the book was written originally 25 years ago. and it has been a widely used in college classrooms around the country and much has happened in the past 25 years. the 24/7 new cycle that john referred to is, of course, facilitated in part by the internet. the original book was written and published in 1988. the internet was nearly a gleam in the eyes of al gore. but since then the internet has really driven what happens in the new cycle. so we felt like it was due for an update on the started working in this about three years ago and it was just published in the month of september and we have been delighted by the reception of the book so far. so what i'm going to do today is just share with you some of the ideas that are in this book. i want to talk a little bit about world news group, just to give you an idea of who we are. even though john did a great

thing of 70 upon that score. and to be clear that my purpose is not to bash the mainstream media. i do not consider the mainstream media, or what some people call the legacy media, i do not consider the enemy. i do believe, however, that we are in a mixed of a pathological media culture. at some of the ideas that i will share with you today will allow us to identify some of those topologies and ultimately find a way out of the topology and provide a hope for the future, as you can see here. in a few words if you would allow me personal privilege about world news group. we are the largest christian news organization in the country. we have world magazine, which has about 400,000 readers. we also have a robust presence on the internet. about 500,000 to 600,000 unique

visitors a month that are added over 2 million views. two years ago we started a radio program called the world and everything in it and it is a two-hour we can program and a 30 minute daily program. for those of you who are listening to things on christian radio and you're used to it, you will discover that it is unlike anything else that is on christian radio and sounds much more like national public radio than it does anything that you would normally hear on christian radio. nick biker and shows a slight are the cohosts and they have been doing a great job. starting after the first of the year we are going to start a new 30 minute program that i will post. once again, it is not really patterned after anything on christian radio, but think about charlie rose or fresh air and you'll have a little bit more of an idea of what we are trying to create with our radio presence. also we have a world on campus website that is targeted towards young people and a range of

age-specific children and the homeschool community. and i would like to begin by sharing for many of you will be audience. and that is that mass media is dominant in our culture today. and it has a profound impact on the way that we think. the average person will spend about $54,000 with some form of mass media before they reach their 17th birthday. comparing and contrasting that to the amount of time that the average young person might spend in church. even if you go to church every day, every sunday 52 weeks per year, for your entire time of growing up, you will spend less than 1000 hours in church. so that does not necessarily mean that one is having, you know, less or more of an impact than the other. it is just a matter of time they spend with them. some is passé. but i think that these numbers

really put into sharp relief the amount of time that we have spent within these various influences on the way we think. i think we are disingenuous to claim that a massive the massive amount of time has no impact on us whatsoever. in fact, joseph lieberman, a senator who most of you know, he was a democrat and said that more than three decades of research is firmly established and has a powerful influence on the attitudes and values and behavior of america's children in this influence has grown only larger as the amount of time that young people spend consuming the media has grown greater. i do not believe that any of us would argue with that. that is one of the ideas that we begin to explore in the press. and that is how the content of the media shapes the way we

think. we also look at how the media themselves shape the way we think. taking a look at content first. i would like to begin with the content in the news media and how much of it has changed over the years by saying that i want to share with you the story of the great christian newspaper. that newspaper is "the new york times." if you read "the new york times" today, you do not think of it as a christian newspaper. but it was founded by a bible believing presbyterian christian and 18 1850s and augustine st. clair when undercover in these facilities in new york. some you may have heard of james o'keefe, and those who have gone under cover with video cameras to planned parenthood and other facilities and posted these videos on the internet. that has been touted as an innovative use of social media

to do investigative reporting. in fact that was being done by "the new york times" in the 1870s. the times passionately opposed abortion in its editorial pages and news coverage, calling it ends in murder and saying that the practice is frank blank and smells to heaven. one abortionist that was exposed by "the new york times" actually ended up spending seven years in prison as a result of those stories. and "the new york times" is not alone in this. between 1825 and 1845, as documented in the original version of this book, "prodigal press: confronting the anti-christian bias of the american news media", over 100 cities and towns across america had explicitly christian newspapers, including the boston reporter, edited by a man named nathaniel willis, one of the most interesting and lively publications of its era. during that same time, new york city alone posted 52 magazines and newspapers that called themselves explicitly christian.

