semi-skilled labor market. and that's, i see that as, basically, the fundamental problem. >> sir, you have the honor of our last question, but i also want to say that all of our panelists will be signing their book, so you can go and get your book signed, ask them some questions later at the signing area. so, sir, your last question. >> curious, sal, what was the -- what degree of interaction was there between the chicano students and black students back in the day? >> >> the panthers were very helpful to us. the walkouts included the dorsey/washington. in fact, i would go over, see, the tactics in the black community, the kids, they wanted to sit-in. they liked the sit-in idea, they didn't want to walk out. [laughter] we wanted them, also, to be out there in the streets with us. so i'd go every day, every evening about 2:00 in the morning and open all the gates,

steal the locks and then leave. you see, the problem with l.a. city schools is there was one key for every lock. [laughter] it was a cheat key, those of you are retired or with me during these periods, it was a c key. so i kept taking locks. i'd go that same night, they'd have new locks. every day they're putting new locks in there. i think they had a run on locks. but the kid, they decided to stay in. but the panthers were extremely helpful to us. there were coalitions and, also, they helped open channels for the kids to walk through safely so there wouldn't be any problems. oh, yes. it was a beautiful thing to behold, really, by the way. thank you for asking. [applause] >> thank you so much for joining us, thank you. [cheers and applause] thank you to our panelists.

and, please, go buy their books. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] .. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on c-span2's book tv. up next on booktv christopher strain looks at why american society is so violent. professor strain talked about his book at the west palm beach public library in florida for about 40 minutes. >> i'm very glad to be here today at the west palm beach public library. i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all about my latest book. i'd also like to thank andrea

for her work in court making this and making it happen. i would like to talk to you a bit first about the genesis of this book about how i came to write it, and then i've got some selections that i will take you through from the book and read a little bit and then leave time for questions and answers towards the end. but this book grew directly out of my work in the classroom. oftentimes with professors, research and teaching are two very different things. compartmentalized without much to do with one another. and this book derived from a course that i thought originally at the university of california university of california, and then at florida atlantic university on violence. the class began as a class dealing with violence in

american history, so it don't with war, it dealt with racial strife, it dealt with labor unrest and familiar topics. and it seemed as if every time i taught this course, which wound up being about every other year for the past 12 years now, something horrible happened in the news. some sort of school shooting, some sort of mass shooting. and so, we wound up talking more and more in this history class about current events. we were trying to place these events in some sort of context. we were trying to make sense of what was happening, and when i taught the class in 1997, they were school shootings and west paducah, kentucky. when i taught it in 1999, the

shootings at columbine high school in littleton colorado happened. two years later in 2000 on thursday shooting in california. 2003 in cold springs, minnesota. again, 2005 read lake minnesota. i was teaching this course in the spring semester 2007 when the shooting in the blackbird, virginia occurred at virginia tech my students were getting ready for the final exams, and it became imperative to share what i have learned in prepping for this course. i was resident at first to do with these current events, but my students kept dragging me into the present, sort of forcing me to do with these issues that were happening in present time. and in the wake of the virginia tech shooting, i felt that that

need to write about what happened. and i had a sabbatical in the fall semester 2007 cop and i sat down and began to write up my research finding, and write up the discussion which are very enlightening with my students. who sort of pulled me into this new place, pulled into new ways of wrestling with these questions of violence in our society. it seemed to be something that we couldn't get away from. and so i do that. i sat down to write, and i was working on the project for about a year. i was actually wrapping it up in the fall of 2008, when my phone rang at florida atlantic university. it was my father, and he was calling to let me know that i shouldn't be alarmed about what was on cnn at the time, but i did know what he was talking about. he told me that there'd been a

bombing at his place of work, and a small town in georgia where i grew up. and the details of what had happened materialized over the next few hours, very chaotic of course. i wound up flying from florida to georgia, but a disgruntled client had packed an suv full of explosives and rammed it repeatedly into my fathers office building to try to blow it up. it didn't work quite as the man had planned, but he did kill himself in the process and he destroyed the building and a number of people were hurt. and so, that prompted a retrospective look at the violence in my own life. and it personalized this violence that had been -- that i

