courage to work and make purpose a priority. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you would like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week.

look for the sounds in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> when i joined a small group evaluating the evidence on bin laden, it was a very hard call. we had intelligence that had been painstakingly gathered, that pointed towards this

compound in abbottabad, but the best you could say was that it was a 40-60% probability. so it was a lot of gut check. does this look like a place that would be housing bin laden? what are the facts that would lead you to that conclusion? and the president's advisers were divided, not because one was right and one was wrong, but because we were all really working hard to come to the very best recommendation. at the end of the process i recommended to the president that he perceived with the seal a tie, although i knew, and my heart was in my throat the entire time that this was a very big and risky undertaking. and then finally the phone rang one night at my home in washington and on the other end, what are my age was the blind dissident has escaped from house arrest and wants to come into our embassy. we have to make a decision right now. is in a car headed towards beijing. he was injured when he escaped,

his foot was hurt. this will be very controversial with the chinese to you are on your way to china, and that one turned out to be for me an easier call because i think are most important, our most important argument to the rest of the were busy we are, what we stand for. so i say go get him. than it took a number of days to sort out the diplomatic problems that we had with the chinese because of that. so all of this is a constant balancing of all the different values, interest, security considerations that you have to take into account. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> booktv what are you reading this summer? >> one of the books that i just started that i'll be finishing over the next few weeks is "the big burn" by timothy egan.

and he walks through some of history of the creation of a national forests are it all was good to know your history when you're on a committee like energy and natural resources, and great stories of teddy roosevelt and the big fire of 1910. and hopefully some lessons that we can apply even today. >> anything else on your list? >> i'm also reading come looking forward to reading a book called the second nuclear age by paul bracken. it's a book that center jack reed gave to me when i came to the senate. i've always ha had a real intert given new mexico's history and our role in the nuclear deterrent, looking forward at this very changing post-cold war landscape of regional nuclear power. what does that mean for our policy. some looking forward to seeing what he has to say and hopefully

get some answers along the way as well. >> what are you reading this summer? tell us what's on your summer reading list, tweet us at booktv. posted your facebook page or send us an e-mail, a tv at c-span.org. >> we are tracked ubiquitously, intimately and all the time. like i think it's easier just to assume that are very few times that we are not tracked. and by that most people will say to me will say to become a longtime civil say, and, i bet of four technology magazines like the guardian and so. they will say it doesn't affect me because i'm not a facebook or my grandmother is not on facebook that i said to them, first of all i think the number is something like there is 45 million people whose photos are on facebook and two can be facially identified through tagging and may not even be on facebook. so the fact to say like my

activity and my behavior that i know about means that i'm not being tracked is in general actually just untrue. >> author john havens on how your personal data is tracked and used and tips on how to secure your digital footprint tonight at eight eastern on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> next an interview with a journalist jenny nordberg from book expo america, the publishing industry annual trade show held at the javits convention center in new york city. >> joining us now on booktv is jenny nordberg. what do you do for a living? >> i am a foreign correspondent based in new york. i write for a swedish paper called -- the national swedish paper and am also an investigative reporter who has worked a lot for a american immediate. >> how long have you been a journalist? >> i had been there since 2002 when it came to columbia to go to graduate school.

>> you're a pulitzer prize winner? >> i was part of a project that won a pulitzer prize to be exact. it was an investigation into the american railway station for the new york times. >> the swedish paper be work for, isn't comparable to the near times? is it outside? >> woulwe like to think so, cer. i say "the wall street journal" maybe, the conservative version of a national newspaper in sweden if there is such a thing. >> how often have you been to afghanistan? >> i came there for the first time in 2009. that was my first trip. i came late to this war. since then i've been back almost every year living there for about three months at a time. my last trip was last summer in 2013. >> what is it about afghanistan that attracted you? >> i think i first became their with the idea that it wanted to understand the war, the way i

