Nice little article that was in my local paper-also CSpan has been showing his book appearance at Borders in DC. All the proceeds from Home are going to Habitat For Humanity and a charity for Uganda.
Q & A John Edwards
By Kate Bolick | December 3, 2006
FOLLOWERS OF THE 2004 vice presidential campaign will no doubt recall John Edwards's stump speech tributes to his modest upbringing. As a boy, he moved from house to house. His father was a mill worker who was eventually promoted to supervisor; their homes were small places on dirt roads, or in housing projects. By the time the family of five settled in Robbins, N.C., when Edwards was 12, the foundation for his populist worldview, and his new book, had been laid. "Probably because we moved around so much, for me home is more about all the things that turn a house into a home than it is the house itself," he writes in "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives" (Collins), a new anthology of essays he recently assembled and edited.
Edwards believes that our experience of home is a "blueprint" that helps "to define how we see ourselves and how we choose to make our way in the world." To put that idea to the test, he solicited reminiscences from more than 1,000 people; the 57 chosen for the book form an eclectic group of movie stars, schoolteachers, politicians -- you name it. Though the essays are often rambling and heavy on platitudes, it's nonetheless a compelling project. John Mellencamp's memory of moving from a lively suburban neighborhood to a big house on a hill is a quiet comment on the isolation of upward mobility. Star Jones Reynolds's first confrontation with racism is equally poignant. Photographs invite scrutiny and comparisons: Set behind a white-picket fence, John Glenn's large, respectable childhood home looks worthy of a senator and astronaut; the ramshackle, three-room dwelling Bob Dole grew up in seems to announce "hard times" -- but according to him was full of laughter.
After the 2004 election, Edwards moved with his wife, Elizabeth, and their two youngest children to a sprawling McMansion on the outskirts of Raleigh. When I arrived one rainy afternoon last month -- on Election Day no less -- my cab driver quipped that it looked more like a town than a house. A dozen cars and trucks gave the impression of a city that never sleeps, as did a wide front porch cluttered with camera equipment -- CBS was setting up for an interview.
So much for my fantasy of sitting down with the former senator for a leisurely literary chat over tea. Instead, an assistant ushered me into a wide foyer, and hurried me to a spacious book-lined study full of comfortable armchairs ("The Good Fight," by Peter Beinart, shared a side table with two issues of Ladies Home Journal). When Edwards arrived, looking youthful as ever in khakis and a blue oxford, I braced myself for the politician's treatment, but I was no match for the warm lull of his Southern cadences.
IDEAS: Where did you get the idea to publish a book about home?
EDWARDS: When I was campaigning for the presidential nomination in 2003, I went back to the home in South Carolina that my parents had brought me to when I was born. I didn't even really live in that house for long; we moved around a lot when I was young. But all these memories came roaring back. Things like me working with my dad, my father coming home from work, me playing high school football, and all of us gathering for meals together.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that what I remembered from the way I grew up, and the environment I'd grown up in, played a huge role in the way I view the world. I suspected that if this were true of me then it was probably true of a lot of people, maybe most people. I could have written it as a book, but I was more interested in a potpourri of personal experiences, so readers could draw their own conclusions, as opposed to me drawing the conclusions for them.
IDEAS: You don't find the blueprint idea overly determinative?
EDWARDS: That's an interesting question, and not something I've really thought a lot about. Am I arguing that the kind of childhood you had predetermines what the rest of your life is going to be? I don't think that's true. But I do think that for negative or positive it has a huge impact on what kind of life you have.
IDEAS: The book is overwhelmingly positive. Did you plan it that way?
EDWARDS: I hoped the book would turn out to be largely positive, but I didn't know for sure if it would. When I called people, I knew almost nothing about what kind of home they grew up in. Probably, in fairness, a lot of people's memories of their childhood tend to be slanted to the positive. It's a natural thing. You don't want to think about the hard times you had when you were young, which I had and everybody else had.
IDEAS: How did you choose the contributors?
EDWARDS: I decided early on that I wanted a combination of people who were well known and those who weren't. First I made a long list of people I was personally interested in, asked my family and staff for ideas, then just got on the phone and started calling them, and got an amazing response. As you see, we have a wide range of people, from chefs to fashion designers to politicians.
IDEAS: I was struck by the absence of rags-to-riches stories.
EDWARDS: We were more interested in hearing about the homes people grew up in and what they meant about their lives. One thing I found a bit startling is that you can't tell the difference between those who went on to be famous and those who didn't. It's up to the readers to determine the connection. What was it that made Steven Spielberg, growing up in Scottsdale, Arizona, a very small town at the time, interested in becoming a moviemaker? He talks in his piece about going to the local movie theater, and about making his first film with his electric train set.
IDEAS: Were there any other surprises?
EDWARDS: I was really struck by how people focused on the same things. Whether they were famous or not famous, whether they came from a well-to-do background or a poor background, people remembered sitting around the kitchen table, talking with their parents. They remembered learning their values in that environment. You realize there's a consistent thread through most Americans' lives, regardless of whether they immigrated to this country or were born here, whether they live in New York City in the Bronx or whether they live in rural North Carolina like me, or on an Indian reservation, as at least a couple of people do in the book. It's very encouraging. It means we're all bound together by the same things, and they're not material things.
IDEAS: Token Election Day question: If you do run in '08, how would you address the idea of home as president?
EDWARDS: From my perspective, America in part represents a set of values. I think those values are driven to a large extent by the things we learn at home. Work, responsibility, optimism -- the trademarks of America are trademarks that were developed in the homes we grew up in.
Kate Bolick is senior editor of Domino magazine and teaches writing at New York University
i know it's sad. but we MUST move on! we have other fights to win! the Virginia governors race for instance. however anytime there are new edwards pics i'll continue to post them here for all to enjoy! 
I can't believe I have actually met this man...
so true 
I passed Cate on the street as I left, he had mentioned her and that he was hoping she would come. He gave a very short statement at the beginning (it was at a very small bookstore and they don't have the space etc for all the people), he said he wanted time to spend time with each person.
