back 5, 6, 7 years ago and culminating in the changes better so significant in terms of what we are going to pay that we have to be even more stringent. >> cuyahoga -- cleveland clinic head toby cosgrove on the future of medical care in the united states tonight at 8:00 on c-span's q&a. now on booktv cris beam examines the foster care system of the united states. be author reports on how children are moved throughout the system and profiles numerous kids including the group aging out of foster care and what that means for their future. this is a lawyer under an hour. [applause] >> it is such an honor and so exciting to be with my old friend chris talking about her beautiful book.

i loved it so much. and i thought maybe start with what got you on to the book, let's start with the most difficult emotional narrative of your life. can you talk a little bit because you do in the book -- what got you thinking about foster care and what happens when childhood is disrupted? >> guest: a couple things. first of all, thank you for being here and thank you to the strand for having us and thank you, everybody, for coming. difficult stuff. >> host: but make it funny. >> guest: funny, difficult stuff. i grew up in a crack the family. so that happened.

hy wasn't removed although i lived with a mom and left her when i was 14 and never saw her again. i lived with that pain for and longtime. there was no foster care intervention. i moved with my father and there was -- child welfare did contact -- did coming to our family but i was never removed and was always terrified that they were going to come back so i had this sort of dual fear. i needed to be removed at some point but i was afraid to be removed, i didn't want to be removed, and wanted to get through where i was so i did know, like a lot of kids i third foster care. i didn't know how to think about it. at 28 i became a foster parent and that was a complete

accident. here come some more people that i know. and adam knows this story because we were both living in l.a. at the time. there was a girl, a high school teacher, and she was my student and got in trouble when she was sent to probation school and trans gender and none of the kids knew that she was -- the guard, one of the guards found out this and told the other kid that she was, that she was born this way and they threatened to kill her and they would have. what happened was she called a group home and said you better come pick me up, they are going to kill me and the van is in use. always about a van.

is always about a van. i was thinking of calling the books of man. the van was in use so she ran -- right? right? so she ran from her school which was a violation of her probation, so they called the cops and when they called the cops they put out a warrant for her arrest, closed out her bed. she called me. i said i will come get you. we will figure this out. i will come get you. and when we finally got to her probation officer and case worker, we don't have anywhere to put her so you want her? so that is how it came about. those through that i sort of really thinking about how is this system that is designed to protect children and supposed to take care of them doing so much

harm you what wanted to look into it more deeply. >> host: such a beautiful masterful bookend five years and so rich with these powerful dep stories, many powerful beat stories and lots and lots of statistics. i wanted to go through your favorite statistics. >> guest: i asked him not to do this. i can tell stories but don't make me remember statistics because then i start making them up. >> host: which you didn't do in the book. >> guest: they are all true in the book because i double checked and double checked. >> host: i am interested in the reporting process. you spent 25 years in and out paula in very intimately in bees' lives. can you talk about maybe the greens, the family spent the most time with, described a bit what their situation is and what

you saw unfolds. >> guest: i know a lot of foster families and talked to a number of families and i was interested in finding families that loved their kids and wanted to do right by their kids because we all know there are a number of mediocre families, there are good families and there are terrible families, the terrible families make the news and make everyone say we need to change the system and nothing happens i wanted to find a family that was really great so we could see where the system has crashed so it wasn't really the family's fault but the system isn't working. i heard about this family, the greens. they are a family in brooklyn and they have 11 kids, they have adopted some. i was interested in that because they came into foster care the

way a lot of people do, any of us might. the father of the family, his sister couldn't care for her kids. an agency called and said can you take them? it was a family foster care situation, the family decided we have got room, we want more kids, let's take more, they had a good experience with their nephew to take in more. by the time i met them they had seven foster kids and work a little overwhelmed and the way they manage their overwhelm was to become very strict. they are a religious family with good, deep values and kids that had a lot of trauma. in this way it is not unusual, kids that have a lot of trauma, a lot of kids had been through many homes. one of the girls i have followed had been through 22 homes covered dream was to become adopted. a couple of the really wanted to be adopted. some had good relations or some

relations with their biological families and some didn't so what i did was what followed what happened for five years with his family. >> seems like you are there a lot. >> i was there a lot so i just hang out with them on weekends and weekdays and go to sporting events with some of the kids or hang out with the after-school or just be with them in their house and all social of 4 important events like adoption or court dates or whatever or show up but when something would happen like when a child would go back to her biological mom i would use that as a moment to look at the history of foster care because it is not a static system. we think about it often as foster care is a disaster. it changes with time.

