Up next we are going to show one of the books mentioned. Heres Thomas Friedman, thank you for being late. [inaudible conversations] the staff here welcome. These are sponsored author talks as much as we would have liked to have you invest or on connecticut avenue. We are excited to use this spacious and comfortable setting for the author talks like the one this evening. And what a treat to have with us few people can foster the complexities and write about them as clearly at the start of his new book went into journalism in part because he was translating in english. It is singled out effecting our lives and the forces of Climate Change, technology and globalization. They discussed the accelerating changes for reshaping the lives and how we can cope with them. It looks at the community in which he grew up in st. Louis a suburb of minneapolis and connecting with others and succeeding. Its dating back to high school in minnesota and that has been his passion for journalism was sparked in when his interest in the middle east was ignited. College and graduate school focuses the studies on mediterranean and middle east so it only seemed fitting after becoming a journalist ended up in that part of the world. They first sent to tom to beirut and after he moved to the new york times, it wasnt long before they sent him back to beirut and off to jerusalem. Reporting in those years garnered two pulitzers for International Coverage and led to his first book from beirut to jerusalem locating in washington he was assigned a rather quick succession to three of the top reporting jobs, the chief diplomatic correspondent, White House Correspondent and International Economics correspondent. By 1995, 21 years ago, he took over the papers Foreign Affairs column and has been at it ever since. This is a commentary in 2002 and those that follow the column know they are not just about Foreign Affairs into the traditional sense of diplomacy and international conflict. They also deal with globalization, the, finance, technology and a number of other issues relevant to how the world works today. The previous books have exhibited a wide range of interest as well as the same engaging conversational style that is characterized in the columns. Tom writes for the general reader and as we are about to hear he pitches the talk for the general lister, to ask a please join me in welcoming tom friedman. The last time i was here, my daughter was here and my soninlaw was here. They are in the front row. To give a general overview than we have microphones then we have microphones in the front so im looking forward to your questions. The title of the book thank you for being late. Where does that come from lacks the title comes from people in washington, d. C. For breakfast over the years as a columnist and every once in a while someone would be ten, 15, 20 minutes late. The weather, traffic, and one day i spontaneously sent to one of them actually, thank you for being late is been eavesdropping on their conversation. Its the ideas that ive been struggling with for a month, so thank you for being late. And people started to get into it and said youre welcome. [laughter] they recognized what i was doing was giving them permission to pause, to slow down and reflect. My favorite quote in the beginning is from my friend who says when you press the pause button on the computer, it stops. But when you press the pause button on a human being, it starts. Rethink and reimagined. And this book was my attempt to press the pause button in order to reflect, rethink and reimagined where we are. And the book began with an applause where i stopped and engaged with someone that i normally wouldnt have. And it ended up in a sequence of events producing this book. I live in bethesda maryland and about once a week i take the subway to work so for me that means driving down bradley blvd. Beneath the bethesda hyatt and i did that almost three years ago now when i started this project. I drive to the cashiers booth and give you tickets to the the tickets to the cashiers and they look at me and said i know who you are. I read your column and i said great. He said i dont always agree. I said thats good it means you always have to check. We had a laugh and i drove off a of the at the cashiers booth and the same guys there. This time he says mr. Friedman, i have my own blog. Would you read it . What just happened. So he wrote it down and took a piece of tape and wrote it down. I went home and pulled it up and it turned out he was ethiopian and wrote about ethiopian politics from a democracy point of view on his website. I eventually concluded that this was a sign from god. I park my car under the gate and i said that night i wrote an email and repeated the emails in the front of the book and basically said to him i have a proposition for you. I see that you are proposing a deal. So we met two weeks later and i presented him with a memo on how to write a column and he told me his life story. I taught a course and sat down and reflected what it was about. The life story. On the websites they were slow slowed so she decided to start his own blog and now i feel empowered. They can get their voice out there so i then presented him with my nano and there were three different sessions. The new story is meant to inform and to do so better. I illuminate something for you and ideally as i do both, i would produce one of several reaction. I didnt know that, i never looked at it that way and i never connected those things. I explained to him that it requires a chemical reaction. First what is your value set and how do you lean into the world and what are the world worldviews you are trying to promote what is the value that you are trying to promote and how do you think the Machine Works, so it is my shorthand for the Biggest Forces shaping more things and more places and as a columnist im always carrying around a working