safely it seems that the law to ask and it goes back to what my father said to me. you are no better than anyone else and no one is better than you are. [applause] i've spent more time thinking about fat van any other thing she said because this is one of those things that seems very simple and it's one of the most profound things. this gives us the confidence to walk into a situation with people who may be different than we are and to feel confident we can hold our heads high.

she felt it was her prerogative as a lack of women in the segregated south and this environment to extend herself to all of the people she works. with. the white male engineers. she had such a transcendent and humanity, and a true equality of meeting people as equals, regardless of who they were. there are so many times in this situation i think what would catherine johnson's father say about them, how would i employ this view are better than no one else and no one is better than you because it seems very simple, and she says a that as f it were very simple.

that is one of the things i feel like i've learned a lot in this research. >> one more question. >> will you have another time to sign books blacks >> i will be back in november if marvel can ever see. [applause] >> that will be another opportunity, it might be -- i will talk with the museum and, you know, we will kind of work out the logistics, so that we can get as many books assigned as possible. so, i think that is it and i thank everyone for coming.

[applause] >> deathless margot talking about her book. tonight on the tv c-span2, we are talking about some of publishers weekly's best books of 2016. up next, we have gary young and his book another day in the death of america. >> host: i am really excited as you can see. [laughter] i'm really excited to talk with you so i'm going to ask you the question.

then in the u.s. ten years when you wrote this. you could have written so many different books. why this one? >> guest: i had done this as an exercise for the guardian magazine, the paper i worke worr in 2007. when i did that at the time, i thought this could be a book. i was tasked with finding the children on that day in 2007 and i was blown away by so many of the stories many of which didn't make the news and i thought this could be the book. so when i got the opportunity a few years later, then i did. it's one of those things foreign people don't understand about the culture.

i'm not sure that i ever fully understood it. and yet by the time i finished the book, i had been in the country and had to american children, my wife is american. for a long time, i assumed i was going to be here. i have skin in the game. >> host: i have lived abroad also and i end up getting questions about all kinds of things that are uniquely american. succumbing to the project, what was your sense of the american culture? >> guest: i think i had not quite understood. i had assumed the mass shootings, which are the things that get the most attention that that is how most younger people died.

and i didn't really give them enough thought to the aggregate number around the country who would be killed in this way was with accidental shootings and the toddler that finds a gun behind a pillow while his dad is asleep the feature that you see in the news every two or three days just before the weather and meanwhile, this is going on all the time so it forces the kind of readjustment of your

understanding of where you are. >> i find it interesting that in your answer you said you were endeavored to create context because we have a lot of reports on crime and the fbi, the cia. everybody but the numbers everywhere. but what i saw you doing was trying to figure out what is it about these, so can you talk about the context that you found? >> guest: with each one, what they tried to do, there is the fact i wasn't trying to litiga litigate, it wasn't forensics. in aland all of these cases thes

a context that everywhere there was a context, so what else is going on. who else can i talk to. so to get a new one. they thought that it was drug related and that he had a red hoodie and pans. cover you look where he was shot dead in the housing projects where he lives, where his mother lefleft that's where he was shot dead. then where his father lived, this is where he grew up in next-door is a factory that had been closed down.

it's the people affected the industrialization and so. it's more or less like a classic american corporation that compares it to mcdonald's and so not to excuse anything but this is what is going on around that time. there are those broad things that one can say to even explain

but just to describe. >> host: one of the things about the inner cities, you found similar circumstances in suburbia. >> guest: there's only one who was killed in a brutal area, but then there's a couple killed in very small towns and yes, basically nobody is immune to this. there is the sense that people should be. there is a very general sense

where that's where things like this happen and for a young person shot dead in those areas, you can't challenge the understanding of the way the government works. you speak to the journalist and say it's not so surprising that someone would get shot in that t area, so it becomes not news, but that phrase when a dog bites a man, that isn't news. if the man bites dog that's news. but after the way of people are being shot in the area and so then they ask why do they keep writing the same people and where are these dogs. as onso one of the reports saysu become desensitized to it. the people that live in the area become desensitized because there are children that are at risk.

>> host: i'm going to read a little bit from this chapter because this caught my eye. you said the indifference is less a byproduct within the unconscious mission or from the deathedead weight of power and privilege. that is a pretty big finger that you are pointing. >> guest: it is. i am talking mostly about the media. if you are talking about the media that is overwhelmingly white and not likely to live in areas like this, then it's not that you think i don't care about these people, but you just think you don't know anybody

that's been shot. this isn't happening to you. it's not happening in your neighborhood. it's happening over there. and so tha the dead weight of privilege and the university education. it leaves you thinking this is something that happens to people like that and after a while, the people like that is in the way that some see they are a different species. but in the chapter, one of the first comments after his death is a woman samuel was walking

down the road in this shot dead after 11 in dallas, which is a kind of poor black and latino area with a reputation for being violent. ..

