and it just piqued my interest. it was something unusual. i was not from southern utah, and i was kind of an outsider in the area and was curious about it. and what i found shocked me, you know? when i went to short creek, it was just like driving off the map. it's like no place else in the country. it's, when i talk to people about it, they just don't believe that some place like that could exist here. it's without a doubt the most lawless town in this country. and so it really piqued my interest. when i started becoming involved and when i started working the cases, i started finding out about these atrocities, about things that aren't supposed to happen in america; people being kicked out of their homes and told that they can't come back and that they can't talk to their families, they can't even

visit their families. and then i was asked by a prominent baltimore attorney to work on some civil cases involving child abuse in this that sect. and what i found there was just, um, unbelievable. it was, i interviewed two young men, um, who had grown up in the religion, they were actually warren jeffs' nephews. and he had abused them, raped and sodomized them from the time they were between the ages of 5 and 7 years old. and that experience, to me, was what really turned, turned the tide for me. that was the experience that kind of lit a fire under me, and i thought, you know, somebody's got to do something about this. the word has to get out about

it. and that was a lot of my motivation for doing the book. and for pursuing this with such vigor is to just get the word out so that people know that there is something of this, you know, horrible caliber that's going on in our country. >> sam brower, is there an issue of freedom of religion here? >> you know, the freedom of religion issue is an issue only with the flds. in reality the freedom of religion is their wildcard. what they do has nothing to do with religion. i mean, unless, unless t okay for religion -- it's okay for religions to molest children, unless it's okay for a prophet to take a little 12-year-old

girl by the hand and take her into a temple and perform a ritualistic rape on her. in my mind that's not religion, that's criminal behavior. and the biggest hurdle, the hardest part of dealing with this and getting law enforcement to deal with it and getting government entities and agencies and politicians to deal with it is to overcome that religious hurdle. they've been able to cover their activities under this smoke screen of religion, and that's all it is. they know it, they know it works. warren jeffs knows that it works. and he's, and they've done really well in cloaking that illegal activity under religion. i mean, if this was a coven of

satan worshipers, the question would never come up. if it was a coven of satan worships that were going out raping little girls, they know they would be going to jail. but somehow this so-called religion is able to mask and cover up their activities and say, it's our constitutional right to do this. >> where do they get their money? >> their money comes, really, off the sweat and off the backs of thousands of workers that believe that they're doing the right thing, that they're involved in the religion of their ancestors, that, you know, they're involved in something that they've been brought up in. it's a cultural thing more than a religion really. and, um, they're in construction, they're in manufacturing, and i would say probably a majority of the money comes right out of the

taxpayers' pockets. it's from public works projects, millions of dollars worth of public works projects in las vegas, all over the west. and even here back east. they're manufacturing, they've produced top secret government projects for the military, they work on the latest generation, um, night vision scopes that are being used overseas right now. the failed o-rings in the shuttle, the challenger disaster was a product of short creek and the flds church. so they're involved in many different areas. and their zeal for raising money is more than just, it's more than just about money, it's a religious calling to them. and so they're very good at it, and they're very good at putting together millions and millions of dollars. >> be preface to your book was

written by john crack our. who is her and why did he write the preface? >> i got to know john when i began working on the book. john had done research on his book, "under the banner of heaven," and i guess that both of us working on, in the same area kind of brought us together. and we just kind of clicked and have been working together since. you know, he was great help for me. it's kind of, it's a bit dangerous to be out there doing that kind of work, and john was a good backup and good help for me, he was somebody that i could depend on. and so we've traveled all around the country and worked quite a bit on this. and he was past the learning curve. it's very complex and very hard

to get, to learn and understand everything that goes on with this. and so, um, john was past that learning curve. and so he was very helpful to me. >> sam brower, the photo on the front cover of the book, where was this taken? >> this was taken at short creek at the vermilion cliffs right under, right in the edge of town in short creek there. and it's a couple of the polygamous women that are having strolling through the little park there. >> now, are either you or john krakauer mormon? >> i'm lds, john's not. and as far as -- i don't feel this is an anti-mormon book in any way. the flds are nothing, you know,

they're not mormon at all. they've chosen to distance themselves from the lds church. they don't practice any of the beliefs. the only thing they really have going on is they believe in some of the same scriptures as some of the lds church, but they've taken their own take and put their own spin on it and things like that. you know, i think a lot of the outside world tends to group the two together, but mormon bees are no more -- mormons are no more flds than lutherans or catholic, you know? the lutherans chose to separate themselves from the catholic church or episcopal church or that far. they're their own religion, and the lds is their own religion. >> brower. this is his book, "prophet's prey." it comes out in october 2011, published by bloomsbury.

