stickers and sprouted on lapels. they held a master class on how to elect a female president. >> many of these authors appeared on book tv. you can watch them on our website, book tv.org. i want to-- i'm also delighted to be introducing jeff from nomad land and told in an incredible way. jeff goes with-- goes out with the people who are really the untold story of the great esession. people who are underwater on mortgages and not going to make end meet. they give up family ties, social ties, off to go to travel the country and try to find work. they are new storm of migrant workers, they are potentially a

new form of what retirement looks like in america. and they went out and tells the story. please put your hands together. [applause] and first time in madison. this is the larger group of people than when i launched in brooklyn on my home turf. if i've got deer in the headlights eyes, i've had coffee and i wanted to appreciate it and thank connor and the library and festival. ... nd go check out other books as well. and thank you for coming out on a saturday morning in the drizzle to chat about this project. so i'm really grateful for that, and i wanted to say thanks. so i think i'm going to start

off by telling you a little bit just about the genesis of the book itself and then read a little bit, and then we'll do some q&a, and i'd be happy to chat about anything you'd like to know more about. but for me -- so i'm a journalist, and we read a lot. a lot of times i feel like my students -- i teach grad students in journalism -- they expect that ideas jump fully formed out of journalists' heads like athena jumping out of zeus' nothing begin and that it's -- noggin and it's just this immaculate thing that happens. the truth is, honestly, a little more boring. [laughter] so bear with me. there were no lightning bolts here, i just do a lot of reading, and i tend to read a lot about labor particularly in the digital economy. beneath the headlines of will the robots eat our jobs, how do we hide from them, what is going to happen, there's a lot of other stuff going on just in the day-to-day in terms of how people work and what it means to

be working in an economy where so many changes are happening at the same time. so somebody who is really kind of addicted to reading about that, i read a story back in 2011 that some of you may have read as well i. made a lot of headlines, and it came out of a very scrappy little newspaper called the allentown morning call. and as somebody who comes out of newspapers, i love it when a scrappy paper gets a scoop. the scoop told us that in an amazon warehouse temperatures were going up to 110 degrees, and rather than open the bay doors -- which they feared could lead to theft -- or ins could lead to theft or spalling air conditioning they stationed ambulances outside and they were there to scoop up people as the dropped. hence the problem. i hear all the gasps of exasperation. forecast to the next year and i

was reading a magazine stir and a young reporter went undercover in a warehouse. and while i was reading that story, there temperature two paragraphs that jumped out another me. a piece i ran by a fantastic writer named macmccain cell man and one woman told mac, i work here and i work here and live full-time in an rv, i'm doing it because i can't afford to retire and there's a whole program for people like us. this story went back to the work day and just the general rigors but my grain got completely stuck. it was like having a record of a little scratch, just kept hopping and hopping and hopping, and i couldn't get out of the groove. when i'm stuck in a groove, i google. i told you this is a little mundane. i promise it gets better.

yeah, i started googling and realized i learn more -- i did a little show-and-tell for you, a prop. but i learned more about amazon's program that hires rvers, people who are full-time rvers and the program called camper force that grew -- basically came into being after the housing collapse in 2008 and brings workers on the road full-time to work in the warehouse this month before christmas. they do pick-and-pack. it's difficult. i know i guy in his 70s who is walking 15-miles a day, people have gotten injuries and that's a sample of people i have opinion to myself. and later i spend time undercover there as well. doing that as a woman in her late 0s, it's probably little different but i still wanted to gate taste for it. so, what i realized was amazon

wasn't just a total anomaly. there's thousands of employers hiring people in the demographic, doing -- having them do everything from working at tourist traps like walmart and dollywood to the theme park called adventureland, where a work camper actually died on the job the summer before last. a conveyor start up too quick and that was it. two people doing campground maintenance jobs, but can be pretty challenging. so we have that. we have people -- i mean, selling fireworks, selling pumpkins, selling christmas trees at roadside stands. you name it, they're doing it and it's the shadow economy and it's all just a cycle of jobs and a lot of folks who i met who are doing it, had come from what we might have called a traditional middle class or the traditional housed economy, and for various reasons -- if we think about the fact that

federal minimum wage is still 7.25, rent keeps going up, and that they're just a lot of really difficult contending factors going on right now, a lot of people said, screw this. want something that feels a little different, that gives me more awe ton me that might feel like freedom and they found it on the road. now, it's not without challenges and we'll talk about those, too. but i'll start off with a reading and take it from there. >> this story actually just start as a magazine piece for harper's, but i didn't realize when i started it i would end up working on hit for more than three years and driving more than 15,000 miles in a camp ervan, which is the great part. it's a great excuse to be on the road. people have been asking, did i keep the van? i kept the van. the side story, the untold and probably boring story behind the book is the love story of the girl and her van. wait supposed to just be a

