>> Ryan Ramsey: Good morning everyone. Welcome to Room 202 of the 2024, Library of Congress National Book Festival. I'm Ryan Ramsey, the chief of staff at the Library of Congress. On behalf of all of us at the library, we're thrilled that you're here. This stage is a nice example of the diversity of topics we aim to feature at the festival each year. We're kicking things off with legendary thriller writer, David Baldacci. Moving on to astrobiology, dipping into historical young adult fiction, and moving on to discuss the sometimes uneasy relationship we have with technology. The Library of Congress is America's library your library? We hope you'll visit us at the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill to do research about subjects you're interested in. See the beautiful Thomas Jefferson Building, or attend one of our public events like live at the library. When we keep the library open until 8 p.m. every Thursday night for book talks, concerts, scavenger hunts, literary costume balls, and more. And you can be part of helping us produce these free events, such as the National Book Festival and Family Days, by joining the friends of the library. You may not know that the National Book Festival and nearly all of our other signature programs, are almost entirely funded by generous private donations. Your support extends the reach of the library and allows people everywhere to see themselves as part of the Library of Congress. Please consider becoming a friend of the Library of Congress by visiting loc.gov/donate. Now we're starting off this beautiful day by actually going back in time via David Baldacci's latest novel, "A Calamity of Souls." I'm honored to introduce David, a fan favorite at this festival and a number one bestselling author whose books are published in over 45 languages and in more than 80 countries, with 150 million copies sold worldwide. That's astounding. David is also the co-founder, along with his wife of the Wish You Well Foundation, a nonprofit that supports literacy efforts across America. He's in conversation today with my former Library of Congress colleague and my friend, Dr. Colleen Shogan, who is now the 11th archivist of the United States, the head of the National Archives, and the first woman appointed to lead the National Archives. So please enjoy. (applause) Please enjoy today's festival and welcome to David and Colleen. Thank you for being here. Thank you all. (applause) >> Colleen Shogan: Thank you Ryan. And yes, I do lead the National Archives, but I love books and that's why I'm here today. One of my favorite days of the year here at the National Book Festival. And what an honor to be here in conversation with the amazing David Baldacci. So, David, I mean, you have a lot of fans here that are very eager to hear from you and I'm sure have read many of your books just to get us started. Can you tell us a little bit about the plot of "A Calamity of Souls?" For those who maybe have not read that book yet? >> David Baldacci: It's set in 1968, and I chose that date specifically because in 1968, a lot of people thought that that was the end of the U.S. in '68. A lot of bad things happened that year. Dr. King was killed, Bobby Kennedy was killed. The war in Vietnam was tearing everybody apart. We had this white supremacist running for president, filling up venues across the country, and it looked pretty bleak. But I majored, I was a political science major in college, but I also minored in history. And history can teach you a lot about the future. And so I wanted to set this book in 1968. It's very autobiographical. It's a courtroom drama. It opens with a murder of two elderly white people, and by allegedly by a Black man. And then a court drama follows that story. And it sort of sounds a little bit like "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "A Time to Kill", both of which are great books. But I tried to do two things in this novel. I wanted to take on the two isms that still plague us as a country. One is racism and the other is sexism. So the greatest attorney in a "A Calamity of Souls." The best attorney by far, is a Black woman. And I come from, my parents had huge families, so I had 17 aunts on both sides, and they were all wonderfully talented, intelligent women. And none of them realized the potential solely because of the time period in which they grew up. When you didn't have just a glass ceiling, you had a steel reinforced ceiling. So this is sort of my take on life in the 60s in Virginia, where the book is set. But I wanted to show that as a country, we have been through a lot together. We've been at each other's throats since inception. We've always found a way through, because the ideals we have as a country, I think, should rise above any differences we might have, either politically or personally, because we really are sort of a beacon on the hill and we can still be one. And this book shows that, you know, 1968 was awful and everybody thought, this is the end of the U.S. 2024, everything is awful. This is the end of the U.S. But actually, we made it out through the other side because common sense and just the love of this country and what it stands for prevailed over the other forces. I started writing this book in 2011 on Christmas Day. My wife gave me a blank page journal, and I took it to my home office, and I wrote at the top "A calamity of Souls." And I started I wrote the first 150 pages of this novel by hand in that journal, and then I set it aside because I