up to. and i think the story here really that she's going to tell is that unlike the promise of change and maybe some reform in washington, government is up to the same old tricks and you're not going to like what you hear when you hear about what's happening in the halls of government. >> another book coming out this fall by denese de souza, life after death, the evidence. >> that's another great book this h-his last book is what's so great about christianity? and this was a book that was a counter-argument to all the anti-god books that had come out a couple of years ago, dawkins and hitchens had been talking about their argument that there was no rational basis for believing in god. and dinesh said, quite the opposite. there's a very rational logical reason for believing in god. this book takes up where that book takes up. life after death talks about why it makes perfect sense, logical

sense to believe in heaven, the after-life, miracles and things that are not particularly consistent with the atheist point of view. and he takes a very logical rational approach to proving why it makes more sense to believe in the after-life than to dismiss it as a fairy-tale. ..

this book is partly a media bias a book, the media's role both complicit and accomplice in solving crime but also in that are sort of obsession with crime as entertainment. in his point is that we have probably gone too far in treating crimen as entertainment in reality tv, and how that gets in a way of solving crime investigators and police detectives doing their job and what it means for us as a society so it should be a very interesting book and hopefully another good best seller for regnery. >> marji ross, president and publisher of regnery publishing. >> thank you, a pleasure to see you. >> this summer booktv is asking, what are you reading?

>> i am the executive editor of washingtonian magazine in washington d.c.. and for my summer reading this summer i am in the midst of writing my own book about the fbi so a lot of my reading efforts are going into research for that but in terms of pleasure the books i'm looking for to reading are fred kaplan biography of lincoln as a writer which came out earlier this year, and hw brands new biography of fdr, traitor to his class which was a runner-up for the pulitzer earlier this year as well. and then on the fiction side i love reading books about india, i traveled there and find it a fascinating country and so i've got the sierra poppies on my list for the summer and also a huge fan collecting these books over the last couple years so i got one of the last ones i haven't read it, is a battlefield, on the list for this summer as well as a collective and volume of the w.

somerset maugham's short stories that i picked up and a bookstore in long beach last summer, of course one of the big influences on the writing so i love to read them together when i can. >> children's author emma walton hamilton, what is the key to writing a children's book? >> gosh, i would say respecting children as readers and not talking down to them. if any thing it is basically about trusting their judgment and their intelligence and hopefully speaking to what interests them and what they're passionate about. >> water children and interested in?

>> well, just about everything adults are for the most part, their world around them among growing up, learning new things, music, arts, sports -- you name it, all the same things we're interested in. >> , have you written? >> i have written to us now about to release the 70 the children's book that i actually cowrite with my mother. >> what is it like working with your mother as a co-author? >> is a great pleasure. we weren't sure it would be a pleasure, we were both bossy and opinionated and we thought mother daughter working together was tricky but happily we play to each other's strengths and have a great time working together and it turned out very well. >> in your mother is julie andrews, but part of the book to you right? >> what part of the book --? >> the right?

>> emma is the structure as much as anything and i am i think tell me if i'm wrong i'm more of the flight, i do certainly the image making and the opening, the closing so emma is the big picture and i do -- where do we go from here and she makes me focus on and the shape of the book but the actual sort of images and things are probably my strength and emma is the structure as much as anything. we seem to complement each other, i think we do wonderfully. >> why did you start reading -- writing children's books? >> i started as a complete surprise. i started in answer to a game that i was playing with my children and i had to forfeit, i was the first to lose the game and i said what will it be in my

eldest daughter cent, write a story because i used to love to scribble and right things and i really honestly thought that is going to be simple, i can write a small thing like an aesop's fable are some things very short and then i thought, no, this is my daughter and this might be a wonderful way and i came up with an idea and kept flashing in and out and the next thing i knew there was a book. if it hadn't been for my has bennett, blake edwards, i don't think out ever have finished it. i didn't have confidence but he kept saying, it doesn't matter, it is a great idea and i have been hooked ever since and that was 40 years ago. so i have been running ever since. >> how many children's books have you authored? >> we have done 17 to gather and for on my own and m.r.. so we go back and forth really

and we have more coming. >> emma walton hamilton, and you live close which other? to view e-mail each other? how you do a? >> unfortunately we live but most of the year on opposite coasts and we always work best when we're together and love to be together whenever we can be but we've become very reliant on modern technology and use the web camera for a lot of our work sessions. we log on to gather at the same time. >> pour mother has to get a three hours earlier. >> in l.a. she will say 10:00 o'clock is half with a my morning, can you get up at seven and i am saying i think i can it works very well and i do my best but i'm not as literate on my computer as she is but i do my best. >> is there a length of children's book should be? can get depends on the age of the child. >> what age?

