And over here. My medic started working on it. It is okay. Two guys got hurt with me, they had been hurt, not going to solve this problem with a lot less. I never went to die but a minute and a half. My tourniquet and left leg turner kept, and two guys were fine. And a helicopter blue me out to kandahar hospital. So good at traumatic injury, leave there alive. And traumatic injury. Trying to get back up, i am mad i am lying on this bed. Jumping my chest, one guys just held me down. I can stop being afraid of showing fear. Saving private ryan, the medic yelling for his mom. My last memories, and you are going to be okay. Shut up and do your job. If i die it is not your fault. My little girl am i ever going to see her again, my girl is 6 months old, my left leg came off with it, triple amputee now. 14 hours of surgery, two nurses, 30 blood transfusions, i had to do month of testing, they didnt have time to go through this procedure to keep me alive. Everything got me going, that was april 10th, april 12th, my brotherinlaw was in afghanistan as well and when you are overseas, the blue book is what you write in if you die, who will bring your body home and what music plays at your funeral, it is morbid who gets the money. Josh flies to kandahar, they took me into surgery and cut my left arm off because the skin had died. Two days later they wake me up for the first time out of my goal station and first out of my mouth my brother in law is in the room, they are okay. Am i paralyzed . You are not paralyzed. We dont have them anymore. Angry, upset, i was questioning does god hate me, am i a bad person . What is going on. Take care of my family. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Live from the gaithersburg book festival, Sally Mott Freeman talked about the search for a missing naval officer during world war ii. Okay, welcome to the gaithersburg book festival. I am a volunteer here. Gaithersburg is a city that supports the arts and humanities and im pleased to bring this event thanks to the generous support of our sponsors and volunteers. If you see a sponsor or volunteer please thank them. A few announcements before we get started. Please silence your cell phones, you dont want cell phones going off during the presentation. If you are on social media and hope you are, use the hashtag gbs. Your feedback is important, there are surveys here, if you register you could win a 100 visa gift card. Who does not want to win a 100 gift card. I know i do. Sally will be signing books after the presentation. Copies of the book are available at politics and prose, quick word, this is a free event. It helps to purchase a book. If you buy a book the more books you sell the more publishers will want to send authors here to talk at the festival so consider purchasing a book if you are able to do so. Lets learn about sally. A searing memory of overhearing an argument in new jersey, the family hastened departure to dc conducting Lasting Impressions on a young Sally Mott Freeman. What are these hushed tones in the air. A 10 Year Research project, her uncle that she never met, the result is a first look at a missing naval officer in her familys quest to bring them home. I had a chance to look at sallys impressive resume. These are the positions she has held, a federal Communications Commissioner and became the Agency Spokesman in the News Media Division during a difficult period of the sec. Sally is director of legislative affairs, public information, she has been with telecommunications, a global relations firm, she has been communications vp, very impressive resume. Currently Sally Mott Freeman is with fm f productions, a Strategic CommunicationsConsultancy Firm specializing in event planning, outreach, article media placement and Public Relations to name a you. That is the professional side. She graduated with a degree in English Literature and was justs alumni award. She was part of a group that banded together to save the college from closing its doors and launched a legal fight to the virginia supreme court. They won. This is very interesting. Her husband, john, dismantled, moved, put back together, renovated and restored a 19th century wooden lighthouse in delaware. I have seen the pictures before and after, quite amazing and beautiful. Looking forward to the invite. I mentioned i enjoy reading her book and you should read it. From the epilogue to the beginning the story draws you in. You will find the story captivating. Not only is the book fun to read but very educational. Put your hands together and welcome Sally Mott Freeman. I will be reading periodically from the text itself in the context of the remarks. Thank you for the generous and unusual introduction, nick. Also to gaithersburg mayor judge ashman, founder of this wonderful festival. His conception showed focus, i might say courage, started organizing it immediately following a fractured us election before the most recent election, there was a lot of background noise during a recession but he took the long view and it is now a local institution and treasurer, i am very impressed by that. I thought i would touch on my research into this story and how it expanded into a 10 year project. My original quest in a slow odyssey was a family mystery nick referred to that generated so much tension between my father and his mother and others and i wanted to find out