CSPAN - America's Book Club David Grann

All Episodes

Previous Next

Nov. 28, 2025 14:12-15:13 - CSPAN

01:00:52

America's Book Club David Grann

Participants

Main

david grann

42:33

david rubenstein

10:25

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Chef, humanitarian, and author Jose Andres joins David M. Rubinstein on America's Book Club to discuss his career, his global relief efforts with World Central Kitchen, his books, and his love of food.
		And at 9.45 p.m. Eastern, retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy talks about his memoir, Life, Law, and Liberty.
		President Ronald Reagan named Mr. Kennedy to the nation's highest court in November 1987.
		Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
		Coming up here on C-SPAN, more from our new series, America's Book Club.
		In just a moment, our conversation with author David Gran at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
		And then journalist Walder Isaacson talks about his biographies of Albert Einstein and Elon Musk.
		After that, restaurateur and philanthropist Jose Andres discusses his career and global relief efforts.
		All that and more just ahead here on C-SPAN.
		America's Book Club is brought to you by these television companies and is supported by the Ford Foundation.
		From the nation's iconic libraries and institutions, America's Book Club takes you on a powerful journey of ideas, exploring the lives and inspiration of writers who have defined the country in conversation with civic leader and author David Rubenstein.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		As a young boy growing up in Baltimore, I went to my local library and was inspired to read as many books as I could.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Hopefully people will enjoy hearing from these authors and hopefully they'll want to read more.
unidentified		Now from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, Chronicler of Adventurers, Crimes and Obsessions, best-selling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and the Wager, David Gran.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		David is an unusual author in the sense that he writes books that read like fiction, but they're non-fiction.
		Some people call this creative nonfiction, but they're really page turners and you can't put them down.
		And I've read many of your books and I really couldn't put them down.
		And I'd like to talk about three of them tonight, but I'd like to mention two of them recently that became bestsellers.
		One book was Killers of the Flower Moon, was a number one New York Times bestseller.
		And you also have a book called The Wager, also a number one New York Times bestseller.
		It's not unusual to have a New York Times number one bestseller.
		By definition, almost everybody at some time, not everybody, but there's always going to be a number one bestseller by definition, right?
		But what's unusual is that you had two books on the New York Times bestseller list simultaneously.
		I can't think of any other author that actually had two books, both of which had been on number one and are on the New York Times bestseller list.
		So when that happened, did you call your mother and say, guess what?
		I'm a really good writer?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, I still remember my editor and publisher calling me and saying, you know, this doesn't happen and congratulating me.
		And the truth is, when you write a book, each of those books each took five years, so collectively a decade.
		And when you're working on them, you don't know if anybody will read them.
		Your worry is they will go into a little stream.
		So the idea that anybody is reading the book and that many people are reading the book is pretty astonishing.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		When you wrote The Killers of the Flower Moon, obviously a lot of research.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		We'll talk about it in a moment, but did you ever expect that you would get a call from Martin Scorsese saying, I want to make this into a movie, or that Leonardo DiCaprio would play one of the heroes in the movie?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		No, no, never, never.
		I mean, you know, I mean, even one's wildest ambitions, I don't think that would ever occur to them.
		They might be deluded.
		And when you're working on these projects, you're so focused on the research.
		You're so, you know, it's a little bit like seeing the folios today here in the library.
		You're going back and you're looking at these old documents and studying them.
		You're trying to decipher them and decode them.
		And the last thing you ever think in your mind is that these obscure stories that have kind of been forgotten by much, many people would ever become a movie, let alone that Marin Scorsese would be interested.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So before we go into these books, let's talk about your background.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So where were you born?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I was born in New York City and grew up in Connecticut.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And were your parents involved in writing in any way?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		So my father was a doctor.
		My mother was a really pioneering editor in the field of publishing.
		And she really was the first woman, major publishing houses, the first woman editor-in-chief at one of the larger New York publishing houses, and then the first CEO of a publishing house.
		So it was kind of part of the background.
		I grew up around writers.
		I will say that my mother, perhaps knowing the difficulty of the life of a writer, had given me one piece of advice.
		She said, whatever you do, David, you don't become a writer.
		And I, being a very good son, decided to prove her wrong.
		And I will say, I think after Killers of the Flower Moon was finished, I remember saying, reading it in an early manuscript and her finally saying, I don't know, I must have been about 45 then or 50.
		She said, I guess it was a good thing you became a writer.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So where did you go to college?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Connecticut College in the London Connection.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And at that time, did you want to be a writer?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I did.
		I had aspirations of being a writer, but it's such a vague, you know, it's not like you go to law school or become an accountant or an electrician.
		Yeah, I kind of like to write.
		You keep a journal.
		I had no idea how it would manifest itself.
		So I just kind of wrote, and I wrote in every different form you can imagine.
		I wrote op-eds.
		I wrote really bad poetry.
		I wrote some creative fiction, short stories, trying to figure out what form would work for me.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		All right, so after college, you went to graduate school, and you got degrees in what area?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I got a degree.
		Well, there was a lot of pressure for me to get a career.
		I was kind of foundering about it.
		I was a school teacher for one year, hardest job I ever had.
		I had a full head of hair before.
		Was bald after trying to teach eighth grade, seventh grade boys and girls.
		And then I got a master's degree from Tufts University in law and diplomacy, which was good because at least it had law in the title, so it would soothe my anxious parents about my ambitions of becoming a writer.
		And then I got a fellowship at Boston University in creative writing.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so you ultimately you migrated to Washington?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		And then I came to Washington.
		I needed a job.
		I mean, that was basically it.
		I just, I was trying to be a writer.
		I was trying to write fiction at that time, and I needed a job.
		And there was a new newspaper starting up in Washington, D.C. called the Hill Newspaper.
		We didn't have, we hadn't published yet.
		We didn't even have computers.
		And they needed a copy editor.
		And I got a job as a copy editor.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		She did that in Washington for a while.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And then eventually you went to work for The New Yorker?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		And that was kind of always my aspiration.
		You know, you don't, my journey as a writer is one of discovery.
		I didn't know what form it would take.
		And so I tried writing newspaper stories.
