the negativity and emotions. bill wrote things about the early civil rights struggle that are embarrassing, deeply embarrassing to read now and he acknowledged that. he admitted that he had been wrong. there were many factors in play. one that occurs to me is the influence of harry java. if anyone has dealt with him, it is a job. but he is also a brilliant man and a brilliant historian, the point of his life is the declaration of independence is the central documents of the american revolution and therefore of american history and i have to say the more i

have read about that period confirms what he argues. we tell the story of a lunch that bill invited me to. we got there first, harry comes in the little late. bill had said in passing that if george iii had captured george washington he would have been justified in hanging him. he strutted before he sat down, how can it be just to hang him? before the salad chain he had bill saying have you are right, i was wrong. it was his grasp of a very important point about american history which was dramatized in

the civil war, lincoln embraces jefferson and the confederacy explicitly repudiates him. the issue, this was the vice-president of the confederacy, says the founders were wrong because it is human equality. they are not equal. some men are not fit to the slaves and our cornerstone would be human inequality. bill always loved a good argument. harry certainly did that. that was part of the process of bill changing his views on that issue. yes, sir? >> as one of the 20 people who wrote to you when you were in high school in 1970, i thought i would ask a euphoriant in question. i could picture bill buckley

graduating this month -- >> that is an excellent question ended the question about people's talents and opportunities. bill had brilliant skills as a journalist. at 750 words at the top of his game, just didn't get better and that was the form that existed in the years that he lived and worked. on television, he was made for the television era that he entered, and he transformed. firing line starts in 1966, and walter cronkite and johnny carson, the edgy as things in mainstream television.

firing line is like from another galaxy, it starts with the brandenburg concerto, bill's mannerisms and accents' and the content of what he is saying. and one of the interesting anecdotes that came my way, i was in a new school that afterwards, an old man came to me and said do you see mr. buckley? yes, i do. pc dirksen senate office building you thank him for me? i am a man of the left and firing line is the only place in the late 60s were leftwingers could get to say their views at length. bill let them say that so he could do it out with them. the media has changed, it is

all a teaser. if jesus came back he would not get an hour of television, he simply one. so bill was suited for his time. what are bills to they going to do? they will be have to be suited for their time and also people are unique. a lot of conservatives are saying where is the next reagan? there will not be a next reagan. there will be somebody else. where is the next buckley? not going to be one. there will be somebody else doing something differently. that is a very fruitful line of inquiry and i hope -- i pursued it in this book and i hope i did justice to it, but the way that his talents sit with his message and the opportunity, the resources that are out there,

was an extraordinary thing. >> bill buckley edited a magazine, he wrote 56 books, nonfiction and fiction, he sailed the world. was there anything he wanted to do but never did? >> priscilla? he did say -- there is a questionnaire, frost wrote these questions. if you could come back, what would you want to be in your next life, one of the questions i remember, he answered, one of the questions was is there any challenge you wish that you had? he said he wished he had an excellent, comprehensive memory.

i thought his memory was pretty good. it is interesting that he would say that. when you think about it, in terms of social class, he met everybody. there was an awful lot of stuff to remember. he told it to us. entertainingly and delightfully. he seems to have felt he could have done it a little better. he had a full life for what he wanted to do. one of the things he said in his letter to me when he said i was not going to succeed him, he said you don't want to be in a job that is not suited to you because responsibilities become after -- asphyxiating.

even at the time, i was going through wailing and weeping, even then, this is not just a letter addressed to me, this is a bill writing to himself. i don't know how far those thoughts went. clearly is a ritter, he loved that tempo, that routine, all of the stuff, but to me, clearly, there was in him, at least a doubt, maybe some of this clutter, but was he going to change it? no. he put his chips on it and he was good at so much, he continued on with it. yes? >> my earliest memory of bill buckley was when he ran for mayor of new york in 1965 on a conservative line. i was wondering why he never

again ran as a candidate for public office. >> he thought about it. i remember one of our director's dinners, van galbraith visiting from paris. much wind had been consumed. van was the most in bullion person i had ever met. he made bill look like john calvin. this was late in reagan's first term. it was not clear that reagan was going to run again. there was real doubt. there was a very bad recession and she didn't want her husband to risk the feet, that fuel lot

of uncertainty and speculation. so vance said you should run. he was kind of serious about this, kind of serious. bill was listening to it kind of seriously, not seriously seriously but kind of seriously. and i did one of the things that kind of astonished me when i thought about it. i remember what happened. i got up to go, i had had a few myself, bill shook my hand as i was leaving, the discussion had taken a non serious turn, what a rude thing to say. what a rude thing to say. should he have run for president? no, i don't think so. i don't think he was cut out for it. not my place to say that. time, history and circumstance would say that. not my place to say it.

