that change was, for me, distilled in june of 2009 when i was interviewing president obama in dresden, germany as he was preparing to go to normandy for the 65th anniversary. i spent a fair amount of time they're given that i wrote about "the greatest generation." i was waiting to interview her first african-american president, thinking about all the change i had witnessed. i was born in 1940. i was standing in dresden which had been firebombed to the point where it was almost completely leveled the at the end of world war two and spent the next 40 years behind communist lines and now the city was writing out of the rubble of that time. i had just come from berlin. the wall had come down. berlin was the most exciting city in central europe, a very cosmopolitan, vibrant once again. in the course of my lifetime, it had been the capital of the most mondays his regime that anyone could possibly imagine. it was the headquarters of hitler's not to germany. -- nazi germany. obama and i began our exchange. i mentioned i had been in berlin the night the wall came down, the only correspondent w

dresden had been firebombed to the point it was leveled. i spent the next 40 years behind communist lines. now the city was rising. i just came from berlin. i was there the night the wall came down. it is vibrant once again. it had been the capital of the most mendacious regime than anyone could imagine. then along came an african- american president his father came from africa and mother came from here. we began our exchange. when i mentioned i have been in berlin denied the what came down, urging the night in the wall came down, he said i know, i watched you. i was in law school. my god. he was in law school. the energy to take that we have been there. i wonder what they would be saying about their time. this is about what we left them. you forget you have a firm idea of where you're going to go. as every page, you have new thoughts about the direction you want to go. this came down to two questions. what happened to the america i thought i knew? they would say, do you think my children will have a better life that i have had? i wary they