what happened to this uncle, uncle barton. He was unaccounted for at the end of the war. If you know anybody, friend or Family Member who has had to deal with an mia situation, it may reseed in time but doesnt reseed in terms of pain and its effect on future generations because there is no resolution. That is the way it was in my family. When i began my journey it was to get to the bottom of a murky set of circumstances that never seem to square no matter how much children theorized over time. What we knew, what we knew was barton was rooted in the philippines in december 1941. He went missing after manila fell but he was relocated in 1943 at a particular prison camp in the philippines but he went missing again. At the end of the war he was unaccounted for. After years of digging through half forgotten boxes in dozens of records and logs, national, military and president ial archives, and others halfway around the world. It was a stunning revelation different from what my family was through in the 1940s but by the time i made this discovery it had become part of a larger story i uncovered along the way. I was not prepared for the flood of accounts detailing astonishing brutality, men bayoneted and decapitated by the thousands. Others buried alive, tortured or starved within an inch of their lives. Against that backdrop i was amazed by other personal narratives, story after story of remarkable resilience, camaraderie, and selfdiscovery. These emerged from my interviews, conversations and travels with former prisoners of war. It was impressive given the statistics. Nearly 41 of American Military prisoners held by the japanese in that war died in captivity compared to 2 of pows held by the nazis. This is in large part due to the Japanese Military contempt for any soldier or sailor who surrendered to the enemy. I explained this in chapter 1. The guards were hot, tired and full of loathing for their charges, sentiment that intensified during the long siege. The best japanese soldiers were reserved to fight the war, those in charge of prisoners were either disgruntled conscripts or minimally trained third tier recruits who world too ready to turn their wrath on the prisoners. The ancient samurai code of conduct taught to every japanese boy from an early age surrender was among the most dishonorable effects. For a soldier to allow himself to be taken alive or, worse, to surrender, was unthinkable. Either brought permanent shame to the individual, his family and his country. In fact, japan declined to ratify the 1929 Geneva Convention because of its opposition to the clause condoning notification of relatives of a soldiers surrender. This would not only bring permanent shame on the soldier but disgrace to his family as well. Perhaps the japanese wartime reporter best described his countrys view, the account of the surrender of baton. I feel like i am watching filthy water running from the sewage of the nation, he wrote, which has lost its pride. By their way of thinking all prisoners of war served only disgrace and hardship or worse. This book is a family saga also. My family saga as much as it is a war story, a detailed divergent wartime paths of three officers, all naval officers following different parts of the expanding conflict. Also threaded through is the story of their mother, helen, fierce and assertive matriarch of whom i was terrified as a child. Left behind her warrior diaries fool of deeply emotional entry. Plus a formidable cannon of letters to the president , the secretary of the army and navy, congressman and senators all of whom replied to her. I often thought of helen as the powers, things mightve wrapped up quickly. The youngest of halfway through the Naval Academy for failing a math examination by 7 100ths of one point. He graduated from chapel hill with a degree in business. The mandatory drafted been signed so Middle Brother bill, my father, a Naval Intelligence officer in washington, 7 years barton senior pulled strings to get him a coveted commission in the relatively safe supply core, the navys central office. He did this to help barton but it was also to placate their mother who wanted her youngest and favorite son out of harms way. The navy had other plans. In november 1941 barton was ordered to the philippines and shortly after his arrival he was felled by a shrapnel wounds in the leg. It happens during an enemy bombing raid on the Us Naval Base near manila hours after the sneak attack on pearl harbor. While he was being admitted to the base hospital, his ship, a submarine tender, threw off its lines and set course for australia. With general macarthurs farmers already destroyed on the ground there was no air cover for the small American Fleet or naval submarines on the globe. All ships were ordered out during the japanese air raid. The overwhelmed Naval Medical staff conferred our next step. The stretcher bearers, an odd group of 17 native musicians, none of whom the patients had seen before or since struggled to avoid studying on some arms or legs. Crews gathered human remains before the japanese return in the morning. The cruise and stretcher boat had dogs, cats, chickens and fish party tearing at the flesh. At the dock a hastily appropriated pleasure kruger cruiser named marianne awaited. Patients were quiet. The fireworks sliced up the night sky behind them with molten carnage lightening the