		And I discovered, you know what, I'm a pretty bad newspaper reporter.
		One, I'm pretty slow.
		And two, I would write these stories and the editors would look at them and they'd say, oh, this is good, but we want the ending to move it up to the first graph.
		So everybody will know what would happen.
		I said, but that gives the whole story away.
		You've got to tell it from beginning to end.
		And then eventually I realized that I could take these literary techniques I had studied.
		And I never had an imagination to be a novelist.
		But I realized you could find these true stories and you could excavate them.
		So rather than invent them, I became this kind of excavator to tell these true stories that would hopefully have the same compelling quality of literature.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So how many years were you at the New Yorker?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I joined the New Yorker in 2003 and I'm still affiliated with the magazine today.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So when you're writing articles, New Yorker has long articles.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		It takes a lot of research.
		And you told the editor, I presume, I'm going to write a book at some point.
		Did they say it won't make a difference because we have so many writers, it won't make a difference if you're not writing?
		Or what did they say?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's funny.
		I think there's always an internal tension at a publication because they want you, you know, in the magazine.
		They want you writing for the magazine.
		But I also think there is a sense that after a certain amount of years of writing for the publication, that one will likely want to write a book.
		And so there is this tension, but they were supportive and they gave me the time to do it.
		But it was a challenge because I didn't have as much time.
		I still had to meet these deadlines to get back to working for the magazine.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		All right, so your first book is going to be, what topic?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		What did you decide to have as your first book?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was interesting.
		The first book grew out of a magazine story.
		I did a story for the New Yorker that was called The Lost City of Z about an explorer who had disappeared in the Amazon in 1925 with his oldest son, his son's best friend, looking for this ancient civilization, this semi-fable place, and they had disappeared.
		And when I finished the magazine piece, it was the first time I had finished the piece, and it was long.
		New Yorker has long stories, but it was the first time when I had finished the piece, I felt like there was still so much more to tell.
		And that became the seed of my first work.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So you told your editor, I'm going to take some time off and write a book, and did you get a publisher to give you a contract to write this book?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I did.
		I did.
		I had a contract for a publisher.
		And part of the origins of that book, really what happened was I went, when I learned about this explorer who had disappeared, I went to Wales, and I tracked down a descendant of Fawcett.
		And it was his granddaughter.
		And I remember, you know, telling her what I was interested in.
		I'd like to tell the story.
		And she said, well, you know, would you like to know what had happened to my grandfather?
		And I said, yeah, you know, yeah, sure, if at all possible.
		And I remember she led me into a back room.
		I felt like I was in a Victorian novel.
		She led me into a back room.
		There was this old chest.
		It was made of wood.
		She opened it up.
		Inside were all these books.
		There were diaries and journals.
		Some of them were still covered with mud.
		Some were held together with keys.
		They were disintegrating.
		And I said, what are they?
		She said, well, those are my grandfather's logbooks and diaries.
		And she let me go through them.
		And they held these enormous clues both to who he was as a person, as this kind of last of this kind of territorial explorer that came out of Victorian Edwardian England, and also clues to what had happened to him.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so his name was Percy Fawcett.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And he took his son and one or two others on a trip to go up the Amazon to find a lost city?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes.
		He had, early in his career, he had been a map maker.
		He had gone to the Royal Geographical Society, had trained as an explorer.
		It's really interesting.
		You could find these books at the Royal Geographical Society where they would train explorers.
		And in those days, you know, these booklets, you know, the medicine was so primitive.
		So they'd say, you know, if you are bleeding out or getting gangrene, you take gunpowder and you explode it in the wound.
		It had all these little lessons and diagrams for them.
		But he had studied that.
		He had mapped a lot of the borders of a lot of the South American countries.
		And during those journeys, he had started to gather clues that suggested to him there might be this ancient civilization.
		He found old pottery.
		He found these earth mounds.
		And it was these things that built together this theory so that finally in 1925, post-World War I, he set out with his son, his older son, Jack and Jack's best friend.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Now, in those days, they didn't have GPS, so you couldn't really figure out exactly where you were going.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And everything in the Amazon hadn't been mapped yet.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		No, and certainly not in these areas.
		And he wanted to go in the southern basin of the Amazon.
		And, you know, in those days, there were, you know, so few immunities against diseases.
		I mean, so many explorers who go on these expeditions would get diseases and die, die of yellow fever, die of malaria.
		Many of them would starve.
		And his idea was to go not along the rivers, but to actually go across land, which is even more difficult and more challenging.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		But what happened is he never came back.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		He never came back.
		And it generated one of the great mysteries.
		You know, in its day, you know, one of the things I love about history, and when I first came upon this story, it was in a footnote, actually, in a story I was reading about how Percy Harrison Fawcett had helped inspire the Lost World, the Conan Doyle novel.
		And so he put it into one of these old historical databases, and up came these crazy headlines in the New York Times.
		Fawcett disappears into jungle, Fawcett's still missing, wife praying, looking for, and in its day, it was a sensation.
		So if you said, you know, where was Fawcett buried, it was kind of saying like, where is Jimmy Hoffa buried?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So it reminds me, as you talk about it, there was somebody who tried to climb Mount Everest the first time and he didn't quite ever come back, Mallory.
unidentified		Yep.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And they never knew exactly what happened to him.
		And then there was somebody who tried to go across Antarctica and it didn't quite make it.
		They didn't know what happened to him.
		This is somewhat similar, right?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Very similar.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Very much so.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I will say, though, one of the things that was happening right then, and it's interesting to library, is it was kind of the beginning of mass media and telegraphs.
		And so Fawcett was writing these accounts, you know, and that he would then give to runners from different indigenous communities.
		And they were running out, you know, it would take them a long time, but they were bringing out his accounts as he was going deeper and deeper into the jungle.
		And then these would be telegraphed and read all around the world in Africa, in Asia.
		So the whole world, with a three-month delay, was following this expedition.
		And then suddenly there was silence.
		So it created this great sense of wonder and mystery.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So nobody knew at the time, and nobody really knows today exactly what happened.
		But you were going to figure it out if you could what happened.
		So to do this type of research, you don't like to do it in a library.
		You like to actually go under the field.
		So did you go to the same place he had gone?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so you know, it's funny.