had been studying in a very abstract way, in an academic setting, in an academic context. but as i was wrapping up the writing for this book, i began to think about my own life as it relates to violence. i begin a different kind of writing i've never done before, much more personal, which is reflected in the introduction of this book. but i began to think about my own life, and how much violence i had experienced in various ways, in various places as a boy, in a small town in georgia growing up, as a student at various universities, and just as a citizen in various places in different towns across the united states. and the incidence added up. the crime added up.

i thought about different things that i'd seen, fistfights and obligations. and i didn't consider myself a particularly violent person but i didn't consider myself someone who courted violence, but it seemed omnipresent in my own life. and i thought if it is something that i am dealing with a lot, as, you know, as a history professor, as someone who leads a fairly quiet existence, it must be something that other people deal with in a much more present way. so, this incident prompted a sort of retrospective moment in thinking about this, and sort of contextualizes this violence. so i wrote about that in this book as well, about this incident in georgia in 2008. i was turning in my head how to

write about violence, how to think about violence, and a lot of scholars and a lot of writers, and a lot of thinkers and a lot of intellectuals in american life had talked about violence in various ways. and they tended to focus on particular incidents, particular topics, ones that captured the public's imagination at different points. in the 1960s, it was assassinations. it was race riots. the 1970s, a gang warfare. in the 1980s it was drive-by shootings. and early 1990s, carjackings. in late 1990s, school shootings but it seemed like it is always some aspect of violence that was being considered and discussed and studied i academic. but there were very few larger

studies that talk about violence in general. and that's really what interested me, because it seemed that in the wake of these mass shootings in school shootings that have been happening over the previous decade, that there was no discussion of how to make things better, how to improve it. there were some short-term, small solutions, but there were no attempts to discuss violence in american life writ large. and that's really where this book comes from. i'd like to read a few statistics that may help illustrate the scope of what i see as a major problem. in american life. this is a passage from the introduction. statistics indicate shocking discrepancies between the united states and other nations, revealing just how violent they place the united states really

isn't. according to the justice department, the homicide rate declined in the united states from a spike of 10-point for per 100,000 in 1991, the 6.1 in 2000, the lowest rate since 1967. by comparison, according to the world health organization, the homicide rates in france, germany and great britain, same year in 2000, were .6, .8, and .9 respectively. children in the united states were far more likely to be shot and killed than their counterparts in other industrial nations. the homicide rate is 16 times higher for american children. as alarmed as such numbers may be, the united states homicide rate involving -- it is the last its homicide rate involving handguns that makes the united states stand apart internationally. in 1996, for example, handguns were used to murder 30 people in

great britain. 106 in canada, 15 in japan, and 9390 in the united states. the cdc, centers for disease control, reports the rate of firearms death, the number of americans shot to death per 100,000, as having between 8.8 and 9.2 for white americans during 2000-2005, between 7.5 and 7.8 for hispanic or latino americans, and between 18-point for and 1923 for african-americans. such statistics suggest that there is something unique and frightening happening in the united states. of course the homicide rate is only one measure of violence. i talk about all kinds of things in the book, and in part that's the point, sort of a look at

undercurrents of violence in american life, look at what i called the ethos of violence in american culture and american society. and accordingly, i spend time in the book, in the first chapter, looking at violence as a male phenomena. violence is predominant done something by men to other men, two women, to children as well. and so i wanted to look at the violence of american masculinity, how masculine is constructed in the united states and to look at how boys are socialized into becoming men in this nation. and i found that in part there are ways in which violent is built into the process. talk about that in the first chapter.

