simply sally whitney it will always turn out well. this is a law of the universe i'm convinced of. so tonight want to thank people that allowed to make that journey from, my ancestors to be here today with. so much emotion. it makes me feel like when i come in here. so i thank carla hayden. i thank david m rubenstein. i thank clay smith. i thank. alveda cordero, senior, my mother, who loved libraries and taught her children to love them, to by taking us to the library. library every saturday where she took up opera. and that instilled me a love of opera. and also my father, alfredo cisneros that more an immigrant, honest labor and world war two event. dr. norma alarcon, my publisher and literary mentor.

back when no one knew who i was, the great gwendolyn, the great eleanor poniatowski, my literary and my literary susan burke and stuart bernstein. and again with josette and dario go the. maria bartiromo. philippa anguiano for the journey that has brought me here today. i believe human beings are capable of atrocities beyond imagination, but they are also equally capable of extraordinary god as well. i believe there is enough misery in the world, but also humanity. just a bit more. i believe. i believe in the power of a thought, a word to change the world. i believe in libraries. i believe in human beings. when as someone has the good, outnumber the bad. thank you so much.

and book tv's of the 2024 national book festival continues and book tv is. so good evening and welcome to the 24th annual library of congress national book festival. and thank for being here. and so wonderful author. this is a place where books i am passed for adults of the library of congress library services for the blind and print disabled. it is a pleasure to welcome all of you here today. at this time, we ask that you turn off or silence your susan. so once she leave the premises

before the session, the door on the right so then the years. we also want to notify you that this event was recorded in your presence. this program constitutes your consent to be filmed or otherwise recorded. there will be time for questions near the end of this. so the microphones are here in the house and because is the last session, i'm going to go here a little bit and ask to join me to thank our time for our years here and here, and also c-span. now they have a wonderful team. our program, our last event of the evening is words matter politicians on, the page.

jeff broten and lozano from is the president and ceo of the constitution center and a professor of law at george washington university law school. previous include the seller conversation, rpg, justice ruth bader ginsburg on life law library and law. and today we'll talk about his new book, the pursuit of happiness how classical writers on virtue the lives of poets and find america. other an opinion columnist at the new york times has won pulitzer prize and the national critics circle citation excellence and reviewing his new book is the washington book how to politics and politicians.

maureen, discussion is not sotomayor who covered the joe biden 2020 campaign and congress for abc news and is currently covering the u.s. of representatives for the washington post. i hope a session and let's walk them them or stage. good evening. thank you so much for being here this a great turnout to talk about such an topic. i mean i can't even begin to explain how grateful i am to be sitting here writing this. your know your work for a long time and reading these books together. i recommend doing so because you just learn so much from the earliest days. i to the politician that we have come to learn a lot about. i want to to ask both of you,

what inspired you to write this, jack? there are many words in the constitution and you chose the pursuit of happiness. what made you want to know what those words honor to be? first of all, what an inspiring event. and be here with. honor. so was a series of unexpected synchronicities led me to try to read the classical moral philosophy that inspired the founders when they wrote that famous phrase, the pursuit of happiness. it was during covid, and i noticed both benjamin franklin and thomas jefferson had chosen as the core of happiness a book by cicero i'd never heard of called the tuscan disputation. and when jefferson was old and people ask him, what's the meaning of happiness, he would offer this book and the definition from cicero that he offered of happiness had to do

with virtue. cicero said he has achieved a tranquility of mind who's neither unduly exuberant or unusually despondent. he is achieve the virtue and the calm tranquility of soul of which we are in quest. he's the happy, man. and then i saw that franklin also when he came up with a list of 13 virtues for daily also chose the cicero book and a motto that said without happiness cannot be. so i thought, i've got to read the cicero. what else to read? then i found this golden list that jefferson would send to who asked him when he was old how to an educated person and others. it's a marvelous list. it includes literature and political philosophy and history law. jefferson includes only what you have to read, but the time of day you have to read it and you have to get up early before sunrise and read moral philosophy for 2 hours. and then you can read some political, then have lunch, then and astronomy, then dinner.

then you're allowed some shakespeare and poetry, then bed up the next morning before. dawn seven days a week, 12 hours a day. okay, so then i saw the list of the moral philosophy books and there was cicero's tuscola in disputation and also marcus aurelius meditations. seneca's letters. and then these enlightenment philosophers, locke, hutcheson, bolingbroke. basically i felt i've got to read these books because it's a gap in my education. i've had this marvelous liberal arts education. i'm so grateful every day to the incredible who inspired me to learn political philosophy and history and law but i'd miss these books of moral philosophy. so it was covid. we had more time. i don't know what over me, but i got up every morning before dawn. i read 2 hours. i watched the sun rise, which is the most beautiful thing that anyone can experience. whenever you are lucky enough to do it. then i found myself these weird writing these sonnets to kind of sum up the wisdom that i had learned. and i know it does sound incredibly weird, but it turns out all sorts people in the

founding era wrote sonnets after reading this great literature, including phillis wheatley, great black poet, and also john quincy adams, who as president would wake up the white house, read cicero in particular the toscanini's, which he loved above all, walk along the potomac and write these sonnets of virtue and abolitionism, which are so. so i did that for a year. the whole project changed my life. it changed what i thought about, how to be a good person, how to be a good citizen, and how to be a lifelong learner. and what i discovered is that for the founders happiness meant not feeling good, but being good, not the pursuit of immediate pleasure, but the pursuit of long term virtue. you're nodding. we talked about this online. you read the book and it's just so clarifying to see your task every day not as just doing feels good in the moment, but self-improvement and character improvement being your best self, being a lifelong learner. and that's what happiness meant for. all of these great wisdom

