something that's a 19th century story, it happens when populations are under great stress. it probably will happen again at some point. yes, sir. >> did you make a literary decision not to use maps and charts? >> no. actually, the lack of a map is an unfortunate oversight. more of a miscommunication between myself and my editor. i very much wished there was a map in the book. it would help. ..

what did people now and not know? >> if carried a lot, the larger group of the dominant party had people who were town folks who are not particularly if is adapted for a living out of doris and one of the people who was most the death of louis harris father franklin who had grown up in the mountains of vermont so do something about mountains and snow and then he lived in a town of peoria. which pretty much frontier and cera grew up in the volunteer existence of a hunted game regularly in that's how they got me to appear if they live in the early a one of them have been so the braves family was quiet event at an outdoor survival but

cheering keith and i kind of thing and so they did quite well. some of the other the families have never town families didn't do as well and have those five of scales. absolutely. anybody else? >> thank you very much, folks. [applause] [applause] i'd be glad to have sign anybody but. >> daniel james brown is the author of "under a flaming sky: the great hinckley firestorm of 1894" to find out more visit danieljamesbrown.com. up next the story of a jordanian

immigrant tries to form a soccer team three 1/5 to a reluctant georgia community. it includes the hostility of local and residents to have the committee designated in a refugee settlement center in the 1970's. borders bookstore in atlanta has of this event, it's about 45 minutes. [applause] for. >> thinks so much care if thank you ever coming out, i appreciated. if i want to spend a few minutes, i came to read this vote in f. about some of 15/i-safe farda important for understanding if find this book about this little town outside of atlanta is relevant to people's lives far beyond just this committee to lift yeah and i should say just for the record if we are for a few miles away of this but fear that i have just come back from a month long

book tour that all of the country in philly almost every few minutes ti went to someone in the audience raised a hand and said if some things like what happened if clarkston is happening here if if is and so i've learned over and over it can from literally coast-to-coast from atlanta to seattle and san francisco and miami and raleigh-durham that what is happening in this little town is highly relevant to committed to sell the place big as this country is changing and that's what this book is about. i learned about the story of how the food tastes while. atlanta just to give a talk about my personal but in after rinsing a couple came up and ask if i had dinner plans and said no so we went out to dinner in the over a hamburger alice told,

i met the couple and asked about the gentleman's job. he worked in refugee rid of settlements in have questions about what that says, what is a resettlement case worker do. but as the first and you do you sit down and what is the last thing you do in the afternoon and i got over dinner a quick idea of of the incredible challenges that face families face. in this particular gentleman was working with families from around the who recently arrived and had nothing and had to find some way to be connecting to the world around them despite cultural differences, language differences or else they face the kind of economic certainly social stagnation and in the course of this dinner that gentlemen have mentioned there is a soccer team of refugee kids is in atlanta and he suggested i check them out so i thought i

would give the coach a college and it turned out the team was playing the next day at a soccer complex north of atlanta have. and so i went to see him play and when i walked out on the field that day when first thing that i noted with some things that sticks with me to this day and something i saw repeatedly during our reporting is, the home team, the suburban teen, have lots of parents on the sidelines and had all of their gear, they have their folding chairs in their blankets and all of their staff. and there was no one on the the fugees side at all. turns out that their parents because they were working weekends and night shifts and because of a few of them had automobiles, but did not go to youth soccer games. that was very far down the list of priorities for the families that had just arrived and new in this country. so it was rare, this season i

reported it the fugees: three teams from i only saw one parent attend it one game and that is that of i don't know, probably 30. that is this indicative of their priorities. but on this particular day the game started in and i noticed that the coach of the home team, the suburban teen, was one of these real screaming dance, dictating every last moment of the gay men to his players and didn't seem to be giving them a lot of room to just enjoy themselves. he had a vision for how they should play in he was expressing a very loudly and another is at least one soccer push in the audience and i see him nodding. i think most forest parents have an idea of what i'm talking about when i talk about that data. were mother were young man who is living vicariously through

