his stepmother who was caring and a great blessing she signed her name with an x. his father could barely sign his name. lincoln said he could bungle his name. there were schools but a big part behalf instructors did was to beat the kids. okay. lincoln told a story in the white house thattured what -- captured what the educational environment was like. he said there was a school room of kids and reading from the book of danielle, you have 0st cast your mind back when it was legal to read the bible in the school room in america, and they are reading from the book and the one boy stumbles over the name. boom, hit up against the head.

.. rode up in a carriage with their luggage and there was a

ski boat and they wanted to meet but there was no war so they wanted lincoln to roll them out there. he willingly does this, helps them with their luggage and when they are getting on the steamboat he says you forgot to pay me. he throws a silver dollar in the boat and says all those years later in the white house he says i realize that that moment i have earned my first dollar. he opened up to him and was a.m. optimist hopeful being. so he wanted to skate that isolation and make possible an america where no one had to live in that kind of isolation ever again. in a nut shell that is when he didn't become a democrat. he was surrounded by people who worshiped andrew jackson, the great general who was a mean son

of a aaron sharockma. if you take arlen specter, his personality except he might kill you, that was andrew jackson. but those -- andrew jackson with people the family loved, the neighbors loved and it's the jacksonian democrats before them they romanticized the back woods, the frontier, they romanticize to the agrarian life and agriculture and lincoln had seen that and experienced it and wanted nothing to do with it ever again. so he goes in the opposite direction. he becomes a whig than republican. he was concerned help rebuild the economy on the frontier? how do we need something different? this was the purpose of their entire program. you need cash.

so the whigs supported the bank. he didn't want a country that was exclusively agricultural for all of time so they supported the tariff. you need markets. you have to put together the country. so they support it and they were excited by the railroads and this is where the more activist side of abraham lincoln comes in with regard to the role of government because he supported subsidizing those enterprises. but the context is important because again if you are abraham lincoln growing up in this area, there is no way to get good for the market. unless perhaps you live near a river and they would literally make handmade crafts and float their goods down to new orleans which is one way to get them to market. the problem is getting them back up. a lot of people walked back home. there are stories linking's father made the trip once and

walked. a market cannot work that way. that is not sufficient. so, what happens when the railroad comes as soon as they touch these areas and they are utterly transformed because they were a barrier between the east and the rest of the country. the railroad, the canal, the e eliminate that a very eerie and you are a farmer now and you can buy manufactured goods at a reasonable cost from the east. you can by quoting from the east. how are you going to buy them? you need cash. how are you going to get cash? you have to grow goods for the market. instantly when the transformation happened, they are no longer subsist and and they might not even grow their own food anymore because it's not the most sufficient crop they want to lie for the market so as soon as the railroad comes

come everyone near them is a player in the market and that is what lincoln wanted said he supported the transportation improvements as they are called towards the ultimate end of the market dynamism where you create a diverse economy and there are different ways for people to rise up in the world and you had to have he believe rightly in my view a level of government support because it is an enormous project you have no sophisticated financial system to speak of coming to don't have the investors of the sort you didn't have the big industrialists so you needed on some level of government support the other great insight had to do with culture and of was that people had to live or early lives and practice self discipline to make the most of themselves.

lincoln lived this and also preached this aspiring lawyers later in his life he would write to him saying how do i become a lawyer, and he would write back things like work, work, work. his stepbrother stayed on the farm living that kind of life that flanagan had grown up in and what fairly often ask him for a loan and the letters that lincoln wrote back were just excoriating. you are not a bad person. but you are destitute because you idle away all your time. go to work. that is the only cure for your case. this might have made for all cord thanksgiving dinners but this is where he was coming from and he of course exemplified this. he was determined and stubborn and this was part of the great

