policy this. and every week in the largest -- of his nonfiction authors and books and booktv. you can see past program to get our schedules at our website. you can join in the conversation on social media sites. .. it jewish-american woman who adopted. i arrived in the united states. on my way what i want to mention briefly about immigration and things of that purpose when i began to perhaps the first time in my life i began to question whether my own humanity was worthy as other people who live in western europe i had never questioned that before in my life and this came about because

of how process of immigration was difficult to the point that it dehumanized a person seeking immigration. when i went to the american embassy to get a visa i was asked to produce two things. one of them was a bank statement that showed i had income and second was documentation that showed i had ownership of property. the war had been going ofone it had been going on for 89 years. ed tried to explain to this below, i did hear his voice.lace i tried to explain to him and w commend love place that had a civil war.of the and also coming from a very up warped part of the world or don't have any of these things. but try to explain to thishat is

gentleman and economics -- understand what i was saying. when he didn't want to i c understand the fact that it and did not -- the fact that if i did not act could be killed. it tried to joke with him, tont explain with him, if i had a bank account, you hear gunshots and your turn his attack, you're not thinking, you know, i must really take my bank statement and my ownership of propertyamea sucking give it to this guy at the american embassy.yo in not taking any of these things at all. thinking, can i survive the nexw minute. so then i was having this w discussion, the idea to write about where are was coming from was born at this point. because out of frustration i wanted to give context to my own

life, my humanity, explain totol people what my life had been before the war, but alson sometimes the stand is that we put in place to trust people tom a lot to make people to trust in humanity mean that this same standard that people have here, but that does not mean there are not human beings. this is some of the things thatd i began to encounter. when i arrive in the year is states -- in the united states and was pastor of school. most schools could not accept m because i did not have a report card. i was not thinking, oh, andabou report card, will end up in new york and some point in my life.l there are a lot of exclusions when you are an immigrant. as a young boy growing up i was

quite fascinated, peace corps, i read the history of this nation as a place that was full ofrts h diversity, who had come from different parts of the worldbeeo because a similar persecutions that our modern now, but some -- when you arrive at jfk or never you are put on to this questione in or you're asked if.elan to the point we don't want toi e tell them anything any longer. of live with that. i am still a permanent resident. particularly around tax time i get very upset when i'vehe questioned in a very inhumane way.

so if i you use my new yorkok be driver's license i'm okay. ia when i put on my sierra leonethe passed bordellos of and it's a g big problem.pl and the same guy even if you'ren trying to get them permission,to for security reasons, if you're lenient and nice you get more than if you're actually inhumanr to them.at t the vote of zero is quite -- ifr am always quite fascinated. every time that i come back and ask questions that cadillac eve though i find them incrediblyon fine.lo where were you, at geneva.why y how long? to our three days. why? i only had a few days to do my

work. why? add all know.eli this just jealous. wire you traveling with the small bag? >> because i was conned put two or three days. why are you traveling so many allyes? because of my work. t the zero on and on. to the point does just what they make annually. as if the allies that relevant. but all these questions are asked. why am i being criminalize to. >> now we hear from brooke hauser. none of the students are native english speakers. she tells the story of a student who escaped nepal and attended the international and school. >> how many of the kids have amazing stories. the one i wanted to read is

about a tibetan boy who left to bet as a little boy, escaped by hiding in the suitcase to travel to the border of nepal. so he and i work pretty hard on his story to get all the facts straight. get in the man said, motioning in a small suitcase on the ground. the fall of 2003. about two years before he would arrive in international. there were standing in a quiet side street. he looked at the man and beckett this a case. the man was his father's friend, a farmer, wide ten face. the suitcase looked very fancy. the there were tests a suitcase before and inspected a closely. some chinese lettering was on it that he could not read. the main compartment was only about two by 3 feet, the size of

a child's coffin. he was small, but not as small. thought that the farmer must be joking. the black suitcase seemed to be one of many banks stacked in the backseat of a beat-up toyota was supposed to deliver into the border. the first leg of the jury that would end in india. in the tea colored light he could make out of you tired faces, older tibetans who had paid to drive out before the capitol city stretched out of a slumber. he was about to join the others when the farmer motioned toward the suitcase. kid and, he said, unzipping the top. he stared blankly. harry, the farmer said, before the police come and take us to jail. how long? nineteen and one day. that was so long it would take to travel from the capitol to the border, and submitted not