didn't know if it was relevant anymore. And about five years ago, I decided that it was relevant again, and I went ahead and finished it. And now here it is. >> Colleen Shogan: Well, that's really my next Question was this book, as I read, it took you about ten years to write on and off. How was that process of writing different from some of the other novels that you write? >> David Baldacci: It was a lot of research. Obviously, I was, I was a little kid in the 1960s, and I'm writing about things that, very much were grown up sort of things. But I took some of my own experiences, and some of the scenes you'll read in the book happened to me personally, and probably some of the most powerful in the book, just because I viscerally felt all of it. And I still remembered those things from childhood. And Jack Lee is the white lawyer who teams up with the Black woman to defend this, this Black man and eventually his wife in this murder. And I just wanted to, in my own mind, have this concept of coming together as opposed to being apart. So the research was really involved. I was a lawyer as well. I was a trial lawyer for ten years, but I didn't practice law in the 1960s. And let me tell you, it was a little bit different. The law. So I actually I have two UVA law professors. I went to the law school at UVA and I sent them the manuscript. One was a white man and one was a Black woman, who both practiced law during that time period. And they read the manuscript and gave me a lot of great comments, but it was going back and finding out what the law was like back then. Virginia has long been what it's called an ambush state, and I think the law just recently changed. But until like 2023, 2022, in Virginia, now you think, well, discovery, you have discovery where people have to share the facts of the case back and forth. And so when you go to a trial, there are no surprises, right? Well, Virginia never really believed in that. They liked surprises. So it was very much like Perry Mason. You could hold stuff until the very day of trial. And they just ambushed the other side. That's what the term ambush states. So I had to sort of relearn that as well. And I wanted to be as authentic and accurate as I could possibly be. But I also brought a lot of my own skills that I had as a litigator to bear when I was writing the courtroom scenes. And I tell you, the courtroom scenes. I loved writing because it was like I was back in the courtroom again. But this was a difficult book for me to write on many levels and many facets, because a lot of it is autobiographical, as I said, and all my books is really, just my imagination putting things together. This is the one where I laid myself bare in this novel and sort of let you know who I was as a person, what I believe and what my opinions are. And that can be a little bit scary. My my wife was like, okay, when you go on book tour, you're going to need security. I was like, it'll be fine, honey, it'll be fine. But it was. I didn't know how I was going to be received, but, I wrote it from a point of truth and facts and just my outlook and perspective on a country, that I'm a citizen of and one which I love and one which I want to see prosper and continue on. >> Colleen Shogan: Let's talk about the title. I think it's "A Calamity of Souls." It's a terrific title. How did you, said you came up with the title right in the beginning, but was there a story behind that title? Was it was the publisher on board with that? Tell us a little bit about why you called it, "A Calamity of Souls." >> David Baldacci: Well, I'll tell you, the publisher was not on board with it. I don't know where the "A Calamity of Souls." We're a nation of souls, we're a people. And we have lots of different beliefs and opinions and ideas and perspectives, okay? And calamities are where something bad happens. And there's this. It affects a lot of people. It's a calamity. And so combining those two terms, "A Calamity of Souls," sort of for me represented us as a country because, we always have calamities going on. Look, it's a lot easier and terrible in an authoritarian regime where one person tells you what you can do and believe and all that other stuff, right? Democracy is messy. Democracy is like bunches of calamities all coming at the same time. And we have to work our way through it. And as adults, we should be able to do that. So when I sent the book up, my publisher didn't even know, I was writing this book. This is a book I was writing on my own. I sent it up and they read it, and they loved it. And then, they came back and said, and they referenced the term no writer ever wants to hear. He goes, so anyway, with the title, we focus grouped it. (laughing) >> David Baldacci: I didn't even know that was a verb. It's apparently a verb. We focus grouped it, and they didn't like it. They didn't know what it means, it's confusing. It doesn't really say David Baldacci. So, but just so you know, we've got a great title, and I'm going to Zoom, so all these people are on the little screens in front of me. And I was like, okay, so what's your great title? And they said, wait for it The trial. (laughing) >> David Baldacci: And I just sort of stared at them for like uncomfortably long period of time. And I said, hang on just a second. So I'm on my computer, I assume. So I went on Amazon and I put in the trial, and I said, there are 493 books. (laughing) >> David Baldacci: With that title, including that really famous one by Kafka. But anyway, so then I put