the second chapter of the book is entitled talib islets and it deals with violence in the media. violence on television. violence in movies, hollywood violence, and it's no surprise to you, to hear that there's a lot of violence in these media. and i look in particular at entertainment and how we entertain ourselves matters, i think. i look at the research and a lot of people are interested in whether or not there is a causal relation between media violence and quote unquote real world violence, violence that is actually happening out in the world. and i'd like to read just a brief passage about that, if i may. again, this passage begins with

discussion of the problem i different groups beginning with insurgents -- the surgeon general. 19 city to the surgeon general's report television and going up the impact of televised violence provide an authoritative warning, as did the national institute of mental health in 1982, and the american psychological association in 1992. health care providers have agreed on the dangers. on july 26, 2000, the american medical association, the american academy of pediatrics, the american psychiatric association, the american psychological association, the american academy of family physicians, and the american academy of child adolescent psychology issued a joint statement on the impact of child -- sorry, on the impact of entertainment violence on children. an excerpt of the statement which was subsequently endorsed by both houses of the estates congress reads, quote, the conclusion of the public health

community based on over 30 years of research is that doing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children. in addressing whether a not media violence causes real life violence, skeptics have been quick to observe that some studies on effects of media violence has been flawed. and the correlation does not prove causation. millions of people you televised violence everyday without subsequent acting in an overtly violent fashion. they correctly point out, and the many studies that sought to prove or disprove a causal link, certainly wanted the degree of skepticism. there is some evidence that media violence makes people more violent, that is, that it directly translates into post viewing violent behavior but the

evidence is largely anecdotal and limited to certain individuals. few knowledgeable individuals would argue that a sustained causal relationship has been proven between media violence and violence in society. but as newton minnow, professor adjudications law policy at northwestern university, and former chairman of the federal communications commission, fcc, has observed, social science is not in the proof business. but in the business of identifying relationships and measuring their significance, strength, and direction. and these are my words, the relationship between media violence and so-called real life violence are measurably strong and undeniably significant. for those one over by peer studies, causality, there's lots of research showing that prolonged viewing of violent

imagery can increase aggression towards others, desensitized viewers to real-life violence, and increased fear of becoming a victim of violence. those with a fine for the 1994 national television violence study, a three-year effort by researchers from four universities, overseen by several national policy organization. others have confirmed these findings. there's also evidence that prolonged viewing of violent imagery can cause what psychologists call this inhibition. that is, viewing of violent media can remove or reduce reservation that people may have with regard to performing aggressive accepting already know. so, in theory, seeing bugs bunny loeb wiley coyote with a case of acme dynamite, or seeing arnold schwarzenegger mode through fields of nameless enemy

soldiers can do is inhibit unrelated acts of aggression, just pushing and shoving on a playground, or hitting, regardless of age. and i think that future studies may confirm this inhibition as one of the more onerous affects of watching violence imagery. i talk more in the book about this relationship, about correlation and a causality and the relationship between media violence and real-life violence. there's a chapter in the book on guns, and the gun culture in the united states. and i'd be happy to talk more about that. let me just read a brief passage. what i've tried to do is not rehash the same tired arguments regarding second amendment and the constitutionality of gun ownership in the united states, because that discussion has

reached i think an impasse. it's a debate and dialogue controlled by those at the extremes. what i've tried to do is sort of reconstitute the discussion about guns and gun culture, which is as it turns out a really important part of american life. i will just read this brief passage. the argument about guns and gun control in the united states are as tired as those regarding media violence. while studio executives and parental watchdogs have succeeded in maintaining a debate about an issue that could have and should have been resolved years ago, the gun nuts and gun grabbers alike have perpetuated and even longer argument born and its aphorisms. it is a debate controlled at the fringes, one extreme are those who would ban all guns, and at

the other are those who would increase the armament of our already heavily armed nation. a professor of criminal criminology at florida state university, has characterized this debate as a dialogue of death. what is needed, i argue, are fresh perspectives and ways of avoiding a dichotomous talking point that inevitably lead to retrenchment and stalemate. a couple more things and then i'd like to again any questions that you all have. i think one of -- again, more dangerous aspects of the many manifestations of violence in american society and american culture are the ways that it is normalized in mainstream, so that kind of extreme violence become more and more routine and more and more regular, some if

