memorial. there becomes a flashpoint people what say you build a statute to george washington with subscription of people that you don't get to it becomes between the glass. robert sullivan here a bookexpo america. a book publishing annual industry convention. ..xñ

she is the author of the 2010 memoir "day of honey." a memoir of food, love, and war. called one of the least political and most valuable books to come out of the iraq war. it's just out in paperback. have been recognized by the international association of culinary professionals and included in the best fooding series. welcome. [applause] to the left of her is amanda. cofounder of food 52.com and the author of the essential "new

york times" cookbook are for which she won an award. a long time staffer for "the new york times" she has contributed to many books including "east memory" and "cooking for mr. latte." she left the "times" to pursue her website. we have james who is the editor and chief of a magazine who was the judge on the first two seasons of "top chef masters." the 2006 book "cradles of flavor." was recognized by th association of culinary professionals and lectured widely. he was also an editor at an magazine. i 4r0*6 love "sassy." [laughter] and next to james is reverend

dev any jackson. is a cofound the brooklyn rescue mission in 2002 with her husband to bring healthy food to the homeless. finding fresh food rare in do nax book. they began growing produce. it is now a small ere bon farm supplying a small farmers market and pantry -- sorry for their food providers and the reverend jackson are known eye cross -- sorry the city with the partnership with community groups. welcome. [applause] on the end is the tracy mcmillan. a senior fellow at the shuster and "the american way of eating" undercover at walmart, applebees, farm fields and the dinner table, which went on sale

today. she has written on for "the new york times" she closed her food stamp case last month and of all things -- sorry. of all the things people have said she most please by a comment borrowed from the book, that girl can work. [laughter] [applause] so before we start with questions, i thought we would open to tracy for a minute. toyw give a quick overview of te book. everybody may not have read it. we'll take it from there. >> thank you for coming. i'm excited to have the discussion about the anti-foodie foodies was inspired by the report i did for the american way of eating. increasingly when i was going around the country working as a farm worker in california, as a produce clerk in michigan, and

cooking in applebees, i kept hearing from all the people they worked with that food was important for them. and yet most of the discussion that i was hearing in my professional life suggested that it was only sort of afliewntd people that cared about what they were eating. that's the inspiration behind the panel. i'm delighted that all of you incredibly smart and dedicated people decided to share with me. i'm psyched. >> great. we'll start off by asking the panel a question, why do we think that the food movementó getsw pigeon holed as elitest. i don't know in my show i tryoó speak to the middle and try to tab away the food lifetime and the realm of the elite so that the access, the approach to real food is nonthreatening to people. why do we think it gets pigeon holed as elitist. can you care about fooding without coming off as sounding

elitist? who would like to start? >> okay. >> okay. [laughter] >> this it right up my ally. we envision food at the level where some of the most at risk hunger people would have an opportunity to eat a level of food of such quality if they were wealthy. and i -- my husband took to the soil, and started to grow foods for our emergency food programs. and the amazing thing about it is a lot many people walk past us laughing what are they doing out there in the dirt. it was before such a popular movement, we began to grow and deliver fresh produce to people who had -- hadn't had real food in a very long time. they grew up with the food, or

they were young and never tasted vegetables that didn't taste like plastic. it was a wide range of motions plus we had another group of people who couldn't identify food. that was another category, you know. every brown red thing was an apple or the green stuff.íí i think that, you know, in our work, we have worked very hard to bring food down to a level where it's wholesome, it's available, it's affordable, and it's good for your body, spirit, mind, soul, empg. and we have taken great pride in the fact that we have worked introduce bock choi. i think the think that food that doesn't have to be elitist at any level at all. >> amanda, maybe you want to speak to that coming from "the new york times" what we could consider the elite of the

elite. [laughter] when it kind of call it food lifestyle, it automatically becomes elitist. you know, . >> having the opportunity to be. of foo foods that people are interested in, it's actually very simple, you know. >> bacon. agree beans. >> peasant style cooking in europe and now we're interested in -- that was fifteen years ago, now we're interested in, you know, growing our own and like, you know, curing and

prepreserving these things like people who didn't have any money. >> and grandma. >> i think it's has to move beyond the lifestyle for it not to seem elitist. >> i guess for me the head scratcher, i mean, looking around this wonderful room full of people, is there not a foody -- is there a person who is not a foody here? is there a thing as food not being a lifestyle? food is what sustains us along with oxygen. and i think, i don't know, i guess, for me personally, i i have got issues with the name foody. it kind of -- it jars me. it rubs me wrong. i mean, i just turned 49 years old. i have probably been in something like 42 countries in my entire life, i'm the editor of a food magazine.

i don't think i have ever met a person for whom food was not lifestyle. it's what we must do every singling day. i think maybe the essence what we're talking about is the fetishizing of eating. maybe that's what we mean by this word "lifestyle." and that's a bit -- it's weird. it's basically kind of like bratd brad pitt and angelina are too human life as is some extraordinary chief as to food and eating. i guess, i don't know. >> right. well just to sort of rip off of what james is seeing and one thing i was working. everybody wants good food. it's not like people that are working at walmart don't think about the meals or think they would like to eat health or don't spend time and energy on

figuring that out. like i sat down with a woman who i was working in the walmart grocery section with. and said what did you are have? we had the tuna cass roll and porky pine balls? they are a southern dish. it's a meatball that is rice cooked in it. the rice is sproutedded around it like spines. she talks about wanting to eat with the family. she's not a foody in the way we think about mainstream culture coming out of new york. >> i can definitely speak to the whole questions even -- people can with foodies and we expect not to be foodies can be foodies. focusing on that can be seen as elitist. i did a story a couple of years ago, for james, actually about the middle east a of the the iraq war there was upbring of

rough fuji. i knew from having traveled around a lot of them were really home sick. and one of the best ways people deal with home sickness is by cooking food. and i pitched james, being the tremendous editor he is, he accepted the story on what are the iraqi ref fujis eating. how are they dealing with home sickness through food? and i originally was going to do the story in damascus before the syrian government didn't let me in. i called the u.n. high commission an talked to the local person when i told him it was a food story. they were excited to have a story in refugees. these are people who are

starving, how can you write about what they're eating? most people, you know, would be thinking they're having difficulty getting food. no. it's part of why i want to write the story. i want to write about people who have absolutely nothing and are in the dreadful situation and how they are coping and food is helping. long story short, i think there's a dichotomy between so sort of what we think of the serious journalism when you say food writing. when you say food writing -- i tell people i'm a food writing. aassume i'm doing restaurant reviews and trend stories, and the latest rest pee recipe for a pink cupcake. it's assumed not to be a serious story. that's a tremendous opportunity for all of us. to do what fray sei is doing and do stuff that's about i don't know war, famine, things that,

you know, we usually think of as being topics that -- don't have anything to do with food. usually there's a food story in there. and our job is to find it. >> but do we think that maybe americans -- we're in america. potentially going -- sorry. >> sorry. >> there. that americans are going over board a little bit in the obsess with food? , i mean, i guess what i find is i see that the american food system has a three tiers to it or three categories with a i call or the of real food, which is, you know, an apple. junk food, which is apple jacks, and what i call in the middle all that sort of sthin etic apple flavored gummy bear. we have the three -- tiers to the food system. i agree with you james, everybody cares about food.

and everybody cares a about what they eat. it's not true they don't care, or people are so blindsighted bid what i call the foody fire wall that think they care about the food but they don't understand what they're eating or getting and i guess that's my big fear. people are -- for me, it keeps coming back to the elite crowd. we talk about food and write about food and do things with food for a living. everybody else doesn't have to. i guess can we speak to that? maybe i'm not being clear what i see as the three-tier system in the country where we have the luxury of being in a city we have access to the great stuff, do you spend time working in a walmart. you spent time works in todays. you had the first-hand experience with those places. i go in to a walmart and all i see is processed package, i know they're trying to bring in more

real food. i'm wondering for people care about the food or people like to eat because we're human and get hungry and we want to eat. is there a difference with that? are people getting obsessed what they're eating or people not that clear about it? >> right. i mean, most working families i met don't obsess about it to the extent they're taking photographs of the meals or -- or spending whole days wandering around farmers markets. gabriel writes how annoying farmers markets can be. you want to get the meat and there's a girl with the bicycle. if you have -- you know, and i've heard friends of mine who are parents make the same about strollers. most a convenient easy way to do it. i do think there tends to be a sort of unspoken undercurrent of debate sort of assuming that low-income families just don't eat a lot of fast food.

and that actually doesn't tend to happen for the low-income. they can't afford fast food. and i also think that when people are picking something like fast food or a convenience food, that's not an expression of i don't care, and i've been tricked. it's the sort of confluent of time and money and access and easy for them. convenience is huge for everybody. all ends of the income spectrum. if we want to have a conversation about public health in food, we have to have a conversation about we want people to eat well, how do we make it easy for them to do that instead of sort following a model. makes a lot of sense for families with disposable incomes to say you need to prioritize this and spend more time. spend more time cooking. i don't watch a lot of tv. i cook a lot. fine, that's my choice. i don't think you're going win over anybody by lecturing at

them by turn off your television and do the other thick. >> i can only make -- i'm not a food historian. i can only make conjecture about what american eating habits, american eating ways might have been hundred years ago, 125 years ago before the american corporate military machine took over and told us what to eat and how to eat it. i grew up in the 1960s and 1970s largely in northern california. a lower middle class kid. i ask not grow up in what we could call a foody family nowadays kind of like you mentioned early on in the book in a very moving way for me personally because i really identify with it. for me, when i was a kid, my dream food was carnation instant

breakfast chocolate malt. and also liby's fruit cocktail was the bomb. [laughter] >> only if you got the cherry. [laughter] >> yeah. >> my mom did not enjoy cooking. she shopped once a week for processed food. that's what i ate. my dad was an office product salesman and he used to travel the country, and he would when he came home, duplicate meals that he'd eaten at the great continental restaurants at the 1960s. and i think i went -- it began me on a journey of appreciating food. i don't think, again, to go back, what i was saying earlier i appreciate food anymore than any -- of any of you in the room right now. one thing that i have experienced maybe in my travels,

i have lived a lot in southeast asia, and south india, i lived for about a year and a half in a south indian village, there were no supermarkets with and there was no cash nation instant breakfast. instead there was only what was grown behind the house in the village behind the house. and eating that food for a year and a half, i felt a lot better than my cash carnation instant breakfast diet of being a kid. >> i also -- [inaudible] but i did spend a lot of time in "the new york times" go back hundreds of years, and the thing that was interested when i was working on a project was that -- it was how present -- like food was and people in every day life because you had to make everything from scratch, and so, like you know what you were buying, how you were making it was what actually was this --

like a very, you know, big part of everyone's day. and probably more so than people face now. and i don't think that, like, that -- [inaudible] but i also sort of feel like if you look at, like, if you get away from food and fashion. and our obsession with fashion. the result of this obsession, i think it's americans are go overboard culturally we're hard wired to go overboard with everything and we pull back until next time. i think the fashion you have seen that there's lot better fashion available to the masses and lower prices than there was twenty years ago. >> everything is made in china. >> i'm not saying -- there a lot of, i mean, negative reasons for that. but the fact is that like, it

would the obsession with fashion pop it get people interested and fig or youring out ways to bring it to the masses. i think that's happening with food. it's good. it's annoying ibdz when you go out to dinner with probably here with a group of people all they talk about the entire meal is like, well, you know, how the carrots were cut or, you know, how they found this weird cheese in the corner queens. and, you know, like, that can get a little much, right? but the end result, i think, i really believe this, i think, if you want to look at big company that has made some progress like chip chipolte. they made a great effort to change the way fast food is done. it takes this kind of -- over the top foody or whatever you want to call it and this kind of interest -- this kind of fashion

of food to, i think, to make problem -- progress that will join the groups right now which is, like, the elite foodies and those who feel kind of left out, and -- lechtd out of the conversation. >> i think chip chip pot lay is a great example. they are raising the bar on fast food. they are setting an example for people. bridging the gap, i think, between mcdonalds and everything else. >> look at something else we're not talking about, which is this kind of tremendous explosion of food blogs. i mean, a lot of food writing that we have grown up with here is the fancy restaurant it costs only $200 to have beginner and stuff like that. and suddenly we have gone from having those food writes we read about the consumption of food

and consumer product to sudden a wealth of studies you make and produce. for me, i don't know i never saw like any sort of i did cot my between fancy food and cheap food. my mom was one of those people. we went to farmers market. we had absolutely no money. really poor. she believed in the thing that came from my grandma who was child of immigrants. you always garden and made basic simple food. it was cheap as dirt because you were making less than tilts and vegetables. that's the '70s 1975 was the height of garden growing. there was great food everywhere. people are doing the stuff doing now. canning pickles, making yogurt. it was cheap and quite affordable and assessable to eat well.