>> >> there must be a reason. >> that brings me to one of of things that to challenge the notion that of course, we expect them to happen to people in other places. that is one of the themes that comes out is the fact that we do need to talk about the violence that goes on star really thought was captured that this should

not happen to people like this and then you say not because of sandy hook that was children that that began to transform people but does that have a significant bearing of gun violence to better align themselves with the gun-control movement and i understand that can you explain that? >> yes. when the oldest people to be shot that day when we before christmas four or five months later the gun-control movement comes for eagan safety.

and i'm trying to find full sitting there was a press conference about gun-control one quarter of minneapolis is black and the victims are black there is nobody there from indianapolis. canadian lady from a very wealthy suburb she talked about mama's bears protecting her babies but they were protecting them that i think that again control movement has a sense of urgency and relevance. it is those that our most likely to be affected in

that latino community and also where african-americans and latinos are more likely to be criminalize so the fact that somebody has a criminal record is a neutral indicator or statistic but if you're only looking for innocents or basie will not find them in those communities so what you have to move from a narrative that this should not happen to kids. period. and have an understanding of why some kids end up where

they do. with lack of infrastructure and plaque of daycare but that is accounts people ought to dehumanize them. one but that has already been accounted for. but there was the real problem which easter to say he was in a student then you suggested there is a grade. somebody 20 tydeus today after the shooting of the olympics and sprinter said she was out 3:00 in the morning how much of a victim mushy?

so what time of the day teasing is the appropriate for a girl to be shot dead? what is the curfew after which these areas become one shooting galleries and they are guilty tennis month negative. >> host: bed is a great segued that in there is thought we should declare the end violence a national health crisis to go steady it to come back with tangible daybed actionable items. can you talking about the confluence that leads to bad epidemic.

there is a map of where they take place in days said that some u.s. any epidemiologist and the cdc used to do research and the second biggest killer of kids that

is imaginable it is like a city disappearing every time . saw what should we do about that? and is the second amendment and it is our right but one dozen subscribers then there hast to be research because they used to do that then that nra lobbied hard against that and now they don't.

have. >> my response to that for those people don't want to do that there is some other meaningful way i will not argue with you about the second amendment but these kids. i do want the kids running the risk and it is unacceptable. so what do you want to do? >> use say is your book with the gun lobby needs up better story. that this is my second amendment rights.

so it comes down to marketing. so what story woody you revise them? >> the gun lobby people to say the devil wife? any merry? to have been children? what will you duplex where you call the police? in and on the homestead. which actually finds a home in a lot of mythology.

people that own a gun usually shoot themselves after that to your more likely to be killed by somebody that you know. are you married? watch out for your wife. she may kill you. [laughter] so they have that narrative that is indebted many ways which we can talk about that but again control people have a bigger problem be coz day talk about background checks even if they are abiding by the second amendment and this is well

regulated background checks are popular. but that does not pat pat up. because american pest to imagines so differently as a more compassionate collective country. and i do think one way to say m. modern country with a medieval problem. this does not have been anywhere else. that might be a powerful message. i used to think that to one to take seriously as a collective endeavor they

need space sorry decent education one woman on the south side of chicago was a physician. she said but the parents put them in a cocoon they drive them everywhere. when they drive them to school they drive them home first of all, if you have the resources to do that you don't probably lived in that area. and then in order to keep

them alive. and said lanai with john and irresponsible. you could do that. these kids don't have that luxury.

if you walk your friend home that could be you. to or maybe you have bad relations. the margins are narrowing and the risks i wish just on a radio program somebody said with this old problem but if you take chicago. okay.

not that the rest of america isn't important but let's just imagine america without these places. but that libby imaginary. -- would be imaginary. so then you find geography could be misleading. so let's talk about the mapping of this book. and the 1,000 choices we have to make. have does that play into it?

that the challenge was to evoke this space. and then also to reduce that in some ways in nest mystical definition. and that was substantial. that is the only price.

in had this to kill year courtyard in dade did not exist then in then to be given us feel vcr? and then his mother is an undocumented.

in such votes to think that there is a very different place to find the history and how of spanish mexican-american napa but also to have a sense of with the working-class.

this is a big country. and hopefully that comes through. with that vast american landscape. >> host: ibm and immigrant myself from the dominican republic. but i grew up in new york city in the late '80s.