caught. the actual distance was much shorter, but the driver were be circumventing several chinese checkpoints along the way. did not have much time. except for the growing operation at prising from the ballot -- valley was still dark, but soon the sun would rise shining a spotlight and anyone had dared to flee. he get in, imagine himself back in his grandmother's bed where he had slept with his older brother and an lopez is only a few weeks before. inside the suitcase sequences news to his chest and rock to the side. for a brief moment he saw the smart -- farmers face. there was as a piece out of everything went black. nine hours and he vomited, the better remnants of the black tea singeing his truck and clinging to the fibers of his camouflage pants. thirteen hours and he urinated.

a cache of warm liquid rushing down his leg. in the upside down dark his tears flowed in uncharted directions. he stared at the star of his grandmother had placed around his neck. he whispered a british prisoner in those last words he spoke. afraid to make a sound. he heard tales about tibetans who were caught bit passage. prisoners and been beaten with clubs, a shot at a new dimension to police hammering sharpen the province. he could not hear anyone. within seconds of sets the zipper is zipping he lost

control of his senses. he could not see. it half of his body went "-- cold. he tried moving his arm and leg of his other side but found that he was trapped. something had fallen on him, but he was not sure what. it sounded like a dead body being thrown into the grave, but then he realized it was the sound of suitcases decking. in and out coming in and out. breeding have become such an impossible task. the more he thought about the more he panicked. his right arm h from pushing up against the weight of the other suitcases. his left arm was frozen against the cold car floor. he felt every bump and rock on the road. the engine sputtered to a halt as it must have been a police checkpoint and cleanse his fist until it started again, until the engine started again pondering his year.

he signed the world. sometimes his thoughts drifted to his grandmother when the village women were not able to breast feed. the village in eastern tibet. before he indies' bothered mounted forces and headed west. the blackness of the suitcase, he could see her standing in the tall grass. tens of thousands of tibetans have followed his path to india. he knew the stories, heard about the men and women across the himalayas, many dying of starvation, getting trapped in

the race. for years his father had planned is on this gate and he was the first of the family to flee the arriving in america in 2003. a few months later he had pieces of the plans whenever they came back. the riding of course where there would board a bus to the county and get on the track headed for the capital. getting their bearings, there were supposed to join up with a page guide to make the trek across the mountains to the border of the paul. if they made it that far he would treat them. for 2500 per boy he would pose as their grandfather and be waiting with a piece of coal. the car was supposed to transport. it then paint the faces a shade

darker so there would look more like children. they're known for their unusually red cheeks with extra blood flow resulting from the heavy blood flow. it the first part of their journey had gone as planned. a crucial part of the plan changed. one evening the farmer said that he had gone to see an oracle or earlier that day. he never met them, but he knew that oracle's travel with a the physical and divine world. two years older and much bigger. attracted to spend thousands of miles and several weeks. he simply would not survive the trip. he says better to come with me in the car. his father used to talk about

how tiny was when he was born. the much larger than one of the potatoes but from the field. the llama in the village had given him a big name. loosely translated meant voice of power, never stuck. when he was born his english teacher said at a glass top table in the shade of her backyard and read the paragraph before him. the suitcase closed and i went blind. my body was squeezing and i could barely breathe. after hours and hours, squeezing into suitcases i felt the press and not. and just wanted to escape. there was sweating and i wanted to scream, but i knew that it

would be worse. they could go after my grandmother and her car because she was sending me the freedom. i knew i would never get to see my single dad, never achieve. and made my hands a fist. this is 7am in the october sun blinks in the clouds like a cursor on a blank page. in between sips from a remark she stares at the purple morning glories creeping upper chain-link fence and back at the college of san. a suitcase, likely to have survived. pen in hand commission tries to imagine an 11 year-old bald up in the darkness fist clenched. surely he understands. is ending his brief.