>> we right for all ages with tremendous audacity and have to say. in the right picture books, we write young adult novels, we read chapter books and middle grade readers. and her latest book is an anthology for all ages, a poetry anthology all the julie andrews bombs. >> this one is actually quite thick. >> very thick. >> it is the first book with our loving you publisher brown and they actually came to us and said it would you consider doing an anthology for us and we have so much fun. >> we are doing another one. >> yes we are. it was enormous fun. we obviously, they are our favorite poems. my father instilled in the love of poetry and i hopefully instill that in my kids. we read to each other, we give poems read together, all our

lives we have done that and here we are asked to put down our favorites. the first choices which were about 20 were really easy and then after that we have the most wonderful journey of discovery in finding what we really loved. >> digging back into our memories of family anthologies. >> we essentially came down to nine separate teams and before each thema there is a piece that we were explaining why we love the themes, optimism or countryside or nature. >> and why each choice of palm or song lyric is within that same resonance for us, what memory and associates for us. >> and we have always as a family had a palms for fun and deaths and special days and holidays and so on and so we challenge each other to write a poem and we brought up our courage and added a few more and

there are a few bars in their. >> now you have a emma walton hamilton, some of your children in there, grandchildren -- are they your focus group for children's books? >> absolutely. actually you were when i was riding on my own and then, of course, now all the grandchildren are a tremendous help. >> not only our focus group, they help us know what is working and what is not working of course, but also provide tremendous source of ideas for us and many of her books were inspired -- for example, the dhabi the dump truck series which is what we collaborated on my son, sam, who was a passionate rock lobber would only read books about trucks and we were having trouble finding those that had a little more than nonfiction, the bulldozer and of books so we wrote that series for him and then we're working on a new series now with little girls and minded inspired by my daughter.

>> and miss andrews, you have also written a memoir, the first half of your life and i guess. it goes up to my coming out to the west coast of america for the very first time and my first movie, that is about the first third of my life and it took a long time to do. i would never have doubted if she hadn't been so generous with her time to push me in and make me do it and helps me with that. >> is there is second half or a second third coming out? >> a lot of people are asking that. to be honest with you i don't know at this point. it took a long, long time to read the first part so maybe one day. >> emma walton hamilton, what is your favorite children's book? that you have written. >> that i have written? or read it? >> either one. >> the focus was growing at the

phantom pilgrims, that was my favorite, the go back to book on rainy days and so forth and people often ask us which is our favorite of the books we have written and it is so hard to answer, it is like saying which is your favorite chocolate in a box of chocolates or your favorite child because you love them offer different reasons but i would say that i am particularly proud and excited about the one we have just finished the poetry anthology which is a real labor of love and beautifully produced. >> and enormous amount of pleasure to put it together. i love the music and poetry and find that a lot of the songs i've been associated with or even songs that i've loved and haven't actually sounded have sometimes of the most beautiful lyrics and i usually choose the songs and then the melody, a beautiful melody and everything comes together.

i have always felt that lyrics for songs are sometimes pollens in themselves so i have included a lot in the book and i am hoping that children will discover for themselves or adults, wow, that is a beautiful, and then realize it is a song. >> and want to listen to the music. >> as mothers finally, is it important to teach young children to read or be exposed to rating? >> we are passionate advocates of literacy in for literacy we do everything we can. >> and i would say it's not so much in common upon parents to teach their children to read, they may well learn that at school was incumbent upon them institution them to love reading and read to them and with them as often as possible and that way they will likely grow up to be lifelong readers themselves. >> and have to post, she's been the most wonderful book and sell published for raising bookworms and is about just that --

raising children to love and then find the joy in reading and keep it constance and school years go by and as difficult as it times when a assignments are handed and sometimes they are boring, how you keep a child to love of reading, and her book is just one of all. >> if people are interested in finding that book or other children's books you all have written and this newest one, or can they go? >> thank you for asking, they can go to our web site which is julie andrews collection.com for any of the books in the collection and raising the bookworms.com is the site for the reading but. >> emma walton hamilton and her mother julie andrews, thank you. >> thank you very much. >> the booktv-bus is traveling the country visiting bookstores, libraries, festivals and authors -- here are some of the people and places we visited.