authorities from, the east and from the west. and then to cut to the chase and sum up the takeaway, if there and there is one of this amazing project it changed way i read i'd gotten out of the habit of being of reading of the immediate deadline or the project that i had to do. and i'm not always catching the sunrise. i have to confess. but i do have a rule which is that i'm not allowed to browse or surf until i've done my reading every day. and that leaves. it's just amazing it's it'll change your life. it really has changed mine even a half hour of reading books every, day you learn and grow and it's a journey of discovery and takes discipline. because every morning i want to swipe left to the browsing, you know, and newspapers and and jefferson. i've given up newspapers for and i feel much better. newspapers don't count. they're important they're necessary for democracy we'll talk about them but you have to read books before you do the

newspapers a half hour or an hour i'd become evangelist for the transformative power of deep reading. and it's so meaningful to be here at the national book festival at our event here is to a life reading that's just thank you for newspapers are important but crucial for democracy or reading online. yes, exactly. carlos, you have read i don't even know how many pages, memoirs, biographies. you've definitely read way more congressional investigation reports. i admit it. as a reporter, you've digested them probably way more than i have. what you to write this book and i am sure you have published so much. why did you choose columns that you've written in that book? sure. i should say first that any sonnets in my book are completely accidental. they yeah. that was so inspiring. i've this has been such a wonderful day. i've run into college friends

here, former students here, even a former swim of mine here and and they're all here right now so thank you and thank you to the book festival and we've been coming for years. it's my first time as an author you know the if i were to get sort of meta about it i say that this book because of two things that happened to me about a decade ago right at the same time. first, it became an american citizen. i lived here for a long time as a green card holder. yeah, and but but i finally took the plunge to to sort of go all in and join this this, this crazy crew and and also almost exactly the same time i became nonfiction book critic at the washington post. this happened just a couple of months apart and didn't think of it in this way at the time. but these two identities kind of melded together for me, and i began to hold the imperatives of

citizenship and the imperatives of reading and of criticism together. and i used my new job to read and write the kind of about the kind of works that would help me understand my new homeland a little better. jeff so eloquently described his his of, you know, exploring the the works of philosophy and ethics that influenced the founders i write about the books that are recent and current and even future leaders write about themselves. so the the 50 essays in this book are sort of views and perspectives on political memoir and political biography and manifest and congressional investigations and special counsel reports, of which there are many lately. and even supreme court opinions right. it's funny when people this is

how i make a living reading these kinds of books and documents. they look at me and they say thank you for reading those books. so we don't have to read those books. right. and of course, the implication of that response is that these books are bad. these books are self-serving, they're ghostwritten, they're propaganda, and they're at worst deceitful. and so why would you bother them? and and i think the the purpose of this book is to push against that that view. first of all, there are wonderful works, even written by politicians. you can get into later. you know, if we if we want to talk about who the politicians are that seem to be best writers but also even when they are self-serving, deceitful, even when politicians sanitize their lives and curate their records and present themselves in the most conform and electable in a favorable light, they always end up revealing themselves. let something slip. they can't help it, right? it's rarely sort of sexy newsy

stuff that a lot of our colleagues in media pour over the moment like nancy pelosi's memoirs out or barack obama's memoirs out. you get like the five takeaways from the memoir. you know, and that stuff is great. it's useful, but not how i enjoy reading. i try to find sort of the little moments and little details that tell you something, not just about their politics, but about their character. it might be something that barack said to a low level aide on a campaign flight long ago that tells you how he sees. right. it could be something that mike pence omits when he about the events of january 6th. right. it might be a phrase that kamala harris just turns to a little too often, too. you start wondering what she really means by it. all right. i also cover some some foreign leaders. it might be a phrase that vladimir putin in an interview in the year 2000 when he was first coming to power, but then he repeats. more than two decades later, on the eve of the war in ukraine,

that explains motivations. all right. it's in there somewhere. and just like my colleagues in at the new york times and at the washington post, you know, very correctly, to hold leaders accountable for their actions. i try to hold them accountable for writing for their words, for the evolution, their thinking and. to me, that's just as revealing. so that's the project of this book. it's also, in a sense, my my response to everyone who's ever said, you read this book, so we don't to cover. jeff i to ask you, and we're going to break down all of this are so many things. i'm like, which question do i ask? because there's so many pathways we can go. but i wanted to ask you about the meaning of it to happen. we started to say this at the end of your answer, where the founding fathers had a completely different definition of what that meant or means to us today. and i remember reading at a point it has changed obviously

over time, even frederick douglass added a little bit of an extra definition, saying that there's an equal opportunity to education. that's what it meant to him. the pursuit of happiness. can you take us through that story arc of just the definition changing over time? absolutely. so the greek word for happiness is which means good daemon or good spirits. and in aristotle, is nick a mark in ethics? famously defines happiness, an activity of the soul, conformity with excellence or virtue. now, those terms self-defining so what do they mean, a virtue? is this again the latin word is virtuous, which can courage or manliness. but the of the definition of virtue in classical moral philosophy was using your powers of reason to moderate or modulate your unreasonable

passions or emotions. reason is logos passion is pathos. that doesn't mean should lack emotions, but that we should moderate, unproductive emotions like anger, jealousy and fear. so we can achieve the classical of temperance, prudence, courage and justice. it comes from pythagoras. who would have thought that pythagoras is in addition to inventing the triangle and the harmonic system, if that wasn't enough, it was pythagoras said that we have certain faculties or powers. pasha in the heart, desire in the stomach and reason the head. and we have to use our reason to achieve a golden mean so that we're not exuberant, despondent, but have that calm tranquility plato popularized is that in the metaphor of the charioteer representing reason with two horses, one noble and the other repetitive. and reason has to ensure that they're all pulling in the same

