>> that was complicated. once you're there, it didn't seem that complicated but the logistics, for instance, of trying to do interviews with gay men in baghdad, i could not do those interviews in the green zone so i had to hire security to take me into the red zone because gay men could be killed trying to come into the green zone. it's dangerous for an iraqi at the time to come in to green zone because it would indicate he or she is probably working for one of the foreign governments. or the iraqi government, which is not necessarily always considered a legitimate government by some people there. plus, you have to wait in line for hours sometimes and insurgents are actually some of the guards who are searching you. so the safest thing to do was to do the interviews with the red zone. i was told it was a bargain, $500 to go a mile. now when i go back i've been told i could walk around much more easily in baghdad. we'll probably take a bus between kurdistan and baghdad and i'll probably be able to move around -- but what does help me in many of these countries -- i don't look typically american. i'm not blond and blue-eyed like all the americans. i've been detained for faking being an american. i pass for arabic and all kinds of things so that is helpful for me until i have to open my mouth. so i have a certain mobility based on appearance that somebody who is blond and blue-eyed or african-american. the war zones are a different story from the actual capitals. it's very much that feel and i use that term casablanca with all this stuff, intrigue, spies and you can have fine wine and dining while bombs are going off. it's very much that feel. >> did you bring any books? >> to there or -- >> your book. >> oh, yeah i have books to sign after we're done here. so, yeah, i definitely have that. any other questions? anybody else have more questions? yeah. [inaudible] >> say that again. >> is there any place, any countries in the middle east that you would not advise gay people to go to? [inaudible] >> i saw "the kite runner" just recently. but the taliban -- [inaudible] >> you know, they are having sex with these boys and at the same time killing this woman because of -- >> yeah, yeah. >> it gives me the opinion that it's very dangerous for gay people to go there? >> yeah, one of the things that i want to make very clear is, you know, i'm not talking about, you know, it's gay pride month and it's gay pride in queens. i'm not talking about walking down the street in go-go shorts and a rainbow flag. much of what i'm towing is undergown and sometimes openly gay and sometimes not openly gay. i would never, ever tell anyone not to travel anywhere 'cause they're gay. one thing i also make clear in this book is that -- and if you talk to, for instance, gay diplomats and the places are full of gay diplomats, gay ngo workers, gay members of the sheriff's department, gay members of the military or the nonmilitary effort for the war, there's a lot of gay people, ñ people, in these zones.le, many of them really, really enjoy being in these zones where everything is nebulous, where things are undefined. you can use that to your advantage in a certain way and also being as old as i am, and what people know of western culture -- and it can come up in conversation but indirectly, 'cause again things are nebulous, well, if you're 35 and 40 and you're not married and from the west people figure out you're probably gay but they won't necessarily use that term. they just figure it out. so i would never say to anybody not to go to a place. you're also looking at "the kite runner" that takes place understand the taliban. and i would think from a travel perspective people of any hesitancy to visit a country that's been torn apart to war but they are fascinating places to go and they are part of our country's history. they're now intertwined with to a degree american colonialism. part of the american empire. the edges of our empire in a certain way. they're part of our history and whether you're gay or you're straight, you need to see it. traveling in afghanistan, iraq is not the same as traveling in germany or mexico or -- it's a very different -- i would never tell anybody not to go. you have to just be different from how you are in the west. if you're two western men holding hands or two blond blue eyed men, but you're a western man but you're western so they know you're different. does that answer the question kind of? any other questions? okay. well, great. if anybody has any questions that they don't want to ask in a public forum or they want to ask me on the side afterwards, yeah, that's fine, i'll be here for a little while, free to sign books if anybody wants any books. and also any questions that somebody isn't it want to ask in a public forum. did you have a question? [inaudible] >> mohammed atta. [inaudible] >> i had never heard that or -- >> there's been pieces in "new york times" and the gay press. you'll see all the stuff that comes up. [inaudible] >> it was part of the conversation from the beginning. okay. all right. great. i want to say things. thanks for having me here in queens. [applause] >> for more information for his work, visit michaelluongo.com. >> miriam greenberg is the author of branding new york: how a city in crisis was sold to the world. when you think of a city in the '50s and '60s, what do you think of? >> well, i think new york in the post-world war ii period was