an extraordinary book and a very different style than alison bechdel, but coming of age at a time of repression and autocracy and a kind of theological, theocratic kind of nightmare in her country and fleeing to france and it has got all of the adolescent tropes falling in love and discovering your body and all the rest of it but untold against the backdrop of this gigantic historic moment. very moving book and shows you both books together showed you kind of the great flexibility of this medium and the great things you can do with comex, which i don't pretend to be an expert about. i taught comics for a long time and have written a comic, and it is a terrific medium and one reaches into all corners of the world of work literature

doesn't. >> to see more summer reading lists and other prodir information visit our web site at booktv.org. former "new york times" reporter peter kilborn describes the professionals who constantly relocate to maintain their place in the corporate level. he also examines the politics of families. politics and prose bookstore here in washington post's the seed and just under one hour. >> i want to thank carla and barbara and konar and all of politics and prose for having me here and thank all of you for coming in the early part of the month when most people are not in town. i'm especially grateful for a couple of subjects in the book,

maggie fisher from the boom town of if you can believe this name, flower mound texas and her elder son, j.c., who happens to be in washington looking at colleges. maggie and j.c., do you want to put your hands of? so those are real relos. they look pretty much like the rest of us. [laughter] matt, no, that's the husband, maggie and j.c. are kind of on conventional people residing in a place steeped in convention for exit will at their home one evening i watched d.c. take his donner from the refrigerator, one heaping scope of tollhouse cookie dough and side of raw carrots. i don't have a clue yet to the view of my long depiction in the

book, so they can serve as your gardez i discussed the book. i invite you to judge the book by its cover. i did not commission the art. i suspect he or she began with a vision of pete seeger town house all the same and put through car garages and multiple cables and little feet under them. that is how i see them if with less humor. the title of this book, next stop reloille wife inside america's new rootless professional class i objected to that, to the publisher's decision to call this glass new. it goes back to the origins of world trade to the east india company and hudson bay company. there is nothing particularly new to be a fruitless soldier

and diplomat or preacher or businessman or woman for decades ibm employees have said the initial stand for i have been moved. what is new, the relos themselves, the breadwinners -- i will start -- what is new is growth in numbers of corporate relos, a figure i estimate to be about 10 million people, that is the breadwinners themselves and their families and how that has grown with the growth of the american economy. american foreign trade to cite a statistical the goods and services we buy and sell abroad has leaped from about $400 million in 1970 to over 3 trillion now as companies american and foreign compete. they need people to carry their banner and build business far

from home. you've not heard the word reloville because i made it up. it is about workers and families frequently relocating, they are see real long-distance movers. the word relos originated among agents who specialize in catering to them. relos tend to roast between moves in reloville and upscale suburbs many catering primarily to them near cities where fortune 500 companies put plants and offices. the summer white here in fairfax virginia and montgomery county maryland many are outside atlanta, dallas, houston, denver, raleigh, charlotte and a few midwestern cities like chicago, columbus ohio, minneapolis and indianapolis. fortune 500 companies recruit mostly they're real those from

state universities. disproportionately from communities with stagnant economies and winding opportunities. maggie and her husband, matt fisher started in carbondale illinois, the home of southern illinois university and a town with relatively low unemployment but a high poverty and little opportunity for college graduates. bright and ambitious they went to the university of illinois and arana and then the accidental career as an expert in inventory management to come to chicago, cleveland, columbus ohio, houston, and flower mound and michaels, a hobby chain where he is a taut information technology officer and senior director for inventory management. the fishers like other families i introduce in the book were chasing their own version of the american dream. like others they wanted a home of their own, couple of cars,

college for the kids and vacation somewhere far button to get their relos have to put the american dream on wheels, they are the new mobile homeless until some like the fisher's take a break for five for ten years to see their kids get into college they don't stay in a town long enough to invest. the relo fathers away to the international airport but not the city hall. relos exchange their roots and sense of belonging somewhere for a secure job and good pay and shot at some cases at the top jobs in their companies. it's easy to rebuke them for their gilded gypsy lives get in the global economy, leading their companies across the american economy, and in to beijing and singapore many do not have much. reloville's pay a price for the

trend since. for whom no place is a real place they don't vote in the town elections. they don't contribute to fund-raising drives or the new museums or stadiums. and why should they they can ask. they won't be around when it opens. frequent relocation can be accelerating for the breadwinners most of whom are still men but difficult for the relo wives. to follow their husbands or wives abandon or postpone careers. i was impressed to hear the white speak of concern for their kids adjustment to new schools. of ruthlessness, loss and loneliness. i don't have a best friend, one white said and i thought well now, wait a minute, what do you mean? well, i don't have the best growth and. well, it can take years to make