direction. and it's pythagoras who comes up with the simple to apply self accounting system. every night before bed. you're supposed to put an x mark next to the virtue where you've fallen short. you haven't achieved that moderation. and franklin turns that into his famous virtus project every night where he falls short of the virtue he is trying to achieve. he puts an x mark. he finds this incredibly depressing. so he gives it up after a while, but he thinks he's better for having tried. and it comes from pythagoras. so that's the basic classical definition, which absolutely persists through most of western history. and history because in the eastern authorities, like the bhagavad gita and dharma pada, we find the injunction when we are what we think life shaped by mind and the theory. bhagavad gita says, in the phrase quoted by gandhi, renounce and enjoy, renounce attachment to external events and actions and enjoy bliss and

john adams, who's an incredible deep reader, notices the connection between the bhagavad gita and pythagoras and he becomes very excited when he finds that pythagoras may have traveled among the east and he's so excited to learn that. joseph priestley's translation of the bhagavad gita has been that priestley lived long enough to complete it, and he thinks that this will show that east and the west all converge in this basic definition of happiness as tranquility of soul, self, self-improvement, character improvement, all rooted in the stoic dichotomy of control, renounce attachment to, external events and, enjoy eternal bliss. so that's it's not a western monopoly and it's also not rooted only in the stoics, the literature shows it whig literature, the civic republican

literature. most extraordinary thing about living today is that all these documents are online and sitting on my couch. i could first of all, access them. it just i have to say, you know, here we were last night in the library of congress in the thomas jefferson building, i think we both think is the most beautiful, sacred building in washington. and when i was a kid, i was so of wonder with my winter, with my mom at the thought that all the books in the world were in that beautiful space and. now they're on my phone. it just blows my mind that any moment of the day i can access all books in the world. all i need is the to read them. but then with words, as i was able to see the phrase the pursuit of happiness occurs in all the documents that i just mentioned, this not some esoteric thing that thomas plucked out of nowhere. it's all of these ancient eastern and wisdom and western sources. so how does it evolve the basic idea of happiness, self-mastery, or self-improvement or lifelong

learning persists, but it evolves in american history from its first appears in the declaration, then the federalist papers are a manual for public happiness and madison's definition of faction is using our powers of reason to overcome unreasonable passions and emotion. john quincy adams resurrects it as soon improvement. a phrase picked up by henry clay and then by lincoln, frederick douglass. after the civil war, insists on the urgent importance education as being crucial to self-improvement. that's why he says that equal access to education is necessary, the pursuit of happiness. and then emerson defines the american as so self mastery and intellectual liberation. so it's just this extraordinary throughline throughout, ancient history all the way up through

american history. and it persists in america, the 1950s, and then it just drops of the literature and this was news to me. i never read these books when i was in college, despite my, you know, the great teachers that i had. and something happened in the sixties, happiness changed from being good to feeling good. let it all hang out. you do you, you know, and and now we have a different meaning. and that's why it was so to recover the classical definition of the pursuit happiness. carlos i. i wanted to tell you that at some times and i was reading your book, i felt like you had predictive and i know you're about to say secret to that is you have to read about these people and what they themselves written because you understand them better. i mean, i was struck when, you know, reading that you wrote in 2015 after devouring, i think it was like over 2000 pages of of

trump's there's a lot in there that have we read those books we would have a lot of his personality then there was something that you wrote about hillary clinton and how she was likely going to say in 2016 during her convention speech, a methodist, something that she had mentioned often. and then i think there was like a little asterisk saying said it, it's like beating my chest. and we've got it right, nailed it. did. so now we have a different cast of characters, politicians. obviously, trump is one of them who is running again for office. harris is someone that even as reporter, having covered her here and there, we're starting to learn about her more. what makes her tick? how does she make decisions? i'm curious. what do you think about? harris and i recently wrote about her in her books, but also someone like j.d. vance. he has his own book there that has been very read by many people. what are some of the takeaways that weren't obvious to, you

know, any reader reading his book that are now kind of personified you? these people on the trail all the time now. so. kamala harris has two books, one she wrote in 2009 and one in 2019. so they're a decade apart, but they're also just worlds apart. her first book is called smart on crime, and it focuses on her years as a prosecutor she was a courtroom. she was d.a. in san francisco and then attorney general of california. and that first book has a very kind of, you know, no nonsense, nonpartisan, tough on crime, but understanding kind of approach. and the timing of it is interesting it came out a year before michelle alexander's new jim crow book came out five years before bryan stevenson's just mercy, and it preceded the sort of huge, you know, racial reckoning, whatever you want to

call the experience of the past decade in, which a lot of her original views on the role, sort of very, very noble vision of the role of the prosecutor in the role of law enforcement came to be looked less favorably. certainly, the democratic party and somewhat across across the nation. so then when she's running for in 2019, this book was it was a campaign. the new book was called the truths we hold. all the campaign books have these very generic rah rah america titles. american, you know, like standing, whatever. this was called the truth. we hold. and and you see how her vision of the role of the prosecutor really shifted. now, she was calling herself a progressive prosecutor, which not something she had embraced in the first book, whereas in the first book, she said that, you know, the most important reforms for law enforcement are entirely nonpartisan. you know, democrats, republicans, independents all crave safety.