but of course that we know that "the new york times" is christian one. regularly editorializing in favor of same-sex marriage and abortion, ideas that most evangelical christians find one. thomas friedman, he equated the tea party with hezbollah and one individual said the tea party republicans have waged jihad on the american people. and whether you agree or disagree with thomas friedman, i think you would have to agree that calling tea party publicans to hottest, it reflects a certain tone deafness when it comes to theological distinctiveness. and we begin to see that religious coverage and use of religious language in anything that resembles a knowing usage

has to radically deteriorated not just in "the new york times" but in other publications as well. so much so that jill abramson, who became the first female editor of the times said that in my house the times substituted for religion and it was the absolute truth. and so again we see how far "the new york times" has come within a 150 year period and what has happened is fairly indicative and this has happened in many other publications. to highlight all of the reasons that would cause us to be here for days, and i'm here to talk about the book and we have documented much of this. i would simply say that there has been a lot of cultural and political changes that have taken place over those 150 years. and in other words there was not a switch that went on or off that caused the mainstream media

to go from a fundamentally religious worldview to one that is fundamentally a religious or not religious today. but it has been a wide variety of events and changes in our culture that have occurred during that time. some specific event that we talk about some details are the rise of transcendentalism and most of us remember from our high school english courses, maybe we try to forget it over the years. but we might remember ralph waldo emerson. ..

lord john foster kane and not move the as a man who is really dislocated from a sense of purpose and meaning in his life comes, so at the end of the movie he died alone and sad. so we begin to see that, you know, as we marched to the 20th century, which was covered by the leading journalist of the day, hl mencken and really pitted. it wasn't just coverage of a trial, that it was a worldview on trial as well.

that was made abundantly plain that it was the christian world view versus a material scientific world view that was really in the dock and not john's coat, a teacher who was teaching tantra teaching determinism. the trial took place around 1850. if you've read whittaker chambers autobiography witness, you know that trial was not just a trial about whittaker chambers and communist, but it was really a trial of worldviews. the communism versus the theistic worldview that had to come to embrace over the course of his life. it also put what was then a relatively inconsequential, small backwater news reaper on the map. the newspaper of course is the "washington post," which covered

the trial asked actively inhabits covers picked up around the country. because the results of a trial of new deal ideas, it really established the "washington post" as a leading liberal progressivist newspaper of the late 20th century. well, all of these back or send more go into creating a media today, so much so that a 1996, it has been in wife team, along with sandy rothman their collaborator were able to read a call to media elite, in which they found after extensive surveying that journalists were well to the left of the general public on a wide range of ideas. not just the culture ideas we think about today like abortion and homosexuality, but they do such as affirmative action and energy policy as well. fast forward another 15 or so years, come to jim kuipers daddy.

jim kuipers is a professor at virginia tech university. he did a survey of 100 xt newspapers and found the media tend to operate within a fairly narrow range of beliefs. not only are the liberal, but their range of contacts in the range of views they represent in their stories tends to be within a narrow range as well. the other thing jim kuipers said that was interesting was the 10 you to omit reasonable and diverse conservative voices and highlight the more radical liberal voices. that is one of the reasons why whenever folks like the pastor in florida who burnt the koran or the pastor fred phelps of west borough baptist church, will protest at the funerals of servicemen. those stories get picked up because they are loud and shrill, but they are not representative of the overwhelming majority of

conservative or christian people in this country. but because most liberal journalists don't have any sense of rolodex of conservative and evangelical context, they just tend to gravitate to the ones they care the most about. so it creates a flawed and cute vision of the number of old will both liberal christian views, but also, just a range of those views in the reasonableness of the youth as well. they can result consistent with the survey suggests mention. between 10% and 15% fewer positive stories occurred in the media whenever there's a republican in the white house. and so, when you take all of this together is a vision of the mainstream media that is creating a metanarrative that

ends at the highest in favor of liberal and anti-christian ideas. this is important because being in control of the public narrative, sometimes called the metanarrative by curious, really does matter. in fact, i saw an example graphically adjust some minor changes to its tory can make a difference. before i show you those pictures, let me just mention that. one reason this is important because robert webber coming theologians of the most pressing issue of our time is to kiss to narrate the world. the world really does matter in the way we think in the way public policy decisions get made. not that photograph i wanted to share with you. great storytelling can elicit a powerful reaction. but who holds the camera in this place really does matter.

