adjust. it is great to announcer: washington journal live every day with the that impact you. monday morning, we will preview the week ahead in washington with bloomberg news white house editor and roll call staff writer kelly mcmanus. a discussion on election security in the u.s. with david becker. c-span'so watch washington journal live at 7:00 eastern monday morning. >> una quote is next. "q&a" is next. after that, boris johnson takes

questions from members of the british house of commons. then, president trump's announcement this morning of military action against the head of isis along with reaction. ♪ susan: i wanted to put the cover of your new book, "dignity," on the screen. explain its essence to me. chris: it is a book about my five years arriving around the united states, spending time in what i would call back road

america, the part of america that is everywhere. it is not a red state or blue state of thing, it is the towns and communities that have been ignored or left behind or forgotten. likes like selma, alabama, the north side of milwaukee, like the bronx in new york city. places that are kind of stigmatized and defined in various ways as being places where there is high crime or poverty, but places that make up a large part of the united states. back row, the the front row is -- chris: the front row is me. i used to work on wall street before i did this, i have a phd in physics. rowe are what i call front professions. people who have harvard degrees,

yale degrees, who make up a large part of the political class. people who make up a large part of wall street and the media. people who are very different in any different ways but have similar lived experience after high school, which is primarily about where they go to college, where they go to school. poor, which a lot of these folks are, have always been part of our society and many western societies. is there anything distinctive about people who are poor in america right now? chris: first of all i would say that part of the change over my lifetime certainly, i am in my 50's, is the income gap between the poor and wealthy. both statistically has grown in the last 30 years. what i have found and what my book tries to highlight is the differences are not just about statistics, the differences are

about how people live, how people think, their whole worldview. what i learned in my book, and i hope i can communicate to the poor, or that being being forgotten or left behind is not just about a statistic. it's about a way of life and feeling humiliated, feeling disenfranchised, feeling the whole way you view the world is ignored and demeaned and looked down on. "dignity" book because what i found during those five years all over the u.s. in these communities is i found a frustration and humiliation and a search for dignity, a desire to be dignified and have a dignity, despite what statistically is very bad circumstances. susan: the concept of pulling

oneself up by the bootstraps has been part of america. you even think of abraham lincoln from the log cabin to the white house. is the concept grounded in reality? chris: i certainly don't think so. --is a wonderful e thousand, wonderful ethos, i think everyone i met on my journey has aspirations to pull themselves up but the ability to do that is very much about where you are and who you know. i think in this world we have created, where i say we have row,gap between the front the educated elite, and the back row, the people i spent time with, the gap is so large. only in large not material terms but in how people think about the world that some

people in the back row don't even know what it means to be in the front. they don't know how to pull themselves up. one of the things we in the front row, we educated, we know the rules. we are supposed to study real hard, sit in the front row, listen to the teacher, perform rightn tests, go to the school, build a resume that gets us into the right schools which gets us the right jobs, into the right neighborhoods, and so on. the people in the back row don't know that, some of them don't know that exists. they don't have a map and they don't know how to do it. do know how to do it, there are so many obstacles in their way. to succeed in the world we have created, to be successful, to go to harvard on scholarship and go to graduate school and work as a wall street trader, you have to

walk this tight rope, doing all of these things right from the very beginning. if you make one mistake, you fall off. and often, it is over. susan: is the book inherently political? viewed -- explicitly explicitly. i intended it to be timeless in that sense. the five years i was doing the research took place during the election of 2016. it is hard not to have politics explicitly and it. -- in it. explicitly, i think the 2016 election is only mentioned three times out of 300 pages. but i think the political ramifications are clear. i think, i hope what the book communicates to people is that

if you are in a forgotten community and you feel humiliated and you want unity -- want dignity, there are political ramifications for a lot of people feeling that way. if a large percent of the elect rate is frustrated and feeling -- the electorate is frustrated , theeeling frustrated consequences are clear. they just opt out of the system. they look at the system and say nope. why should i play this game? and there is another group of people who will basically knock over the table. things are not working for them as is, so why not knock over the table and try some thing different? susan: i heard in an interview that you said the book has

