center at smu, which makes its public debut next month. mrs. bush, thank you so much for having us here, and this little sneak peek thank you for coming, erin. i m glad you re here to see it. reporter: i sat down with the former first lady to talk about the bush s educational program. it s really the answer, i guess, to a dream that george and i both had. we both believed that women are going to be the ones who lead the democracy movement across the broader middle east and so we brought, a year ago, a group of egyptian women. we decided to focus on egypt first. reporter: 14 egyptian women have spent the past year learning leadership skills from prominent american women, in education, health care, business, politics, law, and media. a lot of people say egypt, and they, especially when you think of women. there have been gang rapes in tahrir square and the numbers on things like genital mutilation remain horrific, something like 90 plus percent. what made you said, egypt now?
our fifth story outfront, former first lady, laura bush. i just sat down with the former first lady at the new george w. bush presidential center, as part of cnn s what women want campaign. and we talked about a whole lot of things. and she also gave me a sneak peek of the new presidential center. so, this is all texas native prairie grasses. reporter: it may seem unusual to find 15 acres of mature prairie in the heart of dallas, but former first lady laura bush says it feels just like home. the new urban park is designed after the bush family ranch in crawford, and it s part of the george w. bush presidential center at smu, which makes its public debut next month. mrs. bush, thank you so much for having us here, and this little sneak peek thank you for coming, erin. i m glad you re here to see it.
institute programming. i hosted in march the u.s. afghan women s council, because i want to continue working to support afghan women and to make sure that they can that, you know, the taliban doesn t reverse their progress they ve been able to make so far. so this was a conference that i hosted that focused on literacy for girls and women in afghanistan. larry: the library will be at southern methodist? at smu. uh-h uh-huh. larry: that s your alma mater, right? that s my alma mater, right there in dallas on central expressway in mockingbird. i think it s going to be great. larry: how is it progressing? very well. we should break ground in november. the architect is working on the construction plans right now and they re due in october. so we re excited. we ve already started a lot of the programming that has to do with the institute. we hosted a couple of weeks ago a cyberdissidents conference, for dissidents around the world for the ways they can use the internet to get
that s right. it will be part of the bush library that will be at smu. we ve already started the institute programming. i hosted in parr the u.s. afghan women s council, because i want to continue working to support afghan women and to make sure that they can that, you know, the taliban doesn t reverse their progress that they ve been able to make so far. so this was a conference that i hosted that focused on literacy for girls and women in afghanistan. larry: the library will be at southern methodist? at smu. larry: that s your alma mater, right? that s my alma mater, right there in dallas on central expressway in mockingbird. larry: how is it progressing? very well. we should break ground in november. the architect is working on the construction plans right now and they re due in october. so we re excited. we ve already started a lot of the programming that has to do with the institute. we hosted a couple of weeks ago
larry: one week from tonight we have mick jagger. first, we welcome back laura bush. her new book is spoken from the heart. a terrific read published by scriptners. you were such a private first lady. wasn t this hard for you to do? it actually was not. it was really great to have a chance to do this. it was really great to have a chance to do this. i wanted it to be very candid. i wanted it to be revealing. and i knew there were a lot of gaps that what reporters asked me about, all those eight years we were there, you know, didn t cover some of the things that were in this book. so i had a great time writing it. i went back home to midland when i started it. my mother still lives there, and went by all those houses my dad built. and the houses george and i lived in, and the schools we went to. larry: lived your life over. that s right. and i really did there is something cathartic about it. i saw things really for the first time with my vantage point, now, at my ag