a best friend, someone whom wives can confide anything. like what i asked. well, i had postpartum depression with each of my children. the ah. all i as a man have no formal familiarity with anything associated with postpartum depression. so i understood. [laughter] it was not an issue to raise with the neighbors, the wives would tell me, or a husband, for these wives it is hard enough carrying the burden of selling their families, finding homes, schools, doctors and churches and of arranging the home only to have to start all over again somewhere else. the recession as bad as this one is seems not to take a toll on relos exit those working for crippling companies like general

motors, citigroup or ag. like home building, automobile sales and and obliterate relocation rules with ups and downs. employers cut back hiring relos like other workers and postponed promotions requiring but no help the company with hard relo business away from home abandon those markets and pulled back their engineers and sales people, their financial managers, plant managers and risk losing that business to competitors. of about 20 relo families i followed news stories on every count in the book, the promotions and moves of a few forestalled and a couple dropped out, but not one has lost a job in this recession. summing up i will cite the last paragraph. among this class of serial movers i met people who were s

clearly defined as the old oak in the courthouse square. yet they and in particular their children had little notion of geographic origin of the starting place. i think that said but i cannot conclude that it's bad. without room to grow in a town of light stapleton nebraska these americans, the relos become new pioneers on the global front here. they fly where they must on the shifting winds of the breadwinners job through booms and busts they find a proxy for place and close ties to their immediate family with the help of the digital links of a boundary this age. thank you. [applause] so, are there questions?

bill? >> the first, i want to congratulate you on the impressive reporting you did on putting this book to get there. but i am curious as someone who already had plenty of experience with the location in your own career but two or three real boom surprises did you gain for this reporting that shaped this book? >> the biggest surprise was not the effect on children, but the affect on why this and i think it was a surprise in part because my wife who is here didn't bring these issues up with me much.

she came along. [laughter] and it was probably fruitless for her to have complained. [laughter] but that was a very important thing. i was also struck by the serial relocation. i met a lot of people who had moved to other places but i will send aware of multiple moving. the people i met in paris or london or l.a. or other places i knew from one place but i didn't know that this kind of activity was a central part of their lives in that he didn't really identify with any place. it was a surprise, to back, to see the communities where these people lived. now everybody has seen these upscale suburbs with for a lack of a more original term cookie cutter houses.

but i was just astonished by how similar they all were from their ground keeping to their foods ball -- foosball rooms. a lot of these houses have similar features. and then i thought well, now wait a minute. these people cannot all be like that and it turns out they didn't live in these houses in some modicum and predictable way. they all lived as anybody. but houses needed all those features so they could sell them to another. no one wants to take risks when they are buying a house because they know they will have to sell its so everybody wants essentially the same house. yes, gary. >> as you know i am from one of the three towns and feature in the book and you haven't said

much about how you characterize the towns themselves but i gathered from what you told me earlier you haven't been given the key to the cities in those places. [laughter] i just wonder if you could say something about the reaction you have heard so far from the people. i'd better not name names yet but there is one prominent figure who said she was to be misquoted as because some newspaper reporter was writing an article about the book and, well, i have her on tape and everything is completely accurate recorded and reported. now i hear she has just dialed back but all these people say it doesn't say anything about anything about the quality-of-life and i'm thinking what is the quality-of-life if you call the mayor of san or

charleston or boston or some other city, san francisco how would you compare your quality-of-life? ask them what they would think which is a very flat town, nice people but not anything that really draws you that i could identify so i would run into these kind of chamber of commerce points of view these as either towns but nobody has suggested that i misrepresented them. yes. hi, jane. >> what did you learn of the relationship -- >> you have to go to a microphone. >> go up there. [laughter] >> what did you learn about the adult relationships with their parents? did the parents sit around and

stay where they work or move with them or one mant? >> that is the most fun question and by sorry just can't cover everything. there is a stunning phenomenon that may be all of you know is out there but i have not articulated. you have children. they go to college, they get a job and leave town. they are nowhere near where you live and then they get moved again and you are back home in bismarck and the children love to be with you and what not but they are in singapore or phoenix or some other place and they can't come up to see you and it is a huge effort to go down and see them, so you don't leader action declines rapidly. so, what ensues is what i call families of collateral relos. these are parents who follow

their kids and they go for example outside atlanta a place called the season's and i guess this particular community might be called the winter. [laughter] but they follow their kids to what are called active adult communities. they are all back together. then the kids get moved again and the parents get older and feeble and they are now living in a place they know nothing about where they know nobody and they can't get back to bismarck so that is a sad phenomenon i saw happening. of course i am oversimplifying many find a way to acclimate to this, but it was a fairly striking phenomenon to me. yes? >> your book talks about the end of relo ear and eye -- or i thought it did.

but is there an end to the era and if so what will take its place and where will you name it? [laughter] what will what? >> what will you name it? [laughter] that takes a little work since i can't define it yet. i think there is a predisposition on people who have read the book and with whom i have talked to assume digital technology that teleconferencing, twitter, facebook, etc. are going to displace and that is not true. it probably could enhance eight. in other words you are able to communicate more and more with your customers and employees in beijing which can stimulate your design your to get over there to cultivate new markets so it's hard to predict how digital technology will influence this activity.