remains. Disoriented and morphine days the patients layabout muttering curses and such, making little sense. They periodically looked back shaking their head. In front of them manilla appeared relatively safe. They saw isolated cards of smoke over the city, but nothing like cavite. Barton confidence and as december war on. Heat is navy patients listened nightly to the radio as it don bell somberly detailed the manila bound progress of tens of thousands of japanese soldiers. Wave after wave of m enemy troops had come ashore 32 record 5 miles to the north. Theyll reported this in a tone is so grave, it retired require little interpretation. On Christmas Eve several macarthur ordered a military backed region of the manila and declared the philippine capital an open city meaning all ally defensive efforts had been abandoned. Open city investigation was intended to trigger the 1907 Invention Convention regulating land warfare that forbade a taxon undefended localities, but it was ignored by japan and they continue to bomb manilla including city hall and other buildings close to the hospital. By Christmas Day macarthur had completed his own retreat to the island fortress near the entrance to manila bay. The more than 70000 american and filipino crews had also evacuated to either corregidor or the baton select which borders the bay on one site in the south side titus young the other. By new years eve, the radiohead got off the air and that sounds of sirens had frantic traffic exiting the city had abated, but the wound bert wounded at the hospital had yet to be relocated to any safe haven. Been unimaginable to place. Late december 31, a brief but stunning order from macarthurs headquarters was delivered to the hospital. All army wounded were to be taken down to the peer seven immediately unloaded onto a red cross ship, ss mac 10 and transported to australia. The ship must depart as soon as possible, it said, in order to evade japanese forces. Confused, nurses and doctors both responded to the order with the same question, what about the navy patients . Macarthurs order made no pension mention of the navy patients, only the army patients barton and his fellow navy patients were left behind and i was later captured stray from their hospital caught. Lead on new years eve, 1941 or could they were captured along with a small Naval Medical staff that had accompanied them and cared for them. By all accounts the patients in japanese were equally surprised. These were the only americans left in manila. All others had evacuated the capital and taken up defensive petition positions elsewhere. So surprised where the japanese at the patients and medical staff were suspected to be spies left behind intentionally together intelligence. They were interrogated by the japanese brutal secret police. Veni, the oldest of the three brothers was the anti aircraft and gunnery officer on the uss enterprise, one of the few ships unscathed by the sneak attack on their home port, pearl harbor. Enterprise and her crew returned to the dark and harbor the night of december 8, 1941, lit only by flaming oil slick waters. With few operational ships, not to mention aircraft carriers left in the pacific, then he in the enterprise resupplied in short order. The japanese navy, then the most powerful in the world and some of the most lopsided battles in American Naval history. Fortunately, for me benny wrote eyewitness accounts of virtually every single one. Meanwhile, back in washington bill had been tasked by president roosevelt to set up and run a new and topsecret map room in the white house basement its mission would be to track troop and ship the movements multiplying across the globe. Guarded and locked the map room would operate around the clock. Its walls were lined with National Geographic charts welcomes to gaithersburg. Continuously updated movements in every corner of the world and also translated and received all of roosevelts diplomatic cables to and from winston churchill, Joseph Stalin and general elyse amo as whether as well as other leaders. Fdr who also became bills good friend was briefed at least twice a day in the map room and quickly became at the center allied war planning. Heres next hurt from one of those letters from the white house to benny, a few of which i incorporated into the book providing a glimmer of their ongoing and close were tab key munication. Dear benny, my new job is quite interesting even with my republican background i cant help but like and admire the man refreshing. He certainly is interested in the navy as well as quite warm personally. I have talked with him many times about you and about barton and he asked after every engagement if you are all rights. I am glad to see your luck is holding out in the good work carries on. To leave me, i follow your movements. I am always immensely relieved each time you come through. In the map room we track the movement of allied forces in the acts of the army and navy, but also of the brothers in the pacific at least until one of them went missing, which is when his own search began. My own personal journey, which began the night i came across the only picture i have ever seen of the three brothers together had plenty of twists and turns. After a career as a speechwriter and Public Relations and trade association exec i took a pause from 12 hour days in constant travel. My