead with your question or comment for joy-ann reid of msnbc. >> caller: just want to tell you i do not have time to read your book but have time to listen to it on audiotape. it is wonderful. thank you so much for putting on audiotape. >> thank you. >> caller: i passed audiotape around. what you may not know you have a huge following here in chicago. we love you so much. you are so great. and, every time you're on tv we call one another and tell each other, joy-ann reid is on. we all pick up the phone and do it. thank you so much for putting on audiotape. otherwise i would miss the whole

book. it's a great history, thank you. >> thank you so much. that's very kind, how nice. >> did you enjoy, did you enjoy the process of writing a book? >> writing a book is really one of the most difficult things i've ever done. it is incredible amount of work between research and interviews and transcribing, organizing your thoughts. daunting, really daunting. so is recording an audio book by the way. you're reading back your own work. it was really gratifying experience. i'm so proud of it and really glad it's done. >> you've been on very active book tour. >> yes, i've been all over the country. we've been to chicago. i've been to north carolina and florida a couple of times, wash top d.c. we're really getting around and adding more cities even as we speak. >> do you enjoy that, do you enjoy the book tour? >> i enjoy talking about the book and interacting with people. i was in north carolina with wake forest with my friend melissa harris-perry doing week-long residency. it was wonderful to interact with students and get their take

on very things i'm writing about. kids are way too young to remember any of this stuff. they were infants when clintons came in or didn't exist yet. their take on historical issues with the conn tex of "black lives matter" which is their own civil rights movement in their era i love interaction with people about the book. >> kay in mullen, south carolina. kay, we're in miami and listening to you. >> caller: hello? hello? hello? >> kay, go ahead. we're listening. >> caller: hi, joy, how are you? i love you. >> good, thank you. >> i love you so much. you are so smart, joy. every time i see you i have to look. i never miss your tv show. >> thank you. >> caller: when are you -- tv? >> i am a national correspondent with msnbc. i'm on from time to time. mostly in prime time as a guest.

>> oh, i want you back on your own show. >> do you have anything else you would like to say? >> caller: i would like to ask joy, i would like to know where does she get all her knowledge from? she is so well--- >> tell you what. joy-ann reid, tell us about yourself. before you became the author of "fracture." before you became an msnbc, what were up doing? >> right. i grew up as nerdy kid in denver, colorado. i was born in brooklyn. we moved to denver when i was two. i grew up in household where my mother was political junkie. she came to this country in 1960 from british guy yana. she and my father met in graduate school in iowa of all places. moved to new york and denver. we grew up in household where we cared about news and politics. i remember watching first episode of "nightline" in fifth or sixth grade. i was fascinated with hostage

crisis. . . >> guest: on the web team. i was really on the web side when that was getting started. so i've been very lucky i've been able to have multiple ceer careers. i left tv news during the iraq war, sort of at the height of

it, i went and worked on a campaign, got a lot of contacts and information there. i really admired david ger begin and thought i've got to work in the business. so i did that, did some campaign work, worked in talk radio and found my way back to nbc news because they needed a managing editor, and they hired me because i had that combination of news and web experience. so i think that's how i wound up back in the nbc family. >> host: all right. bonnie in key largo, you're one of the last calls for joy-ann reid, here's the book "barack obama, the clintons and the racial divide." hi, bonnie, we're listening. >> caller: hi, i'm glad to talk to you. i want to mention that joe called in, and he's very concerned about religion. we have separation of church and state in this country, and it's very important. people should not be judging our politicians by their religion.

we're free to have any religion we want, and we're free from religion. so do not judge our president, do not judge any of the candidates by their religion. we have freedom of religion in this country. that's -- >> host: thank you. >> guest: thank you. >> host: bonnie in key largo and neil in michigan. hi, neil. >> caller: now, i'd like to know -- >> host: nell. i apologize, and that's what it says. >> guest: i would like to know why black people always have to refer to themselves as african-american. i was born in america. i don't know anything about africa no more than books and television, movies. so, therefore, i don't see europeans -- whites don't go around saying they're white frenchmen or white this or white that. can't we just be black americans? >> guest: well, it's interesting, there's been this whole sort of name change every

generation with african-americans, we were negro for a while and then became black during the black power movement, that became really popular in the late 1960s, early 1970s. african-american, i think, really came along as black people in this country were looking for different ways to stoke pride in our own young people. and this notion of identifying with someplace, the way that irish-americans do or the way italian-americans do, this notion of having a place in the world. i think for african-americans one of the big stories is a displacement of not having an only story, of not having a home, of not knowing where your particular people came from. i've had friends that travel traveled to ghana and said, it's amazing, i've seen people that look like me and wanting to pick apart the african con innocent. i'm in a weirdly unique position where my father is actually african, so i am a first generation american with an african father, so i'm technically african-american as

is barack obama. and is so, yeah, i think for african-americans, when my father was alive, he too would wonder what was this connection, because there was. so much distance between africa and where we are here. i think what a lot of americans don't understand is the abject pain that's associated with the history of africans in america. it's so substantial. it's so deep. it's so all-encompassing that that kind of pain of the past, it never really leaves most black people. and so when things happen like police brutality, when things happen like the disrespect a that's shown to the first black president, it's so sering for african-americans. and i think nonafricans really don't understand it and can't relate to it and don't understand why it is. but it's real. and it's deep. and it's in a lot of ways deeper for black americans than black people almost anywhere else outside of maybe brazil. so i think understanding that and sort of getting to know one another culturally in this country is one of the keys to greater understanding. i hope we can do that.

>> host: finally this text message comment for you, joy-ann reid, what is the black community's take on ben carson? >> guest: oh, dear. ben carson is a figure who unlike most of the other black presidential candidates including barack obama, including herman cain, ben carson is very well known. anybody who's over the age of maybe 30 remembers when ben carson separated those conjoined twins. he was an icon in black households in much the way jackie robinson was an icon in the 1960s. so i think there's a fair amount of disappointment, a sense of sort of disspirittedness about how this figure who's considered a hero could also be the guy who made his name on the right birdies respecting the first black president. i had one person i'm actually related to who respects ben carson and respects barack obama say that he would not even publicly criticize ben carson because he didn't want to do to him what ben carson had done to the president. so i think there's a deep sense

of just bewilderment at how these two could be the same person and how some of the things he's saying could be coming from the same guy. so i think ben carson occupies a really odd and unique space for african-americans. he's both known and now suddenly completely unknown. >> host: joy-ann reid has been our guest. her book is called "fracture: barack obama, the clintons and the racial divide." here is the cover of the book. thank you for being on booktv. >> guest: thank you so much for having maine it's been great -- me, it's been great. >> host: and joy-ann reid will be doing a panel later live on booktv. and in just a minute now, p.j. o'rourke will be joining us from a call-in. in fact, he's standing right here under our tent because it's raining, and we didn't feel like leaving him out in the rain, so i hope that's okay with you. and so he'll be joining us here in just a minute for a call-in. in an effort to switch the guests out, we want to show you

a little of mr. o'rourke's presentation earlier at the miami book fair that we covered live. here's p.j. o'rourke. after that, a live call-in. >> i remember the title of republican party reptile, how we go to that. do you remember that at all? >> well, we just didn't know what to call the book. >> well, we were calling it -- >> we were calling it irrational affairs, and that sounded like a sad novel or something. [laughter] and so you know, i wanted to call it punk republican, morgan said punk is over. i wanted to call it pants down republican, but that seemed sort of vaguely pornographic, and there weren't supposed to be any photographs in this. what's pornography without photographs? [laughter] i mean, actually, the whole thing was like 50 shades of grey. you're going to read this junk? [laughter] i mean, yeah, look at it, of course. [laughter] everybody has their guilty pleasures, but read it?

of course, if you can't write, it's an extra problem. [laughter] so i'm listening to a.m. radio. in those days i was probably still up. but anyway, for some reason i'm listening to one of those incredibly upbeat sort of howard stern type morning disk jockey people who when you've got a -- i don't know why i didn't turn it off, but he's going, it's friday, is everybody out there, all you party reptiles out there. i go party reptile, republican party reptile, so i stole the title from some idiot morning dj who was giving me a headache. >> and you told it to me over the phone, and i said, yeah, we put eisenhower with a mohawk. >> his idea. >> we got one of those dot artists, and that was the first cover. >> then we eventually -- this is another great thing about our

symbiotic relationship u is i think everybody i've written is still in print. >> absolutely. >> everything is still in print. one thing about staying with the same publisher or building a relationship, you know, over the years, and don't let morgan kid you, he is a hell of a line editor. he's an absolutely fantastic line editor. authors hate to feel edited, because the whole idea of being an author is to be an author, to create a little world exactly the way you want it. and then somebody comes in and pisses on it, you know? [laughter] you go, wait a minute, i created this world exactly the way i wanted it, you know? so you feel sympathy for god, you know? he created this world exactly the way he wanted it, and we just have been acting up ever since, you know, screwing it up for him. [laughter] but morgan manages to do that without, like, ever, you know, seeming to do it, you know what i mean? and we've been together so long

that in certain ways we can read each other's mind about this stuff. but what were we talking about? [laughter] >> that i was going to tell one of the stories that i next remember is about we did after republican party reptile, we did highways in hell, and that broke us out. i remember a winner who was the owner and publisher of "rolling stone" basically subsidized all these books for us -- >> yes. >> he was paying, but he was getting great stuff out of it too. so we collected the "rolling stone" journalism, the foreign correspondent stuff in holidays in hell, and that was the book that moved you to a different level where we could feel we were getting a big, big readership. >> which brings you back to something that's fundamental about business. people think business is competitive, and people think writing and publishing is

competitive. there's a whole lot more cooperation that goes into any kind of business success than there is cooperation. -- than there is competition. much more cooperation. it's about finding out, creating a situation where everybody benefits. you know, that's sort of the ideal business situation. the customer benefits, you know, the vendor benefits, the wholesaler benefits, the manufacturer benefits. and morgan and i have created that kind of situation between ourselves. and when publishing, when magazine publishing was still a viable industry, we would triangulate this. notably with jan at "rolling stone" where jan was paying me to go to these places that morgan couldn't possibly give me a book advance to go to mogadishu, spend three months covering the gulf war or do any of the other, you know, i filed from 40 some different countries, none of them the nice ones. and it was expensive.

and jan had the money from "rolling stone" to send me on these assignments which gave me the material to give to morgan to shape into a collected book about these experiences. and there was shaping required, too, because each of these experiences, each of these foreign things like the overthrow of ferdinand marcos in the philippines and so on, how did that relate to the lebanese civil war, in return how did that relate to, like, rioting in albania because all the pyramid schemes that they had over there had collapsed. so, you know, we created this situation where everybody benefited from this, i the writer benefited, morgan as editor and publisher, jan winter benefited from it and presumably the bookstores, when they existed, they benefited from this too, you know? >> host: and that was p.j. o'rourke from a little bit earlier talking about his most recent book "thrown under the

omnibus: a reader." p.j. o'rourke, i'm trying to figure out what the omnibus is. is it this book? which is pretty hefty? [laughter] >> guest: i know. >> host: or is there a political meaning to that? >> guest: no, no, we were looking for some term for anthology, and we -- omnibus, and so then what do we call it, and i said how about thrown under the omnibus. it didn't really work until my friend pat olyphant, the cartoonist, he loved the idea for a coffer. i owe it all to pat. >> host: that's quite the cover there. you're driving the bus, it looks like. >> guest: yes. >> host: and who's in this picture? >> guest: well, who isn't, you know? [laughter] i think pat with his excellent ability to do caricature, has pretty much every current american politician. i see w., i see the president, i see nancy pelosi, and i see john boehner and who -- you know?

they're all in there somewhere. >> host: well, speaking of omnibus, let's start with national politics and the fact that john boehner is no longer speaker of the house. >> guest: i know. that's sad. i liked, you know, tearful fellow smoker, you know, liked to play golf. he seemed to me to be the ideal of american politicians in many ways. didn't particularly stand for anything, and sometimes that's what's needed. [laughter] yeah. things have been -- but, you know, that didn't surprise me so much, because he had to have been worn out, the constant friction between the house and the senate and the presidency. but it's this presidential race that's amazing me. i mean, aye been covering this stuff -- i've been covering this stuff since 1972, my first political convention. i have never seen an odder field of candidates or an odder public response to an odder field of candidates. in my life. which is getting to be pretty

long. >> host: so 1972 both conventions were held in this city. >> guest: they were. they were right here in miami. >> host: and you were writing for whom at that time? >> guest: underground papers in the east village in washington -- new york, excuse me. >> host: were you a lefty at the time? >> guest: i think i was just about over being a lefty. i remember coming to the democratic convention and, of course, mcgovern was the eventual candidate. and there were quite a few left-wing delegates. so i accidentally came to the wrong entrance. security in those days, pre-9/11, security was very casual. there was one off-duty miami cop. and i walked up to the delegates' entrance thinking it was the media entrance, and he said are you a delegate, and i was pretty hippie looking in those days, and i said, no, i'm a member of the press. he said i didn't think you looked dirty enough to be a delegate. [laughter] and i thought, i don't think mcgovern's going to win here.

