November 27, 2025 • 27 mins
Newt talks Steve Israel about his new novel, “The Einstein Conspiracy.” Steve is a former congressman for New York's second and third districts. He transitioned from politics to literature and entrepreneurship after retiring from Congress in 2017. He opened Theodore's Books in Oyster Bay, New York, named in tribute to Theodore Roosevelt, whose home was nearby. Israel has authored two political satires, "The Global War on Morris" and "Big Guns," and recently published "The Einstein Conspiracy," a historical mystery centered around Albert Einstein and the Nazi threat during World War II. The novel explores Einstein's pivotal role in alerting the U.S. government to the potential of an atomic bomb and the Nazi efforts to assassinate him, set against the backdrop of pro-Nazi activities in the U.S. Israel's research for the book involved balancing historical accuracy with engaging storytelling. His bookstore, Theodore's Books, actively participates in community events, such as Small Business Saturday, promoting local shopping and civil discourse. Visit Theodore’s Books at theodoresbooks.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
In this episode of Newts World, My guest today is
Steve Israel. He served as Congressman for New York's second
District from two thousand and one to twenty thirteen in
New York's third District from twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen.
When I retired from the house, he opened an independent bookstore,
(00:26):
Theodore's Books, in Oyster Bay, New York. He's written two
critically acclaimed political satires, The Global War on Morris and
Big Guns, and he's joining me today to discuss his
new novel, which I have to say I found fascinating.
Steve is a brilliant guy and remarkably versatile, so I'm
(00:47):
really pleased to welcome the author of The Einstein Conspiracy,
my guest and good friend, Steve Israel. Steve, welcome, and
thank you for joining me in this.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
World, mister speaker. What an honor it is for me
to be on. And had somebody told me when I
entered Congress as a Democrat in two thousand that one
day I'd be conversing with you about books, I would
have told them that they were out of their minds.
This is really special.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Thank you well, it's great, and I think you and
are the other one time at a National Book Day
event put on in Washington and celebrating various books. But
I have to ask you. You are the only member
of Congress to retire and open an independent bookstore, Theodore's
Books in Oyster Bay, New York. Was that part of
your plan when you left the Congress?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It was actually and I know you yourself and acclaimed
author and voracious reader, I'm sure bookstores had a special
place for you. They sure did for me. When I
would travel anywhere in the US or on Congressional delegations abroad,
my scheduler would always put on my schedule the name
and address of the closest bookstore. Those were my retreats,
(02:07):
my refuges. That's where I would go to let my
blood pressure drop a little bit from the demands of Congress.
And when I left Congress in two thousand and seventeen,
and I decided that I would devote the next chapter
of my life to owning a bookstore and selling books.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Which is a pretty courageous decision given the complexity of
the modern book market and the rise of systems like Amazon.
Was it as big a challenge as you thought it might?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Be in many respects. Yes, I'm a Democrat, and now
suddenly I'm obsessed with less regulation and lower taxes.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Now a book like George McGovern after he had retired
and open up a sort of a boarding house and
realized how many rules there were.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Lots of rules. I mean, it's a very difficult competitive
environment competing against Amazon or some of the big box bookstores,
who can literally sell their books online at a loss
because the only cost that they're factoring into the book
is the cost of an algorithm. Really, I've got to
hire booksellers. I've got to hire people who know what
they're talking about. I've got to pay them a decent wage.
(03:11):
I've got to pay rent. The margins on books is very,
very narrow. We really don't make much on books. We've
had to adapt. We do very well with author events.
We have acclaimed historians come and Ron chernow and Eric Larson,
They've come to our events. So when we bring authors in.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
We do well. But it is a struggle.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
On the other hand, I'm having more fun now, mister Speaker,
than I ever had in sixteen years in Congress.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Oyster Bay, of course, was Theodore Roosevelt's home and it's
Theodore's books, which I presume was a tribute to the
former president.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
That's exactly right. His home, Sagamore Hill, is less than
a mile from our store, and everything about Oyster Bay,
and I invite you to come when you have an opportunity.
Everything about Oyster Bay is Theodore Roosevelt because that's where
he shot, that's where he went to the drug store.
His Masonic lodge was there, It's where he ate. And
(04:06):
what better name for a bookstore in Theodore's hometown than
Theodore Roosevelt. By the way, when he died at Sagamore Hill,
he left seven thousand books on his shelves and they're
still there.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So let me ask you, though, if you get out
of Congress you write two critically acclaimed political satires, the
Global War and Morris and Big Guns. That sort of
makes some sense because that is your background. And then
all of a sudden my door is darkened by the
Einstein Conspiracy. I want to start right off and just
say to all of our listeners, the Einstein Conspiracy is
(04:41):
a terrific book, and anybody who has any interest in
the most important scientists of the twentieth century and an
extraordinary time in history. Will find the Einstein conspiracy just
draws you in. It's remarkable what led you from political
sce to suddenly writing this kind of a historical mystery
(05:05):
wrapped around a famous personality.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yes, we have something in common, and that is I
think we're both fascinated with these little hinges of history,
these fairly unknown moments that, if they tip in a
different direction, fundamentally and profoundly change all of history. So
I have in my collection Gettysburg and your trilogy on
the Civil War, which is kind of instigated by one
(05:28):
simple alteration of fact, and that is that Lee wins Gettysburg,
and that takes the country on a completely new course.