generally been a nordic by people on the left of the political spectrum. -- been ignored by people on the left of the political spectrum. ofseems to be an indictment capitalism, why would it be ignored by the left? chris: i don't know viewed for me, -- i don't know. i was raised as a democrat, we had democratic club meetings in my house as a kid. i am a lifetime democrat and i count myself as a leftist. the book has an ideology and as you said, an indictment of the current capitalistic system. , one ofpart of it is the chapters is called faith. one of the lessons i learned over those five years was the the verye of faith and

dignified role religion plays in people's lives. i think that caught people on the left off guard. i think some on the left don't particular want to hear that. started the project as an atheist and i count myself now as agnostic, i guess. spending five years with homeless people and in neighborhoods lighted -- and drugsy poverty and seeing that the only thing that works for people was religion. it wasn't just pragmatic, it played a real, central role in their lives and i could not ignore that. susan: it is clear this was an evolution for you. in order to understand that evolution, tell me more about your roots.

where were you born? you mentioned your parents were democrats, tell me how you were brought up. inis: a small, southern town florida. a lot of people don't think florida is the south but it was very much the south. 500 people in town and my parents were a bit of the outsiders, they arrived in the late 1950's when most people in the town had been there three or four generations. my father was a professor. one of the few professors in town. that's where we grew up. 99%, working-class community in the south. the minute i could, i got out of there. , and as much math as i liked the people in the town, and i did like them, it was not for me.

boy and did altar all of the things in town, played little league and high school football. by the time i graduated high school, i was reading science books, was an atheist, and did not feel like i fit in and wanted something different. got an went to college, undergraduate in math. susan: where did you go to school? chris: new college in sarasota, sort of. susan: how did you get from there to the phd? chris: i took tests and was good at it, it came naturally. i was always into the big questions. the big question in my mind was cosmology. i went to johns hopkins, which had the space telescope. got a phd, i went and in theoretical physics. susan: from there to wall

street. what was that? chris: [laughter] i was one of the first people to do it, it is now a pretty common route. they call them rocket scientists. people on wall street realize it is all numbers and here is this group of people who are good at numbers. i was not particular great at physics. to make a career in physics, you have to absolutely love it and i liked it but i did not absolutely love it. i am not particular good at it, so i left and went to wall street. susan: were you good as a bond trader? chris: yes. susan: how long did you do it? chris: 20 years. susan: how did your life sell change? chris: quite a bit. me and my family would like to say we did not change much, but i think over time. i got paid more my first year than my father ever made.

10 times more than i got as a grad student. know, we lived what i thought was a relatively modest life but it wasn't. we had a big apartment in to alyn, and sent our kids private school and did all of the things you do when you live in new york city as a wealthy person. susan: what happened? was -- i always took walks to relieve stress, like 20 miles. being something of a science goal to walk the entire length of the new york city subway system above ground. and i realized at some point that i had not gone to the bronx. terminus walks,

i would walk along the route. financialring the crisis, my life changed dramatically because of the financial crisis. my kids were older and my walks could be longer. i started making those walks not just about the goal of completing the subway system, walking wherever you could, but i started realizing what i enjoyed about the walks were the people i met during the walks. the kind of things you experienced that you necessarily would not want to experience. eventually i started bringing a camera along to document the people i met and the stories i , and during these walks that evolved into me taking pictures of people and writing their stories. susan: what kind of camera did you use? an obtrusive one?

chris: at first it was a point-and-shoot but then i got a real camera. nikon d5.oto geeks, a susan: had you done photography before? chris: just as a hobby. susan: from there all the way to publishing a book essentially a photograph, you found something you are good at and could use to tell a story? what i liked about photography is that people like having their photos taken. that allowed a conversation to them.p about , when anybody saw my camera and wanted their picture taken, inevitably they would spend an hour and a half telling me about their life. for the viewer, these are not people who usually have pictures taken.