but anyone who has ever done what for them is a big transaction, buying a house, you don't do that on twitter. you don't do that on your blackberry. you sit at a desk and talk to somebody and exchange checks and that is true of all business. i can't tell where it's headed. i don't think it is going to get huge lead bigger but i think it is a fact of life and in the work force and in the economy. >> i have experienced the phenomena you are describing vicariously through my son who works for a large oil company, multinational. has lived in houston, london, moscow, and now rwanda angola and i have two questions. one is are there differences between relos and foreign countries and in the united

states? that's the first question. and then the second question is in one of the locations, my son and london actually lived in the community rather than an a reloville. so the second question is do you see differences between the results of families that live in neighborhoods of their choosing verses those who lived in these eight communities where everybody is a multinational employees? >> i am going to try to remember both of those. >> let's talk about american relos. i don't think you're talking about farmers saying is there a difference for those in this country versus going abroad, is that correct? those going abroad get more perks because companies are taking greater risks with them. it costs a lot, $70,000 to send

them abroad. that is typical unless you are a senior person and go to six figures well into six figures. so, they have got more perks, private school tuition, car and drive we learning places, i am thinking of one in particular sent to geneva and he's handed the form describing what he's about to have as he gets abroad and he said well, with respect to the card you can have a mercedes or bmw or volvo and we will cover up to $58,000. now that doesn't happen if you are being sent from phoenix to a loss vegas. and then you have got people going to lesser developed countries i guess it is still fair to call india lesser developed. you have got a coke and manny and all that kind of help. so you travel first class. so that is one distinction i would make. another -- you are talking about

your son working for an oil company. you didn't mention the places some of them get sent. it is the worst to me. you get put into the desert of saudi arabia because there is oil under the sand and there will be a few houses are now and for the exxonmobil and chevron and whatever people are there. you bring your whole family to those places and you've got to get a life. this is also an islamic country and so, you live in a little ghetto of westerners. if your wife wants to go into town she has to put on a irca and she can't drive, she has to be in the back seat unless she is with the side and the car. there's all these terrible constraints for relos living in those countries. the other point, yes, there are families when they are transferred to a place make an extra effort to find something that is more akin to what they

like rather than what moves fast which will be a house in the suburbs. i am thinking of one family sent in america to beijing and they have made a point of getting to the thick of beijing living in chinese housing on on chinese people and they end up enriched greatly by that. this particular family has a daughter who is now 19 and speaks five languages. she is japanese-american. her mother is german, her next language was french. they are sent to beijing and in a few months she goes to japan to learn her mother's language, comes back and worms chinese and gets into stanford on early admission. this is a kid who got into the thick of the society but there's a lot of others who are also party and resilient. suggest, there are people who make that effort.

>> congratulations. it is a beautiful job of writing and reporting. terrific. i have a question. bill clinton said i think in one of his town hall meetings i guess in the 90's -- the average worker changes jobs eight times in a career. so i would like to know -- that would include the relos of course so i would like to know what you think of the implications for the economy of that kind of instability? i don't know there are implications for the macroeconomy. there are very interesting implications for the nature of the work force. a half century ago william whyte wrote the organization man. these were workers who went to toil for major companies and

exchanged their hard tuille dedicated work for pensions and good health benefits for life. that has all stopped and as it has stopped so has the loyalty. if you are not going to give me benefits i am not going to hang around here if i see something better so that is a major change that is a rising, that is occurring within the work force and it doesn't apply strictly to relos but it's more emphatic. the most skilled relos engineers over in china, the moment they see an opportunity to grab something better they grab it if the company hasn't been dealing with them in a satisfactory way. one problem they run into is companies love having them over there in singapore but they don't give much thought to what to do with them when they come back. these guys know that so they look around and there is a

chapter in the book about why call the boundary less courier. these are people that have no attachment to any particular institution. the attachment is to their skill, that and their attachment to their occupational group called the engineers around the world and they are all members of associations all helping each other out when the companies are not. >> does this have an application for the efficiency of the corporate sector if people do not have any kind of loyalty to the company's, just getting ready to jump the ship at any time? >> i think you need an industrial psychologist to confirm that. >> i really do. a person in a new job full of this and vinegar to do the job will enhance his career and reputation might work harder and better and more efficiently than

the guy that has been there for 20 years. >> okey. thank you. >> two quick questions. one, does this address blacks at all, in other words the african-american mobility in corporate america, and i haven't read this at all and secondly how did you choose these reloville's? >> those are two good questions. maybe i should tell you how i chose them first because it helps me answer the other one. i have been assigned by "the new york times" some time ago to go look at the issue of class in america and they said just go anywhere. that is back in the days of newspapers when they didn't worry about you spending time looking at something and it was my assignment to look what was the upper middle class though we didn't know what that was. so i looked at some census data