in a position of -- you know, pr m preeminence and it's fortunes was rising for a time. it was a famous kind of working class city to quote another book by joshua freeman. it was a city that had had a lot of business during world war ii and its industries had been employing many, many new yorkers. and it was also a growing media capital. it was expanding its office infrastructure. it was growing in terms of of the siting of the united nations. it was part of, you know -- it was seen, i think, internationally as kind of the capital of a resurgent u.s. following world war ii. yes, very much so. so its star was rising in that period. >> what happened to new york in the 1970s? >> well, it's a complicated question that has global, national reasonings behind it political economic cultural. it was a period of crisis on many levels. and it was a period that began really in the 1960s, the decline, and really reached a nadir in the mid-'70s that had to do at the local level with a mismanagement of funds and a fiscal crisis of the state that led to the city going bankrupt. and when i say funds, this is a complex story over which historians debate. it had to do on the one hand the city government spending an enormous amount to build massive amounts of high-end private sector office space and residential buildings as well as maintaining its level of social spending at a time when lessens were shrinking and so that created a crisis for the city's budget. on the other hand, new york was not alone. there were many cities, you know, it was a period in which cities across the country and indeed the world were facing bankruptcy to do with a global recession, to do with, you know, inflation and stagflation as a result of, you know, recession and inflation combination, the global oil crisis. so it was a complex time, and it was a time when the fortunes of cities in particular, given the retrenchment of the federal government were put in this very difficult position. they were having to find new sources of revenue. >> was new york losing population in the '50s, '60s, '70s. >> no -- well, there was suburbization that was going on and had been going on since the late 19th century in new york and the÷r surrounding suburbs. one thing was occurring was the rise of suburbs more widely in the united states and the expansion of suburbs and so there was, you know, a loss of population to the growing sunbelt region that was going on since the '50s. so the west and southwest of the united states. and the sunbelt was also -- you know, the suburbized sunbelt was the base of a growing, more area of the country. and it saw its strength -- saw it as reflecting an old guard form of civic populism, if you will, that the republican party, the right wing republican party was trying to supplant. new york was losing a population and finding itself in competition, in serious competition, with other cities that were more in -- you know, in that republican orbit. >> well, in your book you talk about the crisis of the '70s and new york's response. >> yeah. >> how severe was the crisis and what was the response? >> the crisis of the '70s was extremely severe as i mentioned. the city went into technical bankruptcy. as a result of which -- so i think the crisis on the one hand was produced by these national global circumstances and by a reaction. it was a crisis that not only befell new york that was produced as a result of the reaction to it so it involved thet/ imposition of very harsh austerity measures like fire protection and sanitation and education and vital city services. laid off thousands of public sector workers. led to the increased exodus of people in corporations from -- and businesses from new york. as a result of these 0-cutbacko it was very, very severe, yeah. and to this day i think the reaction by the city, the degree of, you know, what some people might call the draconian severity of the situation has been questioned -- >> what do you mean by that draconian reaction. >> well, i think there was kind of a calculus that, you know, where the priority should be placed by the city. i think the city essentially stated to under intense pressure from the ford administration, you know, there's the famous daily news headline, new york city drop dead which was something ford was not only saying to new york but it was saying to many cities in this period, he didn't literally saying but the federal administration was saying cities were not getting the kind of funding that they once got and there was intense pressure on the city to kind of privatize and to downsize its public spending and to increase its competitiveness and to attract new investments as opposed to taking a route which similar to keynesian part of the middle part of the century and similar to what obama is talking about investing in a stimulus package that could have grown the middle class of the city and the working class of the city and i think there was a calculus if one had to be lost, what could be lost was the kind of quality of life for the working and middle class of the city in order to bring in new funds into the city in the form of new corporate headquarters, tourism and a new upper middle class into the city. and so there was a whole restructuring of the priorities and ultimately the budgetary priorities and also the new forms of incentives were provided for investment and relocation and tourism. at the same time, that money was