vehicle for this one project, and instead it's back pretty big part of my life. there you have it. that's the hot gossip. on the foothill freeway an our inland from los angeles, a mountain range looms ahead of northbound -- i'm sorry. you have to forgive me. i have two post-it notes and the other one got pushed in. sorry about that. coffee didn't save me there that's not where we're starting at all. i begin again. i talk about my van and get all flustered. here we go. as i write this they're scattered across the country in north dakota, form san francisco cab driver, 67, labor ted annual sugar beet hard visit, working from sunrise until after sunset in temperatures that dip below freezing, helping trucks that roll in from the fields disgorge

multiton loads offbeats. at night he sleeps in the van that has become his home, ever since uber-squeezed him out of the taxi industry and making the rent became impossible ? campbellsville, kentucky, 66-year-old ex-general contractor, stowed merchandize during the overnight shift as an amazon warehouse. pushing a wheeled cart for miles along the concrete floor. it's i mind, numbing job she struggles to scan each item accurately, hoping to avoid getting fired. in the morning, she returns to her tiny trailer, moored at one of several mobile home parks that contract with amazon to put um nomadic workers like her. in north carolina, a whom hose home is a tier drop style trailer so install it can be pulled with a motorcycle, is couch surfing with a friend while hundreding for work. even with masters degree the 38-year-old nebraska native can't find a job despite filling

out hundreds of applications in the past month alone. she knows the sugar beet harvest is hiring but traveling halfway across the country would error cash than she has. losing her job as a nonprofit several years ago, is one of the reasons she moved into the trailer in the first place. after the funding for her position ran out, she couldn't afford rent on top of paying off student loans. in san marcos, california, 30 something couple in a 1975gmc motorhome is running a roadside pumpkin stand with the children's carnival and petting zoo, which hey head five days to set from scratch on a vacant dirt lot. they will switch to selling christmas trees in a few weeks inch colorado springs, colorado, a 72-year-old van dweller who cracked three ribs doing a campground maintenance job is recuperating while visiting with family. there have always been itinerants, drifters, hobos,

wrestless solds but knew new kind of won wandering trying is emerge, people who never imagined being nomad are hiking the road. giving up traditional houses and apartments live in what are calls wheel estate, they are driving away from the impossible choices that faced what used to be the middle class. decisions like, would you rather have fad or dental work, pay your mortgage or your electric bill? make a car payment or buy medicine? cover rent or student loans? purchase warm clothes or gas for your commute. for many the answers seem radical at first. you can't give yourself a raise but what about cutting you biggest expense, trading a stick and brick domicile for life on wheels. some call them homeless. the new nomads reject that label. equipped with both shelter and transportation, they have

adopted a different word. they refer to themselves as houseless. from a distance, many of them could be mistaken for carefree retired rvers. on occasion when they treat themselves to a movie or dinner at restaurant they blend in with the crowd. in mindset and appearance they're largely middle class. watch their clothe as laundromats and join fitness clubs to use the showers. many took the road after savings were obliterated the great recession. to keep their gas sanctions and bellies full they work long hours at hard, physical jobs inch a time of flat wages and rising housing costs that unshackled themselves from rent and mortgages as a way to get by. they're surviving america. but for them, as for anyone, survival is not enough. has become a battle cry for something greater. being human meanseening for more than subsistence.

we require hope. and there is hope on the road. it's a byproduct or forward momentum, sense of opportunity as wide as the country itself, a bone deep conviction that something better will come. it's just ahead. in the next town. the next gig. the next chance encounter with a stranger. as it happens, some of those strangers are nomads, too. when they meet, online or at a job or camping way off the grid, tribes begin to form. there's a common understanding, a kinship, when someone's van breaks down, they pass the hat. there's a contagious feeling. something big is happening. the country is changing rapidly. the old structures crumbling away and there's the epicenter of something new. around a shared camp fire in the middle of the night, it can feel like a glimpse of utopia. as i write, it is autumn soon winter women come.