and felt i would look at suburbs north of georgia, north of atlanta and i hit upon one called out forever, partly i like the name that i had to figure out what is this place, who are the people here? and the best way to do it in these secluded and often beat it subdivisions was to go to a garage sales because it is hard to meet the people in the other way. but the year they are sitting in their garage and there's nobody to talk to because there's nobody coming by. here comes this reporter up the driveway saying that he is very under false pretences but do they might talking? everybody loves to talk. so that -- and that was the kind of process of random selection in finding people. there were lots of other ways -- maggie it's funny you have a cousin in minneapolis, sister-in-law was developing

some kind of group on the net for newcomers to town. i think it was a dating service. [laughter] to me i thought they are relos and this person couldn't help me with what i was pursuing but i said i know someone like that and mentioned the fissures in forma so that is one way i found other people. at soccer games and baseball games i would sit in the stands and sort of shoulder up to somebody and say where are you from and most people like to talk so that's how i came across people and there were probably 100 whom i started taking notes but then i had to refine and brought it down and there were still too many. the other question, blacks, it was interesting as i looked at data from all these places i

looked at demographic breakdowns by race, family income, origins, birthplace, so on. blacks are still in a minority in most of these places. where i met them there was no difference. there was regular people on to make at major companies. so there was no distinction to make. they had all the same values and accent's and everything else. what was striking was in all these places, nearly all these places the population of asians was twice the national average and so you look at -- you look at these towns and the asians are five, 10% of some of these communities ..

we talk about it a sense of place as being sort of the defining human characteristic, and if you had to distill it down, how does the absence of a sense of place sort of manifest itself among these people? >> i could almost pass to jc but it makes it harder to define

yourself. as they are approached many people just to get a discussion going i would say, who are you? and, they would say well, i am from illinois and so, they started to be defining themselves by place. that question, who are you, another question would be tell me about yourself and they would always tell me about their origins. it was more than the place they were born, it was how they define themselves. essie said, cicero illinois, a blue-collar, a number of things all of which they relate. that defines them. so, without a specific place, i don't want to put jc on the spot. he might identify himself in a different way. i am not going to find a passage in here but i asked him what are

you going to do with your life? he said i'm going to become a lawyer and get a house and then get a better house and then get a better house. [laughter] it is true. in other words, he was taking from his own experience what might well happen. he accepts it. that is not, the whole idea of belonging somewhere is a hard thing to do with but most of us belong somewhere. >> good job peter. i was struck by the parallels that many of us are here from the foreign service and it is a little bit different jumping around countries but some of us don't have a real basis back in the states and had parents and all of that. how do you characterize the parallel with the foreign

service and your re low friends? >> one question that comes up is why didn't you to come and why didn't you do a military and foreign service and those populations? i figured they are a different story. they go through all of these anxieties of people moving. but they tend to move within a government cocoon. now the military more so than the state department the lead in the military everywhere you go there is the psn you know right for the hamburger is. you have a school system that is overseen by the pentagon and might be on by the pentagon. the transportation service is always the same, the health benefits are always the same and further while there are an awful lot of military bases there comes a time when you are seeing people that you have seen otherwise, and you maintain friendships and relationships. now, in the state department that is a little less so. you could be in the pits of

rwanda somewhere and it would be no other state department of round and you are dealing with that just as someone who is sent to the fields of saudi arabia but-- also state department people tend to come back between assignments. so they royce come hamann touch base and then they go off again. that doesn't happen to these people. so is that-- >> thank you. hi, peter. i was wondering if amongst these people you found any who rejoiced in the corelessness, who loved it, just for its own sake? >> yes. there is one couple in the book and i love talking about them. they were such a surprise. in littleton, colorado, and he is 72 and she is 70. their name is so we, when you come across them.

i went to see them. i knew nothing about them. she was involved in what was called a newcomer scroop. there newcomers' groups all over the country but often for newcomers coming to stay. any way that is how i came across it. they lived in a large, well kept but unpretentious ranch house in the middle-income subdivision of littleton. as i went in there was not much furniture around. these are old people, you are supposed to have a lot of artifacts around. stuff on the show some pictures of all the grandkids and all the stuff that you have by the time you were 70. hardly anything and they had a large oak kofski table roughly the size of this, square, maybe ten books on it. i said tell me about the books. she said they are not ours, we got them from the library a we don't buy books. and then he said yeah comment

have you ever tried to move a lot of books? [laughter] so they don't own any books, and they had moved 26 times before landing in littleton. and, over the last couple of years they had gotten rid of all of their silver except the utensils. they just keep dumping stuff. and, they are very happy with themselves. they sort of thing can operate in a synchrony that i announce the at my house. [laughter] there was just a rhythm to them. one other aspect about them, they had two sons. i am going on too long about these people but they impressed me so much. they had two sons, and the sons were born in billings, montana where the parents lived for five