i think we see this everyday in the mainstream media that these changes are adult or differences are subtle, but they really do make a powerful difference in the ultimate narrative that gets told to the american people. so content matters. what is in the media can shape the way we think. i'd like to shift gears a little bit and spend the next couple of minutes talking about the media themselves, the technology that is used and how that has changed and how those changes laws will affect the way we think in the way we process ideas. the question i would pose to you is the one on the screen. hard day i wrote our ability to think, especially about complex issues and ideas, which are the very basis of a christian and conservative worldview. many people who thought deeply about these questions see the

answer to that question is in pdf. one of them is neil postman who wrote a powerful book that we quote extensively called amusing ourselves to death. persons says all media have limited abilities and there are certain things that are just not able to do. postman's famous metaphor was postman was smoke signals, where he said smoke signals can communicate to you, for example, that i access, might even communicate to you where i am and that i have a desire to communicate with you. but it doesn't communicate much more than that. he don't know much about my philosophy, theology, loved, hates, desires, fears a cousin i smoke signals. smoke signals just do not have the capacity to communicate those ideas. postman goes on to say that all media have certain limitations

and that it is important for us to wonders and what a particular medium can communicate, but also what the limitations of that media buyer. the other thing postmen dad was that all media, especially new technology tend to -- the benefits, the positive aspects of the technology tend to show up first and negative aspects tend to show up later. i've come to call that a happy hour effect. if you walk by a bar at 5:00 in the afternoon, the sign on the bar doesn't they come in and we will take all of your money and make you and cause you to make bad decisions later in the evening that you will regret the rest of your life. if that was the sign on the door, nobody would go into the bar. the sign on the bar instead says what? if it's happy hour because it wants to communicate the positive and if it's first rather than the negative benefit

tend to show up later. that is true of any new technology. we don't embrace a new technology like a laptop computer like an iphone or any other wonderful technologies we've embraced because of the negative consequences that might show up in our lives as a result of that. we know, for example, now, many people die every year. literally thousands will die because of texting while driving. now, if we were told that was the primary consequence of owning a cell phone, that we will die at the wheels of our car, we would never embrace the technology. we embrace new technologies because it offers benefits to us. they are also calls. neil postman says we should always evaluate a technology based not just benefit, but do not cause with the net benefits of any technology. a great example showed up in the

news a couple years ago. i've come to call it destroyed the face of burglar. it gives you an idea of what net effect looks like. a woman whose house was robbed, posted a security camera video on her face the profile. because of the video, the burglar was identified and arrested. if this is all you know about the story coming to think this is a fantastic use of technology. fantastic use of the video camera, facebook on a fantastic use of the internet generally. if you know the rest of the story come you may come to a different conclusion. it turns out the robber with a facebook friend of the victim and he learns the woman would yell for the evening because of her update on her facebook profile. so, the rest of the story really communicate that the effect of facebook on this woman's life was not an unmitigated positive. the first part of the story might suggest. another great anchor in addition to neil postman is marshall

mcluhan who wrote a book called understanding media. he's probably best known for his idea that medium is the message. he communicated that using a metaphor sometimes called the cleveland lightbulb. it basically says imagine you walk into a dark room, completely pitch black and you don't do what is in the room. what was your behavior be? mcluhan said he would be guarded. he might have feared. the way you walk around on the ground, the way you communicate to you might in the room would be a certain way. if the light suddenly came on and you could see what was on. he would completely change. it was around like the rest there were no threats, all the happy faces here are friends of mine and not enemies of mine. my behavior would if you change your attitude attitude would completely change. i posture would completely

change. mcluhan asked but what changed about the run? to the contents change? he would say no, not one bit. it is the medium by which we experienced the room that changed from darkness to light. that's one of the reasons why the medium is the message. the media will compel behavior whether we want that behavior to be indicative of who we are. i sometimes when i talk to young people come used the example of the "lord of the rings." a contrast of the book in the movie. you would know who it aragorn and his inward of the rings. aragorn has a lot of names. he is son of aragorn, for example, which gives you an idea of his lineage and heritage and background. he is called a straighter, which tells you something about his physical abilities. he's also a ranger, which is in