So I've also been fascinated by that. And I live
on Long Island. One day I was driving around the
North Fork of Long Island and I literally stumbled on
this little cottage overlooking a harbor where Albert Einstein lived
(05:49):
in nineteen thirty nine. And it was in that cottage
that he wrote a letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt warning
him that Germany was trying to build an Adam Baum.
We at the time had no Adam Baum research program,
nothing by the government it was being researched on an
(06:10):
ad hoc basis by various scientists, and so I was thinking,
what if Einstein hadn't written that letter, what if FDR
hadn't received that letter and authorized a research program. I
also knew that the Nazis had a very aggressive program
to try and assassinate Albert Einstein, that they had agents
on Long Island, and so I put it all together
(06:31):
into one historic thriller called the Einstein Conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
I'm may of viewing you from Bern, Switzerland, which is
less than a while from where I'm sitting. Einstein lived
for years working as a patent clerk for the Swiss
government because the universities wouldn't hire him because he was
too bold in his ideas. And then I run across
this book by you, and I have to say I
(06:58):
couldn't put it down. I don't want to give the
whole book away, but you come at it from angles
involving the FBI and a whole Nazia, forte Quill, Einstein,
and various other things that are going on in parallel.
I can't imagine anybody reading this and not walking away
thinking a whole bunch of new ideas and new thoughts.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
No.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
In your case, once you had seen the cottage, how
did you go about researching this? Because it's a very
well researched.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Book, thank you, And that's, as you know, very difficult.
You know, the tension between the research and a propulsive
story is complex. You know, you can over research a
book and then it turns out to be nonfiction instead
of fiction. My aim was just to entertain the reader,
to bring them on an adventure. That's the bargain that
(07:50):
authors make with the readers. They're going out be on
an adventure. They learn something, perhaps new, and reflect on it.
And so I had to really kind of temper my research.
I went down a three day rabbit hole once on
exactly what it would have taken for Albert Einstein to
sail about twenty miles in the Peconic Bay. I talked
(08:11):
to sailors, and I wanted to understand the wind conditions,
and I wanted to understand how the sailboat would have
responded to certain wind shifts. And finally, my editor. I
don't know whether you ever went through this, but my
editor called me and he said, you're up to page
twenty on this voyage. It's really interesting. If this were
a primer on how to sail in the Peconic Bay,
(08:31):
but it's not. You need to cut it to three paragraphs.
So I did a lot of heavy research and then
really needed to kind of tailor it and cut it
so that the reader would turn the page and keep
it propulsive.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
You're a much better team player than I am. I
hate being edited when I write it. I don't want
some person who doesn't have my passion step in and say, well,
the only problem is that entire paragraph is not understandable
and nobody will be able to wade through it. Those
are the moments when I just want to quit and
go hide somewhere. So I have great admiration for your
(09:08):
calm willingness to accept what I regard as a horrendous
interference with the artist right to do what he or
she want was. I don't know if this was deliberate,
(09:35):
but you actually, in my mind, have three different kinds
of insights. One is Einstein himself as a personality and
the things he was doing and his speech at the
New York World's Fair, and I mean just a lot
about Einstein I didn't know. And then second, you have
(09:55):
the whole challenge of the FBI, which is increasingly engaged
in anti Nazi activities, and trying to track down both
from a sabotage standpoint and from a spying standpoint, what
the Nazis are up to in that period. And then third,
you do a terrific job. And I'm curious how much
(10:16):
of this is built out of that kind of historic
research and how much it was just a novelist keeping
us amused your description of the village, for example, that
was very very pro Nazi network of people who were
actively anti American and pro Hitler. That third track, in
some ways was as interesting as anything else in the book.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Well, thank you for saying that. For me, that was
the most chilling to write. This little village, and it's
all based on actual events. It's called Yapank's Exit sixty
six of the Long Island Expressway. But back in the
nineteen thirties it was called German Gardens and was a
neighborhood where you had to show full Ariyan blood in
(11:03):
order to have a home. Now this is in the
United States. It then became a training camp for pro
Nazi activities. And so I'm not making this up. This
is the historic record. The streets in this little village
included Adolf Hitler Street, Joseph Goebels Street, Hermann Gerring Street.
(11:24):
They had these massive Swastika banners flying from the community
meeting house. They had parades where they trained their young
people to march in formation wearing uniforms of Nazi stormtroopers.
This place existed, and it was a haven for pro
Nazi activities. And now here you have these two FBI agents, who, ironically,
(11:47):
one of them, by the way, is based on truth.
James Amos was an FBI agent. The two of them
have this mission of finding a Nazi spy who's going
to harm Albert Einstein, and you would think it couldn't
be that different. Only it turns out he's a needle
in a haystack. Because there were pro Nazi activities just
permeating and penetrating New York at the time.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
I'm known for a long time about the German saboteur's
landing on Long Island, who had picked up almost immediately,
but I didn't realize that there was this entire internal network,
if you will, that already existed that had really planted
pretty deep roots in the United States.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
They were penetrating our defense plants. You know Long Island
known for Grumman. That's where Grumman started Republic fair Child.