to six years. one son these days, okay, and came back to billings, married a girl who is a part of a large family. now he is part of that large family and he is building a large family and he won't budge. he is totally attached. the other one, and his story is fascinating. he is in montana and this is not a rich family but there is some rich man in montana who pays for one kid a year, for the four year duration of school, to go to st. paul's school in concord, new hampshire. beaches base for the whole thing. he find some super bright kid. this boy couldn't study language in billings, so he signed up and he was accepted. then he got cold feet and turned him down. then he reconsidered and his parents had never been to see the place. they didn't even know what he

was up to 70 reconsidered and called them up and said i think i do want to do that. as it was, it was too late but let's see what we can do for you. he gets into hotchkiss and the richman puts them in hotchkiss. in one year he is boy of the year at hotchkiss, a broad-gauged, athletic, a great student and everything else. the next year he is sent to france for a few months. as his mother told me he packed away and said wait a minute, what is this about being first and everything? i don't want to be first. let's get this life in france, lookout people live, look at how they enjoy life. so they came back and finished hotchkiss and still was doing well enough to get into yale and hotchkiss, hotchkiss trades on the number of people they are able to get into yale. he didn't want anything of that.

he went to the university of pacific in stockton, california. the next year he went to japan. he graduates and he joins a backpacking company and he leaves people on bicycles all around the country and for a long time lived know where and owns nothing but what he could fit in his volkswagen bug. he married, and he settled down in colorado springs, but he and his wife don't want to have children and they live in a very small house and they are very happy but it is a wholly different outcome and i think both of those outcomes are consequences of the kinds of upbringing they had. does that answer anything? [laughter] >> my parents had 26 moves in 55 years of married so i know what you are talking about. [laughter] >> hi peter, how are you?

let me ask you if you saw anything about the companies that employ the people? how many of them recognize this and really attempts to provide more stability for the employees, realizing it they do they will probably be more loyal. things like an oil company in houston and work for a couple of years and they maybe cindy to africa for three years but guarantee they will bring you back to houston and maybe alaska but they will bring you back to houston, said you have kind of got a permanent place in a way. you are with microsoft in seattle and they send it to england, but you come back. your rotated around to a kind of central place. maybe they help you. the companies that belong to the relocation council of america that help companies with spousal job and all those kinds of things for good do you see some of these companies providing that, looking into those sorts of things and helping their

employees? is there any trend one way or the other on that? >> they have become sophisticated in dealing with this core of relocations. it is a sizable population out and the construct good policies to accommodate them. some have more heart than others, and those companies who are looking at these people in terms of the chain of command of the company, saying this guy, jim caulder wood, who was a young brand manager at diangi, i think we will put him in charge of tied soap and a couple of years and then want to give him the whole packer's operation so they are looking at you and moving along and they are going to do early thing to keep it happy and healthy. but there are many, many others who have significant skills. they are software engineers. they really know something that

they can transfer anywhere and as i have said before, companies might accommodate them but they are not interested in becoming senior vice presidents for software engineering. they are interested in whatever the new challenges. but, i am skirting your question a bit. i don't know all the answers. i spent a lot of time that ups and with their human resources department and with ups employees. ups moves to 1200 people a year. its tries to do the right thing and it recognized some years ago that hey, we have got to be a little bit less brittle here. they used to have, bajis said go. now, they ask about your family, they try to do things to accommodate you and you don't get demoted if you refuse a move. very often people there, ups

will tell you, you fell right off the chain of corporate advancement if you refuse to move. ups says they don't do that anymore and i think that is true. >> thank you. >> yes, hi. >> hi peter and my congratulations to all the rest. i wonder what happens to these people perhaps in the statistics sense after they are done with their moving it around. have they developed habits that don't allow them to settle them down? what do they do with their lives and where do they end up? beith i told you about the so we's and a even say that this is our less home until the home. i guess, where they end up is, they will find a place to end up and it is often near their kids. if it doesn't mean collateral

locations where they have got near the kids and then relocated or their kids have gone to settle down somewhere and they tried to move to some place usually within a half-hour of where their kids are, but not ten minutes of play because they don't want that daily interaction of being asked to babysit and everything, so close of them told me that. they want to be close to the kids come and see them on weekends and carry on with their own lives. >> i was wondering these people move off and then buy houses and sell houses and build build up equity in don't have mortgages. when it comes to the and then they have to settle don't they have something of a problem? >> they might soon be having a problem but since the mid 90's they'll become-- they buy a house for $100,000 in a year it is up to $200,000. they take that newspaper equity