the disciple of elizabeth david. this is not expensive stuff. it's stuff anyone can make. the whole kind of i did cot my never made sense we have the great you verse you can go on the internet and which are my favorite blogs? i have a giant box of kale, what do with it. had has a great impact with seability and making people feel like they can do. pioneer woman has five pictures. demystifying things know one showed you how to do. i think it's tremendous. >> i think about family, which is an example of what she was saying and american culture. and i don't think that you can take that out of the picture, because when i was young, my mother made instant mashed potatoes. we all liked them.

when i became in to the food movement, i said, okay, let me try making regular potatoes. i didn't like them. i preferred instant mashed potatoes. i grew up on them. they tasted wonderful. i didn't care they were artificial or dehydrated and the food movement i began to understand like i didn't like idaho but i like yukon gold. [laughter] , you know, nobody is a foody but i know. and i think we hoped -- it was that's instant mashed potatoes was good. it's what we ate as americans and everybody ate them. but now, you know, young people are being raised with the knowledge again now of, you know, different types of poi they tows, you know, they i've met little kids that can identify their vegetables because they are being educate young now. that maybe so many types of

potatoes and lettuce. i think that culture is changing and maybe because of the youth and obese problem but, you know, we're working on it. it's going to go forward.0n0l0n >> the pendulum is swinging0n0nn back.0l0n >> for me, one of the most revolutionary things we can do as americans now is not buy the right foods from the right coo open, not buy the right books and support the right causes, but instead actually just cook dinner at home tonight for your family. and it seems so kind of like -- i don't know it's so obvious but it's -- for me, for my advantage point, a profoundly revolutionary thing. if we all did that, even just one, two, possibly even three times per week, think about what a difference what it would make. think about what it would do to

all the food we've been slightly for the last few minutes and think about what it would do for the corporate military machine that really controls what we eat and how we teat in this country. >> sometimes we also full in to the false i did cot my. i know, we talked about this, there's nothing wrong with having process food every once awhile. i hate to say it but getting back to my mom again. every once awhile you work hard, you buy a frozen pizza, you chop real vegetables and put on top. come on. >> one thing that i i've been thinking about a lot recently because i've been thinking about about where i'm from and the culture there, because i'm from rural michigan, which is, you know, the very -- tends to be fairly conservative and very by your boot strap type of mentality. i find powerful in a lot of ways because particularly when you

don't have lots of industrial opportunity, if you don't think that you can get yourself out of that situation, you're going hob hopeless if you're not happy there. and one thing i engage with a lot, being able to cook is a form of self-sufficientty. it's empowering. you decide this is what i feel like eating and what i want to do. buns you learn to do it, it's not that hard, but there's this really big learn curve. i always feel grateful my family struggled a lot when i was young, i started cooking when i was like seven. all the big mistakes like you forget to put something in the cake you mistake the salt for the sugar and the problems, i done that by the time i was 10. by the time i'm like 12 or 13, i can actually cook food. once i get to the point where i have to actually cook for myself, like, i mostly have it down. i scrap the vegan stuff sometimes.

i have a roommate that is vegan. i have to deal with that. i can do that. it's a hugely empowering thing for me to be like i'm not going go pay money at the restaurant if i can make most of the stuff there. i'm not going to buy the processed stuff if i can make something just as good in just as much time. i did this thing in the book, i want to see what hamburger helps in terms of time and money. i expected it would be faster and cheaper to do hamburger helper which is ground beef, noodleds and gravy. it was like one minute faster to do it with the hamburger helper. it was like 50 centers expensive. the hamburger was moreuñuñ5n expensive. i need to work ouñn the gravy.qñ >>uñ and 50 percent salty.uñuñqñ >> right.5n5ñ5n >> and when you know how to cook, you can say, i want to salt it that much or i don't. and you have the power to

determine what you're eating. i think that that's really powerful about cooking. >> that's sort of -- i'm sorry the foody thing. i think because of there being so many products like hamburger helper things that help you to be convenient to be easy that people have lost a. not only the ability to cook, they have lost the ability to trust the instinct and senses. you fear being able to cook the real thing. you relied on the crutch of processed for song. so long. i grew up in the sub wushes in a house we're we made our jam and pickles. we did all of that. i liked that. little house on the prairie in long islands. suburban life. part of was economics because it was the '70s and times were tough. my dad was a teacher. we had no money. my parents were the same way. my mom went back to work like everybody's mom. she went back to work.

i think there was a huge dropoff for people who the had moms who went tobacco to work. suddenly there was no cooking being done. and as women went back to the work force, the kids grew up with no connection with scooking the mom wasn't home in the afternoon cooking. everybody embraces convenience and prose excessed food. there was so much more flooding in to the market. >> if you look at --ñ=? [inaudible]m9]7m?== stagnant since about 1979.ñ8=8=< that's part of it. one thing trays sei talk about in the book, the biggest barrier for people cooking stuff from scratch is not necessarily knowledge or money but time. that's usually the real expense. >> what tracy just said in the hamburger helper analogy doesn't hold water. >> it doesn't. i mean, i agree with him.

it's a time favored thing. >> we are brainwashed. for like sixty years. it's kind of like in the dna to think that . >> like you called it foody military. consumer. yeah. >> not much effort once you get. once you do, i don't know. we don't think about it. we shop every saturday morning at the trader joes around the corner from us. we have pretty much the same list rigid set of things we buy, and then we kind of riff on it. it really doesn't . >> a lot of people forget. >> [inaudible] they are brainwashed. >> they rely on the i think stingts. we had the mystique of scalloped

potatoes and it sounds difficult. you go jop line and you prog it up and you get thousand recipes. like cream, potatoes and cheese. why was i spending money on the other stuff. the simple recipe . >> information. >> the cookbook i had might have been way over the top with how we were cooking and now the internet is so vast. >> you used to turn on food networking and watch 24 hours of day people cooking. people who are watch the food network are not cooking. >> it and it may not be, but they're ab sorting -- what they have a greater sense how food is made. >> and value to that. if they never cook, they know more about food than they do otherwise. >> i agree with you. >> but i actually feel like -- like, it's a shame that monopoly ever michelle obama focused so

much on ingredients and not on cooking. i feel like she missed great opportunity. i think it would have been more powerful for her to get people back in the kitchen than be interested in the ingredients. because, like, we're saying it wasn't really matter what you're cooking. it matters that you are cooking. that you are understanding what it takes to feed yourself. that self-sufficiency and empowerment is valuable to our culture and in your family life. it has so many ramifications, i feel like that was a big thing for the past four years. >> i like that idea. >> even if you're using some kind of terrible cheating factory food or help that roast chicken along. you're still cooking. >> exactly. >> you're still in the kitchen putting your hands in to it. that's the first step. >> learning to cook is the gateway to having an

appreciation for finer ingredients or sustainable agricultural. >> i mean that. if you start cooking, you start to realize that food is comprised of multiple ingredients that you can play with them. right. , you know, if you taste something you make with one kind of ingredient and you try it with the money to buy a fancy chicken. you know how much better you think one or the other is. you can make an informed decision how you want to spent your money and time. that's important. that's how i got in to writing about my food. my background is an investigative welfare reporter. that's not that many of them. i was following a sustainable food cooking class. i was skeptical about it. it was powerful for the kids. they were learning to cook, and i they started with engaging in talking about with the ingredients and being able to feed themselves. i think that, you know, that's the sort of thing that everybody should learn, right. i think that's powerful. >> yeah. i mean.

i learned basically cumture. my mom cookerred. i looked how to cook with her. i took home ec in school. they don't teach that anymore. that kind of survival no the school kind, but teaching people life skills is something that is missing from american education. we're teaching to the test and not teaching real skills. they learned basic stuff, this is how you go the supermarket and pick out carrots in supermarket. this is how you peel and watch them. this is what you do. we are missing that. everybody is reading the food networking and reading blogs. some may be unattain football you don't have the basic have cab. i've been teaching for 14 years in a culinary school. you would think that everybody coming in is coming with with a

basic vocabulary already there and the basic knowledge. they ask me things like, you know, where is the lemon juice. i say? it's in the lemon. you have to get it out of the lemon. you know. they're coming in because they are attracted to the glamour and the flash they see on tv and "top chief" and everything. i'm graduated people that have basic cooking skills. that's the best i can do. but it's hard to not get caught up in the flash and the glamor forget people are not learning the basic vocabulary. >> i think a lot of the people who watch the food networking. i had some experience says you're a fancy food person. i don't have time. i don't know. and i think a lot of them are devoted food networking watchers and i think there's this disconnect you're talking about people a lot of people who sit and watch really, you know, hours and hours of food shows i think it's in some way it is makes them think they can cook.

