the protesters he is also one that helped to organize the weatherman but it was a revelation to me i expected him to be very defensive of the things that happened in he said the things we had done were foolish, wrong, he currently lives and in your state of poverty in mexico serving as a teacher for pork indian children feeling he can make up things by not having luxuries'. i did not talk to bill ears as he was not directly involved so i cannot offer an opinion on that. >> could this happen today?

there are still crazy people and to follow crazy people. >> we have had demagogue's route history but what i have heard from other people is when minutes in is discussed they compare him to hitler. . .

they said, baysed on your interaction with him, are you surprised charles manson did what he did? and dr. smith said, no, i'm not surprised charles manson led people to these terrible acts. i'm surprised there are so many a potential charl charles mansons who are still around. it's going to happen and keep happening, but if we can just demystify these people, and if my book accomplishes nothing else, i hope it is demystification, he is going to be with us but let it by the truth about him rather than the self-serving legends he has put

out there. i thank everybody for coming out. so nice to see you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or the title in the search bar and click search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking, share, and selecting the format. become booktv streams live every weekend. booktv.org. >> next, an interview with ishmael be beah on his book, radiance of tomorrow. this is about 15 minutes. >> on your scene is issue beah,

memoirs or a boy soldier. your second book is coming out. why did you choose it to make it a novel? >> guest: i want to depart from the memoir, the nonfiction, and secondly the issues i'm writing about in this -- in the new book, radius of tomorrow, is about a lot of people. so my experiences going back home after war, and i wanted to be able to have the freedom to play around with words and images, so that's why it's fictionalized. >> host: what kind of freedom does writing a novel give you rather than nonfiction? >> guest: well, with a novel, there's room to play with language more, play with image more, and to actually maybe accent certain occurrences and expand it a little more, maybe dramatize them a little bit more, and also tie in things

that are not necessarily from the same time period but are still current. so in a way that's what i wanted to do in this novel, where i'm talking about things that existed before the war, and then after the war they existed again. so try to put them together in a way i think that allows me to do that. >> host: what is -- >> guest: it's a town that is in sierra leon but look at a fictional place. in a remote part of the country where people don't get to hear about. these are places that were devastated by the war, and people go back home and try to live there again, starting from scratch. imagine going back home to your vic destroyed by war and it's overgrown, and you have to start. how do you find a way to sustain

your family, actually live next door to your neighbor who has been your enemy during the war, and how do you weave the fabric of that community back together again. what do you lose? what do you gain? what -- how you get around all of this. that's. >> host: after the book was published, your first trip back to sierra leon, what was that like? >> guest: very difficult because i had gone back to place i functioned as a boy soldier and i was going back as a young adult who had -- who has written and had some writing now. so very difficult to look at the places. it brought back a lot of difficult memories, and now people recognize me as well. >> host: are you a celebrity there? >> guest: yes, yes, i am.

but i try to hide under the radar. when i'm there i'm in my flip-flops and shorts, and i speak the language very well. so i just try to be a regular person because it's good for my writing as well. want to observe without people feeling i'm intrusive, so i become a regular person. >> radiance of tomorrow" coming out in january of 2014, have you finished the book? >> guest: i have finished the book. it's coming out with just looking for a cover. we already have some. this is a mock. >> host: what we're seeing in this booklet is not to the -- is not the cover. >> guest: the type on this is the same thing and this picture in the back and another cover on the front that is different. this is just the first five chapters to give poem a taste of it. but it's done and coming out. >> host: is this book written more in the tradition of sierra

leone rather than "a long way gone." the story telling, everything i write is like that. for me, when you write about any human experience, you have two choices, politicize the brown and write in very big terms and take the humanity out of it, or tell a simple, beautiful, poignant story, and then people can draw those conclusions you want them to draw. you don't have to give them the theory. this political climate is like this in this country. i never say that. i just describe how the audience and the public and the people who live in that country, how that's affects them, and then the reader would know what this is, so i always make an example. instead of saying that john cried, i would show john crying so the reader will know that john is crying itch don't have to tell them job -- john is

crying, so this is how i write, and this comes from the oral tradition of story-telling. you have a capture they're emergencies and smell and be part of that experience. you have to tap into theirs imagination. >> host: where did the title come from? >> guest: "radiance of tomorrow." the title comes from somewhere in the book where there's a woman who is based on my grandmother, she is trying to tell the whole story to some of the young people and a really comes from a particular event where she is telling the story why they should be hopeful for life to go forward. >> host: you talk in your second book, "radiance of tomorrow" about the war that never ended. you make a mention of the civil war, the ten-year war that has really never ended.

>> guest: yes, because what -- when wars end -- it's kind of devastation, sort of the physical wounds are the ones that are more visible and heal quicker and everybody can see that. but internal wounds, the psychological ones, and all the things that happened, they take a much longer time. so the wars may en -- end physically but all the things continue to brew under the table in people so that takes a much longer time other. while that is going on people are still trying to find a way to live together. you can't put your life on hold. you continue living while you try to mend what has been broken. so it's a very, very difficultest and very careful thing. requires a lot of patience, requires people coming back in society and everybody willing to look look at them differently. if you look at your neighbor as

a killer, you can never live in peace next to them. so you have to find a way to reconcile with this. so that's what -- >> have you reconcileddous from this? bag boy soldier? to some extent. there's nothing i could do to undo what happened, but with the memories, which i never forget. so you learn to live with the memories of war and not react because you're not in charge of what triggers it. what triggers an emotion from the war, or flashback or nightmare, i have no control. it could be the simplest thing by somebody walking fast. so all i have control of is not reacting and thinking maybe i'm standing on the corner of some street in new york and somebody walks past and just jogging or something. put it in a different context. i will never be able to forget. that's the difficulty of living with the memories of war.

they're with you for the rest of your life, and when you're older you have to find ways to deal with them so you don't pass it on to people who are close to you and family and things like that. >> host: what were the experiences of writing "a long way gone" and "radiance of tomorrow" where did you write them? how are they different? >> guest: they're very different. when i was writing "a long way gone" i never intended to publish it. five, ten minutes, and a very short disstink way what i wanted to stay. and then later on it became a book. this one i wrote with the intention to publish it. this was written in -- in the united states and new york, in central african republic, in

italy, and sierra leone. >> host: have you grown used to living in the state? >> guest: yes. i go home frequently. i'm a sierra leone and american. i'm part of both cultures now, and fairly soon i will have lived actually in the united states about the same years i lived in sierra leone. and it's wonderful for my life, for my thinking, for my writing. >> how has "a long way gone" changed you, changed your family, because of its success? >> guest: changed my life completely. the first book -- when the book came out, all cautious, because of the content, people may not read it and then it just had a life of its own. on what i -- beyond what i

expected. i really did not understand what it meant to be a public person so i had a few mistakes. just a regular kid so i was -- and i just got here from college so when the book came out, friend of mine, college buddy and i moved into an apartment and set up a telephone and i gave them my name, and the private number, and all of a sudden we started getting these calls, literally, 20, 30, 40 calls a day. we're like, oh, how are they doing that? and realize, because your famous. and realizing what does that really mean, and when "the new york times" magazine had a photograph of me on the front, and i was on the subway in new york, and one sunday morning, and i'm sitting there, and literally everybody looked up and i got on the train. just funny to me. i played a