[laughter] we can sign off on that one. >> host: why do you think no political convention's been held in miami since 1972? >> guest: possibly it was the behavior of me and my friends. well, actually, i think that they outgrew that convention hall, and i don't know, you know? i don't know what the reasoning -- i assume that it's very, like, international soccer or the olympics. i assume it's a deeply corrupt process by which they pick the cities that they're in. but i'm just assuming. i don't have any special knowledge on that. >> host: from "thrown under the omnibus: a reader," i have only one firm belief about the american political system, and that is this: god is a republican, and santa claus a democrat. >> guest: i wrote that a lodge time ago, and -- a long time ago and i still stand by it. santa claus is such a better deal than god in every respect. i mean, god -- well, usually just to start with he's portrayed as a middle-aged white

guy, and we all know, like, how out of it that is just to begin with. very hard to get into god's country club. he has lots of rules and regulations. he's very strict. he's, he can be kind of unforgiving. i mean, there's forgiveness in there, but you really have to work for it. santa claus, like, he may know who's naughty and who's nice, but he never does anything about i. he's kind to animals, he always shows up for charity eventings. he's just a great guy, lovable old elf. santa claus is a better deal than god in every respect except there is no santa claus. >> host: p.j. o'rourke is our guest, and he will be with us now for about 40 minutes to take your calls. we're going to put the phone numbers up on the screen, we want to hear from you. 202-748-8200 if you live in the east and central time zones, 748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific. you can also send a text message to mr. o'rourke, this is not a

phone call message, this is a text message. 202-717-9684 is the text if you want to send a text message to p.j. o'rourke. you did mention that you have enjoyed this political season more than any other. what is particularly -- what has particularly caught your eye? >> guest: well, i don't know if "enjoyed" is exactly the right word. i am a political human orist -- humorist, and, you know, they really failed to organize the weather for this. [laughter] so i'm a political humorist, it's hard to be funnier than this campaign. i'm a political commentator, and i can't get a word in edgewise with trump around. so i'm full of indignation about this campaign and not only that, i'm unemployed. [laughter] i'm out of work. >> host: america is the world's

policeman, you write. all right, a big, dumb flat foot in the middle of one of the things cops dread the most, a domestic disturbance. >> guest: yeah. well, don't we have -- again, i wrote that years ago, and it's one of those things that, you know, there's so many things i've written that i wish i could say, boy, was i stupid, boy, was i wrong, you know? unfortunately, when you're making fun of human frailty and human nastiness and human evil, you're rarely wrong. and here we are back on the beat, flat feet and, you know? and, you know, not knowing what to do one more time, and it's domestic disturbance, he said/she said, you know? they're really angry, and they're even more angry at you than they are at each other. >> host: let's take some calls. >> guest: let's do it. >> host: let's start up with theda up in anchorage, alaska.

thanks for holding, you are on with p.j. o'rourke. >> caller: thanks very much. >> guest: i'm not hearing her. now i'm hearing her -- >> host: theda, we're going to listen to you now. >> caller: i just wanted to say that i believe that every candidate -- and, actually, each person who's thinking about accepting an appointment to a government position -- should give some thought about what they might do if they're sincerely-held religious beliefs come in conflict with their official duties. and i recommend an organization called interfaith alliance which has a little thing called five questions for candidates. there are a lot of people on the campaign trail. i don't really care for what i'm hearing from them about what they might do if their religious beliefs and their official duties in the constitution are in conflict.

>> guest: i think you're absolutely right. in fact, i would take it, i would take it further than that. i would say i want to ask the candidates what will happen when, you know, what will you do when circumstances and what you feel you have to do to get elected or to be in office conflict with any basic principles which means that i'm also asking the question do you have any basic principles? i'm not seeing enormous evidence of basic principles, religious let alone ordinary moral and ethical out of this pack of candidates. >> host: jack is calling in from providence, rhode island. jack, please go ahead with your question or comment for p.j. o'rourke. >> caller: yes, hi, good afternoon first of all. >> guest: hi, jack. >> caller: hi. happy thanksgiving to the both of you. we're going to have a good one here. the question i have --

>> guest: good. >> caller: -- basically is this. i'm going to put you on the spot a little bit, mr. o'rourke. >> guest: all right. sure. >> caller: years ago gail sheehy wrote a book, i think it's been pretty much taken off the shelves, about the man who changed the world. she was, like, praising mikhail gorbachev. this was in the late '80s, early '90s. >> guest: yes, yes. >> caller: and making him, like, into jesus christ pretty much. now -- >> guest: yeah. >> caller: you know, that's one short, and it was proven that ronald reagan basically cleaned his clock, in particular in reykjavik, you know? ronald reagan cleaned his clock. and one other point i want to make. i'll never forget this, i saw this in a book, i can't recall which one, then i'm going to hang up. ronald reagan talked about his negotiating skills, and he said he learned his negotiating skills when he was the head of the screen actors' guild when he was negotiating actors'

contracts with the studio heads, and then he said -- >> guest: yeah. >> caller: -- that experience he took with gorbachev was a snap, okay? so i want to talk to you -- [laughter] sheehy, i want to talk to you about sheehy, i want to hear your comments on that and what i just said. have a good one. >> host: all right, jack, in providence, rhode island. p.j. o'rourke. >> guest: okay. yeah, i do think that reagan and thatcher were largely responsible for the end of the cold war and their firmness and their sense of purpose and their negotiating skills. but i think we do owe a debt to gorbachev. gorbachev, who later wrote a very long book, did you read that? it was way boring and really long. nonetheless, it was gorbachev among the senior soviet officials who was the one who said, look, you know, the emperor we've got running around here in so then what do we call,

and i said how about thrown undergorbachev finally realizeds system is not working, there has to be a better way. i don't know what exactly gorbachev, i think, envisioned some sort of communist with a human face or something resembling european socialism but more so. i don't know exactly what he wanted, but he was the one that finally said, look, this just isn't working. like everybody, all the senior soviet officials are almost dead. the one interesting thing in his book was where he talks about sitting in with the soviet leadership and, like, half of them are falling asleep, the other half have alzheimer's, most of them were deaf. he's way down at the end of the table, he can't hear what's going on. [laughter] is this a system? >> host: p.j. o'rourke, this is a text message from craig in sacramento. >> guest: okay. >> host: p.j. o'rourke has been the only funny republican aye ever seen. >> guest: on purpose. there are plenty of funny republicans out there, i can

tell you, i come from a whole family of them. i do it on purpose. i can't be the only one. i may be the only one who's admitting he's doing it on purpose. >> host: are you a humorless lot over in the republican party? >> guest: i would say when humor was being distributed, i'm not sure republicans got their fair share of it. they got a lot of indignation, although these days it seems like everybody got a lot of indignation. >> host: speaking of indignation and tolerance and political correctness, what's your take what's going on on the college campuses these days? >> guest: i don't like it one bit. i was part of the '60s generation, and we were acting up on campus much worse than people are acting up on campus today. but looking back on it with the cold, mature eye of adulthood, we were all jerks. and somebody should have told us to stick a sock in it and go get a job, you know? and looking at the little jerks today, i am inclined to say much

the same thing, you know? it's like, you know, it's -- speaking power, speaking truth to power, speaking truth to power, it's really easy when power can't do anything to you, you know? i can sit right here and speak truth to power about kim jung-il, and he's helpless. i'm in miami, he's in pyongyang. and when you're on college campus these days where students sort of rule and you can get out there and scream and yell about microaggressions and also how the climbing wall isn't high enough and there's not enough variety at the sushi bar in your calf fear ya, it's just -- knock it off. >> host: and craig goes on to say loved your satire since the '80s. keep going on wait, wait, don't tell me. what is that? >> guest: wait, wait, don't tell me is a quiz show from npr, and i'm one of the rotating cast of panelists, and i just did it -- i think it's out right now.

we taped it on thursday night, and it comes out on saturday or sunday according to your local npr station. peter sagal, chase auditorium, and we tape it live in front of about 500 people. it's a lot of fun. >> host: next call for p.j. o'rourke whose most recent book is called "thrown under the omnibus" is brian in ft. lauderdale. >> guest: oh, right up the road. >> host: hi, brian. >> caller: hey! >> guest: hi, brian. >> caller: first of all, gotta say it's a thrill to make air with the great.j. o'rourke. i've been a -- the great p.j. o'rourke. i've been a fan of yours -- >> guest: well, thank you. >> caller: in one sitting i read about half of omnibus just yesterday, and i didn't see one name mentioned -- >> guest: wow. >> caller: -- that is pretty important to me. i know you've got some feelings about him, in fact, i think you did some satire about him back at national lampoon.

i'm a dylanologist, and i've got to tell you nobody had a better handle than national lampoon on the satirical vulnerabilities of america's greatest artistic treasure. what are the two, in your view, maybe even three funniest moments in dylan's career? >> guest: oh, boy. that -- i think when he got booed off the stage for doing, at the newport folk festival. how anything could be worse than folk music is absolutely beyond me, and yet bob dylan managed to produce something on that stage that the audience at least thought was worse than folk music, and that is a low bar. a high bar, i should say. i had that backwards. that is a very high bar. and so that would be my moment. when you've done something that's worse than folk music, you've really done something. >> host: victor, cartersville, georgia. please go ahead with your

question or comment. >> caller: hey, how you doing? my question is the republicans don't seem to have any humor, and most particularly the tea party. in my humble opinion -- >> guest: yeah. >> caller: -- i think the worst thing that ever happened is the tea party. and i would like your comments on the tea party. >> guest: well, i don't think it's the worst thing that ever happened, but it is a little bit like there's an element of naivete, that naive and earnest, angry adolescent attitude where what happened, basically, with tea party members is i think they read the constitution, and they said, hey, wait a minute, you know? we have a book of rules in this country, and a lot of people are violating those rules, and this is, like, an angry call for more

flags on the nfl football field or being really, really upset that tom brady's equipment manager or crew messed with the inflation of the football. it just, you know, it's not that i particularly think tea party people are so i don't wrong, itt where have you people been for the past, like, 200 and some years, you know? think there's some violations of the rules, do you think there's a little bit of cheating? do you think a few people don't live up to the letter of the constitution? be doh. >> host: .j. to roarke, we talked to peggy noonan yesterday -- >> guest: oh, she's great. >> host: -- about her book which is a reader as well. >> guest: yes. >> host: and she divided the column into, oh, i really liked that, maybe and, essentially, why did i write that? [laughter] how did you choose which of your

writings -- >> guest: well, my publisher and editor, morgan, from grove atlantic, he and i have been together forever. we're married. [laughter] and it was, he signed me up for my first book when he was a junior publisher at dell, he went to simon & schuster, signed me up for my second, he had an imprint at atlantic, he eventually took it over, so we've done all the books together. so what morgan and i did was sit down -- and peggy is a much clearer thinker than i am. i love everything i ever wrote. [laughter] and morgan, of course, he's my editor, and he helped me write it all, so morgan loves everything i ever wrote. so we made our list of favorite things, and we put the two lists together, we gave it to the managing editor, and he said, oh, great, you've got a 7,500-page book here. so we pent the next six months killing our darlings. oh, i loved you, you were such a sweet little innocent be piece, damn. until we got it down to printable size, and i personally

am waiting for the readers' digest large print edition to come out because i can't read it. [laughter] >> host: karen's in chester, pennsylvania. hi, karen. >> caller: hi. thank you for c-span, and hello, mr. o'rourke. i was wondering if you would -- >> guest: hi, karen. >> caller: -- care to share your thoughts on the unity of the republican party or lack thereof. they have 18 people with 18 -- >> guest: yeah, lack thereof. >> caller: right. 18 different opinionings. >> guest: yeah, it was -- >> caller: there's no unity. [laughter] what kind of message -- >> host: okay, we got the point. let's hear from p.j. o'rourke. thank you, karen. >> guest: yeah, i mean, i'm exhausted, you know, just keeping track of all these fools. it used to be said that the democratic party fell in love, and the republican party fell in line. that obviously is not the case anymore. it's the democratic party that fell in line. i mean, i think there's almost universal support and almost

universally reluctant support for hillary clinton, this kind of a used car of a political candidate. you saved up your whole life to buy a new car, and you go down to the dealership, and they say, well, we have got a possibility yak, got an oldsmobile. on the republican side, i don't know, i guess everybody just went nuts. the examples that i've been using, it's not that i particularly sport john kasich, but here's a guy, popular conservative governor of a very, very purple state, ohio. he beat a sitting governor, a sitting democratic governor by a little bitty margin, then he went on to be reelected by a landslide. he's been conservative but not too conservative. everybody in ohio hates each other the same way as everybody in the rest of the united states hates each other, all the same conflicts, labor versus management, rich versus poor, immigrants versus nativists, black verses white, they all hate each other, but they all love john. meanwhile, he was nine terms in

the house of representatives and doing some important stuff there. i mean, he was 18 years on the house armed services committee, so he knows about that stuff. six years chairman of the house budget committee, so he knows about that stuff. okay, what's wrong -- and he's a personal guy, a nice guy. people like him. he's reasonably good looking, he's tall enough, and he's polling at 4 percent. i don't get it. i mean, i get it maybe that he didn't win or maybe that he was polling below this perp or that person -- this person or that person, but he's polling at 4%, a perfectly qualified guy. i don't get it. >> host: well, this text message, if trump didn't exist as a real person and candidate, could you ever have had the imagination or courage to create him as a literary character? >> guest: no, no way. i mean, he wouldn't fly, you know, nobody would buy it. when they say you can't make these things up, sometimes they mean you can't make these things up. >> host: another text message for you, p.j. o'rourke. do you have any contact with and

are there other living members of the national lampoon staff around? >> guest: there are other living members of the lampoon staff around. i don't have a lot of contact with them, but i still talk to a few of them, and, you know, it's been a long, long time ago. and a couple of the people that i was closest to at national lampoon -- notably john hughes and doug kenny, one of the founders -- are, unfortunately, dead. we don't hang. we don't hang together, but, you know, they're still out there. >> host: next call for p.j. o'rourke, and we have a fresh water for you here, mr. o'rourke. >> guest: oh, thank you. >> host: sorry about the casualness. [inaudible] >> host: i don't think so. randy in pittsburgh. randy, thanks for holding, randy, you're on the air. >> caller: absolutely. p.j., i can't tell you what a pleasure this is to speak with you. i just want to tell you two quick things, and i have a question. one, i discovered your wonderful short answer how to drive fast

be, yada, yada, yada, and not spill your drink in a very interesting situation. you got me through 30 days of jail in a frederick county, maryland, lock-up. [laughter] >> guest: oh, i'm sorry. i mean, i'm not sorry i got you through them -- >> caller: i got pulled over for drinking and striving on a suspended license in frederick, maryland. really screwed up, was young, just out of the army. depressed. thought my life was ruined. >> guest: right, yeah. >> caller: and i found that writing. and i ripped it out of the prison library. it's in my box downstairs. so thank you for writing that. appreciate that. >> guest: ah, you are welcome. i'm glad to know i did a little good. >> caller: secondly -- >> host: what's he referring -- okay, go ahead, randy. >> caller: no problem. >> guest: did we lose -- no, there he is. >> caller: ing because of you and because of hunter and my prison experience or whatever, i

decided to become a writer, and i just released yesterday on amazon my own book, it's called a drinking man with a gulf problem. and i want to thank you for both of those things, inspiring me to write and writing that story that got me through 30 days in the frederick lock-up, man. >> guest: i'm glad to have done some good in this life. >> host: what is he referring to? >> guest: well, i guess we're just going to come right out and say it on television. the piece that i wrote was how to drive fast on drugs while getting your wing-wang squeezed while not spilling your drink. [laughter] and, actually, i'd like to claim that it was a little better researched that it, point in fact, was. i think i was fantasizing a trifle. i was living in new york. i didn't even have a car. [laughter] >> host: john from farmington hills, michigan, wants to know have you ever been the commencement speak or at miami of ohio or jh?

