of that going on, copernicus managed to keep them there for two years, breaking the law, and together they got the book into shape, and the young man left with a copy of the manuscript and got it printed in nuremberg. and it changed the world. >> why today are you writing about copernicus? >> i actually had something new to bring to him, which was the idea of writing a play about this unusual meeting between the old reckless and the young mathematician, different religions, different backgrounds, different sexuality. but they overcame all of those things, the purpose of an idea. and telling the world about that idea. >> "a more perfect heaven" by dava sobel comes out in

october 2011. >> thank you. >> is a booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online at type the author or book title in the search more in the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also shoot anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top of nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> former mexican foreign minister jorge castaneda has written another new book, "manana forever?." i want to start with the subtitle of this book, mexico and mexicans. where we going without subtitle? >> basically what i'm trying to do is to tell the story of mexico and its people for an american reader, although i'm also publishing the book simultaneously in spanish in the

united states for spanish speaking readers in mexico. that's also being published simultaneously in mexico in spanish in another version with a different addition, which is also just come out this very week in mexico. and the purpose is to tell the story mainly to americans but also to mexicans in the united states and in mexico pashtun mexicans in mexico. the story of whom mexicans are, we were, who we are now and why we are doesn't really work anymore with what the country has become. and why we have to change. >> what kind of change? >> basically it's a national character change. what i try to do here in this book is to take four or five very well detected traits of the

mexican national character as described by classic authors, americans like oscar lewis and others and say okay, these character traits, which are great for mexico over the last 500 years, both as a colony, as an independent country, form a nation, today are totally dysfunctional to what the country has become. middle-class society, a representative of democracy, and open economy, globalized economy and a country that is absolutely desperate for the establishment of the rule of law. the character traits, in these features don't work anymore. they are at odds. and so since we can't change material reality, we've got to change people's heads. >> let's start with the mexican middle class.

what's wrong with the mexican middle-class? >> there's nothing wrong with the middle class. what's wrong with its members who continue to be incredibly individualistic. the first chapter of the book is a chapter about mexican individualism, which even by u.s. standards is outrageous. it's excessive. mexico is a country with less collected or associative participation in any country in latin america, let alone the united states or western europe. we are a country that is terrible in team sports. we have never won anything at team sports the we are good at individual sports, walkers, runners, bullfighters and all of this. we are a country where people don't like to live in high rises because they don't believe it's their home. they want their home on the ground levels which means the city stretch out endlessly and cost a fortune.

we are a country where there are no collective action suits. the notion itself doesn't exist. we're a country of leaders of movements. we are not a country of movements. being so individualistic is great, except when 60% of your society is middle-class. and it doesn't work anymore. >> senior castaneda, how would you describe the current relationship between mexico and the united states? >> what i try to do in this book when i have a long chapter devoted both to review relationship with the united states and the mexican national character of obsession with the past, fear of the foreign, and i try and explain why a country

that is so tied to the united states can no longer continue to be, a country that often sounds off against the united states to lastly, i gave an example back from a 2004. three actually put in a city you know well in guadalajara, where the u.s. and mexico were competing for participation in the athens olympic soccer competition at the mexico stadium at guadalajara. and the american players had been impolite, perhaps a bit aggressive, but all of a sudden towards the end of the game the crowd starts chanting, and this make his concern some of our american people are watching this, osama, osama, osama. need this is a comedy american players got a little bit upset.

now, this would be an insult anywhere in the world, but in guadalajara in the state of jalisco, it is worse because how this goes mexico's number one sending state of immigrants to the united states and has been for 100 years. it's the home of fort of ir do that you know well, one of our most important if not the most important resort city in mexico. it's the home for probably 50, 1000 american retirees who live there and spend a wonderful time and are extraordinarily well received by their mexican neighbors and friends. in this city at this time, to be that insulting to americans means there's something going on which is not right. doesn't work. that's part of the problem, the relationship with the united states. now we've got the drug wars,

which the united states is helping on, but not enough. >> you describe those drug wars as unwinnable. >> absolutely unwinnable. it's a ridiculous war. we should not have started it. we will never be able to win it. it has now cost us more than 40,000 lives, more than $50 billion, widespread human rights abuses, and a tremendous damage to mexico's image abroad with no results to show in exchange. there is nothing that can be done with drugs in mexico as long as the united states keeps consuming what it consumes. and it hasn't changed its consumption patterns. probably there's no reason why it should. i was a strong proponent of prophecy in 19 in california last november. i had hoped it would past legalizing marijuana in the state of california. it didn't pass. it lost by three points.