the kids on the field in kind of going berserk. that is what i was seeing. and the coach of the the fugees up, this young woman from jordan and i'll talk about her in a moment, she had her calf down over her eyes and was in saying anything, she would occasionally get a simple directions to her players and giving them a lot of room to be themselves. and at the end of the half the fugees were up three to one which in my experience as a soccer fan, that was excellent, three goals and one half. i wash entire soccer matches that ended zero to zero or one to zero and everyone seems so happy so i figured free to one the couple be thrilled and that his sister players down and immediately lays into them. she was up said that a quickly became apparent that the score was totally irrelevant to her assessment of how they were

playing. she wanted them to play up to a stated that she has said it expected them to pass the ball, keep their eyes downfield, look for opportunities and then taken and is of them. so she really was playing into her kids and in particular schussing allowed a young man named christian n christian i come to learn a little about his back story. he was a nigerian refugee. he had been on the team and kicked off the team over cussing and then about six weeks before this game i was attending there have been a prior and his family's apartment in clarkson carry the and christian had is survived by climbing out of the win them. but he actually lost three siblings and a young cousin in this fire. soon after the fire he starts showing up again and practice the fugees end if the coach called him down and said i will

give you another shot, if you toss again and you are gone for good and, no exceptions, which you're welcome to i am simply with a team. this is his first game back and he actually scored a goal the first half, but luma was not happy with his play at all. and she really single him out and said what is wrong with you, you're not concentrating, you're not taking advantage of a opportunities before you and she really challenged him to step in as she was giving the talk we hear the coach down at the other end of the field doing his new rocky impression of our vince lombardi impression in the luma sees that in turn to her players with a near of gays and said you see that pushed down there, i wanted to keep scoring goals until he sits down and shot stop here and and do understand and the kids a non-event. so there i am of my reporters now but thinking this is

unusual, not exactly what i expected. the second half stars, they score again, they score again and keep scoring and have a certain point i think it was the coach of the home team placidly takes his cap off, wipes the sweat off his brown and sits down in is upset. n the fugees scored again and the final score of that day was nine to two. and christian, the young man that luma had singled out at halftime finished the game with five of the nine goals, scored four goals in the second half. so again i have just shown to see a soccer game and have no expectation what i'm going to see is going to grab me by the lapels and say this is your next book, this is what you're going to be doing for the next two years. i have to confess i have not watched a lot of sports and supplying them myself very badly as a kid and there's a part of

me that sort of wondering does this go on in in every sports game, and not aware of it, this kind of alchemy and magic happening every time kids think the field? and as i was wondering about this unquestioning my own fascination haoma the referee came over and asked if he could address for players feared he was a sort of older wiser gentleman with gray hair in a gray mustache and he looked like a man who had seen a lot of soccer games. he addressed the kids in said listen, i want to commend you on your sportsmanship, the other team got frustrated and they started kicking your shins in your ankles. not playing the ball when i got behind and it never retaliated and i really appreciate that. in -- you said you are appreciative response when chef and he was turning to leave the sort of almost normal to himself

but clearly everyone was able to hear and he said the and that was the most beautiful half of soccer i have ever seen. so i go back to newark and i am thinking, that was intense and what happened, how did this woman from jordan and up coaching kids from 13 different countries and was going on in that they would respond in so powerfully to her halftime speech and how is she getting some much have them when she said almost nothing during the game. there were a lot of contradictions and i thought maybe this had the makings of a really interesting article. about that team. well, then i started to send about when they were from. and that's when things are getting interesting because the fugees are from a little town called clarkston, 13 miles east of downtown and, is is on 1.1 square miles of the rich or to play.

7100 residents in the baptist church was built in clarkston in 80 and the church sits on the same on it occupied in back them. and basically gives for the first 110 years or so a clarkston existence nothing really happened that they concern and interest the outside world and one gets the sense of the townspeople were perfectly content with this reality. three trains rolled through town, a dozen times a day. as they did at the turn of the century and this little town of was sort of winning -- going about its business and it was a very typical american town particularly became typical american town next to a much bigger city in a place where people and then left the city into this committee to escape it was then and the late 18 -- 1980's when a refugee settlement agencies decided that clarkston i'm making good place to