it is a phenomenon the media violence. but in other things as well. there's a chapter in the book that deals with what i call the combat culture, new interest in fighting sports, and mixed martial arts, and ultimate fighting championships which is their dog spike television. -- which is aired on spike television. i should point out at this point in the discussion, that these are all elements of our popular culture in which i really partake. i watch violent movies. i watch violent television. i watch mixed martial arts. i have participated in the shooting sports. and i have owned guns at various points. so i can talk more about that, too, but -- and i will, but let

me just read something quickly about this issue of normalization in mainstream. it is possible to ignore the wrongness of the raw, the most acute, a moderate and excessive kinds of violence, so long as they exist on the periphery and so long as social mores defined them as extreme. but what happens when the extreme becomes increasingly ordinary? mainstream violence is problematic because that violence becomes normalized and habitual in daily american life. once normalization occurs it is difficult to gain perspective on the violence making it part of the work of everyday life. the bigger concern is that tolerance of violence is expanding as depictions of violence become more pervasive, and importantly that a majority of people have become insulated to viability of humanity and violence represents.

in the end of this book i talk about ideas for solving some of these problems and for fixing issues and addressing this problem of seemingly random violence. i make the argument in the book that there really is no such thing as random violence, and that violence directed at no one specifically is, in fact, violence directed at all of us collectively. and i think until we wrap our minds around that, the incidence such as what happened in tucson a few weeks ago, incidents such as what happened in blackbird in 2007, incidents such as what happened in littleton, colorado, in 1999 will continue.

but i find hope, ultimately, in the ability of us collectively to address these issues and to make our world a better place. let me read this passage in conclusion. this is at the beginning of the conclusion, that discusses what i call -- at this very moment it is possible to fix the problem of getting -- daily personal but in the pacific we have not only the knowledge to curb the mayhem in our streets, schools, workplaces and homes, and also the means to shape a society relatively free of danger and fear. we can create a peaceful lawful nation in which the taking of human life is a shocking aberration, instead of a common occurrence. this newer, better nation would require minimal sacrifice in terms of rights and liberties. it could easily exist in our current framework of laws and

social mores. it was mainly entail a shift in attitude, an adjustment on how we accommodate violence in families, in our social relations, in entertainment, in our public spaces, and our government, and in our dealings with other sovereign nations. such change is not utopian fantasy. it falls well within the realm of possibility. that's the good news. the bad news is that we first have to deal with some unpleasantries, things that most of us do not want to think about. we have to take a long hard look at how violence manifests itself in a society. we have to face up to the ugly record of assaults, rapes, and killings happening around us. but how? how can we do with the limitations imposed by own limited vantage points backs the biggest impediment to positive change may be a personal one.

our own inescapable sense that things must be the way they are. we wonder what we can do, already convinced that the answer is nothing. when doing the overall pattern of societal violence we find difficult to make sense of the chaos, the pattern is obscure, like looking at a heavily pixelated image up close and seeing all the squares. those searching for answers in black and white macy only jumbled blocks, a checkerboard of squares with no discernible border. but i holding pixelated image at arms length, a pattern emerges, a mind shift occurs. it becomes a matter of peridot, i've gained depth perception, and focus. with change in positioning comes change in perspective. i'm hopeful that there are ways to address the problem of random

violence, to address the problems of mass shootings. i think it was tasha i think it requires the creation of national conversation of public dialogue, about all of these issues and how they interlock. we have been good at addressing particular problems, like drive-by shooting in 1980, or carjackings in the early '90s. what we need to do is figure out how to address the issue of violence writ large. and i hope that this book is a step in that direction, and i hope it is able to contribute to a kind of dialogue. i said that i would talk a little bit about myself, and i'm self-conscious doing this because again as an academic i