had certain points in history it is favored by biological parents and at other points it favored removing the kids so -- >> host: a lot by the the latest rebel child murder was. >> guest: driven by news, psychological fees, various trends in culture or that is what i found so i would use these movements to pan back and look at things historically but then i was interested in the stories and come back into the story, that is how i did this. >> the fact that they are not saints, they're not perfect, you want to yell at them, but they're not heroes but doing something very road which so many of us don't do which is particularly these older kids, the kids who are not cute little

6-month-olds. the hero of the book, mary in yonkers. >> mary in yonkers happens to be. how did you guess? >> host: let's talk a little bit about mary. >> guest: one of the kids is like -- >> host: it is just when we needed most because we have gone through this journey and through the greens, you don't get lost in the sensationalist meyer of the worst cases. a solid b plus family doing the best they can, you get how agonizing this is and just when it is almost too much to bear,

the pain i can't imagine, that is when we meet mary and it feels it and i am sure mary is not a hero but she is the hero of this book. tell us about her story. >> guest: mary is a hero to me. right? right? because you keep hearing it again and again from the kids and i know this from my own daughter. dino this from talking to so many people, what kids need and the agencies don't support and i am not trying to demonize agencies because there are amazing people in the agency but systemic approaches, this sense

that people are really interchangeable, interchangeable parts and it is a whole system of interchangeable parts and we need to find a kid a bed. we talk about a bed. the right side of vacation and we're going the kid is in the wrong classification, got to move the kid and get another end put the kid in another slot and once the kid reaches a pretty the rage the kid is done and we find the kids out end married defies that logic because what she thinks about is the attachment and detach into the kids, she has a big house paula mansion and is kind of mansion, it is big and it is big. is not that chancy so don't think mention fancy. >> host: you describe it as an

acoustic guitar. >> guest: there is a little bit, it is soft. mary lets the kids stay as long as they need. we need families be on our 20 first birthdays. think of your first break and job loss and when you cry and at a loss you don't need things, you need people land that is what mary provides and she gets that and other people in the system do too but mary shows that in a way i found powerful. >> host: in describing mary's home where it these kids might come in, didn't occur to me you could think about adoption and mary does with a small but important group of people where

even if the legal system doesn't provide it taking on the responsibility of a relationship with you permanently, reading the book, you have these kids who enter the world of the book which is later in childhood, 14 or so with their sweet goofy kids and some of the kids by the end of the books are in their 20s, would be classified as scary, threats, one guy doesn't want to talk about it but clearly robbed people and this is a theme throughout the book, how foster care -- the population that foster care is supposed to address undercut so

much a societal ills that they enter the system as young children and the system somehow eject them house. if they don't marry a long way, and the caring system in the penal system. and in the statistics, and foster care, much of our society sees it about childhood but it is tied into the rest of life. >> guest: there is a link between the child welfare system and criminal justice system, but i don't know that i have all the answers as to why except i think it is deeply rooted from what i see, deeply rooted in from what i have seen in this bogan the lot of people study this but do

know a lot about it but i do think that a lot of it has to do with trauma and lack of repair. stuff the experts talk about, and 18 or 21, and they don't have connections and various crimes or whatever and that is how they end up in the criminal justice system. what i have seen is when a kid is removed at 5:00 or 6:00 or 8 or 10 and put into a stranger's house is so traumatizing. and even if there is neglect,