hypothesis of how the Machine Works because im trying to take my valid use and push the machine and if i dont know how it works i either wont push it or i will push it in the wrong direction and all of my books have been one take or another. Its how the people and the culture affect the machine. Stir them together and let it rise. If you do it right, you will produce a column that produces more light. The more i explained this, the more i thought to myself if thats what the column is about, what is your value set and how do you think the Machine Works today and what have you learned about people and culture. I will focus on the core engine of the book and how the Machine Works today. We are in the middle of three explorations. One of them is exponential in the three largest forces on the planet all at the same time. I called and the market, Mother Nature and moores law. The speed and power microchips will double every 24 months. If you put the law in a graphic looks like this. Twitter, facebook, paypal things are digitized and globalized. It drives more Climate Change and solutions as well and that is shaping more things and places. Thats why the Second Chapter of the book. 2007, what was this guy talking about. The iphone came out in 2007, january, 2007 they unveiled the center in San Francisco beginning a process whereby we are putting an internetenabled handheld computer into the hands of every person on the planet. It became available to everyone with the address and a Company Called twitter. It went global in 2007. Its a company youve never heard off after the founders sons created the foundation for big data by creating a software platform. A company also launched assaults the Biggest Software repository in the world. Got an idea, no problem. Pull it off the shelf, fix it, improve it, put it back on the shelf. Its one of the most Important Companies in the world today and that isnt all that happened in 2007. In 2007, google came out with something called android. In 2007, i began started a computer called walks in and in 2007, the roommates in San Francisco thought it would be a cool idea to rent out their air mattresses to some guy is coming for a Design Conference and they started a company. Ever seen the grass of the price of sequencing of the human genome it looks like this. 100 million. 2007, look at the graph of solar energy. 2007, something we call the cloud started. Change. Org started in 2005, michael retired and have seen it all. In 2007 for the first time they went off to extend the law to the transistors. They were seen as the single greatest Inflection Point since gutenberg invented the printing press. Think about what happened. Right when our physical technologies took off we were on a moving sidewalk and something went from 5 miles an hour to 35 miles an hour. You need is to get the most out of the acceleration and cushioned the worst and we all basically froze. We have been living the last seven or eight years. Think about this in the context of 2007 and 2008 let me digress for one moment if you are an average worker with an average education, you actually could get something called a higher wage middle skilled job. I quoted a congressman from minnesota who said they needed a plan to fail. If you were an average worker, you needed a plan to fail because there was so much work. Then globalization starts to accelerate in the 80s, 90s and early 20th euros euros. What do we do for the average worker to help them compete, we gave them credit cards and mortgages and a loft were able to sustain themselves through the expansion of credit and by the value of the veterans. In 2007 and 2008. I will explain this in just a second. Machines and software. Its because of the 20 of eight crisis and the shock i would argue produced this election ended with a dislocated and angry people. All five parts, microchips for accelerating, software was accelerating, storage was accelerating and sensors are accelerating. In 2007, they all meld into something we call the cloud. I never used the term the cloud because it sounds so soft. I ive looked at clouds from both sides now. This is a supernova the largest force. It has basically two things that came together. I was here on the stage in 20052 told the story of a massive collapse in the price of fiber optic cables that happened as a result of the bubble and bust we made fiber optic cables so cheap we wired of the world and i gave the moment and name. I said the world was flat because we have collapsed the conductivity and we could suddenly touch people we could never touch before and we could be touched by people who could never before. I wrote a book called the world is flat. In 2007 as the broker says to me it is a bad year to stop. I basically stopped. When i wrote that book, i had missed something. Because i suddenly realized we were running around telling people the world is flat and facebook didnt exist. The cloud was still in the sky, big data was a rap star and all of that had happened between just 2005 and 2011. It all came together in 2007. And whats produced in fact, another price collapse only this time it was end of conductivity, it was the collapse in the price. We made computing and storage so cheap that we could make complexity easy for you and invisible. Theyve been abstracted away and its happening everywhere. Its like a change from solid to liquid. Its putting grease and leverage and everything so when you make conductivity free and you make complexity free and easy for you you get an incredible release of energy that changes. What one person can do as a maker or breaker is phenomenal. If we have a president elect who can sit in his penthouse now and on his iphone to 20 million people. Its changed the power machines that can now think. It was cold jeopardy. They had the alltime champions. Mr. Watson passed on the first question both before the humans on the second question and a ten under 2. 