sons were growing up a fast and i felt i was missing too much. I think they were happy to have me home, but also visible as a launched headlong into every aspect of their lives, perhaps more than they needed or wanted. Lucky for them, however, i had a new project in mind to find out what really happened into my uncle barton. I plumbed the archives and wrote letters asking questions and while i search and waited for answers i started taking courses at the Writer Center. In nonfiction, narrative art and the like and while i had been an english major and worked as a speechwriter and had an otherwise Writer Center career this was a new john rough for me. The answers came in at their own pace and i wrote more inquiries and took more courses and began conducting interviews with the brothers wartime colleagues that i could locate. That last part was a race against time. If i was going to find an interview surprising work colleagues of my father and uncle i needed to hurry. Why would i do all of this you might ask. It was not just a matter of burning curiosity, though that was definitely there. The painful unaccounted for received in time, but for lack of genuine resolution its powerful negative effects on families do not. For any parent or spouse or Family Member of a soldier or sailor missing in action that banks never really goes away. It festers and the children of that conflict, myself and five siblings to 1 degree or another all observed its ill effect. My book and comes too late to remediate the pain of my family, but on some level i feel i have given them peace. That vision was a source of inspiration to me. It took many years longer to learn the truth that i had planned, but it was worth every step of the journey even after my friend stopped asking how is the book coming. Anyway, thank you very much for this honor and im happy to take any questions that you might have. [applause]. Yes . My childhood friend found me online. I believe she said her father, if i may say was a prisoner of war in germany and we have not seen each other since about seventh grade, maybe earlier, so this is intense. I dont know if you want to give the book away, but can you tell us what did happen to your uncle . I cant tell us you because my publisher said she would lock me up if i told anyone else, but maybe you and i can talk later, yes. My father was a pow in germany for about a year and a half and he had been a copilot of a b17 that was shot down. He was six for and weighed about 135 pounds when he got out of the camp. They were starving. They were treated fairly humanely. They were in buildings on stilts like we see at the beach with german shepherds and dobermans pacing below and they were not allowed we were not allowed to watch hogans heroes. Neither were we, actually or mchales navy. But, thats interesting you raise that because we had the United States or the allies i should say had a very sophisticated escape and Evasion Network in the european theater for downed airmen and others they had maps. They had shoes that could double as stamps to make to forge papers and passports, very sophisticated for those that escaped and to get into friendly european territory. It was not until there was an escape from one of the present hands in which my uncle was held and they made it safely all the way to australia with the help of the filipino guerrillas, which i go into in some detail and those escapes made their way to washington to a secret location only known by box number, box 1142 where it was basically the factory for creating these escape innovation techniques. You know, handkerchiefs that if you open them up they were a map of the entire confidence and showed potential escape routes and some that had certain pitfalls and other pitfalls that they would have with them. One of the escapees said why arent you doing this in the Pacific Theater and or in the philippines specifically and they said because yours is the first word we have heard from the philippines since the fall of that country. We didnt even have so much as a contraband radio there, so with these escape prisoners reports they plotted a clandestine very secret rescue mission of 2000 prisoners at a particular prison camp in the philippines and i uncovered to this story and covered it all the way to the point that i cant tell you what happens next, but its relevant because a lot of the german prisoners did get out despite the dobermans, i mean, i know it wasnt pretty, but there were more successful escapes i should say then from the Pacific Theater, so thats really interesting. Yes . Do you want to wait and get the microphone . We will catch you next, okay. My name is nick. When you and i were talking a couple weeks back and i said once you finish the book was at a closing for you and how did you feel and a you said cathartic, i believe. I wanted you to expound upon that more. I had quite a few Indiana Jones moments i call them where i was looking for records. I had gone to the National Personnel center files type of request for the personnel records of all of the men and expanding number of people that knew what had taken place in who i thought might know what had taken place and i also found in those many files i found a number of japanese documents, which i set about getting translated most of which had companion translations, but there were a few that did not and i found