routine layoffs start as the seasonal jobs. the nomad will pick up camp and return to their real home, the road, moving like blood cells through the veins of the country. to they'll set out in search of friends and family or just a place that's warm. several journey clear across the continent. all will count the miles which unspooled like a film strip of america. fast fastfood joints and shopping malls. fields dormant under frost. out dough deep ships, megachurchs and all-night diners, feet feed lots, factories, subdivisions and big box stores no capped peak. the roadside goes through until fatigue sets in. bleary-eyed they find places to well off the road and rest. in walmart parking lots, on quiet suburban streets at struck

stops amid the lullaby of idling engines then, before anyone notices they're back on the highway. driving on, they're secure in this knowledge. the last free place in america is a parking spot. so, in a previous life, my day job was covering startups. i did not really like covering startups. i had a call are in called starts for a webs and i get to to find some neat stuff. the what struck me most was the amount of jargon i'd stumbled over and jumped upon on a daily basis, whether it was this is innovative, this is disruptive, and nine times out of ten whatever was getting called disruptive would enable you to get your dry cleaning back three minutes faster. and i don't like those very much. so, one of the great things

about being out on the road in a world with a lot less of that jargon there's, wait a minute, this is disruptive. this is innovated. you want to see people who have a -- managed to completely turn their lives upside-down who are creative, resilient. it was kind of exciting because there wasn't really a lot of room for jargon or bull shit because the decisions people meat impacted their day-to-day so immediately, and just watching what people were able to do with the circumstances that in many times they were handed be a very weird economy was impressive to me. so, it's interesting. people really like to pigeon hole ideas. sometimes i think people want to hear about a book like this and they will -- expect people to be walking around in sack cloths and ashes and bemoaning the economy and yelling about their lot and

that's a huge distortion, and other people want everything to be freedom, road trip, all right, turn up the stereo, and that's a distortion, and life is just somewhere in the middle. the people i did meet, again, i just can't underscore hour resilient and creative and disruptive they were. so i'd like to share a bit about one of them with you. her name is linda may, and i me her when was writing the initial iteration of this book for harpers magazine, and if i showed up we met in the desert, and if i said to her that i'm going to be spending the next three years, i will sleep in my van in the driveway in frontoff your daughter's house, i will be parked next to you in your camp in the desert. i will stay on the parking pad when you're working at the campground. i think we both probably would have run away screaming. but over that period of time, not only is she resilient but she's incredibly tolerant and had the generosity to share her

story with me and i'd like to share it with you today. this is where i started before. on the foot phil freeway an hour inland from los angeles, a mountain react lambed of northbound traffic. bridgening suburbia to a sudden stop. this wilderness is the southern edge of the san bernardino mountains, table, precipitous in the words of the united states joologyol century fay. it's port of formation that began growing 11 million years ago along the san andreas fault and is still rising today. gaining a few millimeters each year, as the pacific and north american plates grind past each other. the peaks appear to grow much faster, however, when you're driving straight at them. there's the kind of sight that makes you sit up stater and starts a swelling sensation in your chest, feel like helium,

enough perhaps to carry you away. lynn day may grips her steering wheel and watches the approaching mountains, through bifocals with rose colored frames. he silver hair which falls past her showereds, is pull back from her face in a plastic would red. she turns off the foothill friend, on to highway 330, known a little city creek road. for a couple miles the pavement runs flat and wide. then it tapers to a steep serpentine with just one lane in either direction. starting the assent into the san bernardino national forest. the 64-year-old grandmother is driving a jeep grand cherokee laredo which was totaled and salvaged before she bought itself off a tow lou. the check english leash atlanta when nothing is wrong ask a close look reveals the white paint on the hood, which was crump eled and replaced, is a half shade off from the rest of

the body. after months of repairs, the vehicle is finally road worthy. a mechanic installed a new cam shaft and lifters. linda's first step, scrubbing the foggy head lights with an old t-shirt and insect repellent, do it yourself trick it is towing linda home, pail yellow trailer she calls the squeeze inn. if visitors don't get the name on firs mission she puts it in a sentence, yes, there's room, squeeze in. and smiles. revealing deep laugh lines then trailer is a relic, a hunter comp pact 2. built in 1974, and originally advertised as a crowning achievement in travel for fun. that would follow like a kitten on the open road, track like a tiger when the going to gets rough. for a decade alone the squeeze inn feels like a chargingly

retrolife support capsule, box with around edges and sloped sides, reminiscent of the styrofoam clam shell con coiners once used at hamburger joints. inside measures ten feet from end to end theirs same nor length as the covered wagon that carried linda's own great-great, great grandmother across the country a century ago. it has some distinctive touches, linoleum with a mustard and watch cad go pattern own floor. the roof is just high enough for linda to stand. after buying the trailer at auction, for $1,400, she described it on facebook. it is 5'3" inside and i'm 5'2" she wrote. perfect fit. linda is hauling the squeeze inn up to hannah flat, ground in the pine forest northwest of big bear lake. it's hi and she plans to stay