i'm hopeful that in 2012 it will pass, and then we in mexico can also begin a process of legalization of drugs, starting with marijuana. >> present col de romme though is conducting this war in mexico. is it time for him to end the? >> he unfortunately will not end it because he is too stubborn. is taking this as a personal battle of his own. he's all alone in this battle. the rest of the government, rest of the country does not follow him. but he's only got a year and a half left. so it doesn't really matter anymore except for the people who continue to die, which is not a minor event, what he does. the next president will have to end this absurd war which is going to work. >> how open is the mexican economy? >> the point i try to make in the fourth chapter of this book is that we now have a mexican economy, the fifth chapter

actually which is far more open than in a state, but any latin american economy along with chile. and similar to most european economies. the sum of exports and imports over gdp is one of the highest there are, more than 50%. we are a country where tourism is enormously important. it's the number one generator of hard currency and the number one employer in mexico where remittances from mexican immigrants abroad are a very important source of currency. and also by the way, a country where there are more u.s. nonmilitary nationals living than any other country in the world. around a million americans live in mexico, which is more than anyplace else in the whole world. this open economy which has been a good thing by and large, not as good as many people thought it would be, and perhaps not as

beneficial as many expected, but it's been a good thing in general terms. but it's also very much concentrated with the state, with the united states. 90% of our exports go to the u.s. 90% of our oil goes to the u.s. 90% of the tourists that visit mexico comes from the u.s. and so on and so forth. obviously, all of our immigrants are in the u.s., by definition. it's a very open economy so mexico can't be an introspective closed off character. we can't have the traditional mexico way of being in our minds win in our everyday life we are an open economy. >> i want to return, senior castaneda, to mexican xenophobia and fear of the foreigners. with the growing middle class in mexico, has that changed?

>> it hasn't changed yet. it's beginning to change but we are still very much in first in his fear of the foreign come in this notion that we've always been victims of the past, we are foreigners in the past, that we were conquered by the spanish in 1519, 1521, and then humiliated and exploited by the spaniards for the following three centuries. then during the 19th century win independence, first with texas taken away from us in 1836, then the united states invaded us in 1847, then the french invaded us in 1963, then the americans invaded us again in 1914. and so on and so forth. as a matter of fact, all of these factoids are more complicated than they seem. but in any case what i try to say in this book, and is the chapter is let's move on. let's leave all that behind us,

look to the future. and more importantly, look at what the country has become. go to the 11 or 12 million mexicans who live in the united states. one out of every nine mexican citizens in the world lives in the united states. that's a greater share than any country in the world, except el salvador and ecuador, which are very small countries. as i said, a million americans lived in mexico. 300 million crossed the border back and forth every year. why do we want to dwell on the past when we are so open and it's so beneficial to the country to be so open. but we are obsessed with it. we have a very strange situation in mexico. it's one of the anecdotes i write about here. we have laws that foreclose a series of the government jobs and elected positions for

naturalized mexicans. and naturalized mexican cannot be an ambassador, a console, a member of the cabinet, a governor, a mayor, a police chief, member of the board of the central bank. he can have none of those, can be a congressman, can't be a senator. so we are in this absurd situation, we mexicans, where on the one hand we demand rightly, rights for mexicans in the u.s., whether they came to the u.s. legal or illegally, we demand full rights for them. that we deny minimum rights for naturalized mexicans, american, spanish, chinese, whatever. it's an absurd situation which can't go on. >> jorge castaneda served as foreign minister of mexico from 2000-2003, working with president fox at the time. how much of your time as foreign

minister with dealing with the u.s. did you spend -- first of all, how much of your time was spent dealing with the u.s.? and at that time how much was spent dealing on the immigration issue? >> in the mexican foreign minister is going to spend up to 70, 75% of his time getting with the u.s. we have a few other important relationships in the world. obviously, guatemala because we have a border with them. some countries in western europe, mainly spain. some countries in latin america, mainly chile. and with cuba with always a long-standing and often conflicted relationship. canada also. but 75% of any mexican foreign ministers time is devoted to the u.s. and i tried to devote as much time as they could to immigration. because i thought and continue to think this is mexico single most important issue with the u.s.