don't usually this is a part of the book, so let me just address this by way of conclusion and then we can open it up to questions and hopefully some answers. let me read this passage. this is from the president a large part of this book deals with guns and incidents of violence, i should probably know i don't find guns detestable. on the contrary i've gotten a great deal of enjoyment from them. nor do i think violent videogames, movies or tv shows are morally reprehensible. at least not sold because of content. more often i find them referenceable for the ability to suck time and eat up entire afternoons. i i gleefully and unapologetically play such games as grand theft auto, max payne and a tournament which is a first person shooter which rewards head shots for hours on end. watch pulp fiction for more times i care to do. whatever whatever guilt i felt in watching ultimate fighting

chechen has usually dated after the first flurry of bareknuckled blows. does all of this make me a bad person? a hypocrite? perhaps, or maybe it just makes me american. on any given day, like most of us, i am unaware of the cognitive dissonance. on other days i'm remorseful, even defiant. you can have my joystick when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. however, while i remained comparatively untroubled about guns or video games or violent films on their own, i do confess a growing and ease about how these elements freely combined in our society and to what end. are their ill effects like you did, or do they actually catalyze in something different, and you and dangerous toxin born of other chemicals in the environment.

i've only recently begun to understand and appreciate how they make potentiate one another like a bad combination of drugs, to create unhealthy levels of violence. i harbor a special concerned about how these ingredients in fact in american notions of vasco and in a way that exacerbates violent outcome. let's talk about all this in greater detail in the book, but in part why i'm here today is, at the west palm beach public library, is to encourage conversation, have a dialogue. so i would like to stop and answer questions and maybe we can talk together about ways to address these issues. thank you so much. [applause] >> are there any questions?

[inaudible] >> the question is, have i studied suicide at all in the book. and the answer is yes. i can actually provide a few statistics about, about suicide. i haven't studied suicide in particular. i do address it in a couple points in the book, but if i may come if you'll permit me to read a bit from the text. gun accidents account for two to three fire arm deaths every day

in the united states. most are self-inflicted. most are caused by handguns which are easy to point in an unsafe direction, and most occur during routine gun handling. just cleaning, loading and unloading. if every unintentional firearm the town, across the 13 victims are injured seriously enough to be treated in hospital emergency rooms. in other words, every day more than 30 americans are unintentionally and non-fatally shot by themselves or by someone else. this addresses your question. such figures are not account for delivering self-inflicted gunshots which are higher. since 1965 more than half a million americans have committed firearms -- have committed suicide with a firearm. nearly 10 times as many have died from gun related accidents. almost 50 people, each day kill himself with guns in the united states. more than but all other methods of suicide combined. and the thing about guns, guns

facilitate suicide in the same way that they facilitate killing others. that is, among methods of suicide firearms are the most lethal. that's what makes guns such an important part of this discussion about suicide. but yes, suicide is a huge part of the problem and i do discuss some of it in the book. good question. i'm very glad you asked that, thanks. >> i'm always interested in the contrast in violence between the united states and canada, because there's so many different assumptions in their country, but one of the things that is very jarring to me throughout the united states are gun shows. because even when you go, it's the kind of a carnival atmosphere that is going on.

just as we have shows for everything else, it is probably -- i'm told they don't even have gone shows in canada. it's a different set of assumptions, even though there's a very high percentage of gun owners in canada as well. i know your concentration -- have you paid much attention to the contrast with canada? >> that's a great question. two points that i would like to address. one, the comparison to the united states and canada. in order to make sense of violence in the united states i think that we have to treat it comparatively and we have to look at what's happening in other nations, in other nations. one of the misconceptions about canada is that canada has fewer

firearms and the united states. they do have i think numerically probably fewer firearms. it is a hunting society, and there are a lot of guns -- [inaudible] >> percentage of ownership is quite high. i'm not sure if it's higher, but i will trust you if you know. and so, that to me makes it even more important to understand the sort of cultural differences in underlying currents of violence. it's a difficult question. there are other societies that have proportions of gun ownership. sweden, every household has a long gun in it because men serve in the mushy and trained.