in let me try this one, "A Calamity of Souls," zero. So I said, it's going to be "A Calamity of Souls." And it was. And so everybody loves the title. I mean, I can many times authors, come up to me, Oh, my God, I wish I could use that. It's a great title. And so my publisher, after all this was like, wow, I'm so glad we came up with that title. Aren't you? (laughing) It was a partnership between the writer and the publisher, and we worked at it. And wow, let's pat ourselves on the back. I was like, yeah, you guys are just awesome. (laughing ) >> Colleen Shogan: Tell us a little bit about one of your protagonists, Jack Lee, who is one of the attorneys in the case. I would say Jack Lee is an unlikely civil rights advocate. So why does he reverse course and decide that he's going to represent Jerome, who is the African American man accused of these murders? >> David Baldacci: So Jack Lee is in his early 30s, a young white guy. He's never done anything in his whole life to combat racism. He doesn't agree with it. He's well-read. He saw prejudice and discrimination throughout his life growing up, but he never took a stand on any of it, for various reasons. Inconvenient, fear, whatever. He just never did. So he surreptitiously, he meets with the defendant and gets his story, and he comes back and he's like, there's no way I can represent this person because I'm going to lose and he's going to go to prison. There's not a jury in Virginia that's not going to convict him. So what's the point? And also, it'll ruin my life because people will... They'll never want to use me as a lawyer because I've represented this guy who was accused of killing two white people. So there's nothing in it for me. And then something happens to him that has never happened to him before. He became the target of sort of a racist attack because of what people believed. Oh!, you're going to represent this Black man, so we're going to go after you. So he became a target. And in the author's note that prefaces the novel, I actually read this on the audio book. And if you haven't, read the book or whatever, but the audio is by far the best audio book anyone has ever done of any of my novels. It is, really. It just it's fantastic. There are four readers. There's a Black man, a Black woman, a white man, and a white woman. Because I told the publisher, I said, you did such a great job on the title. I want to have four readers across the spectrum of humanity in this novel. I don't want people stretching outside their comfort zones and trying to be something they're not. And so it really is the best. I've listened to it three times and I wrote the damn thing, (laughing) and it's just they don't read it, they don't perform it, they live it, they live this novel and they become these characters. So but in the, preface, I say I grew up in the 60s and 70s in Richmond, Virginia, in a completely segregated society. I passed the giant monuments of Confederate soldiers on Monument Avenue pretty much every week of my life. That was my world. I saw the colored ladies restroom sign, the colored women restroom signs, and white ladies signs. That's how they were differentiated. That was my life growing up. I was the witness and observer of racial prejudice and terrorism, basically, when I was a child, but I was never the target of it. And to borrow from Mark Twain, that truly is a difference between the lightning bug and the lightning, being a target and just being a witness. So Jack Lee had been a witness most of his life. Then he became a target, and he also was at the point in his life where I can just continue to be a lawyer and do the sort of things that I'm going to have been doing my whole life and go through the motions, or I can actually stand up for something and be something and try to make a change, which I think we all have that potential inside of us. It's scary. A lot of people don't want to get outside of their comfort zones, but I think life is built for risk, at least calculated risk. So all of a sudden, Jack Lee decides, well it's about damn time that I did something. But the next point that I really wanted to make with this novel and why I. Because when I was writing this novel, my daughter, she graduated from college a while ago. She's been working different states and different countries, always in the public sector, trying to help people, social justice. She went back to law school because she thought with a law degree. She could be a much better advocate for marginalized communities. So that's what she's in her third year of law school. While I was finishing this novel and she knew I was writing it, she goes, dad, will you promise me one thing? And I said, what's that? She goes, Will you not make this a savior book? And I said, trust me, this is not going to be a savior book. So Jack Lee, as much as well-intentioned as he is, is out of his league with this case. He doesn't have the skill or experience to do this case. He's not a good enough lawyer. So my solution to that was to bring in a woman named Desiree DuBose, who is a Black lawyer from Chicago, who was a good enough lawyer to win this case. And the point was, they came together to take on this case, not separately, not divided. They came together because together they were going to be greater than they would be apart. And the whole point of this novel really was about togetherness and being united in something, in a positive something, as opposed to, attacking each other. And so that was one of the major points