and her views were not, you know, ideological you know, that really shifts my book to now, i'm not saying there's anything duplicitous about it. you know, people should be allowed to change their minds in the face of new information and and new thinking. but to me, it's interesting that now in this campaign, she's kind of moving a little bit back now. her campaign is calling her a pragmatic prosecutor. progressive prosecutor is no longer, you know, in the in the in her discourse. so, you know, to me, that is that is a fascinating way just, just using their books to sort of see how adapts to new, you know, old positions. and but it also makes me wonder where she will end up, because she's clearly using her experience as a prosecutor, as a central message of this campaign. if you watched any of the democratic convention there was a lot of talk about how she can prosecute case against trump. the prosecutor versus the felon.

so you know, that to me has been fascinating. one more thing on harris is that there's a phrase she uses all the time in in her books and it's it's called false choices. she resists false choices. right. so she says, you know, people say, you to be either supporting the police or supporting accountability for the police. that's a false choice. i'm for both. right people say that i care too much about undocumented immigrants versus america citizens. that's a false choice. and she may be right. you know, and it sounds very sage say that things are false choices, but politics is all about making choices in the face of competing priorities. and i wonder if this resistance to being pinned down, this kind of wanting to to embrace, you know, all sides of a certain issue have if that's contributed to some the difficulties she had in carving out a very defined role as the vice president, at least before the dobbs decision

kind of propelled her as a as the administration's voice for for the abortion rights cause. now, her books are as central to her politic persona as hillbilly elegy is to j.d. vance. there is no j.d. vance vp nomination without, hillbilly elegy, just like there's no trump presidency without the apprentice right. it's sort of what what presented him the world and. what's fascinating to me about, the sort of looking at hillbilly elegy, which i read at the time and by the way, if you want to have some watch his library congress or national book festival event from 2017 which is sort of a whole different side of j.d. vance. and by the way, he was the in this building at the. but what's interesting is that in that first book, he's very

critical of the community from which she comes he says it's a culture in right and he says look you got to stop trying to other people to blame for your problems. you've got to work harder. you got go to school. and it's it's a very kind, tough love view of of of middletown, ohio of of the of the the place he came from when he talks that now it's you know it's a far sharper turn than i've identified even in the harris books because now he is looking for people to blame it's elites it's globalization it's the left and i think there's a greater tension between the the worldview of j.d. vance in hillbilly elegy and the worldview that he's espousing the great about trump is that there's no tension at all. he has always been sort of as he as he presents in those books,

even if those books are largely ghostwritten accounts in a way, he he has sort of become the persona that is presented in the art of the deal and surviving at top and the art of the comeback and how to get rich. i've read all these trump books. there's a of trump books, but you know his willingness to sort of denigrate his opponents, right? he's sort of i'm not like tea leaves here. he sort of brags about and in these earlier books, he doesn't say that he's a liar, says he engages in truthful hyperbole, which is a line in in in the art of the deal. and so, you know, ironically trump is the most consistent between the person of his writings and the political figure we've come to. what do you do if you are someone like, governor tim walz, who does not a memoir i know a book about her husband and i even went on amazon in case there was like any biographer and i think there might be one

who wrote somewhat of like a pdf about his life. so what do you do in that case? i stu you're just waiting and i wait right? you know, so it's funny. i am the moment that the day the biden debate debacle, i guess, is the only appropriate word i'd be to sort of thinking about. like, who might you if they if they ditch the biden campaign, who might it be and who has books. right. so i immediately bought gretchen whitmer's new book, true gretch, it's a weird title, but in fact she in the book that she hates the nickname gretch. but it's the title of the book true --. and and you know and i read her book right away. i started looking at like, you know, we already had people to judges book, but i got the other one, and i was just getting ready to see who it might be. and i started and i called my editor. i'm like, who should i start reading? you know, he's like, hold on, you know, let's wait. let's see what happens.

and and so what i often do is, trust me, there will now be biographies up there will not be collections of. tim walz's like locker room speeches to his football team, right? like like all of that is going to come right and so and so that'll happen i'm sure there's publishers who are circling around him like vultures trying to get you know trying to get him to sign a book deal. now that he's had such an auspicious beginning rollout to his campaign. but often i wait like i've long wanted to write about nancy pelosi and were many, many biographies of her. but now that she has her own book out, it seems like like a good moment to do that. for instance, i often will wait till a politician passes the first essay in this book looks at the four books written by george h.w. bush. i'm reading jimmy carter's books for the same reason, and, you know, life is long. i sort of feel like i'm i'm civil service and they're the appointees like, i'll be here after they're gone and i can

still weigh in. maybe there's no schedule f for me. but i'm sorry. deep cut inside, joe. but, you know, in the case of wars was frustrating because i was i was hoping it would be someone who had a book. last thing i'll say about it, when biden was waiting to see when we were waiting to find out who biden was going to pick as his v.p. people, were thinking it was going to come down to either kamala harris or susan rice. and so i got their books right away. and i had them. i was they were on my desk. i was waiting to see if he was going to pick and i was rooting for harris, susan rice, his book is like this. and it would have taken me forever. i was able to read kamala book a little a little quicker, but again, this is not this is not the only way i mean, this is my way to try to understand our political james poniewozik, because some of you may know he's the television critic for the new york times, terrific writer. he wrote a book called of one trying to understand donald trump in the trump presidency through television right, not to

books, to tv and. it was a wonderful book. it's just a different lens. this just happens to be the lens that that that i use, that i'm comfortable. i'm glad to hear you're also very intimidated by very thick books. of jeff. speaking of predictive abilities, the founding fathers to have had some and lot of lessons for us nowadays. you know, so many people about how if the founding fathers were here, they would tell us this about this policy or this about this person, i'm sure if they came down, they would have i told you so, especially when it comes to this definition, pursuit of happiness. you write in the book about how james madison in particular we are now living in james madison's nightmare. what do you mean by that? how do we get out of it, especially in this day and age of social media? so the it's so wonderful to be here with you and carlos because

we're both looking at how what people read their lives and their worldview. and that is the wisdom of the dharma part of we are what we think is shaped by the mind and. it's so striking how madison, like all the founders, was so centrally shaped by books. jefferson sent over a trunk full of books from paris on the failed democracies of greece and rome that madison read in preparation for the constitutional convention and. he took careful notes about what have to the downfall of greece rome, and he concluded his reading that democ forces were liable to being taken over by demagogue dogs and the mob, and he wrote in federalist 55 in all large assemblies of any character composed passion never fails to wrest the scepter. reason even if every athenian had been socrates, athens would still have been a mob.