resettle newcomers to this country well, why would they get this idea finds refugees to come to this country that have no money so they need to housing and the only get 90 days of government assistance. so if they don't find cheap housing they can say there. most have never owned or driven a car so they rely entirely on public transportation and because they only get this brief amount of aid they need jobs. so they need to be near and economic center that can support low-skilled workers who may not speak english and clarkston had all of these elements. have all of these empty apartments that have been abandoned, they were built in the '60s and '70s when the airport here have been built in the atlanta was experiencing incredible growth and the people who live in them have moved further to the suburbs and they were this repaired that they

read their sale and empty in chief. clarkston is on the bus marissa near the last eastern stock of the rail system and then it was near atlanta and georgia. a place that needed people to work in the hotel says maine's, needed people to work in poultry processing plants and light manufacturing jobs. and so agencies on a hunt that maybe clarkston was the perfect place started putting first refugees from southeast asia and the balkans that eventually various african complex and between the 1990 and 2000 this little town where very little of importance ever occurred and transformed into one of the most diverse communities in the south and perhaps the entire country. there are now students from all over a 50 different countries at clarkston high school. you then have to ask are we

going to make this work and this question began to dawn on the residence of clarkston with increasing urgency over the years. because it was down on its luck wasn't the kind of town where people were going to mount, they weren't organized enough to mount it in compositional movement to anything so it wasn't until their town with summer between a third two 1/2 fet and that townsfolk finally comes to death and said it with a minute, what is happening to our town and by that point there was a tremendous amount of frustration resentments, and very and i thank you could say fear because particularly for the older residents of the town they had sat and watched as their community be transformed from something they were utterly comfortable with into something that was utterly and familiar and not just the span of five to seven years.

and so it turned out that just a few weeks after this game i went to, there were hints that this kind of thing was kind to a head in clarkston once again. the had been absent in 2003 with as a town meeting in everyone basically then together and yelled at each other, agencies and the townsfolk and it didn't end on a positive note. there wasn't much of an appetite to continue that kind of dialogue so everyone went back to their corners in angry and upset and then in 2006 not long after i had seen this game that things started to happen again with this discussion starts to take place in public instead of a chest with and that the homes and apartments of clarkston. and this was big as a soccer team of sudanese young men and members of the lost boys had started their on the soccer program called the lost boys' soccer team and they were playing in the town park. there was a sign in the town for

offenses you need permission so they went and asked who they need to get permission from and some said call this fellow, they called and you said you can play seven to play and as soon as they got out on the field accounts showed up and sank off the field. they said of behalf permission and necessary, so they go back and go to the same a process for they told the have permission, they play and cox kick them off. so ever they turn they couldn't get answers and so they of sedgwick included whatever was going on the basic message was we don't want you people playing soccer here. and so they stopped but that field was a field that the fugees were hoping to play on. it had fallen out of with their place where they were playing this public field in town. right about the time they were about to start practice tryouts for a new season of the mayor of clarkston named lisa levee told the atlanta journal constitution

which had gone when of the controversy as long as i am mayor they will only be baseball down on that field, those deals were made for soccer. even today if you hopping your car and brave atlanta's rush-hour traffic to go to clarkston and you plug in the parking lot next to this field there is a green sign that says armas that field and that there are three little jong said the bottom that it clearly you can still make them out, they've been there for decades probably, there is a baseball, a football and there is a soccer ball. so in cash to ever build that field at chile did in 10 per people to play soccer there. it was hard to avoid the conclusion, the mayor's real problem was not with a game of soccer which somehow he argued in was worse for grass and other names, but to was playing soccer. and that that is for me when i heard that i thought, okay, this is going to be interesting.

i am from birmingham and grown up in the south, i have a sense of the 79 and the southern defensiveness with regard to outsiders and now here i am a reporter from the new york times assuming the outsider role again parachuting in this little town to try to report on its but i had a hunch that this is going to be interesting. i was not disappointed if so that is sort of how this story in my reporting started and then like to talk for a moment about some thematic issues that came out of my reporting in some things that i learned from my reporting. one of the most poignant parts of this reporting on refugees that come to this country is to get a sense of how our country looks for a fresh eyes, higher society lives through fresh eyes in it that day after day somebody would say something for gimme some insight then gave the