office, someone who is a protector. these names unfold and we unwrapped the text on the page into the future king. the movie, which i really like by wonderful in many ways. the vision and all the other characters are dictated by the director, peter jackson. whatever picture i might have tends to get swamped, overwhelmed by the picture that movie producer wants me to have, which looks like vigo mortensen to me. media have the power to manipulate and confuse us. it has the ability, whether journalists, producers can

impose their view on us, rather than allowing us to collaborate and participate to come up with our of what the world looks like. what can we do about it? i will close with this and let you that fascinates questions about the book and some of the ideas. one of the things we can do is stand for and why it what is sometimes called the good, true and beautiful and those who produce the good, the true and beautiful. a powerful tool for doing that is what we call biblical storytelling. biblical storytelling is the process of using scripture as their standard of true in using a biblical norm, which is storytelling to make that truth, lies. it would not be enough to say abortion is bad if you believe

abortion is bad. but it would be more powerful, more effective to tell stories of women, children, families and communities that abortion has impact did until the consequences show the consequences of abortion or whatever you're trying to show consequences. i want to be clear we don't think technology is bad. my presence as it is not a powerpoint presentation. we are streaming the slide on the internet and many of you we pray will watch this on c-span. yet another technology you. i'll technology is not bad. we should use all the logical tools that god ministered provenance is made available us, but we should be aware of both their abilities and limitations.

we must be discerning consumers of technology so we are not manipulated by both the abilities and limitations of those to ologies. i'm going to hold this closings dory. if you will again indulge me a couple minutes at the end of the presentation to close the fest. i would like to just pause now and see if there are any questions you might have. john, do you ground rules for question and answers? >> you feel just great with a microphone. if you do not mind, identify yourself as a courtesy to the speaker. i'm going to take the opportunity to ask the first question. i noticed you keep talking about journalism. journalists used to be, like the diary, writing down what they observe today. then they cross the line of i feel bad. then they cross the line of maybe we should feel bad.

then we've gotten to the point where even before the story is released, particularly in washington, talking point, the pr campaign has begun. is there any mechanism for getting around that? >> that's a great question. that to me as part of that psychological media landscape, culture we are in. is there a way to get around it? i think, you know, that panderers box has been opened. i don't think we can go back to his pre-24/7 news cycle, which is a part of the reason this exists. i do think it is not malicious intent on the people that create this environment. sometimes it is the luscious content. often, you know, it is a function of the fact that now it is a couple of these networks,

we have 212 is networks. instead of 30 minutes with walter cronkite, we have 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days here that these cable networks have to build. it becomes a real tyrant, this 24/7 news cycle. i'm not going to say there's not enough new use. there's not enough reporting capability, so they feel country and fill it with under tree. i think the ultimate solution to that goal, is in the hands of his humor. you know, we've got to stop rewarding that kind of behavior. we've got to reward with our readership and viewership and financial reach versus. those organizations putting reporters on the ground and not

resorting to punditry in the studio. usually those are places like los angeles. they are not in places where i live good charlotte, north carolina, flyover country, the red states in america. >> yes. >> thanks. >> jennifer marshall at heritage. the worldview report seeks to eliminate the worldviews play in any news toreador editorial. can you comment on other media, how much disclosure or worldview goes on? d.c. differences between print and brought cast an on line in that regard without eliminating they are but the worldviews that take the coverage? >> that's an interesting question because you are right.

world magazine is explicitly christian in our worldview. other media claimed to be fair and balanced project for whatever language they want to use. we've got an entire chapter that we actually had to revise fairly extensively for this person because things have changed so much in the very area you talk about in the last few years, where inmates team 88, the media were very subjective. there is a very clear bias, but it was for the most part a disguised bias. recall that the sky subjectivity in the book. now we have moved into an area where there is completely disguise subject tbd. i would use msnbc as an old. some of you might remember that the barack obama campaign used the slogan forward as part a safe campaign brandishing a few

well. you might remember about the same time, msnbc wintry rebranding process. do you know what slogan uses on that network? does anyone know? not forward, but leaning forward. i am not saying that there is next with the complicity between the obama campaign and msnbc, but am simply saying that it reflects a commonality of worldview. so we now live in an environment where most of the news networks are much more explicitly either conservative or liberal in their point of view. i would also say that even those that won't cop to the plea of being liberal, because of some of the things we just talked about, the lack of sources they actually have on the right, and

