Book tv, twitter, instagram and facebook. The New Yorker and other publications he has also social all in just phd from new York University he is the author of two previous books that absolute conviction about the abortion of his Hometown Buffalo new York And Beautiful Souls a book about individuals who displayed moral courage in dangerous circumstances. He has received numerous fellowship awards including an award for social justice journalism. Hes a professor of history of new York University she is the author of several books and in the recent Preacher Episode appeared in the range of journalist and in just a moment first greeting from the rater. Thank you. Thank you kristen im so grateful were able to host this tonight, touching upon themes such as morality, Complicity And Corruption what struck me while reading is how communities and corporations or government have found essential workers that are profiled. Guess who finds themselves in our questionable circumstances with limited options to often have a financial incentive to keep them underpaid and undereducated. I like to think that libraries can be part of an antidote to that system. At the bpl patrons can take part in dso language, conversations, we help the divide by providing lower chrome books and hotspots and patrons can book using a camcorder, sympathize the microphone to capture and tell one story. We offer career building, web shops, webinars and access for prototypes with a 3d printer. You can book time with the librarian, a Resume Or Practice interview questions. With entrepreneurs we have services and access to electronic resources so we can have a Business Portfolio and build a Business Plan and market data and find new customers. We also host patrons to organizations for financial empowerment. Options and the possibility of expenditure of what libraries are all about it is our hope that we comply in a role to guide these essential workers further down the track to find success whatever that may be. With that i will turn it over to kim. Thank you. I thought we could start out with you telling a little about the book. Sure, thank you, thank you kim and i want to first think the boston public library for hosting this conversation. I really wish we were having an person books come to life in the hands of readers and Theres Nothing more gratifying as an author then to see the readers come out and its been a highlight of my Book Publishing Career this time were going to have to do a little differently and i hope nevertheless we have a rich conversation because the other way books come to life is through dialogue in the public sphere. I also really want to thank him a brilliant Historian And Someone who has taken time bringing in enormous knowledge to waiver in unions and working conditions. As has been mentioned my book is called dirty work and its subtitled essential jobs in the hidden toll of inequality in america and i want to fixate a little bit on the jobs because its the terms that we all recognize now that is coming to currency during the pandemic and its fascinating for me to watch that happen in to see a national conversation unfold about essential jobs and essential workers in the workers during the pandemic who are bagging groceries, driving Trucks Warehouse panthers were putting items being ordered by people sheltering in place and staying at home got a conversation unfold over the last 18 months and it became a conversation not just about work but of class because it quickly came to life that the people we were calling essential workers are predominantly in jobs that paid less that often had arduous conditions and expose them to all kinds of risks even before the pandemic but during the pandemic itself that came to the exposure through a deadly virus so you have a collective gratitude in society but you also have a sense these workers do these hard jobs in their hidden it was fascinating to me because i spent the past three or four years before the pandemic talking to workers that are more giving and doing jobs that are out of the way and on the margins and i suggest for our society in a slightly different way. The essential jobs im talking about live a morally troubling aspect, it we think of the slaughter of animals in industrial slaughter houses which has environmental on animals and impacts on the workers if we think of the jobs of running americas prisons and focus on the mental health of our mental Health Institution for the spring, we warehouse more people with severe then we do public hospitals, if we think of the job of conducting targeted assassinations with drones all of these are jobs and work and carry profound oral questions and many people find morally discomforting. In delegated out of the margins so we dont have to think about them that much. That is the premise of my book and i came to think about these jobs by going back to a sociological essay that i came across. It was written shortly after World War ii and published in 1962 by an american sociologist named edward hughes it was called Title Group people and dirty work. It was based on the time he spent a semester in postwar germany after World War ii which one can imagine is a very traded place to be at that time. He did not shy away from bringing up what just happened in germany but the people he brought this up with were the folks he had known before the war there were intellectuals and cosmopolitan whitecollar professionals and people who were not members of the polity into we wanted to know how would they talk about and what would they have to say about what it just taken place of the genocide of the jews and the naughty party and he spent at the Architect House and hes among the possible tollison people and he brings up what happened in the architect was hosting this event, i machine for my people whenever i hear this which is exactly you would expect for him to say but further on in the evening the jews were really a problem they were taking all the good jobs and they were living in the filthy ghettos, he goes on to describe them and he then backtracked and says im not saying what the naughty stew was justified. Was something has to do is be done to settle this problem. And out of this conversation similar conversation that hewitt had he write this essay is very comforting to think of