reconsideration how i lived my life. we also were going through the motions of living of lives and rarely do we stop to consider the mundane aspects are live and a simple example would be out frequently come from the york and stop at the avis counter at the airport and drive straight to practice. and then i'll spend a few days reporting and go back to york and after i did this a few times one of the members of the fugees said to me mr. warren he must be a very of wealthy man. and i said why you say that. and he says you have so many cars. and this became an occasion for me to explain in america there is a company where you can actually borrow a car and give it back in what was interesting about that too one liberian member of the fugees was that he now lives in a culture amazingly enough where a total stranger would not only lead to a carbon

trusted you to bring it back, that was a real shocker. i would try to explain that you give them this piece of plastic with some numbers on and if you take off with a car or crashes there will read a letter to this company called experian and then you can buy a house and tried to explain in you realize this is absurd. no wonder is so hard for refugees to figure out our culture. look at how many layers we have piled on to something as simple as borrowing a car and ellis of consequences can be very long if you screw up. in the there were other moments that were more serious and more poignant by thing for me one of the most poignant moments of my reporting was talking to a sudanese refugee about his experience coming to the u.s. charismatic incredibly talented soccer player at an academic

scholarship in north carolina and like anyone in college in america he has a thousand facebook friends say he is doing great and he can comment with a bit of a task in all when he felt like when he arrived in this country and one of the things he said to me for example showing up at the atlanta airport and singing as good for the first time and how afraid to u.s. to get on its because he didn't know what would happen with a staircase that look like teeth of some kind and he laughs about that now but he said to me, you know, in my country in sudan, he is from the new mountains, if someone were to come from a different culture and defense shea and then dropped off in our village everyone would want to come and meet this person and they would have to have hundreds of questions for them. they would want to know everything about the place this person came from. but he said it in america he

said and felt like people were just afraid of me. in they did not want to ask questions, they did not want anything to do, they were intimidated by me and this was for me a very harmful idea that this young man who had been through some much, his village had been bombed by the sudanese air force with these bombs dropped out of the back of cargo planes. he fled. to be committed to this country and felt he was safe and instead of people treated him as though he is summoned to be feared. and it was a reminder to me of how important it is two keep an open mind, to smile, to reach out and say hello to someone who may be different but especially for kids. kids are going to public school, big schools with lots of kids you already know is whether in our comfortable in their own skin and comfortable in their setting.

it must be incredibly isolating and intimidating for someone to into that environment alone. and to feel that people are afraid of him just because he does not speak the language as well as the other kids. this ultimately this is a book about people in transition and i think that applies to everyone in the book. i should say a few words about luma, she is from jordan, she went to college in the u.s. went to smith college enough that she told her parents that she was calling to say in the usps to send this was a place that provided her the best opportunity to live life that if you wanted to appear in the shoes off it and her parents responded by completely cutting her off and financially, they would talk to her and hang up the phone when she called and they said the after college was set adrift yourself and it

eventually made her way to end lanza because of the weather for she spent time in the northeast and delight the cold winters in atlanta whether. amazingly enough she said she didn't like the weather so she came here and coached soccer at the ymca and and eventually on the way to a middle east of roche restorer to get some of the food that reminded her of home she took a wrong turn and turn into a parking lot of an apartment complex than ever a group of kids outside playing soccer the way she had played the game as a kid and seen a play as a child. the repair of roads and plan on asphalt and had a ready soccer ball and did not have goals and having the time of their lives. luma went back to this parking lot again later and actually got out of the car and asked if she could join the kids and play. they said yes and this is for first real encounter with refugees of clarkston and

eventually she got the idea that these kids deserve a team of their own and would be the one to putin so she put fliers around town and call for a tryout in these kids came from all around from dozens of different countries and tried out for her team and many were surprised to see that the fish of this team was a woman. they came from cultures that are frequently known to coach boys' in sports or cut at all. and there was a moment where luma was heard one of the kids tell his teammates don't listen to her famishes a girl and doesn't know what she's talking about. in and luma said, come here, she put him in the gulf, but the ball and the penalty line in the blasted a shot might add ham issue is a very gifted athlete. and she turned around and lifted the rest of the kids who are now