the ability and willingness to paint conservatives stare at it equally or in a matter of a caricature. even those that are at least pretending to some level of talent scum usually end up skewing pretty heavily on the liberal side. this goes back 40 years, but i can't resist telling us anecdote. holling killed was the legendary film reviewer for "the new yorker" magazine. richard nixon got reelected in 1972 come with one of the greatest landslides at that time in american history, holling killed reportedly said nixon, i don't know anybody who voted for nixon. now, she was probably telling the truth. she probably didn't know anyone who voted for nixon come even though the vast majority of americans did. that again is an anecdote that indicates just what a bubble most people in the mainstream

media, most journalists in the mainstream media live-in and they don't know what is going on outside that bubble. it's only gotten worse over the years. yes, sir. >> dave price, retired journalist and educator. i try to tie my question to both of those. when i started in journalism in the 70s, it was newspapers. the front page was supposed to be news but the sky's objectivity. part of what you pointed out is the plan were today people of a part-time distinction between editorial punditry, news, i'll kind of thrown together. what will come if any, d.c. education plane and separating and out of place here americanization if a christian believes, some of my isp or if you're coming from the worldview that informs everything you do and believe in. so what is the role of education

today, in your mind, of letting people know the differences between this is what should pay us views. this is opinion, this is something else. >> well, the role of education is huge. unfortunately, i don't think it is likely that the mainstream educational institutions of this country are going to be a will to rise to that challenge. for example, there are almost no journalism schools and christian colleges in america. the only graduate program in journalism at a christian college that i know of, there may be others. so if you want to teach at the college to me what to teach journalism at the college level, you have to have a graduate degree in journalism. it is usually in journalism. so it is unlike any that someone

coming up within that system, that is getting educated in the mostly liberal, mostly secular, higher education system in this country, suddenly a light bulb is going to go off and they are going to have a worldview that is any different other than the one the last 20 or 25 years in which they've been indoctrinated. education should play a huge role, but from the very early stage, but her kids in public school systems. we put them in public universities. join us in particular end up going to public institutions that are secular, they don't have, you know, a christian worldview. it is pretty unlikely those institutions will change the pattern. yes, sir. >> i'm a citizen journalist with watchdog wire. certainly there is, you know,

rivals when it comes to worldviews. could you talk about fox news versus cnn and contrast that to broadcast network? thank you very much. >> well, fox news is not christian in its orientation. i will say that. you know, what the christian broadcast network is doing, i am not terribly familiar with it. it is a step in the right direction perhaps, the heat is not a christian broadcast network, fox news is not nearly enough to combat the overwhelmingly secular and liberal worldview that we see in virtually every other news network out there. the resources of both of those organizations combined what

amounts to only probably a small fraction of the newsgathering capabilities they would find a place they can be see. so you know, without making any sort of specific judgments or criticism about the christian broadcasting network or fox, i will simply say whatever they are doing that is good is inadequate for the needs of the day. yes, sir. >> dave russell, campus out reach, college ministry here in town. westboro baptist church. you commented about the radical voices. despite them being a couple families, more baptists of the ku klux klan as a christian ministry they are always making the news. can you talk about way news editors may deem them as worthy of voices are highlighted as much? >> guest: >> dave ideology and practicality. the ideology is simply i do not think most folks in the mainstream media have the

theological training and tools in temperament and background to tell a difference between fred phelps and westboro baptist church and rick warren at saddleback church. they might say superficially there is some sort of a difference, but i think for the most part they don't get the difference. if they don't understand what the differences are for the most part. again, it is not maybe animosity. it's a complete lack of understanding, the inability to discern the subtle differences. again, that is a part of the training. if i'm a science reporter for national public radio, it is inconceivable i would get hired without having some sort of a science background. and yet, journalists every day, not just religion reporters, but all reporters, cover issues every day but have a religious or moral or ethical component to them and they don't have any training in these areas.

so i think part of it is that. they just don't have the intended to discern the difference. another part is the practicality , or if these guys are putting out press releases, if they are videotaping what they are doing and making their videotape available, if they are making it easy for the media to cover them, specially visual media, by staging demonstrations and holding up signs that say god hates fags on them. you see at the local level return on virtually any local television news network and use the come to pass the old saying if it bleeds, it leads. ..