dirty work of unethical things in Society And Road factors and they have nothing to do with us. But in fact the people doing societies dirty work are agents of society they have been unconscious mandate of society. And they did not want to hear too much about it. They did not want to ask questions about it and through that she was positive that dirty work can happen in the shadows and in the margins. In the remarkable thing about the essay is not what it says about naughty germany and this is not an expert about. But what he goes on to say this dynamic is in every society and made it very explicit that he was writing the essay to his fellow north americans of the more subtle forms of dirty work that takes place in democratic society where many people call passive democrats to stand by and let this continue and go one. Without asking to any questions of whats being done but what kind of mandate does this have from the rest of us those questions are much more relevant than they are in naughty germany. In the naughty dictatorship in any Country Canterbury North korea and what the good people think in democracy thats quite different and we have a say over what these things are and thats the point of departure for my book into get into more specific examples of stories and continue having a conversation. I have actually never heard of the huge essay myself and was very struck by it, i want to look it up. And there are couple of things about the book that are remarkable in the first is as you point out the question of the relationship between the occupation and the rest of society and you speak about this partly in terms of inequality and also the sense that the people who are doing this work and made it outside of the rest of the social order in for this exciting to exist in for our kindness of society. I think that double relationship is very powerfully brought out in the book as a whole. And i would like you to talk about that often books the focus on the subject of this book and we can talk more about what the actual work is in the usually focus on the victim somehow and focusing on the perpetrators or at least the people that carry out these jobs and the impact that work on them is also quite original and really different than a lot of what we see in this type of book. Wondering if you can talk a little bit of what led you to write of this book, how did you arrive at the topic and how you see it coming out of your longstanding intellectual project, how do you see it connecting to your other work and partly about resistors and in one way or another descend from what theyre supposed to do and also very much about conviction and people who act in accordance, this book anyway is about people who are not acted in a foreign system horribly and i suppose people for whom the sense of morality comes up again, what it is that theyre actually doing, how did you come to write the book how did you arrive at the topic and also seems i mustve been an agonizing book to report, what was it like to work on it. Youre absolutely right that grew out of the previous books and what a longstanding interest all the books were about individuals with more treacherous situations and they have to decide and make very difficult choices and do with what you do with the order to do order expected to do or have to do, my mom was mentioned in the introduction with a study of moral courage in in various situations some of the United States and what is happening and who risked their careers and their lives to stand by their principles and in a sense to keep your hands clean what might stain or duty under dirty them in the course of writing a book and who didnt have that strength and went along in these situations who did dirty their hands and got me really interested in their stories and i was really compelled in part by one impulse i felt when i met these people i was talking to people that participated attached to their neighbors which became Weber Versus Nader enter neighbor, on another level i wondered how different what i have acted and how different would any of us act in those situations and that gave me a pause in the stories ive heard people 18 to 19 years old and to do things that they were told and had to leave for the nation to survive. I got interested in the stories that go along in the price not only society pays for the conformity, the people to get swept up in these situations and this wanted to be a book about america and who is allotted the most morally and its not powerful as people with choices and opportunities and let me give a little example the book opens with the story of harriet and she is a mental Health Aid who gets a job the correctional institution. Harriet has no prior experience and corrections this is after 2008, the great recession the Markets Crash and it was very hard in florida. And she doesnt really know what shes getting into but she quickly comes to discover and hear stories from the patients in the mental health of the prison that they are being missed. Enter mistreated in a guide told her theres skippy my mills and not giving me food she hears us more than once so she goes to her supervisor and says what should i do about this the supervisor told her prisoners to a lot of false stories and they dont necessarily believe that. By the way our job is to get along with security and this message and he doesnt need to be told that because she knows when shes doing her Work Part of the reason she feels safe there is a guard where she is the people in the mental health unit. At a certain point she gets frustrated and she says something how she doesnt like the conditions and specifically about letting the prisoners and their not let out, she gets frustrated and she writes an email and suddenly she finds herself retaliated shes left alone in these group sessions and it dawns on her theyre sending me a message i cannot cross that they run this place, i dont, thats like one specific story but in fact i point out in a chapter, it is not specific to date as mentioned the four largest mental Health Institutions in this country, the people who are entrusted to provide the care on the one hand are supposed to not violate basic medical ethics that they see abuse they should stand up for the patients on the other hand the bold into security in dangerous