there through september. but unlike the thousands of warm weather visitors who travel for pleasure each year, to the san bernardino national forest, a swath of wilderness larger than the state of rhode island, lynn days making the journey for work. it's her third summer employed as a campground host, a seasonal gig that is equal parts janitor, cashier, groundskeeper, security guard, and welcoming committee. she is enthusiastic about starting the job, and getting the annual raise for returning workers, that will bump her hourly wage to 9.35. up 20 cents over the year before. and though she and other crowned hosts are hired at well, according to the company's written employment policy, meaning they can be fired at any time, with or without cause, or notice. she has been told to expect a full 40 hours of work each week. some first-time campground hosts expect a paid vacation in hair

dies. hard to blame the. ads for their job are splash it withs to of creeks and meadows. a brochure for california land management, the private concessionaire that is linda's employer, shows gray-ahead women smiling on a sunday donled lake shore, arm in arm, like best friends at summer camp. get paid to go camping, cajoles the recruiting banner for american land and leisure. another company that hires camp hosts. below the ledheadline are if testimonials, our staff says, retirment has never been this much fun. we developed life-long friendships. we're healthier than we've been in years. newbies are known for balking and quitting when faced with a less picturesque part of the job. baby-sitting noise, drunk campers, rowdy visitors like dropping battles into the flames to make them explode, and the

daily ritual of cleaning outhouses. though tending toilets is hosts' least favorite chore, lynn days unfazed by it and takes pride in performing the task well. i want them clean because my campers are using them, she says. i'm not a germ aphone. you snap on rubber gloves and do it. she reaches the san bernardino mountains the valley views are sub lime but distracting, the road side is narrow, with barely enough of an edge to call a shoulder. along some stretches there's nothing but empty air past the ribbon of pavement that clings to the slope. sign posts warn drivers, rock slide area, and avoid overheating. turn off ac next 14 miles. none of this seems to rattle linda, though. her citizen as a long-haul trucker two decades ago left her undaunted by difficult roads. i'm driving a camp ervan just ahead of linda, as a journalist

i've been spending time with her on and off now for a year and a half. between in-person visit wes have spoken on the phone so many times that on ever call i anticipate her familiar getting before he even pike picks up. it's a mel loadic, hello, spoken in the same three notes you used say, i see you, when playing peek-a-boo with on infant. i'd originally met linda while researching a magazine story on a growing subculture of american nomad who live full-time on the road. like linda, many of them were trying to escape an economic paradox. the collision of rising rents and flat wages. an unstoppable force meeting anen unmoveable object. they were kind in a vice, putting time into exhausting, soul sucking jobs that paid barely enough to cover the rent or a mortgage, with no way to better their lot for the long term and no promise of ever being able to retire. those feelings were grounded in

hard fact. wages and housing costs have diverged so dramatically that for a growing number of americans, the dream of a middle class life is gone from difficult to impossible. as i write this, there are only a dozen counties and one metro area in america where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a one bedroom apartment at fair market rent. you have to make at least 16.35 an hour. more than twice the federal minimum wage, to rent such an apartment without spending more the recommend 30% of income on housing. the consequences are dire. especially for the one in six american households that have been putting more than half of what they make into shelter. for many low income families, that means little or nothing left over to buy food, medication, and other essentials. many of the people i met felt they'd spent too long losing a rigged game, and so they found a way to hack the system. they gave up traditional stick and brick homes, breaking the

shackles of rent and mortgages. they moved into vans,'vees and traileres, traveled from place to place following good weather, kept their gas tanks full by working seasonal jobs. lynn days member of that tribe, as she migrates around the west i've been following her. when the steep climb into the san bernardino mountains begins, my giddiness at seek the peaks from a distance fade. suddenly i'm anxious. the idea of driving switch baecks in my clunk yvan scares me a little. watching linda pull the squeeze inn and her rattle trap jeep scares me a lot. earlier she instructed me to drive ahead of her. she wanted to be in the rear following. but why? did she think or trailer could come unhitched? i never found out. past the first seem for the san bernardino national forest, a shiny oil tanker truck looms up behind the squeeze inn. the driver seems impatient, too

close as the enter a series of s-surfs that obscures linda from my sight. i keep watching for jeep. when the road straightens out again it doesn't emerge. instead, the tanker reappears on the uphill straight away. there's no sign of linda, pull to go into a turnout i dial her cell phone and hope for the familiar, hello. the call rings and rings, then goes to voice mail. i park the van. hop out, and pace nervously on the driver's side. i try again. no answer. by now more cars, maybe half a dozen, have come out of the curves. on to straightaway, and past the turnout. i try to push down a queazy feeling. adrenaline blooming into panic as the minutes slide past. the squeeze inhas disappeared. and i will leave you with that literal cliff hanger. [laughter]