and also i think it's the united states and most single important issue with mexico. there are more than 3 million americans of mexican descent in the u.s. there are important states in the u.s. like california, like texas, like arizona, like nevada, like illinois where mexicans make up a very significant part of the electorate, or of the population at large. it's a central asia and it's an issue that has to be addressed, and that nobody wants to addressed forthrightly. >> how should it be addressed? >> it should be a dress a little bit the way we said back in 2001 and 2002 with my good friend from secretary of state colin powell, the way presidents bush and fox wanted to address it, and the way president obama wants to address it now. legalize the people who are here with out papers, establish an

migrant workers program for people to be able to continue to enter the united states as the u.s. economy needs of their labor. support and help the areas of mexico way these migrants come from so that they eventually start staying in their hometowns unless they are needed in the u.s. and once you have done that, in sure that the u.s.-mexican border is only opened for legal entry with the cooperation of both countries to make that entry legal. but you can't stop illegal entries and lets you increase the number of illegal entries. is not to let people climbing over the fence are under the fans or swimming across the moat with alligators in it like president obama said a few days ago. >> jorge castaneda, what are you doing today? >> i spend about a third of my year in new york city. i've been teaching there for 14 years. except for the as i was in government.

i spent a lot of time in mexico lecturing and speaking all over the country trying to push forward ideas like the ones that are in this book. i gavel in politics but tries to elevate away from it. and i write a lot. i'm not sure how well but certainly i write a lot. >> "manana forever?" is the name of the billy. here's the english version to be sold in the united states. here is the spanish-language version to be sold in the united states. and finally here is the version to be sold in mexico. y. a different cover? >> and well, two reasons. i like the mexican cover for the u.s., but the people who publish it said it was too somber. and u.s. cover in mexico has an arguable legal status because if you look at it, if you could put it back on, you see the mexican

eagle is divided into. this is the center of the mexican flag. you've got the top of the eagle at the bottom and you got the bottom of the eagle at the top. and in mexico distorting the national emblem and flag is a dubious legal status. so we decided not to risk it. >> back to the mexican version. what is this on the cover? >> this is a painting by a person i considered to be, most people consider to be mexico's foremost artist today, rafael, who just finished an extraordinary mural of the mexican supreme court. these are five or six kids who are migrants. they are about ready to leave for the united states. if you look down at the bottom right hand corner, the license plate on the truck says migrants 666.

he's a hyperrealistic painter. and these are six or seven kids with extraordinary faces about to leave for the united states. i think they tell the story of the ministry of mexicans as the subtitle of the book in spanish in the case. >> this is c-span booktv e. and we've been talking with jorge castaneda, author of "manana forever?." thanks for being with us. >> thank you. >> you are watching book tv on c-span2. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> khalid sheikh mohammed is about four years old at the time. his father died. i search for the death records. apparently his father died in 1959. the kuwaitis simply didn't keep records of resident foreigners, births, deaths, marriages. it just wasn't interesting to them. so we have this account of his father's death that is very sparse and no official

transcript to back it up. his father dies in his dual welfare state. there is no organized charity in kuwait for foreigners to his mother takes a job washing the bodies of the dead. female bodies of the dead and preparing them for burial. this is a very low status, low income job but it enables her to eke out a living but at the time she has nine children. khalid shaikh is the fourth meal. -- fourth meal. years pass on. via somewhat of a bookish boy. and the family decides they can't, they don't have any money at all. but they need to back one son to get an education and that one son is typical in arab areas of this period of time would support the rest of them. and that sunday is khalid shaikh. and they sent, the ultimate, he

applies to school in north carolina. and historically baptist school in murphysboro north carolina. either the family has saved money or more likely the muslim brotherhood of kuwait has agreed to sponsor them. he joined the muslim brotherhood after two of his older brothers had joined. at age 16. so he arrives in america at roughly 18 years old, and his unprepared for what he sees. i envy the man who picked them up in the airport, outside of virginia beach. and what he remembers, years later, the minute he remembers is khalid shaikh being surprised about what he saw. he is surprised by the geography, the intense green. when you see trees in kuwait they're usually behind walls.