imagine being yanked out and thrown into a stranger's house how terrifying that is. what do you do? start wetting the bed. pretty much number one. so many kids i talk to got taken out of their first home because they wet the bed. they wet the bed and got back to the agency so what happens? they hardened. they get freaked out, they feel unloved again, they did something wrong, feel like they did something wrong first-time and the second time and then got sent to another home, if a more restrictive home and by the time they are 18 or 20, and pretty unwanted and so they don't have somebody reflecting back to them. and do your best self is and

here it is who you are as a loved member of society. it is partly about lack of resources everybody talks about but also partly about being one did and valued and that is the real reason we see a lot of flow between the two systems. that is my perspective. is a little soft but it is there. >> the shadow in the book is the thing that is warbling missing which is just a good enough childhood. people who have not the greatest parents in the world but sustained attachments over it their whole childhood. >> guest: bureaucracy and love makes strange bedfellows but love is what is missing and is most needed. fundamentally. >> host: i studied economic issues for a living. >> guest: with love.

>> host: with a lot of love. from an economic standpoint, unfortunately it does make sense this would be a neglected area because the system as you described it clearly imposes a lot of cost on us collectively as a society. but does so in a diffuse way that is hard to allocate that cost properly. it is something you want to be good at but often not good at and it is hard to think of any private actors others then people like mary who take it upon themselves but hard to think systematically hall private actors could take that on. >> is that why there's little interest in it as an economic story? you are spending $22 billion, i think why is there not more outrage that it is not being managed in a more vibrant and

interesting way? your covering an all time. >> host: from a political economic standpoint, if you are a politician in view action will be genuinely want to take on an issue that will both make the world a better place and also get you elected this would be a terrible one to take on because let's say you came up with a solution that would fix it the benefits would be very diffuse, hard to measure and would take place over decades and so if i want to win an election next year, the fact that there will be fewer arrests in 2014 or less homelessness in 2035 is a hard thing to run on but it is a constituency that frankly is less likely to vote, less likely, i don't mean to make an already potentially depressing conversation several degrees more depressing but i do think

what you are doing by articulating the many areas in which -- you do describe how reunifying the foster care system with the juvenile justice system has a negative outcome. but at least looking at the cost throughout society so at least we are aware of the my could see as moving people in the right direction. >> guest: foster care isn't a discreet hot with this treated as. i think the child welfare is actually -- touches all areas of society so that actually, when we are thinking about or writing about or talking about all kinds of public policy we are touching child welfare and one of the problems we had is we have only been talking about child welfare, has an issue over there, something that is

affecting only these people in this one area, impacting us not only in this negative way but in all kinds of ways. when talking about child welfare talking about issues of education, issues of race, issues of poverty, talking about issues -- all kinds of issues that affect all of us. i don't think it is just a discreet thing. it is not like a politician can build a building and say i built the building so elect me but i do think one of the ways to change the conversation about child welfare to talk about the way this, my culture overall if that makes sense. not to sound like a politician. >> host: i am voting for you. >> guest: we will go to questions very shortly. i sort of want to know what happened to you during this

journey. >> guest: i made a lot of charts. i made a lot of charts. at one point my editor, i had written 500 pages in you will see a very manageable 320. i had written 500 pages and my editor was like oh my god, this is a mess, you need to write all the characters on one side and all the issues on another and start laying them out and i had bulletin boards over the office and my partner, is like everywhere so that happened to me. i got very disorganized and then very organized and i really -- i have always been interested in teenagers but i really thought a lot about the teenagers most of all because what i really saw was a lot of things, i thought about the teenagers and the way the numbers changed since 1997 when clinton did the -- how the

numbers shifted. we brought the numberf foster kids down overall. that is something to cheer about definitely but we shifted the numbers, fewer little kids but what has happened is it has become a system about older kids and they are getting aged out and systemically we have addressed how to manage it and the other thing i really noticed was there are studies about the kids and what happens to them. barely any about foster parents. hardly any national studies about foster parents. we have a few in a few states but mostly it is anecdotal. we have very little data who is taking care of our kids. there are some gaps. >> host: we will go to questions. i wouldn't mind hearing from