for me in this novel and sort of made it a little bit different. I mean, I love "Mockingbird." "Mockingbird" is a terrific book. It was a book written in its time, though, and quite frankly, in 1968, Black Female Defense Lawyer was a rarity. There weren't many of them, but I wanted this one to be exceptional because I always figured my experience with my aunts and other women I saw growing up. If you were a woman and you got to be in a position like that, forget about D-I-E. you had to work nine times harder than a man to get that same level. So I figured if they got to that level, they were a lot better than the guys. >> Colleen Shogan: So it's interesting with Desiree. She doesn't come into the book until about 100 pages in. So why did you decide to introduce her in that way? Was there a specific historical inspiration for her? >> David Baldacci: Yeah, I, for me, I always knew that she was going to be entering the plot. At a certain point, I needed 100 pages or so really, to beat Jack Lee completely up to a pulp, where he all of a sudden understood what it was like to be a target of all this hatred and bigotry. And in the same way, I wanted to metaphorically show, what it would feel like for someone who's never been a target of anything like that to be a target. And what would you do and how would you react to that? Every writer, you have to wear multiple hats, as a writer, you have to be a writer, you have to be a psychologist, you have to be a magician. Writers, write the words, but psychologically, I have to sort of understand how are you the reader is going to react to what I'm writing. If I want to pull you in a certain direction, I have to sort of understand how you're going to react to something I'm writing. And if I write it in such a way that you don't go the path that I want you to go, then I have a problem as a writer and as you following the story and as a thriller writer, and you know this as well. The magician part is, I want to be fair with you to convey all the information you need to sort of figure this out. So if you figure it out, you know, before the end of the book, you can go on Amazon and said, this book sucks. I figured it out in the last three pages and it was totally predictable. So that's the magician part. So what I do is, if I have to show you something that I don't really want you to focus on, I give it to you briefly, but then I do something really dazzling over here and you're like, Oh!, okay. And you look back and it's gone. >> Colleen Shogan: Yeah, >> David Baldacci: but you've got it. It's there. I'm playing fair with you. So really, that was my point. I wanted to really immerse Jack Lee in this. He made this choice and I wanted him to feel the ramifications of his choice. And then Desiree DuBose comes in. So I guess there is a savior component to this novel. It's the Black woman saves the white guy, >> Colleen Shogan: Right right, right. >> David Baldacci: Which I thought was pretty compelling. >> Colleen Shogan: So a secondary character that I really liked, who's a really interesting character, but she's not integral to the plot. Maybe of the mystery is Hilly Lee. So can you tell us a little bit about Hilly Lee and why you included her in the story. >> David Baldacci: So Hilly Lee is Jack's mom and Hilly Lee is a racist. You have to understand, too, that at least in my experience, growing up where I did and when I did, racists are also not monolithic. They get to that point different ways, different journeys. You'll meet some in the book right away who are just. There's no way to resurrect these people to be anything other than racist. They just are. And I met people. I grew up with people just like that. They're authentic and real because they exist. Hilly Lee was not like that. She grew up dirt poor on, the top of a mountain in Southwest Virginia, in the poorest county in Virginia. Dickenson County, hardscrabble life, coal mining, a little bit of farming. She had to be taking care of herself totally by the time she was seven. And that's just the way life worked out there. And on the mountaintop. There was no color, everybody had it so bad that everybody helped each other because that's the only way you could survive. Then she moved from the mountain and moved to a bigger city. And then all of a sudden, people told her, color is important. You need to start seeing color everywhere, and that will determine who you are and what you are as a person. And she started seeing color and all of a sudden she became a racist. And hers, she was the most conflicted character in the novel. I think about how she was trying to figure out who exactly she was and what she believed. It's really easy to sit back and allow other people to define who you are and tell you what you're supposed to believe these days in particular, you know, we're on the threshold of this, A.I. Explosion. And there are a lot of good points to A.I. But you have to realize, too, that with artificial intelligence, we're on the cusp of anybody being able to create reality and making all of you believe it. You can create videos now where you can take any person, famous or not, and make them do anything. And all of you in this room, myself included, would be hard pressed to say, that's not that person, and that's really scary in ways. So Hilly was a character through the character arc of the novel for her. She had to figure out who she really wanted to be, not who she was being told she was, someone else defining her, but who she wanted to be. And