>> guest: no, i went to miami of ohio and the graduate school at johns hopkins and, oddly enough, they have not invited me to come and be the commencement speaker. and it's interesting because i now have a college-age daughter who may be applying to both those schools, and i'm going to have to write a letter saying that's some different p.j. o'rourke entirely, we get mixed up all the time, and it's been a lifelong irritant. and i've thought about bringing criminal action against him, but that isn't me. i didn't go there. and i promise never to go there again. >> host: kent, washington, d.c., thanks for holding. please go ahead with your question or comment for p.j. to roarke. >> caller: oh, this is such an incredible pleasure, this is just amazing. and how does one follow randy? i have absolutely no idea. my question is a simple one, have you been or do you plan to come to washington, d.c.? >> guest: well, yes. actually, we lived there for a long time. we lived there for about 15 years, and we kept a place there

for quite a while. but when the kids got to be school age, we decided do we really want our children to be exposed to this. and by this, you know what i mean. so we had a place all along up in new hampshire, a summer place, and so we scooted up there, moved up there. but now that the kids are about to be parked in various different schools, we're seriously thinking of coming back because, for me of course, it's like not being in washington's like not getting to go to the circus, you know? and plus we still have a lot of really good friends there, so social aspect of it is great. and also we live in a town of 300 in new hampshire and, frankly, the only place to go out to eat is when i am cooking on the barbecue grill, you can go out the screen door, you know? [laughter] >> host: p.j. o'rourke, bernie sanders is running for president. have you written about it? >> guest: i have written a little bit about the screwy commander of the vermont kong.

bernie sanders is the type i never expected to see back in the public eye in america. he belongs not to the 1960s hippie-dippy generation like me and, for that matter, hillary clinton and bill, he actually belongs to a prior generation, kind of half a generation older of angry, left-wing, you know, bitter sds organizer types who were, frankly, they were a bummer back in 1967, and they are even more of a bummer now. and thing is that really gets me is what really gets my goat is it isn't a matter of politics, he wants to make america more like europe. i mean, europe has had a great track record for the past hundred years. i mean, since archduke ferd demand's car got a flat in sarajevo in 1914, things have just been hunky dory in europe.

where do you go to get the nazis and commies and lunatics that it would take to make america more like europe. no thanks. >> host: michael is calling from deerfield beach, florida. michael, go ahead. >> caller: yes, hello. first off, i wanted to say thank you very much, mr. o'rourke. satire and comedy are it when it comes to communicating something. >> guest: you're welcome. >> caller: and by that i mean to the populace at large. both the center for disease control this past week, i don't know if you're aware of this, and the health and human services have come out and said that we're all crazy in a lawsuit in compton, california, that has been won. it was based on something they called complex traumatic justice, ptsd in our schools. and it's basically behaviorally-transmitted bad behavior that whole communities and schools can suffer and that, clearly, if it's not caricatured and put into comedy, no one's

going to want to hear. so i want to thank you ahead of time, because i can't help but think that it's going to be a big topic. i'm all done. >> guest: i'll get right on that one. >> caller: there you go. that'd be awesome. >> host: all right, michael, thank you. go ahead, p.j. to roarke. >> guest: oh, i was just going to say my whole life explained. i knew there was something the matter with me. but, you know, the national institutes of health also came out in the past week with all these facts and figures about how it is actually healthier to be fat, that all sorts of diseases, you have a higher survival rate, actually, if you weigh more after years and years of telling us we were all too fat. so i've been hitting the baconators ever since in my attempt to do the best i can. but, yes. yes, we all have -- i mean, i don't know, i'm speaking for everybody who's, like, married and has children. we all have stress disorders. [laughter] >> host: all right. this is susie in texas via text

message. what is the definition, your definition of conservativism? be looking at the current gop candidates seems hike the definition of fear, hate, meanness. >> guest: yeah. well, i won't disagree with you there. i mean, to me a conservative is somebody who is just worried about the size and scope of government. it's almost like it's a quantitative concern. you know, people who have power over us, it's always dangerous when any group of people has power over any other group of people, when it's management over labor, what have you, it's always dangerous and unhappy-making for people to have power over other people. especially when it's inappropriate power. we're talking about a group of supposedly free adults having power over other supposedly free adults. and the thing that makes government different from other sources of power is that government has a legal monopoly on deadly force. , and therefore, we have to be

extra careful about the amount of power that we give to government. and i think a good conservative, to my mind, is somebody that always keeps that in mind while also keeping in mind the importance of individual liberties and of private property upon which individual liberties are based. now, how does this tie in with what i'm seeing from be -- and i'm not saying all, but way too many of the republican candidates? i don't see it. where's this anti-immigrant stuff coming from? be i mean, i'm willing to listen to an anti-immigrant argument from a native american. i think native americans might have a few things to say about the dangers of immigration, and i am willing to listen to them especially if they've got a casino. but i am not willing to listen to it from a whole bunch of people who, like myself, have family that is come from europe. and never mind the rest -- we'll just use that as an example of sort of the hate mongering and the fear. yeah, i'm disgusted.

>> host: p.j. o'rourke has been our guest talking about his newest book, here it is, "thrown under the omnibus: a reader." as always, mr. o'rourke, we appreciate your coming on booktv and taking calls from our viewers. >> guest: oh, it's so much fun. i really enjoy doing it. thank you, and i'm going to go fix the weather as soon as i get out of here. >> host: i was going to say there's about ten -- we're joined by author luther campbell. here's the book, the book of luke: my fight for truth, justice and liberty city the city. mr. campbell, what and where is liberty city? >> guest: liberty city is probably about ten minutes away from here on 58th and 10th avenue right in the heart where i was raised at. 62nd, you know, martin luther king boulevard. that's right where liberty city is. >> host: what is it? >> guest: what is it? oh, it's a historical black neighborhood.

like i talk about in my book, it's a neighborhood in which blackç folks from here when we first moved here, when we first came here, you know, everybody lived in overtown, and we eventually ended up, started moving to liberty city when i-95 was cut right through the african-american community here in south florida. where i-95 was cut right through the african-american community. so my dad, like a partner in the book was one of the first persons to purchase a home there. they didn't know he was a black man when he came, showed a. it obligate a deposit at the end of day when the sun shall provide we didn't know we were selling to a black guy. he eventually ended up moving into one of the first guys to move in to the inner city spent a deposit went from $52,500 overnight? >> exactly, exactly. >> what is trying to?

>> two live crew is a group that eventually got into, do i start out dj early on a micro. i was immobile dj around here in miami and the guys came down just every other band that was struggling, were not getting paid royalties. so we said look, we want to do songs, where we will get a. i said i'll help you. i just want you to help me out because i want you to do a song that i created, edited a song -- remember that song? it was a great dance. eventually i went from that point doing an album and -- >> rap music? >> yes. first hip-hop song done in the south. and from there we started and greater hip-hop in the south. >> what is relationship between

two live crew and the supreme court? >> two live crew and the supreme court. two live crew ended up getting in the supreme court in my case between -- it was something i think i do happen. was destined to happen because hip-hop at that period of time was under attack by you name it, and will, governor martinez in the state of georgia, my friend, judge gonzales, federal judge in broward county. you name it, everybody was after hip-hop at the time. >> what -- was at a first time in the case in the supreme court speak with yes. it was a parody case originally. it was to cases that talk about in the book. one obviously the one that i went to the supreme court, i think the most, the case that my lawyer overturned and the fourth

district court of appeals. no, not the fourth district, the court of appeals where i was the authenticity case -- obscenity case. judge gonzales originally said that the music was obscene and went to go back and get it overturned because the music that you write out they would've been told different. spin at one point you write in your book, try not that you were worth about $100 million. >> yes. >> was the money, did it come easy? >> well, did the money come easy? not really. it was tough. it was tough. just like biggie smalls says more money, more problems. the more money i got, the more problems i got. i tried to higher good people, good tax attorneys, attorneys, general counsel, have built my corporation. but when you read in the book

most of those people, those were people i did put him and he stole me, in my opinion. so it was company was difficult to make money but it was hard to keep the money. >> was your work as part of two live crew, was a graphic? >> my work, my work was not graphic i think the work the other members could have been considered as graphic but i think they are right, to their artistic doubts as well as free speech but when you listen to record and to listen to the lyrics that i wrote it was totally different. but i was stupid to take responsibility everything that's put out and given up to the general public spent from your book, "the book of luke" at the end of the day there's one simple reflect hip-hop historians and journalists don't give me the credit i can do. it's because of uncle luke. who was uncle luke? >> uncle luke, my mom and dad

raised luther campbell. she raise all the but of the four brothers, all these guys pretty much rocket scientists. navy pilot, comptroller of major plants. me, you know, i was a young guy, the baby of the family. would read and heard all those guys complain about money that they need for college or whether they were in the armed services and felt like they're being mistreated because they were black. particularly my third oldest brother, when he was in the navy. i don't think he ever got any leave because he was trying to be a father. i ended up dj'g, becoming uncle luke. uncle luke became cummins originally luke skywalker then george lucas sued me.

i was dj luke skywalker. now i look out for my community. i try and do the right thing for everybody. >> so was uncle luke a stage persona in a sense of? >> yeah, yeah, no doubt about it. luke, you have luke campbell, luke, and uncle luke. so luke on stage was a guy that gave the people what they wanted. if you listen to record, it was our responsibility to go and give people what they want, other than going into a concert or situation and toning it down at times, a particular time. and other records as more secure but pushed back, we pushed back and the records got a little

more graphic. then we wanted to become but we are in this thing called fighting for free speech spent the fight for two live crew speaks blessed lyri literature e was never really about the lyrics. it'd been about the principle of fighting for the right to do the same thing white artist did without legal harassment and censorship. >> when i look at it, again, i only operate in myself. i look at artists like lee were still at, and esther, you name it, these guys, then you looked at people like andrew dice clay. those guys already on record, i'll really a philly with major record labels. they were not getting their records take it off the shelf. so i look down from the standpoint of saying i'm a hip-hop artist can't i own my own record company, i am an easy

target for the government and i just said look, if of god to take all my irony -- my money i earn to buy for free speech for hip-hop then i will do that. >> what are you doing today? >> there's movies and helping my wife out with nfl agency and restaurants. i'm just happy doing, helping out with the committee. >> how did you get involved in being a defense coordinator for a miami high school? >> my passion has always been football. i ended up going to miami beach high playing football. i always said when my career dies down that i will go back to my youth and help out. i started coaching and ended up coaching.

now got some great players in the nfl, whether it's kerry williams, dante friedman is going to be up with the redskins, and you know, duke johnson, we've got quite a few kids in the lead male. but the most important one is the one that came out of my program is the city commission of one of most important areas, which is this area as well. i'm happy to find all of them speaking let's bring it all back to liberty city, your career, the trajectory, what you went through. was pure with liberty city now? >> my roll with liberty city is to try, you know, to stay it and just everything i possibly can to help the people who do not have a voice. whawhen i look at politics in liberty city and miami in general, other than our black elected officials, our own black special interest groups that

don't have an interest of the african-american people here in south florida. my job is to stay here and fight, fight for them, fight for the school, fight for jobs, you know, the unemployment rate is horrible. every day is a challenge of taking their property and putting condoms on their property every day. that's one of the reasons i'm happy i did move to hollywood when others doing movies and happy i did move to new york. very, very successful in the music industry and stay here and fight for my people. >> you talking about with the fact he ran for mayor at one point. >> you. >> how did you do speak what i did do. i came in fourth place. i came in first place with all

the living voters. i came in fourth place with all the dead voters. and the living people i came in first place but the dead people i came in second. >> you got 11% of the vote overall. you also talk about how you look at it as one miami. has that anyway and achieve? >> it's still a struggle because, from the outside looking in, the people of miami want one miami. there's not a day that goes by that semi-latin friends or jewish friends, you name it, came to be and see what can we do to help these communities ask what we do to help these schools? not a day that goes by when you see folks. doethere's much more to politics that are controlled by the special interest groups. those are the ones who try to great is a diversion and the separation of our town.

we have some great people here in miami and the people, they want one miami and i think that's going to be my slogan, one miami. >> in your book, "the book of luke," you talk about the fact that the explicit lyrics labeled that's put on, that was put on a lot of albums and cds, you are partially responsible but it was a put out into the white kids started buying rap music explicit rap music it is okay you say when black kids reminded. >> you. just like i say, we've been going on in the book i talk about it in detail because i want people to know what i was going through, figure out why i was going through all of this controversy. why is the government and vice president and tipper gore and everybody was coming after me. i went outside to start thinking about about, okay, hip-hop has

been around. you know, rock 'n roll is being phased out a little bit. a lot of white kids in this community. that's when the controversy .. up on tipper gore's list, al gore's wife, the top 10 bad guys. so at the time i just figured that's what it was really all about. it was all about white kids navigating the music. .. when a lot of kids today are saying at the police and some great stories talking about those periods of time, i just

think, it is important for people to read. >> herod is, the book of luke, my fight for truth, liberty and justice city. luther campbell is the author. >> the book of luke, live coverage from the miami book festival continues up next. tracy stuart and gene bauer are the authors and this panel will begin in a few minutes. leonard pitts, talking about

their book as well. live coverage from the miami book festival. ♪ ♪ [inaudible conversations]

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>> good afternoon. good afternoon. you are the brave crowd that swam here despite the rain and we are so grateful, give yourselves a hand and the round of applause. welcome to book fair, the pride and joy of our community, at miami dade college. we are thrilled to be able to host this volunteer and part with you in the community and bring this event to our home. and tracy stewart, i want you to turn off your cellphones or anything that could vibrate or be distracting. i would like to invite friends of the book fair, if you could wait and be acknowledged for your generous contribution, keep you from going year after year. and please be certain to connect

with us by the end of the day. now i have the distinct pleasure of introducing judge monica bordeaux who served our community as circuit court judge for the last five years, introducing our keynote speakers. please join me in welcoming judge bordeaux. >> good afternoon, how are you today? we have two amazing others i'm going to be interested in today. and like most of view, we have living minds with animals. unfriend the guide to help animals live and make their lives better.