lincoln myth or legend that we celebrate but a lot of people frown on it at the time. he had neighbors say he is lazy. he sets are now reading all day. there is a quote from a neighbor saying he wasn't good to do real work like killing snakes but he read it any way. and it was really a very specific and conscious program of self improvement that he embarked on in a time the country is soaked in alcohol and tobacco he didn't drink, smoke, swear, chu. he used to tell stories about himself sharing a car with a gentleman from kentucky that offered him a shot of whiskey and offered him a fine cigar, no thanks. welford hlf tobacco, no thanks. then they looked at him and tell them can i tell you something, sir? flanagan said sure to get he

said those of you with a few voices have few virtues. but in fact at the time when casual cruelty to words analysts believe to animals was common and incredibly embarrassingly tender hearted towards animals when he rose as a lawyer there was one incident where he was at the back of the pack and all of a sudden disappeared. and mary was waiting for him wondering where he gone. the lawyer had been writing back and they asked him what happened to lincoln? they said he is off looking for the baby bird that fell out of the nest. when he finally caught up as you can imagine the tough guys they made fun of him and said if i didn't return them to their mother i wouldn't have been able to sleep tonight. there's a cat in the white house and there is a story how lincoln at dinner one night the cat in the chair next to him he started feeding this cat with the official white house flat wire

and mary todd understandably was outraged and said to the witness of the event you think it's crazy that the president of the united states is feeding the cat with the official white house silverware and lincoln said it was good enough for buchanan. so it's through this relentless ethic of self improvement what happens? he becomes a lawyer. we tend to think of them as specific bottom feeders. they accepted line sure, but then the lawyers are the shock troops of american capitalism. they were creating the rules of the road for this new emerging market economy. lincoln wasn't a very big-time lawyer. he would carry letters around in his hat. there was a letter that exists from him to decline and saying i'm sorry i took so long to get back to you but i left my letter in the hat and took me weeks to realize where it was. one clerk said that actually because when he was a

congressman apparently he would carry seeds to distribute to farmers which is something i guess the congressman did, but apparently he dropped some in the office and the floor was so dirty that there was enough soil for a plant to spring up in the floor. so, but eventually she became much more important as a lawyer and he became a lawyer for corporations and in fact he was on retainer of the biggest corporation in the state of illinois, the illinois central railroad. and lincoln had -- a lot of people had a hard time getting their hands around this, he was the head of corporations and his economics gave a pride of place to the patent law and he gave a speech once saying that it was one of the top three discoveries of all of human history. lincoln and his whigs didn't believe there was a cirrose some

economic, a proper early working market economy that benefit everyone. and they rejected the class warfare and redistributionist economics. lamken famously said to a delegation of working men who came to visit him in the white house during the war let knott him who is houseless pulled down the house of another. but let him labor diligently and build one of his own. the most important thing under this entire view was the belief in the fundamental dignity of labor and the right of people to the proceeds of their own labor. again and again lincoln would come back from genesis, thou shalt eat through the sweat of the eyebrow or as he put it informally, he who earnings the corn should eat the corn and anything that violated this principle was an act of.

this brings us to slavery because he talked about it in exactly these terms. the second inaugural address has a phrase of toil what was slavery it was a theft of people's labour. just to give you an idea how strongly he felt about this when he was a young man his father hi your hinault as was his father's right. so he would go and hoe and take care of the halls and chop down trees and his father would take the proceeds as was his right until lyndon was age 21. and he said -- this is an exaggeration but again and gives you an idea where he was coming from on this he said i used to be a sleeve because he worked, and someone else took the proceeds. of course he had a much more serious little slavery in the south. a system as lincoln said was

based on classification and task and human bondage the required stealing of the labor of others. lincoln hammered away at the system throughout the 1850's, and he argued slavery is the only good that people want for others but not for themselves. and he wrote -- when he was thinking things through he would write these fragments to himself and there is one on the end. he says this is such a simple and natural principle even in the end if an aunt gets a crumb and wants to to get back to the nest and you try to take it, the and knows that it belongs to it because it worked for it and will fight you to hold onto it. now for slavery they fought back and they said sure we have sleeves, but you have wage

