existed. i never smoked, never drank too much, never smoked at all. so now i survived, but now i'm trying to go little beyond surviving. >> has been impeded your travel plans? >> yes, yes. i can speak to you or you understand, but in germany or france or egypt, they won't understand it. so i'm rearranging my life. i can still write. >> georgie anne geyer's newest book is "predicting the unthinkable, anticipating the impossible" thank you for being on booktv. >> thank you. >> .net, booktv interviews rick bragg while touring birmingham,

alabama as part of our cities tour of the king of the landscape of the southeastern cities. airports are not workers of the foothills foothills of north alabama. >> those people in the cover her workers from kind of the dark ages of the cottonelle in my hometown. those are folks who had survived the 20s, 30s, 40s and into the 50s when it is a brick oven and summertime, when the air was safe pick with fine cotton, that would fill their lungs with cotton favor. they would hang out the windows, trying to get a breath of air. kids would read by in cars and wagons and he is and it would scare them death. these were people that lost their thinkers, hands and arms to the machines and work for it.

they had to work because they came down out of the mountains, walking barefoot, came down with other children and mine. and hired men and women in the bbs because the children were valuable. their hands were small and they could reach into the cares of the machine and unclog them. >> how long are you talking about? >> eight, nine, 10. >> can you tell me more about the town of jacksonville and alabama? >> is a great town. the beautiful town. i said once that it's almost like someone painted and hung it in the inner. it nestles the foothills foothills of the operations surrounded by beautiful

mountains. not from heart from the coosa river. as one of the most beautiful places on earth. but the faux water wrecked the region. a lot of people dare call it the rich man's war. a lot of people dare call it the rich man's war. a lot of people dare call it the rich man's war. then came reconstruction. it was almost like a civil war faded into reconstruction and the reconstruction faded into the great depression and not much changed for the poor. and the mail came in the early years of the 20th century and was salvation.

these people were sharecroppers were subsistence farmers. he dug wells, cut timber and all of a sudden there has inside work 30 and it saves them. naca, many of them, sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters cs salvation. in that, should they get paid? >> next to nothing. it varied over the years from nicholson times an hour, pocket change to a few dollars a week even after roosevelt demanded a decent wage for them, the male owner there refute to pay them

decide the federal government successfully invoke the union. so mill owners kind of paid what they knew they had to pay, with considering these poor nonpeople and where they came from was not very much. now it's 50 feet into the 60s and 60s and 70s it became a decent paying job. the machines will never save cuts favor. and by the 70s and 80s, if you work for a cut milia make as much money as any blue-collar worker except amy a coal miners and steel workers. m.i.t. said people were losing fingers, hands and in the beginning getting paid next to nothing. why were they so loyal to

working in a mill? >> they were so loyal because there was nothing else. there is nothing else they are. our pipe shops and steel mills in the bigger cities. to understand why you would work in a place that kept apart of you you acquit and i'm commune i do understand that these are folks who don't want to go anywhere else. they don't want to move. -- you know, a lot of folks were not detroit bumpers on cadillacs. it was important to these people to live in the mountains of their fathers. it was important to them that they live in a place where deer jump across the rows in front of their cars, but they lived in a

place where their grandmothers pacelli up in the window so. it was important that when they decide nobody sent their body home monitoring. >> when did they know close? >> it closed after 100 years. i think it was 2001. >> and what did i do to jacksonville, alabama? >> it would be a romantic story tuesday the economy bottomed out, but that's not true. the mill became a lesser force than the economy although still a force. jacksonville state university, a college became the economic force in town. it wasn't that there was a whole lot of new industry. there was then. you work with your hands for living in this country, you don't have any champions.

so the mail faded out of existence and a lot of those workers -- my brother was one of them, went to work for jobs that pay less. my brother works for the city, jacksonville parks and recreation. they went to work for jobs that don't pay as much, but are not as dangerous until wreck their health. a lot of them said they would work for nothing so they could have insurance. so you know, the town went on about its collective life. but the cottonelle workers often one of the jobs that do not pay as well as other standard of living field. some got very lucky and went to

work for honda, went to work for some new plants around the state where they had to travel. the town went on about his slave, but it really was as though the blue-collar hard as a place they called it in the book the bleeding blue-collar heart of the place and it would still. it is such a knot thing to get your hands around because when my brother lost his job, i know that he killed him because for these people the work is the same. people talk about southerners and clichés. you know, we live for stock car racing and hunting and fishing and football. and when he tanks and chew a lot

of tobacco. what my people are about his work. they talk about work. they talk about how many feet of wood flooring and a laid-back day. they talk about how much pope would they cut. they talk about how many bricks they laid. what they are really about his work. and if you take the work away, if you take the machines away and they did. they take the machines to south america into niche. if you take the work away, then you take something out of all of them that can't be put back.

so while you hate the fact that he killed so many people come in so people died young and died gasping from business brown lung, what you hate outside, you also need to see that tool taken out of their hands. there ain't no perfect world and there is no perfect solution. i just know that it's messed. it's badly missed. >> what prompted you to write this book was >> i promised his folks i would write it. a lot of the folks i bumped into in my hometown. i'd written a newspaper story about a long time ago when it shut down and a lot of these folks my hometown, these older folks helped me in previous

books and i promised him if i ever could, i would rate than their own book. while old soul in particular, his name is homered arm while in homer went to work in the mail. his mom and had a work themselves to death. he went to work in the mail after world war ii and one day after walking all across europe, he walked to round them up to the carnage in the noise and the people trying to breathe and you walked out. but it's always hard at the mill village. he lives there now and his mom and daddy again keep their lives are such a part of it. i thought all those servers are worth telling. i told him i would tell the story. i was deeply ashamed not to attend the book already.

so finally got a chance to do it and did it for pretty good reasons. and i'm glad it's done. but it's on the shelf and i'm very proud of it. >> how is this different from the other books you've written? >> it was similar in that it wasn't necessarily about family. i did not dwell in my brother's story. i told it in a handful of essays of other people. but they're almost family. these people are friends and their people i know on the street. the books on family had moments even though it was killing and pain and screaming and poverty struggle and sacrifice. there were also moments i hope people laughed out loud moments where i hope smiled. this book was a little grimmer,

a little fatter. it did not -- uncredited. i hope he had people write. it didn't give you much of a chance to breathe. >> that's going to be my next question. for people at 11 jacksonville for the state of alabama, when they take up this book and read it, what do you want them to take away from it? >> the country is changing. people love to say we have a service economy now. but will he serve his people work -- this is not an original thought. they work longer to eat at ruby tuesday for their work at ruby tuesday to shop at wal-mart. there was a time when being able to pick up