she was my moral compass. Throughout most of the story. I felt like if she could be resurrected back to the person she had once been, that there was hope for everybody. >> Colleen Shogan: What's the role do you think of historical fiction in teaching people about history? I mean, I wasn't alive in 1968, but I can tell you that I felt like I learned a lot about 1968 in Virginia and what that was like from this novel. So was that part of the reason why you wanted to write the book, to also give people an idea of a conception of that history. >> David Baldacci: Yeah, I wanted everyone to know that we've been through really difficult times before when it looked like there was no hope and we did make it through. History is a fantastic lesson to learn for future because things change, things evolve. Life today is a lot different than life was 40 years ago. I was watching the video on YouTube, and the guy had taken this, filmed Manhattan in 1995, and he filmed people walking down the streets, driving in cars on the subway and on the buses. Right. And then a little caption at the bottom says, what's missing from this? And I was like, looking at looking at I was like. And then it struck me. Nobody had a phone. Nobody was doing this. We all do this. That's why we have we have a fold in our neck right here. We all do this so that all changes. But think about it this way. Shakespeare and his other incarnations, wrote about things centuries ago, and today we all write about those same stories too. So what has remained the same throughout history? People have, so in Shakespeare's time, people were enthusiastic and bright. They were also jealous and petty and greedy, angry and bigoted. And today we have people who are great people, and we have people who are angry and jealous and petty and greedy and bigoted. So, that's we're sort of been the status quo. And I wanted to just show that people have a choice. In the 1960s, it was far more, this is the way the world works. This is the way the world is built. There's this side, there's this side. Never shall they meet in any significant way. We've gotten beyond that. But there's still a sublayer below that, that we have to address as well. Racism and discrimination and prejudice can come in many different forms. And anybody who thinks that it doesn't exists today, well, you're just not opening your eyes because it does. I have a friend of mine. She's actually a character in this novel, Cheryl Miller. She plays a journalist, and I've known Cheryl for 30 years. She's an anchor in CBS for CBS in Richmond, and I had dinner with her a few years ago, and we were talking about things, because Richmond had had a lot of obviously, had a lot of problems historically with race. I remember the race riots in 1996, Monument Avenue, with all the Confederate generals in 1996, they wanted to add another, monument to Monument Avenue for the first time in almost a 100 years. And there were riots all over the place because people did not want this monument to go on Monument Avenue. And the monument was for a Richmond native, an iconic sports star, Arthur Ashe. And they did not want a Black man. On Monument Avenue with Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart and all those other guys. So 1996 is not that long ago, and I remember what had happened in Richmond at that time. So I was talking with Cheryl about it and she said, I've never had kids, but I have a lot of nephews and nieces. And, do you know what I buy each of my nephews and nieces on their 16th birthday? And I said, no, what do you buy them? She goes, I buy them a dash cam. So when they're arrested and stopped by the police, there'll be a record of what happened. Now, as a father of, children myself, never would have occurred to me to buy a dash cam for my kids on their 16th birthday. So, we have to understand that, we've come a way since 1968, but we still have ways to go. I just know that history, has a lot of lessons for us. My first novel is "Absolute Power." They just reissued Absolute Power, and the tagline for Absolute Power was, they just reissued it and said, what happens if the president of the United States is a narcissistic sociopath? (laughing) And I wrote that book almost 30 years ago. So again, there are lessons to be learned. And this is a mystery, and it's obviously historical fiction, but it's a lesson in there for all of us to go back a little bit in time and say, okay, this is how it was. This is what choices people made. This is how we've come today in 2024. But let me look at 2024 in depth and realistically and understand where really are we today. Because I think we've all seen, you over the last number of years that we still have a lot of challenges as a country. We're not there yet. I mean, the book, the book addresses the 1968, where a guy was walking, a Black guy was walking through a neighborhood, and he was shot and killed because he was walking through a white neighborhood and shouldn't have been. That happens today. That's not anything new. And so I when I was writing this novel, the reason I thought it was relevant again is because if I didn't tell you it was 1968, you might have just assumed it was contemporary novel. And that's at the point where I thought, yeah, I think this is still relevant. >> Colleen Shogan: So this is my last question before we open it up to the audience. I know there's likely a lot of questions from devoted fans and readers. We have two microphones here, so tell us, what you're working on next. What's