slaves in the north to me not have much money and may not have much opportunity to get ahead. at least we care for our sleeves but you have a system of every man for himself and you pretend to care about paying them and lincoln just rejected this with every fiber of his being. he said they don't understand the way that a free economy works and the way the free econ and should work. the man that lever for another last year this year leaders for himself and next year will hire others to labor for him. on another occasion he said advancement, improvement of conditions is the order of things in a society of equals whereas of slavery on the other hand, he said had a tendency to be debate could dehumanize, excuse my language, to dehumanize, to take away from him the right of ever striving to be a man and that is such a

sentiment. we strive to be men and women and it is in the pursuit of bettering ourselves that we are fully human. throughout this period, lincoln's rhetoric is a profound sense of loss because he believed our founders had been embarrassed by slavery. they tolerated it because it existed in the there was no easy way to get away -- to do away with it right away. but the constitution, rates slavery but it doesn't mention it. clearly embarrassed by it. but you had in the south a defense of slavery that rose up that was affirmative in nature. that was positive in nature that said this is a good thing. it's good for society. it's good for the slaves. so when khanna looked back to the past four years running and tall times we celebrate the new and lincoln was just unabashed about referring to the founders as those old-time man.

he called us back to the declaration of independence. he advocated for the old phase and his program i believe as any conservative program in america were the of the name should be was about renewal come about progress and creating more opportunity but doing it through a return through a restoration of our principles and one gorgeous passage in the speech he said our republican road is trailed in the dust. let us pyrrophyte. let us turn and watch it in the spirit if not the blood of the revolution. and he believed that these three institutions not only guaranteed our right, but they guaranteed our prosperity. there is a little speech he gave during the war to a regimen from

ohio, the 166 redmon came to the white house and he said any time the troops come to see me i want to tell them a little bit about why i think this struggle, the wife of war is so important and why it's -- why we are fighting it. he said you see i am this big white house -- you too candian this big white house and he said it is an order that each of you may have three the government that we have enjoyed an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence that you may have equal privileges and the race of life with all of its desirable aspirations is for this. the struggle should be maintained. that we may not lose all but write not only for one, but for two or three years. the nation is worth fighting for to secure such an investable joule and the struggle was one. and i believe that he decreased

to less modern america. and some come here you have this great american. he believes in a dynamic economy. he has a deep-seeded belief and importance of individual striving and an individual initiative. he rejects class warfare and he has an ironclad fidelity to the free institutions and our founders. and we are supposed to believe that barack obama is a natural air to him, which i just totally reject. and i think it's so important to focus on lincoln at this time because i think there is a crisis of opportunity in america. we have seen a lot of focus over inequality which has genuinely grown over the last several decades. i think some level of inequality obviously is inevitable in a free society but we should focus on mobility. do people like lincoln? do they have a chance to rise up from nothing in this country? and we -- the fact is we are not

as mobile as we did. there are western european countries that are more mobile than br and other eastern speaking countries, scandinavian countries that are more mobile than we are. and this has obviously a large part to do with a broad economic trend and culture and the social breakdown that we are seeing in this country where you see the breakdown in family, the breakdown of the work ethic and the breakdown of individual responsibility. so, i think that it behooves the conservatives to consider what is the program that will increase mobility in this society and i believe it goes back to the kind of trinity that lincoln supported. a dynamic economy, education and return to the very basic border lal virtues and this is not

bible thumping stuff. it doesn't have to be realistic about the things that make it easier to get ahead. marriage, work, discipline. so, i will just leave you with one last passage from lincoln. long before anyone had heard of him he gave the life of speech as a young man in springfield. and he talked about how even then, this week and amateur country that we are vulnerable to the military. he said to contain all the armies of the bottle and put the greatest general anyone has ever known at the head of the army and they couldn't take a step on the blue ridge mountains. they couldn't get their foot in the ohio river by the force. but then he went on to say if the destruction is here a lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. as a nation of free men, we must