he is in a suitcase and in india they never learn what really happened. he met the man at the border, disguised himself, a swift cars, and headed to katmandu. his brother was not so fortunate on his first attempt to make to the border. while trekking through the himalayas he was arrested by chinese police. the boys later reunited, and in 2005 it joined the father in the united states where there are granted political asylum. >> next, detailing how she read from mexico at the age of nineed and the experiences that she ha? once you is in the end the state's. >> i was born in a small city in it's mexico. nobody was really heard of it, but it's about three hours away from acapulco.os how

if you're driving from mexico city you have to pass by. n >> how big is it? >> it was small when i was u growing up.outskis of now it has over hundred thousane people. agar up in the of skirts of thek city.di to me it's like a small-town. very world. wher a worker roads. up, in the outskirts, very, very close to the mountains, and it's in a valley surrounded by mountains which are very, very beautiful, and, you know, very meaningful to me because when my parents came to the u.s., and the u.s., to us, we called it the other side, and as a child, i always thought that it was the other side of the mountains so i thought that that's where the u.s. was, on the other side of those mountains. >> host: when did you come to the u.s. and why? >> guest: i came to the u.s. when i was nine and a half years old. this was back in 1985, and the

reason why i came was because my parents were already here. my father left when i was 2. my mother came here when i was four and a half, and my father came back to mexico, and he saw that we were not taken care of by the relatives we were left with, and he decided to bring us here because he had changed his mind about coming back to mexico, and he decided we should join him here in the u.s.. >> host: how did you get to the other side? >> guest: i had to run a lot. we had to cross the border illegally, through -- back then, there was no wall, and that's what we did our crossing, and the first two times, we were caught by border patrol. my father, he was hesitant to bring me at first because i was nine and a half at the time, and he thought i was too too littler the journey. we were caught the first two times, and i felt guilty because

i thought it was my fault. my father was right in that i was small, got tired, hungry, and he carried me on his back for a big part of the journey so then the third time, he told us that was it. that was the last time, and if we didn't make it, he was going to send us back to the relatives in mexico, and the third time was different because we trieded it at night, and it was very scary to be in the middle of nowhere, pitch black, couldn't see where we were going, we kept, you know, falling, tripping op rocks, and then there came a point when the helicopter came by with a search light, and i was very afraid of being seen and being caught and ultimately being sent back to mexico, but also being sent away from my father and from my chance of having a family. >> host: you got into the u.s., got to the other side, where did you get to? where did you live?

how did you grow up in the u.s.? >> guest: well, my father lived in los angeles, and he had been there for, you know, for a few years. he had gotten a job as a maintenance worker, and we came to live with him and my stepmother, and it was -- los angeles, there's a small community called highland park, which is in northeast l.a., and it it's predominantly latino, but there was a lot of culture shock in the sense even though a lot of the kids in the class looked like me, latino, black hair, brown eyes, brown skin, last names that i was familiar with, but they all spoke english, a language i couldn't speak, and that's when i realized, you know, sometimes there is a difference between being a child of an imgrant and being a child immigrant, and that's what i was. i was a child immigrant who didn't speak a word of english d

relationship with her. >> host: did you feel illegal, undocumented growing up in the u.s. after you were nine years old? >> guest: well, i think because i was young enough, i was naive in terms of the situation. i didn't really understand it's full complexity, you know? i came here at a young age, but i felt different many times because, first, i had a language barrier that i had to overcome, and then as i grew up, i realized my experiences were different from a lot of people you know, coming from another country, living through poverty, the abandonment issue with my parents, changed me, and made me feel different from other

people, and it was something i struggled with, and my father, you know, when we went to school rather than having a good day at school, he said you better not tell anyone how you got to the country or you can kiss it good-bye. it was a fear of going to school and being freeway of saying anything because i might say something that might give us away so i would go to school with fear and very unwilling to participate in my class or have a lot of conversations with people because i always thought, well, what if i say something that might lead them to my home, and have, you know and them take us away, and so i did have a fe build the future op. >> host: what was your path to citizenship? when did you come out from the shadows? >> guest: i came here at a

very lucky time because i came in 1985, and a year later, the reagan, you know, president reagan passed amnesty which allowed 3 million people to be legal residents, and my father and my mother were went fisheries, that's how we got the green card and spend from 1985 to 1990 undocumented, but we got our green card right when i was finishing junior high, 9th grade, and my oldest sister was going to graduate from high school so our undocumented status was something she was worried about because she was about to graduate from high school, and she was looking at her options in terms of college and opportunities, scholarships, that she could not qualify because of the status, and in