next in the pipeline for you? >> David Baldacci: So in November, my new book is called "To Die For." It's a "6:20 Man." It's about Travis Devine, and he goes to the Pacific Northwest. Where he has to sort of be a bodyguard for this young girl. I wrote the "6:20 Man". Because when I was in Florida one winter, I had read this story about the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers about this organization. They're a consortium of journalists around the world, and they broke the story about this $30 trillion of dark money that's floating around the world. And they identified a lot of the people who had it. So it was beyond tax authorities, and it was hidden. And there were athletes and dictators and movie stars and businessmen and all that. They had this money, and they just wanted to keep it out of sight. So they wrote this story, and I found it fascinating. I really did, but it didn't answer the one question that I wanted answered. And that is, what the hell do you do with $30 trillion? Right. So I answered it in the "6:20 Man" by saying, if I had $30 trillion, I wouldn't use it to buy the ninth yacht or the tenth jet. I would use it in various ways by buying people and property and places and influence to tilt the world, even more in my favor. Right. So I can make even more trillions of dollars. So, I wrote the novel I wrote the "6:20 Man" like, I don't know, eight weeks because it was just the story just poured out of me and I sent it up, published it, didn't know I was writing it. And so it came out. It was a big bestseller. It was like number one for three weeks in a row, big bestseller. So anyway, I get an email from the head journalist for this international consortium of journalists who wrote the Pandora and Panama Papers, and he said, I was sitting in bed and you mentioned us in the book, and I fell out of bed. I couldn't believe it. I just fell on the floor. I was like, Oh! My God, He Baldacci mentioned us. So he and his, his, one of his partners flew in from Australia, to have dinner with my wife and I in D.C. And he said, we have gotten so many calls and emails, far more people read you than read us. And he said we'd love to work with you in the future. Any stories that we break, we can, he said, I have to tell you, your conclusion about what they're doing with the $30 trillion spot on. So I'm bringing Travis Devine back and "To Die For." and then next spring. That book, I'm a little bit ahead of the game, which is nice to be. Next spring, I have another historical fiction coming out. It's called "Strangers in Time", and it's set in 1944, in London, England. So yap. >> Colleen Shogan: So I'm a big fan of the Campbell Club and of course, the book you wrote for the Campbell Club, "The Collectors", was partially set at the Library of Congress. So I have to ask you, what about a book, set at the National Archives? >> David Baldacci: I know, I know. >> Colleen Shogan: I know someone that might be willing to give you a tour. I don't know, I mean, it's an open invitation. >> David Baldacci: Well, let me, so I'll tell you. So the library, the collectors that she, Colleen is referring to, I went down and the director of the rare book collection, great guy. He took me through the vaults and, it was terrific. So while he's taking me through the vault and showing me, Jefferson's books and all this other great stuff, and while I was in the vault, all I wanted to do was to figure out how to kill him in the novel. Because that... >> Colleen Shogan: Poor Mark Diminution... >> David Baldacci: Yes Mark Diminution, yes he is. He's totally alive. But because that was one of the plot points, the director was going to have to die. So when I came out of the vault, I knew how I was going to do it. (laughing) >> Colleen Shogan: There we go. >> David Baldacci: And so later on in, Mark loved it. And Mark was like, he would take people on tours. And over here is where Baldacci killed me. Right there. I died gloriously. >> David Baldacci: So if I write about the archives, I don't know. >> Colleen Shogan: Well, I don't know. I'll keep my eye on you. Yeah, that's for sure. Okay, so there are questions. We'd like to open this up to people that might have a question for David about this book, or about other books that he's written. Please come on up. This is your chance. And while we're waiting for people to come up, a reminder that right after this, David will be signing books in line nine. So if you want your book signed, that's where he'll be. Here we go. >> Hi. I'm curious because this is such a departure from a lot of the books that you've written. How much pushback did you get on being able to publish it, or because of all the success that you had, were you able to basically dictate that this book was coming out? >> David Baldacci: That's a great question. This is the first time, first book I've ever had where I was assigned a sensitivity reader. Because it it has a lot of, terms in it. And I made a choice about one term in particular that I sort of used a hybrid because I thought it was my choice. I was more comfortable doing it that way. So I learned a lot with that. I didn't get really any other pushback other than that, they wanted to make sure that people would be comfortable. Although, look, my point of view on books is that the best books make us uncomfortable, and that's what they're supposed to do. Comfort is vanilla, it's a nice flavor, but it's not going to knock your socks off, right? You're not going to remember God. Last week