he's convinced that in the large assembly of 6000 people, demagogues, cleon could offer cheap luxuries to the people like bread and circuses, persuade them to surround their liberty in exchange for security. so he resolves to establish a constitution that, will allow us to achieve the same harmony in the constitution of the state that we have to achieve in the constitution of own mind. and it's remarkable to read the federalist papers as an act of political psychology. adams applying the books that he read in college believes that just as we have reason in the head, passion in the heart and desire in the stomach, so the constitution of the state can have reason in an executive and passion and desire mirrored and matched in the various houses of the legislature and the executive and thinks that the goal of the constitution is to

slow down deliberation so that citizens aren't liable to demagogues and they don't engage in the riots as in shay's rebellion, western massachusetts, where debtors are mobbing the federal courthouses because they don't want to pay their debts. i found after the book was published this astonishing that jefferson wrote madison right when he received a draft of the constitution and he said, i have two concerns. first, there's no bill of rights. and second, the president is eligible for reelection. and i'm concerned that in distant future, a president might lose an election by a few votes, cry foul, refuse to leave office and install himself as a dictator for life. i never gave your it's in madison's letter jefferson's letter to madison and hamilton to fears a demagogue, a caesar on horseback will come. and by seducing the people establish a subvert the constitution and establish himself as a dictator.

jefferson's solution is a one year term limit. so the president can't run again. hamilton's is a president for life so that the president can't attempted to subvert an election. but both are centrally concerned about demagogues. now, madison solution first is the large size america because it's so big, it'll be hard for mobs to find each, and by the time they do, they'll get tired. go home. and then he has one other solution, which is a new media. the broadside press, that will allow a class of enlightened. he calls the literati. basically, it's carlos. and you, arianna, are supposed to have arguments like the federalist papers which citizens will read in newspapers which slowly diffuse across land. they'll discuss it in coffeehouses, but they will never communicate directly. the president because the idea of a tweeting president is madison's nightmare you that that might lead to demagogues. but by slowly allowing reason to

diffuse over time and space will be guided by reason than passion by the public good rather than self-interest and will avoid factions. so that's madison's hope. obviously, as i say, this it's clear that we're living in madison's nightmare. first, the large size of america's undermined by this social media technology where posts based on passion, travel further and faster than those based on reason and in real time, rather than slowly and this enrage to engage model ensures that it's the angriest post rather than the most temperate ones that get an audience and the polarization of america is more intense than at any time since civil war. according to studies, is the opposite of. the government without party that the founders envisioned. you ask the solution, and i'm not going to solve it at the with in this answer, which i'm going to do. but if it's really striking how that not the founders are kind of pessimistic at the end of

their lives about whether the experiment will survive washington gravely fears and the rise of parties. hamilton you know thinks the government should have been stronger like adams jefferson both trembling for his country when he perceives that god is just and recognizing that he and his fellow enslavers will find divine justice for the slavery they know is wrong, but refuse to abandon fears and accurately anticipates the civil war. only madison is a little more hopeful because he expects of government, but all of them and this is the hopeful point and this is why it's good to be remembering it here at national book fair. all of them think the salvation is is education, is civic, education is citizens taking. go ahead. it is citizens taking the time to educate yourself to, learn about the principles of so you will defend them when they are under siege and will not allow caesar on horseback to persuade

you to abandon the urgently important constitutional structures on which republic depends and also through thoughtful, deep reading and learning from different perspectives, you'll learn the habits of civil and reflection. we'll learn think before we tweet. we'll learn to listen to different points of view. we'll learn the lesson of franklin, who at the end of his extraordinary life, where he's the most acclaimed person in the world, along with voltaire, famous for taming the gulfstream and and bringing lightning from the heavens the part that he's most grateful for is his virtuous of temper. the fact he doesn't assert my or the highway. i know this to be so, but it may be said or i think perhaps just it's the opposite of our current civil, you know, deeply polarized environs. and then finally, washington is very hopeful about the idea of a new national universe. and he thinks it will actually be gw we're here in town, so

we'll acknowledge that. and but the point is not who administer it, but the idea of people from across the country coming to d.c., setting their sectional differences and, their local prejudices so they can study the science of government and learn the habits of deliberation. that's his hope. and if there's any, i want to end on this hopeful note. the marvelous thing about this new age is all these glorious document are online and with great tools. the books that we can read and national constitution centers incredible, interactive constitution that want to recommend to you. it's got 90 million hits since we launched this. and now the most googled constitution in the world because people around the country are eager for nonpartisan, accurate information, the constitution. and then because i'm doing my plug the weekly podcast, we the people that brings together liberals and conservative gives to model civil dialog and the incredible constitution one of one course unlike against the knife salesmen, there's but this is that which is now online but

