Nelson Johnson, the author of Boardwalk Empire came to Stockton on 1st November 2013, to talk to the Honors freshman class. The students of the Honors class had to read his book Boardwalk Empire for the class. I was looking forward to this talk as I had enjoyed reading his book and wanted to know how he personally was.

Nelson Johnson, opened up the conversation with explaining the main reason behind writing the Boardwalk Empire. He said the before Boardwalk Empire the history of Atlantic City was only talked about in components and pieces. There were not any book on the complete history of Atlantic City. So, he decided to do an extensive research on the history of Atlantic City when he was perusing his career as a lawyer, and in the meanwhile compiled his findings into a book.

After his small talk when he asked the students if they had questions, majority of the questions were about the HBO series Boardwalk Empire based on his book. He very serenely answered all the questions. He also told that he really likes the HBO series even though it was not following his book anymore. Additionally, he also said that he got a copy of the script of the program before it aired. This was not because the television crew was asking for his approval but rather he merely asked for the script and that is why he got the script of the  TV series. He was very easy going about the fact that the TV channel wasn’t asking for his approval.

Also, after the talk session he very happily signed the books the for everyone. Unfortunately I had rented by book, and didn’t own it, so couldn’t get his autograph on the book. But otherwise it was a very successful and fruitful talk session presented by Nelson Johnson and I would thank the Honors Program that they arranged the meet and greet.