someone. it is the face of quiteness. there is something holy about that that. >> it is an intimidating term for me. it is possible in the spiritual life to show courage when you do something like a pointed decision. but holy people have a long obedience in the same direction. it is a set of habits that result again and again. it is like the rewiring of your own mind in some way. it can't be done in a moment.

a man's habit become character. it is the look of the life time. when you do meet people in that category there is a kind of radiance. >> i agree. david, michael, thank you so much. [applause]

>> booktv is on facebook. like us to get scheduling use, schedule updates, behind the scene pictures and to like authors and talk to authors. >> we continue with mary piper, author of the middle of everywhere, that examines the lives of refugees who have been relocated in nebraska. >> refugee is a legal definition and it means a person who can not stay in their country of origin because of a danger to themselves or their family. to become a refugee there has to be an adjudication process that

allows a certain group of keep to be called such. i just heard on national public radio today there are 39 million internally displaced refugees. this is people in their own country but no longer have homes. it is the most people in the history of the world. i don't know the number for displaced other countries but i am sure it is at an all-time high. and most americans have read about libya and people are risking their lives on these boats trying to cross the mediterranean into the italy. people leave because of war, famine, because they are likely to be killed for their political beliefs. refugees come to many cities across america. they are selected in a process

no one understand. but fargo, north dakota is a refugee resettlement community, des moines lincoln is one. they have good social services and available employment. so that is why one reason places like that are picked. on the other hand the federal government does nothing to help refugees beyond meeting them at an airport, usually in san francisco or jkf in new york and hand them a ticket to the town they have been assigned to go. people have no control over what city they are sent to. they don't even know necessarily until they open the envelope. usually families are kept together, friends of a lifetime people that escaped together and have been friends since the

beginning of their lives are separated never to see each other. if they are handed a ticket to buffalo, new york they go to buffalo. if they are handed a ticket to lincoln, nebraska that is where they come. so people land where they are sent. not only do they get no help from the federal government. but they actually have to pay the money for the plane ticket back. as soon as they get a job and make money the wages are gar garnished. if you think about a family speaking no english coming from sudan with four children that is $8,000 in debt before getting off the plane they have to deal with. so the people who had help them

are local community service agencies or church groups. the catholic social services has been very important here. lutheran family services have been important here. one of the arguments i make is that every refugee that comes here needs a cultural broker and that is a person that can help them deal with our complicated technology culture. i did this work in 1999-2000 and lincoln nebraska had 54 languages in our public schools. we had people coming from all over the world. my background is in psychology but i got really interested in working with this population because i realized i could learn a lot about families and

teenagers, and geography and history and language by visiting with people coming from all over the world and i could go home and sleep in my own bed. i didn't have to travel even. i always became very involved in the lives of many of the refugees and met and i am still friends with many of them. when i started being a cultural broker and helped introduce them to other people and get jobs one of the most complicated things was buying a car and getting a driver's license and understanding car insurance. that was a big project. and many people come from places where there were no vehicles. so the most basic car maintenance. i don't know how people my husband taught to change the oil in the car and check the water.

they didn't know things like one of the risks in nebraska is hypothermia. you have to stay warm. they didn't know how to walk ice so they would fall down. i would visit a home and refugees from some parts of the world that were not industrialized would have can goods in the fridge and milk in the cupboard. how to cross streets using green, yellow and red light signs, how to use a parking meter. everything was new. and segueing with the major american systems like health care, schools, business -- those are all enormous issues. medical care. many of the countries where these people come from have a different idea about the cause of disease, treatment of disease and so on. helping people learn the basics

about the american medical system and how to interact with it one of the rules i had was first-time rules. in other words, any time someone has their first trip to department of motor vehicles and their first trip to the dentist and job application and visit to a school or doctor. someone needs to go with them and talk them through that. i remember taking a young woman from afghanistan for an mri. and she had been tortured locked in small cells, and when why got to that mri machine she was overwhelmed. and we needed to do a little therapy on the spot to calm her down to the point she could get through the mri. so there is enormous challenges. language. the children of refugees pick it up quick.

women pick it up faster than men. the older people have the hard hardest time. so very soon the kids can speak english and they translate for the parents and the parents don't understand the culture and no body is in charge of the family because the parents don't understand what is going on well enough to intervene with their own children. when i was working at lincoln high school there was a boy in the office and the principal told him to call home and say he was missing school he called home and told his mother the principal said he needed a black leather jacket and it took a while to say what was going on. and he kept missing school and showed up in a black jacket. a translator worked through it and got it figured out

eventually. but refugees are resilient people if they were not they would make it here. every book i write, i write because i want people to do something. i value good writing, but that is not what i ask of my own writing. i ask what impact it will have on the world. i want to write advocy writing. i wanted to write something about teenage girls being mis misunderstood. there is a lot of misinformation about refugees and a thorough lack of understanding of the problems they come from and face

in our country. at the end of the book the main thing i encourage readers to do is become a cultural broker. work at a literacy center. if you see a refugee walking down the street with a heavy couch on their back stop and ask them to help move it. if you see someone confused in a grocery store about how to check out help them understand how to go through the check out line. the interesting thing is when people do this they have fun. they enjoy it.

and they really feel good about being able to interact in such an informal and direct way with people whose lives that were never understood by the way. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to lincoln and the other cities visited by local content vehicles go to cspan.org/localcontent. >> lawrence wright, thank you for being here.

let's start with 13 days in september. where did the idea for this peace process and this summit start? >> it was roseland carter's idea. jimmy carter went and got elected and had in his mind that he wanted to bring peace to the middle east which was a crazy dream. no body in his administration encouraged it but he audited middle east leaders and trying to sound them out and he was disappointed until me met anwar. he fell in love. he said he loved him many times. that is not the normal language of diplomacy. but he was very discouraged about how it was going and finally his wife was at camp david and she said why not bring them here and get them away from the press. they thought they would be three or four