thought the second big war of my generation. and also a big crime that was going on against my time, with women. i wanted to understand what was happening there and why there was this story of fundamentalists and the suppression and especially against women. >> what was about trying? >> in afghanistan, it's considered to be the worst place on earth to be a woman, according to the u.n. but it's also the most dangerous place to be a woman. and why is that? why have women no rights are most? why do all the rights belong to me and? why can't women leave the house or work or drive cars, and why is there such obvious against women? there's an enormous prevalence of domestic abuse and women burned themselves to death and things like that. so wanted to just figure out what was going on in our time

right under our noses against women. >> before we get into the book that came from your experience in afghanistan, what was your personal experience as a woman in afghanistan? >> you mean working there as a reporter? it's an absolute advantage to be a woman, to be a female reporter in a very conservative country. because you get access to both parts of the population to get access to men as a foreigner in almost being -- and have access to the women were as a male reporter would have difficulty speaking to women because they are so secluded and so protected. so as a woman you can go between the two genders, and that gives you an enormous advantage actually. you are seeing almost as a third gender, as a foreign entity. and for that reason they also allow you to come into their lives. >> jenny nordberg, how did your experience in afghanistan, this

book "the underground girls of kabul." who are these girls? >> the underground girls of kabul as i think of them, they are part of a secret practice that goes on in afghanistan right under the surface where little girl actually being brought up as boys pics of the girls have so little value there, it's a very strict patriarchy, gender segregation were men of almost all the rights. been born a girl is often seen as a disappointment to their family. they prefer sons because sons are who will inherit. they will carry on the family name. it's almost like you think of our own history far back, our own for mothers and forefathers, the suns were very, very important for a family. if you don't have any sens sonsa family, the family is considered weak, it's a vulnerable. for families then who don't have any sons, they will many times

take a girl and they will cut off her hair and put it in the hands and let her out into the world, more than the world would normally be allowed to do. >> what's the term that is used for the? >> it means dressed up as a boy, just one of the official languages in afghanistan. i found this out because an afghan, i spoke to an afghan about this and she said it's -- so turn that those actually a term for those who officially don't exist. that's when i realized that there must be many more of these girls. >> that's a you discovered this practice? >> i discovered this practice originally why anything a female parliamentarian on the topic of women and what it was like. she invited me into her, her family and into her house to me when she was in another room i spoke -- his fortune and i spoke to her twin daughters, and the

family had been presented to me as having three daughters and a young boy. and the two oldest girls said to me, you know our brother is really a girl. and then i thought that, i was like okay, you know, they speak broken english and i thought we had a language issue. i thought to myself what are they talking about? and then i met the son of the family, a six-year-old child who came in with a whole different body language and attitude, short, spiky hair shooting a toy gun at me. you know, presenting himself at the time as a boy. and i was too afraid to ask a mother about this. i didn't really know what to do. this was completely a boy to me. so i didn't say anything for quite a while. i did the whole interview. we spoke for a long time, and

finally she said i have, you know i have for doctors. and i knew, i think then, that she was ready to tell me the story of her family, which is a bishop dressed her youngest daughter as a son. >> how prevalent is this practice? >> no one knows. there's no statistics agency of reliable time in afghanistan. there is very little in terms of libraries and research and. most of what's done like that now are done by westerners. none of the westerners there knew anything about this practice. i tried to ask them. there are million-dollar projects going on in afghanistan for a decade now to figure out the country and afghans and the culture, but they couldn't really help me when i began to ask around about this, so i had to find it myself. i had to become the expert on

this. and to answer your question, what would like to see, you know, what i conclude is it's not uncommon, according to afghans that i've spoken to. i've spoken to many. it cuts right across social class, education, you know, geography. every family that lacks a son will consider doing this. some will do it, some won't. there's usually one in a school, you know, the teachers will know about it. doctors will often know about it. neighbors will have an idea. the way i describe it is it's almost as the american expression, "don't ask, don't tell." like every afghan will know someone. they will know of a friend or a colleague or someone they went to school with. everyone will be for me with it. but it's a culture also in society of mining on business.