>> so, what can i tell you? what can i tell you about what happens to linda? you know what i have to say to that, right? i'm not going to do hash tag spoiler alert. going say, read the book. but linda's all right. don't worry. too much. please. >> any corporate changes since this -- [inaudible question] -- as far as the amazon workers. >> to the best of my knowledge, no. it's funny because there are few things on that register that the book addresses. another one that concerned me quite a bit was so many people i spoke to about campground hosting, which is really a hard job and pays just a little more than minimum wage, you're essentially on call all the time because you're a captive audience on the work site. but many, many people told me

directly that when they were working, they were not able to invoice for full hours. they were expected to do job a, job a exceededded the amount of sures they were allowed to invoice for, and if they tried to comment about that, they were worried about being targeted for firing or just told, make it work, bend time. and it's a tricky job. if somebody bangs on your trailer at 11 at night and want firewood, you're on. so that's a challenge. so, what i did was writing a freedom of information act request to the national forest service, which is one of the many, many, many employers of comeground hosts. they hire concessionaires, private companies to manage campgrounds campgrounds and that's en the debate of managing private lands, these are private milled

men who make a lot of money. so i did ask for just any complaints. in the region. they couldn't do the whole country. did find that even though many people i talked to said, yeah, everybody has this problem and nobody complaints because nobody wants to get fired, there were some complaints. probably the tip of the iceberg. so i called and i said, okay, what da you do? are these investigated? what happened next? and what they told me was, oh, well, we hand them back to the concessionaires, we forward them. i said, wait a minute. these are public lands, public trust. i don't understand. you give them back to the concessionaires who are people are saying are violating wage law. they said we don't investigate. i felt like is wouldn't game show and i said, is that your final answer? and the final answer to my asking is that is what we do. so i think there are a bunch of things that are dodging that

came up in the research that maybe it's still too soon to see if they get dressed. >> microphone for questions. >> sorry. thank you. >> may i please collect you to the audience microphone for questions. sorry. it's over there. thank you, connor. >> thank you very much for writing this book. i'm halfway through but the thing that brought it close to home to me was every started reading the book i started looming for the comegrounds and found that right near wisconsin, amazon has some down in the a seen ken. i and i walked shot -- thank you talk about your experience working are in warehouse. >> surreal. a little surreal. basically i'm a journalist.

i'm not a memoir writer and like to tell other people's stories s so whenever possible i would follow someone around the work site. when it came to the campground job i live informant to linda for three week in my van and when she got up to clean toilets i was not allowed in her golf cart and i would walk after her and they enjoyed pointing out pieces of microlitter i could pick up. so we did that. that's actually kind of my preference because i'd rather observe other people, but two closed work size wanted to see because for my understanding these are plateplaces you go to make a chunk of money in a short time. one was amazon and the other was the annual sugar beet hard verse in the red refer valley which ismarked as unbeatable employment. i like puns but i thick they're

direct it at a work force, i get stressed. went undercover and did some stuff for the sugar beets to see what was that like and then i went to amazon. at the time i went to amazon i interviewed many dozen of people, and seemed really a lot of instances of this being hard work, just first-hand accounts of injuries, all sorts of stuff and people coping with it by saying, i'm getting paid to lose weight, fitness program. amazon was send ought newsletters that said things lime damper force, the value of friendship. so what i called weaponized positive psychology happening. it was weird when i went there because there aren't any age requirements and at the time i was 37, two years ago already. but it was really easy to get a job, called bulk hiring in the url. feels like a cattle call. and i applied for a job at the warehouse in texas, and when i

got there in my -- there are some younger workers, think there was one person who might have been in their 50s but everybody else definitely north of 60. i stuck out like a sore thumb. paranoid all the time. joke about it in the book and the wire story. but just -- oh, i was a slacker, i left after a week, i really left after a week because being undercover is stressful. it was time go home. i'm not that lazy, i swear. but it is surreal. i know there's been a lot of reporting on the work camping environments and amazon's warehouses in general, but one of the interesting things was at the time this was one of only ten warehouses, where people were work withrow abouts so a mind, machine thing happening. i heard this was making jobs easier for people because instead of walking 15-mile days

to go between different shelfs the robots brought things to you. what i learned that just kind of outsources the jobs to different muscles. you're doing more stopping, reaching, ladder climbing. we were warned's these ladders, pay linterly one was caught on a robot shelf and somebody almost got dragged away. increed by regimented enwhen i went to use the restroom there are a color chart, urging you to match the colorful of your-underin to make sure you were hydrated. there are walk paths. you feel like you're on a living game board. you need to stay wind the paths, have to keep your numbers up. it's pretty intense. i hope i don't -- i know that's a general take but i hope it's specific enough to be useful. hi. >> first, where there are other places in wisconsin doing this,