after years the bureau of medicine and surgery found boxes of the files kept by the navy doctors caring for those patients that were injured and that was a big discovery. It filled a gap in time that i just wasnt able to account for and even when i went to the philippines and went from prison camp to prison camp i had visited places that were mentioned in this file, but i didnt know at the time that i was in the philippines that that was where they had been, but i was able to put it together. It was only when i got a translation and it was so shocking to me that i saw a psychic cooperating translation of a japanese document that i found out what did happen and yes, it was what was the word to use, it was cathartic and offered closure. It also gives us some credit to my grandmother, helen. Of whom i was terrified, think i mentioned because it was what she had suspected had taken place which was vigorously denied by not only the army and the navy and what was by then the department of defense, but also i went to International Red cross in geneva and got notarized documents claiming the same thing and they were all incorrect, so, yes, i would say that was cathartic, very cathartic other questions . Yes, sir . I was wondering, during the war itself what did Service Personnel believe . What was their expectations about how they would be treated if captured, i mean, did they have realistic expectations. You mean the captured personnel . Just us prisoner in general, what did they think would happen if they were captured by the japanese during the war . I think they thought they would be incarcerated, but that they would be said and that they if they were ill, rampant malaria, rampant tropical diseases in these camps especially mondays patients whose health was already compromised, so i dont think the expectation was that they would be brutalized the way they were, but i think its really a comment on how on how our american culture, we kind of demonize the japanese. We say they cant see well, they are not very smart and this and that. In fact, they were extremely talented and hardened warriors and had been traded from a young age and had been fighting the war since the mid 1930s beginning in china and other areas and we did not have an accurate understanding of their culture. Even though ambassador grew and others had tried to explain it i think there was a national the japanese sort of warrior mentality. These people were fighters and also i dont think there was a full appreciation for their disdain of a surrendered individual, i mean, that was a shameful act in their view and they had been taught that from the earliest age, you know, since they learned to read and write. You do not surrender. You kill your self or allow yourself to be killed in a final bonsai charger whatever, which took place on a lot of the islands as you go throughout the area across the pacific even when they were outnumbered and losing, those that were still that were still surviving after a day of the battle they would rush the marines or they would jump over a cliff, so it was a cultural chasm in understanding the difference. Is a cultural chasm between the american, western culture if you will and japanese culture. Any other questions . How much was your research in japan and were you successful in getting information from the japanese government . Interesting you should ask because its really the second time i have been asked. I did not go to japan proper. I did not go to japan proper because i got the answers i was looking for without doing that. I might have gone on to there had i continued to hit dead ends , but i will say even though i did not physically go there about the time i started this some very productive and positive online japaneseamerican dialogue sort of boron started to crop up and develop and there was a lot of participation. I think for the surviving prisoners of war their biggest kind of unresolved anger was that there was no apology especially for those forced into slave laborer. The allies and macarthur, the army contingent wanted to prevent japan from falling into communist hands pick the country had been devastated and they didnt want to do the same thing that the americans had done to germany at the end of world war i, which was to be so punitive that it basically was the cause of the start of world war ii, but tell that to a prisoner of war who had been beaten to within an inch of his life and was starved and saw many colleagues around him die from harsh treatment, so there was once again there cultural chasm that exist and pick the japanese would say two atomic bombs and so on and so forth, so this online these online forms began to crop up, us japanese dialogue about prisoners, cultural differences, about the behaviors, leaders of both of our countries in terms of consolatory behavior towards these former prisoners and families of former prisoners and i would say this year actually the end of early 2017 or late 2016 that abbe went and visited the first Prime Minister of japan ever visit pearl harbor and i would say there have been many conciliatory gestures that are finally generating closure. There have been apologies both formal and informal. I dont know if that answers your question, but yeah. I would say there was a cooperative spirit with the people i did speak with and talk to online. So, i think right in