environments and what that caused in Harriets Case was silence and she remains silent even as she subsequently learned a far more horrific abuse that was happening including what was called the shallow treatment guards were taking prisoners into a shower controlled from the outside and essentially earning them the water was 180 degrees which was hot enough to brew tea. And harriet goes to work and learns a prisoner was locked in the shower and he died there. And we now know from autopsy Photos Neighbor 90 of his body, she learned the other mental Health Offer would learn this and dont say anything. And again, on one Level One can say thats reprehensible you have to come forward your mental Health Professional you must say something here and on another level how many people would and what ends up happening harriet and a lot of the other people at the Prison Silence themselves and live with their guilt and their allowing this to happen into circle back to your first point about inequality and why got interested in how this reflects, the Lead Psychiatrist dont work in the correctional institution is people like harriet in the psychiatric profession is aware that so many of the people in our six id are getting the treatment in jails and prisons but because of that division of labor which is replicated over and over in our society the more conflict is delegated and less to the people the bottom and the profession itself can pay less attention because its not a central concern to people that are rounding the conferences of the association and so forth. That is an example of how it shapes dirty work in america and plays a role in the stories that it tells. The work that you write about with a meatpacking plant, also oil rigs in one thing that unites them in different kinds of workplaces, all of them are inaccessible to the public and reporters and kept out of public view as you say, i wonder how you write about it, how you found people how you went about doing work at the book. And also the complex and fossil fuels in particular something that implicates all of us in different ways. Im curious as you found yourself facing any moral while you are working on the book. I should say from the beginning the book is about the workers but its been published and its also about i mean myself as well im not stated above and through our lifestyles of politics and the social policies that have happened in this country im not leaving myself to any degree so writing a book with all of this in terms of the process youre so right all of the forms that i look at our hidden they take place in remote institutions and President S in the places you just walk right into you have to seek them out and if you do seek them out and you do have authorization you will not be allowed inside, i do think really hard about how i was going to illuminate what goes on inside in this world and doing the story about harriet and the correctional institution came to the conclusion going to the front Door Wasnt going to show me much. What im going to get a free truth is the ladies and they do some of that in the new book but what do i get it to staged reality and they know im coming in so when reporters are outsiders and advocates and politicians can go into these sites, there is a filter of reality, i felt i couldnt write the book based on that. In another way would be to go undercover there are books written about prisons and a wonderful book in which he works as a Corrections Officer to get that. I decided not to do that as well because i wanted to look at multiple and i feel im going to get multiples, going to get inside sort ultimately decided i have to find people who work in that begin as a writer because in most fascinated by not just the choices that people make in the difficult situations but what stories they tell themselves about what theyve gone through what they experience. I feel as a writer i am interested in that and to the extent i can produce something significant and by touching the sensitive things like Shame And Stigma in the psychic toll that is a big part of inequality in this country and its not easy to measure it and fuel the stories of these workers in the very personal in her case to go back to her for one second she falls into depression and she loses her hair and shes later diagnosed with post dramatic Press Disorder in the Hair Loss and rather than talk about what shes gone through she handed me an account she written of what she had gone through in all of her trauma and i was so struck by what it contained and what i subsequently fall and that replicated throughout the book that people are talking very personal ways and what they went through and that could only be in the coast. If you havent read the book most books and whats really interesting about this in different from the undercover Reporting Strategy it isnt just about the conditions in prisons or meatpacking plants or in afghanistan in the past week it mustve made the tradition of the drone operators and people involved in the conflict and whats happened last week, many people who havent thought about afghanistan or whats happening for years are suddenly brought facetoface with some measure of the reality of what has been going wrong all the time. Rarely do you see them with this other level of reflection about what it means. Internally for the people involved in making the institutions come to life. Another wonderful point in the book is the role of art and writing. Many of the people who you write about seem to have written about their own experiences, engaged, painted or did other things that were efforts that might mediate and understand for themselves what happened. Thats a very powerful part of the book. We can come back to this at the ends, the role of seeing people like just the efforts that they go to to make sense of their own lives. And to articulate their sense of what happened to them and their complicated relationships to it, is really interesting. The book is about agency and what people tried to do to understand, they world they live in and they role they play within it. I want to go back to the question you were racing about inequality and virtue. Its another major theme of the book. Thanks so much about morality, is it something that belongs to the individual, having a conscience, doing