I had the best vanilla ice cream cone, I've ever had in my life. No you don't. You never say that. We never say that. So. But it was an experience for me that I really took away. It was critical, which I needed it to be. I always people say, you know, how do you like it when editors. My wife reads pretty much all my stuff. She's my first reader and, my wife, if you've read my novels, I have never written about a damsel in distress in any of my novels for one simple reason. I have never met one in my entire life ever. So I write about strong, independent women, and my wife is definitely a force of nature. And she tells me, with relish what's wrong with my novels? But that's what I need, because I instinctively I sort of know what's right with the novels. I need to know where the weak points are. I need to know where I'm not connecting. And so the sensitivity reader was another way to do that as well. So, I enjoyed that experience very much. But look, I've written almost 60 novels and sometimes it just comes down to money, and the publisher is like, hey, whatever you want to do, we all want our bonuses next year, so you can go ahead and do what you need to do. But I take every experience like that as a learning experience. I was raised to be a modest, humble person. I was raised in a blue collar neighborhood. Those would have been my roots. I didn't have success as a writer until I was in my mid-30s, so I was fully formed as a person, I have no desire to be a jerk because it would be too much hard work for me. So everything that I do, when I'm working with other people, I feel like I can learn something. People can criticize me all they want, and sometimes their criticism is justified. And not every word that I write is set in stone. I want to make it as good as I possibly can, and so do they. So anybody you work with, if you have a common goal, don't put your back up just because somebody has some criticism. Criticism is how you grow and evolve and become better. Compliments do nothing for you except stroke your ego. >> Colleen Shogan: Right here. >> Hi. I was wondering, or what would your first piece of advice be for, like, aspiring young writers? >> Colleen Shogan: Oh, that's good question. >> David Baldacci: What are my first pieces of advice be about aspiring young writer? I would say don't write necessarily what you know about. Write about what you'd like to know about. And I always give this example of Laura Hillenbrand. She wrote a book 15 years ago called "Seabiscuit" about the famous horse in the 1930s. She wrote that book. She had chronic fatigue syndrome. She never could leave her home. But she's obsessed with Seabiscuit, and she read everything. And she became more knowledgeable about the racing industry, I think, than experts in the race industry were, because she was so passionate about it, and she wrote one of the best books that I've ever read, even though she'd never ridden a horse She'd never go on to a horse race, but she was so passionate about the subject matter, so she wrote about something she wanted to know about. And I have to tell you that when you have that sort of passion for a subject matter, it lifts your prose to another level. It makes your plots more compelling, and it makes your characters sparkle. So, you can write stuff about things that you're expert in or what you know about. But I've always found that writing is about passion, and if you can hit that level of passion by finding something that I'm curious about this subject, I'm going to go all in and immerse myself in that world. And as a writer, when you come out the other end, you are sheathed in like this creative machine. Because every waking moment, all you're thinking about is a story and what you want to do with it. And it makes the process of writing that story actually a lot more fun. And here's my other piece of advice writing is hard. It can be really frustrated. One day you're writing and nothing works, and you throw pages away and you're like beating your head against the wall. That happens to all of us. Don't feel like you're any different. It happens to all of it. Happens to me. I've written a lot of books. But please have fun while you're doing this, because fun can motivate you like nothing else possibly can. And keep in mind that what we do, people pay us hopefully to make shit up. (laughing) How cool is that? >> David Baldacci: Right? I mean, when I was seven, that was my whole world. I just didn't get paid for it. So good luck to you. >> I think this book has the making of a classic. I did not grow up in western Virginia. I grew up in for what would say, one of the New England states. But the states I grew up in, we had those issues. We had farmers who employed immigrants, and we were told to shun those immigrant’s people would walk on the other side of the street. We had Indian reservations. We were told to shun those Native Americans. And a city close by, burned in 1969 almost to the ground. And again, we were to shun those Black people. I had a teacher in high school for my sophomore and junior year, and he talked so much about what went on in that book, that we shouldn't be colorblind. We need to accept people for who they are, look for their good points. Sadly, that teacher died on Wednesday. He was Congressman Bill Pascrell (applause) So thank you very much for writing the book that you wrote. >> David Baldacci: Thank you. Thank you. Well, what I so, grew up, in circumstances where I could have turned out very differently. I