this fall on september 17th constitution they were launching khan academy the great online you know you'd learn your math and science from them and this is their first civics class. now, everyone free from around the country will be able to learn constitution from the greatest constitutional scholars in america from all perspectives. it's all free and online. all we need to do is learn about it, and we can keep the republic together. thank you for that. so as i was reading of your books, my question always was how did you all take notes? how did you both take notes? i mean, i know reporters do it differently, whether you are a tv reporter and you're prepping all of this information in. and how do you jotted down or if your print like myself, you talked to a zillion people and then you're like, oh my gosh, i have so many. what do i do with that? how do i put it together? we all have like our a rhythm. ah formulas. so i wanted to ask both of you

how how did you just keep everything together? i know you had lot of time, but how did you go through these very dense readings? stay focused and put this book together. it's just so exciting. i you know, i am a kindle reader. it's so easy to take notes and you just highlight and cut paste. it's just incredible. it's so to do and all the primary sources are online and i'm such an evangelist for the transformative power of primary sources. the founders online has in it the complete papers. all the people that i wrote. and you can just go and and word searches are so wonderful reason passion you know virtue you find everything that everyone ever wrote on the subject looking for and then just read it go letter letter and read the sources and then you can cut and paste them onto word document. it's like a marvel, an

excavation or an excavation or a kind adventure, a hunt, a treasure hunt through american intellectual history. and then the fact that you can read the books that they all read by looking at their reading lists is just so exciting. and i share carlos's mission to resurrect peoples through reading the books they read. we are what we think life shaped by the mind, and it's so new, and then you feel like you're learning and reading along with them and all the are there. what do you know? you can lament social media, all you like, but what a glorious time. how fortunate we are to be living in this incredible age where all the all the books are online. and i just read them and take notes and cut and paste and you write and you've written a book. it's just wonderful. carlos, about you or are your books just marked up? i read very differently i, i

have difficulty on any kind of device. like i need a physical book and i started doing it this way that i'm going to describe. and i think it's probably a bad way to do it. i do not recommend to anyone, but it's kind of the way that i read now and i can't stop, i've just been doing it for too long and this is the way it goes. so if i'm going to be reading, if i'm going to be writing a particular book, i know that i'm reading it in order to about it. i feel like i really have to know it. i really have to absorb it. and so i read it three times and the first read is the deepest read. you know, it's with a pen, lots of notes, extensive, you know, marginalia going to footnotes sometimes other books to prepare me to read book. when david garrels knew about my biography he came out, i had to read david maraniss book and remnick's book and, some others, just to sort of figure out what was new and.

this one, for instance. right. but so that first read is the deepest read, and it's just lot of writing, a lot of notes, lot of, you know, rabbit holes. then i, i set it aside at least for a day, and i pick it up again. this is way in the weeds. pick it to begin with, with a highlighter instead of a pen and i read it again a little faster kind of lingering on the portions based on my notes. i can that really struck me the most the first time, i think like, why did this strike me? what's interesting here, what's the context around it? how did these things start to come together and and so then i finished that one and then i go through it a third time, this time with my computer open, you know, open a file and. i start looking at the highlighted material from the second round and, and i can't just cut and paste it. i actually rewrite material because then even just writing the words kind really cements them in my head a little bit more. and i end up with, you know, thousands words of notes from

each book. it works out to maybe like a thousand words per 100 pages of a book. so it's a 400 page book. i might have 4 to 5000 words of notes, and it's quotes it's questions. it's ideas, it's contradictions i've identified. and then that my raw material for i'm going to write about and then i just sit with that and i read through those notes and and that becomes the way that that i can i can write a review, or an essay about one book or about multiple books. it takes forever. it takes forever. and like, my editor gets so frustrated, know, i mean, actually he's he's great, but but, you know, i say like, done reading. so he's like, okay, so you going to write? i'm like not yet. i've got to type up my notes which takes forever right. but you know it it's a it's a method that works for me i feel that at the end an author may not always like what i have to say about that person's book, but they can't say i haven't taken it seriously because. i've really delved into as much

as i can. i recently read a book, a called trust by hernan diaz, which i recommend to you, and without saying too much, it's the kind of book you need to experience. i really explain it. it's it's a memoir. it's it's it's a novel about a memoir and it's a memoir told different vantage points and the deeper end you get to the story the actually the less you really know about the true story at the heart of it and it's it's a little bit disorienting, but it's also just mesmerizing. i'll never read memoir again in the same way after reading book and i sometimes think of that when i think of all the reading that i do because, you know, there's there's a benefit to to to read deeply in a subject. but the deeper read on any subject, the more you just conclude how little actually know about it. right and you know, if you want

to feel like you know a lot about a subject or read one book. if you want to feel like you know nothing about, read five books on that subject and you realize there's just many different different avenues to explore. and that is, again, like and there's this novel that is both disorienting but also just exhilarating because, you know, you can always keep going, you know, jeff is an evangelist for, you know, reading the primary documents, going deeper and and for me, you know, whenever i want to learn about a subject i that the deeper i go the more i realize how much more there is to learn how much more is to read and i mean, i'm preaching to the choir here at the national festival that's that's why you're here, because that's something that you understand very deeply. so for me, i know it's just never going to end. you know, you never gain mastery of of of a subject. you just you just keep learning how much more there is to learn. so now it's your turn to ask questions. there's a microphone.