>> and they will ignore many evangelical voices that they feel deeply about and talking about it. >> how much of journalism, when i was growing up i thought about it as partly a public service that they did as part of their

overall broadcasting. but nowadays, it is where is the profit line. we need to do this line. >> that is a very good question. i'm not sure that it has changed a lot. if you look at william randolph, he became one of the wealthiest men in the planet. and you might say that he ushered in the modern news era. but i do think that it is, that you are right that it sort of allows me to set another interesting point. a lot of interesting journalism is coming out of nonprofit organizations within the secular arena or it you had organizations like the center for public integrity, which not the corporation for public broadcasting, but organizations like npr, which is a nonprofit organization that receives

running from the public broadcasting and another investigative news organization. and unfortunately, from my point of view, those tend to be left is less lenient and that is where most of their funding comes from and we don't really have a viable conservative alternative to those types of organizations. i do believe that that could be the wave of the future. that we will see more nonprofit journalism and more journalism that will be funded by organizations, especially investigative journalism that does not always return, providing an economic return to be funded by these nonprofit organizations. it looks like you had a question? okay. are there any other questions? yes, sir. [inaudible question] >> hello, i am dean sinclair from alexandria. early on we talked today, you

talked about the fact that journalists are very much a liberal and political individuals who have 80% or more systems. and is there something that just draws liberal people to that kind of profession. is there something in the hiring mechanism and is there something that is going on that makes it so liberal? >> that is a very good question. i think it goes back in part to the education system that we talked about. most journalists are being trained in the liberal and secular academies of this country. and so that is likely going to be what they produce. and we have a lot of the statistics in the press. but gallup has been doing this since the 1960s and that, while it has trailed off a little bit in recent years, it has stayed around 40%. have you attended a religious

service, they asked, in the last seven days, which is a very specific behavioral questions very close to 40% of americans answered yes to that question. when journalists are asked the same question and surveys have been done on this topic. the numbers are usually less than 10% and you can argue is that right or wrong or good or bad. and it is way different than the religious orientation and behaviors of journalists to look very different from the mainstream. and it becomes a virtuous cycle or, you know, a downward spiral depending upon your orientation. and all of your friends are liberal, if all of your friends are secular in this and you get positive reinforcement from now, that will create a continuing cycle and it will be hard for

you to justify or rationalize this looking outside of this because you're getting all kinds of affirmation both personally and professionally within the community in which you are operating. and so are there any other questions? >> okay. i will close my story. you might believe that i'm a pessimist and the truth of the matter is that i am not. i'm an optimist and there's a lot of hope for the future and in part, that springs from my understanding of history and that is that god always works through this and there is a continuous cycle throughout history of decline and recovery. one story that i found encouraging that i would like to share with you and the battle of britain began in august of 1941 they started bombing great

britain in part because killer wanted to invade britain and knew that he had to have control of the air. a day after day, the air force went up against the aloof lofa and we now know that with the hindsight of history what this was. and i'm just going to skip down to the last. last paragraph. they must've been beaten down that they can no longer muster any power of attack worth mentioning against the german crossing. but what we know is that the english airports was not beaten down and with the tremendous destruction, they exhibited tremendous determination and by the way i really love that picture. because you see the dog running after the airplane with the

pilots and its assorted humanizes the picture. and we also know that against overwhelming odds that the royal air force did not exactly prevail against the luftwaffe that they were able to get this with a stalemate, which ended in october of 1940 and leadership of course, it made a difference. winston churchill was one of the most erratic figures in the 20th century history and he said this. you may recall about the battle of britain and he went up day after day and said never have they so much been owed by so many to so few. and when i started studying this battle a bit more closely and i read a biography of winston churchill, i found something i didn't know before. and that was the raf only had 2000 pilots. and it was only 2000 when not

every single day against the german luftwaffe and he gave me a lot of encouragement. and i believe that it is the arab war of our time, journalism is, and while it is attempting to become discouraged, there is a lot of them and so few of us and i continue to believe that while we may be feeling that we are a number without help, we will be enough. so thank you very much for your attention today and i thank you, john, thank you to the heritage foundation for hosting me. i look forward to having lunch with some of you and hanging out for the next hour. thank you. >> thank you for coming. [applause] >> of course, as we mentioned, we do have copies of the 20th addition addition of "prodigal press: confronting the anti-christian bias of the american news media." thank you, warren cole smith for joining us. thank you for your attendance