mary a little bit. >> guest: mary. >> did you say anything specific or question? >> i found reading the book that it made me, which i never thought of before, really want to be a foster parent, and think that really seems tough. can you talk about how many foster kids you handle that have in your home and what is meant for you? >> i don't use the word foster. i was always into teenagers and that is what my passion has been. what i realized because i did begin as a foster parent and didn't know what i was doing and was not even at the beginning and what i learned, what the kids taught me, they are the most powerful teachers, they taught me that they needed one person, just me to care about

them and be there for that regardless of what they did. and they had different behavior is but it was really about they needed somebody to say they were of value. they don't come thinking that. it is difficult. i don't minimize that and to recommend you take as many as i did but it is also the most rewarding, powerful thing you can do with your life. i don't think there is anything that beep in terms of satisfaction, rewards. they are not immediate or long term but they eventually, you can survive it now, my kids are mostly grown, there is nothing but the gratitude pouring in and stuff like that and that is not what i did it for and there were many years, for 13 years when that wasn't the case but it is

still, i did it for the right reasons and wanted to help some kids and i was interested in helping lesbian teens and that didn't happen for a long time but eventually that did too. i have a mixed bag of kids. recently i would say i claims 12 kids but that number has gone up. some kids claim me so the numbers increases regardless of what i try to do to stop. the most powerful thing you can do and i increased the ages that i work with. my first child was fourteen and every year they went up and now it is 21, 22. i find them again with nobody. they leave the system with nobody and it is a constant stream of kids that are aging out with nothing, no resources. it is really tragic what we do

to our kids. >> if you can survive even jewelry gives you back. >> it is true and surviving it is not that difficult. if you are not caught up with needing instant gratification, if you are not doing it for the wrong reasons and you are really doing it, it is a very selfless thing. if you can get through it, that is what we usually say, if you get caught up in taking it personally it will destroy you but if you can maintain a distance and hold onto your sanity the kids will be okay. and you will be [speaking in native tongue] too. nothing better that you could do with your life. >> thank you so much, thank you. [applause] >> are there questions? >> my name is seen known,

director of development for health. and we have residential programs and if you are a politician you cannot easily tie advocating for restructuring the foster care system to your platform but in new york state with the advent of social impact bonds or peer for success bonds i personally think somewhere in there is a way to tie it to decrease in homelessness rates. if anyone is working on that, i think it is important. the question, the stories in your book are so tender and nuanced and beautifully rich, what do you want the book to accomplish? to highlight the stories or impact of policyholder, what is your ultimate dream for this

book's impact? >> there are couple of dreams. that is a really great question. i wanted to sort of turn up the volume on a couple of conversations that were already going on. ..

answered and more. and have it be taught in every school. last night >> insurance issued by a copy. >> yeah, hundreds of them. >> high, so you talked about the problem that i know foster care is a pretty big subject. i wonder if any particular states are better at handling it than others were more proud week, other countries that have models to look after that maybe do it differently than the natives days. >> i do think there are places that have interesting models. a step. that is quite interesting. i have a lot of hope in the waiver system and i'm curious about it and you get something that's going to change. i think it's going to change the way child welfare is. the waiver system is something florida has been the biggest

thing with it. the way to foster care is funded -- and sorry if i am telling you things you may be rad no, a lot of you. childcare is essentially funded on a per diem basis, which means every day if i take jennifer here and put into foster care. i have to remove jennifer from her family and put her into foster care in order to get any money for my agent c. i don't have any money until i remove her from care. what if you had a chance to go to. she has special needs and needs to into the residential home. she gets a little bit more money. figure out what kind of cats. and then i have to listen agency requested five for acs, from the city at the 60 adtran city has to request it from the federal

government. this is a lot of counting begins. most of the time and faster care, a lot of time spent in child care is spent counting beans. the reason we do it this way is for what date we can track where each child is and how much a child is costing them because they're public monies, we make sure the money isn't he is spent. a lot of people say we are spending our time on deeper than we ever people. so what florida did in seven cities and counties have said forget it, we will take a flat to them they don't have to remove jennifer to get the money. so florida to visit the tune of $140 million a year for five years. it's much more complicated. they could take the $140 million put it into front and services so they could do domestic violence treatment.