the right thing or wrong thing. One question your book puts forward is that the rightly are the only way to see it at all. Some people are put in positions where they have to make this decision. They have to have the weight of making moral decisions that people never have to face in the same way. Morality and the capacity to act ethically in part as a function you are placed in society as a whole. I think its a very different way of seeing having a ethical life a moral life. I wondered if you want to say anything about that, is a lot that has been written about economic inequality your book is also one of the ways that is justified or understood some people are better than others. Some people are able to have the luxury of a clean conscience. Of not seeing themselves as people who carry out this type of work. Can you give your thoughts on that . Was good to very specific examples of that they come to mind. Worked in a poultry slaughter house. I tell her story its an extraordinary story of what she went through. There is a point very early in her story where she actually sees although a lot of the killing of the chickens one of the first job she gets at the slaughterhouse is hoisting these onto the slaughterhouse. They passed through an area where their slopes are slips, they are de feathered without any workers there pray they just come out the other side. And then at that point theyre going to be dismembered, claims, all of that. Some of the birds dont make it through that. Even through the throat slitting the execution is all very graphic im sorry. Until the birds to make it out they are still alive. There is a person whose job at that point to kill the bird, if it makes it through unto literally slashes throat with a knife just as in a Beef Slaughterhouse there is a person who operates the Bolt Gun that kills the cow. The first time she sees this she cries for she says to herself im never going to eat chicken again. That concern quickly goes away shes an undocumented immigrant shes trying to make ends meet. And like so many of the workers i met in that plants, she did not have the luxury to go around that concern in a way a consumer who will never set foot in an industrial slaughterhouse can go to whole foods and pick the poultry that has the label that makes them feel most virtuous, no antibiotics, does not sensing about the treatment of the workers its not unknown to those workers because they often say it consumers seems to think more about the treatment of animals and then the treatment of us. That is an example of moral inequality. In a very similar where there is a drone operator i write about that comes from a small town, is poor she ends up enlisting in the Air Force to get out. To travel and to hopefully get some opportunities which face it thats a big reason people join the military in the country especially since we have eliminated the draft. Its a voluntary but its voluntary under what i refer to is from the philosopher its a choice made under the pressure of economic necessity both in her case and in many cases. She goes in becomes an analysis. At first is fine with it. And then starts to not be fine with it. And really doubt who are these killed in the strikes what are the points of them . She is watching areas of afghanistan war soldiers are dying, no progress needs to be made. Very much we just heard in the news. She comes out of the base there actually are some protesters there. They are saying dont be involved in this killing. Some are with graphic designs and images what infuriates her as i think, not just that shes having doubts herself and it stirs such a difficult feelings, but the feelings she has they do not know, wish i had the luxury to bend their shoes. They dont know what its like to be in mine. They do not have a clue what lead the people in my unit to serve. I dont make a black Blanket Criticism of those protesters and i dont. I dont to suggest, once the perpetrators and victims. I think in different passages in different parts of the book i am trying to get to that complexity and let leaders decide for themselves what to make of this. But i do once, i wrote the book from the perspective of these frontline workers. I think it is so easy to judge them from afar. Much less easy to do that when you hear about their lives and when the stories are grounded in the social context that unfolds. And n8 where, as i said, the more privileged and powerful you are, the easier it is to never have anything to do it. Not only to not do it but never to see it. I think i will ask more questions than we can open it up for the audience to send questions in. Heres one question that came that troubled me reading the book. All of the areas you write about are ones that have, as you point out there is significant disagreement within the society about all these undertakings. Different types of resistance there are people who want to abolish prisons, there obviously or manic critics of the war in afghanistan let alone the drone program in particular. There are different types of critique of the meatpacking industry. These are all areas that have significant social division. How do you think about that accountability in that framework are there divisions, distinctions, and whose name is the dirty work being done really . How do you think about the tensions around that . That is a great question. Just to go back to the protesters at that base she is thinking very much these are done in my name i am responsible. Therefore i have to come out and act according to my beliefs and my conscience. Its not simply a Blanket Dismissal by any means of the folks who are doing that. And you are right there are divisions and i should also say, one of the premises of the book dirty work is not etched in stone. You mentioned prisons the consumer which in so much dirty work lies. Public awareness, public consciousness has shifted quite significantly over i would say the past decade or so. And i acknowledge that and hope the reader keeps that in mind so this is not just a canvas of hopelessness, it is not. But having said that, i think there certainly is accountability. So, when i talk about the abuses of that Work Ward of the Prison Right at the top in my view are the private companies that were profiting from running floridas mental health services along