We were the backbone of the defense industry during World
War two and after. It was very easy for a
Nazi spy to get a job as a custodian, as
a janitor in one of those plants and fine blueprints.
(12:51):
It was a very sophisticated operation, so much so that
Jadgar Hoover met secretly with FDR. I don't know if
you ever knew this. Under the Woaldorf Astoria there was
a train track and FDR had a car there, a
train car. And whoever meets with FDR in that train
and tells him that he needs more funding for counter
(13:13):
espionage activities. Because the Nazis were so powerful and so pervasive.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I think we forget how real these kind of activities
can become. We see some of it now with the
Chinese and the Russians, but in their day, the Nazis
were very formidable and very strategically thoughtful. Now there's another
piece of this, which is initially there had been an
assumption that while we had passed the han Stressman point
(13:42):
and we knew it was possible to create a nuclear reaction.
Virtually nobody thought it was doable as a practical nutter,
and there's a real argument in the physics community about
the plausibility of actually making a nuclear weapon. I mean,
you do a marvelous job and bring in some very
(14:03):
important and famous characters in that period. Walcus, just for
a second, through that whole process in which I think
initially Einstein is on the side of it's really not doable,
and then gradually being viralized that gosh, it could be doable,
and if the wrong guys get it first, it could
be horrified.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Well, that's exactly right, and that's why I would hope
that's one of the major tensions in the book, So
Little Bit of Nuclear Weapon History. Otto Han splits an
atom for the first time in December of nineteen thirty eight.
He does that in Germany. He's a German physicist. Ironically,
by that point most of the best and smartest physicists
(14:43):
in Germany are gone, they're purged, they're expelled, or they
leave on their own because of the Nazi movement. He
splits the atom. There's a scientist at Columbia University named
Leo Solard. He's kind of an eccentric Hungarian scientist who
and says, well, if you can split an atom, you
can build an atomic bomb. At some point, you can
create a chain reaction that will build a bomb capable
(15:07):
of immense destruction. He goes to Einstein. This is all
part of the public record. He goes to Einstein. He says,
Ottohn has split an atom that will enable Hitler to
get an atom bomb. They have a research program. You
must warn President Roosevelt at once. And Einstein says, no,
it's not possible. He says, the science just doesn't justify it.
(15:27):
He actually says, even if you could split an atom,
that doesn't mean you can create a chain reaction that
can do anything dangerous. He said, quote it's like shooting
birds in the dark. And he says to Han, prove
it to me. Go back to your lab and prove
it to me. And that becomes the interplay between Einstein
and Einstein remains very skeptical until Salard drives out to
(15:51):
the North Fork of Long Island in July, forces his
way onto Einstein's porch, shows him the data, and only
then does Einstein look up and say, why didn't I
think of this? And he then realizes Adolph Hitler is
capable of building a bomb that can incinerate cities and
the United States is doing nothing.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Five years ago, the opportunity to spend some time with
Edward Teller, who is great scientists at creating both the
atomic bombing and the hydrogen bomb. Teler said he got
involved in this long argument I think in the summer
of nineteen forty with Neils Bohr and in Copenhaken, and
Borr had said to him, even if you could theoretically
(16:38):
do it, the amount of electricity it would take, the
amount of energy you would take, he said, it would
take the equivalent of a whole country's GDP. Well, four
years later he is walking down the corridor and he
sees Neils Boorr at the other end, and Boor yells
at him. You see, I was right, because the Manhattan
(16:58):
Project was larger than the entire GDP of Denmark.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Once FDR was convinced that it was potentially real. The
scale of is one of things worrying about America today.
I'm not sure we could cut through the red tape
and mobilize the way they were able to in the
nineteen forties.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
This is a moment in time where the American government
just realized we're not debating, we're not deliberating, we're not regulating.
We just need to do this. And it happens only
because Einstein wts that letter. It's not delivered to FDR
three months after it's written, and they finally get the
letter to FDR, somebody reads it to him because they
(17:40):
didn't want FDR just to read it by himself and
you know, just put it in the outbox. They wanted
to make sure he understood. And after listening to the
letter read to him, FDR says, what they're trying to
tell me is that the Germans may be able to
blow us all up. He calls in his aid and
tells him to do something thing. That night, calls are
(18:01):
made to some scientists. They convene a group of scientists
and that becomes the embryo for the Manhattan Project. So
it was quite at hoc at the time, but it worked.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
NTSI, who became very important and wrote the pre eminent
document explaining the strategy of the Cold War, was a
financier from New York. Was in Texas and gets a
call from his boss, Forestal, who says, you're not going
back to New York, You're coming to Washington. Meet me
there Monday. He shows up Monday, and forest All's on
(18:34):
one side of the desk, He's on the other side.