tracy provides insight into the secret life of animals and ways to live with and alongside them. the co-founder and president of barnes sanctuary, the leading farm animal protection organization, and presents living the sanctuary life, the ultimate guide to eating wisely, living longer and feeling better every day. going back to tracy, tracy's for the editor-in-chief of the web site which provides parents and kids bearing kind of nonprofits, she lives on a farm with her husband, jon stewart, she is two kids, four dogs, two pigs, one hamster, three raddatz, two guinea pigs, a brave woman, one parent and two fish, all are rescues and i imagining her husband. and pretty sure he is not a rescue. and a pretty guide to how

animals live and how to make their lives better, stewart provides insight into the secret lives of animals and ways to live alongside them. she shows readers how to do that and how to adopt an animal. in the backyard in her book we learn about building the houses, dealing nicely with has the moles and created ways to bird watch. on the farm stewart teaches us what we can do to help all farm animals lead a better life. she reveals superpowers she believes pigs have. part practical guide, part memoir for life with animals, a testament to the power of giving back, and animal lovers of all stripes. and a co-founder and president of the leading farm animal protection organization, he was named the conscience of the food movement by time magazine. featured in the new york times los angeles times chicago tribune and the wall street

journal among many other printouts and a frequent guest on television. the best selling author of farm sanctuary, changing minds about animals and food. in his latest "living the farm sactuary life," the ultimate guide to eating michael, live in la grande feeling better everyday, his book is an expiring practical book for readers looking to improve their whole lives and the lives of those around them. bose ten four legged. please give a warm welcome to tracy stuart and gene bauer. [applause] >> hello, everybody. thank you for being here and for your interest in talking about, thinking about animals and our

relationship with other animals. when it comes to animals raised for food this is an area not a lot of people pay attention to. we will be talking some about that and good things and not so good things in our world when it comes to our relationship with other animals. farm sanctuary we started investigating in 1980, to see firsthand what was happening and we would literally find living animals thrown in trash cans or living animals roam on piles of dead animals so we started rescuing them and we have sanctuaries in new york, california and soon in new jersey. we are extremely excited about that. and once the animals come to farm sanctuary, and they are our friends, not our food, they enjoy their lives. we get to enjoy their lives, and it is a win/win. i have been to these factory

farms and seen animals in small crates where they can't move, where they are literally clinking against the bars to get out, suffering every day of their lives. and people who work in these places to some extent i think absorb the stress of that environment. can you imagine what it is like going into a massive warehouse where you have thousands and thousands of animals lined up in rows of crete's, clanking against the bars, screening. the air is thick with the toxic fumes from their waist and it is a stressful place to be where the animals and the people, think about slaughterhouse, not pleasant for any one. and contrast that with a sanctuary where it the animals get to enjoy life, where they get to run and play, we have turkeys that follow you around like puppy dogs. we have sheep who love to be petted and so you are paying them and when you stop paying

them and walk away they start buying at you saying keep getting the sort of like a dog would. they are not that different from cats and dogs in terms of their desire to enjoy life, in terms of their ability to recognize people and have memories. when the animals first come to a oftentimes they are very fearful of people because they have only known cruelty and pain when people have approached them. for example in the industry it is common for pigs for example to have their tails cut off without any pain killer. to be castrated without any pain killers, to have chunks of skin knocked out of their years without any pain killers. when a human being approaches them, in the past it has meant been. so often times when they come to farm sanctuary they are frightened of people because of that experience and that memory but as time goes, it is

recognized they are in different place and when people approach them is to get petted, if they're sheep or pigs, they love belly rubs, but they start warming up to us. and the animals at the sanctuary see how the other animals are reacting and recognize they feel safe and they feel positive about the environment and the new animal rival learns from their other residents and they say this is a sanctuary, this is very different from anything they experienced before. this is the world that is great for the animals but also one that is good for us. and we encourage people to--who aren't on a farm to come visit the farm. for folks in cities and everywhere in this country to think about how we eat and recognize our food six have a profound impacts on other animals, on ourselves and on the

planet and i have been of vegan since 1985, i eat no animal food, get everything i need from plant food and it is estimated we could save 70% on health care costs in this country by shifting to a hold foods planting, eating plant foods instead of animals is not only good for animals but good for us. the united nations put out a report couple years ago called livestock long shadow in that report they talked about how animal agriculture is one of the top contributors to the most serious environmental problems are of planet is facing including climate change. animal agriculture contributes more to climate change than the entire transportation system. this is an industry that is causing enormous harm to animals, it is negatively impacting our own health, it is harming the planet and most people grow up unwittingly supporting this.

i grew up eating meat because everybody around me was and i didn't think about it but it -- as time went and i started thinking about it recognize i could live well on plants and no animal products and that is one of the best decisions i ever made. everybody has to make their home choice. each of us have to decide what works but we grow up bombarded with messages that we need meet for protein but that is the myth. we can get all the protein wheat from plans. we are bombarded with the message we need to drink our an end calcium but in fact if you look at our country we drink a lot of cal's milk but we also have a lot of osteoporosis which is a calcium deficiencies the drinking,'s milk is not something to solve that problem. we need to think about our food shoelaces, make mindful ones and to do so in a way we can feel good about. too often what happens when the issue of factory farming comes up and the cruelty associated

with it people say don't tell me, i don't want to know because it is too upsetting but it is important to pay attention and to know what you are supporting and take responsibility and as we do that as a society i think we will see a shift that we are beginning to see a shift. in fact the number of farm animals being raised and slaughtered in the u.s. recently started going down. that is because people icy in this and don't think it is okay. so it has never been a better time for our movement, there's more information available online, there is video, pictures of factory farming cruelty and pictures of animals playing and enjoying life. and we love people to share those and educate others that these are living creatures and we can live with them and if we can live well without causing unnecessary harm what wouldn't be? so i guess i will end with ann and open up for tracy and have a discussion and open up for

questions so thank you very much. [applause] >> before we came out on stage, james said he didn't know what to talk about. i was feeling really confident. just to start off, i would say i am a baby vegan, i am new to being vegan. when i started writing the book "do unto animals" i was a vegetarian, but since reading gene bauer's first book and what happened for me was my kids started to get older. i had kids, and a veterinary technician, the way i came to that was i always loved animals when i was young, i really felt empathetic and felt that i cared so much about them that if i were to pursue that as a courier, it would be debilitating for me, too much. and so i went in another direction, i studied art and had

a lot of jobs doing design, i was really unfulfilled and it took awhile, my boyfriend at the time who is my husband now would say to me i don't understand you are such a passionate person and yet you live such a compassionate life, you don't enjoy what you do and you don't work on the things that really touch your heart. and so i think he convinced me that i needed to work that didn't make me cry so i did go back to school and became a veterinary technician and the funny thing that happened was all those things that used to upset me, i think a lot of times it is hard to face those things, when you feel overwhelmed comment and not so much you as an individual can do. and turned that energy into thinking i could do when you start to do those things whether

they are very small things, start to feel you are working your way toward something positive, there's real strength that comes from that, up those things that upset you don't affect you in the same way, at and you are helping, like when i was a veterinary technician the things that i was fearful about were the things that i began to love. not that it was ever a happy experience when an animal was euthanize but that was one of the main reasons i didn't want to become that and i found actually those with the moments of the most because they were such beautiful moments, things i got to experience with people that were so profound, saying goodbye and being there to comfort the person that was about to lose the animal and the animal health, those are the things sometimes i think it life we can set ourselves up to be safe. we can listen to our fear is and i think i am finding as i get

older when i look back at when my life started to get progressively better it was when i face my fear is and on the other side of that was something really powerful, and when i had my kids i took a break from being a veterinarian technician and i really was focused on keeping them save, keeping them from falling down the stairs and had not myopic vision at that point and i was overwhelmed. i wasn't looking to make changes in my life, certainly not dietary changes at that point and i found as they got older they wanted to go out into the world and they really wanted to do something where their voices could be heard, where they could feel they had an impact and i volunteered at a shelter for many years and realized that was the perfect place to take them so we started going there and they started making videos for the dogs that were very good with children still a lot of times people have a difficult

time getting adopted. but it bulls that had been there a long time and had a good history with children, my kids would do videos for that, make animations for then and there were several times right after where the dogs did get adopted so for them that made them feel so good and powerful and when we got to the point we couldn't adopt, living in the city at the time, they would do virtual adoptions, they would fall in love with someone and they would advocate for that animal, and would tell their friends we have a little charm bracelet we would make with pictures of the cats and dogs and when their friends asked about them, what they knew where somebody was waiting for them. so i started to write the book with that in mind because i was feeling like the things we were doing were so interesting for my parenting and it was really improving my parenting and improving lives of my kids and so the book first began as that.

and as i started to write and expand out, i started to have to read things i didn't want to read fryer and i became aware of a lot of things i had shut the door to knowing, certainly after writing the farm animals section but i found it was so surprising though when i actually faced and was aware of it, motivated me to make a change that actually made me happier and did not made my life more difficult, and hoping when people read it, it goes slow and takes you lots of places and takes you, i think if we are sitting here now talking about being vegan as the only solution i hope that is not the message you will leave with. [laughter] >> that is not what we are saying. >> every step is a good step. >> vegans are really good at every step is good.

>> when i think back to how live my life several years ago, the same, compassionate, rational, intelligent person and i didn't live the life i am living now. i do understand it is a lot to change all at once and so when i wrote the book, i wanted to show, every little things you could do every day that could help you feel good about the way you were living and to connect to. there is the middle of the book about your backyard and moving out of the city and moving into suburbs, and release threat by how other neighbors were talking about problems they were having in their yard, and everybody out there, i would sit and watch what they were doing, i realize they were doing a lot, i see

trucks driving like test control, and i hope people will even change that way of thinking to not think of them as testss, but to watch and see what they are doing out there and my lawn isn't as green as my neighbor's and that is okay but i have lots of happy critters' running around and my kids have lots of projects and lots of things to build in the backyard and lots of feeders to fill land animals to watch and build the garden and we build it twice as big as what we wanted so that when the rabbits got in and the squirrels gotten it was fine because it was meant for them so we share and bears his been plenty for the amount of greens we actually eat there has been plenty. you might have a harder time. i think the message of what "do unto animals" is is there are little things you can do in your life everyday and by doing those

things there really is an impact. when we think about rescuing animals week think we are rescuing the animals but more times than not we are rescuing ourselves and i do think when we take these steps toward being kind to other creatures we are being really kind to ourselves and really getting a lot back from doing that. >> when we see the undercover investigation and horrible things, being able to come home with a rescued animal, helped heal us as well as the animals were able to lift their head and stand, it lifted our hearts and to watch them go out and enjoy life and play also was very inspiring to us, so it boils down to what is our relationship with other animals? is it when based on respect or is it one based on exploitation? if it is based on exploitation there is a whole sort of series of psychological machinations

you go through to feel okay about treating somebody else badly and when it comes to farm animals for example, we tend to denigrate them in the way we speak, being called a pig is not a compliment for instance or being called a turkey is not a compliment the these are animals that have feelings and individuals and they develop relationships and friendships and one of the myths out there i have heard for years is turkeys are so dumb they go outside and drown in the rain. we have been taking care of turkey's for 30 years now and they are allowed to go in the barn or outside or in the rain or outside and never have gone outside and drowned in the rain. there are the stories we tell ourselves to feel better about mistreating these others and this is in the case over human history, if there are victims of abuse of a more powerful group there's a tendency to denigrate

them and when it comes to victims in our society today, every year there are 9 billion farm animals raised and slaughtered under egregious conditions and that is more than there are people on the planet and the number every year, these numbers are immense and it is hard to get your head around that. what is important is to recognize these region to mitchell's. we think 9 billion, you think i can't comprehend that but when you recognize 1 plus 1 plus 1, each individual, a to 9 billion, that makes it much more real and each of the animals that live in farm sanctuary came out of the system and each of them has their life transformed did in a way our life is transformed too, our relationship is realigned to be one based on compassion and respect and that is good for everybody involved. the quote i love we don't see

the world as it is, we see the world as we are. i heard factory farm people talk so often about how these animals are violent. there's one big farmer who visited our farm years ago and he saw some of our volunteers taking care of these and this pig farmer was genuinely worried about the well-being of our volunteers lisa those pigs are going to attack you and i told him we have never had this experience of pigs attacking us and often they come in french but learn to trust us and they never acted in a violent way toward us and the farmers that i raised pigs 3 years, as i understand these animals, you can't trust them. to make his point, he told a story about a mother pig who had babies and he took her babies away and she came after him. he told this story to make the point that these are violent

animals without having any clue or recognition that his behavior caused this mother to react when her babies are taken away. a natural, instinct will reaction most mothers would have but this farmer didn't see that. this is a violent animal and the solution to that is you put them in small crates. we can control their behavior and prevent that aggression in their minds. we start doing the sort of mental mack and asians to create a world we feel better about and too often that means denigrating these individuals we have mistreated. to me being vegan is an aspiration, to live as kindly as possible. it is an ongoing process. is not an ingredient. for example, i will often buy organic produce which is probably grown with slaughterhouse by products, meat and bone for instance though if

it is an ingredient it must not be vegan but it is an aspiration and each of us can do better each day and it is a process and there is not an end to it so new jersey. >> i want to say one thing about that, sometimes we can stop ourselves from making a change in our life because we think there's a certain way we have to do it and i know for my husband when he was struggling to be a vegetarian, he kept bringing up the second avenue deli basket we get every year at the holidays and when the second avenue deli entered his mind he would say i just don't think i could do it. finally i said how about you just do it until the second avenue deli basket comes in and you let yourself eat it and it is funny because what has happened -- where you are, i

think if there is something you are afraid of that is a reason you are telling yourself not to move forward think about what you could do and knows that you will get a little further down the path, but sometimes i met certain vegans that really think their way of being vegan is the way and i think the important thing to remember it is no one is the boss of you. you can do it in whatever way you want to do it. there's this idea, i have a whole collection of shoes and if i go vegan 9 won't be able to wear this any more. to this telling you that? my friend calls that freegan. before you thought that when you bought those clothes so if you have to wear them and that is the one thing stopping you from making another change in your life and go ahead and do that and that ends up happening, you find other things you don't wear

as much, so i do think sometimes people stop themselves because of that and i would love to have that be a message, due in whatever way you can. it is about living kindly and making decisions everyday and as far as food goes i make the decision to eat all day long, eating constantly so i do feel that was one reason, that is going to complicate my life so much but the reality of it was -- i have celiac disease also, a had to go and change my diet for that and when i did that i realize how easy that was and the other was easy so sometimes things you can tell yourself and is good to look at that. >> that is important point. we are afraid and the fear prevents us from doing anything but when it comes to daily choices, we have a lot of

control, things we don't have control over, when we are at the grocery store, we can make concrete shoelaces and if we are mindful about those choices it can make a big difference in each of us has a lot of power to shift small fingers, the way to go because shifting overnight can seem daunting but be mindful and paying attention. one of the reason things have gotten as bad as they have is we have not paid attention. we have gone along with what everybody around us is doing. like i mentioned i grew up eating meat because everybody around me was doing it and they didn't think about it and when i went begin, all of a sudden everyone was thinking about it, what is this about? food is very emotional. we have attachments tied to our identity, human beings forever have gotten together a round food as part of the community.