and, second, what was the age of the oldest person doing this that you found? >> definitely mid to late 70s. the hard being about being uncover is you can't ask direct questions. it's really just like standing there with your mouth -- with a sock in it and just listening and feeling like jerk all the time. but definitely people in their 70s. one fellow, the guy i know who was really proud of doing this 15 miles a day, in his 70s, said i know a guy in this 80s who is doing it, so i cook it. i wish i knew more about the wisconsin take. do not. i don't know a camper force happening here. i do know a few years ago i was writing an article for reuters about amazon coming to new communities and seeking tax breaks and i actually watched by the internet a rather vigorous debate in the city council of kenosha, debating whether or not

to bring somebody in, and i was worried then about what this kind of beauty pageant of tax breaks and subsidies meant. i have a friend in new york who owns a book store. a book store owner a town being told their hard earns tax dollars were going to subdies a large monopoly that is gutting what they do and is heartbreaking. that's a little wisconsin angle but not exactly what you wanted for which i apologize. >> first i want to say i'm thrilled you are here. heard you on npr and i saw your were going to be here and my number one choice for coming to a book talk. i was wondering what are the impressions of the family of the people that are living this nomadic life? you mentioned a lot of them are grandparents and they stay with relatives and stuff. so, what is the reaction of the

younger generations to what they see their elders doing? >> sure. so, people ask me that a fair amount, too. it's like where are the kids? and i have to say, when i was first meeting the family of one person, she was already sleeping on the couch, one of the granddaughters was sleeping in what had been a walk-in closet. said i could stay the night. i said i'll stay in the van no pressure. it's all good again, we're in a really weird economic time. can't unscore enough that federal minimum wage is 7.25 an hour, which is abysmal. i think a lot of the people met didn't want to put pressure on the next generation. they saw them as under enough pressure, and from the next generation's anle, i remember talking to linda may's daughter, odd contract, and audra was telling me, based on the linda may you know you must think she was automobile a social butterfly. she has whole tribe, possess

see. she was like she was not this social at home. sometimes i see them being impressed by the community that form on the road just because there's such an incredible tightknit mutual aide, newt to all sharing network that people find themselves joining, and it's a membership that i think it's kind of a nonblood family. it's what the writer would have called a -- people are impressed by that. it's not always that rosy. there's one fellow in the book who i'm a big fan of. a mr.. when i sir viewed samir and the call to prayer went often of hence iphone, she showed me a kool appear he used so she could park this van oriented towards maybe car which was neat, set him up for prayer. he went home answer for ramadan and his family threw him out for no other reason that someone is in famedly decide his lifestyle was a bad influence on the kids

and ish red my heart. so you hear stuff like that also. you do hear of strains, and you also hear situations where there's just not that much contact. so, i've met a lot of people whose families super supportive and trying to learn as much as they can do to the other end completely where i remember interviewing a pastor in the ten in arizona, he ran a food bank. said what's up with this place, quartite and he noted and says -- he was a former biker for christ. i think his son had died of a heroin overtight and he was meeting poo and helping them. he said this is a cheap retirement town and hen said to me it's also a good place for people to hide. and suddenly i'm thinking of all the people i met. are the all on the lam? are you talking about. i'm picturing lawrence, and he

says, to hide from their kids. and gave me -- there was one example where in some situations people were just like, look, i'm going to make it, i'm fine, but not everybody was fine. some people were doing great but one guy who had been visiting the kitchen and he was found dead in his rv on the gravel turf of aaronburg. so, again, i don't have stats on this bit there's a van owner i speak with all the time, a come moundings ago she was camped all the grid and found a cool guy living in an r,struggling, a painter, and like her, they were sharing each other's part kind of bonding over looking at each other's craft stuff, and one day she came by and she hadn't seen him in a few day thursday there are flies on the screens. so, you know, i'm not saying that is super common. i have no stats. but i've seen the range of people with a really vibrant

support network of family oren in blood family or people having a tough time, too. thank you. >> hey, louis. louis is the dog. >> so, what -- expect for seniors. >> now that you outed yourself i'm allowed to mention the ghost gestures in the back. >> page 81, i believe. >> not that you read it or anything. >> twice. >> are you going to sign mine? i'm asking anybody to -- >> i would. >> would you hemmed people trying this lifestyle? >> oh, gosh. i mean, would you? it's really different for everybody. think some people see it -- >> would? i the eldest elder of the tribe? of course i would. >> i'm a --

>> i would strongly recommend everybody get on the road, see america. don't gone -- don't go on the internet. a friend of mine wrote the book "blue highways." i if you read that, read this book, continue. there's thousands of people out there that you'll never expect to see. and you can't see them unlessout get out on osmall highways, get in the backcountry, meet people. it's a wonderful country. >> thank you. [applause] >> yes, please, round of applause. >> thank you. it's truism think one of the things hope to do with this book is to show just -- to make it harder to pigeon hole people on the road. i mean, there are people here who have been -- had all sorts of different lives.

