Security Expert Juliette Kayyem was driving home on the Thursday night following the Boston marathon bombing when the ground began to shake. Fifty police cars passed Kayyem on I-90, rushing to what she would later learn was the scene of a police shootout with the Tsarnaev brothers. Kayyem, former Undersecretary of Homeland Security and a CNN security analyst, received a call to come back to the studio to cover the news. Knowing that her three children were waiting at home, Kayyem was left with a decision: the home or the homeland?
So opens Kayyem’s memoir, Security Mom: An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our Homeland And Your Home. Kayyem, who hosts WGBH’s Security Mom podcast, joined Jim Braude and Margery Eagan on Boston Public Radio to discuss security on a national and personal scale. “The goal of the book is to describe what homeland security is to people who live it, breathe it, are a part of it, and to tell it as a memoir because I think people will find it accessible,” Kayyem said. “I wasn’t born a terrorism expert, I wasn’t born a homeland security maven, I am like you. I am exactly like you, and sort of make it accessible to people by telling the stories of my own life.”
To hear the full interview, click on the audio link above.