>> we're here with linda gugin, co-author of "chief justice fred m. vinson of kentucky: a political biography". linda, who was justice vinson and why did you write a book about him? >> well, he was chief justice of the united states from 1947 to 1943 and i got interested in him because of my co author and i have another book we rode on a sherman mention who is from indiana and he was on the supreme court with justice vinson as we did research on that time of the court and thought that he would be a logical person for us to write about. furthermore, being in indiana we are very close to the university of kentucky across the river and they have all of his papers so it was convenient for us to go there and to the research. >> why did you decide to go off to the two books? >> well, i think that michael author who grew up in new

albany, indiana were sherman was from persuaded me that he would be an interesting topic for a biography. i got interested in that and we discover that we worked pretty well together we were sort of complementary, we have different strengths i think enjoyed that. and so we decided we would take another venture together. >> what or some other notable cases and that justice vinson presided over? >> i think there were two different kinds of cases going on while he was on the court. he is on record during the cold war and he had previously been in the truman administration and i think has a lot of it inside knowledge about what was going on in terms of issues about communism and the government and so forth and probably his most famous case in that area had to do with dennis verses the united states, members of the communist party being prosecuted for conspiracy against the u.s. and he wrote the majority opinion in that case essentially upholding

the government's position and he did that on most of the cases that had to do with communism issues during that time but also this is the time when the court was beginning to wrestle with civil-rights issues. end justice vinson wrote to of the majority opinions, in fact, they were unanimous opinions on the court that were a prelude to brown vs. board of education. one was what vs. painter which was about ending discrimination in the university of texas school of law and the other was maclaren vs. oklahoma which had to do of graduate education in oklahoma. the court was unanimous in striking down those practices of discrimination in many people see those as being a prelude to the court eventually overturning the discrimination in the lower elementary and secondary schools, public schools. >> how did it justice vinson make his way to the supreme court? >> he started his political career, the main part of the

national level in the u.s. house of representatives and he was expertise in the area of taxes. he then was put on the district of columbia court of appeals by president roosevelt and then he was back into the administration secretary of treasury and then truman, he and truman struck up a friendship and he was appointed to the courts by truman at a time when there's a lot of in-fighting on the course, a lot of conflict. vincent was known as a very affable person and seem to get along with people on both sides of the political aisle social and thought he would be a good person to bring some peace to the courts in unanimity to the court -- it didn't quite work out that way but that was the intended reason for appointing him. >> why did and it worked out? >> in the book we tried to explain the major reasons, one is the members of the court did not think that justice vinson was their intellectual equal,

many, one was felix frankfurter who have been a harvard professor of law and in the roosevelt administration. so he was a much more down-to-earth kind of person, here is the issue, here is the opinion and didn't read these long floury some of opinions explaining why the court was doing when it was doing. and i thank you had too many piven don is on the court at that time and i'm not sure anybody and i think that sort of a judgment of history is not clear that anybody could have brought the members of the court together. >> does he have a lasting legacy whether it be from his work on the court when different posts within government? >> i think is lasting legacy was in the area of civil rights and i think that he's never been given full credit for that. he wrote one other case in the area of civil rights shelley vs. kramer in which a rule that state courts could not uphold restrictive covenants where people would refuse to sell

their houses to summon a particular race. so i think that the court was chipping away at all these practices of discrimination during that time and i don't think they could have gone to brown vs. board of education when they finally overturned the notion of separate but equal without laying the groundwork courts don't move that quickly. the move incrementally and i think they were unanimous decisions. i think that was very important. >> thank you so much. we have been talking with linda gugin, co-author of "chief justice fred m. vinson of kentucky: a political biography". in. >> for more information about the booktv-bus, visit our web site at booktv.org/booktv-bus. >> this summer booktv is asking, what are you reading?