these are drug addicts, homeless , the poorest of the poor often. beneighborhoods that to blunt, a lot of white people will not go. hispanic, largely black neighborhoods. it was a conduit, in retrospect it was a conduit for me to learn more, to learn in a different way, from people rather than books and spreadsheets and articles. susan: you ended up spending quite amount of time in one part of the bronx called hunts point. why did this part of the city attract you so much? chris: a variety of reasons but originally i went because i was told not to go there, which is my way of dealing sometimes. i remember i was on wall street and people were like, where are you walking this time, and i

said i'm going to the end of the tutoring -- two train and walking home. bronx, do not go to hunts point. ok, i am going to hunts point. is reason they told me that it is considered to be the poorest neighborhood in new york, it is stigmatized as being poor, crime-ridden. hbo had done a salacious show the point."ers at it had a reputation. i did not know much of that but i knew i was not supposed to go there. there, irst walked in just want to say it is a wonderful neighborhood before saying anything else and that's what i try to communicate in my book. i saw that the minute i walked in there. it is a tongue of land cutting

out, if you ever fly into laguardia, you fly over it coming from the north. it is a tongue of land that juts out into the east river most directly across from laguardia airport. it is kind of a gated community in all of the wrong ways. on three sides it is cut off by everything else by water and on the fourth side, it is cut off by the massive interstate, the expressway. garbage dump, junkyard, auto body shops. it is also home to 40,000 people. susan: who are they? who lives there? chris: 99% hispanic and black, working-class. 50% below poverty level. they live in one area. the minute i walked into the in an oddod, i felt,

way, what i had grown up with, which is a small town where people watch out for each other. it also, as a photographer, it faces the south and has good light. it doesn't have tall buildings and has good light and it was very good photographically. susan: i want to put another photo on screen, this is keisha. who is she? --is: she was the first there is a sex trade, and she is a homeless addict. she is much more than that, but that is what she would be called. she has been living on and off the streets for 40 years. she is one of the first people i met at huns point.

-- hunts point. i had a respect for what she is doing in the big differences between us. i had given her space. eventually she called me over. come take a picture of me. so i walked over and took a picture. it was a sunday morning i believe, or a saturday. , she was in the industrial part of hunts point. immediately her intelligence came right through and we spoke for about an hour, half an hour or so. she told me her life, which is just, you know -- it is like a cliche of everything wrong that can happen to somebody. eventually i asked her what i ask everybody i photograph, -- how do wantis me to describe you?

give me one sentence. i am, a back, what prostitute, a mother of six, and a child of god. have been done with his project for years and it seems like you are still emotional. why is that? think -- sorry, i tear up when i talk about keisha. author, there is a frustration about not being able to communicate how rich of a person -- you ask who she is. cliche, she is a homeless addict, but there is so much more than that. part of it is the frustration of an author not being able to say she is an immensely rich, smart, wonderful person who can also be called a homeless addict.

and, you know, i also get emotional because i know how rough her life has been and still is, and how unfair that is. said she became your guide to hunts point. how did the relationship work and what were the kinds of people she introduced you to? chris: it's basically, i call it 30, aet family, roughly whoection of 25-30 people call each other sister, mother, father, mother. they act like a family. they are homeless. , often 10 up heroin bags per day. they live under bridges, in

abandoned buildings, and broken pits.ars, on roofs, in under expressways, wherever. and some of them do sex work. some of them don't. by, some of scrap them steel, some of them rob. they have to make $150 per day to shoot up heroin. -- she, amongst others, let me into their lives. kind of guided me through this 2.5 twoy for roughly three years, i was kind of an outsider and fly on the wall. an honorary member of this family. they were kind enough to let me in with my camera. susan: at one point you quit wall street? monthsafter about nine

of hanging out in hunts point and doing that, it was absurd. was weird being a wall street trader during the day and on the weekends, being under bridges with heroin addicts. susan: when i was reading your it,, there are two parts to one at hunts point, and one around the country, but i kept aching about your own family. clearly you were changing so much and you were leaving at odd hours. how did your family members react to the journey you are on? chris: i have a supportive family, i am very fortunate of. the way i explain it is this was more me than being a wall street banker was, and they knew that and appreciated that. if you knew me growing up or knew me in college, i was not a wall street banker. this was more who i was.

