This video, titled Fall Convocation, was a conversation between Khaled Hosseini and Constance (Connie) Book in the Alumni Gym in October 13, 2009. Hosseini is a Bestselling author, an Afghan native who implored students to travel the world in the coming years to better understand how events around the globe impact their lives at home. Hosseini, wearing a dark suit and an open collar button-down shirt, sat relaxed as he traded ideas with Book, Associate Dean of the School of Communications, in a question-and-answer discussion that deviated from the speech format that has been a tradition of recent Elon Convocations. With two chairs separated by a small table, Book asked the author questions previously submitted by students who wanted more information on Afghanistan and the literary techniques Hosseini employed in his two best-selling novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Hosseini, founder of a nonprofit foundation {The Khaled Hosseini Foundation} dedicated to helping residents of his native country, fielded those questions and then some. What he emphasized at several points, and in different fashions, is that no foreign nation has ever emerged victorious from war in Afghanistan and that the best course of action for the United States would be to treat its efforts there not so much as a war on terror – but as a war on poverty. Book quizzed Hosseini on his ability to write A Thousand Splendid Suns, Elon University’s Common Reading selection for 2009-2010, in such a way that many women were able to emotionally connect with characters drawn from the imagination of a man.