they are watched complicated stuff and those are the people who say i don't have time for that. i'm not that great of a cook. and oftentimes they can cook simple stuff. but i think that we don't have enough of just really simple, basic stuff you were describing. i get questions like that all the time. i have recipes in the back of my book. and i tell people you know what they involve and they're like, i could never do that. and i'm like, why? i choose like the simplest recipes i know. most people are intimidated by the culture of food as performance. i think it has gone some way toward convincing people they can cook or don't have time because they think food has to be something glamorous and exciting and rock star chiefs make it. stuff that looks like a building. i think that's a problem in some ways. >> i think food tv, [inaudible] they have stuff in little

bowls. we never see where the lemon use comes from. and that's why i have to say -- [inaudible] farmers markets, we have food demos so people can actually the people peel the carrots and get them the free peeler to take home with them. because learning how to cut is a big deal to the average farmers market customer. we have many organizations that help those basic skills get in to the community, but, you know, we said if i had the little bowls, i could cook that dish too. [laughter] [inaudible] stacks of little bowls. i'll give you some. wouldn't it be great if you went to school and, you know, let's say second and third or fourth grade and mandatory part of the

national curriculum -- like that's going to happen, you had to take a class called life skills. is how you do your laundry. this is how you peel a carrot inspect is how you clean a wound things like that. i think that's what the life skills. i'm getting off track here a some of our discussion is about consumption and so little of the food discussion is about the production or sociopolitical context. anybody? [laughter] >> complicatedded. well, i mean, we do talk -- it's about eat olympic weapon talk about cooking, eating, shopping within what about production. you can speak to this, tray tracey. you were in the field. it is hard work. >> it is hard work. >> i have a garden, and that's

enough, you know. >> and you don't get paid a lot. >> no. in the book tracey your statistic which i can't recall the exact the tiny percentage of the actual labor to the final cost -- they paid the farmworkers more we couldn't afford the food. we have the cheapest food in proportion to our income in the world. >> right. farm labor ends up being on average 5% of the less or the index. i have a all kinds of noteds in the book. you get in to the argument about you couldn't possibly pay farmworkers anymore money. it would make our food so expensive. i mean, particularly in the community -- i was working in we weren't paid minimum wage. you could have brought it up to

min monal wane wage and the pound of garlic was like ten cents more. >> where is the markup happening in the head of garlic? >> most of the food of -- cost of the food is in marketing. up to the farm gate, it's usually i think the specific is around 16 or 18%. and 80%, that's all transportation, distribution, marketing, labor, you know, for furthered on. there was a usda study looking at what would happen to the cost of food if the minimum wage would go up. it's minuscule something like 1%. >> and the reason you weren't making minimum wage, you and your fellows throughout in the field, was because i imagine largely your coworkers were out of status. undocumented what we call illegal aliens. >> everybody as far as i could tell, they weren't documented. i did not do a systemmatic poll

of. everyone i was close do to scare did not have papers. and that seemed to be the case with everybody else. and i really think that is, you know, that's the only reason people are going to to for are $2 or $3 an hour. they have come up with a community and they are terrified of is isaying anything because they might not get worked. it's a deep fear of getting deported or having any kind of problems. they have very much living hand to mouth. it's better for us to have stable income than it is for us to have no income. we'll keep doing the work. >> what were your shifts work working for $12 or $3 an hour? >> i would be paid peace rate. get a $1.60 for every five. gallon bucket of garlic i could pick.

that happened with everybody. we were working for a farm labor contractor. and the contractor my foreman was really nice. he was a very aimble guy. i saw him help a woman who cut himself. i liked him. what the company did is they would take the cards from the field, take whatever we earned by piece rate, before they issued the payroll checks they would divide it by minimum wage. the card from the field would say i was there for eight or nine hours and the paycheck would have changed it to two or three. they would fake the sum of my wages divided by minimum wage and that would be whey earned. it was compelling and interesting for know sort of realize, you know, i this idea in my idea that farmwork is hard. i know, people suffer. in my head, secretly i thought they earned minimum wage. that doesn't tend to happen and part of the reason, we have the idea that the farm for the one

thing, gets a lot of the money for food at the store. that's very rare. and a lot of the way that food has gotten cheaper there's been a consolidation within the supermarket industry to develop these consolidated networks of distribution and supply chain. walmart is a king of this. walmart controls 25% of our food between farm and plate. which was interesting to learn. i was thinking yeah, there's pleasure on suppliers and farmers to pull down the cost. mostly it's been all of that sort of efficiency and distribution. >> sorry. do you have any idea where the garlic you were picking ended up? >> i actually -- i picked for two -- i picked for the farm labor character i was able to identify it was going two companies. one was the garlic company and one was christopher ranch. garlic company is a mass market company.

i stocked garlic from the garlic company from walmart. it was out of season. it's not possible it was actually my garlic. and i see braided heads -- lose garlic and braided heads of garlic from christopher ranch at whole foods. i called them up and said, hey, guess what? i was working working in in your field and i had the paycheck and the card, they don't match. christopher ranch said, sorry, everybody said it was paid minimum wage. it would happen if you look at payroll checks. and the garlic company sort of engaged with me more. they were like we cannot find your employee number. we have no record of you. there's a lot of field. you must be confused. which, you know, it's possible that the garlic that was in the create that said the garlic company on it went somewhere else. i didn't track it from the field

to the distribution center. i have no way to know. the way that it works is basically, you know, it just -- and workers have no idea where it's going. it right because the only reason i knew was because i was paying attention to detail what's the name on the piece of paper. there's a real disconnect where people that are working the fields don't know with the food is doing. what brand it is being sold pane people are buying stuff have no idea. we know it's grown in california, mexico, or the dr. we have no clue of the growing condition. ivity like i was in the place where there weren't actually any laws for workers. which was kind of creepy in the u.s. >> and kind of true. >> yeah. labeling of origins of produce, so you really adopt know where it's coming from. you adopt know what you're buying. they don't have to say where the produce comes from. i find that scary and

deceptive. in europe and great britain they had that for years. probably twenty years they had to label where it comes from. i find -- it makes me suspicious and skeptical when i'm buying super market produce. you talk about walmart you worked there. one of the things in my notes here is that's walmart announced they'll be putting their own label now on foods telling you whether it's a "healthy choice" or not. a "healthy" food according to the gospel of walmart. healthy in the walmart world. so that people can look at the food that walmart sells and grows and controls and owns and is selling to you. they can get a sense whether it's healthy. so they don't actually have to read nutrition labels anymore. >> is a marketing copy on the packages or what are we talking about? >> do you want to speak to that? >> it's a green sticker that says great for you.

it has a little icon of a unsex figure. >> that's what my mom said about the libies fruit cocktail. >> i was a fan of that. and cottage cheese. >> really good. >> canned peach. >> i liked canned fruit. i'm fine with that. >> it's often . >> great for you. if you go and look at what the actual criteria are to get the "great for you label." it's not very -- i wouldn't argue with most of it. it's low sugar, any fruit or vegetable with get it if there's no added sugar. it there's sodium criteria. i personally probably wouldn't let anything that artificial sweetener in there. they're letting some of that in. the thing that is crazy, if it's basically telling you it's a fruit, vegetabling with or low sowed sodium or sugar. are we that stupid we don't know if that's good for us. >> yeah. they are.

>> do we want to encourage that? >> if you shop at walmart. >> i don't know. i think a lot of people probably know fruits and vegetables are okay. don't eat a lot of sugar or salt. for me, it was the like of weird thing it feels like saturday tire. there's this corporation that is going to tell us we should eat our vegetables and we're extra excited by the corporation to tell us to eat our vegetables. i think maybe we should put and energy in to literacy around food and cooking. >> people are okay with walmart but not the government. that means that people trust walmart to make decisions. >> it comes in all forms. i don't want a corporate nanny either. >> yeah. i find it disturbing it is the gospel according to walmart.

they are making the decision as to what they consider better for you. i guess if it's vegetables and fruits, it's okay. i'm suspicious of that sort of thing. it if they're controlling the supply chain and they own allful corporate america. this is where you're going to get things like organic coke. better for you because they are organic corn super. >> i think we go back to the thing we were talking about. it encouragings someone, anybody to cook rather than just, you know, snipping open a plastic bag and dumping it in a bowl. more power to walmart even for the stupid-sounding green labels. >> i don't know people who shop at walmart are necessarily dumb. >> they shop at walmart because they -- i know you didn't mean it. but it's close to their house or, you know, . >> they can get all the ingredients. it is cheaper. i think what we're not talking

about or sort of talking about without naming naming it it is control and power. you know, walmart puts places out of business. they are so big they control so much of the supply chain. they can make sure they're the only grocery store in your neighborhood. and same thing with whole foods. i find it shocking, what i find most shocking is that tracey's book wasn't written before. knob went before and did what you did, and, you know, that to me, that's a challenge for us as food writers. we ask the question, why is there this sort of try cot my, the three levels of fee and part of it us because of us. we do unconsciously perhaps promoted the idea there's high food and low food. and, you know, the bad people eat low food and the good people eat high food. there's nothing in between. there's no gray areas. it doesn't meet. i think they do, i think that's

sort of our job is to map those areas where they do. >> i remember when maybe i'm wrong diet soda was good for you. and all of a sudden, it was . >> so was mar grin. >> the standard of good for you is until they find out it causes cancer. and then it's no longer good for you or, you know, it's grown in a way that has some sort of problem attached to it or, you know, it's great for you. but we're sprays nasty pesticides. you listen to one of the popular medical shows and like, you know, this specific fruit strawberry or something has so much pesticide and you're like, okay, healthy but can i get the stuff off my food? and these are the kinds of things that concern me. especially with things like peaches because of the fuss. and then they're good for me because of the fruit?

>> well, when you take the things that have been good for you for thousand of yearings and industrialize them, that's what becomes an industrialized product. it's going to be treated treated in a way where it's doused with chemicals a and not good for you. you have to look at how people eat them 300 years ago. >> my question for tracey on the note. do they get the good are for you label? >> i don't know. i would suspect they do. it's the fruit we regulate. so . >> who monitors whether or not something like pesticides is good for you when you can't feed off and you feed it to your children? >> and who accountable for that? that's why where the question is do we trust that -- who do we trust to help us figure that out? we as individual consumers are not going to be able to fibbing the problem of the pesticides

being put on the pooled. >> dot best we can. here we are sitting up here drinking this -- i've been served in a class out of the tap is it bad for me? probably it is. i know, it's crappy for the environment. we're going crush this thing up and maybe going go to go -- you know where i'm going. dot best we can do. >> rights. we can educate people too. don't always look for the per fruit. we train that way. the food with no blemish, that's, you know, -- i don't know how. >> the most common name. >> tell us the common person goes in to a walmart knows that's not the best food? not the best product to buy. and that's the process the next part of the food mu. to get the educational messages out that,

you know, t more than just whether or not it has sugar or salt or fat or, you know, whether it's been shipped from far away. there's a lot of things to take whether food is good for you or not. >> teaching kids basic stuff if it has a bug on it. that's a good thing. >> right. it doesn't have pesticides. >> i used to work in a restaurant we would get organic salad on it and a spider could crawling occupy. we have to train the spiders to put the spin on it. it mean it is wasn't sprayed by a pesticide. we have to ask the question where do you see it us twentd years from now. fifty years to the future? are we like those fat people in wall-e with the screens in front our faces.

is that where we're going? are we going to be eating pellets made out of people? are things going get were better? [laughter] that's what it was. it was people. it was a simpson party of party of it too. where do you -- where do we see ourselves in the future? do you want to field that one? [laughter] >> i don't know. when i was a kid, there's a sort of on secure science fiction writer named frank who wrote cool novels and wildly genres and had the book called the "missing person league" how the world of the future, only the elite get real food. there's a revolutionary movement of people that grow corn and tomatoes and under lights like

-- any age bring this book back to print. it has a profound event on me. he was a good writer. there was a scene where a little kid takes a little girlfriend to the dad's basement and it's like pot but it's corn and tomatoes they have tomatoes. she's like, oh my god, this is amazing. this is never i've experienced before. they get the pellets and stuff out of vending machines. and so that's like -- that's the, you know, the sort of possible future. and then there's other world that, you know, this possible, right. we all make our own yogurt or maybe we don't. we get good yogurt that isn't full of sugar and good stuff. ..