here at the registries ever. more surprising, more strange and more offputting than the trees with people and what they were doing. they were sitting in lawn chairs on the front lawn, visible from the road. they were going out, playing with the kids, taking a host to the bushes outside the front window. what surprised him with so much american, family life happening in public. this is not the kind of thing that would happen in the arab world. the more time he spends in north carolina the more he was persuaded, americans were really backwards. they did things that should be private and public, they trusted each other very quickly, and he didn't go out at night after dark is when most social occasions happen in kuwait. many arab countries. but in the united states, in murfreesboro at the time,

murfreesboro had one pizza parlor, no bars. pizza parlor close at 9:00. the town is asleep. so far from the night being alive and social and from the, it was silent as a tomb. it was a day when americans were busy. so he became more and more alienated by america because it wasn't an arab country. and these are very small observation. these things by themselves do not make him a terrorist but it does set him at odds with the country. there's nothing that he did other than they can attend chapel service that made him part of its larger community. in fact, one of the things i've learned in writing "mastermind" was really nothing our civilian colleges to integrate foreign students, to explain this country to them. we take it for granted that everyone knows these things. when the fbi searched the car of

the 9/11 hijackers left behind at dulles airport they found a small spiral bound notebook and a very careful arabic script there was a description explaining the differences between shampoo, conditioner and body wash. we think we are easily understood, but from another culture, another time, yeah, we are puzzling. maybe an explanation is in order for foreign students. so naturally trend once the most of his time in college with not just other arab students but other kuwaiti arab students. didn't even mix with the non-kuwaiti arabs. after a semester, he transfers to north carolina a. and t. jesse jackson's alma mater. here he is debtors -- all of whom more kuwaiti immigrant but some of them transferred within.

but he emerges, he is an enforcer. he make sure that the other students in this group do not violate these very small, very obscure tenets of islamic law. what they believe to be islamic law. for example, the cusp of the pans can never cover your ankle. it is forbidden ever to wear shorts because they expose the knee, and so on. so even when they would go to the gym and work out they would be fully covered. enforcing all of these differences kept them apart from the american college campus. i met a number of people, almost a dozen, who went to college with jsf and who remember him. the most remember him as father. he was a comedian. he was very successful and very, very humorously imitate various

arab leaders. but his audience was the other 20 kuwaiti arab students. i couldn't find anyone who wasn't a kuwaiti arab, who knew him well in school. his lab partner, just remember him as a person who had very broken english. his professors remember him being very good at math and science. but never had a single substantial conversation with him about anything that didn't involve molecules or formulas. so he was in north to live for almost four years but he came into contact with americans on a very glancing basis. if you are changing claims in a strange city and walked to the airport. document the people the people in cincinnati, not really. that's what he did in basically four years. he self isolated himself and he policed the borders, the

perimeter, social perimeter to limit contact with americans. but sometimes, but the things i've learned which surprised me was that he had a criminal record in the united states. i was surprised the government didn't turn this up but he liked to drive at high speeds with an expired drivers license and he would roar through the streets of greensboro and other parts of north carolina, and he saw too much of the dukes of hazzard, i don't know. but he would occasionally crash. one day to women are talking in a parked car, some urging thing they could go on in the living room i would imagine. when their car is smashed by khalid sheikh mohammed. their injuries are so severe they sue him. i found a copy of the lawsuit. their last name is christian. the lawsuit is christian versus mohammed. ultimately, they win.

they are awarded more than $10,000 in 1985. which is a substantial sum of money at the time. their injuries was fairly severe. he never pays. he dodges the sheriff. he flouts the law. but i talk to the christian women's attorney, and he remembers khalid shaikh bursting into his office with a translator and a posse of other arab students to lecture him about the iran-iraq war and what america is wrong on israel. israel turns out to be a very important point in his radicalization. more so than i would have thought. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> and now in a program from 2005, marian fontana becomes the first year coping with the death of her husband transit, a member of the new york fire department on september 11, 2001, in