They have one phone they're sharing, and Forrestal says, we
are now going to finance and structure the industrial development
needed the United States to win World War two, and
we'll do our paperwork in about six months. Now. Can
you imagine today if somebody walked in started ordering billions
(18:55):
of dollars, had not been sworn in, had not been vetted,
and had not finished out any of their aprilwork between
the news media and the Congress, the level of screaming
would be unbelievable. And in thirty nine, forty forty one,
that's the way they were working.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Most of the people who flee who are intellectuals or Jews,
and Einstein actually holds on pretty long and leaves in
thirty three. As Hitler's taking power. If he had not left,
my assumptions, at a minimum put him in a concentration
camp or maybe just killed him outright. But he clearly
(19:48):
understood what was coming and was motivated to move despite
that Hitler was insanely antisemitic, but if he had understood
what he was doing himself, the number some are of
competent people he drives out of the country is astonishing
and deeply undermines the German ability to mobilize the use science.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And this is one of the ironies of magnitude in
world history, is that the Nazis begin to refute what
they call dark physics, which is another way of saying
Jewish physics. So many Jewish scientists were working in the field,
and Hitler has to discredit them, and so they create
(20:31):
a kind of a new category called deutsch Physics. And
now it's Aryan physics. It's not science, it's ideology pretending
to be science. To my knowledge, every credible Jewish physicist
ends up leaving or is expelled. For me, by the way,
wasn't Jewish. He lived in Italy with a Jewish woman,
(20:54):
and so he leaves Italy to protect his wife, and
they deploy to burn Switzerland. They're in London, some go
to France. Einstein comes to the United States. He teaches
in California, he does a national tour. He very much
wants to go back to Germany, but he realizes he can't.
He ends up in Belgium and France, where the Nazis
(21:15):
try and assassinate him, goes to London, and then finally
comes to the United States permanently in October of nineteen
thirty three. But what would have happened had those great,
brilliant scientific minds not converged on America. I don't think
we would have had the bomb.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And there are dozens of other breakthroughs beyond physics where
we were enormously enriched by the people who came here.
A while back, did a PBS documentary called Journey to America,
which was about people who came here legally and who
made such a huge contribution. Einstein is one of them.
(21:54):
I think the last interview Kissinger gave he gave for
that particular program. And it's very important keep this balance.
While we oppose illegal immigration, we desperately need to continue
legal immigration and to be willing to attract talent from
all over the world. And Einstein is a perfect example.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, Clart as well. You know, the guy who actually
convinced Einstein was this kind of mad Hungarian scientist too,
wins a Nobel Prize, comes up with the concept of
nuclear fusion. Literally standing in front of a stoplight in
London that changes from green to red, has this epiphany.
When the Reichstag burned, he reportedly went into a bit
(22:38):
of a trance, saw the Holocaust coming, packed two bags
and fled Berlin and ends up ultimately in poopin Hall
at Columbia University, which is still there.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
It's amazing, and it goes. Fermi ends up at the
University of Chicago.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
He's in Chicago. He also spends time in poopin Hall.
You have this extraordinary convergence of Whiggner, Salard, Fermi, and
others who are working on the eighth floor of Poopenhall,
or at least that's where Salard's office was, trying to
figure out whether splitting a neutron can create a chain
reaction and whether that chain reaction can amount to anything.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
I know you're just now launching the book, and you
share my said understanding that you have to spend as
much time selling the book as you spend writing it.
But having said that, do you have an inkling yet
of what the next book will be?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I do. There is a character in the book who
is an FBI agent named James Amos. James Amos was
a real person, fascinating guy. He was the second African
American to be a special Agent in the FBI, the
second in real life.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
He starts working for Theodore Roosevelt as a caretaker to
his children in the White House, then becomes his quote manservant,
then becomes his bodyguard, then becomes his confidante, and spends
Rosevelt's last day and night with him at Sagamore Hill.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
He becomes this extraordinary FBI agent. He takes down Nazi
spy rings, he disrupts Murder Incorporated, and he dies into
obscurity in nineteen fifty four. My book ends with well,
I don't want to do any spoiler alerts, but let's
say that there's still a lot of work to be
done by the FBI in hunting down particular Nazis. And
(24:25):
if this book does well enough, I can see a
sequel where James Amos goes on his next adventure to
bring down an even more lethal Nazi threat to the
United States after World War Two begins.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well, of course, you have the right kind of personality.
Who knows how many adventures he might be in over
the course of the next decade. As long as people
will buy the book. It's remarkable what you can then
get done well.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
I have a good instructor, because Gettysburg led to a
couple of fascinating sequels and other alternate histories and other
periods of times, so you know how to do it.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Most of my work has been nonfiction, and I find
fiction dramatically more difficult, which is why I'm so impressed
with your book, The Einstein Conspiracy. Saturday, November twenty ninth
is Small Business Saturday. Talk just a little bit about
what is Theater of Books going to do to celebrate
small business Saturday.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Theater of Books has managed to recruit a very solid
author to sign books on that day, and his name
is Steve Israel, So that's good. So it's good. When
you own a store, you can set yourself up for
books signing. I'll tell you, I love the notion of
shopping local. We have now a bookstore, Missus Speaker. People
(25:44):
come in your book March. The majority is still on
the shelves. People come in. They can read Gingrich, they
could read Adam Schiff. They're there not to screen, but
to learn and to have civil discourse. And I love
the locality of the place.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I want to thank you for joining me. This has
been delightful as I thought it would be. Your new book,
The Einstein Conspiracy is available now on Amazon and in
bookstores everywhere, including Theodore's Books and Unsterbay, New York. And
I should mention to our listeners Theodorsbooks dot com you
have a holiday gift guide right there on the homepage,
(26:21):
so Theodore's Books dot Com. Steve, thank you so much
for joining me.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Thanks miss Speaker.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
It's an honor.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Thank you to my guest, Steve Israel. NEWTS World is
produced by Gayoish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer
is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
to the team at ginguis three sixty. If you've been
enjoying newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts
(26:52):
and both rate us with five stars and give us
a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Join me on the substack Gnglish through sixty dot net.