>> maybe we should look to that example. >> i am an optimist and i feel like, you know, it is the great things that we are all here for. there is a reason for everything. there is so much spotlight in regards to this issue. the fact that we are here is a good sign. maybe in 20 years we will look back and feeling our feel like our conversation was naïve. but i still think that the fact that people are talking about it, the first lady is focusing on food is her major life mission. people are running in both ways. michael collins has created a whole idea of food politics. i think you know, yes.

>> yes, i kind of side with you, amanda. just thinking about the childhood favorites of mine, and remembering from my perspective, my valid content relatively small perspective about what americans aged 20 years ago, i mean, oh my god, god, it was an apocalypse. it was all just canned and frozen food, olfactory food. there was virtually nary a fresh peeled carrot in what i grew up eating and what many around me eight as well. when i am starting to see now, i am a sort of by default food anthropologist, just because of my work. and if i am in a certain market

in suburban denver order somewhere in northern california or in hempstead out in long island, generally i think when i see people filling up their cards, they are filling up their cards with a little bit less terrible things and was 20 years ago. i can't imagine that that is going to -- i don't think we're going to go back in time. i don't know. i don't know. but it feels like maybe some okay things are starting to happen. and it feels like yes, maybe people are respecting the essential act of cooking. that is amazing. >> i think the economy has a lot to do at that, too. people have to feel like they are fending for themselves now. >> so be it. >> stephanie?

>> i agree with what he is saying. what i would add is a difference then, this movement has gone after the children. they are going to grow up to create children to eat better. the seniors, they were easy to recap it because they remember eating well. it is the middle group that has been ignored. the one that has been raised in the 70s that have been eating processed foods. in some ways, we can't cast them aside. because i personally feel that if you do, you are going to break the medical bank. we are going to have so much sickness and disease and not be able to pay for it all. you know, i think that in the future, starting from now and moving forward, we need to work on helping the ones that are

going to grow old and need the most support. i think they have been ignored. twenty years from now, you know, i think it's going to be okay. because in a community, i am looking at young people. getting a lot of emphasis. i have seen children going past the supermarket crying because their parents are trying to stop and get them fresh produce, but they are rushing him. the kids are really doing a good job. they are really reaching out and changing our culture. i kept reaching out to them with books and shows. it's not so hard to make the operon potatoes or whatever. maybe we won't buy organic, but maybe, you know, we will cook.

that is the way i think a lot of it breaks down. >> i am sort of torn between the dystopian view and otherwise. but i do think one of the things we need to let people know, like the reverend here, because the work that she is doing really shows that people in working-class communities care about their food, and that is actually the largest and fastest-growing portion of the population. marketers are telling realtors this. houses that earns less than 30,000 dollars a year. houses that are earning that kind of income. you are seeing change and a dedication to fresh fruit, and i think that is really exciting and optimistic. you know come at the same time, there are a lot of structural regions that make it very hard. i think that annie is called

would be we have to take this stuff seriously and we can't just be doing the lifestyle stuff. everybody on this panel does way more than lifestyle stuff. there is beautiful, informed, historical writing and the recipe writing is phenomenal as well. but we have to as a society, take our foods seriously and stop teasing people for it. yes, i do and i take a shower everyday and i brush my teeth. the only person that sincerely believes poor people only like junk food is somebody who has never met somebody who is poor. i think that is really important to remember that and build a community around now. >> okay.

the future of food in america is going to mirror the future of politics, which means we will come even more divided along those lines. like a michael collin versus sarah palin, basically. sarah palin raising her just because she can't bring packaged cookies to her kids soccer games and fighting for her corporations like coke. i think the other side could be people who care and people like us. i can't be quite as optimistic, but part of my job is to be. >> i think we are just about out of time. but we can take questions. if anybody has any questions,. >> the microphone is going around. because this is being filmed, we need everyone's talking to the

>> i would like to thank you all for the discussion. we have put together some awesome content awesome questions here. primarily, i am going to topics that you have sort of touched on. i'm talking about the shame of lecturing people on how to eat. it seems like we are trying to sow the seeds of shame. and she has written on a degree of shame and people who access food stamps, and just how do we get around this? what does the panel think about this, especially people who are preaching to the food community, can you really go back? taking it out of the equation, really. >> i think that i like the question, i guess i'm just -- i'm not completely sure about what you are -- i'm not completely sure about what

you're getting at. >> i think that i understand. it goes back to food access and the whole notion of people who are poor don't want to eat healthy when it just may be that their supermarkets, but the local has really poor produce. the farmers market is sometimes out of their price range, and it's about creating a way for people who may not have enough money to really shock the way they would like, but, you know, by accepting food cards and at the farmers market, putting in systems when they spend amount of money, they get a 2-dollar coupon that comes back order a cooking demonstration and they're going to put on -- just trying to level the playing

field as much as we can. that is one of the reasons why we participated in a program with the united way or the emergency food program has reached contract with old farmer's. for half of the year, they brought down fresh produce. it is pretty much the same as the csa produce, and that is distributed free of charge. there are people out there trying to level the playing field so that, you know, it just becomes food, and equal access. it is not special food, it is not, you know, we eat it all and we all have access to it. you know what? donated food, tax expiration, put that in and let's start feeding her people food.

we need to figure out ways that we can level the playing field and pay for it. question, but -- >> i don't have a whole lot to add because i think that -- what i would sort of love to see if the food culture move towards -- where we don't have to like talk about where our food is from or its pedigree or any of that. it is all pretty good stuff in it is all produce pretty well. we can focus on other things like art and music and culture. you know, i would really love to see that. and i think that the idea that, you know, we want to want to get to a point where it can just be food that we know that is good. that is really -- i would love that. >> you know, this is going to sound sort of bad, but i'm going to say it. i go there. there are a lot of things in new

york city. our farmer's market is the union square armors market. like many new yorkers, respect a lot of what i see and what i buy at the union square farmer's market. there is frankly another side of me that is really appalled by it. and the fact that, you know, in season plums and peaches are $4.50 per pound, it's not right. it is not okay. i have been to a farmer's market. i've been to a couple in california, but i have one in mind in particular. for me it was like a dream farmer's market. it was like where everybody shopped. just from my perspective, it seemed like all cultures and economic levels, all races, all skin colors, it was just this really amazing, really true

quelled of the culture of sacramento. there were farms for sale for 50 cents. of course, you are in the heart of the central california valley. most of the funds that we eat come from, but they are is also 25-dollar bottles of olive oil. it was like a place where sacramento shot, and it actually bugs me that yes, there are exceptions, and yes, you can find dollar bags even at the union square farmer's market, but it does kind of bugged me that the overriding thing at the union square farmer's market is for me, for dollar 50 cents bombs. it disturbs me. maybe that sort of hoax in what you are talking about. it makes me feel shameful. >> one quick thing.

detroit eastern market is totally the same way. it is open to all walks of life. you can get tons of really great food there. and it is totally affordable. that is just the way it is. it is not done a really fancy. you go there, everyone shops there and you're done. >> all kinds of markets and stuff like that. you have great markets that it will be half mexican and it is a very typical chicago thing and it's all dirt cheap. the you are asking about the shame thing, which i think is interesting. food has this really visceral profound affect on people. like all, had some food once, let me tell you about it. everybody has a story. we can tell that some are not interested in food. most people, you know, most

people have their own food culture. i think it's like some people react with this kind of feeling, that you must know all of these amazing bunch and amazing things about food and you must only dine on montego cheese and certain things and part of what we can do to not make people feel ashamed is just not to judge people who eat frozen pizza. when people react like this, i grew up eating frozen pizza, but my mom put vegetables on it or my grandmother made duncan hines next step because she could get it for 50 cents. but when she would, she would add ground pairs to it that she would grind by hand. we think that these are kind of false. one thing that we have to keep in mind is with our system in new york, there is a geographical limit to where the good can come from. so i think --

>> because like you are saying, those are just sort of general will sell markets or you can bring in stuff from all over the place. but you know, i'm with you. it drives me crazy when i put one tomato on a scale of farmer's market. >> i totally agree with you, but i also think that you talk about eating and people are paying with food stamps. people who live around the square,. >> it was like 20 years ago. >> also one thing we are not talking about is organic food at half the price of what you paid in union square, and often cheaper than the non-organic foods at the supermarket. a bunch of people that get together, you know, different kinds of food co-ops, and

despite their different kinds of bars, and you google it and go home and start your own. this is like my night to talk about how great the 70s work. [laughter] >> everyone had their food court and often it would be a bunch of people getting together, and they would like called a distribution company in the truck would come would be women unloading stuff, it was just -- stuff that regular people head. that is still acceptable, but it might be a little harder, but we can still do it. >> are rcf is not just for produce but from everything, meat and dairy and stuff like that. >> yeah. [talking over each other] >> okay, learning about how we you found are the most effective

dear husband to not overcooked vegetables. >> does your husband like the overcooked vegetables? >> i think there is a rule that it it is extra hard teacher has been anything and vice versa. >> some people really like overcooked vegetables because that's what they grew up with. and that is a comforting thing for them. i like really overcooked carrots. i admit it. i can say that. >> would you like to take a question? >> i have something to say. earlier i was talking about [inaudible name], and i love

them. there are sometimes certain things that can really be taught only in person. remember 10 years ago that distance learning was the new thing. we were just all going to learn on the computer and come to find out, that didn't necessarily work so well. we learned by having somebody show us how to do stuff. sometimes it is just someone you know. sometimes that is the best. >> i mean, you know, traveling back in time fo 25 years ago, there were not so many sources to turn to for information about where to learn to cook. plain and simple. as there are now. it is pretty incredible. however, i do think it is important to remember that by and large, what we see on tv on the food network and top chef and top chef masters, is just

like you get in that kind of tb narcoleptic thing and you zone out and it's fun and you fall in love with personalities, even on really straight cooking shows. but there is an amazing food blog out there, the food blog that she is talking about, food 52.com, for that matter. it is kind of phenomenal. an explosion of information out there, it is incredible. it is absolutely incredible. >> yes, i would just say that i mostly learned to cook from cookbooks. because my mom is really sick. i was just as dorky little kid that was like oh, there is a parent teacher conference. i'm going to cook this with margarine. and i went and i did that. and i think that if you can find cookbooks and sort of look for them having the little bits that

explain how something is done, just like in a couple of basic recipes, they will tell you what attention is supposed to be when you pierce the carrot with a fork or something like that. reporters often make good recipe writers because you need these concrete details. you find a few folks that do that. and it makes sense for her your husband, right? because everybody learns differently and everyone drives differently which is why different people like different cookbooks. i generally find that very powerful. i have just a few cookbooks that i turn to for anything like that. there is the joy of cooking. really good basic things. the key is also the person doing the learning has to say, okay, i'm going to win this and decide to really focus and figure it out. but i have found you can learn from books pretty well. >> it's like a whole bunch of cooking, the teaching cooking applications that are coming out. you know, cook's illustrated or