it is kind of like, you are back to being you again. quit, i wasce i physically around my family more. gone two months at a time on the road, but i'm also back for two months and always there. it has been tough on my family in that is part of the problem with doing something like this, it changed me and it is unfair to my family. it is not fair, they did not sign up for this. i think the old book is "mosquito coast" about a guy who does on a journey and drags his family along and at some point i said i am not going to "mosquito coast" this and that's why stop going to the bronx. susan: you write about how you felt very involved in people's lives. some of the critics suggest that's where the line with journalism stops.

what do you think about that? the rulebook? do my best not to get too angry. the rulebook is well-intentioned. but it is conveniently a way to keep people from doing projects like this. it is conveniently a way to keep a boundary and not get involved in people's lives. i got criticized for helping people out financially, which i can't imagine not doing. how can i not by people food? how can i see somebody who was a friend of mine at that point and withdraw and not help them find money? um, it is just basic human decency. these people accepted me into their lives and for me to not help in a way that i could -- i

had money. money, it wast driving them to detox, visiting them in prison, taking them to hospitals, taking them home to visit their family. how could i not do that? the idea that you are not supposed to get involved with the subject is well intended and i understand why it is there, but it is also a way to keep people from writing about these things. i find it unethical for a journalist to do this, or an artist to do this, and not help out. to get some of the stories and leave. susan: what kind of boundaries did you give them about how you would use their stories? do we know their real names, did they give you permission to use their photographs? chris: yes. huns point specifically was a three-year project and there are a lot of pictures i haven't published, a lot of stories i haven't told. off and i have taken

requested one of the things -- requested. one of the things i do regret is i don't think they can fully understand. susan: how expose your -- exposed you are? i can't say now i am comfortable necessarily. i did not know it would become this, i did not predict it would become this. i don't know that anybody else could have. there are cases where people might feel uncomfortable that it is out there, but for three years they told me they were comfortable and i have to go without. susan: -- with that. susan: what was the progression from your walking and taking photographs to you doing blogs with photographs to columns in the "guardian" to this?

chris: it was basically that progression. susan: did the "guardian" see you and find you? chris: it was an editor, heidi moore, who knew me for my business writing. she had seen me on twitter and asked me to write some business articles for her, which i did, on wall street. not very favorable to wall street articles. from there, she introduced me to the op-ed people and i started writing more political pieces. susan: who -- how did the book idea come together? chris: that was entirely accidental. did hunts point for three years and eventually i had to leave for emotional reasons, i was into deep. it wasn't fair to my family.

getting me to be -- i was tricking too much and it was not a good place. -- i was drinking too much and it was not a good place. it was so much pain. i exercise the option i had, and i left. i decided to be a geek about it and mathematical about it and i put on my science hat. i had learned all of these things at hunts point and i wanted to know if they translated. what i was seeing at hunts point , the vast injustices, but beneath it all still human dignity that shown through, was that unique to hunts point or elsewhere? got i clear my head and

sober, i went to other places. hunts before we leave point, tell me about one other person who impacted you. chris: that would be millie. again, a homeless addict. she is dead now. -- herher death lifestyle. she was part of the family. she went missing. just kind of, you know. it is common, people disappear. rumor fills the void. , someaid she got stabbed said they found her body in the east river, and fanciful tales were told. i figured that what happened like in most cases, she was in orson or had gone to detox managed to find family members and escape the streets for a while.

body.ally i found her she had died at lincoln memorial hospital. died with no papers. no identification. her body was buried on something island ind island, an the east river where about one million unclaimed bodies are buried. they have been burying people there in new york city since 1865. aupers'rs field -- p field i think is what they call it. put in a wood box in a massive trench. i went through the legal loopholes of getting her body exhumed and properly buried.

which is both smile not a nice thing to do, because i think back to the old me. when i found out she was buried on an island -- you cannot visit the island, by the way, there are one million people there and it is run by the department of corrections. now because of the work of one woman, this one woman, linda hunt i believe is her name, you can visit once a month. and step on a ferry the island and that is about it. you cannot go to any grave. i think back to old me, when i found out she was buried in a trench on an island you can't -- i said so you what, she is dead, what does it matter if you can't visit? but when i eventually got her a