I'm new Genglish.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
This is neutral
In this episode of Newts World, My guest today is
Steve Israel. He served as Congressman for New York's second
District from two thousand and one to twenty thirteen in
New York's third District from twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen.
When I retired from the house, he opened an independent bookstore,
(00:26):
Theodore's Books, in Oyster Bay, New York. He's written two
critically acclaimed political satires, The Global War on Morris and
Big Guns, and he's joining me today to discuss his
new novel, which I have to say I found fascinating.
Steve is a brilliant guy and remarkably versatile, so I'm
(00:47):
really pleased to welcome the author of The Einstein Conspiracy,
my guest and good friend, Steve Israel. Steve, welcome, and
thank you for joining me in this.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
World, mister speaker. What an honor it is for me
to be on. And had somebody told me when I
entered Congress as a Democrat in two thousand that one
day I'd be conversing with you about books, I would
have told them that they were out of their minds.
This is really special.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Thank you well, it's great, and I think you and
are the other one time at a National Book Day
event put on in Washington and celebrating various books. But
I have to ask you. You are the only member
of Congress to retire and open an independent bookstore, Theodore's
Books in Oyster Bay, New York. Was that part of
your plan when you left the Congress?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It was actually and I know you yourself and acclaimed
author and voracious reader, I'm sure bookstores had a special
place for you. They sure did for me. When I
would travel anywhere in the US or on Congressional delegations abroad,
my scheduler would always put on my schedule the name
and address of the closest bookstore. Those were my retreats,
(02:07):
my refuges. That's where I would go to let my
blood pressure drop a little bit from the demands of Congress.
And when I left Congress in two thousand and seventeen,
and I decided that I would devote the next chapter
of my life to owning a bookstore and selling books.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Which is a pretty courageous decision given the complexity of
the modern book market and the rise of systems like Amazon.
Was it as big a challenge as you thought it might?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Be in many respects. Yes, I'm a Democrat, and now
suddenly I'm obsessed with less regulation and lower taxes.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Now a book like George McGovern after he had retired
and open up a sort of a boarding house and
realized how many rules there were.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Lots of rules. I mean, it's a very difficult competitive
environment competing against Amazon or some of the big box bookstores,
who can literally sell their books online at a loss
because the only cost that they're factoring into the book
is the cost of an algorithm. Really, I've got to
hire booksellers. I've got to hire people who know what
they're talking about. I've got to pay them a decent wage.
(03:11):
I've got to pay rent. The margins on books is very,
very narrow. We really don't make much on books. We've
had to adapt. We do very well with author events.
We have acclaimed historians come and Ron chernow and Eric Larson,
They've come to our events. So when we bring authors in.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
We do well. But it is a struggle.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
On the other hand, I'm having more fun now, mister Speaker,
than I ever had in sixteen years in Congress.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Oyster Bay, of course, was Theodore Roosevelt's home and it's
Theodore's books, which I presume was a tribute to the
former president.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
That's exactly right. His home, Sagamore Hill, is less than
a mile from our store, and everything about Oyster Bay,
and I invite you to come when you have an opportunity.
Everything about Oyster Bay is Theodore Roosevelt because that's where
he shot, that's where he went to the drug store.
His Masonic lodge was there, It's where he ate. And
(04:06):
what better name for a bookstore in Theodore's hometown than
Theodore Roosevelt. By the way, when he died at Sagamore Hill,
he left seven thousand books on his shelves and they're
still there.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So let me ask you, though, if you get out
of Congress you write two critically acclaimed political satires, the
Global War and Morris and Big Guns. That sort of
makes some sense because that is your background. And then
all of a sudden my door is darkened by the
Einstein Conspiracy. I want to start right off and just
say to all of our listeners, the Einstein Conspiracy is
(04:41):
a terrific book, and anybody who has any interest in
the most important scientists of the twentieth century and an
extraordinary time in history. Will find the Einstein conspiracy just
draws you in. It's remarkable what led you from political
sce to suddenly writing this kind of a historical mystery
(05:05):
wrapped around a famous personality.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yes, we have something in common, and that is I
think we're both fascinated with these little hinges of history,
these fairly unknown moments that, if they tip in a
different direction, fundamentally and profoundly change all of history. So
I have in my collection Gettysburg and your trilogy on
the Civil War, which is kind of instigated by one
(05:28):
simple alteration of fact, and that is that Lee wins Gettysburg,
and that takes the country on a completely new course.
So I've also been fascinated by that. And I live
on Long Island. One day I was driving around the
North Fork of Long Island and I literally stumbled on
this little cottage overlooking a harbor where Albert Einstein lived
(05:49):
in nineteen thirty nine. And it was in that cottage
that he wrote a letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt warning
him that Germany was trying to build an Adam Baum.