they could put money into the neighborhoods. they could be some front end stuff and not have to remove the kid up for a period some people say there is a perverse incentive to take the kids out in order to get the money. so florida's numbers went down. it looks kind of good. obama open this up in 2011 and said more states can apply. now there's 30 states and cities have applied a mobile see what happened. this could change the way foster care looks because we're not having this per diem system. i do think that's helpful. i think we are getting away from group homes in general. some states not so much, but we are overall pick in the group home institutionalization is not great. people mostly know that families are better than group home setting. so i think that there's movement and here we are getting appeared at their are organizations like

chapin hall center for women -- i don't know if it's their primary role, but they are due to overstay with agencies and cities to say how can we redefine what you are doing to be born child centered? is exciting stuff happening here. i don't think we are like we've got to follow senegal's model. i think we've got -- >> there are negative incentives. if there is a flat fee companies and tempted to do fewer services. >> the risk with flat feet if we go jennifer looks pretty good. jennifer is our average kid, so let's make all the services they jennifer and we are not thinking about pat and pat is like super freaky kid to move really got to take care of past meets won't get mad because were thinking about jennifer is the basic. so that's the risk with the flat fee. the overall theme of child

welfare disease got to think about every family has individual. every single kid has individual. if we could be that, we would be a million miles ahead rather than try and defend model. it's kind of you got to believe. >> pc other here when the book. [applause] >> yes, there's a question back there. we further make. >> congratulations on the book. since the book's been released, what kind of hits have you got in your e-mail from readers? what kind of remarks are you getting? >> that is so interesting that you ask. can i see you wire? okay, do read this in the book. terrain is another star of the

book. [applause] doorframe is a biological parent to foster trust the system when her child was 23 missile. is that right? and she is a very, very powerful woman. we met how many ago? six, five? okay, seven years ago. when i was teaching. she was a student of mine. so what kind of comments? a lot of people have been writing saying, saying i lost my kid and i want to know more. i just heard you on the radio. i'm really interested to know about this topic. what i've been happy with this i have an -- it's been like parents, foster parents, adoptive parents, child welfare

workers, at initiators come all kinds of people have been writing in to ask questions. i'm happy in that way because nobody is writing saying you demonize me because i don't feel like there are bad guys in child welfare in my opinion. i mean, i've met some pair of what i think are bad guys, but there's no bad guy role. so i haven't had any. most people have been pretty interested. thank you. >> you knew a lot about foster care before you started writing the book. what would you say something that surprised you the most after your five years in terms of what you learned? >> yeah, a couple things. when i started to read the research was surprised at how little was known about foster

parents and the range there is and how much training they need to give them. and some states we don't have to train them at all. some states we have to give them a lot. there's no sort of consistency in that. i was surprised, because this happened with my own daughter, how consistently, i thought she was anomaly, how consistently the kid need to stay connected with their biological family, how i saw that again and again and again. even when it is destructive to them, even when they noticed a struct is, they will go back i think the system doesn't make a law make a lot of allowances for that doesn't necessarily train their families for how to manage that and that is some tenet is to to be thought about order. yeah, i was not surprised by how

directors and commissioners speak and acronyms that are completely incomprehensible. er. there are so many really smart people in here, in this field. really, really carrying, dedicated, smart people doing great work that mostly what they are bucking up against it here craddick gridlock. that is really what i find. >> do you know as commissioner victor has read the book and if so has he commented? the comment you made is there is no wrong person in the system. i think this system is scary in itself, but i ain't that most people are on the same page.

when i think about the commissioner with the changes he is trying to make started to close to home, starting with what he's doing a prevention with the evidence-based program, it feels to me what he is trying to do to keep children in their homes are not separate them out. i'm wondering if he's read your book -- >> i interviewed him. he was -- [laughter] he was very careful. there were two media people in the room while he talked. they had a lot of hand signals. so he was being very careful when he talked to me. i couldn't quite get him to be very extemporaneous. yes, i sent him the book because he's a net.