cut from social spending for existing residents, you know, and workers in the city. >> and what was the affect today of those changes? >> well, i think it created what some -- what some people started to call actually already in the 1980s a kind of dual city. a city that was far more divided and unequal between classes. it created a city that was far more focused on the center, on manhattan as opposed to the outer boroughs which lost out in this calculus, so a kind of new form of centralization. i think it created a city that -- you know, what i focus on in the book is how marketing and media were used in concert with these new priorities, these new political and economic priorities and so it also created a new kind of imaginary, a new identity for new york, no longer was it this, you know, famed working class capital. now it became really represented as a more luxury elite city and a city could be more prominently placed in the -- in advertisements in association with products that wanted that kind of cachet. >> in fact, in your book, branding new york, you talk about a very famous new york brand, i heart or i love ny. what was the affect of that. >> well, i think that campaign kind of had two phases. in the initial phase of that campaign, this famous campaign that was designed by milton glaser the artistic director of "new york" magazine and a great graphic designer in his own right, i think that it really stimulated a kind of solidarity with new york and with new yorkers and made people think about what were the essential qualities of new york that they loved and they would be really sorry to lose. when i say this was a severe crisis, there was media and there were a lot of hype nationwide to the glee of some people that new york was going to cease to exist and there were kind of satires about new york falling -- you know, sinking into the ocean. you know, the famous scene in planet of the apes and the final -- the final episode where, you know, you see the torch of the statue of liberty rising above the stand, so there were a lot of characters of the city and representations of the city in which the city ceases to exist and i love new york, i heart new york, really responded to what was an anxiety about that, i think, for new yorkers. you know, many new yorkers wore i heart ny as well as among it is nation and had people identifying with, you know, i love new york, with this idea that there was something in the kind of urbanity and the issue and those playing around the font of the campaign with the gritty newspaper-style font and the softness of the heart and that juxtaposition and the early newspaper and -- sorry, print and television campaign featured prominently broadway stars and broadway shows from cats, from chorus line, from some of what remain to be some of the great musicals and productions that were -- many of which originated in the '70s and early '80s. and annie and other things. and so there was also, you know, this -- characters from those performances and services for free and there was a great creatity and vitality of broadway and times square. i think that was the first phase and the second phase -- this was a campaign launched by the state and not sit. what now is called the empire state development corporation, what was the department of commerce at the time, they kind of shifted focus largely away from this intense personal identification with new york and a kind of inovacation of the crisis itself to much more bland imagery of shopping and downtown finance and the skyline of the city in association with the natural escape that you could have in the rest of new york state. sflufsh and i think that was part of the planning all along. i think the early phase was so much in the midst of the crisis that people wanted that kind of identification and later the more business development side of the campaign was what was focused on. you know, from the beginning, i love new york was kind of the front stage of this deeper restructuring that i was talking about. and that became more and more clear as the campaign went on. and i actually also talk in the book -- in this -- about this transition of another side of the campaign that was less publicized that actually involved -- instead of having broadway stars performed had ceos why they loved new york and, you know, there's a 30% tax break for relocating to the state, i love new york. there's all these different kinds of deals that corporations could bget was the reason why they loved new york. >> what is new york's brand. >> i think i love new york was very successful in many ways and was held up as perhaps one of the recognized city marketing campaigns globally and was copied enormously. so much so -- and that was allowed in the early phase. it was not copy written until later and was allowed to virally travel. and i think there was an effort following 9/11 to rebrand the city. i think there was a feeling amongst now a new much more professionalized cohort of branders that the brand value of i heart new york had been watered down and they needed a more resident kind of program to do the economic development, business development that they envisioned and they rebranded immediately following 9/11 with very patriotic imagery and given the loss of the world trade center which had prominent in the commercials and the sky line, you know, of this second phase of the i love new york campaign, that had to be