height numbers of guns in these societies, very few incidents of interpersonal violence. then there are places like japan. we've all been focused on japan in the news over the past week, and japan has very what i would call high level of cultural violence. if you watch japanese cinema, you're familiar with japanese animation, incredibly violent. and yet again low levels of interpersonal violence in japan. so these are all things that we should know, first of all, and second of all, study more closely in trying to figure out what's happening here in the united states. the other point i wanted to address about gun shows is that there's a wonderful new book, relatively new book out by joan

birbeck called gun show nation in which she also tries to look at this climate of violence in the united states, but understand the gun culture on its own terms. i think that it's easy for a number of gun control advocates and anti-gunners, sort of write off gun enthusiasts as irrational or to write off their interests a firearm. i think that's a mistake, and i think she makes a conscientious effort to sort of get inside the gun culture. she writes this book after visiting a number of gun shows and anything people there about the ideas of politics, about their ideas about firearms and their place in american history, american society. and i think that's a step in the right direction. creating a new sort of dialogue

between those who are interested in firearms, you know. thank you. let me say again that i'm very glad to be here today and i really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all. and i hope that we can treat this as a beginning of a conversation and a beginning of a dialogue, and not an end. i think we are at the end of our time. thank you so much. i appreciate it. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you would like to see featured on book tv? send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org, or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> i began two years before the bombs begin to fall onto the. exactly two years to the day. april 15, 1959, that evening

fidel castro arrived in the united states for a visit. this was his first visit to the united states. dwight eisenhower was still president. richard nixon was vice president. kerry was still a junior senator from massachusetts. castro came to deliver his speech to newspaper editors, but the visit was something more like a charm offensive. he and his bearded entourage arrived in washington loaded with cuban cigars and cases of cuban rum, and castro spent most of his visit hugging and smiling and saying all the right things. there were some americans comically some in the eisenhower administration, including dwight eisenhower himself, who had some pretty serious concerns about castro, maybe maybe he was a kindness in making. me found in charismatic. after a few days in washington castro trained in new york city. for the moment he arrived at

penn station where he was greeted by 20,000 people, he had a grand old time. he went to the top of the empire state building. he should can't with jackie robinson. he went down to city hall, went up to columbia university, having less fun in your city where the policemen who were assigned to protect him. because there were all these assassination plots surrounding castro, and these were reported to the press every day. none of these turned out to be real but the police didn't know that. and castro was completely impossible to protect. he would throw himself to the crowds, hugging and kissing with no concern for safety. one afternoon on a whim he decide to go to the bronx zoo. the press followed, federal agents followed, new york city police followed. and castro did what everybody does at the zoo. he ate a hotdog. eap does. he wrote a miniature electric train. and then before anyone could stop him, he climbed over a

protective rating in front of the tiger cages and stuck his fingers right through the cage and petted a bengal tiger on a. this is the sort of thing castro did to make people think he was crazy. besides trying to save castro from assassins and tigers, americans spent most of his visit trying to savor his politics which may answer the phone question. was fidel castro a communist? you have to recall it in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the battle against the so-called international communist conspiracy was the organizing principle on which america's foreign policy was made. it wasn't just the spread of communism that was so feared. it was, in fact, that congress had nuclear weapons. and given the right are coming out of the criminal, khrushchev was saying all sorts of things, they seem more and more willing to use them. i emphasized this, point out

that the kindness country, 90 miles from american shores was simply intolerable. not just conservatives like barry goldwater, richard nixon, but really to everybody. so, fidel castro was interrogated on the subject of communism everywhere he went on his visit. by vice president nixon, by congressional subcommittee, by scores of journalists. everyone asking the same question. are you a communist? and he answered the same every time. no, he was not economies, never have been, never would be. when castro finally left new york on april 25, the please were relieved to see him go. but most of new yorkers were happy to come to visit. and avatar and "the new york times" summed up the general attitude towards castro as he left, quote, he made it quite clear that neither he nor anyone of importance in his government so far as he knew was a communist. by the same token it seemed obvious that americans f