june, green cards arrived in the mail, the most wonderful thing that happened. finally, we could breathe, you know, with relief. we could see a lot of the doors open to us, and i could see a brighter future and say, yes, i think i will now be able to go to college, pursue my deems, and that's what i did. as soon as i got the green card, i took it and ran with it. >> host: was it a physical relief, and did the fear leave you in many ways? >> guest: it did, it did, and it really helped our family, too, because it took so much pressure off my dad. you know, we no longer got the warning going to school. he no longer had to say don't tell anybody how you got here, but go to school, relax, and know that we were not going to

be deported or separated as a family so it changed for using a en, also, my father, you know, working as undocumented immigrants, he had limited opportunity with work, and as soon as he got the green card, he pursued, like, his own dreams, and my dad was a maintenance worker, and when he got the green card, he eventually made it to the top of the ladder of his work where he was the manager overseeing the other workers. to him, that was

i was about four or five years old when a move to the capitol city. and i lived there for a while. until the revolution was the first thing that changed my life. and i was going to a french catholic school. i was going to of french catholic school. because of the revolution the school was closed to the first year and we were moved around. my friends were sort of spread all over. and being a teenager during the revolution and then later on, it teaches you a lot of things. i remember the first time i heard the word revolution. i did not really know what it meant. i have heard it, but did not have any concept. and the same thing with gunfire. i had never heard gunfire, i

have never been around guns. a lot of things are learning experience for a teenager growing up. then later on as i was getting ready for graduation my parents decided that maybe will be a good idea to start back over. we've given up everything that they had and leave everything behind and start a new life in a country that would give them a chance, especially the children the chance to have a better life that is what we did. that's what the story talks about tommy going to school, becoming an engineer, meeting my husband which is a big part of my life. you will see that many things that happen in my life, the

lovely chair, the support, unconditional support. i'd talk about of course coming to the u.s. this will be my best chance of becoming an astronaut. going to the country's aerospace is a big part of it. i had to overcome the businesses here. starting lead over in a country without a lot of money my mom told me, i recommend you study something that will actually

land your job. so i listened to my mom and decided to go to an engineering school. telecommunication. this whole thing that happened to me my life has taken a different term and it has nothing to do with space. we forget about it. but i thought that some how i would find a way to eventually be able to fill that.

the light company will come up with this amazing invention. maybe it can do something that will cause nasa i will find a way. and i did not know how, but i knew deep down i would find a way. i think that is a very important part of someone being able to achieve a dream or a passion that they had. the best part. later on camino, my passion for space became a source of inspiration and motivation. the reason i wanted some crow was after the first person, a

citizen who was able to negotiate a deal to get to the international space station. and i found that on cnn. that would be the way. if i can just find the money somehow or be halted. it became an inspiration to me for my company. once i was able to do that i looked at other possibilities and one of the see if there was a way we can make this happen for everyone. i knew there would be. elected to fractions. i met with my hero and he'd tell me about his vision transpire

entrepreneurish. my government agencies. people in the building space. you get entrepreneurs building spaces and food, the government agencies. that's how we became sponsors. private companies. in 2004 an american aerospace engineer his design became very famous. so i go there. i'm very proud to say i had something to do with that.

also my involvement, back into mine plan to space and ended up in russia. and i was there and had no idea that our good chance to fly the space. i was just given an opportunity to go. a lot of people may have said, what? we will what i do? spend six months in the cold, you know, winter moscow. just go there for no apparent reason. it was an opportunity is spend time with the astronauts. the same places that the first person who went to space, you know, resided. the russian space program compelled many of there.

being there gave me that opportunity to be it the right place at the right time. unfortunately, give me the qualified plan. but fortunately for me i was there. that's what i did. this is another point when i talk to students to try to de -- i tried to tell them that if you have a passion, if there is something that you want to do, you have to have that in your mind. you have to have a command make sure that you look for the opportunity because you never know. if you're not thinking about it, if you're not ready, you may not even notice it. you let them go. you know, later on you will realize what happened and you will regret.