and here if you guys to line up we only have about 10 minutes maybe maybe we can go a little longer don't know so there's there's still people who may or may not have the interest in politics what is one main thing that you would want them to understand like if they were to be exposed to a political idea as political books. so learning more about the political theory or the politic political news of the day. yeah. i, i guess what i hope people would understand from from the happiness book is not how to form a government, but how to live, how to be a good person, how to spend the day. and this this is what it taught me and to spend the day productively which would have to involve learning every day and

some reading every day. well, you know when it comes to politics, i think it's very helpful to think about the structures of government not the latest policy debates or, who's up or who's down, although it's deeply important to learn about american history from the beginning to the present, including reading about what people read, but just why the constitution set up the way it is. and just for a quick take away the basic principles of the american idea of liberty, democracy, equality federalism embodied in the declaration and, the constitution, and understand their philosophical sources are, and then how they were applied over time and how people them. and then you're often running all i would say all i would add to that is that whatever this person you're talking this hypothetical person who's not into politics, whatever that person cares about science, sports. you know, civil rights, any, any

subject that you're that you're into, literature or there are political dimensions, all of that. and so i think that that whatever your particular interest is, you don't have to think of politics as this kind of dirty thing off to the side that you want to look at. it can be woven in to to to all the issues that you might be concerned about. and it doesn't have to be dirty. it can it can it can be it can be uplifting, but it can but it is always necessary. look over here as an outsider, not actually american. i'm english. i'm still here. you've spoken a lot about certain words in the constitution, be it pursuit of happiness or like well-regulated militia. do you not feel it's a little bit most looking back and i'm looking forward that these men nearly 30 days ago now who wrote these words have such influence on what we think today. they back then they were going to vote. if you were a landowning man,

why are we listening to them? why you guys listen to them so much, not choosing your own path? a crucial question because they articulate it. the shining ideals of the american idea which future generations have to become more embracing, to use justice ginsburg's term, the left out people not just grudgingly, but with opening arms and every single underarm in minority in american history fighting for their rights have invoked the declaration it's so inspiring to see first white men arguing for the expansion of the franchise, then the great abolitionists david walker and frederick douglass, denouncing slavery in the name of the declaration. women at seneca falls, immigrants, and then lgbtq people and onward and onward. it is this glorious that we've always fallen short, but always striving to become more perfect. that's why america is about an

idea. it is not about blood or, about where you're born or your inherited status in britain. that's why for all the glories of britain and its law and its tradition, liberty. it's the american constitution that has proved to be the most impressive and expansive because it is always open to reinvention and to becoming more extensive in its reach. we are the only country, the world that remains defined by an idea in these polarized times when people are worried about whether or not the country is falling apart, it's so inspiring to see that people of all backgrounds still embrace the american idea, although they disagree about its meaning and. that's why i am optimistic that we will survive and flourish. political memoirs.

so these books have so many hands on them, whether they're ghostwritten or not political advisers, editors, etc. so how does a book i know was 20 news cycles ago, but how does a book christine holmes miss the mark so badly, how on earth did clear a charming story about killing a dog? and i'm curious, are there any examples that come to mind for of how someone so badly misunderstood, how their words would shape their public persona? people often ask sort of for the for the best examples, most uplifting examples of political memoir. i love how this is like who screwed up the most? yeah. so wasn't intending to read christine holmes book. i was going to do the thing i'd done before. i was like, well, she's on these lists of potential trump vp's, if she becomes the vp, i'll her book and of course the book comes out, crickett, the dog becomes like a household name,

and suddenly my colleagues are like, are you going to read christine i was working rhetoric. christine knows what. so i picked it up. what i what i learned about process of how that even came to be she written an earlier book where she had wanted to tell the cricket story and her editors wisely pulled her back from doing so. this time. different publisher, a different right. it may that someone who in her case was probably attempting to look you know, tough for trump. remember, remember trump says, you know, so-and-so died like a dog right like i always do. i thought of that when i thought of holmes book and the so for those of you who don't know in the story, she talks about how many years ago in the book talks, how many years ago she was having this hunt, some friends on her land and this dog cricket was poorly trained and got way up ahead of the other hunting dogs and scared away all the birds they were trying

shoot. and then later on the way home, cricket jumps out of the car and massacres some chickens. so she decides crickets and trainable drags into a gravel pit, shoots them, then sees a goat. like i never like that goat either. i'm going to drag that goat over and kill the goat. the story dominated news cycles right? but when you read the book right, don't just listen to the stories about, the anecdote you see that that story of cricket in the goat was in her chapter on, her thinking about policy and national security. and she's trying to explain how she makes decisions on issues of life and death. and, you know, and so it was was this effort to project a kind of trumpian toughness that backfired horribly. but you can almost see how in a certain and a certain way of thinking in a season where everyone is trying to sort of, you know, talk as tough as possible to appeal to a certain wing of the transformed

republican party, like you might convince yourself that story shows that i'm tough and it came up against the sort of, you know, dog lovers of america. and and it became it sort of torpedoed her career any any ambition she had for the vice presidency. but, you know, it's contextual. she's trying to explain how she's tough. she will be tough in the world, right. she doesn't mind, you know, you know, doing the dirty that she needs to do. but at the same time, she's trying to appeal to a certain constituency and in this case did so in a way that really backfired her. jeffrey, you've mentioned how i think the madison quote athens would be a mob even if every citizen was a socrates. and i think we're here at the national book festival. we all wanted some sense to be socrates.