		I am very much suited for the place we are in for archives and libraries.
		One can look at my physical physique.
		But usually what happens is when I'm doing research, you start to feel like and wonder, can you really know what was happening?
		And one of the things I found in those journals in the chest, one of them described where Fawcett had gone.
		Fawcett had described where he wanted to go.
		And he had never made that public because he was afraid some rival would beat him to the discovery.
		So I thought, well, if everybody had gone that way and other people had gone and disappeared or not come back, I thought, well, maybe if everybody went that way, what if I go that way?
		What will I find?
		And so I decided to set out into the jungle.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Now, before you did this, did you update your own will?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a sensitive topic.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I did take out an extra life insurance policy.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And did your wife say, look, this other guy went in there and he didn't come back and maybe the same thing could happen to you?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Did she ever mention that?
unidentified		She did.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, she said to me, I said, don't worry.
		I said, don't worry.
		Other people have done that.
		She said, well, what happened to them?
		I said, well, some of them died or didn't come back.
		She said, oh.
		And then I started to, you know, I don't hike.
		I don't camp.
		I'm pretty phobic.
		I like my Chinese food delivered right to the door.
		And so I'm starting to pack for this trip.
		And my wife takes one look at me when I'm packing and she says, David, like, you've got to go to one of these stores and get some real equipment.
		So, of course, I went to one of these schools.
		I think it was R.R., what do they call it?
		R-R-R?
unidentified		R-E-I-R.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		REI.
		See, that's how much I chose I don't know about camping.
		REI.
		So I went to an REI store.
		I'd never been to an REI store, and I haven't been since.
		But I went in there and I started looking at all the cool gizmos and gadgets and putting them into my container and pushing on the aisle.
		And then this guy comes over to me, he looked like he was 22, and it looked like he'd just come down from Mount Everest.
		And he says to me, You never camped, have you?
		He starts taking out all the things out of my bag and saying, Look, we've got to get you a mosquito net, we're going to get you some boots, some water-resistant material.
		And so off I went.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		All right, so you went there.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		What year was that you went in?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Oh my goodness, that was, I think it was 2005.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		How long did you expect to be in the jungle?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I didn't know.
		I had a guide.
		It was just going to be the two of us.
		We're going to go into the southern basin of the Amazon.
		It was an area where the indigenous communities have territorial control over these areas, but they've been under assault so much from settlers and people seeking wood and forestry that it's really dangerous.
		You can't just wander onto the land.
		So I found a guide who spoke the indigenous languages, would introduce me, and we set off.
		And it ended up taking all total about two months.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Two months.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And were you able to send letters to your wife?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		No.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Did she worry about you?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, this is actually, I did have a sat phone, but I didn't really want to use it once.
		And I would, this story isn't going to make me look very good.
		But I had a sat phone, and very rarely I would be able to call out and just say, hey, I'm fine.
		But I had a very young son at the time.
		And I could hear him screaming in the background, dad, dad, dad, dad, to the phone.
		He began to associate the phone with me, which, you know, you do these foolish things sometimes.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So what did you conclude that Mr. Fawcett had been eaten by somebody or what happened?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, the thing about Fawcett was he was older, but he was a well-trained explorer.
		He had been doing this for years.
		And he had almost invincibility about him.
		He would always emerge from these expeditions when half the parties would die.
		So it was almost inconceivable that he would die.
		And then when he didn't come back, many people didn't believe it.
		But when I went into the Amazon, I stayed with an indigenous group, the Kalapalos, and they had an oral history, which was like a beautiful poem.
		It reads like a beautiful epic poem.
		And it describes in there their first encounter with these white men, and it was Fawcett.
		And in this poem, one of the reasons I knew it had an authenticity is it described this explorer playing a little flute.
		And I knew from Fawcett's letters to his wife home that he had brought a little recorder with him.
		He said so he wouldn't go mad in the solitude of the jungle.
		And it described how they could see a fire in the distance, that Fawcett had insisted on going to the east, and they had warned him not to head into that direction.
		And they could see the fire from Fawcett's camps rise above the trees.
		And then suddenly the fire and the smoke goes out, and they go to investigate and they're gone.
		And the presumption from this oral history, which I think is the closest and best recording we have of what happened, was that Fawcett was likely killed with his party by one of these indigenous groups there.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		All right, so that was your conclusion.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So when you came back and you wrote a book about it, how long did you actually take to do all this research?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		That book I did quicker than my other books, partly because I was still working for the magazine and trying to have to generate articles.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		And it took about probably three years of research and writing.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And did your publisher say hurry up, hurry up?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you always feel that pressure.
		Hurry up, hurry up.
		And I get the famous, this is what you usually get from your editor, well, my watch is on this hand.
		And you know, it's unspoken, but you know exactly what it means.
		It's like, let's go, let's go.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		All right, so that book came out, did well, but then you decided to do another book.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And the book, let me talk about, you did a couple others, but let's talk about the book on Killers of the Flower Moon.
		Sure.
		So what is the premise?
		For those who haven't read the book yet, what's the basic premise of the book?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's about how members of the Osage Nation in Northeast Oklahoma in the early 20th century have become among the wealthiest people per capita in the world because of these oil deposits under their land.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Is that because the people that owned Oklahoma said, we want to give the Indians very valuable land?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Is that what they said?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Just the opposite.
		The Osage had been driven off their ancestral lands, and they had finally eyed this area in what was then Indian territory.
		It's now part of Oklahoma.
		And it was an area that was rocky and hilly and seen as infertile by settlers and therefore worthless.
		So an Osage chief at the time actually stood up and he said, our people should move there because the white people will finally leave us alone and we'll be happy there.
		And so they purchased their land.
		They had a deed to that land.
		And they ultimately maintained, even as a lot of their surface territory disappeared into the hands of whites, they maintained this collective trust, this mineral trust over all the minerals under the land.
		It was about the size of Delaware.
		And then oil was discovered in that land.
		Some of the largest deposits then in the United States ever found.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So what happened was a number of people who were Native Americans who were part of the Osage tribe started dying.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yes, they began to die under mysterious circumstances.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And nobody could figure out why they were dying.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Did the FBI come in to investigate or what happened?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, for many years, the Osage, in particular, this one family of Molly Burkhardt begins to be seriously murdered.