grew up with a lot of people who were racist back then, and they're racist today. And I have to say, what saved me in my brother and sister. My parents took us to the library every week. Here's the thing about racism. Any ism like that prejudiced. It's the fear of the unknown. Okay, somebody looks different from me. I'm scared of them because I don't know who they are or where they're coming from. And people use that fear to divide people. That's clear. That's been a playbook in this country forever. It's just how it's done. Okay? How you break down the fear of the unknown is knowing the unknown. And it's the little kid in Richmond. I never had a chance to leave Richmond. But I like to say, when I went to the library and read books, I traveled the world without a plane or a passport. So I'd met people from all over the world, all walks of life. People didn't look, pray, eat, speak, educate, learn like me. But I learned that we all share the common core of humanity right away. By the time I was ten, I had met people from all over the world. That fear of the unknown was gone because, I knew these people. Right? And so books can do that. Books are magic in that form. Mark Twain used to say that travel is fatal to prejudice. He was the most traveled man of his, of his time around the world. All of us don't have the ability to do that, but we do have the ability to go to the library and travel the world through books. And once you meet people in books, and you will meet far more people in books than you ever will personally, in life, and far more people across a wide spectrum of humanity than you ever will meet personally in life. And then all of a sudden, the boogeyman is exposed as a fraud. You don't have to look under the bed and be scared of other people. And once that fear goes away, guess what happens? All the other bad isms go away because there are They're people like us. So books saved me, and I dedicated this book to teachers and librarians for what they do around the world, not just in this country. If I could wave a magic wand... I read a statistic years ago that the five top paid hedge fund managers in this country make more money each year than all teachers combined. Five guys make more money. If I could wave a wand, every teacher and librarian in this country would make $1 million a year. Because you know what? The return on investment, far higher than that. (applause) >> Hello. I just wanted to make a comment about, especially wish you well. And in your last book, obviously, the way I talk, I speak Appalachian, and, but how you got in the mind, I know it's part of your background, but when you talk about racism. A lot of people from Appalachia, it's not racism. It's there are no, there's no diversity. And I think especially in wished you well, you hit that like there there is no different, like you're not racist but you've never experienced. Any other anybody else. And I just, I'm wondering what your feedback was from, like the Virginia community and the, Appalachian community on your works. >> David Baldacci: So I toured through Appalachia when I, for "Wish You Well" and I went back where my mother grew up. And we actually, "Wish You Well" was turned into a movie with, Ellen Burstyn and Josh Lucas. And we filmed some of it in Southwest Virginia. Again, ignorance and intolerance go hand in hand. They're like commas off a clause. You never. There are two commas together. You never find ignorance without intolerance because one creates the other. And not having a lot of diversity in the community can create ignorance because you don't have examples of other types of people out there. And for me, any community that you have, that's you got to put a library in every corner if you can. It'll have a mobile book machine. I do a lot of work with the Library of Virginia, where we send out, bookmobiles and books and librarians across the state, because I know I'm a firm believer that the better educated you are, the better country we're going to have, the better read we are, the better country we're going to have. Not only that, but guess what books also do besides educating us. It creates in all of us the one human attribute that makes all the other attributes we have as a person better and stronger. And that one attribute is empathy. Books create empathy in all of us, and once you have empathy in spades, then the rest of your life is going to be wonderful, and the people you deal with in your life is going to be a much better experience with that one word empathy. The lack of empathy leads to the worst that human beings have to offer, as we are seeing across the country today, unfortunately. But if we can just turn that around, and I did it through books and we can all do it that way. But it used to be when people would come up to me and say, my wife likes your books or my husband likes your books, I don't have time to read. Sorry. And I was like, yeah, everybody's busy. I don't do that anymore. People come up to me and they say, yeah, I don't have time to read. I haven't read a book in 20 years. And I said, I can't tell you the depths of sorrow I have for your loss. >> David Baldacci: And they're like, what are you talking about? I said, you have a void in your life. You have. No, you have no idea if it's even there. You are a lesser human being because you don't read books. They're like, what the hell are you talking about? I said, read a book. Here's one, and you'll figure it out. Thank you, guys, very much. (applause) ♪upbeat music♪