and by a new house for $40,000. they are building up their 401(k)'s, building up their retirement funds with the houses and in some of these towns it is astonishing how much wealth these people accumulated with housing. ups employees particularly moving from greenwich connecticut in the early 90's to a land where houses were dirt cheap and they had these palaces. they still realize significant gains, this a move for so unlike your suspicion, these people tend to do very well largely because of their houses. now they don't know what it's going to happen. it happens in cities outside of dallas, denver, atlanta and but not price appreciation has been much less acute than in places where there view relocations but a lot of houses. north las vegas is one stunning

place, phoenix is another. people moved to this place is tuesday but the builders day ahead of them, building to many houses so they depreciate but in these places where people are moving through, there is another relocation coming along to buy the house and the company is helping them so that helps offset the impact of what we are seeing on housing prices elsewhere. >> i have a follow-up question about the company's. i work for a major oil company and moved three times with them but that was after having wanderlust of my own in the the run the country just looking for venture. when i got to the big multinational, what i saw was they would move you they would kind of steer you so they would stair you to's pacifica, what you are calling reloville's but it you say i want to live in the

city, i want to live over in that kind of funky little we development, they go know, that is outside of the cookie cutter. they don't even have the people there so i am wondering going back is the sociologists were as i started off they have taken what used to be the greenwich connecticut to new york phenomenon and done it in these reloville's rather packaging people to control the culture and guidance so that they are part of the corporation or still organization. >> that is a brilliant observation. he were totally right. yeah there are some companies that are listen up to let you live in greenwich village or the equivalent in atlanta or something but the companies that they are going to have to buy your house did you have trouble selling it because they want you to hit the ground running in the next place. they don't want a in a poke. there is a house with crushed tin soda cans on its exterior

walls. it clangs in the wind. now, that guy might loved that house, but his employer is never going to be able to sell it. so they need house is that the companies know will sell. they also urge you, when you move to let's say atlanta and try to see if the thing get a house that is less than 15 years old and by the way don't buy any houses with artificial stucco citing because stucco siding is subject to water damage and depresses the value of houses said they give you what kinds of guidance that steer you into these places. one consequence around alpharetta, alpharetta has an old subdivision called alfred a park built in the 70's. it is gone to seed. it is quite nice ranch houses and what not but no companies will support it worker going to live in 40-year-old houses so now it has moved from

homeownership to rental and it is in decline. so yeah, you are right, companies to sort of dictate to some extent where you are going to live. i am sorry. >> we will make this the last one. >> peter, if you look at the table of contents in your book, there is a geographic line from texas to colorado, and everything on the west coast is not included for some reason and they think that there is the reason for that and i would like a very much for you to discuss what is going on, suddenly colorado is the end of everything is going to the easton nothing is to the west. >> the populous areas of the west coast, where companies would have significant

facilities are expensive. california land prices particularly around l.a. and san francisco and the other attractive locations, the prices are three, four, five, six times what they are outside atlanta or outside of those. that discourages companies from expanding to those places though their future facilities they put some place else. they also know that even if they put a facility in marin county their employees won't be able to buy a house there so they don't do it. and, that is true also of seattle. there are a couple of towns around seattle-- >> what has happened in the heartland of the united states? >> i think that is a different book. [laughter] >> the and oklahoma and places like that? >> what is happening to those

places? all of these people come from those places. they end up at the other places. the emt oklahoman. the best and brightest leave the states because the corporate recruiters grab them. did that in your hometown is not going to come to lincoln, nebraska to grab you from the university of nebraska. major companies are and that is where they end up. i must say that also applies to the east coast. you don't see reloville's around boston. the land is expensive. corporate headquarters is one thing. yeah, that is right, that is right. okay, well thank you very much. [applause] >> peter kilborn was in "new york times" reporter for 30 years.

he holds a master's in journalism from columbia university and was a contributor to the book, class matters. for more permission on the author visit ny times.com. >> this summer booktv is asking, what are you reading? >> early on this year i was given a copy of this book by kirstin downey and it is the woman behind the new deal and it is the life of frances perkins who was the first woman cabinet member and the first labor secretary back in the great depression. she was nominated by frankenmuth roosevelt and i find a lot of similarities with respect to the kinds of challenges we are facing right now as we see unemployment and find a lot of dislocation of workers and need for investment in our workforce, protections in the workplace, safety for children, making sure

we pull the labor laws and provide adequate help to the population so it is a really interesting book. she was someone who had great courage and someone who broke barriers for women and everytime i think about what she was going through i can relate to a. icsi gore around the country in my travels, continue to see poverty and the financial crisis affecting so many people. just how she helped to resolve and give strength to the administration and president in terms of providing good leadership for reforms, basic wages and hours to be met, safety in the workplace. there were many people that were for example killed in a sweat shop. she saw that first-hand and creedle lawson procedures to make sure there were ctl was for people in the workplace which is really important. to a second but then i want to look at is one that i read and actually good friend of mine, caroline kennedy wrote this. profiles in courage for our time and she has continued the legacy