laughing hysterically and said his next. nobody was next and so she had a lot of small battles to have her a 40 respected as a coach. and so you have these three elements, the town of going to incredible change end of the refugees themselves with incredible changes time to acclimate to a culture and luma has been set adrift by her family and brown them in the deep with south. taking on responsibility of this group of refugees in this community who had no and 70 and that need began to draw her in simple things my translating between a teacher and a parent, helping with the power bill for the phone bill with immigration forms and all the paperwork that we have in our culture and seemed very wasteful and perplexing for the newcomers

here. two found that these families needed a lot of help and she also felt gratified helping them. so all of these people as i said in a moment ago are in transition between when world and the next. and in what is interesting about that it is the choices people have to make in that process. where they going to side with the old world that they came from in some ways or try to forge some a new community and if so what would that committed to look like. that was true for luma and the townspeople and the people who had lived in the community for decades. .. people in these

communities watched more hours of television each week than the average american. they were less likely to vote than the average american. they were less likely to volunteer or become part of civic organizations. they were -- if you can believe this, they head the media and politicians in greater distrust than the rest of america, you know, if that were possible. but the portrait that this study painted was of people who in the face of change in their communities had closed the front door, gotten on the sofa, turned on the television set and become angry. and resentful at all the levers

of powers and the organizations out there they blamed of the change that upset their lives. if you believe as the pastor of the clarkson bible church whom i quote in the book who says america is changing, get over it, that's what he tells his parishioners, then this portrait is concerning because if america is changing and that's what we do when we're faced with change and stud newfound diversity, well, what does that say about our prospect for building community in the future? and so i think clarkson is really interesting because it give us a little glimpse, it's a little laboratory that allows us to see all these issues playdc t in real time because he's america on fast forward. it went through what the rest of the country is going through slowly but surely in a span of five to seven years. so all the issues are thrown

into sharp relief. so that's what the book about. and i think you'll see in the book there are people who come up with incredible solutions an offer inspiring models for how to deal with a situation and how to connect with others over cultural barriers and divides and i think you'll see in the book there are people who retreat and who become fearful and cut themselves off from the people around them and you'll see little pockets of the community who suffer when you do that. ultimately, i think it's a very inspirational story because you get to see our capacity for improvising our way out of very complicated social situations when there's a willingness to do so. and so with that, i'd like to take a few questions, if i could. i know sometimes asking the first question can be tough. i see some familiar faces who were at the carter center when

we launched the book about a month ago and it came to this moment and i was kind of anxious, you know, is anyone going to ask a question and this young man bolted from 300 adults and went to the microphone and he pulled out a paper and he said my name is so-and-so. it was clear he didn't speak english very well but he had everything written out so he wouldn't make a mistake. i'm from nepal. i've been in america for one year. i live in clarkston and i want to know how can i join the fugees and you can try out like everybody else and he said, oh, yeah and he pointed to the back of the room i've got four brothers and they want to play too. so it was a wonderful moment because it underscored not the only need but the degree which this refuge soccer team has become newcomers who come to clarkston hear about and they

want to join it. it's the cool thing to do. when i showed up in 2006, the cool thing to do was play basketball because that's what the american kids do and now because of the fugees they have done so well in the field and people have heard their story, kids are showing up listening to an old guy like me blather on about a book just to have an opportunity to ask how they can play on the team. that's some kind of dedication, right? so with that, i challenge someone to be -- to be the person to ask that first question. i don't think anyone here could possibly qualify for the fugees so get that out of the way. >> i enjoyed the book a lot for a bunch of reasons. i guess my big question would be -- i know you kind of talked about the beginning like that first shot but is there like one story, one player story that really kind of emcompasses everything that you think about the fugees and there's one

moment -- >> one particular kid? well, i think it's hard for me to separate, you know, one kid from another. i found them all like incredibly generous and, you know, i was talking someone upstairs a moment ago about these little moments when i was let into a world that previously, you know, the refuge committee is quite guarded. they went through tremendous experiences and they're not -- they're just not in the frame of mind that allows them to be very trustful of strangers. but i was there for a while. i kept showing up. i was at the games. i would occasionally, you know -- my journalistically objectively would break down and i would cheer. and they kind of began to understand -- i was not going anywhere. i had mentioned to one liberian

player that i really like liberian food but, you know, it was a little too spicy for me and i knew he cooked and i'd love to eat you're cooking. and before a game he actually came up to me and said, i'm cooking dinner for you tonight at my apartment. i hope you can make it. and it was just -- you know, this is a 15-year-old boy inviting me to dinner that he's going to cook and he's so proud not only of his native food but of his ability to cook it and, you know, he was partly showing off and it was one of those touching things where you think to yourself, wow, really? me? and he's just this remarkable kid who at the team car wash raised funds for the next soccer tournament. he would wash more cars better than anybody else. he's just that guy. he's the guy who just works harder than anyone. he's got the best attitude. there was a moment in the book where he had gotten in a fight.