front of you was a question also. Did you have an opportunity to interview either electronically or in person any of the soldiers who remain . I know the world war ii veterans are dying out. Yes, absolutely. In 2005, there and i found out about this group really cute were seared diggity. Wanted to travel to the philippines. A woman alone traveling in the philippines is not recommended. I try to talk my sister into going with me, but then we would have been a double target. We would have gone down together, lets say. Theres a lot of crime, kidnapping, burglary and worse and so i was struggling with what to do about this because i felt i needed to go. Write about when i heard of a it was a charter trip for former prisoners or military that have fought in that military Philippine Campaign traveling together to other camps to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the limited liberation of manila and we qualified as Family Members to go and on that trip were dozens of a former prisoners. For example and at the end of each day i would go down to this , you know barely functioning typewriter in the basement of our hotel in type up these notes while they were fresh in my mind. We went to each of the prison camps and they would point say this is where this happened, thats where the graves were, this is where we buried our radio and when we were traveling to baton on the National Road made impetus by the Bataan Death March a guy started pounding is that i want off the bus and a woman running the tour was terrified that he would hurt himself and she said he kept trying to hand him a bottle of water. I didnt have any water the last time. They had a sense of humor about it, i mean, they were happy to be back it was closure for them. For some it was not the first time they had been back, but for several laws, so yes and actually i found i have a cousin in new jersey that had a box with a stack of letters from my number of these prisoners and i set about tried to find them. Some were more important than others i could tell. You know, some had been with barton from the point they were captured in the hospital and i had trouble initial trouble locating them, but there was one who was extremely importance that i couldnt find any information that he had passed away. Although, on the return addresses on these letters were va hospitals around the country. These were not home addresses, so it was hard to know where to look, but i was up at the archives in new york and i was looking again because they have a database and by the same time that veterans oral history project was expanding all over the country. It was all over where people were being invited to give their piece of oral history of the war and when i was in hyde park, new york, i did a query of this man again and i found him to be alive because he had done on oral history project in florida so when i got back i found him, i googled him and found the name and i dialed him up on the phone and told him i was barton crosses these and he immediately burst into tears and said i was just thinking about him the other day. The man was 89 at that point. Still alive, 100 and one right now if i think that is correct. I went to see him and spent a couple days with him and it was transformative and he did not know what had happened either. Other questions . Thank you so much. This was an honor to come and speak to you today. [applause]. Look for them to air in the near future on booktv on cspan2. Tim jones was always a megalomaniac. He always believed to some extent that it has been preordained that he would be great. He always lies. He is really unthinking and cool to his wife. He is selfish. He is accomplishing these great things as he gets more attention. He gets less criticism for those around him. When he does odd things, when he maybe overdoses of the amphetamines he has to take because he needs to be awake 20 out of 24 hours a day to get so many great things done, makes it easy to say that is jim. He performs faith healings that are fake as the days long and if you read this book, one of the interesting sections you might find is how these faith healers produce these cancers they take from peoples bodies, hints, chicken parts. He sexually abused many of his followers. Havent we all seen an end today examples of men in power who abuse that with women . It is disgusting and it is cyclical. As he began more and more to become famous, to achieve what he wanted, he began less and less to worry about what impression he might be giving in private for the way he is acting. Members of the church who disobey him can suffer terrible beatings in front of everybody else. He has sex with the wife of one of his closest followers. They have a child. There is a whole lawsuit, all kinds of legal battles going on over custody of the child. He gets what he wantss because he is jim jones. It was inevitable with all the bad things he was doing. Because of the great accomplishments that doesnt negate the horrible things he is doing. At some point the media is going to catch up with him and when they do, jones does two things, first, he starts claiming, this is a phrase that was used back then im sure no one is familiar with, fake news. [laughter] they are making it up. They cant prove it. As they started to prove that he would continue saying they havent proved it at all until finally the heat