of the kennedy family profiling people of courage and her father was the original author of the first book, and she has since taken up the torch there and has really looked at profiling different people, people that would make decisions that could cost them their political careers, people that would come forward and fight the good fight on behalf of everyone. she just gives different examples of people she showcases in the book. when they think of that was of great interest to me was henry beacon solis who was a congressman here from texas who was one of the first hispanic members of of that background and a really exciting to read and in fact they have a chapter about me in here. that is kind of interesting. this last book here, "the grapes of wrath," a historical book for me. i remember reading it when i was in the ninth grade. i just felt drawn to the stories

and the humility of people that back in the era were faced with hardships, depression, trying to find a job and sought a lot of mistreatment and abuse is going on but more and partly just the fighting tenacity behind these people that wanted them to be successful, make a new life and many came from the midwest, southeast and part of the country came to california. it is a great story to reflect back on the plight of americans and how they kind of laid the frontier for many of the changes that we see now that we are actually benefiting from, because a lot of the changes that occurred in society, laws, protections for workers so me-- for me the theme here is women, women of courage, the people of courage, people that have been able to go through great challenges in their life and able to superseding go beyond so we think these are good things to think about as we look at

where we are right now. >> to see more summer reading lists and other program information visit our web site at booktv.org.

>> childrens author emma walton hamilton, what is the key to writing a children's book? >> gosh, i would say respecting children as readers in not talking down to them. if anything, basically about trusting their judgment and their intelligence and speak to what interests them and what they are passionate about. >> what are children interested in? >> just about everything adults are interested in for the most part, the world and around them, growing up, learning new things, music, arts, sports you name it. the same things we are interested in. >> how many children's books have you written? >> of i have written, just now about to release the 17th

children's book that i actually coquyt with my mother. >> what is it like working with your mother as a co-author? >> it is a great pleasure. we weren't sure it would be a great pleasure to work with. were a little bossy and we thought this would be tricky but happily we played to each other's strengths and we have a great time working together and it is turned up very well. >> your mother is julie andrews. julie andrews what part of the book to you right? >> what part-- >> book do you right? >> emma is the structure as much as anything and i am sort of, tell me if i'm wrong, i think i'm the more flights of fancy. i do certainly the image making, the openings, closings. i do the big picture and emma says we must have the finish, this is the end of the first

act, which we go from here? she makes me focus on the shape of the book but the actual images and things probably are my strength and emma's is the structure as much as anything. we seem to complement each other, at least i think so. >> why did you start writing children's books? >> i started as a complete surprise. i started, in answer to a game that i was playing with my children and i had to play a forfeit. i was the first to lose the game. i said what will my forfeit be? my eldest daughter, jennifer, said a bright as a story because i used to love to scribble and right things. i really honestly thought that is going to be simple. i can just write a small thing like an aesop's fable or something very short. then i thought no, this is my stepdaughter and it might be a wonderful way to help the spot. i came up with a little idea of

man kept fleshing it out in the next thing i knew there was a book. if it hadn't been for blake, my husband, blake edwards i don't think that would have finished it. i did not know what i was doing but he kept saying, juliet, it is a sweet idea, keep the pages coming. that was 40 years ago just about so i have been rising ever since. >> how many children's books that you authored? >> we have done 17 other. for on my own blessit memoir and so we go back and forth really and we have more coming. >> emma walton hamilton do you live close to each other, do you e-mail leach other? >> unfortunately we live most of the year on opposite coasts and we always work best when we are together and love to be together but we have become very reliant on modern technology and we use

webcam for a lot of their work sessions. we log on together at the same time. >> poor mom has to give up three hours earlier. in l.a. she will say mom, 10:00 is halfway through my morning, can you give up at 7:00? i will say, i think i can. >> she does very well. >> i am not this literate on my computer as she is but i do my best. >> is there a certain length of children's books should be? is there a certain length-- what hd ride for? >> we right for all ages with tremendous audacity i have to say. we right picture books, we write young adult novels, we write chapter books. and their latest book is an anthology for all ages of poetry, called the julie andrews collect some of palms, songs and lullabies.

>> this one is actually quite that. >> it is the first book with our lovely new publisher, little brown, and they turn to us and said would you consider doing an anthology for us? >> we had so much fun we are doing another one. >> yes we are and it was enormous fund. obviously it is our fay biss-- favorite but. my father instilled a meet the love of books and i hopefully instill that in to all of my kids. we have read to each other and give books as gifts to each other. oliver lights we have done that in so they were asked to put down their favorites and the first choices which were about 20 were easy and after that we have the most wonderful journey of discovery, finding what we really loved. >> didion back into our memories and family anthologies. >> we eventually came down to

nine separate teams and before each thaman there is a piece that we road, why we love to this theme. let's say it is optimism or the countryside or nature. >> and why each choice of song lyrics within that the more resonates for us, what memory it is the siege for us. >> we have always said the family exchange poems for fun and as gifts for birthdays and special days and holidays so we sort of challenge each other to write a poem and we brought up their courage and added a few more. >> now, emma walton hamilton you have got some of your children, grandchildren. are they your focus group for children's groups? >> you were when i was riding on my own and then of course all the grandchildren are a tremendous help. >> not only our focus, but they'll bust know what is