i think it was true for me. was there. was ready. i spent the six months training as it was going to space. and did not waste time walking around. dallas better learn. i was spending six months and no one again something of a, even if it wasn't going to end it paid off. a lot of the details, it was interesting, all the different criteria, qualifications for the program, details in the book. >> had five years old she agreed with a family from argentina. she tells about her experiences as an immigrant in alabama next. >> a coming-of-age story primarily about my family's o

immigration to the united statei in 1961. i was five years old.civights we settled in alabama right in the part of some of the most dramatic events that occurred in the civil rights movement mario. pretty dramatic. >> host: now, where do you live now, first of all? >> guest: i live in tuscaloosa, alabama, which is 60 miles up the road but almost in another, more recent century than my small hometown. >> host: and darkroom is a lot about the civil rights movement and some of the experiences that you had. i want to start with your father. what did he do for a living, and what was his experience like? >> guest: my father was a teacher. he had a background also in the ministry. but, um, he was an amateur photographer. he did some freelance work, and that figures centrally in my book, "darkroom." >> host: and i want to ask about his ministering, because he'd been assigned to some churches,

and you write about b that in here. what was his experience? >> guest: well, this was, actually, my family's first immigration period. in 1948 my father came to the u.s., and he studied at a seminary in new orleans, and he went around and did some speaking in various places there where he encountered institutionalized segregation even in the church. >> host: and at one point he spoke at a black church. >> guest: yes. >> host: and he invited the choir to attend a service at a white church. >> guest: that's right. >> host: what happened? >> guest: the white church was not happy with that at all, and he not only was the choir ejected and my father and his friend who was a seminary student and also the pastor of that little church of the white church, he was fired. my father or's friend. >> host: and your father at some point dropped out of the ministry, correct? >> guest: yes, he did,

eventually. >> host: why, because of his experience in alabama? >> guest: no, not necessarily. the family went back to argentina, i was born during that time, and he was a pastor there in a city called la plata for a period of time and then decided to come back to the u.s., and the opport where, in the baptist church in my hometown of marion. there were actually deace ya ton argentinean or are you an american? >> guest: you know, it's a funny thing. down there i do feel somewhat like a foreigner. um, i don't speak spanish excellently, fluently and not with an argentine accent. but, um, i do lo it. the culture is mine. but i guess i feel more american down there and here i feel maybe more -- especially in alabama, i don't feel as american as i do elsewhere. >> host: why is that? >> guest: um, alabama's a very conservative state, and it's

also not diverse. we still have the setup from many decades back when the rest of the country or i should say the east coast, the west coast, other parts of the country were receiving a lot of immigrants, alabama did not have the influx of immigration that other places did. and so we are still, basically, a black and white society with just a few hispanics sprinkled in. >> host: in "darkroom," you mentioned that you weren't necessarily discriminated against as a child or your family wasn't because they didn't have any terms for latinos -- >> guest: exactly. that's right. >> host: or spanish-speaking people. >> guest: that's right. we were just oddballs. we were more or less objects of curiosity. and now there are more hispanics in the region and, unfortunately, there is also more xenophobia as a result of that. [inaudible]

>> guest: yes. alabama has instituted one of the harshest immigration laws in part of operation peter pan and he speaks to the emotional challenges associated with a leaving her native country and starting over in the united states. >> i am one of 14,068 cuban children who were airlifted to h the u.s. without their parents between 1960 and 1962.e we were all stuck with the name for the airlift the really hate.

for several reasons, the chief one being that in cuba and c nobody called the film peter pan .but but an american journalist came up with the name and a stock. i and like to read to you an excerpt of one of my first experiences as a school.w teach me how to swear in spanish i cannot add up how many times i had this request already. wanto everyone wants to learn all theo bad words in spanish, even thee girls. this puts me in a tight spot ti, for uttering bad words is against the first commandment. and an entry ticket the to hell. so if i teach bad words to anyone, i'm endangering not only my eternal fate, but also theirs. and that makes my sin doubly

worse. and if i say nothing, they'll just keep pestering me. i tried that, and i know that silence won't work. plus, if i refuse, i'll be totally uncool, worse than a nerd. what's a boy to do? today them a bone maybe. [laughter] what's that? ooh, it's the spanish word for sex, you know, the really dirty word with the f. gimme more. [laughter] okay, how about this? [speaking spanish] what's that? it means, you know, another version of the big, bad f word. thanks, charles. thanks a lot. this is great. i don't tell them what i've just taught him to say is the word for the vegetable beet, beet, and kick my buttocks.