food and community are affected. as we gather as human beings it can be challenging being a vegan in a non vegan world it is important to recognize not everybody -- for non vegans it is good to recognize for vegan this is something that is very emotionally important to see living animals as not too different from cats and dogs. there is now more awareness and more discussion and open discussion about these issues which is challenging because they i emotional. people who grew up in a family where parents care about the children, want to feed from well, the children when they get into high school or college, parents feel they are being rejected. the whole emotional thing about it, a better way to look at it

is children have learned to think and be careful and mindful about their shoelaces and responsible too and accountable for their choices and that is happening a lot where young folks are making these choices, it can lead to some challenges in social dynamics but the intent should not be to put anybody down. intent should be to support positive shift. as tracy was saying nobody has all the answers. we can all learn from each other. benjamin franklin said everybody thinks the same way nobody is thinking. that is a very valuable thing to remember. there are different perspectives, different ways to go about this and each of us is on our own path but most people would rather live in a way that is rooted in compassion and respect and responsibility and

causing less harm as opposed to causing more harm. is impossible to live without causing any harm but most of us would generally prefer to cause less harm. most of us would rather eat food that is nourishing and doesn't lead to chronic disease we have in this country like heart disease, cancer and diabetes and reduce the risk of those by eating plants and animals, even by shifting bit by bit in that direction and most of us would rather live on a planet not being polluted and where scarce resources like water are not being despoiled by this industry that is so wasteful. 70% of the corn, 90% of soybeans produced in the u.s. are fed to farm animals. we could feed so many more people without using as many resources, by eating plants instead of animals. these are the facts to look at but it is important to recognize we are individuals that have

emotional attachments and to look at those and determine what ultimately serves us well, what serves our families well, what serves our planet well and as we delve into these issues we can start making small shifts and besides our food, how we relate in our backyards to animals and seeing animals as co in haven'ts of the planet and paying attention too and seeing the beauty that exists in nature and appreciating it and it shifts our attitudes towards one of respect and wonderment in a way, children especially have a real kind of openness and ability to see things that as we grow we become adulterated and don't see the same way. your children i think are very much enjoying time with animals. >> very much so. started to mention the farm, my husband and i bought a farm in

new jersey and our idea was to start an animal sanctuary because our kids were getting involved and enjoying fat. i spent time at farm sanctuary, that was really transforming it to me and really positive experience where you do fall in love and make friends up there. i wanted to do something close to home where there were a lot of people, and now it will be the fourth branch of farm sanctuary and we are going to do with it is making an educational center so the idea is hopefully one of the things that will accomplish that, kids coming and maybe on the farm, in third grade, maybe they are learning to grow something, fourth grade, what they are going to learn to do is cook food, grow food, see if they can give a little care to something and grow into something really big, and they're taking care of animals and watching animals be taking

care of, and a lot of therapy there, you love to have something for veterans, doing therapy for that, my daughter volunteers for something called gentle carrousel where there are tiny little horses the going to hospitals, places where nursing home says where larger horses can't go, doing that. we want to create this space where people come year in and year out and see the same animals. i think that is what happens, dogs and cats get to see them and watch them. the idea somebody would say animals don't have feelings, looking at our dogs for cats, is crazy. but somehow if someone is saying something about a pig or how it doesn't seem as crazy. you do feel it in such a great way that when you make the changes in your life in other

ways it doesn't feel there is a lot, there is a powerful gain that happens for you. with the book i have been approached a lot by people who want to have a reality show based on me which will never happen. ever. but i sometimes think i just wish someone could follow be our rounds with a camera and see how happy i am and how much i eat and how much i enjoy my food and my life and my wife and my relationship with animals, i sometimes do wish that but not enough. not enough to become a kardashian. that is not going to happen. >> when you live your passion it is a beautiful thing. that is the thing about being mindful and looking at our actions and being responsible for the man living in a way we feel good about and not being

dissident and think i don't want to see that. no reality show then? so when you eat on a daily basis what do you enjoy eating? >> so many things. lie new favorite thing that i discovered, cream cheese, in the morning i have a gluten free bagel, slice of tomato and salt and pepper, very bad thing i have been doing, protein shakes in the morning and lunge i will have lentils and rice and snack on fruits during the day and have another big typists to at night like kale, rice, my favorite food would be that. >> tons of protein in it. the greens movies, do you do that very much?

i have done a few, when i'm training for those, and sometimes -- you are burning a lot of calories a you got to eat so much. in my book "living the farm sactuary life" i have a recipe from this vegan triathlete like double iron man distance, and made in the office, it was massive. you are doing enormous amounts of training, how you eat makes sense to reflect your level of activity. >> that is why i eat so much. >> it is so true. when you are mindful about your food and recognize what it does to you that can be very healthy. in this country we are addicted to sugar and things like that and just get into this routine

where we don't recognize that. by shifting how we eat we could feel much better physically, as well as emotionally. children for example eat a lot of sugar at noon and be a challenging afternoon. and impact on our well-being that you don't think about, heart disease kills more people in this country isn't anything else and we could reduce our risk in a huge way and our medical profession is not well informed about benefits of plant based eating. i am in my 50s and haven't been to a doctor in decades. i went to dr. a few years ago to get a checkup and make sure everything is okay. the doctor starts asking me questions about heart disease in my family and i told him my father died of heart attack, my grandfather died of a heart attack, my father had a heart attack and without taking any blood tests or anything he tells me he might want to put me on

heart medication. i was like astounded. i left that hospital and didn't go back and went to another hospital, they took my blood work and it came back fine. too often our medical profession is too click to prescribe drugs though we don't need if we eat in a more mindful, healthy way and the other thing about the pharmaceutical business is the majority of the drugs that used in the united states are fed to farm animals in these factory farms to keep them alive and growing in these filthy horrendous conditions because the stress, the disease and everything. now you have the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria and there have been efforts 3 years in washington d.c. to pass laws to limits the use of these antibiotics, but it has not been able to pass because the business is so influential in washington d.c.. i live near washington d.c. and i have seen how that process

works and it is pretty frustrating. so i think where the real change is going to happen and is starting to happen is individual consumers making more thoughtful choices and food decisions that are all lined with our own interests and our own values and as happens things are changing. as i mentioned the number of animals starting to go down, there are companies that have been created specifically to provide meetless alternatives to meet. there is a company called beyond meat that is making chicken, quote, chicken out of p and soy proteins and because plant foods are more efficient to grow it will be less expensive than meat from chickens and the new york times food critic couldn't tell the difference in a taste test. >> that is good. >> there is this massive shift happening in the marketplace and each person who votes with our

dollars can play a role in bringing about this shift and is happening like never before. >> a couple years ago you tried, you tried some of the alternatives and they were disgusting. you were right, they were disgusting but i am telling you now there are so many great alternatives and when you venture in you might find one that is terrible, but don't let that stop you because there are great foods right now, really exciting. >> there is a cow that tells you where vegan foodies and plant based foods, you can find places that have vegan foods. i was at a dinner last night with miami food and wine festival, four i amazing chefs, they were producing incredible recipes at this restaurant. it is the creative process, the vegan culinary world is taking off, this restaurant in l.a. that is amazing, is getting

increasingly satisfying to each plant food. years ago i used to be happy to see the word vegan on a menu. now i am thinking it better taste for good because so often people try it and there's a general kind of prejudice about it and a feeling that if it is vegan it can't be good but that is not the case at all and this food is getting tastier than average have real artists creating amazing -- there's a place not far from you in new jersey that has some. >> really funny. we are a minute away from incredible vegan restaurants where we live so that is exciting. we went to dinner last night, it is not a vegan restaurant so when i go to a restaurant i try to be extra nice because i am telling them i have a gluten allergy and then i tell them i m vegan so already i try to be

really nice and we went in and just told them what our limitations were as far as we could lead on the menu and got so excited about it and the chef got so excited and created a whole meal for us. and mushrooms in teriyaki sauce, spicy on the side, they took a coconut rice and fried it so it was crispy and tasted more delicious, avocado and spice, you do feel your whole experience, and excited to do it for you. they never make a stink about this. >> you want to be respectful and realize people are working and

may be very stressed. is so wonderful when they embrace the challenge and create amazing food. >> i don't make this thing, just really sad. >> they don't really make a stink but just interacting, sometimes just by being vegan and asking, sometimes in a strange way, really the challenge is to communicate in a way that is not going to upset people, these are very emotional issues, how do we eat and if somebody hears you are of vegan sometimes they internalize it, they judging me for eating meat and that is not the intent. that is oftentimes the emotional feeling and it is understandable, most people are humane, don't support cruelty and a lot of times people are afraid because they don't know what they could do instead. a big part of this is being a

positive example land being inspiring and supportive of all positive change and the amelia had sounds incredible. so i think we are getting close to opening up for questions. if anybody wants to ask anything or raise any thoughts or things, there's a microphone here in the middle and folks should go there and raise questions if you would like to. >> it is a real privilege to be in the room with you and i so admire vegans. seven years ago i went -- chests of little funny quote, i have a cousin who has been that for several years and he said instead of feeding grains and plant food to animals let's eliminate the middleman to each it ourselves. is so true.

what i want to say is will you be taking volunteers? i have been a volunteer with the command decided to four years, asked me to help today, and i said -- got a book. >> everyone will actually be hired through farm sanctuary. we will be taking volunteers, that has been such a nice part for me living in my own community as i go are relatively these to be my husband was the one and now i am getting stuff left and right, with people that really want to be involved and it is a beautiful thing, i went to the prescription and the woman behind the counter set i you going to be having volunteers? i really need to be there. i said yes, i will let you know as soon as we are ready, just got diagnosed with breast cancer

and i feel like it would be really important thing for me to be there so please let me know and is things like that, i am so excited for what is going to happen. i feel like there is going to be a lot of beautiful relationships that happened there. and i am excited you want to come. >> and i have a business card. >> a couple things. when my kids were young they did the birthday parties where everyone couldn't bring a gift, they had to bring dog food or cat food for the shelter. now my youngest, just went away, guess what she asked for her birthday? her father and i can only have non vegetarian meals three times a week and her sisters get five. we have to do it for a month and that is fresen and of course the

photos have to go through. anyway, her field is designing habitat because we are breeding a lot of endangered species because we can't seem to save native habitats. and i want you to talk a little bit about the funding of how we can fund animal habitats for wild animals for animals we have bred in captivity, and horses, the horse industry is a rich one. people make millions on these big federal breads, or have a worse problem here, of course is aging and expensive for people to keep them so they let their horses starve and people -- just to talk about how we can

regulate the same industry to pay for down the line horses kind of like in the military we are still paying for va services all the way down the life of a person who serves in the military, how we can't get it for horses physically but maybe for other animals as well. >> habitat preservation is critically important and we keep gobbling up acreage and turning it too often into cropland to raise food for farm animals. in south america rain forests are being destroyed so soybeans can be grown to feed the animals in china right now. across the u.s. we have vast acreages being killed and plowed egregious year for feed for farm animals. unfortunately government incentive in courages this and every year we spent something like $100 billion through the

farm bill to support farm programs and this helps support production of cheap corn and soybeans to feed farm animals so meat is cheaper than it should be in the marketplace so i think one of the things that has to happen is federal policies need to catch up where a lot of the public is and where the science is and to promote a healthy sustainable food system instead of one that is very exploited and depleting. when it comes to horses, there are programs to round of horse is out west, to get them off of federal land so that cattle can graze their rental lot of courses held in stockyards and sometimes have been slaughtered. a lot of times this links back to the animal agriculture industry which is massive. and uses half of the land in the u.s. is used for animal agriculture. if we start moving towards

habitat preservation that is a very important place to look. forces are related but sort of on the margin and they are important as well, but it boils down to the factory farming and animal agriculture issue. >> not to plug my own web site but do -- "do unto animals" has an article about that written by joanne who wrote the book saving baby, she really goes into detail, how you did make a difference and what goes on with horses and how they are considered disposable and they do end up in slaughterhouses as food. >> first i would like to say, something like 15 copies of tracy's book. it is beautiful land makes a wonderful christmas or holiday

gifts. >> thank you. >> see you later. we are animal lovers, we say we are aspiring vegans, we are long way off. we have four cats and two dogs. this is not planned parenthood. this is a little off, and i don't know if it belongs in this discussion, i wondered, you deal with animals every day, if you find that any of the animals you deal with our psychic? they say things we don't see, we had some strange experiences that have been very positive. one dog and one cats. if you have noticed any, these things are not there. >> i really do think when we

talk about intelligence and we talk about ourselves as having highest intelligence i do think animals have different intelligences and because they don't have some of the things we have, i believe they have other things and i believe in my own home that my animals are really present in a way that humans are knocked and they see things and smell things and are aware of things emotionally. i was at farm sanctuary and susie was the national director of there being interviewed for a film and she started to cry and she was talking about a difficult time she has gone through and pick up named sebastian snaps at people but love susie very much. when susie started to cry, outside the barn, came into the barn and was next to her and stayed with her until she was done with the interview. she knew what was happening is

>> there is an empathy, relationships and they pay attention and are in the moment and they really do comfort us in many ways and we should pay attention to them and treat from with respect and it is beautiful when that happens. >> they pay attention to us. >> it is paying attention and being mindful and ultimately responsible and living in a way we can feel good and when it comes down we treat other animals, defining who we are and the beautiful thing to see when that sort of healing goes back and forth. >> i am susan hardgrieve, we do programs in florida and internationally and nationally rewarding and recognizing kids who helped to rescue animals. i have in doing this for many

years and notice things change, where kids after a program, we do begin animal hero sandwichmaking and i wonder if you could speak a little bit about how much it has changed as far as what you can get in public, not a matter of taking away what you normally eat but replacing it, i have been vegan since 1984 and there was powdered soy milk back then. compare that to today with all the silk and coconut milk, if you could speak a little bit about if the average person with an average pocket of finance goes into publix locally, what can they buy that would replace products that they currently have that is healthier for them, healthier for the planet and kinder to the animals?