america's test kitchen. they came out with a whole program. top chef has top chef university. they're just going to be more and more and more. there's actually a new company that will be doing a daily video e-mail that teaches you something like how to cook something everyday. it will be coming out soon. >> i think there will be more than enough information available. >> i think we stopped overcooking vegetables when we stop going through the process. >> if you're getting them from a garden, you want to capture as much of the flavor and nutrients as you can. even if it is, you know, something that is being buried in salad dressing, all those kinds of things. they come from, having tasteless food. as you move closer to better

tasting food, i think it is an easy habit to break. >> you stop cooking your food. what she ate before she came here was raw bok choy. that's what you had for dinner. [laughter] grow a taste for what we grew up with. some people does he do it 12 it. >> you need to support that. don't make fun of the south vegetables, i love them. [laughter] >> i wonder if we could go back to that sort of class topic. like many of you are saying. economics. to go back to your question

about shame or judgment or lower classes. i'm surprised that nobody explored the exploitation of those classes, if you will, by those sort of militarized corporate machines, as you called it, tracie macmillan certainly mentioned the exploitation of the workers, i am surprised that nobody explore the topics of the exploitation -- because they are essentiallyp easy prey for agribusiness and other corporations. >> i think it is maybe important to remember that i don't think falling prey to this machine that we both know reference -- i

don't think it is class specific. i think that all of us as americans, in one way or another, i don't know, maybe victimize, perhaps that's too strong of a term to describe this, but in a way, maybe it is not. we all fall prey to it. we are all in a kind of mass hypnosis, too. where we don't -- we have even forgotten the basic things, like how to simply fry an egg. that, of course, is an exaggeration in some ways. contradicting some of the things that we were talking about earlier, but i don't think that it is something just specific to poor people or middle class people or rich people. in a way, i think we all, as americans, are hypnotized by0o this kind of really screwy way of nurturing our bodies. >> not just as americans. by the way, i write primarily

about middle east politics. there is a famous story, not to go back to current history, but i'm sure everyone here is aware of saddam hussein's gassing of northern iraq in 1988. this horrible thing that happened at the end of the iran-iraq border. one of the things that made possible was the fact that we were showering him with support in the form of subsidized american wheat. this is one of the things that help prop up saddam hussein during his reign. there is a story about one of his biggest henchmen. at that time, it was sort of the bread basket of iraq. they were making this decision to do this and he said, somebody said, what about this? we can't do this campaign against these guys because -- we

have the americans way, we don't need that. >> we don't necessarily think of the food system. we think of ourselves as the primary accessories of it. go to wiki leaks and you will find some very interesting dialogues between american diplomats trying to tell people in other countries, you know, these farmers won't accept a certain foods, we have to find a way to make sure that these guys except rj mcleod. we all have our work cut out for us. i cannot just emphasize this as americans and works in ways that, you know, we don't even think of. >> it feels like the biggest hurdle, is just that -- in addition to being -- it's just

that we've been trying to think that everything should be cheap, do you know what i mean? it's hard to have a conversation about it. because when you are on the side of the issue and you say that you look like a jackass. but it is true. but it should cost something and it cost something for those who get paid minimum wage at least. this is the thing, the conflict that is most difficult to resolve. >> also that we should put our trust in corporations. the corporations -- that the products can be trusted because they are these great pillars of american society and corporations are people and we can trust them. look at what they are producing. they are good for us, and made america strong. if you put all your trust in

corporations, then you're going to eat whatever they tell you to eat. >> hopefully the rest of the world won't follow this kind of terrible model that we have set up. you know, for the last five or six or seven or eight generations or so. i'm sorry, decades or so. one thing just popped into my mind, as you were speaking. i have been traveling to mexico since probably, oh, goodness, the late 1970s. and i have spent a couple of days with diana kennedy, who is one of the great authorities on mexican cooking. on my recent trips to the country, and this is something that diana was very much echoing, mexico in their way of eating is kind of eerily like -- it's becoming like ours was, maybe in the 1940s were the 1950s. and it is kind of not so good but a lot of local farmers --

they are kind of out of business. a lot of the way to mexico each now is because it's dependent upon big huge agribusiness. it is not cool. that is just mexico as an example. i have to say, that is pretty unsettling for me personally. >> actually, there is a word it is called "globesity." something that is interesting -- we have been trained to think that it should be cheap. also, one of the things that has happened in this period of these decades, is that we have been trained to think that certain foods should be cheap. like white refined flour and sugar. why is it that -- my grandmother always made molasses cookies because during the depression,

molasses was more cheap. why do we think it really cheap sugar -- if we know anything about how sugar is produced, that is what should be expected. tracy talked about this in her book. we haven't almost exactly reversed. >> farm subsidies. >> you know, we talk about europeans and income to our food, greater percentage, and i think the thing about you value it more when you have to work for something. it is kind of like we need to find some middle ground there. >> i am also a little upset when i shop at a food four less, which is a southern california, i don't know. it's a cheap supermarket chain. you can buy, oftentimes, 10

lines for 1 dollar. there is something not right with that story. >> and we always have to conceptualize this. as much as europeans spent on food, you know, they also spend less on housing and education and health care, which are things that the european government-subsidized pretty heavily. in france from the most recent comparative numbers were from 2007, and the average american household was spending about 13% of their income on food and the french were spending 19 or 20. there was a 6% difference when i calculated this. the americans spent 6% more on education and housing, france spent like 20% of their gdp. we are making decisions on how we want to allocate our money and what are we expecting people to shoulder the burden of that. not to mention child care, which doesn't even get pulled into

that, as well as vacation time. if i had five weeks of vacation every year, i would be really happy to spend a week of that canning all of my on food and canning a garden and things like that. i think it is important to make sure that people are getting paid decent wages and develop a weight to talk about food so that people appreciate it and don't think it's worthless. we need to talk about how what life is like for a lot of people. >> i think that is part of the thing we have to do as writers. we have to paint in economic and political story. anthropology, sociology. we tend to look at it another way. >> unfortunately, we are out of time. i'm getting a signal fromsuw] somebody over there.wñs] thank you all for coming and thank you to the panel. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> everybody, there are books for sale. also amanda and jim and anna are awesome. everyone come talk to the reverend because she is awesome. >> all this week, turn to c-span for the live gavel to gavel coverage of the democratic national convention in charlotte, north carolina. this evening see speeches from elizabeth warren and former president bill clinton. watch every minute in every and every speech on c-span. here on c-span2, it is booktv all day every day throughout the convention, with highlights of nonfiction authors and books from this past year. on c-span3, also throughout the convention, 24 hours of american history tv with lectures, oral histories, and they look at historical american sites and artifacts. tonight in prime time on

booktv, former national intelligence officer discusses his biography about the chinese leader. >> because the idea of reform was not unique, and even criticizing his successor, the one that has now been chosen to be his successor, who turned out not to be a great were strong leader, was in favor of the reforms. a lot of the senior officials were in favor of the reforms. to a certain extent, he did have a very long time perspective. when he thought about hong kong, he said, you know, if he asked obama, what are you planning to do for the next 50 years for your country, there would hardly be a serious question. no american leader can think to the end of this comment to the

end of the next election. i think that he did have a long-term perspective, but at the same time, he was experimental. and he didn't have a fixed notion. and there was the expression crossing the river and groping for stones. again, that tone was somehow not unique to him. he did not invent the tone. he used the term and the ideas, and he was the manager who put it all together and provided the direction that made it all happen. >> watch the entire interview on his biography on the transformation of china here at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2. >> on your screen is a new book that is coming out in september of 2012. lynn povich is the author and it is called "the good girls

revolt." who are the good girls? >> well, i was a good girl and i went to work at newsweek when newsweek hired women only as researchers. basically, we were fact checkers. all of the guys from the reporters they were writers. and we stayed and fact checked and one day be realized, there is something wrong with this picture. on the day that "newsweek" did a cover story on the women's movement, 46 of us sue them for sexual discrimination. >> was that timing accidental? >> we knew we would get the publicity because we knew the publicity would get them more than a case going through the eeoc. >> so you work that "newsweek" 1965 to 1970. at what point did you start talking to women in the office? >> we started organizing in the fall of 1969. one of our friends, judy, was a

lawyer and set our situation was illegal. she didn't leave it and call the eeoc and they said yes, it is illegal to have an all-female research category. as we were organizing, we just decided to do a cover story on the women's movement that there were no women writers. time commitment outside their magazine and hired a woman from outside. and we thought, the day that they publish -- they picked up the book follow all over the world. >> how long did it last? >> immediately wanted to negotiate and we settled in august. a year later, they have done very little. our first lawyer was eleanor holmes norton. the second lawyer was sure your grad who represented the women

at "the new york times" afterwards. in 1972, kay graham, of the "washington post", center corporate low order to negotiate with us. that was joe calloused on tells donald that ended up being the secretary of president johnson. we settled in 1973. we had one third of the writers and reporters to be women and a third of the researchers to be man. which was really important. >> what was your career trajectory? >> well, what happened was we made him promise to have a woman senior editor. in august of 1975, i was promoted to that position. so i was the first female editor at newsweek. it is beyond this, it is a story about good girls. women who are raised in the

40s and 50s and came of age in the 60s. they ultimately challenge all the things they were raised to believe about women's role in the world. and the impact that had on us. >> again, what has changed for young women today. >> is a senior editor, when he became a senior editor, you became part of management, too, was that difficult for you? >> the men who were the writers supported the women. the senior editors, the management which often happens in organizations, was where a lot of the discrimination took place. the editor-in-chief was a convert quickly. the other senior editors had a very hard time and women who tried out as writers for them failed often. when i was in meetings as a senior editor, the first woman in a meeting filled with men, it was really hard for me. i have learned to speak up. and i had to learn to fight for my story.

but one of the interesting things that i learned is that a lot of the men who were fighting were actually very timid. in fact, there were a lot of passive man that you didn't realize, so it was a lot of learning experiences. >> has it over the years changed for women? >> it has gotten much better. there is no longer a research category at all. young women hired as reporters and writers right way. until gina brown took over as the editor, the first female editor in chief in 2011. >> she was the first magazine chief? >> she was the first news and magazine editor in chief for "time" magazine and "newsweek." there are still subtle kinds of discrimination to make it harder

for young women today. but that it still exists often about marginalization, not being heard, guys getting ahead a little bit faster, the kinds of stories, there is still a lot to be done in the workplace. in the workplace as well as journalism. men who are in the female occupations now, because of the recession, they are becoming nurses and secretaries and so are. >> is there a reason? >> i think the perception of men and how they have been seen still exists. i do think that women still have trouble putting themselves forward. >> what have you learned over the years? about making sure that your voice is heard? >> i have learned to speak out.

and i have learned to put myself forward and put other women forward in their ideas. i have also learned not to be put off by style. a lot of women have styles that are very modest and humble. a lot of men always say, right, i can do it. but the question of who does a better job, and i think that we have to get beyond saying she looks like they can do the job and who can really be capable and confident of its. >> why did you write this book? >> i wrote the book because i thought the story should be told. we were the first women in the media who sued. nobody knows about it. and i think that history is important. i was a history major. when young women today found out about our story and learned that they weren't the only ones who are feeling that way, it changed their lives. they are immersed in issues now.