We at the time had no Adam Baum research program,
nothing by the government it was being researched on an
(06:10):
ad hoc basis by various scientists, and so I was thinking,
what if Einstein hadn't written that letter, what if FDR
hadn't received that letter and authorized a research program. I
also knew that the Nazis had a very aggressive program
to try and assassinate Albert Einstein, that they had agents
on Long Island, and so I put it all together
(06:31):
into one historic thriller called the Einstein Conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
I'm may of viewing you from Bern, Switzerland, which is
less than a while from where I'm sitting. Einstein lived
for years working as a patent clerk for the Swiss
government because the universities wouldn't hire him because he was
too bold in his ideas. And then I run across
this book by you, and I have to say I
(06:58):
couldn't put it down. I don't want to give the
whole book away, but you come at it from angles
involving the FBI and a whole Nazia, forte Quill, Einstein,
and various other things that are going on in parallel.
I can't imagine anybody reading this and not walking away
thinking a whole bunch of new ideas and new thoughts.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
No.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
In your case, once you had seen the cottage, how
did you go about researching this? Because it's a very
well researched.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Book, thank you, And that's, as you know, very difficult.
You know, the tension between the research and a propulsive
story is complex. You know, you can over research a
book and then it turns out to be nonfiction instead
of fiction. My aim was just to entertain the reader,
to bring them on an adventure. That's the bargain that
(07:50):
authors make with the readers. They're going out be on
an adventure. They learn something, perhaps new, and reflect on it.
And so I had to really kind of temper my research.
I went down a three day rabbit hole once on
exactly what it would have taken for Albert Einstein to
sail about twenty miles in the Peconic Bay. I talked
(08:11):
to sailors, and I wanted to understand the wind conditions,
and I wanted to understand how the sailboat would have
responded to certain wind shifts. And finally, my editor. I
don't know whether you ever went through this, but my
editor called me and he said, you're up to page
twenty on this voyage. It's really interesting. If this were
a primer on how to sail in the Peconic Bay,
(08:31):
but it's not. You need to cut it to three paragraphs.
So I did a lot of heavy research and then
really needed to kind of tailor it and cut it
so that the reader would turn the page and keep
it propulsive.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
You're a much better team player than I am. I
hate being edited when I write it. I don't want
some person who doesn't have my passion step in and say, well,
the only problem is that entire paragraph is not understandable
and nobody will be able to wade through it. Those
are the moments when I just want to quit and
go hide somewhere. So I have great admiration for your
(09:08):
calm willingness to accept what I regard as a horrendous
interference with the artist right to do what he or
she want was. I don't know if this was deliberate,
(09:35):
but you actually, in my mind, have three different kinds
of insights. One is Einstein himself as a personality and
the things he was doing and his speech at the
New York World's Fair, and I mean just a lot
about Einstein I didn't know. And then second, you have
(09:55):
the whole challenge of the FBI, which is increasingly engaged
in anti Nazi activities, and trying to track down both
from a sabotage standpoint and from a spying standpoint, what
the Nazis are up to in that period. And then third,
you do a terrific job. And I'm curious how much
(10:16):
of this is built out of that kind of historic
research and how much it was just a novelist keeping
us amused your description of the village, for example, that
was very very pro Nazi network of people who were
actively anti American and pro Hitler. That third track, in
some ways was as interesting as anything else in the book.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Well, thank you for saying that. For me, that was
the most chilling to write. This little village, and it's
all based on actual events. It's called Yapank's Exit sixty
six of the Long Island Expressway. But back in the
nineteen thirties it was called German Gardens and was a
neighborhood where you had to show full Ariyan blood in
(11:03):
order to have a home. Now this is in the
United States. It then became a training camp for pro
Nazi activities. And so I'm not making this up. This
is the historic record. The streets in this little village
included Adolf Hitler Street, Joseph Goebels Street, Hermann Gerring Street.
(11:24):
They had these massive Swastika banners flying from the community
meeting house. They had parades where they trained their young
people to march in formation wearing uniforms of Nazi stormtroopers.
This place existed, and it was a haven for pro
Nazi activities. And now here you have these two FBI agents, who, ironically,
(11:47):
one of them, by the way, is based on truth.
James Amos was an FBI agent. The two of them
have this mission of finding a Nazi spy who's going
to harm Albert Einstein, and you would think it couldn't
be that different. Only it turns out he's a needle
in a haystack. Because there were pro Nazi activities just
permeating and penetrating New York at the time.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
I'm known for a long time about the German saboteur's
landing on Long Island, who had picked up almost immediately,
but I didn't realize that there was this entire internal network,
if you will, that already existed that had really planted
pretty deep roots in the United States.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
They were penetrating our defense plants. You know Long Island
known for Grumman. That's where Grumman started Republic fair Child.
We were the backbone of the defense industry during World
War two and after. It was very easy for a
Nazi spy to get a job as a custodian, as
a janitor in one of those plants and fine blueprints.