carlos is described in detail how reading one has to do just to become a specialist in one particular political figure. so i'm wondering how might as readers engage in places where where attaining specialization tractable and engage with our communities in places that more light than heat? oh, it's so beautiful. and by definition, this is the of a mob, a community, lifelong learners and readers. it's so beautiful to gaze out at you to. this is the republic of reason because you are all the reason you're here is because you think before you speak, want to grow in wisdom. before you tweet, you, you have the humility to recognize what carlos said, which is the more we read, the less we realize that we know and the more realize that the path is in the

pursuit. it's just the daily growing that define a republic of reason. so your job is to take light of this room and the that you experience every day in your lifelong learning and reading and inspire others to join us in this project of lifelong learning. and the most important thing to do. and it's a radical act nowadays, the great threat to our democracy is that people are not reading and it's not just people who don't have access to books. the most privileged among us both, you know, at every it's adults as well as kids so start and this a serious thing you ask what can you do do your daily reading and if tempted as i am every day to it and to start with the washington post, which i'd much rather do because i want to know what happened, you know, yesterday just just keep and develop that habit and then for goodness sakes, teach it to your kids as all of you were

doing it. how wonderful to hear kids here in this room and to see them, their parents. and just let's and just carry the light across america. i just came yesterday from the chautauqua institute, which was founded in the 19th century as a national movement for self-improvement through lifelong. and it had a spiritual component and had an evangelical component, and it still does. and i subscribe to it. so let's all be part that community and do it by modeling it for ourselves and for our kids and our friends. and in the process, we can transform the world. i'll make two very practical point that i'm very briefly. one is we're talking about the of reading. i would emphasize power of rereading. go back to books that you think you know, back to novels that you think you know, that you read long ago. you will find different. it'll be a different book to you because are a different person. you live in a different time. i would rather get to know one book better and get to know a

second book superficially. and the other thing i'll say reading community, i one of the great joys of my life is reading with my family or sitting over here, we read together, we read at dinner, we read at breakfast, we sneak in 15 minutes. when we can. i'm reading all the king's men, robert and warren with with my oldest son, we're reading, read like five pages to each other at night. and we're slowly reading it. we're like 100 something pages in and so rereading, but also reading together, reading not just in your book club, but actually reading together the process of reading community to me, been just of the great joys of my life. so thank you to everyone who is standing in line. unfortunately we are out of time. but thank you so much for coming. i mean what a great conversation i've learned much talking you both thank you so much thank you so much. so you so much i wrote.

yeah. i'm glad to finally connected it. book tv has been covering the national book festival every year since its founding in 2001. we've covered hundreds of authors at the annual festivals and you can watch any of our previous coverage on our website and book tv dot org. just click on the fairs and festivals tab near the top of the page. stay with book tv.

this year's national festival will re-air in its entirety in about an hour. while attending a recent conference, supreme court justice kagan was asked about the books reading this summer here is a response. what are you reading these days you know, i came prepared because you asked that last year. know it'll be a tradition. yeah. okay, cool. and i remember last year i gave you a couple fun books and then i gave you a law book. is that right? so i guess because i did that year, that's what i came prepared to do. so my fun books are if people are ann patchett fans, i just loved tom lake and, and it's, and you shouldn't read it, you should listen to it like i never listen to fiction. i have this rule where i listen to non fiction and i read fiction just because i like sort of reading words.

when i read fiction. but tom lake, which is this book about, it's about a sort of summerstage production of our town and the the young women and men in that production. and what happens to them later in? life. it's a it's a terrific story. but the reason you should listen to it is because on audible version meryl streep reads it and it's it's just stunningly good. and it you realize like how good and audio of a book can be. so that's one of the fun books that i've been reading at the start of the summer is. there are these books called the thursday club, which about these octogenarians, a kind of elders community who solve murders in their free time and and they're really fun and they're really

very and in the books i think there are four of them, you know, there are four of them, and they're very human. human. one of them even made me cry, notwithstanding the fact that i told you, it wasn't a crier. and and they're really terrific. okay, so here's my law book. last year, i told you to read this biography of felix frankfurter. and in this one, felix plays a cameo role. but it's a book called the descent. and it's about how oliver wendell holmes, that think that this is the subtitle of the books like how one justice, which is oliver wendell holmes, changed his mind about speech. and it it it's basically a sort of history of how it is that oliver wendell holmes came to write great free speech dissent in v united states, which the dissent that creates the whole

marketplace ideas metaphor and which is the dissent that becomes in the course of decades really the the basis of this, the supreme court's first amendment jurisprudence. so it's of those dissents you can look at and say he was of his time. but it but now we understand that that's the basis of our first amendment law notwithstanding it was a dissent. and it's a remarkable book. i mean, it's about a really interesting subject. know, thinking about free speech is pretty interesting, but but it's also about how justices change their mind. and oliver wendell holmes was 78 at the time. he about ready. he was thinking leaving the court, although he had another 12 years to go he had already been a judge for a long period of time. you would have thought like kind of knew what he knew and thought he thought and that there wouldn't be all this room for intellectual growth and it's about how judges can find room

for intellectual growth and how they can change their minds. and felix frankfurter is much younger than oliver wendell holmes and learned hand also much and in a non-law lawyer, a harvard politics professor named harold laski, also much younger mean 40 years younger, play important roles in bringing holmes to the conclusion that he's gotten fundamentally wrong and that going to sort of redo thinking in this area and the it's it's sort of like a fascinating intellectual history and then of course the opinion that holmes produces along with brandeis is opinion and there's a big cameo for brandeis here you know ah, such master works of judicial literature as well as judicial thought that the

whole is just fantastic. the great dissent book tv covered the great dissent in 2013, and you can watch on our video archive along with all our previous book events and book tv t org. next book tv to several authors at freedom fest 2020 for a libertarian in las vegas. a first it's patriot tv host. sam sorbo on home schooling in america. and now joining us on book is author, actress, entrepreneur sam sorbo. how many books have you written and? what's your newest about? oh. seven. and maybe i'm i'm guessing i because i have to count the newest one is the parent's guide to homeschooling. that one i'm very excited about. you've written about education in the past. i have. i've written i wrote words for warriors specifically for