and staying out others' affairs. so they are there. they right in front of our eyes. but to most people they will just be boys on the street. >> is almost in a sense like the last generation having a son or daughter who is gay here in the states of? >> it's exactly like that, that's a very good analogy. and that also, and if you take it even further and think about what it means. when one gender is so suppressed and so despised and so unwanted, and has happened throughout her own history with sexuality, religion, ethnicity, race, all those things, when you cut out one and say, you know, that that is worth less than the other, there will always be people who try and, you know, just pretend to be something they are not, or

someone they are not out of necessity. and sometimes out of, you know, to resist, to say that i need to be a part of society, even though i'm not of the preferred kind. >> jenny nordberg, these young girls, do they have any say in whether they're being raised as boys or girls? >> according to my research, no, not really because these are children. so how many times can you really speak about free will and choice when it comes to very small children? i mean, many of them are made into boys so to speak and brought up as sons from the point where they are born. if there is a fourth or fifth girl born in a family, that child would be designated as the family's son. and then they are nurtured and cultured as boys and young men. and in that i don't think you can speak as much choice.

so rigidly the children don't really have a say, and most of the time they don't have a say when parents required that they become women taking because that's the culture. you were supposed to marry in an arranged marriage and you're essentially sold off to another family. >> so at puberty these girls race as boys become girls again, or women, young women? >> again, considering some of them may never have known the female gender, they know nothing about being girls, they know nothing about women. and in a culture, in a country so segregated and where the genders are so separated, they don't really know what goes on on the other side. so they don't even know, you know, they don't know how to speak to women. they don't know how do sit like a woman, behave like a woman or carry themselves. so it's like they essentially have to train themselves to become women, to become the gender that they have never

known. and, in fact, no, they don't have much say. some of them resist very strongly and some of them succeed, very few i believe, but in most cases that's when the curtain comes down pretty much. that's when the world is closed again. [inaudible] >> sorry? >> who is the hero in your book? >> the teenager, sorry. she is a 15 year-old girl number 15 when i met her. she had gone into puberty as a young boy, growing up as the family's son since the age of two or three. her mother was exactly sure. and she is, she's very conflicted. she has all this other young men. she looks like a dashing tom cruise type of look, young man with shiny hair and wearing

jackets off the shoulders and sort of a hunched over look like this. she is becoming a young woman physically, but she is resisting her parents attempt to bring her into the fold and become a woman essentially. and i followed her for a few years trying to come how they try to make a more feminine essential because she is like why would i want to be a woman when i see how women are treated in afghanistan? why would i want to do that? or as another woman said, i am free now. why would i want to go to prison? >> jenny nordberg, how did you gain the trust of these families and girls to talk to them? >> it took a long time. i worked with very good people in afghanistan. that's the only way to do it. there's no phonebook even define

these families and these girls and the bacha posh. so little by little through connections and taking the time and patience and being very respectful. you can't just barge into people's homes and expect them to share their innermost secrets. many of these, and i met and interviewed many more of them, you know, that are in the book right now but several of them had never told their story before. they were living as women now, married women may be with children, and a history of being boys and young men that they have never spoken about before. so over several years i spent time with them, and these are some extremely brave women in the book who also decided to tell their stories to open up a window, if you will, you know, into what is actually going on

in afghan society and with afghan families. because the way i see it is also mirrors the whole construction there of a very harsh patriarchy and gender apartheid. >> is there a danger to these girls and these families input in this book? >> you can never predict everything that's going to happen in the universe. this has been a very different process for me as a journalist, because most of the time as a reporter you want people to tell you as much as possible. in this case it's almost in a reverse negotiation, when they've opened up to me and i said that i don't know if we should include this, you know, this is potentially controversial. i changed some details. sometimes i changed names. i tried as far as possible to protect these women and girls, and entire families, as much as

possible. and it's been -- it's a tricky process, and they have many times been very bold to say, well, i want to go what it's really like it. like my main character, she said i want to show the reality of afghanistan the so there's a success story over as a very unique woman, kind of the story we want from afghanistan, someone who comes from a village and sits on parliament. we love that store but she's also decided to show herself as a human being and some of the ugly and some of the week that we all have in us, and that's a very conscious decision by her, and also and to invite me into her family. i tried to take that very respectfully and carefully. ..

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