he was at school, because he was doing rehearsals for the school play and some of the kids started to make fun of him for his accent. and he got upset. there were words back and forth and there was a shoving match and he got suspended. and this wasn't like him. i mean, occasionally he had moments of frustration but it wasn't what he was about and he knew that was wrong. and i asked him about it later and i said, you know, what did you learn from that experience? and what do you do now if someone makes fun of you? and he said well, now if the american kids make fun of me at school for the way i talk, i say to them, you know, don't make fun of me, just please tell me how to say it and to hear a 15-year-old kid negotiating his way through that social situation and basically, you know, putting his anger and frustration and trying to learn,

you know, trying to hard to learn to say things the right way so people wouldn't make fun of him those moments were incredibly touching and they happen every day in this community. there's over 40 kids on the various teams when i was following them and every day somebody is dealing with this(j know? am i american 'cause this is where i live now or am i liberian or am i from the congo? and kids make fun of them because they're not from america and they've got these accents. so they untuck their shirts and they put their jeans down a little low to look baggy to fit with the american kids and they go home and mom and dad says, what on earth are you dressed like? we don't dress where we come from. you need to respect our culture and respect where you came from and by the way, do you know what i went through to get you here safely? they feel like they're not quite liberian or congolese anymore because they're trying to fit in

here and now but in the here and now the people whose approval they want look at them as outsiders. that struggle was ongoing everyday. these kids had trauma in their pasts and occasionally they would open up about that. it was very much in their pasts. this thing was going on every single day right, you know, in real time and sometimes it was wrenching to hear about. and i think one of the things i hope people get from the book and i specially hope young readers get a chance to read the book and the adults will encourage young people to read the book is you gain a sense of insight into what these kids are going through. and also an insight into how the simplest and smallest gestures can mean a world of difference to a kid. you know, complimenting a kid with an accent over his delivery of a soliloquy at a school play

may not seem much but someone struggling in to fit in could mean a lot. that's one of the hopes in the book by hearing the kids talk about their experiences themselves, other young people will be able to identify with them and say, you know, gosh, i never realized that's what they were going through. i could kind of -- i've been there myself and i'm going to be a little bit nicer to that kid down the hallway who, you know, comes from another country i don't know about. anybody else? >> in general, how successful do you think the refuge resettlement program is in the u.s. versus other countries or is it more like -- it sounded like you wet,6 saying from the 0 days, it's too short and the ngos kind of take over from there. >> so the question was, how does the u.s. refuge resettlement process work in compared to the way other countries handle it, i'm not an expert on international resettlement. i know from some of the families who have been in other countries or who have family or relatives

in other countries, there are other countries that definitely do it differently. i know in, i think, belgium, for example, they tend to -- there are sort of refuge apartment buildings and everyone is struggling with how best to service this community. and what's best for the refuges. is it best to scatter them around so far from each other that they have no choice but to assimilate? or do you want to put them all together so that you can provide social services to them, you know, they need to be able to get to their -- the resettlement office, to get job help and educational help. that's the way we tend to do it in america. we tend to concentrate people so they're within walking distance of the local offices for the agencies. but the agencies actually take over for them in america from the moment they land. they greet them at the airport so the government assistance is financial but they hand off the jobs to the agencies and the

agencies have just absurdly few resources to handle what's been given to them in terms of responsibility. case workers i spoke to dealing with, you know, dozens of families at the same time, some of whom who had just gotten here. some of whom may have been 18 months or two years but are still dealing with a lot of serious issues. and the issues change, you know, because a family might get here with a bunch of kids who are 6 or 7 years old pretty soon they're kind of preteens and preteens are facing completely different set of issues. in clarkston one of those issues is the lure of gang activity. and this is one of the more bitter paradoxes or ironies for a lot of these families is that they have left war zones and they've come to the u.s., a place where they expect peace and they're very hopeful and