live through all time or die by suicide. and ladies and gentlemen, i submit to you that we should be resolved to live. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you. >> ladies and gentlemen, he has agreed to take some questions. this is being broadcast live to the world. >> keep it clean, people. >> we are also taking questions from the internet and our first one is when to come from jennifer bleak from alexandria virginia. which leaders today are most like lincoln? which leaders today are most like lincoln? i really don't think that he has any of that i'm aware of. i am open to suggestions. i spoke and why i think barack

obama is not that leader. i would say mitt romney was and that leader. it helps a lot in america if you live the story. and i think mitt romney through no fault of his own obviously had not lived the story so there was always a self-conscious thus they're a certain defensiveness about his wealth that was in contrast there is a wonderful exchange with his father on the sidewalk during one of the campaigns or they said you are a rich guy and he said i came from nothing. iran every dime of this. and he was never quite able to say that. i think that it behooves the republican party. everything it says, everything it does should be through this prism of opportunity and aspiration to be and it is heartening to me -- i wouldn't deem them to be linked in light.

but it is heartening to me that we have a marco rubio paul ryan leaders of that nature talking in these terms. because otherwise i think the republican party is -- they have no future in this country because they had the same problem. people seceded them with the elite and they said they were rich. the great achievement of lamken was to demonstrate how his economics helps and how they were designed to help everyone and help the little guy climbing up and that is what the contemporary party needs to do as well. >> next question. >> thank you for the presentation. i am one of those lawyers. i like to think of myself as a good lawyer. >> you mentioned early on in your presentation that they had supported the idea of to sort of

build things up. and so i would like to walk down that slope and the position the government should have very little will what goes on in the country in terms of defense, criminal-justice system, the police force and those kind of things that aren't in the interest of the private entities to produce. there are all kind of government subsidies now. maybe they were relatively small and not intrusive but given that the government naturally grows if you are supporting the subsidies in lincoln's day that would be supporting these today and if you aren't or you are supporting some of them where do you draw the line? >> that's a great question. i would say a couple things.

every time the government spends anything now it's called an investment. it's kind of a joke but some of them back then were genuine investment. if you read about the erie canal, it paid for itself almost immediately. and it transformed the whole economy and in that area in a way that would be much more favorable and created a market where there wasn't long before. so i think if you get a slippery slope from doing of the canal to what we have now, that is a heck of a slope and there is a lot of distance between those two things. i think most people support -- i don't oppose the government rhodes or government bridges as long as the make economic sense in a rational way and they are not an excuse one for political spending or number two economist the got an attempt to create short-term stimulus. it's just funding stuff that

actually makes sense. if that is all the government did, what percentage of the federal government would be spending? it is probably 1% or something. we have almost nothing that we have now. lincoln had a possible view than we will ever have as conservatives but it's a different kind of government. with the federal government does now even though all the democrats talk about is investment and infrastructure, mainly what it does and what it is best at is taking money from some people and getting it to others. that is a fact. that is the entitlement state and the welfare state. there is none of that in the mid 19th century. there is no bureaucracy to speak. the state department i believe in 1863 in the middle of a war had 33 employees. there is no regulation. i'm a little hesitant to predict where lincoln would be 150 years later but i have a hard time

believe he wouldn't find it absolutely anathema all we do to constructed the development of our own country. you have states like new york that are dragging their feet and doing everything they can to obstruct this great natural gas revolution we have going on that creates good blue collar jobs and gets the wealth out of the ground and into the economy that lowers the price of electricity and makes manufacturing better. everyone should be doing somersaults of joy over this. but the pipeline there is an infrastructure project and what are they doing? blocking it in of late years of the environmental review. no sense i don't have that much about lawyers but all these lawsuits filed by the environmental groups to stop it from happening. so, i would argue the fundamental break into the nature of american government can with a new deal. those are progressives and

wasn't that abraham lincoln wanted to fund the canal. by the way, some of what he did was excessive and ridiculous. he supported a program in illinois that got way out of hand because everyone looked at the erie canal and said it paid for itself so everything can pay for itself and they passed a program and that basically bankrupted states. the continental rolled everyone looks unfavorably for understandable reasons. barry carow backend minn shy to the age but it enabled the worst kind of fraud and corruption that you could imagine. i would be favorably inclined to that kind of transportation program back then that even back then, you had to have a very skeptical eye towards a lot of it, but we didn't get -- it couldn't create the medicare part b. there are separate things. and i don't think the slope was that deep or slippery.