, they said herne memory does not die. we tell stories and having the gravestone allows that. susan: you left hunts point and set out on a three year journey? chris: roughly two and a half. susan: how many miles? chris: around 200000 and 300,000. susan: how did you choose the communities you visited? chris: i kind of was mean about people i like because i would say, where should i go? i would go where they would not tell me. i wanted to go to places people never go to, like hunts point. i ended up going to places -- i used poverty maps, maps of

addiction, maps of crime rates, to find places -- i had this big ip in my mind of places wasn't going to go to that people told me to go to them, and places that stood out because they had high poverty or high crime. susan: i'm going to put another photograph on screen, and that is because -- and that is mcdonald's. why mcdonald's? what does it do in these communities? chris: at hunts point, i was in the mcdonald's all the time, because everybody else was there. ramon, millie, shelley, they were all there at mcdonald's. spitefered them a re from the streets, it allowed them to use the bathroom, allowed them to charge their

phone, use the internet. was basically a community center where people did not judge them. susan: this is true throughout the country. what is it replacing in our society? chris: the town square in some ways, the community center. writek people -- when i about mcdonald's and how it has become this ad hoc community center, where people who live on the streets can gain a moment of dignity by rejoining society and not being stared out and -- stared at and being allowed to go there. you go to any mcdonald's and there are people there like keisha and millie, people living on the cusp. you see them in a booth, maybe with their old cell phone with crocs on it, -- with crocs on it, maybe with a bible. ways,d say in many

libraries fill that role too. susan: how does mcdonald's management feel about this? chris: i don't know. susan: do you ever see managers chasing people out? chris: no. maybe one out of a million. -- i think mean someone, i can't say for a guarantee because i haven't asked, but i suspect mcdonald's knows what it is doing. it knows its clientele. often it is people who are friends with the workers. mcdonald's is very reflective of the neighborhood. the people who work at mcdonald's are from the community. the bond is between often the employees and the people using it as a shelter. they may know them from high school, or they may know their brother or sister from high school. again, thees,

employees are very much part of the community as well. this: you referenced earlier, small churches, not the big institutional churches, but small churches that you found in these communities. where is this one? chris: preston berg, kentucky, i believe. susan: what do they represent? chris: absolutely everything. this particular young lady was part of a family that -- i don't want to use their names -- who had, they did not have much. they did not have a car, they had someone drive them the 35 miles from the place they were living down to this church for sunday night service. six hours sunday night service and i was there for the entire thing. it was everything, it was their community. week, it was

everything. presence inid the those churches in the time you spent impact your spirituality? says: again, i jokingly with mcdonald's and the churches as i went from being a vegetarian atheist to a meat-eating churchgoer. susan: do you still go to church now? chris: not as much as i should. susan: before this, not at all. chris: not at all. susan: i want to move to another photograph that i went back to a number of times, from portsmouth, ohio. this is a father pushing his kids in a shopping cart. how did you happen upon them and what is the story you wanted to tell with the photograph? um, they were -- before

getting into this, i want to say the father was doing everything he could and was a good father. people would think probably not, but he was doing everything he knew you'd he said these kids came into my life and he was doing every thing he could to raise them. susan: did he have a job? chris: no. themother who is not in photo, is standing along that road panhandling. that is right outside of mcdonald's outside of portsmouth, ohio. just there in the community. the mother wasle working panhandling, the father would push the kids around, maybe sit under a tree and play with them. susan: where did they live? chris: they lived, and his telling, and a garage -- in a

garage behind the home of someone he knew. as he said, it's not that bad. he said, sometimes we can run a cord out there to run a heater but is not that bad right now because it's not that cold. isan: did you ultimately -- think i read in one of the stories about this, that you callingly struggled on social services on some of these folks. chris: i did. i was in town three or four maybe fourimes over weeks, and this trip lasted maybe four days. i ran into them on the first day and the fourth day before i left, i called social services. susan: what happened? chris: i don't know for sure but i can read between the lines and they came and took the kids away. which was the right thing.