with the politicians who entrusted the entire mental Health And Healthcare system of Floridas Prison System which is the third largest. Dont just do this, turn a profit. There is been a recording since about what that read the kind of Abuse And Corruption that led too. They are more accountable, they are more responsible, their hands are dirtier than the rest of society. I also think its too easy to just and the story there and not to look at what began, whats called good people. People who, on the one hand, feel very discomforted, and its the kind of abuses i read about or if told about the environmental consequences of our industrial meat system. It is discomforting. It may make them say i am ashamed of the system. I certainly do not intend too. I dont think too much about it i think about putting it aside. The dirty workers i write about, they are agents of society. They are not just rogue actors who have been hoodwinked by a few companies doing marginal activities. They are doing things that have a sanction. On some Level Society has decided it wants. We have a number of questions that have come in already. I may join some of these together, because they go together nicely. Jess asks, im delighted ask this, gets us to another part of the book i was really struck by, have you come to any further dark or moral in writing the Drum Wire in 2018, maybe talk a little bit about that article in the part about drones in the book. Thank you for the question jeff. So that article which appears in the book and i expanded upon, really unpacks this idea which is a real theme in the book. What that refers to, is the kind of injury that is sustained by a person who, in the course of doing their job or their duty, witnesses or participates in an act that goes against their core values and then has to live with it. That is known to some of the public of the stone in the context of war. But, i suggest in the book, that it is not limited to the military. That moral injuries can be sustained in any number of jobs and any number of sectors where people again witness or participate in things that go against their core values. And then they have to make sense of somehow. And actually, during the pandemic that was in the newspapers quite a bit because we were reading about emergency workers, doctors, nurses, who had to make excruciating decisions about who gets the last ventilator at the peak of the pandemic. Who should get it, should it go to a younger woman who is pregnant . Should it go to an elderly man who without it might not survive . And you started seeing that term circulate more outside the context of the military. Part of the contribution, i hope of my book is to get us thinking about moral injury as something that pervades probably every profession. I certainly think it is something that permeates the sectors i wrote about. To questions from david and sharon. I will put them together, what are your thoughts on how society can protect people from morally and psychologically adverse conditions . And from sharon, how do we give agents each of those who to pay bills from Day Today and often cannot speak up for themselves. A should say i am an author and an analyst of these conditions, not a policy expert. I do not have a set of simple solutions. But i do think it begins with awareness. I thank you so much of how the dirty work unfolds and how it is organized, is premised on both the secrecy and apathy. Those things work together. Its not just that it is hidden from us. Begins with Awareness And Conversation and dialogue. Without that it could be perpetuated without questions asked maybe ill ask at the end. Do you have any thoughts about the rhetoric of essential workers did the pandemic, there is a lot of attention given to healthcare workers who were forced to make very difficult decisions. Are they dirty workers in the same way . Or how to be think about the relationship of that group of people to the kinds of issues you are talking about . On the point of essential workers i would say you have to almost put quotes around those terms. Because essential, yes society cannot run without them. But in terms of how we treat them, in prisons and other places what we see is their lives are often expendable and we do not want to hear too much. I wonder how much attention will continue to be paid to essential workers once the pandemic fades will fade back into though be a real shame just let my mind. Tricks i know what it is. A question about healthcare workers im sorry. The question about healthcare workers, such a good question. Joy see them as dirty workers . No, i dont actually. I actually say very early in the book that it was a very moving, and it is very powerful and moving to hear about physicians and frontline responders who were placed in these very morally difficult situations. But one very key difference certainly in New York where i live and i think across the country is that society treated and those who were doing these work as heroes, and very quickly newspapers, usa today, cbs evening news, and that New York times magazine, i was watching an enormous amount of attention to the discussion of these dilemmas are seen as admirable but if you are placing is morally tenuous situations you have these incredibly difficult ethical questions to work there. Youre doing a job people look down on that is stigmatized. It is a stain on you. That carries a very different psychic weight. Hold onto Ones Place i made these incredibly moral decisions and nobody was here about what i do. Answer your point and await people generically they know prisons are terrible places. They know animals are killed in terrible ways in slaughter houses and the workers are not treated well. Those in detail perhaps they dont about people being scalded to death and showers. Why is it does happen its the knowing and not knowing that surrounds the whole society. And, we have a question from lou see the point to an moral compass in many institutions or sit more starkly this is not my concern. I know its not a simple answer but where and how do you think pressure can be applied to reach that compass as well as what can be done to create a kinder United States . I guess i would go on to that also, many of these jobs, can we make peace with them or would it be better if there were not