and we hope to see you in the future not very far from now. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> is there a nonfiction author or book that you would like to see featured onbooktv? send us an e-mail at booktv at c-span.org or send us a tweet at twitter.com/booktv. >> we are at the national press club talking with molly raskin. who is danny lewin to . >> he founded a company, a technology company in the late '90s and he was a mathematical genius at mit and the company that he created, the company that he created is as much of a masterpiece that has changed the way the internet work and allows the information to be delivered efficiently at a time when the internet was suffering from a lot of roadblocks and traffic congestion. >> want to know more about him? >> well, we don't know more

about him because the story went largely untold. he died tragically on september 11, the very first victim of that day. his story went untold for well over a decade until someone tipped me off to it. the more i read about him, the more i thought that this was a great story that needed to be told. and it wasn't about the way he died but the way he lived in this incredible technology that he had created. >> county the first victim of 9/11? >> tragically he was on american airlines flight 9/11. on the morning, he boarded that for a business meeting in los angeles and the flight was hijacked 45 minute into the flight. and we know from the commission report that he was unfortunately engaged in a struggle with one of the terrorists, trying to stop them and stabbed from behind and died. before anyone knew anything about what was happening that terrible day. >> how did you come across him? how did you come across the

subject matter? >> welcome at i am always looking out for good stories as a journalist. a friend of a friend told me a little bit about him 10 years after september 11. the date was on my mind area i have lived in new york and covered the tragedy that year. but i never thought that i would come across a story 10 years later that i would be interested in telling. the more i read about him, bits and pieces of his life were out there, but as a whole the story was so incredible to me that i wondered why has no one written a book about it. and it was largely out of grief and i think privacy as well. his family and friends just were not ready to share this story until now. >> how did you come up with the title? no better time? >> the title is really because of the theme of time that runs throughout the entire book, he lived such a short life and accomplished so much in a short period of time. he was kind of obsessed with

speed and creating things. with technology he sped up the internet. and so it was really about -- the story to me was about why wait. he had an incredible idea, even when it's audacious, even when people say they could never succeed. you know, we have a short time and so you go for it. and so that was really what it was about. the theme of how time ran through these disparate but fascinating parts of life. >> what would you like to have people take away from the book? >> what i would most like people to take away from the book is the idea that we can create or that we all have within us the ability to create something that is larger than ourselves that outlives us and outlasts us and changes the world. and you do not have to be a computer scientist or an mit mathematician. but, you know, if you have the drive and you believe in something and you don't let the naysayers convince you otherwise, then we all have the ability to create something and that is the beauty of danny's

story and i hope to take away of the book is. >> thank you for your time and for joining us. >> here's a look at some books are being published this week. mary matalin and james carville, "love and war" reflect on their personal life in their book, 20 years and three president presidents and two daughters and one louisiana home. and in this book, rayna tabari idliby, "burqas, baseball, and apple pie", is a discussion of raising her children as muslims in america. and betty medsger, "the burglary", her book discusses j. edgar hoover's secret investigation of american citizens. the discovery of the secret fbi. and the fox news business host lou.

his book, lou dobbs, "upheaval." also, john rizzo, "company man", he provides an in-depth look inside the central intelligence agency. and a first-hand account in adhaf soueif, "cairo." look for these titles and book stores coming this week and watch for these authors in the near future on booktv.org. >> up next, former "new york times" correspondent stephen kinzer presents a dual biography of john foster dulles and his brother, allen dulles. this is about an hour and 20 minutes.

[applause] >> thank you so much. it is a wonderful to be here with all of you today. especially here at this fabulous independent bookstore. those of us who like books lie on places like this, not just for selling our books, but also for the inspiration that we hope leads us to write. so i really appreciate this great opportunity and i always encouraged the people to patronize their independent bookstores. go online and figure out what books you like them and figure out to buy it. and i should add that legally i let the boston university and i am now at the watson institute for international studies at brown university, said wonderful place for me to do research and work with wonderful professors are great students. and these are professors and students who, like everyone else in america, they have largely