working and nonworking of course but they also provided tremendous source of ideas. many of our books were inspired-- >> such as. >> the dumpy the dump truck series was inspired by my son, sam you is a passionate truck lover and would only read books about trucks than we were having trouble finding this that had a little bit more than non-fiction, the bulldozer the scrunch kind of book so we put that series for him and we are working on a new series now with little girls in mind, inspired by my daughter. >> ms. sanders, he webb also written a memoir. the first half of your life basically. >> it goes up to my coming out in the west coast of america for the very first time in my first movie, but it is about the first third of my life you know, and it took a long time to do.

i had never have done it if she hadn't been so generous with her time to push me and make me do it then help me with that. >> is there a second third coming out? >> hello the people are asking that. to be honest with you i don't know what this point and it took a long long time to write the first part so maybe one day. >> emma walton hamilton of what is your favorite children's book that you have written? >> that i've written or that i've read? >> either one. >> the book for me that was the form of book growing up with the phantom tollbooth. that was my favorite. people often ask us which is our favorite of the books we have written and it is hard to answer. it is like saying which is your favorite chocolate in a box of chocolates, because we love them all for different reasons but i

would say i am particularly excited about the one we just finished, the poetry anthology which is a real labor of love and beautifully produced. >> it gave us an enormous amount of pleasure to put it together. i love the music and poetry and find that a lot of the songs i have associated with or songs that i love that i haven't actually sung have sometimes the most beautiful lyrics and i usually choose songs for lyrics first and foremost and then the melody, if it is a beautiful melody it really comes together. so i have always felt that lyrics to songs are sometimes poems in themselves so i have recruited a lot in the book and i'm hoping children will discover for themselves or adults wow that is it beautiful poem, who wrote it and realize it is a song. >> it and want to go and listen to the music.

>> as mothers, the is it important to teach young children to read or be exposed to reading? >> we are passionate advocates for literacy. we do everything we can in that respect. >> i would say it is not so much incumbent upon parents to teach their children to read. they may well and that in school. what is incumbent upon us is to teach them to love to read and to speak to them and with them as much as possible and they will very likely to grow up to be readers themselves. >> she has written the most wonderful book and self published it. it is about just that, raising children to love and find the joy in reading and keeping constant as school years go by and how difficult it becomes when assignments are added and sometimes they are very boring. how do you keep a child love of reading of life and sparkling. her book is just wonderful.

>> of people are interested in finding that the court's other children's books that you have written and the newest one, where should they go? >> they can go to our web site which is julie andrews' collection.com for any of the books in the collection and also raising bookworms.com is the site for the reading book. >> emma walton hamilton and her mother, julie andrews, thank you. >> thank you peter. >> mirek bookexpo america in new york city the book for regnery publishing based in washington d.c. with marjory ross president of the press. what you have coming out this season? >> we are very excited about several of our books for summer and fall and of course it is a

good time to be a conservative publisher in washington d.c. because there is a lot to talk about. our first book i will tell you about is a book by repeat best-selling author for regnery, michelle malkin and this is a book called culture of corruption. it is probably the first big anti-obama book, from any publisher and we think is going to be very big. michelle malkin as the gabriel investigative reporter's job of looking at president obama, his team who he is nominated and brought in to work with them, who has come from the corrupt city of chicago and what they are up to. and i think the story here really that she is going to tell is that unlike the promise of change and maybe some reform in washington, government is up to the same old tricks and you are not going to like what you hear when you hear about what is happening in the halls of

government. >> another book coming out this fall by dinesh d'souza. life after death, the evidence. >> his last book with us was called what is the great about christianity and this was the book that was the counter arguments to waldie inside god books that it cannot a couple of years ago, dawkins and hitchens had been talking about because there was no rational basis for believing in god and d'sousa says quite the opposite, there is a rational reason for believing in god. that book takes takes up for that book left off. why it makes sense to believe in heaven, the afterlife, miracles and things that are not particularly consistent with the atheists point of view and he takes a very rational approach to proving why it makes more sense to believe in the afterlife then to dismiss it as

a fairytale. >> finally, mark fuhrman, the murder business, high profile crimes and corruption in justice. >> mark fuhrman did his first book with us about 12 years ago. of course that was the book that broke open the o.j. simpson murder case and he was the lead detective there. he has come back to regnery, with a very interesting book. he is of course best known as an analyst of crime and he has solved a lot of the biggest crimes that we have seen. he is a fox news contributor. he talked a lot about crime and justice in detective work on tv. this book is partly a media bias book, the media's role on complicit and accomplice in solving crimes but also in our sort of obsession with crime as entertainment and his point is we have probably gone