		Her older sister is found shot in the back of the head.
		Not long after, her younger, well, not long after that, her mother begins to grow mysteriously sick each day becoming more insubstantial, and evidence would indicate she was poisoned.
		So within just a span of a few months, she lost her older sister and her mother.
		And not long after that, her younger sister was so terrified, moved into a house to be nearer.
		And about three in the morning, Molly hears this loud explosion.
		She goes out to the window and she can see a bomb basically blowing up her younger sister's house.
		So one after the other, the Osage began to be killed.
		And they would crusade for justice, but because of corruption at the time, because of prejudice, these crimes were not looked into.
		And finally, after the official death toll had climbed to about two dozen or more, the Osage Nation's tribal council issued a resolution pleading with federal authorities to step in.
		And that's when the FBI took up the case.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And did the FBI crack the case?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Did they figure out what really happened?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's interesting.
		They went undercover.
		They put together an undercover team, including one of the members was a Native American.
		And they posed as cattlemen.
		One posed as an insurance salesman.
		And in particular, they followed the money in the deaths of Molly's case.
		And in particular, they followed the wills to see who was profiting from each of these killings.
		And they ultimately led them to somebody who Molly knew and somebody who Molly thought she loved.
		It led them to her own husband, Ernest Burckhardt, and Ernest's uncle, who had masterminded the scheme.
		And these were essentially inheritance schemes.
		So they involve somebody marrying into a family while pretending to love them, having children with them in many cases, while systematically plotting to kill them.
		We're in the Folger Library, and I think always of this quote from Julius Caesar about conspiracy and about hiding thy face.
		And that was very true of these crimes.
		So just to answer your question really quickly, the FBI was able to identify some of the henchmen, but there was a much deeper and darker conspiracy that the Bureau never exposed.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And what was that?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		There were many other deaths, many other suspicious deaths, and they were unconnected to Ernest Burckhardt and his uncle.
		I went out to a massive archive out in Oklahoma, a branch of the National Archives, about the size of an airport hangar.
		And in that archive, I was doing research on this guardianship system.
		And just very quickly, the guardianship system was a system which the government forced many of the Osage with their money to have these white guardians to manage their fortunes.
		It's this very prejudiced and paternalistic system.
		And so I was doing research on the Guardians, and I pulled out a booklet that identified who a guardian was and whose Osage's fortunes they had managed.
		And I was looking through that booklet, and I noticed that under the name of one of the guardians, they had five Osages whose fortunes they had managed.
		The only other thing in this little booklet was if one of them had died, somebody had written the word dead next to their name.
		And I noticed in the first name dead, the next name, dead, third name, fourth names, all dead.
		And then I began to look through the book more quickly, and I noticed other guardians, and they had about 12 Osages whose money they may have managed, and they had about a 50% mortality rate.
		And this defied any natural death rate.
		I remember the Osage had money, they had health care, and this booklet contained the hints of a systematic murder campaign, and it really ended up demolishing the notion of the book I thought I was writing.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So you concluded that there were some more extensive than people thought at the time.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		But at that time, was anybody ever punished for doing this?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		There was the people who had masterminded some of the killings of Molly's family, Molly's husband, her husband's uncle, and a henchman were prosecuted and convicted.
		But it turned out that this was really less about the singular evil figure or just a singular evil figure.
		It was really about this culture of killing in which many people were participating in these crimes.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So when you concluded that it had been more extensive, you decided to write a book about it, did you expect the U.S. government to do anything at that point to go after people or their descendants or somehow have some redress for the descendants of the people who had lost lives?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		You know, as a writer and a historian, the job you view yourself, you never know what kind of impact you will have.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		And so the thing that you're trying to do, the thing you can hopefully control, is to document this, is to research and to put it out there and let people absorb it and hopefully produce change that way.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Now, to be honest, a subject like this is not one.
		It's fairly esoteric.
		Yes.
		It's not one.
		It's not like you're writing a book about Abraham Lincoln might be a bestseller.
		George Washington is probably going to be a bestseller or John Kennedy going to be a bestseller.
		This is a tribe that nobody in the east of probably Oklahoma has heard of.
		And it happened a long time ago.
		So were you shocked when your book became the number one bestseller?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Whenever you write a book, you don't know.
		And I remember, you know, I spent really six years working on that book.
		And I remember my wife sitting me down before it came out and just saying, no matter what happened, you did something you believed in and it's important.
		And so you have no expectation.
		And that anyone would read the book or that it would become part of our, that it would help deepen our understanding of this very important history was one of those unexpected surprises.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		When it came out, did it rise up gradually to number one or what point did your publisher?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I got to ask my publisher these questions.
		I don't know.
		I don't remember how it, but I will say this.
		I remember going to Oklahoma and beginning to hold events to discuss this history.
		And even in Oklahoma where these crimes took place, outside the Osage Nation, who deeply were aware of their history, but outside the Osage Nation, Uncle, many people there had not heard of it.
		And I remember arriving and more and more people coming, descendants coming.
		And one of the most amazing experiences I had in the wake of the book, you know, more than anything else, was I had asked the publisher if they would send me back to the communities where I'd done research.
		I would go to the Osage Nation.
		I would spend usually two months out of the year every year there.
		And I remember they had an event for me in Fairfax, which has a town of just about a thousand people.
		And they arranged it, and so many members of the Osage Nation had come and lined up, so many people I had interviewed.
		And for me, that was more rewarding than anything else.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So when they're making the movie of this book, do you sit there on the set and say, well, it didn't happen that way, or you want to be factually accurate, you've got to do it differently, or they didn't want to pay attention to you?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		You know, I've been pretty blessed.
		They really cared about getting things right.
		And the most important thing, you know, it's Martin Scorsese.
		I would never say to Martin Scorsese, you know, I really don't think you should do that tracking shot.
		I would go this way.
		You know, they all know what they're doing.
		But the one thing that was very important to me was I had worked so closely with the Osage Nation in working on my book, and they needed to develop those relationships.
		And they were so committed to doing that and working so closely.
		So many members of Osage participated in the film, were consultants, there were Osage actors in it.