got too bad and there was a foreign Farm Settlement in guyana, jones was going to escape. It was going to happen. Demagogues in any form even if they are promising their followers we are going to make this a better world, at some point lead them to doom. One last point, we are talking why people would follow him. We know all the great things that are happening but there is the eccentricities of jim jones. How do you forgive them . One of the members of peoples temple, one of the few remaining survivors of the terrible day november 18, 1978, told me the story, the frog and the pot of water. If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water it is going to hop out right away but if you sit the frog in a pot of lukewarm water and turn up the heat little by little it will almost allow itself to be boiled to death. Please dont think when you read about crazy jim jones that he was exactly that way. It was incremental. It happened over a number of years. Again, the difference between him and other demagogues and followers, oligarchs gained their following by creating enemies out there. If out of the only one, they all say, who can fix the problems today, these people, lets take this side of the room. No offense. These are the people who already have everything. They want what you have got. If you dont follow me, they are going to get everything you own. They are going to take it away. They create that tension. The members of people simple did not join because they thought they were going to get something. They gave up everything they owned joyfully. The idea being they were going to set an example in a group where everybody is the same. Everyone is treated alike. That example will be so wonderful that the rest of the world will see it and adopt it. We have a world where race doesnt matter, where money doesnt matter. They were getting into this because they thought ultimately for all the crap jim jones is doing on the side, he is the one who will lead us to this great moment. They did it out of generosity and not selfishness. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Here is a look at the bestselling nonfiction books according to politics and prose bookstore. Topping the list, the report the local, state and federal legislation is responsible for americas segregated cities. Some of these authors have or will be appearing on booktv. You can watch them on our website, booktv. Org. How, you might wonder, did i end up in gainesville when there are all these other communities we are losing work to . I didnt know this community, didnt have family here, didnt have any friends here but i heard about gainesville which i never heard about before. In 2009 when i was looking for a setting for a story about the washington post, there was a community in wisconsin, a big General Motors plant. I didnt come here at the time because it just happened. A lot of people were still getting sub pay. The economic pain for some people hadnt begun to see been. I didnt come. As i was getting close to Getting Started after i did this scary thing of taking time off from my job i kept thinking about various places i could go. Something inside me kept telling me gainesville might be the place. Why was that . One reason was i needed to find a place that lost a lot of jobs and you definitely qualify. I dont have to tell you thousands of jobs lost around here. There are different figures you can see but looking at the bureau of labor statistics figures and 20082009, 9000 jobs left this county. A lot of jobs. If you look what happened to the Unemployment Rate at that time, in june of 2008 when the announcement was made that General Motors was going to shut down production Unemployment Rate was 5. 4 . A few months after the last of these jobs disappeared unemployment shot up to 13 . On the job loss front you were a winner, or a loser. Beyond that i had the sense that i wanted to tell the story about what this session had done so it was important to find a place i didnt want to write about an accumulation of economic decay. I wanted to show was one that economic time did. So flint, michigan was one story. Economic trouble was new and obviously the Assembly Plant had been shrinking a little bit and a little bit more over a couple of decades, it always got a new product. So disclosing was really a very Different Things that nobody had experienced. That was very appealing to me as a place to potentially do this writing, what was happening in their community and i had the sense that no place is like every place but as much as possible i thought it would be interesting to find a community to write about where the pattern of job losses matched pretty well the National Pattern of jobs that went away in this great recession. If you think of what happened nationally, the largest job the dispute was the manufacturing sector. A lot of jobs that were lost paid pretty well but had not required a lot of higher education. More men than women lost jobs in this recession so i thought this was a community that had a number of the qualities in the lost jobs other people around the country could identify with. I also had the sense that jamesville might fit nicely into the sweep of history. I remember the first time i found the Youtube Video for speech that then senator barack obama gave at the Assembly Plant in february 2008. I dont know if you remember him