(12:51):
It was a very sophisticated operation, so much so that
Jadgar Hoover met secretly with FDR. I don't know if
you ever knew this. Under the Woaldorf Astoria there was
a train track and FDR had a car there, a
train car. And whoever meets with FDR in that train
and tells him that he needs more funding for counter
(13:13):
espionage activities. Because the Nazis were so powerful and so pervasive.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I think we forget how real these kind of activities
can become. We see some of it now with the
Chinese and the Russians, but in their day, the Nazis
were very formidable and very strategically thoughtful. Now there's another
piece of this, which is initially there had been an
assumption that while we had passed the han Stressman point
(13:42):
and we knew it was possible to create a nuclear reaction.
Virtually nobody thought it was doable as a practical nutter,
and there's a real argument in the physics community about
the plausibility of actually making a nuclear weapon. I mean,
you do a marvelous job and bring in some very
(14:03):
important and famous characters in that period. Walcus, just for
a second, through that whole process in which I think
initially Einstein is on the side of it's really not doable,
and then gradually being viralized that gosh, it could be doable,
and if the wrong guys get it first, it could
be horrified.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Well, that's exactly right, and that's why I would hope
that's one of the major tensions in the book, So
Little Bit of Nuclear Weapon History. Otto Han splits an
atom for the first time in December of nineteen thirty eight.
He does that in Germany. He's a German physicist. Ironically,
by that point most of the best and smartest physicists
(14:43):
in Germany are gone, they're purged, they're expelled, or they
leave on their own because of the Nazi movement. He
splits the atom. There's a scientist at Columbia University named
Leo Solard. He's kind of an eccentric Hungarian scientist who
and says, well, if you can split an atom, you
can build an atomic bomb. At some point, you can
create a chain reaction that will build a bomb capable
(15:07):
of immense destruction. He goes to Einstein. This is all
part of the public record. He goes to Einstein. He says,
Ottohn has split an atom that will enable Hitler to
get an atom bomb. They have a research program. You
must warn President Roosevelt at once. And Einstein says, no,
it's not possible. He says, the science just doesn't justify it.
(15:27):
He actually says, even if you could split an atom,
that doesn't mean you can create a chain reaction that
can do anything dangerous. He said, quote it's like shooting
birds in the dark. And he says to Han, prove
it to me. Go back to your lab and prove
it to me. And that becomes the interplay between Einstein
and Einstein remains very skeptical until Salard drives out to
(15:51):
the North Fork of Long Island in July, forces his
way onto Einstein's porch, shows him the data, and only
then does Einstein look up and say, why didn't I
think of this? And he then realizes Adolph Hitler is
capable of building a bomb that can incinerate cities and
the United States is doing nothing.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Five years ago, the opportunity to spend some time with
Edward Teller, who is great scientists at creating both the
atomic bombing and the hydrogen bomb. Teler said he got
involved in this long argument I think in the summer
of nineteen forty with Neils Bohr and in Copenhaken, and
Borr had said to him, even if you could theoretically
(16:38):
do it, the amount of electricity it would take, the
amount of energy you would take, he said, it would
take the equivalent of a whole country's GDP. Well, four
years later he is walking down the corridor and he
sees Neils Boorr at the other end, and Boor yells
at him. You see, I was right, because the Manhattan
(16:58):
Project was larger than the entire GDP of Denmark.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Once FDR was convinced that it was potentially real. The
scale of is one of things worrying about America today.
I'm not sure we could cut through the red tape
and mobilize the way they were able to in the
nineteen forties.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
This is a moment in time where the American government
just realized we're not debating, we're not deliberating, we're not regulating.
We just need to do this. And it happens only
because Einstein wts that letter. It's not delivered to FDR
three months after it's written, and they finally get the
letter to FDR, somebody reads it to him because they
(17:40):
didn't want FDR just to read it by himself and
you know, just put it in the outbox. They wanted
to make sure he understood. And after listening to the
letter read to him, FDR says, what they're trying to
tell me is that the Germans may be able to
blow us all up. He calls in his aid and
tells him to do something thing. That night, calls are
(18:01):
made to some scientists. They convene a group of scientists
and that becomes the embryo for the Manhattan Project. So
it was quite at hoc at the time, but it worked.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
NTSI, who became very important and wrote the pre eminent
document explaining the strategy of the Cold War, was a
financier from New York. Was in Texas and gets a
call from his boss, Forestal, who says, you're not going
back to New York, You're coming to Washington. Meet me
there Monday. He shows up Monday, and forest All's on
(18:34):
one side of the desk, He's on the other side.
They have one phone they're sharing, and Forrestal says, we
are now going to finance and structure the industrial development
needed the United States to win World War two, and
we'll do our paperwork in about six months. Now. Can
you imagine today if somebody walked in started ordering billions
(18:55):
of dollars, had not been sworn in, had not been vetted,
and had not finished out any of their aprilwork between
the news media and the Congress, the level of screaming
would be unbelievable. And in thirty nine, forty forty one,
that's the way they were working.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Most of the people who flee who are intellectuals or Jews,
and Einstein actually holds on pretty long and leaves in
thirty three. As Hitler's taking power. If he had not left,
my assumptions, at a minimum put him in a concentration
camp or maybe just killed him outright. But he clearly
(19:48):
understood what was coming and was motivated to move despite
that Hitler was insanely antisemitic, but if he had understood
what he was doing himself, the number some are of
competent people he drives out of the country is astonishing
and deeply undermines the German ability to mobilize the use science.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
And this is one of the ironies of magnitude in
world history, is that the Nazis begin to refute what
they call dark physics, which is another way of saying
Jewish physics. So many Jewish scientists were working in the field,
and Hitler has to discredit them, and so they create
(20:31):
a kind of a new category called deutsch Physics. And
now it's Aryan physics. It's not science, it's ideology pretending
to be science. To my knowledge, every credible Jewish physicist
ends up leaving or is expelled. For me, by the way,
wasn't Jewish. He lived in Italy with a Jewish woman,
(20:54):
and so he leaves Italy to protect his wife, and
they deploy to burn Switzerland. They're in London, some go
to France. Einstein comes to the United States. He teaches
in California, he does a national tour. He very much
wants to go back to Germany, but he realizes he can't.