		And to me, that was really what was the most important.
		And you're there as a resource.
		You know, you're there if they need you.
		Sometimes an actor might want court transcripts.
		Or I even had a video of Ernest Burkhard-Molly's husband as an elder gentleman.
		And I was able to send that to Leonardo DiCaprio so he could see that, get a better sense of the person he was playing.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So did you get invited to the Oscars when the movie was made?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I did get to go to the Oscars.
unidentified		Yes.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, the good thing about being a nerd book writer, you spend all your time in the archives, is basically if you get invited to the Oscars or a movie comes out and it's directed by Martin Scorsese for at least two days, your kids think you are cool.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		When you go to the Oscars, that everybody say, oh, there's the author of the book.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, this is true.
		So you go to the Oscars.
		I've never been to the Oscars.
		You go to the Oscars.
		So all the beautiful people go this way.
		And then they have another little path in the Oscars where the people like I go.
		And then you kind of look down on the beautiful people getting their pictures taken.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So let's talk about the wager.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		The wager is a book that you spent how many years on?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Another half decade.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I like to round it off.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And what's the premise, for those who haven't read it yet, the premise behind the book?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		So the premise behind the book was about a British maritime ship in the 18th century that was part of a squadron in a war against Spain that was being set out on a secret mission to try to capture a galleon filled with so much wealth it was known as the prize of all the ocean.
		And it focuses on this one ship, the wager.
		And the squadron and the wager ship just undergo one calamity after another from scurvy to hurricanes.
		And eventually, the wager gets shipwrecked on a desolate island where the crew and the officers slowly descend into a real life Lord of the Flies.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Now, it's called the Wager.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		It's maybe a pun, but why is it called The Wager?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, it's funny.
		It's known as The Wager for a very simple, kind of almost literal reason, which was the Wager, Sir Charles Wagers, was in the Admiralty at the time and was a leader, and so it was named after him.
		It was known as The Wager, but obviously it was metaphorical.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so this is not an event that jumps off the page.
		It's likely to be a great bestseller.
		So what about this fact, about this occurrence, made you think this could be something worth your time?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So usually you're looking for a few things.
		And one, you're looking for a story that grips you.
		I remember I was doing research.
		I came upon this story when I found a copy of a digital manuscript in a British library.
		It was written by John Byron, who had been the 16-year-old midshipman on the wager, who would later go on to become the grandfather of the poet, Lord Byron, whose poetry is greatly influenced by this narrative I was suddenly reading.
		And it was written in very old English.
		I certainly did not think reading it at first that this would ever be a bestseller.
		It was written in this old English, the F's are S's or the S's are F's.
		But I kept pausing over these very arresting phrases.
		He referred to it as the perfect hurricane.
		He describes the scurvy that's consuming the ship and getting into the shipmates' mind and sending them mad.
		And I started to realize that this odd little old manuscript contained the seeds of one of the most extraordinary stories of survival and mayhem I had ever come across.
		But I will just say that that would not have been enough.
		That would not have been enough because that would have been a great story.
		But what does it mean and what is it about?
		And at that time, when I was doing the research, I started to say, well, would there be enough material to actually tell the story?
		And I found out that some of the survivors, after this horrific shipwreck, have made it back to England.
		And after everything they have been through, they are suddenly summoned to face a court-martial for their alleged crimes.
		And if they don't tell a compelling story, if they don't convince the Admiralty that their version is true, after everything they've been through, they're going to get hanged.
		And so there begins this war over the truth and the war over these stories.
		And it really echoed our times in which we're having these wars over history, wars over truth.
		And so I thought this weird little 18th century story that I'd never heard of felt like a parable.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		All right, how many people were initially on the wager?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Oh my God, you're testing my memory.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I think 250.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Some of them, as you point out, were so old that they couldn't have a hard time getting people to go on this.
		So they were taking people out of old age homes to put them into this boat.
		Is that right?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the seeds of destruction of this expedition were planted right at the start.
		Great Britain did not have conscription at the time.
		They were short of volunteers.
		And so they began to press people.
		And people from the American Revolution know about pressing, which is they would go around and they would look for anybody who had the telltale signs of a mariner.
		They would even check your fingertips if you had a little bit of tar on them.
		Tar was used on ships to make things water resistant.
		You were a mariner.
		They would essentially abduct you and take you on the ship.
		But even then they were short of seamen.
		So they went to this old pensioner home and they took 500 of these people, many of them who were in their 60s and 70s, some of whom were missing a limb.
		And some who were so sick they had to be lifted on stretchers onto the ship.
		Everybody knew they were sailing to their death.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So they go on the ship, the wager, and the wager is one of several ships involved in this expedition to try to capture the Spanish gold.
		But the wager is going on a route that is the most dangerous route probably on the earth.
		Yeah.
		Why is the route so dangerous?
		Because it goes in a place in the earth where there's nothing else like it.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there is nothing else like it.
		They were going to go around Cape Horn, so they're going to go around the tip of South America between the very bottom of South America and Antarctica.
		And that has the roughest seas on Earth.
		And, you know, many people have heard that.
		It wasn't until I did the research that I actually knew why.
		And there are real geological reasons for this.
		It's the only place on Earth where the seas circle the globe.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		With no land.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		With no land.
		They never hit land.
		They travel about 15,000 miles or 13,000 miles and they never hit land.
		So they gather more and more force.
		And then they go into this area where the land suddenly narrows, they chute, and the ground becomes more shallow.
		It generates the Cape Horn roller waves, which are about 90 feet.
		They could dwarf a 90-foot mass.
		You have winds that can reach 200 miles per hour, and you have the strongest currents on Earth.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		All right, so the boat goes through that, and does it survive?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, many of the ships there would begin to break apart.
		They're all trying to stay together.
		You know, they couldn't communicate.
		They didn't have their iPhone, so they're like blasting their cannon blanks to try to signal their location.
		But they separate.
		The wager is suddenly left to its own destiny.
		And it does make it around Cape Horn, and it's heading up the South American coast of Chile.
		But they have to navigate by dead reckoning, which is, they did not have accurate clocks, so they could not measure their longitude precisely.
		They miscalculate, and they end up in this gulf.