if you are upset about that you should blame fdr and not lincoln. >> next question to your right. >> thank you for coming. can you tell us something about what the "national review" is doing and what you are doing and where they are going and what is the direction? >> i am trying to do the look. [laughter] nti haven't made this clear, amazon.com. the review we are doing what we've been doing since 1955 when our founder and a great william f. buckley wrote the initial editorial saying our role is to stand up to history with a capital and yell stop. the "national review" has always thrived in adversity and we have now more adversity than ever. this country is really in trouble and it's not just the top line stuff, the size of

government, the debt. i really believe so many of our systems make no sense anymore and handed down to the mid 20th century reflecting industrial age assumptions nobody in plight. this is true of a war and amid programs medicare and social security and our educational system not just k-12 but college where we are spending more in and getting less because there are some studies that show the cognitive development of kids in college that regresses rather than advances. and this social breakdown. and it's dismaying to me that it's really the top one-third of the country in educational terms. a college degree and more who have learned that the basic virtues work and they help you to get ahead. you look at the illegitimacy rate among the top third, 6%. just 6%. that is i don't know, that is

the 1930's level or something. mabey 19th century levels. and you look at the middle and high school degrees, some college but not a college degree and they begin to look more like the bottom than the top. when reagan was president the illegitimacy rate was 14% and now what is 44. it's harder for the mothers and fathers. what i worry about is you have the top one-third because they are just doing the social the advantages that are passed down to their children and you don't see that happening in the rest of the country and that is how you get a class society that we may be america still and pretty

rich. you may still be powerful but that isn't what this country was and that is and what it should be. >> let's take another one from the left. this one is from jesse angelo from chicago illinois. clinton addressed the divisions in the political climate. >> how would lincoln have addressed to the political climate? >> this is one objection that i have to the movie lincoln. it is a wonderful detection and going down in very small detail on the scene captured him to the team and you may think i'm strange refocusing on the spot he's sitting at his desk in the white house and he has a ruler he's just knocking it back and forth and that is such a lyndon thing because he had a brooding nature. we tend to think of it is a common jokester but he was

impossible to get to know close friends and even the people that spent the most time with him said that there was a barrier that he couldn't get past. so he was also fascinated with mechanics and how things worked. he would see this on the circuit and have a logical cast in mind. he studied you quit in the spare time and how many congressmen today go and check out a copy. this came through in his advocacy. you have heard of the declaration as the definition of the free society. my problem with the movie is the way it was interpreted. what happened in the movie he was a matter of principle to get the 13th amendment because the laws right as a matter of principle. he was in patient about it and wanted it right then. and now he's a confident

politician getting it and wheeling and dealing but it wasn't a compromise. it was somebody getting what they wanted as a matter of principle. today they should split devotee difference and compromise every issue and perhaps there is something to be said about that but that isn't where lincoln would be. as a young man he was incredibly slashing and he would make people cry. there is something called the spinning of thomas where there was a debate between lamken and jessie thomas. lincoln imitated him, ridiculed him, and he left the stage in tears and he eventually apologized. he would write an honest newspapers just skating and ridicules people and he did it to the state auditor who found out that was lincoln i did this and he challenged. lincoln wasn't a natural and had no interest but he pretty much had to accept if you are going to save your honor he got to