>> jane can speak well to this but i recognize you and i have been to your site and love what you do and i would love to talk later about doing more. >> i brought a book for you and your kids. >> thank you. >> i think it is a good point that vegan food is more easily available now than ever before. instead of cow's milk you can go to a mainstream supermarkets and get cocoanut and slam milken moment. there are alternatives, a growing alternatives to cheese and meat analogs like meatless meat loaf that you see in freezer sections. it has never been easier and you also have a regular old vegan foods like beans and rice and fruit and vegetables and whole grains and so the options are increasingly available and it is

easy to substitute and good health the whole plant and living the farm sanctuary life we have the amazing recipes and tips. >> getting kids to grow food, i know from my own kids when we have things thrown in the garden they are more receptive and more excited about eating that. also more excited when they made something of themselves. i think cooking and growing for the younger generation will be very helpful. >> it really connects them and people are engaged, and powering and hopeful. >> we have been sold disconnected from that. i see a trend in fact which i am very excited about. >> very optimistic. there is this food movement we want to get close to the source of their food, and as we do we take more responsibility and we are connected which is helpful.

>> we like ending on an optimistic note. we want to thank you and this is the end of the session. we appreciate you being with us. [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ >> companies outside. [inaudible] ♪ ♪

>> booktv's live coverage in miami continues. we have a couple of more author panels coming up. in a few minutes you will hear from the current poet laureate of the united states and former polish lauria of the united states, that is one panel and after that, leonard pitts and julie and read will discuss thei book, leonard pitts is local columnist and joy and read joy does with phone calls but we want to introduce gerald posner, the author of several books, his most recent is this one, "god's bankers," the history of money and power at the vatican, was published by simon and schuster.

do is "god's bankers"? >> guest: they change every 20 years or so but for the most part their bishops and cardinals of the catholic church and the one person who runs the vatican bank is the pulp. the only shareholder at vatican bank, they hire layman to run the details of the in and out of money but the presents and people responsible for the finances of the vatican are the same people who run the religion. >> host: how big is the vatican bank? how much money does it hold? has access? >> guest: in reverse order who has access is a group of people, by its charter was created in the middle of world war ii, has been around seven years in the institution. citizens of vatican city, religious orders and catholic charities, in practice it has been manhandled and this used for years by everyone from wealthy italians, who has control over it, the pope is the

only shareholder of the vatican bank, but in addition, the size of a small community bank, 7 to $10 billion a year, not enormous, goldman sachs pales in significance, but enough money when it is running the dark without any oversight or transparency, plenty of problems and that is what it has done. >> why was it formed during world war ii? >> he questioned the 700 page book, why was the vatican bank form, and the problems it got into, was formed in the middle of world war ii in order to avoid british and americans having a black list to stop neutral countries from working with the enemy. we were looking to stop all of these neutral countries in europe and we have put on, we meaning the united states and britain-liechtenstein and luxembourg and san marino and monaco, switzerland, every neutral country in europe except for one, the vatican.

the vatican developed its own bank, went guy can't continue to do business with the german-italian fascists, they play both sides, didn't know who was going to win so invested in both. >> what is the purpose? is a leading why do they need a bank? what is the purpose? being no purpose to it that couldn't be served. they didn't have a bank for the first 1930 years of their existence, the only reason they formed one was to circumvent the rules in world war ii but now is a matter of national pride so when pope francis came into power in 2013 he set i am going to reform it but may also abolish it, he could do so with the simple degree. and a permanent observer status at the you and they are a sovereign entity as well as a religious entity, they like the bank because it is the equivalent of central bank, they want to keep it if nothing else because they think it burnishes the reputation of that. it does that has also cause a lot of headaches of a time. >> host: is there evidence of

misuse? >> it is hard to catalog. one reason the book is so fake is the evidence chronicles that use of the bank continues decade after decade. with each successive pope saying i will clean it up, whether you have for instance in world war ii doing business with the germans and in the 1960s is misused by a group of italian bankers, one ends up debt and the london bridge, another is a businessman who ends up debt in jail. after that, 70s and 80s made a one quarter of $1 billion to restitution. and they cleaned it up. we lyndon and 90s and 2,000s italian politicians like the prime minister to the vatican bank, and 10 civilians of dollars, everything from their wife's bullish to politicians so until the last few years has been a source of consternation and scandal for the church.

>> host: where does the money come from? >> it comes from cash given by religious orders, much of the money comes in cash and is positive for the bank, back to those religious ones for the deposit, take the deposit and a safe investment. one thing i must say for the vatican bank, in the heart of london, they bought in world war ii, major shares of the top 100 companies in the 1940s and tell them for years, they don't know money because they had none of the ones in european banks and almost a commander so they're very safe on their investments. some of the money also comes from sources of the account like money launderers, the 1% of evading taxes. in the last three years pope francis said they closed those accounts that don't exist. and the bank is down to the religious orders.

>> how does the catholic church otherwise bank cannot through this bank? >> to correspondent banks. one thing before the vatican bank existed, they did need the vatican bank because they did it all for the bank of rome and the bank of england, and the banks they normally would. the problem with those banks and doing that as a country is the international banking investigators and the country's, chase manhattan, they can follow your money so if you're transferring $5 million to chase manhattan american investors in the treasury department can see where you are going, that is what the vatican wanted, they wanted their own secrecy of national bank and got it. >> what kind of problems? >> problems you expect when dealing with billions of dollars, no transparency and lack of oversight. this is mobile corps in public. 80% of the cleric's involved in running the vatican bank over

the years are well intentioned and want to do the right thing in the catholic church. what i mean is they were not always personally taking fortunes, the bishops involved in the 1970s ratings end ed up house on lake geneva and rolls-royce and rory, what they did is made money from illegal operations they stashed in to what i call their own accounts in case they could use it to gain power in the vatican. perfect example, the bishop from illinois, american archbishop came to run the vatican, knew nothing about finances, he was loyal to the pope, and in 1970 brand for 18 years, he amassed $6 million slush fund from all these deals and used it when the polish pope came in, john paul ii came in, use it to help that

polk destroy communism in his native poland and bring down solidarity, it endured the bank, built the power for the vatican bank, the money that got in from ill-gotten gains wasn't used necessarily for personal purposes but what i call lot power struggles within the vatican for power and closeness to the pope. >> host: what is the catholic church at history with money? >> guest: the reason this turns out to be, thing goodness i have a publisher who was willing to allow me to expand this book. i pitched an idea in 2005 that this is about world war ii and the vatican and you have a 200 year history, they let me do that because every time i thought i had a story i brought it back earlier and the key part of that once the vatican's relationship to money, you find out when you go back 150 years

ago they did not like the idea of capitalism. they disdained it. the bible said melinda and interest, you couldn't do it and capitalism was an idea mix with modernism, freethinking, very dangerous, autocratic rule. not only did they have disdain for capitalism but treated it as heretical protestants and jews, please borrowed money from the rothschilds, did is insane of the traditionalists but once they lost their empire, popes were not just heads of the roman catholic church the kings who ran a 15,000 square mile empire, anyone who has seen the board joys knows it all too well, they didn't look like jeremy irons, they levied taxes, collected fees, when they lost the empire in 1870 they had to scramble to bring in money, selling indulgences, paper to forgive sins, didn't pay the bills, as the faithful to send contributions to the pope, they

slowly, grudgingly embrace the concept of capitalism and in 1942 in the middle of the war when they -- they were looking at capitalism with a bit of disdain. to embrace capitalism putting it on steroids. for the next 70 years, they are engaged in what pope francis would call savage capitalism. and dramatic in the last 70 years, in the 2,000 year history. >> first of all where did you get onto this and why? >> guest: from my first book in 1986, i put out a biography of mandela, the nazi doctor. in 1984 i was done in buenos aires, the federal police fires on mandela who persisted, and in those files i found documents about german war criminals arriving in argentina with the help of a priest in rome, father weber and the bishop and i thought to myself that is interesting.

a priest and bishop, nazi war criminals. i put that in the back of my mind and said i will find a publisher who will allow me to do that subject, it put me until 2005 and ten books later to find a publisher who set all right, we're willing to let you go. vote story turned out to be very different. not getting into what and july started the book it turned out to be money, not necessarily world war ii which was also about money. if you said what is the story about would have thought was about ideology, possibly not the sympathizing. can that communism, the nazis, that was the tail. >> host: how many books have you written? >> guest: 12 books but if i write from as slowly as this i won't have many more. good news about as you well know from authors, and i think david juergen years ago, his book about oil, he published it

during the first gulf war so there was tremendous interest, i was supposed to have this done in 2011-2012 at the latest but i was running slow. we would have published under benedict but that would not be as interesting. >> host: franchise has energized the church, the idea that francis is a reforming pope, said something different from predecessors and brought attention to the catholic church for catholics and non catholics as well. it ends on a note of optimism. and the bank going forward. and that is luck when you publish. >> host: what has francis said publicly? anything? >> guest: he said all the right things but that did not convince me he was the real deal when it came to the vatican bank because

every other pope had the right things when they became pope about reforming the bank and failed to do so but when he became pope in 2013 and set i will reform the bank, i more or less said oh sure, i heard that before but changed my mind in the following way. first of all, whoever is pope today they would have to be reforming the bank, it is a quirk of finances but italy decided to go with the euro and when it did the vatican was in a quandary because they use the italian hero for their own currencies so had decided they wanted to bring their own currency or go with the euro. they didn't know when they went with the euro that brussels wanted oversight on the central reserve vatican bank. as a result of that, the vatican attached their first-ever law against financing of terrorism in 2011 and money-laundering, they didn't have a law against money-laundering. their first flaw against how

much money the dominion and disclosed in to the vatican. they had to become compliant by european standards but francis has done it with enthusiasm and vigor, she has run its independent outsiders, layman who are in fact really trying to change the culture of no transparency and make it complaint bank moving forward in the 21st century. team needs to be pope and other three four years to have the effect all the way to the bureaucracy. >> host: what is the official name of this? >> guest: institutes of works of religion. i always loved that. the institute for the works of religion is the vatican bank so sometimes, you don't go by the name of the institution, look behind the curtains to see what it is doing. >> host: is there a physical location? >> guest: the physical location, medieval tower in vatican city, in this power is where the bank is located. it has no other branch anywhere

in the world, only atms inside vatican city, the only bank in the world that has latin as one of the languages, the story of the vatican bank. >> host: could you or i open an account there? >> guest: in the battle days we could open an account if we knew they cardinal who was a friend of ours but to date we would have difficulty doing it. if you were a religious order or charity, the way around it is the following, and and seven time prime minister, died the year-and-a-half ago, the most prominent postwar politician, and opened it up an account, the cardinal spell as a man foundation, there was no such institutional organization and the vatican bank. and ran about $60 million in cash over the years, everything from paying for his wife's jeweler to slush funds for other politicians. if you had the right connection you could get a deal.

the fashion designer has his main retail showroom on a street in a row like madison avenue or fifth avenue, recently became known he was paying a couple hundred dollars a year for rent when everyone else was paying $600, he knew a cardinal was a friend to cut in the deal, that is the way the vatican has been operating for years. and the answer to the question is could we open up an account? know unless we have the right connection. >> host: how cooperative if at all was the vatican in your research? >> guest: i would like to say they were cooperative but they were not. i asked for access to the secret archives, the private archives of the pope, where the world war ii business documents are about the vatican bank and the bishop of miami lobby on my behalf for access and a bishop in washington, lobbied on my behalf but the bishop who runs the vatican archive said no.

that forced me to do with the old-fashioned way. and did business with the vatican bank. and alliance, go into their files and private archives, pull of the transactions that have been done with rome 50 or 60 or 70, and called on the pope since publication of this book in los angeles times out that in march, ask for the pope to release bank's world war ii files and what files of the wartime pope, there was no response. when he came to america the washington post editorial said the same thing and there was no response which i am hopeful francis will not just be a reformer going back in the vatican bank history but also going forward. he can do that by releasing the bank's world war ii files. >> host: one of your former books, secret of the kingdom, the inside story of the saudi u.s. connection. how do you get the information?

when you sign the book with a publisher you never know what the story is. i am doing lincoln's assassination, i pretty much know what the story is, a different narrative than many fine writers. a living subjects like the saudi royal family or vatican bank, i throw out to everybody, i read everything available on the subject, markdown names, not knowing whether they are alive or dead for an interview and narrow down my wish list of people i would like to interview. a lot of people say no or get what i call on the record formal interviews, and occasionally what happens in my profession is you meet somebody who after a couple meetings says take a liking to your have a beer one night or weekend talk, that opens the door and eventually they will say i know someone who worked for is a former auditor. i know somebody over here and you never know where that is.

this book i am able to show for the first time on the record the vatican did business with insurance companies that word chairman, there might be somebody else who said they did business with arms manufacturers a pharmaceutical company. i did not have that door opening lead you end up pursuing the information you have. is this the absolute final word on the finances of the vatican? no but it is a thorough word on what i wanted to find out. >> host: here is the book, gerald posner is the author, "god's bankers," a history of money and power at the vatican. and we are watching -- you are watching, i should say, miami book fair here on booktv on c-span2. live coverage continues and in just a moment you will hear from a couple authors who happened to the former and current u.s. poet laureates and this panel will be beginning in just a minute. the current public laureate juan phili

philipe, they will speak to the audiences and a few minutes here from the campus of miami dade college. after that, leonard pitts and july and we wioy and we will be booktv. we go to miami dade for live coverage. ♪ ♪

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. good afternoon. miami-dade college is delighted to host the 32nd miami book fair, and we are thrilled that you came out. and we are also thrilled to see the sun. let's give the sun a round of applause. [applause] 1st, we would like to thank all of our generous sponsors who helped make today possible. we also want to acknowledge our friends of the book fair. thank you for your continued support.

and we invite all of you to become part of our circle of friends by connecting with us after the program. please, if you have not already, turn off your cell phone or any other gadget that may vibrate or distract us in any way. we also invite you to enjoy the program command i wouldi would like to welcome professor campbell mcgrath's, creative writing teacher at fiu. please join me in welcoming the professor. [applause] >> it is an honor to be here today to introduce not one but two poets laureate. juan felipe herrera, the current occupant of the post,post, k ryan who served as poet laureate from 2,008 to 2010. over the last dozen years or so the position has become ever more visible and prominent helping poetry expand its narrow toehold in american cultural life, and i, and i do not think it is any accident that this increase in relevance has

coincided with a long awaited extension of that diversity. i don't just mean diversity in the common social aspects of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality command even language, but more to the.diversity of poetics. not that long ago the poet laureate was pretty much guaranteed to be a boring old white guy in the blue blazer. and he was pretty much guaranteed to write poetry in a manner approved by the editors of the northern anthology. thankfully we are in no such danger today. certainly it is true that k ryan sligh thunder poems of must the model of emily dickinson while juan felipe herrera's vast wide-ranging bodywork belongs to the lineage of whatwalt whitman, but these two laureates share a gift for poetry that is engaging, entertaining,

populist commence aversive. neither emerge economical tradition, employ jargon come in either traffic and high blood poet it clichés. neither of them is a boring old white guy in a blue blazer. they are writers to seize control of the material of language, draped across the body of the worlds and tailor it to their own completely original purposes. let me tell you about how we are going to run the show today. ryan will come up and read for 20 minutes. then juan felipe herrera will do the same. i we will come up in the middle to get in the way. after that, we will sit here on stage until they kick us out of 430 and get questions from you guys and let the poet laureates respond to them.