		It's known as the Gulf of Painus or the Gulf of Sorrow, or as some refer to it or translate it as the Gulf of Pain.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So it has a shipwreck?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		It has a shipwreck.
		It's suddenly, you have to understand these people on the ship, many of them didn't swim back then.
		That surprised me.
		Seaman often did not know how to swim.
		And these ships were their homes.
		They were also these murderous instruments for war.
		They were their fortresses.
		And suddenly it hits a rock and a two-ton anchor falls through the hull of the ship.
		Then another wave comes and washes the wager off of this rock and it's careening through the Gulf of Pain.
		Its tiller is broken.
		And then finally, it smashes between these two pillars of rocks and the ship begins to break apart.
		The calbins collapse.
		Water is surging upward.
		Rats are surging upward.
		Those who have been suffering from scurvy in their hammocks, who could not get out, they drowned.
		But miraculously, the ship did not entirely sink yet.
		It was kind of perched between these rocks.
		And the few survivors climb up onto the tops onto the remnants of the ship.
		And they look out in the distance, and they can see this island, which would become known as Wager Island in the distance.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Right, so they ultimately go to the how many people make it to the island?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		About 130.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		130.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And then ultimately, they're there for how long before some start to leave.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, they are there for many, many months.
		Some of them as long as six, some more.
		And eventually they build a castaway ship from the remnants.
		But even before they do that, their order is breaking down and they are breaking into different groups.
		And there are these three groups on the island.
		One group are known as the seceders.
		The other group is kind of this growing rebellion.
		And the other group is led by the captain who still wants to run this community by order and remain.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		What was the captain's name?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		His name was David Cheap.
unidentified		They all had the Keynesian names, David Cheap.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Eventually, a group of these people make their way back to England.
		And they say, We had a shipwreck and we survived it.
		It's amazing.
		It's incredible.
		And people say, Wow, look what they did.
		And then another group comes back and says, Well, these people are lying about what happened.
		Can you explain why they were lying or some were saying the others were lying?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		So initially, yeah.
		So one group, these kind of the mutineers who overthrow the captain, leave the captain behind on the island.
		About 30 of them survive and they make it back to England.
		And it really is a lesson in trying to tell your story first.
		They quickly rush out their story of what had happened.
		One of them, the leader of the group, was a very good writer and had documented everything and kind of sets this narrative of what had happened: that they had suffered and they had eventually built the ship and they had traveled some 3,000 miles leading one of the longest castaway voyages ever recorded.
		And they were treated as heroes.
		They were seen as heroes who had led this miraculous journey of survival.
		And then...
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So they're treated as heroes when they get back?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, initially.
		Well, at least when they initially land in Brazil.
		And then several months later, this other little ship, as you described, is basically a dugout canoe washes ashore with the captain who's so delirious he can't even recollect his own name.
		And then when he begins to get better, he says, wait a second, those people aren't mutineers.
		They're not heroes.
		They're mutineers.
		They left us to die.
		And then begins this battle over the narratives.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So the British Admiralty says, well, you have to have a hearing about all this.
		And after many, many months, they have a hearing.
		What actually happens?
		Is somebody found at fault and somebody going to go to jail or hung for this?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		The expectation was that some of them would definitely hang.
		I mean, mutiny was the most severe crime and accusation in a naval body because it threatens the very order of the ship and it threatens the order of the empire.
		And so the mutineers were praying on the day before they went into the trial.
		The captain himself had shot somebody on the island, and the countercharge was that he had committed murder.
		So there was a chance that he could hang if he couldn't justify.
		They get in this room and the Admiralty's listening to all these stories back and forth and they start to think, you know, do we really like any of these stories?
		They're making us look like brutes, not like gentlemen, and they're undercutting the British Empire.
		And so they eventually do something that's really astonishing and shocking given the British history of treating mutinies.
		They kind of just go.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Whitewashed it.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		They whitewashed it.
		And not only do they whitewash it, they then begin to construct and encourage there is one kind of heroic deed that came out of this squadron and this mission: that one of the ships in the squadron, only one, survived the journey, and it actually captured the galleon.
		And so that story becomes the one the gold is paraded through England.
		The war had been disastrous, the expedition had been disastrous, more than 1,300 people had died on this expedition.
		But here they had this victorious narrative.
		That's the story they want to tell.
		And that becomes the alternative history, the kind of mythic tale of the sea that would get passed down through history.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Now, the part that is so dangerous is the part where there's no other land in that part of the earth.
		So the water goes around, it's very vicious, very dangerous.
		Nobody in his right mind would go back there to do research, right?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, I did, you know, I told you my story about the Amazon, and I seem, you know, it somehow seems to be a predilection.
		Again, I never ever begin these projects thinking I will leave a library.
		I'm being completely honest about that.
		I begin, I did two years in these archives like where we are now, looking at these 18th century journals.
		But at a certain point, you get this gnawing doubt.
		Do I know everything about this story?
		Do I really fully or can I fully understand what had happened to these men and boys on that island if I didn't go myself?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So you decided to go?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Hi, honey.
		I'm going to go to Wager Island in the Gulf of Pain.
		The good thing now about my wife is she's like, oh yeah, go.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So how did you get somebody to take you there?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Who takes you there these days?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, I found somebody, I found, through the help of somebody, I found a Chilean captain who had a boat, and he said he could take me from Chiliway Island, which is about 350 miles north of Wager Island.
		It was actually where Captain Cheap and Byron ended up when they escaped before getting back to England.
		And he sent me a photograph of the boat.
		I wish I could show it.
		But, you know, in the photograph, it looked really pretty good.
		I was like, this is good.
		I can handle this.
		And then when I finally got there after several days and got to the boat, it was this pretty small, kind of ungainly boat that was wood heated.
		You know, it was heated by a wood stove.
		And it was so rough that for the first five days, I think it was five days, we could not actually even leave the harbor.
		The Coast Guard would not let us depart.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So did you get seasick on this eventually?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		So I didn't think I would get that seasick, but yes, I did get seasick.
		And I had, I was kind of like, you know, one of these, you know, lab creeps.
		I should go into labs.
		I should just be tested on.
		So I had basically taken every type of seasick medicine known to humankind for this trip.