different things over the world. linda may has been everything from a cocktail waitress to somebody who defeathers quails at a hunting lodge. more life experience than i even can think about. another guy i met out there was a form head of product development for mcdonald's. he got hit hard bit the great recession. the stories you hear around the camp fire out there are just -- it's so beautiful. >> i notice as a journalist you probably do a lot of surveying, and i'm going to ask, use doo you frequently survey your audience? today i got here and i do that a lot as somebody who likes to watch people, and there are a lot of gray beards like myself here, and i think it's utterly important that younger people be aware of thisphone because it's affecting our country dramatically, and it's something that i thing they need to be cognizant enough of that if they

don't start analyzing it, it could be upon them quicker than they think. but is this typical of an audience that shows up to your book readings? thanks. >> sure. matt, come on tour with me and do the survey because i just try to keep it together up here. >> i love america, too. >> all right. yes, so i have to say it varies. i talked to a couple hundred high school students, which is funny. in connecticut. they didn't warn me. thought i was going into a classroom and suddenly i was back in high school. and only thing i could think of was to say, it gets better. so, contextually it's hard to answer that. point well taken and i agree there's some issues that everybody should be thinking about. >> hi, jessica. >> hi, david. >> my name is david, and i'm a nomad. sounds like -- >> everybody, hi, david. >> sounds like i'm recovering from something. if i am recovering from

something it's prom log chronically housed in a sticks and bricks most of my life. now i am very happily living in a camper that i have carefully built into a really very comfortable home with refrigeration, cooking, wonderful, comfortable bed. call it mitt ultralight motorhome and it's a prius. so, yes, that's pretty unique. i love it. it works really well in a lot of ways. i'm so happy that jessica wrote this book. i've been on the road for here toese and i can't believe all the things she discovered that i haven't seen yet and i thought i had seen so many things. she interviewed so many people, and she uncovers such a diversity of people on the road. really appreciate that you have written the book, jessica, and that it's a very balanced book. she pretty much says what is

going on for everybody, and, again, just a lot of diversity of happiness, diversity of seeking happiness, and doing different jobs, et cetera. i'm lucky in that it don't have to work. i'm retired, and in fact i have a little money left every month so that's -- that puts me in a different position, a little different perspective not dealing with working, but certainly all of the stories i've heard of people on the road working, jessica nailed it. >> thank you. didn't put him up to that. >> i sometimes get a little crowd of people asking me questions afterwards and i'm open to that if you want to. >> it has a fan club. >> it's her show, not mine. >> thank you, david. >> okay, thank you. >> good to see you. >> please. >> i want to follow up my first question about policy. i think it's great to have the

romantic positive stories and clearly you have also identified the negative impact, particularly connected to the recession. there's a myth that about the gig economy being so liberating and we know in your work before you started this book, in looking at that economy, that, yes, there are always ten percent of the 20 percent with the great tribulation stories -- great liberation stories but for a lot of people it's pretty awful. who it's made parker in worried or farm workers in florida, the idea of migrant work in america has been there a long, long time, since grapes of wrath days, and so i just like before we leave on this wonderful glorious note about retiring to one's rv, that you can address a little bit about the policy possibilities of bringing up the bottom if this is really what our children and grandchildren will be facing. i appreciate your reference to the minimum wage, probably union

issues and other things that are critical. >> are you ready? let's start. the economy is a mess. there's a big umbrella statement for you. it's a mess. and i really worry that a lot of the things that i grew up considering to be iron clad, we all have such short life spans. i thought retirement for just about everybody was just something that was kind of in the water. thought the 40-hour work week would stick around. i thought people would have weekends. but when you look at the great sweep of time these are triflely recent innovations and more fragile than people realize. one of the great forces eroding all of this is this suddenly titled gig economy. argue that anybody -- yes, there are some opportunities for freedom there, but we also saw in the 1980s when pensions gave away to 401(k)s. they were marketed as an instrument of financial freedom,

which was greek for saying, now your corporate bosses aren't responsible, good look to you in the stock market, havefront. so freedom is abused as a word, i find. i'm worried right now just, again, even in just following this particular subset of a subculture, just watching -- there was that supreme court case where workers sued amazon saying they deserved to be paid for the time that they spent in line wait the opening metaling detector. they lost. there's another case against -- another work camping job that involves guarding the gates to ol' fields in texas, and -- oil fields in texas. somebody has to be 24 hours a day but because they're an independent contractorrors e you're not going bet paid for all your time. making people independent contractors on the gig economy has been a way to skirt everything, every game that the labor movement has made in this