in now they remain with pockets so i want to ask you if you think geography plays a role of of identify errors . leaving in n places like new york. >> right team this book completely because there is

the assumption that it could be gang-related. and on one level and then the victim. but actually if one doesn't do the one doesn't the dissenting gang-related.

but with that public opinion but he was wearing red walking down the road, is that gang-related? to the extent is that it's gang-related?

and as a stray bullet in this complicated actually. and not just a way to think about it but if you are in the soviet union. that's they dominate the block where you live in and everybody has some type of relationship to beginning. it could be complete the middle so how do we say and

then you have to live there. so it is not like an affiliation. and then people pay their dues. so when they see the term gang-related now i say what is the relationship between the murder and the gang? most between the victim and the gang?

the less likely to be covered by the police or the press. but what i hope comes out in the book but they're not that different. with that call of duty.

like that dynasty. and twitter and facebook. >> talk about gay affiliation. it is actually a convenient term in the entire state of california if you are charged with a crime isn't automatic enhancement if it was a misdemeanor with the

imminent they put that day gang-related activity. and it has been legislated. so basically there is the eldest p. tween what that means in real life or any other pipeline with that punishment. >> what i found issue can do anything that you want. but sfax this not like a scent thing.

in day talk for the kids that i have to order to did get through the day? but the question is if you try to codified he start of to apply those rules wide the kid is wearing red. are we at the place where rented is illegal? or is that a gang sign?

or prove to put someone away? as far as what is done or gang-related. and actually that would be the way to cement their relationship. saw as the criminal justice enhancement that the daunting gauge through the issue so while they link to

criminal and activity and would issue need to america and what could we provide them. >> and the methodology. so for example, his family contacting them some to follow-through that constant rejection. as i was thinking it would i

have made the right choice? >> i wrote about public record. and never said why. but i found these grandparents as a very common man. so actually they were up for that conversation then i made the mistake but to

catch them off guard. he was wrong footed but he never called me back. and then when they came to minneapolis for the nra convention they said don't call again. and second, the things that i read about in the public record was a 20 feet with the newspaper clipping in do

you treat them with respect? where they give me the number of the other parent i will get my employer how dare you and even with more colorful language in one of the parents are speaking to me already i did the same

thing for every parent i'd like to know who they were. and would give them the copy for my last book and i would say this is to ibm would you like to talk so i don't feel entitled to protect the

parents but those that indeed public domain. >> but to see those boxes of documents and to make those critical choices weren't quite. >> that is difficult because there are things that you read that you learn that could be difficult is this important to the story? isn't harmful to the family?

if it was possible a with cent of that quotation. in a couple of places they could be happy i would set would you said is that okay with you? otherwise trust they are formal people who have lost their job and they're not used to being in the limelight so you have to proceed with caution.

and the feedback is that they're happy with the treatment they could have got. and that is a difference to be inaccurate or unfair. and my mother died quite young. and describe the house is being messy but it wasn't. when it would not have spent in accurate or unfair made

be unnecessary but they are very tricky that i hope in in the way that i don't know about. >> day zinc you could accidentally incriminate anyone? >> incriminate? >> with the information with the way that you put it together? >> yes. a couple of instances where

but the people who did it have not been identified. and i am trying to sing, many. also a feeling where were the father said yes i have seen the kid. >> but i want to ask about that if you talk to a lot of people in about the

high-school counselor. and those who grew up with a parent so could you talk about that net workmen's up -- network of grief quick. >> so yes it comes with in trying to find the family in a few cases it was from us funeral parlor where somebody who posted something on facebook.

that these cancers are not just raised by their parents. there is a support network got there it will sustain them and that is hard to not just open to reform and journalist -- open to a foreign journalist. we'll come chat. then his mother wanted to tell stories.

and i could tell from my facebook post but i think that extended the word is very important. and then there are the other elements. so.

>> does anyone give you that story to find a middle ground? iceboat to the mom and others yet he had not really bad in trouble when one recently that then field was

in jail but i don't know for gulf sometimes you do and sometimes you don't. he was in jail. nobody's really talking about that. and also those who knew him him, and did know a thing about him. >> but i also know that a as

they had been suspended from school. in vienna after a from the stations of different people kaifeng and some of those things put the flat five.

[laughter] and hops. >> no - - but now quick. >> i will say three things. but african-american parents it was a low income community.

i did think it would be him but is a brother. if you don't think this kid could deal shot for 455 was a black parent. but the second was the degree to which the again debate that it does not engage them. thtached is their lives for