		And I had, you know, that band around the wrist.
		I could attest.
		I don't think it really works.
		I did have the drugs of some kind of drugs you put behind your ear.
		Very good.
		I do think that one works.
		And I was basically half drunk on drama.
		And I was like this on the boat.
		But for the first part, it was actually pretty calm because you're kind of between these little islets.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Well, but did you ever think you could tell everybody you had been there and done it without actually anybody knowing what you did?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		You never thought about that?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		No, that's the problem when you do nonfiction.
		I should have been a fiction writer.
		I could have skipped the whole trip.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So ultimately, when you get there and you get as close as you can, you see some remnants of the wager, is that right?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, we did.
		We would get into the Gulf of Pain.
		You're basically sitting there.
		You couldn't stand on the boat because it was so rough.
		I was listening foolishly to Moby Dick in my earphones, which as I've said before, is I think the greatest American novel ever written and the worst book to ever listen to when you're on the wager, going, I mean, on this boat looking for the wager remnants.
		But we did.
		We made it to the island.
		I had a skilled captain.
		And at one point he pointed, we were looking.
		I mean, the island is still windswept.
		It's barren.
		It's cold.
		There is nothing there.
		No signs of this ferocious struggle that took place there.
		And I could understand why this British officer described the island as this place of where your soul would die in you.
		I thought, well, my soul would die in me here.
		But the captain at one point pointed to a little stream, and he said, come over here.
		And in that stream, we could see this wooden timber.
		It was about five yards in length.
		I could see it floating.
		The water was very clear.
		And they were the remnants from an 18th century warship believed to be from His Majesty's ship The Wager.
		And we know what they were and are because an earlier expedition, a British Chilean scientific expedition, had discovered them.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Well, did you ever think about getting a piece to come back and kind of has a residence?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I really should.
		You know, it's funny.
		You felt kind of blasphemous.
		I mean, it felt blasphemous.
		I honestly, I did actually think about it.
		But I mean, this should probably be in a museum.
		And I felt like it was an artifact.
		I felt like it was like plucking a folio from this library and walking out with it.
		So even though it was this decaying wood in a stream, I just left it there.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so how long after that trip did you finish writing the book?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, I must have done two years of research before that trip, and then the book took a good, three and a half years to finish the research and writing.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so a number one bestseller again.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So at that point, you're not surprised by writing.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, you are always surprised.
		No, no, you always are surprised.
		You know, when you're working on a book and you're working on something that long, you live with constant doubt.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so for somebody that's watching and wants to be David Graham, what would your advice be about how to learn how to be a writer?
		Is it to have a mother that's in publishing?
		Is it to take courses in creative writing, write for a magazine?
		What is the best way to be a writer?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I would say my one piece of advice, whatever you don't become David Graham.
		You don't want to be in my head.
		You know, there are lots of ways to do this, so I'll keep it really simple because it really is.
		There are no real secrets.
		The key, I think, to writing and learning is reading and writing.
		Reading and writing.
		And in whatever form, however way you can write, if you're writing on cereal boxes, the descriptions, if you're writing line notes to music, if you're writing for your local newspaper, if you're writing poetry, you have to write, you have to sit.
		There are no ways out.
		I mean, the difference I always say between a writer and a non-writer is the writer is willing to sit for hours staring at his computer, rewriting the same sentence.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		When you're writing, do you get up in the morning and say, I'm going to write for three hours, or I'm going to write a thousand words, or I'm going to write so many pages?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		How do you decide how much you're going to write before you stop at the end of the day?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I have a 500-word goal each day.
		I get up early, drink too much coffee, read too many newspapers, get to the computer, and try to write 500 words.
		The thing I have discovered about writing, which is why I actually like to do chores around the house sometimes, is because those correlate with time in and output.
		You know, you do the dishes, you know how long it'll take to do the dishes.
		So that 500 words, sometimes I'll go to my computer and at lunchtime, I'm like, 500 words are done.
		I'm done.
		And then sometimes 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock at night, and I'm at 200 words, and I just can't get it there.
		I just can't get it.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		When you're writing, do you have distractions?
		Can somebody call you?
		Can somebody email you?
		Or are you just completely silent?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		I get, you know, in the old days, it was a lot easier when you didn't have emails coming in and so many distractions and your phones.
		I can kind of hyper-focus, but there are too many distractions.
		But when I'm really writing and really focused, I find it trouble to think about anything else.
		And I kind of let go of my world.
		Like I am a mess.
		I don't shave.
		The office becomes cluttered.
		I probably smell.
		I mean, there's just some breakdown in basic order.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		And after you write your 500 words, do you go back the next day and say, how could I have written something so poorly and edit it all back?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Or you don't?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I do tend to, you know, the times when the 500 words come best is when I have separated my editorial voice that is looking over my shoulder saying, that stinks.
		That's a repetitive word.
		That's not very creative.
		Does the comma really go there?
		The best 500 words come when I'm more in an unconscious state.
		And so it tends to flow better.
		And then the next day I come back and then I really try to use that voice.
		And I do edit it and you never know.
		I mean, that's what's so erratic.
		Sometimes I look at it, I'm like, yeah, that's pretty good.
		I'm done.
		And sometimes I'll be rewriting those 500 words all week.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So some writers say to their spouse, what do you think of this?
		And some writers say to their adult children, what do you think of this?
		Do you ever do that?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so my wife, who I've now spoken much about, her name is Kira Darn.
		Journalist, too.
		She's wonderful.
		And she's my first reader, brilliant editor.
		But I will usually take my manuscript when I finish a chapter.
		And I say, well, you read this.
		And then, well, let's just give an example of the first chapter of The Wager.
		So you're so nervous, it's the first chapter.
		And you kind of, you watch her as she takes the pen and you can see her reading.
		I'm kind of in the distance.
		She doesn't know I'm watching, kind of peeking nervously, trying to gauge reactions.
		How are the eyes moving?
		And inevitably, I'll suddenly hear the word, oh God, no.
		Oh, God, no.
		And that is where I have spent probably six months researching the construction of the ship of the wager.
		And I have written, I think personally, a magisterial account of 20,000 words of how to build an 18th-century ship, including where the wood floats from, where it's cut down, how it's bent.