and the book, i talk about close to home and i question what is done with close to home so far because i've been very happy. for those of you who know, close to home has been a movement to bring the kids in the residential treatment centers outside of the city, to bring them into the city and be closer to home. there's other components. so far they've been bringing the juvenile delinquent kids into the city. but their foster kids that haven't committed crimes that are not being brought back. so i question why the focus has been on the gt kids are not the foster kids at my foster kids stay in the rtc's. you know, personally would be curious to see what some of you think. i personally have some questions

about they've merged acs and juvenile justice. most people think this is a great idea because they say so many kids are too involved so they can get both services. ball, there is this presumption of a foregone conclusion. it's a little bit exciting. this is me being idealist, but what if we combined foster care and the libraries because those kids are too involved. what if we had a different kind of thinking about this? why is it always this kind of model? so i think commissioner victor victor -- we can't tell yet is my sense of him. but i don't think he's a bad guy. personally i don't think is a

bad guy, but it's hard to tell exactly. he's a politician, you know? >> hi. i'm hairy. i'm just a bystander, interested bystander. the >> thank you for the work you are both doing. i just have a question. you've been giving us a sense of the public. one of the reasons we can't get more system energy for the public is because there is no both in addition to the fact that kids aren't voting in the social workers are voting. there isn't anyone to go forward because no one is touting this as an issue. were we in terms of sunday the general public will say i'm not in a not going to take it anymore. do you have any sense of that? be vacuuming people with enough of the child welfare system? >> the general public. the people who don't know about foster care.

>> does anybody feel that people are going to rise up? >> i have an opinion about that. >> go ahead. >> i might have heard it your show. on one of the npr shows about how politicians. it depends what committee they are wrong and how easily be electable they are going back to this idea. the education committees for the federal government, those people who sit on those committees get the least amount intonations because they are not sitting on the energy committee to get in all the petroleum dollars. they are not the real movers and shakers. because who is funding the education system? >> definitely not exxon or dupont or, you know, i'm in the

pharmaceutical -- like us. i can't remember what program, but this speaks to exactly what you are saying on how do we look at this system and then who -- how do we as individuals look at the system and who are we going to entrust inside the federal government to actually listen to us because we don't have those kinds of funds? >> there's a congressional caucus on foster care now that's mostly representatives. there are 100,000 of them. karen bass and charlie rangel and michele bachmann. [laughter] so it's bipartisan, which, you know -- what? [inaudible] >> issue bipolar?

know, bipartisan. by spreading rumors. i [inaudible] >> date and a congressional listening to her, which is god's attention. they do york. they've done a leg, miami, somewhere. they've been going around. i don't think it has big bucks, but it has a lot of people and that's the first time this is ever happy. there is some political movement here. >> i would be the way anything would change the politician who had power for some other reason decided for some personal reason -- i remember spending a day at capitol hill with a lobbyist for the haitian government. they have note hole in the world and they just needed to find the senators and congresspeople who just happen to have visited

haiti. or had a staff member who is from haiti. but when they found those people and got them together, they can sometimes get those people to use a tiny shard of their power in a good direction. >> and i'm not tip, that's what this book really taught me and what is true about foster care. it is not a system update. it's about those personal connections. that's the networks that is when you know some i.d. and when you are pulled in to care or you become a parent, you know that kids can care about that kid. that's when it works. that's when the magic happens. that is where we're actually going to see some change. it's not about really changing the system in a big way. it's not like we can rebuild the building. it is knowing someone individually but working within

that. >> i think that's analogous actually when people change their minds. that's how it works. >> i mean, i hate my brother but not -- [inaudible] i think we are running out of time. i found myself, which had never occurred to me before, feeling that maybe i'd like to be a foster. what's involved? maybe pat can talk about his remarkable program, which is a little different. maybe we could ask pat to talk about what does it take? how does someone become a foster parent? >> there's a practical thing that should take it state-by-state, state, city by city. so it's practically not impossible. that's not the hard part.