5 seconds, he said what is shoe. The world doesnt been the same since. It was figured out faster than two human beings and power machines. It is between any human beings that loved each other and keeps falling to that. Think of how quickly they flow and melt away and its changed the power of many. We as a collective are a force of nature. The newest geological era facilities for kinds of power are not just changing the world. They are fundamentally reshaping the world. Its about those that are being reshaped and we need to reimagine them. The workplace is being reshaped, geopolitics, ethics and the community. My chapter on how the workplace is being reshaped is how we turn Artificial Intelligence into intelligence assistance and intelligent algorithms there was a change in the pace of change one of the hardest things for the mind to grasp is the power of an exponential and that is what we are in the middle of. They said how can i reward you and he said i just want to feed my family. He said i would like one grain of rice on the first and then just keep doubling it and my family will be fine. The number you get is the team quintillion. You start to see cars that can drive themselves, machines that not only can win at jeopardy but basically ingested every article the power of an exponential is so hard to demonstrate that to give the users a feeling for this, its engineers on the back of an envelope said what if a 1971 beedle improved at the same rate as microchips and calculated they would go 300,000 Miles Per Hour and get 200 million per gallon and cost 4 cents. Thats the kind of exponential we are in and therefore we are feeling the change and pace of change in the workplace. I like to say when i got out of college i found a job and when my girls got out of college to invent a job and i think this will increasingly be true slips out of the turn Artificial Intelligence into this kind of assistance in algorithms. We have the hr policies of at t. Living on the edge of the supernova competing with verizon, tmobile, very interesting to understand what the policies are so we spent a lot of time. The ceo begins with a transparent and speech about what world he thinks they are in and what skills you will need as the employee this year and they put every employee on the system we have ten skills we think you need to thrive and youve got seven of them but you are missing three then they partnered with the Online Learning platform and a key creek aged man no degrees for all time and then they said we will give you 800,000 to take all these courses on one condition you have to take them on your own time. When the new jobs open up we wont go outside. If you want to be a lifelong employee coming to be a lifelong learner. If brad says i climbed up to many telephone poles im tired and dont want to take these courses, they have a wonderful severance package. That social contract is coming to a neighborhood near you. Theres 64 buildings in san diego and they basically retrofitted a bunch of the buildings with sensors on every computer in the door of your window, they just have sensors on everything. They been all of that data to the cloud and then to the generators. They give them an anthropogenic assistant to enable them to live above the line and that the it gives them a tour and that is what it does for the dignity of the person because they now have an intelligent assistant enabling them to operate at this higher level. Intelligent algorithm, by example that is the partnership between the College Board and the academy. At the democratic the all have kids in college. Yet you have to pay some kid 200 in order to lift your kid above the line. If you come from a family that cant afford that, you are behind from day one. Now he takes his exam in the 11th grade but you have a problem with fractions and right angles and then he takes them to a website devoted to fractions and right angles to exactly as weakness. He comes back and says have you thought of taking math in your senior year. It is an intelligent algorithm and last year, 2 million got free sat prep through this algorithm so what you find that would never have known from this campaign was Bernie Sanders was to take down the bank and people are actually doing amazing stuff to try to help people live in this higher case of change but it is a challenge. I will talk about my chapter on how we need to reimagine politics. We are in the middle of a Climate Change and climate of technology and change and globalization. We are going through three Climate Changes at once. You want brazilians you want to resell against. I thought how do we win the Climate Changes and then i realized there was a woman of 3. 8 billionyearsold, she was Mother Nature and she has been through more then anybody so i interviewed her and said how do you produce this when the Climate Changes and she said first of all, i do this unconsciously but i am incredibly adaptive. Only the adaptive survive. In the portal ecosystem is the most resilient ecosystem. Then she said i do believe in the state of the body and a circular. Im very sustainable. Then she said im incredibly entrepreneurial. She said you cant build anything resilient without time and to speed up the growth of a tree or gestation and all of. And the ecosystem is in balance it is highly resilient to the invasive species. The party lost ownership of the system and donald trump was an invasive species. That is exactly what happened by the way. Last, she said i believe in the solutions. Im very hybrid. Theres nothing dogmatic about me. Last i do believe in the loss of bankruptcy, return them to the great manufacture and take their energy to nourish my successes. I basically argue within the political systems they must consciously mirror what will be the most resilient in the age of acceleration and then i took it one step further and said to myself what his Mother Nature running if