>> my name is amy walter, editor in chief of the hotline, unlike most people i have dreams for what out like to read this summer although i don't know how many will get red but top of my list is john mecham, his new book american lion about into jackson. i love to get at least one good political biography in a summer and believe it or not sitting on the beach with truman one year was quite lovely. it seems odd but it is true. i have started but not yet made its as much of a event in the new book breakthrough and so that is another goal of mine as well. if we are going into the fiction category, although this is non-fiction fiction, quirky, some people don't necessarily appreciate his sense of humor. i personally find him

hysterical. when you are engulfed in flames is a book that came out i think probably a couple years ago that has been sitting on my nightstand, that one will get red especially. a good play in a book or a pick me up for those days when i just can't slog through much else. what is also going to get read this summer because i have a two and a half year all the, in a lot of bugs that i don't have any choice but i will read them every night and for those of you with young kids nine to recommend little neighbors on some sense street, it is a little bit quirky, it doesn't really make any sense but those are most books for kids. i have a lot of things to look at which distracts him for a good long time. by the end he is so exhausted navy on have to do one. the scary books are high on the list as well as for the wild things are, all is a classic so

is to be moved a movie. so those are my summer books. i just hope i get through one of them. >> to see more summer reading lists and other program information visit our web site at booktv.org a. >> we're at the book expo america booksellers' convention in new york, i am here with stc lewis of city lights books at a san francisco. what is coming out this fall? >> well, this fall we have a couple books coming out from angela davis. we have a collection of essays, her first book that has been published in about four years. it covers themes she is particularly interested in -- racism, sexism, industrial

complex and to do interesting but we are publishing with angela is a new edition of a narrative of the life of frederick douglass, an american slave, which contains the douglases narrative as well as essays by a davis that are part of a chorus then she taught at ucla in the '70s. so it really brings to life that essay and will also include in your essay written by her this year appear, so we are hoping that people who have read the narrative emma walton hamilton take a look at this book as it will be enriched by the inuit and the old work. we are already publishing in the awakening, a long-awaited memoir by helen weaver, about her life with jack kerouac, lenny bruce, allen ginsberg, greenwich village in the '60s, also involved in the publishing scene in the '50s so it is more than just focusing on kerouac, it

really presents a bigger picture of literature life in new york in the '50s in greenwich village which continues to voice seemed to be of interest. we are excited about that one. and that our land is put that just came out as, like learning to love watching ourselves and our neighbors. and what he is talking about is at one time everyone was interested in pop culture because everyone is fascinated by celebrities but he has coined the term people culture and that's the focus is gone from celebrities to the focus on yourself that you actually can be the celebrity and you can do that by blogs and web sites and youtube videos. if seven is a commentary on what that change in technology has created for social and cultural life in the u.s.. is very entertaining in he actually inserts himself and

loss of scenarios. he blogs all the time and was twittering people about secrets, people were asked if i wanted to get a copy of his but today, we ask them to tell us a secret and then he went ahead and put on his twitter account and twisted -- deleted the secrets. so some of the new nonfiction. >> suit regular booktv readers know city lies is a bookstore and a publishing offices are on the second floor -- how did it start and who founded it? him at city lights publishing was actually started in 1955 by lawrence brolin gandy and many people know who he is, he is one of the most renowned the pilots in the world. he began publishing company with a collection of his own poems called pictures of the gone world -- the first book in the city lies pocket series which is

gone on to continue publishing, we have about 60 books printing right now in the series. >> so tell me a little bit about the book store and the publishing house? how does it work? is there a similarity between the book has in the publishing house? >> yes, i would say that at one time most of the people that worked in the publishing company had worked in the bookstore. the person that is now the editorial director worked for over 15 years in the bookstore and is now leading the way publishing excellent books for a city lights is quite symbiotic. and the books that we published rematch with of the types of books that we carry in the store, the commitment to progressive politics, literature in translation, a new voices, gay and lesbian literature, poetry, poetry and translation, if one were to look at the city

lights last week or think about the books i was talking about and then walked through the store you'll get the same sort of a sense that this election is being carried for you and that is a very specific intention of thing that is done by a bookstore buyers, our assistant manager, and a whole host of other people working in the bookstore so i think that of the mission is one in the same and that continues through the bookstore to the books we published. >> now how old is lawrence it and how involved is the? >> lawrence is 90 years old and we just celebrated his 90th birthday with him. at this point, i would say that any poetry that we're publishing is abetted by lawrence but it has to have his approval, but the great thing that he has done is that he