what's amazing about this program, you've got to believe, is they start with the kids. they start with you that kid knows. the idea is it's homelessness prevention rather than thinking about it. that's what i wrote about it because it's not an 80s thing that says as a kid commuters a crisis. but the kid in available bed. who does that kid now? the kid knows somebody. all the families that i know work. my daughter is in trouble so i said we love each other, let's make this work a long time. that's why worked part-time because they committed to her and cared for her. they find kids throughout the agencies and they say who do you know and from that they work with the parent didn't give them the support. i may not be explained at the best way. do you want to give it a shot?

>> that was very nice. the other thing is we are still very interested in anybody like you for the general public to take a learning experience because we've made wonderful connections with people, with young people they previously did not know because we actually have been sharing the same time and space during the education process. i would say senate immediately to take a 10 week learning experience. you know, we are doing -- bring your wife with you. there's no commitment to take a learning experience. we've had lots of people from the general public connect with a kid because they became acquainted to the learning experience. everybody in this room to just learn about it. even if it's 20% and that's what we need.

>> is that typical you would start with the training program and get certified? >> yeah come you take a class and usually in new york the last 10 weeks. then what happens -- this happens in every state. someone comes in your house -- you're adopting through a private agency. they make sure you have it bad in the right number of square feet and make sure to do a background check and that your house looks fine. idea back >> but this is to legally do it. they put you on my list and tell them what kind of person you want and it goes from there. if you want to do it, it's not that hard. what happens is when the kids come. then it's a story.

the setup is not the problem. [inaudible] >> wonderful. we have come to the end of a time for the evening. thank you so much, cris beam and adam davidson for joining us this evening. [applause] if you haven't already, take out a copy of "to the end of june." have a great night. [inaudible conversations] >> i am very pleased to present this audience, my new book, women of the gulag. portraits of five remarkable

lives. as they said about writing letters, it is more difficult to write a short than a long one. my book a short and it attempts to capture site, so that smells of the great terror from 1937 to 1938 through the eyes of five women caught up the next word area circumstances. i wish you think collectively my friends and colleagues at the hoover institution, the hoover institution library and archives. the hoover press, without which this book could not have been written. there's too many here. i'd like to thank you collect delay. now to the book itself, i said this before, but it's a good way to introduce the topic.

stalin is reported to have said that the one is a tragedy. the death of a million is a statistic. those of us who studies of the russian talent to this trap. we saved millions who died in the hundreds of thousands shot during the great terror in the millions of men, women and children whose sidedness concentration camps and settlements. many admire today's russia and even wise admit that stalin made is that things. but if you look at it in its totality, maybe it's worth it.

today stalinists among the most admired figures in contemporary russia, which may be hard for us to believe. my stories transported to the statistic to the tragedy. they tell us that overwhelmingly has the guns were very people, confused why they had been singled out. they tell us to find dividing lines between perpetrator and the doomed. unlike hitler's germany, the executioners became the executed. their stories tell us that the wives and children of the repressed could contaminate others and they had to be isolated from society also. each part of my book begins in

stalin's office as he and his henchmen finalize their decrees of repression. i then follow these decreases the filter down to our five families. and this presentation, i leave stalin out. that is for you to read about when you buy the book. i want to instead introduce you to four of my five willing. you have to read the book to learn about the fifth. my women were not select it in any sign a thick fashion. rather i read through hundreds, probably more than hundreds of unpublished memoirs, primarily collect good by the foundation until i found subjects to describe in enough detail their lives during and after the girl

out. i did not want to write a story about women having barbed wires. rather, i wanted to get to know each family and to share their tragedy with my readers.

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>> the power of this state. benjamin wiker obtained a ph.d. in ethics from vanderbilt university and has taught in many colleges, the brokers moral darwinism, how we became hedonists showing darwinism completely undermines the ethical foundations of christianity, judaism and islam because its materialism, cosmology is incompatible wi