		That will then become about maybe 600 words.
		And I have at my desk, I really do.
		I have what I have written on it now.
		It's called the God-Know File with all the wonderful descriptions that would have bored everybody to tears but me, ghosts.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So when you come up with a potential idea, you must go to three, four, five, six potential ideas before you pick one of them.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Is that right?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I have a cemetery because I try to spend about three months at least an intensive period.
		If I think a story is good, I will dedicate a very intensive period to researching it.
		And at a certain point, I have to make a kind of decision.
		Is there enough material there?
		Is this the story I thought it was?
		Or is it not really gripping?
		It kind of turns out to be a mess.
		Or I don't think I'll ever get the material.
		And you have to make a decision then because what I don't want to happen and is always the fear that will happen, and it could still happen.
		I've now been working on the new one for about two years, is you suddenly go, uh-oh, I think I shouldn't have done this one.
		So if you can make that decision in three months, you're better off.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Okay, and so today, do you have any advice for somebody that wants to write a bestseller?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		To write a bestseller, number one bestseller, what's the key?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll say I think the, I don't know about being a number one bestseller, but I think the key, I really believe in the story more than the author.
		There are so many writers who are better writers than me.
		You know, they are just incredibly gifted.
		They can write these beautiful metaphors.
		They're exquisite.
		You know, my belief is that if I can find the right story, a story that has power and meaning and grip, and get out of the way.
		I mean, I'm doing the research, and I got to put it on the paper, but get out of the way.
		To me, that has always been, I spend so much time trying to find the right story because to me, that's really what it's about, much more than the ham behind.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Now, if you knew you were going to be stranded on Wager Island for a month or so, whose books would you take with you to read?
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Who are the books that you like to read that aren't your books?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a really good question.
		If I was stranded on the island, I mean, you know, you might want to be reading Lord of the Flies or, you know, Cormick McCarthy, just the darkness and the ravenousness of human nature for getting clues.
		But maybe you want to get something sweet in there, you know, maybe something a little distracting.
		I mean, I, for distraction, read a lot of detective fiction.
		So I'd find some, you know, Raymond Chandler novel and curl up in the cold as I froze to death reading that.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're an incredible American success story, and I want to thank you for giving us the benefit of how you've done this.
		And we don't know what you're going to write your next book about, but I got a feeling it's going to be a New York Times number one bestseller.
		So, David, I want to thank you very much for being with us and giving us the insights on how to be a great writer.
		Thank you.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		Such a pleasure.
unidentified		David Grahn and David Rubenstein viewed the Folger Shakespeare Library's collection of first folios, the first published collections of Shakespeare's plays, and also visited the library's vault.
unidentified		Hi, great to see you.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		See you again.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		How are you?
unidentified		Hi, good.
		Thank you.
		How are you?
		Welcome to the Folger.
		Well, would you like to have a look at two of the folios that we've decided to isolate?
		So these two were folios that were owned by women.
		This one was owned by Margaret Bay, and you can see that she's written an inscription.
		She's sort of tried to sort of test out what it might be like to write with a quill and write kind of sub-par verse.
		And then this one was owned by Olivia Cotton, who may have been, who was related to the Hutchinson family, which was an important family in the 17th century.
		So it just shows you that women were reading Shakespeare as well, even in the 17th century.
		and many of the bullies were owned by them.
		Welcome.
		This is one of the famous vaults where we hold the Folger collection in all its forms.
		But I'm going to take you first back into this other room.
		And what I would like to show you is back in this corner.
		So we've seen the first folios and the Folgers' obsession with this collecting this magnificent object.
		This is the collection of quartos that they also collected.
		So these are the earlier, smaller, cheaper versions of the plays.
		18 of the plays were printed in this format and often during Shakespeare's lifetime.
		So this is Pericles, for instance, and 1609 with Shakespeare's name on it, and is a very good example of the way the plays appeared in this earlier format before we get to the first folio.
		And so of course the Folgers wanting to collect everything they possibly could that documented this work.
		The folios were very important.
		So now we're going to head back this way.
		So we're going to head back here.
		We have a little bit of room where I have a few things set out.
		So this is one of the 82 first folios, but I wanted to show this one in particular because to me it demonstrates a little bit of something about Henry and Emily's obsession with this book.
		This is a copy that is actually made up.
		In other words, all of the sections come from various copies and it was put together to make a copy.
		So even in this state, all of these leaves are detached.
		This binding is essentially a shell.
		But it is complete more or less in its parts.
		And so again, we have it right now.
		It's arranged that the Tempest in the opening of that play is what you see when you open this binding, but it doesn't really exist.
		But the Folgers were just devoted to collecting every single copy that they could because they felt as though, if they were to do that, that someday we would learn something new about Shakespeare.
		See more with David Gran in the vault of the Folger Shakespeare Library on America's book club, The Treasures.
		Available at c-span.org slash ABC and C-SPAN's YouTube page.
		Bring you into the chamber,
		onto the Senate floor, inside the hearing room, up to the mic, and to the desk in the Oval Office.
		C-SPAN takes you where decisions are made.
		No spin, no commentary, no agenda.
		C-SPAN is your unfiltered connection to American democracy.
		Advance the mission.
		Donate today at c-SPAN.org forward slash donate.
		Together, we keep democracy in view.
		There are many ways to listen to C-SPAN radio anytime, anywhere.
		In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM.
		Use our free C-SPAN Now app or go online to c-SPAN.org slash radio on SiriusXM Radio on channel 455, the TuneIn app, and on your smart speaker by simply saying play C-SPAN Radio.
		Hear our live call-in program Washington Journal daily at 7 a.m. Eastern.
		Listen to House and Senate proceedings, committee hearings, news conferences, and other public affairs events live throughout the day.
		And for the best way to hear what's happening in Washington with fast-paced reports, live interviews, and analysis of the day, catch Washington today, weekdays at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern.
		Listen to C-SPAN programs on C-SPAN Radio anytime, anywhere.
		C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
		America's book club host David Rubenstein and author David Grant viewed the Folcher Shakespeare Library's collection of first folios, the first published collections of Shakespeare's plays,

▲