they happen to get put in this kind of community where there's a lot of gang activity and hear gunshots at night and crime. there's a liberian refuge i write about on the book on her first night home from work she took the bus down here to the ritz carlton hotel to work as a maid, gets off the bus and she's walking from the bus stop to clarkston back to her apartment and she's mugged by a man with an african accent. so here she is in america. she's left all this violence in africa and she's getting mugged by someone who's accent she recognizes. she's thinking, what was all that travel for, you know, if not to get to a safer place. there's a scene in the book where it's halloween and luma takes the kids, puts them on the bus and takes them to this really nice neighborhood in atlanta with these beautiful brick houses, with chandeliers and the parents are out in the yard having cocktails and the kids -- the streets are closed to traffic and kids are just free to run around and trick or

treat like crazy and they're all walking around with 50 pound burlap sacks of candy like every kid's dream and iñán say in the book, you know, a comfortable american might potentially take -- could afford to take a kind of jaundice view of suburban life and there have been no end of writers who have pontificated on the malaise of the burbs but when you have lived in a refuge camp and fled a war zone and you've come to america, you know, the tableau before these kids was exactly what they hoped america would be like for them, for themselves. they expected that they'd get a car and get a nice house and where kids could run around all the time without worrying about anybody and where you could ring a stranger's doorbell and they would just give you candy, you know, some of the kids i was with that night, it was their first halloween ever.

and they just could not believe that there was this thing where you could ring the doorbell of a stranger, say a couple of words and they would give you candy. and luma had given the kids, you know, pep talk about manners, you know, take one piece of candy, say thank you and there was one young man on the team who was so excited -- he's at the back%w of the line and one one the fugees their one piece of candy out of this big bag of candy and this kid takes two hands of candy and the woman at the door says, young man, and he says thank you. and he takes off running. and he was just so happy that, you know, this is what they dreamed about and they got back on the bus and they went back to clarkston where nobody is trick or treating because in clarkston you would not dare ring the doorbell of a stranger at night or at least in certain -- in the apartment complexes or some of the apartment complexes. i'm sure there's a few corners

of clarkston where they do trick or treat but certainly not where these kids camepur from. maybe one more question. >> talk about the impact your reporting was with the "times" and in the book with the kids themselves. >> can i talk about theeódpact of the stories i did for the "new york times" and the book itself on the kids. and i think -- you know, it's interesting. that sort of thing is jg removed from their daily life, not reading the "new york times," they're not listening to npr, not probably watching c-span 'pz unless, you know, all the'fg ot channels are81[ out, and so a l of the media stuff seems very remote to them. they're more likely to hearoqt from -- i've heard from a lot of kids, oh, my teacher read your article or my teacher did -- you know, said this or read -- you know, read about your book, and so they hear about it that way

and maybe other kids will say my mom said they saw your coach on cnn or on tv. so it seems sort of far away and i don't think it really impacts their daily life, and they've got all these struggles that are right before them every single day. so i think, you know -- again, to kind of upper middle class america and a bunch of media attention would probably be a very exciting, maybe even temporarily life-changing experience, you know, you go gate publicist and that kind of thing but for most of these kids, it's just -- they don't quite understand why there's all these grownups, you know, walking around with these big sticks and with things on their shoulders. you know, that's my sense. i think i'm right about that. i think, you know, one thing that has changed is that the profile of the fugees because they've been there now for5ç several years and some of the young kids on the team --

they've stayed with the program and they've gotten older so their reputation of the program has grown locally. and that has nothing to do with the media coverage at all. it's just a factor of the profile of the program, the way it's run. they've got this bus now with a huge gaudy fugees logo. they're no longer on this nondescript y buses where every ymca shuttles kids in and they think that's pretty cool and i was at a tournament with the fugees where a kid came up and asked one of the players of the younger team for his autograph. he said could you autograph my duffel bag and he was, you know, that on his teammates for the days, you know, that they hadn't been asked for their autographs but he had. anybody else? so thank you so much for coming out. i really appreciate it.

and i'm happy to sign some books and answer any other questions that you might have. and i hope you enjoy the book. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> warren st. john is a3p÷ "new of rammer jammer yellow hammer. for more information on the author and the soccer team, you can go to outcastsunited.com. sfloesh >> bookexpo america in new york city, 2009. we're at the yale university press press, what do you have coming out this fall?