she had a party up with her platform be and i invented Mother Natures Political Party. We should have a singlepayer healthcare system. The same timeline to the right of the editorial page and i would abolish all and replace them with a carbon tax. I think we need to get entrepreneurial to pay for the safety nets we are going to need over here, because the world is going to get too fast for some people if you are radical on entrepreneurism and if you are safety net that has got to go and that is not sustainable. Whether it is in the uk or europe or here, they were designed in the new deal and civil rights. What you have to respond to in the Political Party are the three accelerations. My favorite chapter in the book is called is god in cyberspace. Portland oregon a man stands up in the balcony and says i have to question, is god in cyberspace and i thought. [laughter] i said i dont know. I have never been asked that question. I feel like a complete idiot. So i got home and i called my rabbi. One of my spiritual teachers at the time. I met him at the institute in jerusalem. I called and said ive ive gotten a question that ive never had before. Is god in cyberspace and he said in our state tradition we have two concepts of the almighty. If that is your view key spot in cyberspace which is full of pornography, gambling but we have a post biblical view of god and that is that it is in how we behave so if you want god to be in cyberspace, we have to bring him verify how we behave. So i took the interview and put it into the paperback edition. Its obvious and it became starkly obvious in this election everything has moved to cyberspace. How we educate, build friendships, find spouses, how we learn. Everything is moved to the round that we are all connected but no one is in charge. What does that mean. It means the phrase is posttruth and you can say anything about anybody. So much of our lives are moving into the realm that we are all connected and no one is in charge and therefore, values the each one of us believes matters more than ever especially when now you can be a maker and breaker. For those reasons values the golden rules matter now more than ever but every person believes no matters. So i gave this talk as a commencement address at the college of engineering last spring and i said to the parents i know what youre thinking, you paid 200,000 so your kid could get an engineering degree and there is a knucklehead up there preaching about the golden rule. Is there anything more naive. There is one thing and that is thinking that we are going to be okay if we do not scale back the golden rule. The standout and introspection that theyve never stood before. If it had to be one country im glad that it was ours. At the same time, we could fix something. Weve never stood at this place before where we could actually fix everything, feed, house, clothe, educate every person on the planet with the same powers. It means weve never been more caught like as a species. Weve never stood at this intersection before. And now matters more than ever. It comes from Strong Families and communities. I grew up in an amazing little town outside of minneapolis and went to the same high school, grew up in the same neighborhood with the brothers. They basically tell its story and in the early 50s they are with africanamericans and they were able to get out in the mid 50s. Its to the suburb of st. Louis park that had been 100 protestant catholic overnight became 20 jewish protestant catholic finland and israel have a baby. [laughter] it produced this energy. If you watch no country for old men you will see where he blows up a car outside of a pharmacy in mexico, the camera panned up to the story and we build an Inclusive Community of trust. My friend also says trust is the only legal enhancing drugs. You have people applying the golden rule and telling how we do it. Then i come back to the same high school. Now it is so much more challenging. That is the story of the world. I left st. Louis park to discover and came back and found the world had discovered st. Louis park. So i will come include my book like a Hallmark Card plays happy birthday and its by a great country focusing her main refrain is a wreck your love around me but never was afraid it would die. You can dance in a hurricane but only if you are standing in the eye. And i believe right now the acceleration is like the wind of a hurricane. You think you can manage them by building a wall. I dont think so. It creates a platform of dynamic stability within it that is the struggle in this country and going forward. Thank you very much. [applause] we have time for thank you. [applause] so much of what you said resonates with me. I operate a solo Consulting Firm by myself and i manage global trade biotechnology in food around the world sitting at my desk singapore and evening blended in the morning. Im the epitome of what you call diverse adapters entrepreneurial and resiliency and the people i talk to and listen to in my year every day and yet this election showed me that the biggest lack of linkages is my hometown in detroit where so many of the people are older and theyll want to diversity. They dont want to adapt to the market they were told one job or life and they dont want to move any more. Theres this tremendous and my heart into my life. How do we bridge this . Thats a really powerful question. Thank you for sharing all of that. And first of all let me say i was humbled in writing this book its longer than any book ive ever done and i worked on it for three years. I felt like i had butterfly net and i was chasing a butterfly and every time i got close it moved. I entered a few ahead of intel three times and each time just to make sure often things change in between. I was sending them and so i know how fast its getting and when i say im humbled its that i dont have the answer. I really dont but heres everything