[laughter] quandary. how to fit in. it's true, first thing anyone ever asked me here in miami where i lived for a year and a half, teach me how to swear in spanish. then i moved to the midwest, a small town in central illinois, and it was the same thing when people found out that i was not from if here. teach me how to swear in your language. kids have this interest in many bad words. but the book is, it's really about adjusting to a new place. it's not just because, you know, this is my life story and i was a child who came here on my own. the book is really about the immigrant experience. every immigrant has to go true the process of -- through the process of dying to their former self and becoming a new self, hence the title, "learning to die in miami," which the aarp

took a very strong interest in, i think, because of the title. [laughter] and i hope they're not disappointed in the contents, you know, now that they've found out what it's really about. it's about learning to shed your former self and learning to become a whole other self. for us who came without our parents, it was an immediate immersion not just in another culture, but in another entirely different set of circumstances, and it required very special kind of adapting to dying because many of us were shuffled from one foster home to another or an orphanage or different places. many of us actually ended up being in more than two places before our parents reunited with cue pa, and i never -- cuba, and i never got to see him again. it took our mom -- i left with my brother.

the two of us left together. the minute we landed here at the miami airport, we were separated. he went to one camp, i went to a different camp, and the camps were processing centers that sent us elsewhere because miami couldn't take us in. we ended up being sent to 40 different states. invisible under the radar. you know, i bet that most of you even if you lived here in miami may not have been aware the fact that this was going on. but learning to die is something kids do very easily. prominent psychologists explained to me once that we are all exiles, all of us even if we never leave our hometown because we're all exiled from childhood, you know? once we leave childhood behind and we start a new life, it's almost like that. you can't go pack. you never -- back.

representative group. our parents put i on commercial flights and sent us here because they were desperate. they were desperate because their children were already being taken away from them. in many different ways. the so-called free education in cuba is not really free. all children have to perform agricultural labor in the summer to pay their debt to the revolution, to basically pay for their education. and there's no pay involved in this labor. it's slave labor. the kids were being sent to camps in the countryside, and the parents had no say in where the kids went or what happened at these camps. so parents panicked. and there was just, it's a long

and complicated story, but a school headmaster in havana, james baker, who had connections with the u.s. state department, and he managed to get the state department to give him and a group of people in if havana carte blanche to draw up visa waivers that would allow kids to leave about two, three or four months after they applied. parents required a much longer time, so the parents that wanted to get the kid out first, and the plan was to reunite with them. in just a matter of a few more months. but it didn't turn out that way because a little fallout from the missile crisis of october '62 that nobody noticed is that whenmy kieta kruschev took fidel castro's toys away, he got very angry, and he closed the door, and the parents of most of us were trapped and couldn't leave.

for most of us it took the parents anywhere from 3-6 years or longer to finally pick it to the -- make it to the u.s. and what would drive any parent to do this? i'm asked over and over again, if you were in your parents' situation, would you do the samesome -- same? my answer is always the same, yes, most definitely. and there's not a day that i don't wake up and thank my parents and thank god for that flight that rescued me from a life of slavery. because most americans actually are very fortunate in this country to never experience a totalitarian regime. and for most americans freedom is is an abstraction. but believe me, it's not an abstraction. for those who are deprived of freedom and for those whose human rights are trampled, freedom becomes more important than the food you eat or the air you breathe. and our parents were willing to make that sacrifice of, perhaps, never seeing us again.

just so that we could be free. something that, you know, i talk about this all the time, and i know my audiences generally have a hard time understanding. but believe me, not one of the parents put the kids on the planes did it knowing that they would see their kids again. there was that chance in the back of everyone's mind they may not ever see them again. so imagine that sacrifice. here at this end things were run very well, but it was well-organized chaos. basically, no one knew from one planeload to the next how many children would be showing up. so the camps here in florida were processing centers for sending us elsewhere. we ended up in many all sorts of places -- up in all sorts of places, interesting places. i was taken in by a wonderful american jewish family here in

miami for a while, and then we ended up in this a group home -- in a group home run by a cuban couple about three blocks from the orange bowl which was, well, back in those days the kids who were in that home were called juvenile delinquents. they'd already -- their families had fallen apart. these were all cuban kids. their families had already fallen apart, and they'd already gotten into trouble in all sorts of ways. but in the end we ended up with an uncle in central illinois and, boy, talk about another adjustment. this is the adjustment most of us had to make, especially if we were sent away from miami and ended up in towns where, as in my case, in seventh grade only one other child had been born outside the u.s., and he was from germany. ..