people who experience, can these jobs how can they be transformed . How can they be redeemed . Is the purpose to psychologically adjust people who carry out this burden . Or is it somehow to make us so they dont have to carry it out or change the nature of the work in such a way it is no longer i dont know some of these things you can change the conditions of the work and the purpose of it and they remain profoundly troubling. So how do you grapple with that what can be done . I think if we had more public dialogue about this in more exposure, it may be the case that people say i know what takes place in industrial slaughterhouses is pretty awful, but it is worth it. It is worth it to me. And i will own that, we should all on that. I know it is pretty awful to warehouse people with severe mental illnesses in jails and prisons. I am not willing to have my taxes raised so there is a adequate public Health System unless inequality and care, that is fine for me. Or, okay Theres Something troubling about drones. It is not a pleasant thing. But i dont what us sending our boys overseas i do not with United States sacrificing his own soldiers lives and putting them at risk so i am fine with fighting this way. If we had open conversation this is the way we are, we are all kind of in this and we all share responsibility to some extent. Maybe that is the way things would end up. It is striking to me that we dont actually. And part of the organization of dirty work enables us as a society to in a sense to not think about any of those things. We do not have to feel like were making these compromise choices or we are implemented anyway because it happens out of sight, out of mind. To me there is a fundamental lack of integrity and that as a society. We are somehow not actually facing and acknowledging these are the choices we are willing to make. Might hope certainly would be through those conversations we decided some of the things we dont want too. We dont want to have the worlds largest prison system. I think we have decided that in the last decade or so both on the left and on the right for different reasons. I think there is a real push back against mass and incarnation. Severely mentally ill that circles through the third dehumanizing to them and dehumanizing to the staff. Do we really want that . This is a country that set shutdown asylums because of the horrors going down in the asylums. Lets think about the horrors going on now that are worse in many ways, are we okay with that . I think again it is not etched in stone. These are collective conversations we have to have. And i just wrote the book because i dont think we are having them. I think what so often happens and to go back to why i wrote from the perspective of these people, i dont think its just inequality and who does the dirty work. I also think Theres Inequality in who gets the blame for the dirty work. And who gets blamed so often are the frontline people who dirty their hands for the low ranking guards at the dade correctional institution who did all this, it is their fault. Well, its their fault theyre certainly culpable they should be held accountable. These were horrific, horrific crimes. But i was struck by what harriet said about that, she said you know, a lot of the guards i knew were also just trying to do their best and awful situations. And i dont really blame them because the people in that prison or what she calls throw away people face was the conclusion she came to after thinking about the larger structure. I think that we have to think about the larger structure and not just the easy way to cast judgment on the people who dirty their hands. Yes in a way they are in prison too. I think were just about at the time, but did you want to speak briefly about the Va Hospital exercise or to leave that quote i have that here if you want too. Sure i will happily speak about that. Because again, i think that no less than in my book, beautiful souls, there are moments of real Grace And Dignity in stories i came across even as so much was upsetting and so much was painful to hear about. And nowhere more so than this public ceremony i attended at a va medical center. I was trying to think about moral injury is something that is expensed personally and privately. Is there anyway as a society we might talk about in a different way . I went to this chapel in the Va Center were a group of veterans of americas recent wars spoke about their moral injuries and spoke about things they had done that society did something to do. One soldier in particular at that ceremony came forward and he spoke about a Missile Strike he had called in, thinking there was Enemy Fire coming from the second floor of this building. And when the smoke cleared he saw there was no enemy there and there were the bodies of civilians. I believe several dozen civilians. Its an extraordinary moment in this chapel, it is completely silent and the veteran who tells the story, his name is andy and he is sobbing. This error may could have ended there, everybody could have walked away. But instead, the next step was for the people in the audience to be called forth. The minister running the ceremony asked them to circle the veterans and to link hands. And then to chant in unison, this quote, i will read it as we close. And i say, at the end of the book i think it is this message every dirty worker in america deserves to hear. We sent you into harms way. We put you in situations where atrocities were possible, we share responsibility with you for all that you have seen, for all that you have done, for all that you have failed to do. I find that incredibly powerful and noa very hopeful. By the way, i heard recently from the minister who ran that ceremony, that ended pretty well and i think that speaks to something. If we can kim utilize some of this, it takes it out of that sort of private suffering into a public conversation in which we all acknowledge responsibility. So that is my hope with this book. Okay thank you. Thanks so much. Book tv continues now, television for serious readers. Senator Mitchne Mcconnell what is on your Reading List these days . Not surprisingly i tend to go towards american history, much of it political. But actually, one book i just finished was not about politics. It was about the history of the polio