you can't look forward without understanding where you're coming from. >> we've been talking with lynn povich from "newsweek." formerly of "newsweek." "the good girls"the good girls e women of newsweek sued their bosses and changed the workplace". >> thank you for being with us. >> i enjoyed it. send us an e-mail at booktv.org. works under such we at booktv. a biography of president dwight eisenhower was written entitled eisenhower in war and peace. he spoke at the 2012 reading festival at the presidential library and museum in hyde park, new york. >> thank you very much.

it is always a pleasure to return to the roosevelt presidential library. i think this is my 26th visit here while i'm primarily going to talk about eisenhower, let me say a few words about eisenhower and ike. when eisenhower was sent to london in june of 1942, later, on his way to tedder ran in the end of 43, the president stopped off in north africa and spent two full days with eisenhower. fdr was taking in what he saw and he liked it. the two are very much alike. they bonded on a trip to a

battlefield of carthage. and roosevelt was also smitten. he insisted that case did not set him on a picnic lunch that they had on the way. [laughter] immediately, after the conference, roosevelt picked eisenhower to command the dude untuned d-day. if you wanted it, with characteristic self-discipline, national decline to express an opinion when roosevelt asked him. at that point, fdr said simply that it will be eisenhower. eisenhower was roosevelt's first choice, really to command the d-day invasion. by that point, he had three major operations under his belt.

he was experienced leaving coalition forces. the old story that roosevelt could not sleep with marshall out of washington, that was the spin that was put on it, that was the spin that was put on his face of not getting the position. ike and roosevelt met in january 1944, eisenhower visited washington. they thought alike, they got along marvelously. except on the question of charles de gaulle. roosevelt heeded the call. eisenhower knew that de gaulle was essential. and, in fact, outmaneuvered the president, which very few people have ever done. now, for today's lecture on eisenhower, my text is a letter that i wrote to his brother edgar when i was president in

1955. edgar was one of his older brothers. should any political party attempt to abolish social security, and eliminate labor laws, he would never hear of that party again. there is a tiny splinter group that believes you can do these things but their number is negligible and they are stupid. [applause] [laughter] >> eisenhower was a progressive conservative. fiscal matters come he was militantly conservative. we insisted on a balanced budget, resisted deficit spending and refused to cut taxes until the government expenditures were in line with the revenues. but he also recognized that government had a positive role to play. when the economy turned down after the korean war, eisenhower

launched the interstate highway program. which is really the mother of all programs. the total costs of the interest rate program exceeded the total expenditures from 1933 to 1941. the entire program was funded without impacting the federal budget. simply by increasing the tax on gasoline. eisenhower also constructed the same ones sea wave, a mammoth public works project opening the midwest public traffic. he expanded social security and added 12 million self-employed persons, doctors, lawyers, accountants, and so forth, increased benefits across the board, raised the minimum wage by 25%. perhaps, above all, eisenhower took on senator mccarthy and soundly defeated wisconsin

senator, restoring sanity after almost a decade of anti-communist dispute. eisenhower orchestrated the army's response during the mccarthy hearings, and at a crucial point during those hearings, issued one of the most far-reaching executive orders ever issued, prohibiting government employees and testifying before congress. he handled the entire matter behind the scenes, never expose himself, i'm not going to get into a contest -- he did it all behind the scenes. eisenhower's appointments to the federal judiciary led the way to social equality, racial equality in the united states. and it was not just the appointments of earl warren and william brennan to supreme

court. it was a host of liberal republicans that roosevelt appointed himself. men like elbert tuttle of georgia and john wants in a louisiana. these were the judges that were in the vanguard of the civil rights struggle. but the most significant judicial appointment, i think, that eisenhower made at the time, was that of john marshall harlan, great conservative justice, just after the court's landmark decision in brown versus board of education. certainly after that decision came down, justice robert jackson died, leaving a vacancy on the court. at that point, roosevelt turned to harlem, who is the grandson of the great john marshall harlan, who had been the only dissenter in 1896, a place that utilized segregation, by pointing harlem, the main gate

of the great dissenter, eisenhower was making a statement of the south could not ignore. desegregation was the law of the land and eisenhower was going to enforce it. when a mob attempted to block it, eisenhower sent a regular army, not just a regular army, but 101st airborne to little rock to enforce liberty. eisenhower's view on desegregation was clear. he recognized that this was a bitter pill for the south to swallow. he placed the emphasis on the fact that this was law. the supreme court decision was the law of the land. eisenhower was going to enforce it. i believed it would be easier for the south to accept. if he stressed it was the law of the land, his successors, lbj and jfk, emphasized the virtue

of integration. ike stressed the rule of allah. and if you look back to 1950 in the early 50s, this might've been the most effective strategy. in foreign policy, eisenhower's record is exemplary. after the election in 1952, before taking office, he went to korea, flu and an army spotter plane along the entire battle line and concluded the war was unwinnable. over the objections and the commanders on the spot. south korean president, and a significant portion of the republican party, eisenhower made peace. after we did so, early in his term, not one american serviceman was killed in action for the remaining eight years of eisenhower's presidency.

eisenhower, he was a contradiction of terms. like america's other great military president, ulysses-esque rant. eisenhower hated war and asserted that the u.s. would not become involved unless national survival was at stake. he had no national security adviser, ike was his own national security adviser. he had a secretary to the national security council. that came in with president kennedy in 1961. the president trusted eisenhower's judgment completely. as president, ike slashed spending, reduced ground forces and introduce what we called the new look to military strategy.

states would not fight wars beneath the nuclear threshold, and if they did go to war, it would be with massive retaliation. under eisenhower, that kept the peace. twice the joint chiefs of staff and members of the national security council recommended the use of nuclear weapons, a second time and both times ike said no. there are few presidents who would've had the confidence or the courage to do that. eisenhower understood the term and american exceptionalism that we hear so much about today. but it was not a free pass to, but an obligation for the united states to set an example. as the world's most powerful country, eisenhower believes that the united states and its actions must always be above

reproach. in england, france, and israel, when they invaded egypt in the suez canal, one week before the presidential election in 1956, eisenhower was livid. and was determined to withdraw appellate not to withdraw this because we ask them to come as he told the secretary of state willis, eisenhower instructed secretary of the treasury george humphrey to run on the british pound on the international markets. today's leader anthony eden called eisenhower and asked for financial assistance or that eisenhower agreed to provide it if they withdrew from the suez canal. he told them if you are not out by this evening, i will tell humphrey to bring it down to zero and they were out by

evening. it cost anthony eden his post as prime minister. he had been a friend of eisenhower's. india, britain and france were america's oldest allies. eisenhower insisted in compliance with international law and were for the united states, particularly in the underdeveloped world was enormous. the american prestige rarely have been higher. and eisenhower concealed his hand throughout, just like in his dealings with macarthur. the documents and documentation pertaining to this has become available only in the last several years. that was eisenhower's style. he liked to make everything look easy. he enjoyed being underestimated by his opponents. many of you here can probably remember back to the election in 1956 when they had the bumper

stickers. if we're going to have a golfer for president, let's have a good one. [laughter] >> eisenhower made mistakes, he was overly concerned about communist and political activity and listened to critically to the cia. also in guatemala and iran, the consequences in iran have been disastrous. eisenhower also approved on the eve of the very summit, which was judgment mistake. which ike took full responsibility for. now, eisenhower, like grant was a product of the peacetime army. i'm joking to myself about grant. two weeks ago i spoke epigram presidential library but if you can believe it, the u.s. grant presidential library is at

mississippi state university. [laughter] it is at mississippi state university in mississippi. and the president said, well, let's let them put pittsburgh on the map. [laughter] it shows you how times have changed. i was born in texas, october 14. 1819. he grew up with five brothers in abilene, kansas. .. ..

it was deliberate. he resented having to go to church every sunday when he was a cadet at west point and said he wasn't going back. eisenhower also clearly did the political resonance of religion and he did later join the methodist church. the sender aye added the words, under god, to the pledge of allegiance. it was under a fake that we put in god we trust on the currency. and also, it was eisenhower who is the recommendation of secretary of agriculture began each cabinet meeting with a silent prayer. one day, cabinet secretary has a note to eisenhower, which said, mr. president, you forgotten

silent prayer. eisenhower read the note and said that the imac, we forgot the family prayer. [laughter] eisenhower entered west point in 1911 at the age of 21. he was three years older than his classmates, unlike grant, he went to the academy to get an education, unlike perhaps mcarthur and patton, who went there interested in future glory. eisenhower graduated in the top third of his class. he was the color sergeant in the color academy. his first duty assignment was an 18th infantry in for sam, houston, texas. he was there he met mimi. a very wealthy family from denver in texas and san antonio.

and they were married july 1, 1916. mimi was 19 at the time. i'd did not get to france in world war i. he spent world war i in gettysburg, commanding a training center. the end of the war, as lieutenant colonel. he was reduced to a major in the contraction of the army afterwards and remained a major first eckstein years in the army. most of the army does is first recorded by seniority. there were no meritorious promotions through the rank of general. and it took eight of 16 years to climb to the top of the promotion list. in the decade of the 20, he served under dictatorship really of the legendary with baron

operations officer in europe and who was a cardinal, richard lugar, the military profession if you think that's fair. connor took a liking to eisenhower and took him with them to panama to be his executive officer. in 1921. and by so doing, save him for being court-martialed. the inspector general wanted to court martial eisenhower because he submitted a false voucher claiming $250.45 housing allowance for his son, ike, who happen to not be present at the time. $250.45, but when they court-martialed had when he decided to take eisenhower to panama, the inspector general bill last to the power would be on eisenhower's side and agreed to settle for a letter of reprimand in ike style, which is still in ike's bio.