charles again and within three weeks i am charlie and within three weeks i am chuck. [laughing] so, as soon as i got back with my mom in chicago, i became carlos again. and i am still carlos. but, it is a question of identity, and of becoming a different person and a different place and adapting and adjusting. someone asked me a wonderful

question just two days ago in philadelphia. when did you first feel like an american? and i have never thought about it that the answer came instantly. at first i felt like a real american in bloomington, illinois, never here in miami where i was only one of hundreds of thousands of cubans, but in bloomington, illinois the bane of my existence and of every cuban mail, it everyone expects us to be good at baseball. [laughter] so i was always the first one picked for softball games and i was always a strikeout king, i was terrible at baseball. i am also supposed to be a good dancer and i stink at dancing. but i struck out in this one kid comes up to me, spit in my face and calls me a name. all the other kids in the class jumped on him and started

beating him up and one of them came up to me and said, don't listen to him. he is an idiot. to me, that is the united states, and anyone who wants to become american, that is the beauty of american culture is that we all come from somewhere else and even if we are native american, we have the larger culture. anyone who wants to be an american can become american and >> what are you reading this summer? book tv must know. >> hi. i'm the washington editor of the national review, and i have a

lot of books i want to read this summer. i'm looking ahead to the 2016 presidential race looking at the candidates are probably going to run, especially on the republican side. one of the people i'm looking at is chris christie. this new book, chris christie the inside story of his rise to power by bob ankle and michael simon's. it really takes you back. his political ascent in new jersey. ford became a u.s. attorney he was a morris county freeholder who was involved a lot of county politics. so this takes us behind the story, behind the politician we have seen the magazine covers with president obama in new jersey and asks to be is, told by people who really know new jersey politics. i think she's a very likely contender and has to know where he came from and what is politics mean ahead of the election. the second book on my list, kevin d. williamson wrote a new book called the end is near, and it is going to be awesome.

how going broke will leave america richer, happier, and more secure. the fiscal cliff earlier in 2013 was a big store recovered. later this year is going to have the debt limit be a story that consumes congress. kevin williamson looks at the debt from a political perspective, historical perspective, talked about the consequences of the debt, al it really is taking a lot of the congress's time, howard could potentially run the country and make it go broken does it was somewhat, fine, and i think the end is near is a great book by kevin williamson. third on my book list, as a journalist in washington there's always gossip and talk about what is happening behind the scenes and how stories could written, the power struggles, not only within politics, what the media. so he has the year of the beltway crowd and this coming up with a book in july. it's all about the inside seen in washington, dupont circle and the georgetown salon.

that book really gives us the story and the color of what washington and the political media establishment is all about. and a book i am looking forward to reading, the mantle, the maze, the parallel lives of baseball's golden age. i was just done in spring training in arizona watching the cleveland indians, the chicago cubs play baseball. i ran into willie mays, but this book is great because it looks set to man who came of age at the same time, stars at the same time, and formed a lifelong, something i had never knew. that is a great book. so that is my list. her look forward to reading the mall. >> let us know what you are reading this summer. posted on our facebook page or send us an e-mail. >> here is a best-selling

nonfiction books. reflecting sales as of june 20th.

>> a chinese journalist and former member of the communist party talks about the great chinese famine from 1958 until 1962 that killed an estimated 36 million people. he argues that the famine did not have natural causes and was solely the responsibility of the communist party. this is about 50 minutes. [applause]

>> it is an honor to be here tonight and to have the average into interview this gentleman about this remarkable book. we're going to talk for a little bit between the two and a half of glass, three of us. and then we are going to open it up to your questions, so as we are talking up here, have in mind questions you might want ask. so i want to begin with the title of the book. the title of the book is tombstone. please explain why you give the title to the book. ..