>> senator daniel inouye, a democrat from hawaii s reading the lost symbol by dan brown and the fiery trial by eric foreign. >> visit booktv.org to see this and other summer reading lists. >> so i began two years before the bombs began to fall on cuba, exactly two years, in fact, 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 since he'd taken over cuba at the start of the year. dwight eisenhower was still president, richard nixon was vice president, john kennedy was still a junior senator from massachusetts. castro came to deliver a speech to some newspaper editors, but the visit was something more like an invasion in its own right, 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, including some in the eisenhower administration -- including dwight eisenhower himself -- who had pretty serious concerns about eisenhower, mainly that he was a communist in the making. but many found him to be quite charming and, certainly, charismatic. after a few days in washington, castro took a train to new york city. from 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 site building, he shook hands with jackie robinson, he went down to city hall, went up to columbia university. having less fun in new york city were the policemen who were assigned to protect him. because there were all these assassination plots surrounding castro, and these were reported in the press every day. and none of these turned out to be real, but the police didn't know that. and castro was completely

impossible to protect. he'd throw himself into crowds, hugging and kissing people with no concern for his safety. and one afternoon on a whim, he decided to go to the bronx zoo. the press followed, federal agents followed, the new york city police followed. and castro did what everybody does at the zoo; he ate a hot dog, he fed peanuts to the elephants, he rode a miniature electric train, and then before anybody could stop him, he climbed over a protective railing in front of the tiger cages and stuck his fingers through the cage and petted a bengal tiger on the head. these were the kind of things that made people think he was a little crazy. [laughter] americans spent much of his visit trying to decipher his politics which meant answering the following question: was fidel castro a communist? now, you have to recall that in the late 1950s and early

1960s the battle against the so-called international communist conspiracy was the organizing principle on which american foreign policy was based. and it wasn't just the spread of communism that was so feared, it was the fact that the communists had nuclear weapons. and given the rhetoric coming out of the kremlin, kruschev was saying all sorts of things, like we will bury you, and those were literally his words, they seemed more and more willing to use them. i emphasize this to point out that the specter of a communist country 09 miles from american -- 90 miles from american shores was intolerable not just to conservatives, but really to everybody. so fidel castro was interrogated on the subjectover communism everywhere he went on his visit. by vice president nixon, by congressional subcommittee, by scores of journalists. everyone asked him the same question: dr. castro, are you a communist? >> and he answered the same

every time. no, he was not a communist, never had been, never would be. when castro finally left new york on april 25th, the police were relieved to see him go, but most new yorkers were happy he'd come to visit. an editorial in "the new york times" summed up the general attitude towards castro. quote: he made it quite clear that neither he nor anyone of importance in his government so far as he knew was a communist. it seems obvious that the americans feel better about castro than they did before. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> up next on booktv, jeremy men a my provides his ideas on how to move forward in israel and argued that jewish wish-americans aren't single-issue voters and aren't represented by grouped like aipac. this is just over an hour. >> good evening, everyone, and thanks for being here to this

standing-room-only audience. i'm david cohen, and i'm the husband of carla cohen of blessed memory who is one of the founders and starter of politics and prose. so we're here to welcome the celebration of jeremy ben-ami's "a new voice for israel: fighting for the survival of the jewish nation." and i'm particularly pleased to be here. in the interest of full disclosure, i'm an active supporter of j street that jeremy helped found, and i've walked the corridors with him and many others, loads of rabbis at different times and, um, and i welcome you to politics and prose and this family. jeremy's personal and reflective book represent an important

contribution to an ongoing matter that engages us as americans on matters affecting the middle east. including israel and palestine. and for many of us who are supporters of israel, as a homeland for jewish people, as a democratic state and as a pluralist state, as a community institution, politics & prose believes in a thriving and robust free marketplace of ideas. a new voice for israel exemplifies what politics & prose is all about. and this legacy that carla and barbara meade began with the staff of politics & prose and you, the engaged customers, this legacy continues under the new ownership of brad graham and lissa muscatine. now, i want to just take a minute on some brief history history on israel and palestine

in this store. under carla's chairing the free marketplace of ideas, this very place, exposed in a public forum at politics & prose the wrong-headedness of the book, "the israel lobby and u.s. foreign policy." there's a lot of questions, should a place, should they have a place to discuss their ideas. and carla and her team said, yes. but the give and take of ideas exposed what the authors were about. politics & prose has also hosted writers who present the palestinian perspective and scholarly writers such as bernard lewis and perceptive journalists such as tom friedman, jennifer griffin, thomas litman, greg meyer, robin

wright, among many others. i'm particularly proud because at other times politics & prose has hosted writers who are moral leaders in israel. more than once david grossman, amos -- [inaudible] have graced our portals. now, jeremy ben-ami has accomplished in his book a powerful case for a new definition of pro-israel advocacy. and i'm just going to quote three sentences. victory means ensuring the long-term security and survival of israel as the democratic home of the jewish people. victory means defining borders for israel, that the world recognize and gives israel enduring legitimacy in the community of nations. and it means helping insure that israel is solidly rooted in the values, ethics and principles of

the jewish people. this is a personal book of jeremy's family, deeply involved as pioneers, builders and fighters. i would say risk takers to create israel. it is also a story of jeremy's personal journey not as a young man alienated from politics or participation in jewish activities, but it's still a journey. jeremy came to this call and passion out of his american experience as an activist and one who came to resolve questions about his background combined with the trauma of the rabin assassination. now, lots of opinion data exists on what american jews think. the public agenda is often defined by a group that reflects 8% of american jews. the political playing field should not be left to this small minority, loud as it may be.

there are other voices that need to be heard in dealing with real security concerns that israel faces, and overcoming those who delegitimize israel. jeremy calls for rewriting the rules on our relationship with israel so that it, we get beyond the yes or no proposition. we should have a serious relationship with israel, and that means there's a time to hug and a time to wrestle; a time to question and a time to argue. the relationship should reflect our own public ethical and moral values, and that means there's also a time to support. it surely should embrace critical thinking. we should not fear dealing with difficult issues even if they lead to initial argument. in jeremy's work she he has s