it was hard because they trusted me. susan: you feel like you violated that trust? chris: it is hard to make a decision for someone when you don't know the full story, but, you know, it was the right decision. i asked three or four other people for their advice and it was the right decision. thei guess what to me was bigger take awake when i try to , this fathere book wo kids to kids -- t around, and one of those blinkers are filthy and the cart is filthy, it doesn't come across in that picture. but it reeked. that's partially why i called. but nobody cared. it was just normal. it was shocking to me and i have seen a lot. this is near the end of my five years and i had seen a lot. i had been in crack houses, i

had seen people with septic wounds. i had seen people do desperate things for drugs and this shocked me. what shocked me even more was that cars just drove by. like this was normal. there was a minister who came and somethem a bible slabs of water but otherwise people kept driving by. the fact that it became normal was what was shocking to me. susan: in selma, alabama, you met tonya. we don't have a photograph. he had been shot six times? chris: i checked my notes, i messed up, it was nine or six. you'devery bullet wound -- wound.

susan: the interesting thing is he accept this as his life, the options available to him. what did he do? how did he make his money to live? chris: drugs. susan: he sells them? chris: yes. susan: where did they come from? chris: you learn not to ask questions, i suspect from up north. i did not want to know. susan: the connection with mcdonald's that was compelling hireable.s i am unm if you tried to work at mcdonald's, what would happen? chris: he showed me his gun, they would always show me their guns. he said, if i put my gun down and put on an apron at mcdonald's, someone is going to put a cap in me, someone will shoot me. i have to shoot first or i will be shot. susan: how old was he

approximately? chris: 32. susan: he'd been doing this a long time. chris: yeah. you talk about permission, he wanted me to take a picture of him and i said, you are running from six felonies and you just admitted to me that you have been involved in nine shootings or six shootings, don't let me take a picture of you. selma,another story from the brick reclamation work. what is that? chris: the person who was wasnds with the drug dealer a former drug dealer himself who said you have to see this. i was like, what? olde were these 45 massive cotton warehouses -- four or five massive old cotton warehouses that were being dismantled and were piles of

rubble. people were being paid to sift through the rubble, scrape the think off, stack 500, i they were getting $20 or $50 to do that. people's hands were bleeding and this was the only work they had. this was the only way to earn hard cash. susan: in selma. chris: yeah. people were not angry, it was just, this is work, i've got three kids to veep you'd -- three kids to feed. susan: the last stop i have time for, lewiston, maine. a very different group of people you got involved with photographing their. -- photographing there. who were they? chris: somali's. refugees.

somali-americans. quebecois, french-canadian town that had mills and the mills left. and then catholic relief agencies moved in an african family and within 10 roughlyhey are at 15,000 somali-americans living downtown and turning it into their home. susan: successfully? chris: yeah. starting businesses, they reclaimed downtown, which was dying. susan: what is the moral of the story? chris: there are a lot of morals understand -- i -- immigrants in

the united states face a lot of problems. but i think the lesson of lewiston is that it works. you have this somali-american community that moved in in 1999 and dramatically changed the town and the town by and large is working ok pure there are problems -- working ok. there are problems but by and large it is working out. susan: i want to put a wrapper on this conversation about what you learned. let me start with statistics. we started with poverty. the federal poverty level is 12000 and change for single and 15,000 for families. congress month, released a report that says -- fromy from depths of death from despair far surpasses that of anything in the 20th century. overdoses,n by drug

but even excluding those deaths, the combined mortality rate from suicides and alcohol-related deaths is higher than it need point in more than 100 years. -- man at any point in more than 100 years. are 70,000ly, there drug overdose deaths and 2018 and 88,000 deaths in the country from alcohol. you have documented a lot of this. what is going on in the country, what is the cause? chris: i am a bit of an outlier. i don't think it is about supply, addiction is not about supply, it is about demand. to be politically incorrect, drugs are popular because drugs work. they work because they numb the pain. there is a lot of pain viewed -- pain. susan: how did we get to this point? chris: people feel humiliated.