so now or read a quick introduction. ryan will read 1st, author of nine books of poetry including her latest, erratic facts enter volume of new and selected poems for which he received the pulitzer prize of 2011. actually, let me back it up. i should introduce juan felipe a first. juan felipe herrera is a lifelong californian, the trial of chicano farm workers farmworkers in the san joaquin valley, has lived all across the state and a life dedicateda life dedicated to literature, teaching, activism, and the promulgation of mexican american culture. he has won awards for children's books, the latest of which has just been published and received the national book critics circle award for poetry in 2,008 for his knew and selected poems half the world alight. his dozen books of poetry

_has much to the tradition of modernism as i do to the spoken word come as much of the 20th century as the 21st century and has been described by the new york times is wildly inventive and always unpredictable. k ryan is the author of nine books of poetry and erratic facts or nurse and the pulitzer prize-winning volume the best of it. the possibility compared to the work of george herbert and marion more to cornell boxes and postmodern word puzzles and also to freshly made cocktails. received fellowships at a national humanities medal. a lifelong californian she taught for many years in a community college. [applause]

>> thank you, campbell.you, campbell. i am so glad to not be an old white man. it is hard enough being a white woman. well, somebody has got to do it. it is delightful to be at a community college and such a grand one is this. i am very happy to read. my hotel, there were some really good cuban music last night. i ought to let music influence my reading a little bit. it has an ever graph from something i heard on npr. this biographer of thelonious monk said in practice it took 45 minutes to hit his stride. it was hard for month appointment.

i love that. it may be that monk is always playing month. down the hall. there are long corridors, as in the school. monk must approach himself, join himself at the bench, and sit a while. then slipped his hand into his hands monk style. . . i thought i would follow that with a poem called an instrument with keys. stick with the piano. what i'm really talking about his memory. i have extremely peculiar

memory. and i have written a lot of poems about memory them although i don't remember it. so i always start fresh. sophistic called an instrument with keys. as though memory were not a history but an instrument of keys on which no see list a plate. as though memory were a large orchestra without a repertoire. whereupon it remembered all of chopin. you don't want to clap every time because there will be a a time when you don't want to clap and then you'll be

torn. i think you should just not do it. you see are sticking with this. is a little martha stewart and me. i wondered this line of thought, what it came from the thrill of removal that when things are taken away and the kind of exhilaration that produces. this is called musical chairs, of course. only one is musical. the others are ordinary mostly from the kitchen. not a peep of music.

the managements, banishment. [laughter] i would hate to have to be severe with you. this is called brief. it's hilarious. no, this is t wind. that is a

ridiculous thing to say, is it not? i'm shameless. creatures whose habits match nothing we understand on trackable air, sea, and land. there will be moments things will be in italics. i'll tell my head. and you'll no i'm reading caps on place.

creatures whose habits match nothing we understand on trackable by our most implacable trackers of air, sea, and land. as the conjured by conditions as though conditions fretted something arrangements in the trackers regret this is real things in real places. now, i iplaces. now, i so distracted you, so distracted you that i have to read it again because you have no idea what you just heard. okay. all right. the faster this time. creatures whose habits match nothing we understand on trackable by our most implacable trackers of air, sea, and land. the conjured by convicts -- condi to existence they regret

this, produce brief real things in real places. you think if you clap i won't read it again. thethe air and bars holds its load of jars and still suspension. also jails.

jails are present for the person who will pour smoke. i hate to have to.all these things out,out, but it is funny to say that is jails a present. i think. that there are private amusement i would like to public a possible. one need not smoke to inhale. year and bars holds its load of jars and still suspension. also jails, jails are present for the person who of course smoke. but happily gorgeous .-dot also hangs around like that. you can walk through the mist and contact exists. i don't have many talk

poems. i was asked to substitute for mary oliver in colorado, a great victory. just published a book of dog poems. i will have to try to scrape some dog poems together. mary and dizziness. i did read this poem. most of my poems use them to a not so nice. but this one is pretty dog. fool's errand. the thing cannot be delivered enough times. for whom there are no fools errands. to list out and come back is

good all alone. it is greatly to carry a ball or bone. now, a little equal time. this goes back to my desert heritage central valley. they both have that in common. they turned out very differently. the pause the, and this describing the movement of water. the 1st trickle of water -- water down a dry ditch sketches like the path. slightly tucked at the front

why really like is the word arguing. unambitious about arguing what. arguing, of course, means for telling are predicting, but it also gives you the sense of an auger. appointed sharp object which could be related. oh,zero, i thought i would read this poem even though i shouldn't. it's called venice. it reveals too much about me. it's ammunition for certain people. you know? that shows my own culpability and my general aversion to stimulation. think about venice and all the stimulation there and then think about miami home feeling.

there is a category of person eased by constraint, sous when things cease. it is the assault of abundance from which they seek release. the gorgeous intensities of venice would work best for these people at a distance.ng, a departing train car feeling the minnesota. i want to read this one because i love the epigraph. this is an epigraph from montaigne. montaigne said, let the poet's voice lose all its measuring joints, it's character will not be changed by this.

even the fragments will be beautiful. i hope he's right. so this is called dragon's teeth. probably most of you now, but in the -- there is a greek myth in which a dragon was killed, and the teeth of the dragon when sown in the ground produce soldiers. really a very nice thing in a way. if they are your soldiers. so this is called dragon's teeth. a small wallet of dragon's teeth is so potent that one wonders why forces are raised any other way. the seller has a couple of soldiers in under a day. nonetheless interest in pockets of these pointed seeds stays unaccountably low across the many fields

where they would grow. there is something i learned from wikipedia. the main difficulty of waterwheels was there in separability from water. so this is the main difficulty of waterwheels. there are machines of great generative power that can only work locally for one reason or another. the great fixed wheels moved by water cannot be moved from water. it hurts to think of anything wrenched out of work works. but not just for the work.

those buckets trenching the river, all the ornaments of torque. this poem is called my kingdom for horse. you can think of the king. i guess in the field of battle. billy needing a horse. okay. my kingdom for horse. the kingdom is already grown abstract. no one with an actual kingdom suggests a trait like that.perty to go. of the ancestral timber the last redoubt, still ringing

of your great states. the loneliest page of any one of which would race to get a horse to get you out. i ran and so i'm changing my reading. this is called eggs. very short. eggs. and then i will read one more and be done. we turn out as to be as eggs legs are an illusion. we are held as in a carton if someone loves us. it is a pity. only loss process.

something i get a kick out of venice, and i don't know if i knew it when i wrote it, but i noticed it. i just don't know. the reverse sound. gives me a big kick. i'll read again. we turn out as to his acts. legs are illusion. they are held as in the carton if someone loves us. it is a pity only loss process. a highly optimistic poem in an abstract sense. this is called why explain the precise by way of the less precise which is kind of an irritable question posed by the biographer.

why explain the precise by way of the less precise? okay. i'm going to answer that. zero, i have to tell you, this is the word nap and it is the thing that you do to arrowheads. okay. it is not seem right to think blonde blows could do a thing like that. we do net arrowheads enough of rocks. so maybe it is possible that some kind of edge could result from generalized impact large blasts. among those somehow more exact. thank you. [applause]

>> i am regretting my own protocols. please help me welcome the poet laureate. [applause] >> thank you so much. because gus yes. so beautiful to be here. thank you so much, everybody. thank you for inviting me, inviting us, and doing a great book festival here in miami. florida. big old hand for everybody here. [applause] how beautiful it is. and really, a lot of beautiful culture here and a lot of stories here, a lot of poetry.

i was talking to the taxi driver. i asked him. i really wanted to know the life of a little player, gordimer whatever it is that makes it beautiful. spicy and sultry and peppery. and he said, no, i'm talking about we'd up. made out of steel or metal. and so i learned a lot in taxes. i am so glad i learned a lot the music,music, i want to learn more music, much more. thanks again. this is a piece from assemblies. you know, people talk about migration, migrants, he got this.

it is kind of falling apart because we are all migrating. they are all scrambling. we are all moving without really knowing whether we will make it. we don't know where to go. surprise at every moment. very big, as you know, an incredible thing. letters between countries. so the term migrant is receiving. and perhaps that is why it's a good thing. reflect on this condition, the human condition, being

blown out where you live and where your life used to be your family, everything command all of a sudden this broken trail with no end in sight and hopefully you'll find a place. now, sometimes people do not want you to come in. this is called board of us. and talks about this. in this case it is a voice of two women who have already been detained. and the buses not being -- it is not wanted to enter the site where the detention center is. so i can't imagine a more terrible situation. in spanish and english.

barely going? speak in english of the guard is going to come. where are we going? speaking english regard is going to get us. but what did we do? speaking english. come on. >> ii just know a few words. >> you better figure it out. the guard is right there. so many days and we did not even no where we were headed. i know where we are going. some detention center. some warehouse after warehouse.

but they already question us. wequestioned us. we already crossed over. they already grabbed us. what more do they want? that is all. where we going? i'm telling you. i came from under us. where we going to sleep? i don't want to talk about it. tell them that you came from nowhere, i came from nowhere , we crossed the border from nowhere. you and me and everybody else here is on a bus to nowhere. you got it? [speaking in native tongue] that that's why we came, to leave all that nothing behind. the bus stops. there will be more nothing.

we are here. [speaking in native tongue] those people, who are they? they don't want the bus to keep going, they don't want us to keep going.going. how they are blocking the bus. what do we do? >> what? [speaking in native tongue] [speaking in native tongue]

>> zero, yes. [speaking in native tongue] brownsville. [speaking in native tongue] [speaking in native tongue] it took me 47 days to get here. forty-five days of under us. the coyotes. you know what they did right there in front of us. what were we supposed to do? and the trains, nothing.

writing on trains of thousands. here me? thousands. and they slip from the rooftops of the desert of arizona and texas, thirst and hunger, thirst and hunger, two things, thirst and hunger, day after day. and now here i come. and now here on this bus. i come from brownsville with a titus up and still the border lies ahead of us. >> i told you to speak in english. the guard is going to think we are doing something. people are screaming outside. i want to push the bus back.

[speaking in native tongue] but where do we go? that's why i'm here. they broke my father's legs, gangs killed my son. i just want to be together, us. so many years old apart. [speaking in native tongue] >> my mother told me that the most important thing is freedom. kindness and doing good for others. [speaking in native tongue]

[speaking in native tongue] freedom comes from deep inside, all the pain of the world lives there. the 2nd we close the pain from our guts we shall be free and in that moment we have to fill ourselves up with all the pains of wrong beings, to free them, all of them. the guard is coming. well, now what? maybe they will take us to another detention center. eat come out before, blanket, toilets, water, each other a while. [speaking in native tongue]

we are nothing command we come from nothing. thatthat nothing is everything if you feel it with love. we are everything. because we come from everything. [applause] thank you so much. thank you so much. and if the man with the chokehold, and if the man with the chokehold pulls a standing man down why does he live? and if the dead man is gone what is your eyes? and why is there clicking sound, the sound the soul makes when it leaves? and if the woman stays why is she the crucible of fire all white issue the voice and if the voices never heard why does it resound for nine generations point

even if it was a teen with a swagger why is he still prone? the governor spoke on both facing the masses, why they still scorched with thirst. if we march why does the street divine. take my water. if all laws of freedom for you for me why do we not speak? and if the tree stands behind you green the last two limbs of swollen the blood why does it not suffer. why does it blossom. this is from my 1st book. let me tell you, it was so

much fun to write this book. because just coming out all burly and nectar he and tie-dyed out and filled with aspect words trying to unite all the nations and put all latin america together back again like humpty dumpty latino latina. and this is what the poem sounded like. a lot of long hair and a big guitar. this is what they sounded like. and i'm going to choose one that is back here. there is no title here. they are just coming out of things. titles gotten the way. no page numbers because pays number start us down. you don't really want to read the page number when you read the poem. i have it they're anyway? too much ink. and the criminals -- they were given a special day on the book. people say how come you are using paper?

a timeterm we want to use for all of latin america united. all of it into one nation. one heart, one earth. read burning rain, rain, jewel rising polling it's on: you like. blake blazing acres soulless sons and ripples on us. [speaking in native tongue] [speaking in native tongue] nude and naked. [speaking in native tongue] [speaking in native tongue]

the red dawn of blazing heart. [speaking in native tongue] one people. [speaking in native tongue] celestial earth and song. [speaking in native tongue] [speaking in native tongue] [speaking in native tongue]

thank you so much. >> are your microphones -- >> let's see. is it on? zero, great. i no that both really want to talk to the audience. here what you guys have to ask them. yet to that microphone it would be easiest. think about that.that. in the meantime i will start off of the question. anytime i encounter the lord of poet laureate i am reminded of shelley's famous thought that poets of the

unacknowledged legislators of the world. you guys have both now been in dc of their. >> legislating. >> the poet laureate's office is actually in the library of congress right on capitol hill thanks to the supreme court. i wonder, if not show his grandiose vision what do you see the role of poetry in the public sphere? >> the readings in her reflections. all awards.

to bring the foam as far as possible and to include the voices and lives. >> that's the kind of thing is sitting laureate says. >> you imagined utopian. >> a moment of solidarity. really tell our truths. stories, lies. shannon, not bury them, not ignore them, not deny them

that's what it was about. >> i loved your poetry. when you read the poem immigration lawyer never heard the story many times. it explains tells the story. the immigrants. so many problems. that's a big problem. it seems that the republican are very anti- immigrant. all the immigration lawyers and everyone else who is in favor of immigration, immigration gets a bad so

many republicans and the fox news people using immigrant and criminal the simpsons. and i grieve campbell. >> that was not my personal assertion of belief. you are commending the poem which i agree entirely. just checking to make sure. >> thank you very much. english and spanish.