He ends up in Belgium and France, where the Nazis
(21:15):
try and assassinate him, goes to London, and then finally
comes to the United States permanently in October of nineteen
thirty three. But what would have happened had those great,
brilliant scientific minds not converged on America. I don't think
we would have had the bomb.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And there are dozens of other breakthroughs beyond physics where
we were enormously enriched by the people who came here.
A while back, did a PBS documentary called Journey to America,
which was about people who came here legally and who
made such a huge contribution. Einstein is one of them.
(21:54):
I think the last interview Kissinger gave he gave for
that particular program. And it's very important keep this balance.
While we oppose illegal immigration, we desperately need to continue
legal immigration and to be willing to attract talent from
all over the world. And Einstein is a perfect example.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, Clart as well. You know, the guy who actually
convinced Einstein was this kind of mad Hungarian scientist too,
wins a Nobel Prize, comes up with the concept of
nuclear fusion. Literally standing in front of a stoplight in
London that changes from green to red, has this epiphany.
When the Reichstag burned, he reportedly went into a bit
(22:38):
of a trance, saw the Holocaust coming, packed two bags
and fled Berlin and ends up ultimately in poopin Hall
at Columbia University, which is still there.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
It's amazing, and it goes. Fermi ends up at the
University of Chicago.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
He's in Chicago. He also spends time in poopin Hall.
You have this extraordinary convergence of Whiggner, Salard, Fermi, and
others who are working on the eighth floor of Poopenhall,
or at least that's where Salard's office was, trying to
figure out whether splitting a neutron can create a chain
reaction and whether that chain reaction can amount to anything.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
I know you're just now launching the book, and you
share my said understanding that you have to spend as
much time selling the book as you spend writing it.
But having said that, do you have an inkling yet
of what the next book will be?
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I do. There is a character in the book who
is an FBI agent named James Amos. James Amos was
a real person, fascinating guy. He was the second African
American to be a special Agent in the FBI, the
second in real life.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
He starts working for Theodore Roosevelt as a caretaker to
his children in the White House, then becomes his quote manservant,
then becomes his bodyguard, then becomes his confidante, and spends
Rosevelt's last day and night with him at Sagamore Hill.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
He becomes this extraordinary FBI agent. He takes down Nazi
spy rings, he disrupts Murder Incorporated, and he dies into
obscurity in nineteen fifty four. My book ends with well,
I don't want to do any spoiler alerts, but let's
say that there's still a lot of work to be
done by the FBI in hunting down particular Nazis. And
(24:25):
if this book does well enough, I can see a
sequel where James Amos goes on his next adventure to
bring down an even more lethal Nazi threat to the
United States after World War Two begins.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Well, of course, you have the right kind of personality.
Who knows how many adventures he might be in over
the course of the next decade. As long as people
will buy the book. It's remarkable what you can then
get done well.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
I have a good instructor, because Gettysburg led to a
couple of fascinating sequels and other alternate histories and other
periods of times, so you know how to do it.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Most of my work has been nonfiction, and I find
fiction dramatically more difficult, which is why I'm so impressed
with your book, The Einstein Conspiracy. Saturday, November twenty ninth
is Small Business Saturday. Talk just a little bit about
what is Theater of Books going to do to celebrate
small business Saturday.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Theater of Books has managed to recruit a very solid
author to sign books on that day, and his name
is Steve Israel, So that's good. So it's good. When
you own a store, you can set yourself up for
books signing. I'll tell you, I love the notion of
shopping local. We have now a bookstore, Missus Speaker. People
(25:44):
come in your book March. The majority is still on
the shelves. People come in. They can read Gingrich, they
could read Adam Schiff. They're there not to screen, but
to learn and to have civil discourse. And I love
the locality of the place.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I want to thank you for joining me. This has
been delightful as I thought it would be. Your new book,
The Einstein Conspiracy is available now on Amazon and in
bookstores everywhere, including Theodore's Books and Unsterbay, New York. And
I should mention to our listeners Theodorsbooks dot com you
have a holiday gift guide right there on the homepage,
(26:21):
so Theodore's Books dot Com. Steve, thank you so much
for joining me.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Thanks miss Speaker.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
It's an honor.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Thank you to my guest, Steve Israel. NEWTS World is
produced by Gayoish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer
is Guernsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork
for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks
to the team at ginguis three sixty. If you've been
enjoying newts World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts
(26:52):
and both rate us with five stars and give us
a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Join me on the substack Gnglish through sixty dot net.
I'm new Genglish.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
This is neutral
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