they came back to the u.s. wanted to go to the status quo more than worth, one of the stations you have to punch in the military career. the chief of infantry had passed them over for an assignment there. again it was fox conner, deputy deputy chief of staff food intervened, transferred to the adjunct general corps. graduated first in its class, went back to the infantry. the chief of infantry was so annoyed at eisenhower for having made that, but he assigned them to the 24th in country and for dining. this is the guy who graduated first in his class at leavenworth with the chief of infantry science into the try for the infantry, which is a housing unit. if it's a black unit, similar in the eye to the famous calvary,

the considered by virtually everyone in the military and assignment they are misunderstood to be a penal assignment. again, fox conner intervened and after three months they are from the normal tour of duty was three years, eisenhower was assigned to the general pershing's battle monuments in paris. fox conner polled the strings as well. eisenhower stayed for a year and a half in the late 20th come enjoy the enormously, but decided they were out of the mainstream and for the fourth time conner intervened and eisenhower was ordered back to washington to the office of the undersecretary of war in 1930 and 31 and it was there in washington that the war department, were general macarthur, who was chief of staff saw eisenhower, made eisenhower his military secretary and spent the next eight years working for macarthur while he was chief of staff in washington. this began as absolute hero

worship on eisenhower's part and ended in mutual hostility between the two. in 1939, eisenhower returned to the united states. i may say just a further word about that assignment. macarthur had retired as chief of staff in the united states army in 1935 and his job in manila was commander of the philippine army. eisenhower was chief of staff and remained on act to duty in the united states army. eisenhower was a senior at the u.s. army person at the philippine army. macarthur being a commander, but out of the u.s. army and president roosevelt did not recall active duty in the army until june of 1941. eisenhower came back and 39 to command the first battalion with

the 15th infantry at fort lewis and in quick succession became chief of staff of the third division, chief of staff of the ninth court and the chief of staff of third army town in san antonio again under general walter krueger, the famous louisiana took place in the summer of 1961. kruger's third army beat the socks off then layers thick and army. eisenhower was chief of staff, got an enormous amount of credit for that. general marshall went down to watch the maneuvers of these for over 500,000 troops marching all over louisiana for two weeks. marshall asked kruger who should have the war plans division in washington and krueger said eisenhower. so the week after pearl harbor, eisenhower was courted from san antonio to come back to washington to head the war plans division. in june of 1942, marshall, who i

saw eisenhower and saw his effectiveness and eisenhower to london to become chief of staff, presumably for the invasion of the war department believed to take place in november 1942. that of course was an incredibly wishful thinking. president roosevelt insisted they come to grips with the germans somewhere in 1942 and preferably before november because of the congressional elections. and our staff will select it by default. the invasion of north africa. marshall did not want to command the invasion of north africa. eisenhower again was there on the spot. he got along famously with the british and eisenhower was elected to command the invasion. the invasion of north africa for the army and eisenhower was a learning experience. rick atkinson has a marvelous book, an army at dawn, which is

superb. eisenhower learned. he also learned the state department and roosevelt were totally wrong about who is doing what in france and form an alliance with the goal at that time, which remains throughout the lives of the two. then came sicily, which eisenhower commanded as well. we have all seen the movie patton and we've all seen how patton in the sicily campaign went out to palermo and then got back to miss dana before my family that they are and so forth. but we don't realize is that going up to palermo he took the pressure of the german front, couldn't understand what he was doing and give them pestering to us draw the entire german army back to italy where remained for

the next two years. eisenhower -- it was not a good day for the home team. the landing at salerno and italy, eisenhower's third amphibious landing again was a near disaster. they didn't have enough preinvasion compartment, ms air cover or didn't send enough troops ashore. eisenhower learned from that. yet we amphibious landings and he learned from his mistakes. i won't say anything really about the war. eisenhower was lucky. if you can imagine having 5000 ships off the furniture including landing ships and not being detected by the crowds, the weather had stopped in in the air force was incredible. i would like to say a word about paris. eisenhower and the battle plan assumed they were going to

bypass paris. general von coulters, the commander of paris said he was under orders to destroy paris, but eisenhower had to get there quick because if he had destroyed within 24 or 48 hours, he was going to be relieved, which he would've been in so eisenhower changed planes and decided if i'm called since it's not going to destroy, he was going to take it. so the reason was paris is taken is because eisenhower changed his plan and marched into paris or the general mcclary to march into paris. the battle of the bulge. the only time really during the war in france at eisenhower to personal command, he really decided they would simply run out of gas, which he literally did an impact in headed in from the south among them are from the north and close it off. it was eisenhower who decided not to press on berlin.

the boundaries that are deep and agreed to. he saw no reason to capture berlin, which was a stooge object is and they would have to go back from anyway. after the war, they got on marvelously. they invited eisenhower to moscow and i'll say a word about that because eisenhower flew in a russian plane and they flew very low from berlin back to moscow. eisenhower saw the destruction. not a house standing really for that long, long trip, convince eisenhower that the russians did not want war. but it had been so terrible and the losses have been too severe. but it convinced him that the russians would not dissolve either. he took into the presidency. after eisenhower served as chief of staff for two years. he really did not want the job.

it is really winding the service is down. he retired in the beginning of 1948 and then wrote crusade in europe. crusade in europe read grant's memoirs before doing now. crusade in europe does not approach grant's memoirs to turn the literary style. but it's probably the best coming out of world war ii, the most complete, the least -- eisenhower did not grind axes and eisenhower rated himself over a period of four, working 16 hours a day, seven hours a week. he dictated the entire manuscript. after that he became president of columbia. and let me say a word or two about that because most academics sort of hoopoe hikes presidency of columbia. but he did a very effect of job from the time mccarthy is in

the the united states and ike stud at columbia in defense of academic freedom on several occasions. other presidents hide behind eisenhower. he balanced the budget, which had been in deficit for the last five years and organize columbia spurs strathcona raise $2 billion, mary butler in his later years. nicholas murray butler had been president of columbia for 34 years and in the later years slacked off on raising money. and eisenhower was really learning the job. one of the frequently told stories of columbia, eisenhower's first mini with columbia faculty told him he wanted the faculty to know the university was proud of the faculty. at that point, isidore bobby, a

nobel laureate in physics stood up and said general eisenhower, the faculty are university. the faculty are the university. and at that point, eisenhower flashed that smile, put his hands over his head and said i surrender. eisenhower was learning the job and would've been a very effect the president except on a brisk tuesday after the first monday in november 1948, thomas dewey lost the election. he assumed he was young enough if elected president he would serve two terms. when do we lost the election in november 1948, eisenhower lost interest in columbia. there was a bigger prize out there and that was the presidency. he became, also president of columbia at the unofficial

chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the original legislation did not provide. he became the official chairman and a genuine 1951, general truman sent into nato to organize the military forces in nato. it was clearly the candidate of the liberal wing of the republican party. there is such a thing in my stays. -- in those days. [laughter] taft was his opponent. general clay who is running eisenhower's campaign couldn't get ike to say he was a candidate. they knew he wanted to run, but they couldn't get him to admit he was a candidate. in may, the republican national committee announced that douglas macarthur would be the keynote speaker at the republican

convention. clay, who would serve at eisenhower and macarthur in manila and new on the details of their relationship and new on the details of their relationship, write eisenhower a personal letter to relationship, write eisenhower a personal letter in longhand and tell him that macarthur has selected to be the keynote speaker and we are concerned that macarthur in his keynote speech is going to seat the delegates away with his eloquence, is going to see the convention and they're going to nominate 10 by acclamation. the letter was handcarried over by twa to ike and paris. the next day, eisenhower announced he was coming back to attest the republican nomination. bush is a great deal about the relationship between ike and macarthur, which clay was privy

to. eisenhower did not win the nomination on the first ballot. after the role of the states, eisenhower did not have a majority and before acre mountain, the chairman of the convention could announce the result, warren burger with the minnesota standard and minnesota switched to eisenhower, putting eisenhower over the top. that evening at the hotel, eisenhower had different with herbert brownell who is really as campaign manager and general clay and they asked him, brownell told me the story. general eisenhower who she wished to be a vice presidential candidate. this is 1952. and eisenhower said is not up to the convention? and run elsa lucius and i will direct a bit and i said, yes

general this is after the convention, but i'm sure they'll look to you exclusively for guidance. eisenhower named out several people here charles wilson had of general electric wilson, the head of american airlines to be good vice presidential candidates and at this point they were looking at each other again. it would be great vice presidents, but we really need someone's name his recognizable to delegates on the floor. and if you haven't read about it really come a general clay and i think maybe you should go with richard nixon, senator nixon from california. eisenhower said i have met him. clear up with the forces and if if they want to, it's okay. ike was appalled when the nixon phone scandal broke. he was appalled at nixon's speech and assumed you would take them out of the race, which

he didn't. and emotions between eisenhower and nixon never improved much after that. i've spoken to the eisenhower presidency earlier, but after the term expired in 1861, he returned to gettysburg, stayed out of public life, wrote a two-volume work on his presidency, which does not compare to crusade in europe, generally avoided politics, how to teach himself how to adjust to civilian life. he had to learn how to dial a telephone and how to drive a car, which of course for the last many years he didn't, he hadn't done. he had heart trouble, died after a prolonged illness of walter reid hospital on march 28, 1969. he was buried in a very simple

ceremony in agi cascade, $90 g itasca, wherein simply his ike jacket with five stars on the shoulder, but no decorations were battles. i think eisenhower really was someone who has spent closely underrated. he commanded the largest coalition army ever assembled in the history of the world. and in many respects i think was the second-most successful president president in the 20th century after fdr. i think i've been privileged to be able to write the biography the biography the biography and franklin roosevelt and i'm happy to answer questions. there's several issues that i didn't cover, which i'm sure he'll ask about.

so thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible] >> thank you for the wonderful talk. just before i ask question, i want to tell you my brother was at columbia when he was the president under the g.i. bill. he was a member of the american veterans committee to eisenhower's office for some reason and eisenhower said, why aren't you asking the american legion, which was just the opposite of what the anc was all about. i would like you to tell us a little more about eisenhower and

macarthur at the time of the veterans march on washington. >> eisenhower was macarthur's military secretary and eisenhower was a major and macarthur was chief of staff. there's a picture in the book of eisenhower and macarthur there. you see a very starry eyed looking at macarthur. eisenhower theater -- eisenhower theater said welcome nigel general macarthur he shouldn't do this and so forth and so on. but there's no evidence whatever to support that. eisenhower wrote the official report, which macarthur's report on the bonus march. he defended it. he was in sympathy with it. and it's only related that eisenhower decided that was probably not a very good position to take and changed his position. the eisenhower has done that on

several occasions. he has reinterpreted. he was very much in favor of it. george patton at kabul are they across the bridge. yes, sir. >> yeah, hi. i haven't read your eisenhower book, which are fdr book is marvelous, i have two questions for you. if you could ask dwight eisenhower one question, what would you ask and what do you think his answer would eat? same question for fdr. if you could ask fdr question, what would you ask them what you think of the answer would eat? >> i think fdr's point was his relationship and that was brutally inexcusable and so i have to ask him about his relationship with de gaulle and whatever. but eisenhower, you know, i

really think i have to take a pass on not. i'll tell you my manure story. it was a bit roly-poly in 1839 and 1940. certainly a mobile in the field, always had the american fielding. and a reporter asked one day, how can you possibly leave the american? are absolutely mobile out there. he said is simple if you don't touch the ball come you can't make an error. [laughter] >> i voted for stevenson. [laughter] into my surprise, i found myself

at a cabinet meeting with eisenhower and he was a wonderful person. he was a wonderful person. he was interested in that time at the moment in the issue that can't. i was presenting a live projection that was built for rockefellers presentation because rockefeller had left him. so i went there at 7:30 in the morning to the cabinet meeting and all of a sudden i feel to

hands and said, and his son, we take me to the show quite a chicken to the show and then in the cabinet got together, you know, you listen to me. he listened to every word and every time as a pie chart, for instance, about the school construction. he asked me questions with 12% of the pie chart. he built this close, too. why is that half the budget is paid by the government in order by the state in order by the

locals and i told them the reason why they wanted the local people to be able to decide whether schools are going to be. for the moment of rockefeller said that spray. every time in the chart, he says he paid attention and he got respect for his cabinet. he had cabinet meetings every month. the question is, do you know the president and have respect for their cabinet and cabinet meetings. >> and marvelous point. eisenhower when they met with the cabinet almost every week and met with the national security council also every week. there were roughly 370 some,

maybe 372. the national security council and eisenhower was president, he presided over 360 meetings and the 12 he missed was because he was out of the country are in the hospital. eisenhower presided over the nsc, did not have the national security adviser under the cabinet as well he met the national security council usually on thursday the cabinet on friday and he was there. he presided over them. they certainly did have respect and eisenhower expected the president officers to fund their own show and operates anything in a cabinet meeting having to do with their department because they should handle that themselves. eisenhower agreed them a great deal, unlike fdr perhaps come he gave them a great deal of pre-play. [inaudible] >> thank you.