i have learned has taught me. Number one we have been here before. In the most dangerous time to be on the streets of new york city was when automobiles were first introduced both horses and buggies had been phased out yet. We are at one of those moments if horses could have voted a narrow there never would have been cars so we always have to remember this and unfortunately those people that are heard by change know exactly who they are in a protest. People who benefit from it are too busy garnering the benefits and you see that in our politics. But when it comes to the average worker i dont have a simple answer. I wish i did. I look for it but i dont have a simple answer when the pace of change is as fast as a lifelong learner. I was in iowa last week and a man came up to me after my talk and he said i have all these trump voters out here in central iowa. Other people have pointed this out the most important line on the of trump is the word again and believe me i understand that i live in this world and i thrive on it so i dont have a simple answer for each person. They do have a macroanswer and i macroanswer is not one that any trump voter want to hear. That is when you have a fastchanging moment you want to be as open as possible because you will get signals. You will attract a the most highrisk entrepreneur and at the same time you want to be educating everybody as much as you can. Be open and educate everybody as much as you can and then let the miracle of america happen. I was at a conference in september and there was a woman there. Sure she said her job was packing sharks for twitter. Who knew there was a job tagging sharks for twitter. Your job five years ago didnt exist. If you let it happen and thats what scares me out trump. I understand it and i respect him. The column that i wrote was addressed to his voters. You are a decent man but i know where youre coming from and its not going to get you there because the board is not coming back to this country with a factory in dearborn. Its 500 robots. The modern fact trees, the man is there to feed the dog and the dog is there to keep the man away from the machines. Thats where its going. But let me share with you the most important thing i learned in this book in doing this book and it was surprising for me. If youll indulge me i will read a little bit and we may have to close and take questions but i just want to share this with you. You know what i learned during this what . The thing that stood out is that the things that matter most to people where the humantohuman connections. Gallup did a giant study. They studied people who have been out of college at lease for five years and they asked them, are you happy with the direction of your career . I called up the group said yes and then they joked down and found that they had in common gallup him they had two things in common. They had an internship somewhere along the way and they had a mentor who took an interest in their hopes and dreams. They are such a message in a bottle. Their profile in this book most big Retail Companies today their h. R. Policies or to leave people out. Apply for old navy or walmart. They give millions of applications a year. They are overwhelmed so the interface between them and the job applicant. Do you know how to fold a shirt and you know how to deal with the customer and if you pass that test that weeds out thousands of people. If you go to their web site youll notice in the upper right corner are a smiley face button. Call the coach button. I listed all the questions. Coach would away where its my job . Coach what would light the first question be . Everywhere i turned it was the humantohuman stuff that stood out. Let me just read to you, this is from the last pages of my book. Thats why when i asked the Surgeon General what was the biggest disease in America Today without hesitation he answered not cancer, its not hard disease, its isolation. It is to the pronounce isolation that so many people are experiencing that is the great pathology of our lives today. How ironic. We are the most technologically connected generation Human History and get more people feel more isolated than ever. This only reinforces the point that the connections that matter most are in short supply today are the humantohuman ones. Dont get me wrong technology has so much to offer to make us more productive healthier more learned and more secure if. Im awed by the intelligent assistant night discovered in researching this book and the potential it has on so many people to make it possible for us to fix everything. We will get the best out of tate tate these technologies only if we dont let them distract us from making these human connections addressing human longings and inspiring human energies. When we do that depends on all that stuff you can download. The high five from the coach, the praise from mentor, the hug from a friend to hand up from a neighbor the handshake from a rival the totally unsolicited gesture of a stranger the smell of the garden and not the cold stare of a wall. Can you imagine how many jobs there are going to be the humantohuman connections . Here. This is such an important question and we had a friend of ours who is a consultant hired by company and they have ours were adult come and other people in a paint by numbers. Whoever thought there would be an industry in teaching people to paint in bars but maybe so somebody is going to teach painting. Theres a good job. So let it happen but if you put up a wall against it you will thanks for your question. Thank you. [applause] i will do as many as i can. In addition to reading your good book would you recommend is the action plan for individual citizens if our next administration antipolicy. I can say what im going to do as a columnist. Im going to go all out. I spent 15 months trying to prevent trump from winning. Right now im in a phase where i focused on one