let the poem being one of the other. and also just in your role as poet laureate and the multiple languages o'malley recognize them as american language just english and spanish with all the other and whether poetry has a function in that education of that recognition. very specifically whether you think the poem should always be in both english and spanish so that the english only reader can understand the poem, just not reading the spanish parts of whether you think that at some point we can just write in both english

and spanish. >> you know, thank you. speak many languages in use many musics to express ourselves. when we get interviews. get all poetic, hanging out. there's a lot of music and ways of speaking a speech. of course there is language. let'slet's let them all flow. the thought them all flow. let us take the feathers off as much as possible. just too many feathers puttering around. and you know it is good to be free. it is what it is all about. poetry is a free space, free zone. just and encouragement. and encouragement for all of us to free up especially language. when we choke a language

rich of your people. we choke a language we are choking an entire people command entire history. just choking up. even if it is just one word, another language, even if you don't speak that language, get that word and put it in their. free it upfree it up a little bit. given a little milk. a little water. it's a good thing. free up our languages and free up our peoples by using as much language and language art as possible. not easy to do, and you did a wonderful job. both of the languages were kind of simultaneously present, not know way that made it clear. it is a hard trick to pull off. another question. >> thank you. >> i really enjoyed the readings.

but on the same lines about multilingual, i am a mother of many other. raising kids that are multilingual actually speak spanglish, and it is very -- i really appreciate what you are doing, mr. herrera. i no you're also working in creative roles for these children who are overseen. they struggle a lot to find books of quality and spanish year in the united states. i live here in south florida. i come every year with my kids just to get a chance to get good quality books in spanish for them to practice their skills in spanish. and i just wondered what is happening. you know, here we are in a nation that many people speak other languages.

i don't see it as a handicap. they see it is a wonderful opportunity for many people to raise the kids multilingual, not only in spanish but you can teach the many languages. maybe support and i know i'm not the only one to really support more. thank you so much. >> do you know anything about that? >> a specific initiative that would be equitable? >> you know, there is the day of the children. pat mora is one of the great promoters of that, also a children's book writer. and she does a day of the children, bilingual books, and it is not necessarily in every city.

we promote it in our local community. the day of the children is one way to go about it. and also remember that you are the initiative. everyone here is the initiative. so as you feel that that is important in your online i now, you feel it is a good cause to open up the doors for children's books and multilingual children's books, if you believe in and feel it and can sense it right now, than get yourselves going and find ways, create small groups. you know how good you guys are. you guys are fabulous. ..

wth an interesting case study lieve sh because one with curly f constraint and a political decision and what it was for bubbliciousre pros more freedomo discuss some of the pros andsome cons for being a poet laureate.g i noticed some sarcasm in some o of her comments earlier about being in a position.ry, you i want her to explore the. libet this is a very, certainly if yoe guys say this liberates you but u'll be you write something that very offensive you giunta a lot of political pressure, you getbili. called a step down or blue suree credibility. representing the government and being a representative of the government that does all the things that it

does -- >> yeah, that's an excellent question, and i know that these guys have strong feelings. >> juan and i were actually talking about that a little bit. when i was invited to be the poet laureate, george bush was the president. and i was very reluctant to say yes to the position because i thought i don't want any part in this government. and i had to think that over. and what i thought, what i decided -- first of all, it is not a government position. i mean, it is, you are, you are paid not by the president or not by a political party or anything like that, you are an agent of the library of congress. your check comes from the library of congress. your office is in the library of congress, and it is not one political party or another, and it is not -- doesn't represent the presidency. be -- thank god.

[laughter] but i also felt, i thought about it, and i thought should -- is it a good thing to have, to have, to be dissuaded from accepting a position, from advocating for poetry, for representing poetry, for embodying poetry because, because of political oppression? because of distaste in that way? and i thought really it would have sort of been letting, letting them win to not take position. and that it was an act of freedom and assertion in the power of poetry to go ahead and to do it and to be as free as i was. and being as free as i was -- although you did call me sarcastic -- [laughter] was to be the eccentric person that i am and to embody the fact that, you know what? poets are only who they are.

they aren't -- they can't become some artificial person or some ambassador exclusively. they are these strange people who stayed home a lot and wrote, you know? [laughter] and now find themselves in this weirdly public position. [applause] >> that's well said. extremely well said. [laughter] that's well said. and it's a great question. you know, for me it's putting -- i agree with kay, and my focus is stepping aside from my biases. my focus is stepping aside from my biases and kind of crackling into a new self. as i really have -- i'm changing as i move along. because i'm in more communities, and i'm listening to more

stories. young people come up to me and ask me about what shall i do with my manuscript? young latinas ask me, you know, well, you know, i feel some microaggressions on this campus, and i, you know, can you tell, can you help me? and on and on. or simply this is my poetry book, this is what i'm doing, or i meet young teachers who are totally ecstatic, they're just great, raring to go, they just love teaching, and i meet them, and they just pour all these shovels of inspiration on me. i go, oh, she's just so inspired. she's a brand new teacher, and. >> e wants to give, you know, work with her students. and i go all right, you know? i'm inspired, and i'm ready to go to the next place. but it's about putting aside my biases and my old severals and being -- selfs and being open. it's very challenging, but it's

a good challenge. it's a challenge i want to face. >> did either of you ever feel -- i think part of the question implied there was kind of an official constraint in the job. did you feel constrained in your writing or in your ability to represent literature? >> i think one of the things that happened is it really takes your time. i mean, you are distracted from writing, and i think for the period of time that you're the laureate you're pretty much busy hoofing it around. and the one thing i felt was i think juan and i are very different in this. juan is much more socially engaged than i ever was. and i never particularly thought -- and sort of i'm kind of the poster child for poetry not being a helping profession. i don't, i don't think of it as a helping profession. [laughter] and, therefore, i sort of embodied that. and there is a certain amount of pressure exerted by the library of congress or for the high

brain of -- librarian of congress to do something socially useful. and i'm very concerned about this confusion of social usefulness in poetry. i don't think it's inevitable. i don't think it's an automatic thing. i think it can be, but it doesn't -- absolutely doesn't need to be, doesn't have to be. so that's kind of an answer. >> well, you know, the shoulds are always a problem. so you're right. but, you know, for me it's growing up as a farm worker child and across california being kind of shut down in many ways and kind of just gaining all that steam and combustion for years and years and years, i just had to come on out sooner or later. and i also noticed that many others wanted to speak also. so then my poetry became, because of my generation, became a vehicle for them and for you and also more me. i mean, it's -- for me.

it's a circle. it's not this or that. but i love poetry in all its aspects. in its private aspects, experimental aspects, its public aspects and its rugged, bohemian, tie-dyed out aspects. >> another question. sorry to keep you waiting there. >> so a comment and a question. first, to pick up on the prior comment, the poem about the migrants is so beautiful not only because it seems to me it comes very naturally from you, but in the dialogue between the two, it expresses something which one doesn't see often at all. in the news there are statistics, and even when a journalist interviews somebody, it's a question and an answer

perhaps. whereas you're getting inside. and so in a very unique way, i think, you give voice to something that's hugely important to be given voice to even though it seems to me that you weren't intending to be socially useful. but it fulfills both those things beautifully and importantly, i think. and i have a question for kay, if i may. there's so much wonderful humor in each of your poems, i sort of want to get a little more of that by asking something like in what other ways in your life other than the poetry the humor finds expression or if for some reason you couldn't have been a poet, what other forms might your personality as so

beautifully expressed in the humor have taken or come out as? >> well, thank you, thank you for that. you know, when i was starting to write poetry, i felt constrained by the fact that humor really budget seen as a -- wasn't seen as a legitimate form of poetry at the time. there was no rhyme, and there was no humor. and i was very interested in sounds and humor and wit. i mean, wit in the larger sense of, you know, the gray cells. and i was reluctant to be a poet because i didn't, i didn't think that i could find a way to write that had a prayer of success. i actually would have liked to have been a stand-up comedian. [laughter] but i didn't really have the character for it. i mean, i'm not public enough.

so it really wouldn't have suited me. but there is, there is that in me. >> we have one more question. >> good afternoon and thank you. this is a two-pronged question. my worst -- first question is how you were introduced to poetry, what were your introductions to poetry and, second, this is a concern as an educator. there's a crisis in some, maybe all public school systems across the u.s. some schools don't have a fully-equipped school library or one at all. and that's not to say that the teachers aren't using quality literature in the classroom, but perhaps some teachers k-12 don't teach poet tally at all. and so i'm wondering how they, students, in their primary years, maybe some even in their

high school years -- i'm hoping they're being introduced to poetry at that time -- are being introduced to poetry. so perhaps for part two you might share some of your strategies as to how, and this might be some grandiose vision that you have of how young people can be introduced to poetry. so, first, your introductions and, secondly, what we might do, educators and families have their own rule in the home -- role in the home, and that's another issue, literacy in the home, about how we can get poetry -- >> you're absolutely right, poetry has been extremely drastically reduced in the standard curriculum in public schools steadilyover the last -- steadily over the last hundred years, the diminished of poetry. but anyway, let me put it to our poet laureates what your, a, your own kind of genesis as a poet or how poetry maybe entered your life and then what are some thoughts how to keep it vie broont with especially --

vibrant with especially kids who may not get exposure to it? >> you know, i'll answer briefly. i had almost no exposure to poetry as a child. and i, i don't feel dismal about these things. i think there are appetites in us, and sensitivities. there is in us something that wants something, and it keeps seeking for it until it finds it. and you don't have to necessarily be presented with it as a child. i mean, of course, it would be vastly superior if we were, we were rained with poetry. but i think that a certain kind of mind will, will have to have it and will find it and will always seek it. i mean, like, in my childhood i just liked the way people used language. i was always listening for the word that i hadn't heard or the

strange expression. i remember a student said -- i was a kid, and somebody said dow don't have to -- you don't have to broadcast it. and i thought, oh, my god, what a beautiful thing to say. [laughter] you don't have to broadcast it. i was a loudmouth, apparently. but i think the sensitive man acquires language, acquires -- sensitive mind acquires language, acquires a great trove of potential, and it doesn't frighten me that things aren't perhaps at one moment or another not going well. >> and do you believe that crosses all economic boundaries, all types of demographics? >> do i think that's happening everywhere? >> yes. you're saying that the mind wants to -- >> oh, yeah. i mean, i think it's so unpredictable, particularly in community colleges which is where i spent my lifetime teaching remedial english. you absolutely don't know who's where. i mean, such promise, such

surprises come out of the most unlikely places. and poets are always coming from weird spots. they never come, they never come from where they're supposed to, and they usually have a story of not having been particularly encouraged. >> that makes a lot of sense. i can, i can definitely relate to that, you know? i never even took a poetry class, you know, until i was in the workshop later on, but that was a workshop. i didn't even know what that was. >> yeah. >> i just kind of -- there i was all of a sudden. but you said you liked the word "broadcast," and that's how it works. you know, i like to do a lot of, with middle schoolers and high schoolers, i like to do, i've used a million phrases for it, but it's up to like a word-a word-a-thon. because, you know, it's hard to get the words out. it's kind of, okay, well, what am i going to write, you know, therefore? how do i start, you know?

so i'll create two lines of students with little pieces of paper and a pencil and the line in the middle that everybody has to walk slowly through til they get to the other side and then join the lines. and as they walk through the external lines, the twor very tight lines, shoulder to shoulder like a tunnel, like a gauntlet, everyone and's having a conversation with everybody else. like if i'm facing you on the line, hey, how you doing? amazing, wow, could you believe that reading? what happened? i don't know, it was like orange and red and blue and wild. but everybody's doing that, and the person who is walking by is just listening and taking words that they like and adding words that come to them as they note these words that they like while they're moving. so i think physical movement, word-a-thon or just a lot of conversations flying across the brains and ears of young peoples. and they're taking them down because it's okay, you can take them down, and then add your own

words. and everybody does it, and everybody completes it, everybody's successful. and when they read them, they're wild poems. and there's no failer in that project. be -- i also want to do that with sports. so as they're kicking the soccer ball, they're yelling out words and picking up words. so we have movement and games and language. and also when i was in new york city, i noticed these two young -- three young children like, you know, they were, like, doing homework very seriously with their headphones on. and i says, oh, yeah, music. you've got to have music just flashing through your brain now these days, this generation. music flashes through your brain. so while you do things. so i would recommend put on headphones and write. [laughter] i think that's going to be a lot of fun. i tried it the other day, it was fabulous. so those are ideas for you.

[applause] >> please join me in thanking our wonderful panel for a delightful conversation. [applause] >> we have another session beginning at 5:00. we ask that you, please, exit to the left. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> and as the moderator just said, there is one more panel coming from miami-dade college here in miami, and that's going to be leonard pitts and joy-ann reid, and that will begin in about ten minutes or so. you know what? we've got about ten minutes, we're going to introduce you to somebody you probably have seen before in our coverage here in a minute, and but we also want to hear from you. what have you seen this weekend? what are you reading? what would you like to see on booktv? this is kind of a booktv-centric open phones segment. 748-8200, remember, the area corrode is 202. 742-8201, and we're also going to put the text message number

as well, and you'll see that. that's only for text messages, and you can text that to us, and we'll try to get to those as much as possible. but in the meantime, we're going to introduce you to somebody. now, if you've watched us over the many, many years that we have covered the miami book fair, if you watched -- you've watched us, you've seen this gentleman. this is mitch kaplan. he is the founder, chairman of the board of the miami book fair, he's also the own or of books and books. mr. kaplan, where'd you come up with the idea for this fair? >> guest: well, peter, first of all, before i answer that question, i just want to tell you how thrilled we are to have you here once again. it's been too many years to even remember how many years that you've been coming and covering beautifully the miami book fair, and we thank you for it. the miami book fair came together as an idea from dr. eduardo padron who's the

president of miami-dade college, and he called a number of us very young booksellers about 34 years ago. he called us together and said in the old mickey rooney way, let's put on a book fair. and the whole idea was to bring interest to miami again, because miami in the early '80s was a place that was suffering. the boat lift had just happened, there was a lot of economic downturn here. we had just come out of a period of a lot of racial strife. and so the idea was to create a festival about ideas, about books, about things that are very essential in people's lives that would incorporate and would thread together the entire community. we wanted to create a big tent under which all the disparate parts of miami -- which is one of the most diverse communities in the country -- could all feel comfortable under. and that was the genesis of the miami book fair. so in the very first year, i was

a two- it was a two-day festival, and we had about 75 or 100 authors, and it worked. people came. and pe