[applause] ..

a lot of the senior officials were in favor of a lot of those reforms. does that make sense you did have a very long time perspective but when you think about hong kong he said predict the years they can keep the present system. if you ask obama what do you plan to do the next 50 years for this country that would hardly be a serious question. for years is long term for the end of short-term to the next election. i think he did have a long-term perspective at the same time he was experimental and he didn't have the fixed notion, and.

that term was attributed but it wasn't unique to him. he used the terms, he used the ideas and he was the manager who put it all together and provided the direction and that made it all happen. >> next we hear from john stagg, war fet ralf from the university of virginia in charlottesville and this is part of book tv college series. it's about 20 minutes. joining us on booktv is professor john stagg, the author of the war of 1812, conflict for the continent university of virginia professor john stagg is

it fair to say it's the second american revolutionary war a lot of people called the second war for independence. in the sense that they regarded it as a necessary sequel to the american revolution. there were certain the reasons why they thought that was the case, and the title more or less stock even in the 20th century most historians now would say american independence wasn't at stake in this war. the contemporaries had their own reason of thinking, so it is tough after the war. americans started publishing books about the war was 1816. islamic the war of 1812. estimate the war of 1812, call it the night war with great britain, one of the earliest to appear was in fact called the

late war and it's a very strange and odd book to read and produces the cadences of the bible, and thus james spiked the congress, but this way of thinking about it starts immediately after the war is over. stat why was this war hot? >> it's one of the more attainable problems and the historiography of the war causation. historians point to the whole range of grievances the united states had against great britain in the early 19th century. many of them are associated with maritime disputes between great britain and the united states because this is middle of the napoleonic war trying to control

natural trade to the continent which is dominated by napoleon and the question for the american missiles and the indians on the front, british policy affected the agricultural process very badly for the american exports during this period that made people angry. there is a whole range of those grievances. why it was fought followed was many of these disputes have been preceded by a number of years without necessarily produce in the declaration of the war the summer of 1811. called the orders and the

council of. through these executive orders of the council with the british proclaim the blockades when. they are designed to stop the neutrals. and america is the main neutral with of the stage of the. the british and french empire resources. they've been disputing this ever since 1807. the americans hoped this dispute could be negotiated by diplomacy by december of 1811 they've come to the realization that the diplomacy is not going to solve this problem. the british are not going to remove these orders. until basically they've got napoleon where they want of the

dominant position to begin to violate the british control. they realize the call congress into the 30's for the congress. as a tactic to try to force the british to the neutrality and by 1812, the diplomacy had been exhausted and medicine thinks the only way is to go to the war to force the british to sign a treaty which will come at them on paper and its interests. >> so very familiar writing.

>> so the u.s. declared war on great britain in this case? >> yes. >> did the british troops in the north american area. >> there's the troops in canada, and troops in the various colonial possessions, but the troops actually own the territorial limits of the united states in 1811 and 1812. there have been for a number of years after the revolution we know after the peace treaty of 1783 the british had not abandoned all of the american territories that they said they would do but continue to occupy the chain of sorts along underneath the great lakes extending to the west which was a violation of the peace treaty and american sovereignty which annoyed than considerably but

that didn't stop americans from saying that restricts in canada in the midwest would be interfering in optimistic so that becomes the their grievance which becomes a part of the whole tangle of problems that the americans want to sort out during the war. >> how popular was this declaration of war against britain in the state of that time? >> welcome it is hard to measure in the sense that we kind of take public opinion the way that we do now. but it is said to be the most unpopular war in american history. that was certainly said until the time of the vietnam war come and maybe it was about as unpopular as vietnam. the declarations and the congress or not by wide margins

in the house of representatives of for 49 against. in the senate even closer. was 19-13. to put it another way with three votes that change in the senate the senate wouldn't be able to pass the war bill so they've been debating for nearly two weeks and it was touch and go. nobody knew what the outcome was going to be in it that reflect all sorts of misgivings about the war. some of it was sheer doubt about whether it was expedient and why is that the united states could come after all they were a heavily armed nation with a very large navy, a fairly sizable army or sizable navy. some of the standing army at that point. >> you have the standing army of

the one paper of 10,000 men in the ranks and even started more than half of that. but the other political party just to follow-up on your own short question they were bitterly opposed to the war. >> and the federalist at a time? >> they were pretty much confined to the states. it sounded a more prominent of people picking james ashton. they were the leading federalists but they held national power since 1800 when they lost after thomas jefferson and become something of the regional base manly and new

england particularly in massachusetts and connecticut those were very strongholds, and the state governments of the regions and probably the majority of the people in the new england states, not all of them, but very strongly opposed the war and they preached against the demonstrations for public and a congressman who voted for the war in the streets when back home all sorts of things. and the partisanship they were for and against the the the the war was a major mistake and an anglo file the republicans were french and they were interested in napoleon. the federalists wanted to trade with the french empire.

>> we want the pressure to be on the british about the interest of the federalist emergence and imports like boston of. that opposition culminates in the heart of the convention would rich dillinger when was doing a good job of and getting that tax money to pay the

defensive dillinger when and that sort of thing. and what it would do what either secede from the union and make some sort of arrangement none of that came to pass and maybe to the state historians haven't been tied to what that contention was about and was careful not to leave a paper trail. we had no records of the debate, but the actions were considerably as suggested, but it was the most extreme manifestations and some in the wide spread federalist discontent as far as madison's

opponents were concerned. >> professor stagg, how does this war wrapup? >> feith. the stalemate carried all of the implications of the mutual exhaustion which are very easily matched and you just don't have anything as a result on that particular occasion but it worked at the end of 1814 and the underlying reason for that was napoleon had been overthrown in 1814 and the war in europe was winding down, and in that sense the pretext had been trying to control and they were

disappearing and having more and more question of those points to get on the side the american or the british side which war would continue if the peace returned after europe. and eventually the peace treaty was negotiated in the city assigned on christmas eve, 1814. and the treaty said absolutely nothing about the issues because in that sense the treaty didn't settle any of the problems of the procedural issues about the peace in the postwar growth to the united states took that as a

victory fund with since we are in the bicentennial year of the war 1812 there are many americans that don't appear to notice the press too hard and said americans one so it is a joke that goes around that americans are happy because they think they won the war of 1812. the canadians are even happier because they know they won the war of 1812 come and the british are the heaviest. >> where did you grow up, professor? >> in new zealand. >> new zealand?

>> yes, in the city of christ church which any american readers went to think about today is a city of 10,000 earthquakes over the last year which has gained some attention in the american media. that's where i grew up and went to undergraduate -- >> how did you end up here at the university of virginia? >> i was back and new zealand at the time teaching american history, mid-1980s to have a job here, which included the taskof running the papers of james madison, which was one of these definitive additions of the papers of the founding fathers of thomas jefferson, george washington and franklin. the madison papers are a part of that consortium.

why don't you try to run this project and teach the history and together if they join the trier of youth. if you taught american history in new zealand what are the important things important should know about history? >> i will give you an example of the conception that i had done the sort of thing you ought to deal with television having an impact on the society because they are the major producers,

the united states is a major producer of entertainment because the of the popular culture and that sort of thing and of course the common language, so in some ways in terms of popular culture in the society's, but i would often start with my glasses and new zealand not many had and those that had have been to the gulf coast. it is like disneyland. and if fifth with its enormously

of march with many regional differences in the east coast as quite different on the west coast and i specialize in early american history and the west coast wasn't even part of the united states subject matter that i taught. so, it was really important to sort of convey some sense that even existed at all what independence was about one and why they wanted to leave the provision higher when they're teaching the societies remained half of the british empire and break away from it in the sense of what the united states did. so, generally the problem is actually to convey some sense of the span of american history of course it wasn't much importance of schools.

so, you have a society which has an enormous number of preconceptions about the state's from the american culture but they are actually grounded in any sort of knowledge of the history of the united states and its development. and of course the united states is a world power come always very cautious. but i don't know how much success people teach with a larger picture you are against the control of the individual professor. >> finally, professor stagg that to your book war 1812 come at the end of this year 1815 or so, what was james patteson' reputation in the u.s.?

>> it started to improve very during the war itself and some pretty low. everybody thought he had made a pretty bad job of running the war. even his own supporters many of them were somewhat disenchanted and supported him because there were loyal to him and they didn't like the great britain and they thought the war was just and wasn't well but the americans and the peace treaty were settled and they had major damage as well, so the turn them back to the survival into major big creek and the last two years which were 1815 and 1817 for the two most popular years and one in the white house and the reputation he were pretty miserable between 89 and 1815. but he went out on a great part

of the popularity. >> here's the cover of the book. john stagg professor at university of virginia is the author the war of 1812 conflict for the continent published by cambridge university press.

in the book publishing world thanking, and the director of publicity for fsg. we wanted to talk about some of the new books coming out by this publisher in the fall of 2012. i want to start with william chase's new book, bill and

hillary. >> yes, written by william she's a professor of duke. he's a specialist in race and gender studies and he gives a fascinating portrait of their relationship and how her support of bill and during his three personal crisis actually afford her the opportunity to reach her platform publicly and become a prominent politician, and in turn the same thing happened with the bill, so in a way it is a look at the start of the partnership in a modern presidential relationship it to the president and first lady. really fascinating inside tidbits. spinning is the market and the american public is there a market for more clinton looks? >> you know, i think there is just from the initial release of the early editions of the book. people cannot put it down. it's fascinating the insight you get about their family history, their personal stories and their extensive interviews with stephanopoulos and reubin and many of the power players that

are out still in the public sphere today. i think it will change the way we look at the relationship between the presidents and their first partners going forward. >> is it coming out before the election? >> september 4th, just in time. >> patrick has a new book out, "the new york times" reporter, correct? >> he's been a correspondent for the times and the post. he wrote a book on the middle east before this, and the new book is really looking at the history of israel and making the argument that the military has always been a huge part of the strategy for the country in the three essential part come and that the basic we need to come to terms with their military history and the role of the military and the government in order to achieve peace and at least. a complicated situation. and he just looks at it through a new lens. >> finally, i wanted to ask you about the book on the 1958

chinese famine. >> the book tombstone is quite a fascinating look at the great famine. he's a member of the communist party with journalists so i had unprecedented access to archives and he has a personal connection and that his father was a victim of the famine, so he sort of goes back with the statistics on the record and kind of recreate of public policy has led to the so-called natural disaster. in fact, the famine really could have been avoided or happened to a much larger extent in the policies. so, it is just a fascinating look at an unknown story. >> sarita varma, what the are you excited about that fsg is coming out with? >> there's so many to choose. the c-span audience another but we haven't touched on is robert sullivan, my american revolution, which is kind of a fascinating matchup of looking back at the american revol