completely revised and there was an intensive focus on the statue of liberty and the association of a kind of patriotic red, white and blue infinity logo with statue of liberty a kind of triumphant resurgent. with bloomberg there's been a shift again in an interesting way. bloomberg has spoken about a need to see new york as a luxury city again. so there's been a lot of marketing along the lines of -- that was done in association with the effort to attract the olympics to new york and done in the association with the republican national convention. that has been done in association with a lot of events that had been hosted by a much larger, beefed-up professionalized marketing apparatus that has been -- that has been produced under his administration. so there's been a lot of very kind of luxury-like images that have been -- that have been produced. and there's also been a new campaign called this is new york which interestingly associates that luxury image with a very kind of utopian vision of a diversity that kind of harkens back to the early days of i love new york. and i think that juxtaposition of a kind of a longing, a utopian longing, with this luxury-oriented, elite things is one of the things that makes these campaigns so successful and allows people not to sort of think so critically about them as i think they should. >> as a sociology professor at uc santa cruz, why are you writing a book called "branding new york"? >> well, i recently relocated to santa cruz, not that i wouldn't be interested in it. i lived in new york for 20 years before i moved to california. and over the course of living in new york i became very fascinated with the sociology of the city, the history of the city. i was myself a media-maker, the representation of the city, and i became fascinated with this period which i see as really formative in the contestimony -- contemporary form that it takes and the draconian cutbacks and the image of the city at the same time the resources for the livelihood of the city were being taken away. so i think while in new york, that really fascinated me. i've taken that fascination with me to california and tried to convince enemy santa cruz the importance of this. and i think it has resonance. cities when faced with crisis have a lot of these decisions to make about how to represent themselves. >> miriam greenberg is the author of branding new york: how a city in crisis was sold to the world is the book. >> we're at bookexpo america in new york city. we're at the university of minnesota press booth with emily hamilton, marketing director from the university of minnesota press. everything you know about indians is wrong. >> he believes there are a lot of myths about american indians in our culture perpetuated by movies, by toys, by ideas about the way american indians live in our culture and he has basically taken people to task with this with his dry wit that american indians live in different ways. they live in cities, do all different kinds of jobs. you know, they contribute to culture in a very, very integral way not in a nostalgic way. and he's trying to correct those ideas that are still so pervasive in our culture. >> bury don imus is the book. he talks a little bit about this. >> the book is around don imus' firing and his -- you know, the racial comments that he made on the air and people -- when this happens there's this huge explosion of emotion and of anger and outpouring of outrage about racist comments but michael awkward is saying this is basically sort of an underlying -- it's an underlying tension in our culture that needs to be sort of -- it's a cathartic when it happens but -- and people sort of congratulate themselves, hey, we're dealing with race relations because we ostracized this media figure and we're not dealing with our underlying themes in our culture. >> who is michael awkward. >> he's a professor from the university of michigan. he's a feminist, a black scholar, a fan of dan imus' show and so the book really kind of takes a personal look at the incident, too, in how he personally sort of worked through it and why was it such a big teal? and how could he reconcile be a fan of the show and sort of with his own problems with american culture. when people say things like this, you know, in one context and not in another, why is it considered over the line? why is it considered over the line for don imus and not in other aspects of culture. >> you have one other title, never trust a thin cook. you want to tell me about this and the reason for the acquisition. >> sure, absolutely. this is -- we published eric drgney before. he's a really, really fun writer. he does cross-cultural travel memoirs. and he recently wrote a book about being in norway for two years and this is about being in italy. he and his wife lived in italy for two years and they were in search for the best food in the world. and so they went to italy, the birth place of balsamic vinegar. and it's basically like this really, really funny cross-cultural misadventures of living in italy and it's all based around food. the vinegar place and, you know, having -- going to pavaratti's house. trying to figure out how to live in italian culture and eat the best food in the world. >> emily hamilton, university of minnesota press, thanks. >> thank you very much. >> coming up, jeff benedict, author of "little pink house," talks about susette kelo and her battle to sell her n