>> i've got a number of great books for the fall starting with the making of americans by e.d. hirsch who a book called "cultural literacy" and defining what it is to be american and this book is a capstone of his career which included many best sellers and many decades of activism and education to talk about the centrality of information and knowledge and what it means to have a shared corpus of knowledge and how important it is to our national identity and how it's being threatened by the way education seems to be splintered across the country. it's a book that has a lot of argument and advocacy, a lot of ways to look forward to what the new administration can do about education. >> the other book you have g.a. bradshaw, elephants on the edge, what elephants teaches us about humanity? >> it's a marvelous book. it's very moving, very touching.

what she does here -- and she has quite a platform in doing this. she's been on 20/20 and 60 minutes. and what she tries to do here is to understand how human behavior affects the global population of animals in the wild and cap activity. it's a very touching subject. people who have read many books on these kinds of issues will really respond to this book because our actions do have consequences and especially on those creatures that can't argue for themselves in books like elephants, for instance, so she talks about sort of elephants having nervous breakdowns. that's what the title refers to and so the inner emotional life of animals and actually how our own empathy understanding how they behave touches us something about what it is to be human it's a very interesting sort of turn-around in our efforts to understand animals we begin to

understand ourselves. >> two books two artists, charles dickens and andy warhol? >> everyone thinks -- that we've learned everything we need to know about charles dickens but there actually hasn't been a biography in over 20 years. this is the first full cradle to grave biography of dickens in a couple decades and we're really, really excited about this. there's new information, there's new research, and i think dickens is a kind of christmas book so there will be good christmas books for the sale. >> the andy warhol book. >> the author is a very distinguished art historian. he writes a column for "the nation" magazine and this is a wonderful biography really of kind of legacy that warhol left behind. some people think about andy warhol than his paintings and it talks about what warhol did to

the meaning of an american icon, he has become our most significant icons and such an unlikely one and how did that happen and he did it largely through working very savvy with icon graphic subjects whether it's the campbell soup can or liz taylor and it takes a look at how he redetermined or redefined what it is to be iconic. >> as director of the press, what decisions do you make on a day-to-day basis? >> maybe it would be easier to say what i don't. basically, all the departments run up to me operationally, editorially, marketing and financially. so starting, of course, with the books. we have a staff of about 14 editors. the press is only as good as the books it publishes so that's the most important decisions i think we make day-to-day. we're the largest book-based american university press in the country.

and the only one with a significant london base as well. >> yale university press celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. can you give me a little history of the press. >> is it started basically of the left drawer of a lawyer who graduated from yale who worked on lower fifth avenue. and over the decades he became more and more famous for its lists in humanities and art history. in the 1960s it was appropriated into the university itself so we're now a department of the university. in the '70s there was a big london office that was built in bedsford square and it's still there. we do about 400 books a year mostly in the humanities and the social sciences. >> we have the director of the yale university press. thank you. >> thank you very much. >> here's a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals over the next few months.

>> please let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area and we'll add them to our list.

email us at book tv@c-span.org. ♪ >> this summer book tv is asking, what are you reading? >> my name is emily and i write for the roll call paper. i've got a couple of other books on my nightstand table. first of all i want to read a homemade life stories and recipes from my kitchen table. that's by molly wisdomenberg who's the fantastic food blogger she's also a columnist for bon appetite magazine. i'm excited to read her book. next up is ham biscuits. and that's by julia ray the fantastic vogue writer and it's a recollection of her southern

upbringing. i love reading the food books in the summer and something more serious it's called plain, honest men the making of the american constitution and that chronicles the constitution convention. also on my serious reading list is the hemingses an american family. and it's a virginia and a graduate of uva i'm interested in the topic and then just for a little break since i didn't get to paris this year i like to read about it and i picked up a fantastic guidebook from a funky little german press. they do fantastic design books and i'm reading taschen's paris. check back at the end of the summer to see how far i've gotten into it. ..