books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> this weekend on booktv on c-span2 we are alive from books and books bookstore in coral gables, florida. tonight at 6:00 eastern your chance to participate in a live discussion on books and reading. tomorrow we are life or three is with father and humorist dave barry on in-depth.

that happens on booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books. >> i set out to write this book about citizenship following emancipation. timing in 20009. and followed in 2011 through 2015, thanks to both of those things i received a lot of invitation. and on the surface of it, the center of the plate, exactly what i was working gone and wake up in the morning and give them. what i quickly discovered was emancipation and citizenship

were two really different things and didn't understand either one of them very much. i figured i better start by understanding the differences of those two things between emancipation and citizenship and start with the basics emancipation first, where did it happen? where did people stop being slaves and start being something else. for half 1 million of them went through the process of exiting slavery in place is called contraband camps. they were essentially refugee camps that followed the union army throughout the civil war. other contraband camps. people usually get mental images like smuggled cigars, sounds like a good place to start. the introductory section on

emancipation and citizenship takes place in contraband camps which deciding to do that was like entering the cyclorama, step into the enormous story and be totally overwhelmed by the details of what i was finding. the details of lives in these refugee camps. iwas overwhelmed by the particularities of women and children's experiences or any analytical framework or narratives arc to make sense of them with any conversation with each other or in conversation with congress or the president or larger story of how slavery ended to do. i was lost and it stunk. i kept going in circles.

finally a basket of eggs, the first 200 distraction, and try an experiment. a basket of eggs was something i came across involving women in north carolina and she put a basket of eggs and her children into a canoe and walked the canoe 12 miles up the course to the union army to deliver those eggs and delivered herself and children to freedom and that story stuck with me. eggs in a canoe. the most fragile farm product you could think of. she had her kids in the canoe. if they were anything like mike in the eggs would be broken in half a mile. how would she get those 2 safety? nevermind how she gets the people to safety. i didn't know if she could swim but i couldn't make sense of

this story. timing stepped in too. my only kids were experiencing significant challenges and we were undergoing intensive testing with them and it came to pass my oldest son has autism and that means something specific for this story. a lot of ways life is hard but one of them has to do with how perception works. when most of us come into a new place we proceed from general to specific. you walked in here today and at first we were aware of four walls, we know we are in a room and pretty quickly know we are in a bookstore and it is a familiar place, safe and fine and we know we haven't been here before or not lately or not often, we know where we are in space, safe and secure and go about the business of what we do

in the bookstore and eventually we fill in details, start to notice the book we are looking for, we noticed the big picture first. my son proceed in the opposite order. totally unaware, no more aware he is doing it then you are but he begins with a very specific and works out so he walked into a place like this and depending on where his eye fell 1st, maybe it would fall -- on this end first and he would take into account every single book on that end, the pictures on the cover would register the titles, eventually work out there was three rose some copies underneath and the whole end in mind and he would go out a little further and a little further but for a very long time, most of the time he is disoriented. he doesn't know where he is, it feels overwhelming, panicking,

makes his life superhard but also means he almost always notices thing the rest of us this and when that changes my world, i got the idea what if i look at these eggs the way my son looks, what if i see a big picture they fit in and start with the eggs, what do i notice that i missed before? and i noticed eggs are probably what the women have that day? i noticed the waves, the shakiness of the canoe and she could see an outcome to this story any more than i could. all she could possibly know i details of what the day brought her and enormous misfit she faced and to decide to take one step and then another anyway. she made me see in a way i have before that to exit slavery was

to go up against hard hour with no assurance of success, to look real threat in the face, have no idea what would happen and do it anyway, that is what it felt like to leave slavery. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. now dave barry and carl hiaasen discuss politics in florida. sensenbrenner 0 will join us on in-depth tomorrow discussing his work and take your phone calls. >> welcome dave barry and carl hiaasen.