country. and it's eroding incredibly quickly. it's very sad. employers don't want to pay for benefits. don't want to have to give you live and if you're an innocent contractor, you're not they're problem. when i think of work campers do. >> of an employer's dream. they're plug and play labor, you show up with your house, perfectly self-contained, like a u.s. sb drive plugs e -- a usb driver plugs in a commuter and you have it in there as long as you need it and then goes away and you're not responsible for it anymore. so, that's how i feel about that. >> that's a heavy topic i wanted to give week in camping aspect of this. although i agree with everything you just said. and i have a specific question but it comes out of the fact that my husband and i actually lived on the road for two years in our late 30s, and we lived in a tent, and our purpose at

that time was to spend a lot of time in wilderness areas, and we just got finished this summer with a -- what might have been a somewhat similar trip. we own a toyota -- i forget the name of -- a van. we own a van. minivan. a toyota minivan -- siena, and we outfit it out with a platform and be traveled for five years, and the next summer we plan to do it for probably twice as long. but what was interesting to me in comparing the two experiences was that when we did it in our late 30s, which was quite a while ago, we had so much flexibility. we could go places in summer anytime and we could find a

place to stay. you -- that is not -- it's much more difficult now because there are so many people out there, and it's harder to say if you're going to a forest oregon campgrounds, particularly national parks it's extremely difficult to be flexible. you need to make reservations. so, my question is, when you're talking about the people being off the grid, way off the grid, i always field we were pretty off the greed but i wonder, what is off the grade, way off the grid mean to you. what is that now darren -- daze bought i might want to go there. >> off the grids connotes self-sufficientsive the price of solar panels has come down quite a bit and one of hi favorite anecdotes who goes by the name of swanky wheels, torch as

transman in his 20s how to install solar panels on the roof otherwise his van which he named -- what was -- tilly's starlight from the little engine that could. i think i can, i think i can, and stilley and starlight express, and he feel -- in his 20s. he felt this was the only way he could if achieve financial independence. worked a ton of jobs. for him, finding that mentorship, swanky, who had even told me her family wouldn't receive her mail new jersey was lifting him shim his testosterone to her po box which i found incredibly moving and they created this kind of mobile family ton the road through her kind of apprenticing him as he was learning how to good off the grid. off the grid can involve having your own power generation, own water, being self-contained, burt i think for a lot of people it's always been about creating these mentorship networks and a different kind of off the grid but it's a self-contained world in a self-contained family and

i've seen mutual aid and i consider them off the grid in a communal way that might be a little different than what people have in mind. >> it's expensive to stay in a lot of places. the question is where physically locationwise do they consider off the grid to be? >> sure. >> so, there are lot of places where it is legal to camp for 14 days for free. i'm not going blow up people's favorite secret camping spots in front of this large crowd for you. i apologize. there's a lot of self-camping going on,-under or ban parking and people are trying avoid the knock and be as low profile as possible but we are seeing a terrifying way of increasing criminalization of homelessness, in air quotes, people being told

they can't sleep in their cars. in mind to tell somebody here is a parking spot, your car is welcome but not if you're there is a scary indictment our val views that say we value cars over people. in parks rangers say prove that you live the addressee your domiciled you must be homeless and you're making the forest your home, get out, you're not entitled to the 14 days anyone else would get. so i think there are lot of ways people go off the grid but a lot of these sites and means have a lot more pressure on them than they have in the past. >> one more question. >> eight years out from the great recession mitchell -- my question is, how many people are in nomadland today and how many do you see being there eight years from now? >> sure. so, this population is a dem

michigan demographs nile might. people have address at home with mail forwarding sufferses inch south dakota you spend a night in a hotel, you show a receipt, you beck a south dakotan. so i don't know of any studyings on this group. there are tons of nome indianas even win the larger nomadic population. i'm writing mostly about people who are at or nearing retirement age and doing these jobs. so if we look at that -- shares some younger people as well but not as -- when is was at amazon i was the only one over -- under 50, and everybody except for one person was probably over 60. so, given that, and given just based on things employers have saved about how many applications are coming in, give thing numbers of employers and the number of jobs, i could conservely tell you that this subset of the culture, probably

tens of thousands and i would say growing. growing just because, okay, 2008 is over but for a lot of people it didn't really end, for people who don't have time to make up whatever savings they might have had or who were relying on equity in their house, there's opportunities are not coming back. >> so i guess that's where we'll leave it. i i'll be signing. thank you for coming out. [applause] >> thank you to jess car and thank you to all of you, jessica will be signing books and we'll resume at noon with nikki kapsambelis. thank you very much. >> next up from the wisconsin book festival, niki cap sam bliss