pick the weapon so he said we are going to do it with the calgary. that might seem like a ridiculous choice of weapons until you realize he had a foot long reach and someone afterwards said are you making fun of the whole thing and he said no i was worried he would shoot and kill me and it turned out that the dispute was at adjudicated in the dole didn't happen. but lincoln was a man that sort of partisanship was for his younger days but he was a man of principle and it consisted i think as all great statesmanship do of having an alternate fixed goal and then being flexible in how you get there and being persuasive. he had a line at one of his addresses that always attracts more and i think some of the republican side especially some of friends don't understand that. but a little sweetness and

persuasion can the lilongwe said he was flexible and persuasive begole never changed and he couldn't just compromise those goals. he was compromising how he achieved them and he ultimately did. >> next question right here in the front. they weren't the first pick to marry. they tolerate each other and they love each other. >> mary todd and lincoln's relationship there is so much literature i couldn't get into it except for the very surface and there is a story about lincoln when he was going to their wedding which was a snap wedding. i think that mary todd was a

little that crazy and horrible blow to her and made it really crazy. but they have a sort of contempt for her and tate to blame her for everything, every difficulty in the relationship because lincoln was discussing he wasn't an easy guy himself and they said afterwards in an interview that lincoln felt the most he expressed the least. i'm a little bit like that. it drives my wife crazy. he was just as ambitious as he was in the first campaign for the senate which doesn't get noticed as much and will send a campaign because the state legislature picked the senator when the legislature was voting and she was keeping track of every single vote. and if you are an ambitious political guy there is no substitute for a wife that is right there with you and also,

she was a huge step up for him. the pony that she took to show henry clay and the former statesman of the day so in that sense it was quite the catch and obviously it wasn't a perfect relationship. so much about that we will never know. but i am a little softer on mary todd and others are. and for the women in the audience, too. >> i'm curious as a current affairs writer on commentary. >> i love the story, and there's nothing that people making the most of themselves on the account is important. we have a disabled brother. so i feel very strongly that any talent you have is a complete

gift and it is, you know, a shame and a san not to make the most of it so i love how he made it the most of himself and it would have been very easy just the subsistence on agriculture wasn't necessarily that bad. his dad had a very complicated -- i shouldn't say complicated but he spends lots of time hunting and fishing and you don't. the neighbors said of his bad you didn't think that he was old come he didn't chase after things. so there is something to be said for the way of life but it doesn't make the most of you and he would drive to make the most of himself. that really -- i was really belong to that and i think that just undergirds everything. it is a two-part program in that kind of isolation.

so they have their chance to rise and then slavery. it has the opportunity for those who can't compete with petitions because they don't have the labor that can force by brute force to go out into their field. so lincoln's aspiration to make the most of themselves and then how he made it possible for the rest of them and the fact that this is an area where we really as a country need to do better. >> the next question right here. >> you mentioned president clinton when he was in the white house and he was an avid reader through what his life. what are some of the of the books that you like that influenced him? >> that is a great question to the he spoke in the bible and as

time went on he became a religious man and the pressure of events and personal tragedy there was never a huge debate about this as anything. i don't believe that he was an orthodox christian ever. but he was deeply religious of the second inaugural address i think is the most profoundly religious state paper in american history and will never be surpassed because he spent a lifetime grappling with a gaudy and grappling with god's well and then shakespeare, loved shakespeare and knew shakespeare and could recite shakespeare by heart and you just consider those two things if you read nothing else you read in the bible that is pretty good training as a writer and he was the best presidential writer and on top of these things he was an amateur poet which also tends to make you a better writer so the words matter deeply to him and when you take out the music and

read the profound purposes that he has and the attachment to the founding and its principal, that's where you get these speeches from in the ages and also if you go back and read and look at what was in the readers, i kind of had a skeptical depiction of education at that time, but i did have these readers for kids that just had everything, excerpt of all sorts of literature and a great speeches throughout american history. one of the tragedies, like we don't have anything like that anymore really for kids. we have watered-down politically correct textbooks that have language that is forgettable at best. so he was able to soak himself in the best word that had been uttered and written in american history and her cheeks. the bible throughout human history. >> we have time for one more question. this one is from james snow,