the phrase i use is people want to be a valued member of something larger than themselves and currently right now, a lot of people don't feel a valued member of something larger than themselves. -- one of thee forms of that, was faith, church. as societyes, we have demeaned the value of faith so that if somebody does feel religious, they feel a built humiliated, a bit scorned for it. toal community was another, be a valued member of, to be a member of your community, to be part of the bowling league, the elk's club, the county fair committee. we have become so mobile and so much emphasis on we in the front row. move, move, move. everybody has to move. if you stay put, you are a

loser. you are lacking. things, the things that provided people, you did not have to build a resume to get them. you had your family, your place, your faith. those grounded you and give you a role and made you feel valued. we have devalued those to the point where a lot of people, and less -- unless they are economically successful. in less you are educated, which gives you a pathway to be economically successful, that is the only real thing we value these days, how much stuff you have and how much education you have. it has left a lot of people feeling like they are not valued. know, crack houses, drug traps, and prisons are

filled with people who don't feel valued butte -- valued. they feel humiliated, left behind, scorned, ignored. feel rejected. we have made so many people in this country feel rejected. one of the ways to deal with that is turning to drugs. susan: what about the absence of jobs? chris: that has hurt. things, one ofhe the reasons these communities are falling apart -- every community i went to, people could literally point to a field that was either surrounded by barbed wire or just empty, or had a dilapidated building. they would say, that's where the jobs used to be.

you guys took those jobs away. inse jobs -- i remember , thee creek, michigan couple who told me that they walked onto the factory floor and it allowed them the stability to build a life, a home, and everybody wants to build a home and have a family and build a life. everybody. it enabled him to have stability, buy a home, raise a family, have grandkids. and the stability is not there anymore. susan: the cover of your work a best selling author of "hillbilly elegy." "a profound book, it will break your heart and leave you with

hope." i am struggling to see the hope. chris: [laughter] endure. is that people you know. one of the things i wish i had done more of in my book, you go into a crack house, you go underneath the bridge with addicts, there are jokes being or, moments is hum of levity. people celebrating birthdays. i remember, i think it was sarah's birthday. homeless, literally under a bridge where we had to crawl along the pipe for about 30 yards. there, it is like 12:00 at night, filth. the train zooming by every once

in a while. and someone stole a cake for her. someone came through with this cake. they had gone into the shop right and lifted it, they stole hold birthday cake. -- stole a whole birthday cake. susan: are you going to stay on the speed or have you exhausted it for yourself? chris: i am not sure. it is hard. i am not going to say whoa is me because i have been very lucky, but it takes a toll. partly because it is so frustrating, it gets to be so frustrating to see something and not be able to rejoin polite society. people don't get it. that is festering. susan: for the last -- that is frustrating. time, for the last bit of

what is your hope that the book will do? what is the best outcome? chris: that readers, before you judge somebody, take a moment to realize they are probably going through a lot. before you judge someone's decisions on an individual or re-think whether it got personal flaw that them there or the situation they found themselves there. times out of 10, a person is doing their best against overwhelming odds. susan: thank you very much about telling us about "dignity" in your work documenting the back row, as you call it, of society. chris: thank you for having me. ♪ >> all "q&a" programs are

available on our website or as a podcast at c-span.org. ♪ next week on "q&a," an attorney looks at how several supreme court justices have influenced the courts election and american life. that is next sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. senior represented john -- former representative john conyers has died at the age of 90. he was a veteran of the korean war and served in the house for 53 years, having begun his tenure during the johnson administration. among his positions, oversight committee chair, judiciary committee chair, and dean of the house. he served until december of 2017, when he resigned amidst scandals.

the district he last represented, michigan's 13th, is now represented by democrat rashida tlaib. >> one day after parliament voted to block british prime minister boris johnson's latest brexit plan, he answered questions from members on next steps in the negotiations process with the european union. other questions focused on domestic issues and the uk's response to turkeys operations in syria. >> questions to the prime minister. >> questions to the prime minister. >> number 131, mister speaker. >> the prime minister. >> the house will be shocked by the news that 39 bodies have been discovered in a lori

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