thing Climate Change. There is one thing he can do that would be reversal met with the turn america away from Global Leadership on climate printing everything i can to push that direction one way or another. [applause] but if he goes against that its allout war. This is a really Pivotal Moment and i have a column in the news york times i can use that but everybody will have to find their way to resist. We will not and we should not and i dont think people while. People will. [inaudible] to connect. To resist. I think you really have to do with the other side did very well. They gerrymandered districts and they got control of the congress and through that they have been able to dominate the legislative process. I think all the people dont get organized. Im not a big Facebook User and im not a big twitter user because i find they are both forms of activism. I tweeted about it. Thats like firing a mortar into the Milky Way Galaxy and i have news for you ask on mobile are now on facebook. They are in the cloak room, not the chat room and they are in the cloak room with bags of money. So get out of facebook and all of this on line stuff has so much activism that it given a pass to a lot of people. So in 2013 you spoke at air traders seminar. One of the last things he said was he made a forecast for the middle east and he basically said it was chaos. Little did we know that summer that morsi would he out and things with progressively get worse later. I was going to ask how is that changed in light of the election but also how was it changed in the world entering 50 years and not just the middle east and the unstable part of the world but the world as a whole zoom 50 years of chaos. I confess i didnt rent any dinner parties today and i do weddings and bar mitzvahs as well. So i dont want to ruin this one but i have a chapter on that in the book is built around the television show. You are too young to know but it was a famous and don adams was agent 86 and worked for an Organization Called control. Their worldwide entity was called chaos spilled kaos. The chapters are relevant divide in the world is between the world of order and the world disorder and mediterranean and the rio grande are dividing line why is that . Basically 60 years after world war ii was a wonderful time to be an average you have superpowers during money at you in educating their children. They give you for an eighth and they rebuild their army. Climate change was moderate. China couldnt take your low wage labor and populations were moderate. Everyone had a demographic given them. In the age of acceleration all of that is gone. Now Climate Change is hammering these countries. They have demographic deficits a lot of them. The climate, just did document drink on this for national geographic, globalization is leaving them behind and china is in the world trade organization. So i tell the story i was in each apt egypt. Im leaving it just any good at cairo airport and i go to the souvenir store cairo airport in by my hon a Little Something to remind her where her honey was for three weeks. What did they have here . Pyramid ash trays. My pumpkin doesnt smoke. What do they have here . They have a stuffed camel and if you squeeze his it honks. The my honey doesnt have a honking camel so i buy a honking camel. A ticket to the Cash Register and a turnover in with a slam the bottom . Say it with me, made in china and you were the lowest wage country in the mediterranean. Its cheaper than you can ship it didnt take the profits back home. So what is happening . All of the average states are actually cracking up. They cant handle the acceleration. They are like caravan homes in the trailer park. They are built on slabs of cement with no basement and foundation. Acceleration is like a tornado going through taylor park starting in west africa and those whose borders are permanent waste great lines because they are the most artificial edits created this new divide between order and disorder. Thats why a say in the book, tell your daughters not to drop and the secretaries of state. Its the worst job in the world. If trump comes to you and says hed like for you to be secretary of state tell him you had your heart set on agriculture. [laughter] [applause] woes to be whoever gets this job. To me its like russian roulette because managing weakness in managing state collapse they all thought obama was a wimp. They have discovered that managing weakness is hell on wheels. I had better stop here. Im going to side books after. Thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] but the house and senate back in session on tuesday september 5, we are taking a look at the work the members of congress will be handling, the federal budgets tax reform, the debt ceiling and health care. Join us for a review of whats ahead for Congress Thursday night at eight eastern on cspan and cspan. Org and listen on the free cspan radio app. Youve been listening to columnist and author Thomas Friedman talking about his book thank you for being late. By the way mr. Friedman will be at the National Book festival on saturday september 2. You will be able to watch that live on booktv on cspan2. This is booktv and we are in primetime during the congressional recess showing you books being read by members of congress. Recently on capitol hill we visited with congresswoman martha robey of alabama and here is your reading list. Booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. Right now im reading this book by sam keon this. This is a book about the history of opiates in our country and its a Nonfiction Book but its absolutely fascinating. We have an epidemic in our country right now where we have more deaths by Drug Overdose the two car. This book lays out the foundation for how we got there. Im not finished with it yet but i do think it should be required reading as we move towards creating policy to deal with this epidemicn