fort lauderdale florida. is today's gop anything like lincoln's gop? >> is today's gop anything like lincoln? there is a difference that we talked about in the view of government, but i think that the economics are very similar. i think the idea that the a rising tide lifts all boats is a commonality and the devotion is a commonality and it is just astonishing to me as the politicians like ted cruce who are constitutionalist to the core they are some sort of weird rose because they care so much about the constitution and the founding of that is something where lincoln was right there. another line that he quoted from the bible was at the declaration

is like the golden apple and the constitution is the silver frames of the declaration represents the purpose of the government and what we want to achieve in the government, the quality of all men and the means of giving it is the constitution and he was confronted by the rival camps both of which wanted to distance of the constitution in important respects one of which he was allied with, the abolitionists felt that was a pact with the devil and they would burn it and tear it up and condemn it and then you have the secessionist that wanted to leave so they felt that afforded to much of the protectionist slavery and then they wanted to write another constitution because they didn't think that the constitution of four did enough protection to slavery. lincoln was in the middle of the constitution and that ultimately is the right thing in the

commonality with today's republican party. >> thank you. let's give him a round of applause. [applause] >> thank you. on your screen is author of a long way gone. you're second book is coming out. why did you choose to make it an awful? >> i went from the memoir of the nonfiction and there are issues that i write about been the new book of my experience is going back home and for people to experience the composite of a lot of things and i wanted to be able to have the freedom to play around with words and images so that is the depiction of life. >> what kind of freedom does writing a novel give you rather than nonfiction?

>> there is room to play with language and to actually may be extend certain things, occurrences, expand the bill will put more. maybe dramatize them a little bit more and also things in the same time period. in a way that is what i wanted to do in this novel talking about things that existed before the war and then after the existed a different magnitude to put them together in a way that for me allows me to do that. >> what is in an awful? >> [inaudible] looked at in a fictional way in a part of the country people really don't get to hear about it and return to. but people go back home and try

to live and start from scratch. imagine going back home and the return and it's pretty much overgrown and how do you deal with that? is a family. how do you find a way to save your family and actually go to your neighbor who may have been your enemy during the war and how do you leave the traffic of the community back together again, what did you lose, what do you gain? you know, how do you get around all of this. >> after a long way gone was published your first trip back to see a leone, was that like? >> was very difficult in the sense that i was going back to eighth place that had functioned as a boy soldier. i was going back as a young

adult who had written to date so it was very difficult just to look at the place. but also know people recognize me as well. >> are you a celebrity in ziara lenone -- sierra leone? >> ibm, when i'm there i met my flip-flops' and shorts and speak the language very well. but i try to be a regular person because i want to observe. i become a regular person when i'm there. >> "radiance of tomorrow" comes out. have you finished the book? >> i have finished the book. looking for a cover this is just a markup for now. >> we're seeing here a little booklet. that's not to be the cover,

correct? >> the one you have on there will be the same thing in this picture probably on the back and then there will be another on the front that's very different from the slums of this is just the first five chapters. when it's done and coming out. >> is this book written more in the tradition out of sierra leone rather than "a long way gone? >> everything i always right -- for me i think when you write about an experience you have two choices. i'm a political scientist background so you can write about big terms and take up the humanity out of it or you can have a very simple poignant story and then people can do all those conclusions. you don't need to give them a fury about the political climate in this country. i would never say that in my book.

i would just to describe how the audience and the public and the people that live in that country and then the reader would no. so for an example i would show joan cry. for the experience what is happening this is how i write and this comes from the older story telling people you have to capture the imagination and bring them to the rise to hear and smell and be part of the experience. you have to tap into the migration. >> where did the title come from? it comes from somewhere in the look is a strong character based on a woman, my grandmother who returns and she is trying to tell the story to the young people. they come from particular events in the book that like to go

forward. >> you talk in your second book about the war that never ends. you may mention of the civil war that has really never ended. >> whenever there is any kind of devastation, the physical wounds are the ones that are more visible and he'll quicker and everybody can see that but in general the psychological ones and all the things that have happened, those are the ones that take a long time so physically no more conscious and things like that. but other things that continue to grow that takes a much longer time. >> you can't put your life on hold to continue living.

