Welcome bookcasers. Good to have you back. I'm Charlie Gibson. And I am Kate Gibson, and we're very happy to have you this week. I always hesitate to call a book important because what authority do I have to call a book important? But I'm really glad you tuned into this episode because I'm

really excited about the book today, and I do think it is important. The name of the book is

the barn, and it is written by Wright Thompson. Right Thompson. And it is a very, very interesting

history of one of the dark days in the history of the South,

the murder of Emmett Till.

And I picked it up and thinking, why do I need to read another book about Emmett Till?

Because this case has been so well plumbed.

But the name of the book is the barn.

It is the place where Emmett Till was tortured and killed, a black man in the period

of time that was very dark in the history of the South. I wouldn't call him a man. I'd call him a

boy. He was a boy. He was a boy at a time. He was a young boy. That's true. And yet what he has done is that he has told this story through the prism of that barn

and how the area in which the crime occurred tried to cover it up at the time to still extent

is covering it up and yet actually though the perpetrators of the crime were never punished, they have been

punished.

You know, I think it's, I'd even, I even take a little bit of an issue with what you said.

I don't even think he looks at it through the lens of that particular area.

He looks at it through the lens of the entire state history of Mississippi.

I think he's arguing that the Emmett Till murder could not have happened in another state,

that in some ways Mississippi's history promised such a violent, terrifying, horrible act of,

well, terrorism against a young child. And he really takes you back all the way back. And it's funny because when you read books about this, you know, I've written a new book about Abraham Lincoln. I've written a new and you think to yourself, yes, but I learned that in history class. This book had a lot of investigative details, a lot of history and a lot of things about the modern day cover-up.

And I say modern.

I mean very modern day cover-up of Emmett Till's murder.

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