you continue living while you try to learn what has been broken but it's a very difficult step and it requires a lot of patience and people coming back into society and willing to look up their differences because someone that is a killer will always be a killer to you and you want people to live in peace so you have to find a way to reconcile. >> have you reconciled yourself from this being able a soldier? >> in some extent. there is nothing that i can undo what happened but you can never forget them so you learn to live with the memory of the war and not react because you are not in charge of what triggers this. what triggers an emotion from the war cory flashback or nightmare. i have no control. it could be the simplest thing.

thinking i'm standing on the corner. just jogging or something i would never be able to forget. that is the difficulty of living with the memory of the war and as we grow older we have to find ways to deal with them and pass them on to people that are close to your family and things like that. >> what are the experiences of writing a long way gone and radiance of tomorrow? how are they alike and different? >> they are very different because when i was writing a long way gone i never intended to publish date. to find a way to fine tune to be able to speak five or ten minutes and think about what i wanted to say and then later on it became a group i had agreed

to publish, whereas this 1i wrote to the extension of publishing and this is when i was an undergraduate and the united states and in the african republic of every product. >> have you grown used to living in a state? >> yes [inaudible] that's how i describe myself and that's part of the culture now and i would have lived in the united states about the same year that i lived in sierra leone. so i find myself between these and it is wonderful for my life and for my thinking. >> how has a long way gone changed you and your family

because of its success? >> it's changed my life completely when the book came out we were conscious. people may not read it but it had a life of its own. i you really didn't understand what it meant to be a public person. so i had a few mistakes. when the book came out a friend of mine and i got an apartment and i gave him my name and number and all of a sudden we started getting these calls like 20, 30, 40 calls a day and we were like why are they doing that? my son would say because you are famous. really? so it was hard for me to realize what does that really mean? and also when "the new york times" magazine had a photograph

of me on the front cover and i was on the subway in new york one sunday morning and i was sitting there and literally i got on the train and left. it was funny to me. i played around with it because i was a simple person and remained that way that it changed my life tremendously. >> from lady hands of tomorrow it is in the end or the beginning of another story? every story begins and ends with a mother, grandmother, a girl, a child, every story. >> i believe that strongly because i think again going back to the traditional storytelling to every story in the book it is something that you are discovering in the end of every story you are introducing people

to the new landscaping bringing them alive and the women are the ones every story starts with that and this is from the more traditional storytelling that i grew up on being a part of and my grandmother also a very strong character in my life and actively she would tell me the most simple things like you will understand this ten years from now. that is what this book is. >> what is sierra leone like today? >> it's coming along. we put the war away officially in 2002 and we have seen a lot of development. a lot of young people like

myself going back starting small businesses and people going back home but the political climate is still in the sense that politicians are what we want in terms of people who can really move the country forward and be at the surface of the people in the country so that is still the problem and why the war started because we didn't have a government to really care for the people. it's a very small country. so it somebody is really interested in shaping the country to be one of the best in the world we can become but we have the leaders for themselves and how well they are serving the people so we have to redefine the idea of the leadership and that doesn't mean that when you are in power your the almighty but you aren't the public service. you know, you are not there to do whatever you like and embezzle funds. the country is very safe.

we have free and fair elections mel and we are moving along slowly. >> do you still see a lot of amputees? >> yes that remnant of the war still exists in some parts of the country that are very remote which i read about ingredients of tomorrow and they have been changing because they are so remote out of the capitol city where there is a lot of development. so we do see a lot of people, but a lot of people are very dignified. there's nothing you can do if your hand is that is one thing i love if it wasn't for that none of us would know what happened in sierra leone. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2.