love is rough. there is a lot that goes on, a lot of mistakes. but he did think of it. my final judgment in the book is that he would have been a better president than franklin pierce. anyone else? yes? henry stern? >> you said there might be another bill buckley but it wouldn't be buckley, it would be someone else. what i want to ask, who were the bill buckleys of the past, go back 10, 20, 30 years, who were the conservative intellectuals who had diversified interests, made such an impression as he did? >> let me broaden your question

and take it beyond the universe of just conservative intellectuals. he had some resemblance to henry hamilton. hamilton held government positions. he was treasury secretary, most eminently, did other if things as well. they were both journalists. they both grow very fast, they wrote well. bill was a better writer. they were incredibly disciplined and they also had this go to hell streak, this dealer arthur st.. bill set up his life to encourage that. it was a big mistake to tell thomas jefferson, a man you must admire is julius caesar, which hamilton did once, joanne freeman argues he was pulling

jefferson's leg and i think he was right, big mistake. thomas jefferson had no humor and he thought the plot is real. this is something, i just got an e-mail from a friend of mine who is considering a political biography of bill. the parallel he came up with, this was fascinating, was frederick douglass. frederick douglass was also a private man, in a voice held office but he was a journalist, an eloquent organizer, and that worker, he was obviously an outsider for obvious reasons. i am eager to see how he worked

this out. it is interesting. there are people you can find some resemblance to, we just have -- we can't produce the next one, we'd just have to be sure the opportunities are there and when they knock on the door, the doors will open. >> at the moment that we speak, we have 2 book very much on hand, chris buckley's book has been on the best-seller list for weeks. >> i haven't looked. >> seriously, in each case, we have 2 brilliant writers writing

about the great man, the current man. journalistically speaking, many of the interviews that have been on television and other media for chris's book, have, in my view, come out rather negatively on film, because the excerpts so often -- there is danger. i only read one review of your book coming about and it had some emphasis on the-. accentuate the positive was a song from world war ii. as one reviewer said, chris's book, the last half where he acknowledges how much bill was

tight. not that we have to be, but in understanding, let's not go with the journalism book, and so on, but i just want to remind us, i would like to say that you and chris are brilliant bookends in acknowledging bill's greatness. >> thank you for that complement. journalists do what they do. i know what they do, in the right circumstances i'd do it myself. but also, i found this when writing about people of the past, i found this most strongly with the atomses. if i have a quarrel with the john adams revival which is a huge thing, let's not sugarcoat it, that doesn't do him any

favors. john adams was a complex, complicated man. to make him a kind of plaster image is sort of doing what i was doing at 15, looking for and idle, the posthumous equivalent of that. you shouldn't try to do that. of course, there will be many more books, when samuel johnson died there were a bunch of books. there was this friend, that friend, everybody wanted to get out there because they knew that a great man had left, they all had a take and wanted to get it down. two books, there will be 10 by this time next year. do we have time? time for more? i think i got the high sign.

the brandenburg concerto will play. [applause] >> there are books for sale right outside. >> richard brookhiser is a senior editor of national review, he is the author of several books including what would the founders do? and john washington--george washington on leadership. he does the recipient of the national command these metal in 2008. for more information, visit the office website at richardbrookhiser.com. >> sunday on book tv, former reagan advisers martin and emily anderson on why reagan believed destroying nuclear weapons would bring an end to the soviet union. and then nicholas talks about 2

years in pakistan. he sits down with ralph peters and for the holliday, 3 days of book tv, including historian and author john furling live sunday from george washington's mount vernon estate on in debt. the entire schedule is on line with great new features including streaming videos and easy to search archives. booktv.org. >> what are you reading? >> what are you reading this summer? >> frost/nixon by david frost. what i am reading this summer is mainly on holidays, i go from relaxing reading in terms of this and that sort of thing. i used to be robert low blow, i

like holiday reading. the most serious reading i am doing, william safire's book of the great political speeches of all time. that is what i am reading for deal. >> how do you select the books you read? >> in the seconds i have, i race to the area. hopefully come out with the one i am in to. >> thank you. >> to see more summer reading list visit our web site, booktv.org. >> book expo america, we are here with a publisher of basic books. what does a publisher do? >> that is a title i have. i run the imprint of basic books, we have editorial, marketing, publicity design, and

i make the final decisions on things, i say a lot of yes or no. >> would you say yes or no to? >> whether do we are going to acquire a book, how much we're going to pay for, what resources we put into marketing and promoting it, the final call on which jacket, i like this better than that, what the price will be, how many we should print, small decisions. that adds up to big decisions. >> how long have you been in books and do you always want to be a publisher? >> i found the book business, i was in retail, i ran a bookstore in washington for 10 years and decided i enjoyed it so much i want to try something different from retail. publishing was the obvious choice. i was -- this is going to date me, almost 20 years of book expos, half of them in retail and half of them in publishing. >> what will set you said yes or

2 -- you are with edf. >> in europe for the back door travel series, some of the best travel books on the market, but very active. it is not appropriate have political activism because people want to make their own decisions, this is a long essay on the fact that when you travel, you are committing a political act and when you travel, you should consider where you are going and how you behave when you are in a place and americans need to travel better and you can learn as much from the culture you are going to visit. you will see the cover has this suitcase on it and when you come back from a place, you should bring back as much of that place as possible, make america more interesting, make you a more interesting individual. a political essay on travel. >> the idea of you being a

publisher, did you make the decision on the cover? how did that come about? >> that cover was originated by one of the marketing people. we struggled because we knew it couldn't look like a conventional travel guide, couldn't have a single destination, but we didn't want it to seem too over the political, we wanted to be acceptable, fun, old-fashioned, so that is a suitcase that brick seeds own, we put stickers on it, it is not a stock photo, we put it together and designed around it. i like the way it is clean but fun. it comes across clearly. >> and the viewers are at the bookstore, a lot of work is put into these covers? >> covers are one of the toughest things we do because everybody has a legitimate opinion about what works as a cover and sometimes what i am doing is filtering through the many different legitimate points and trying to pick the one that is going to help us in the long run. >> all the books we are talking about are out right now.

these are spring titles. >> usually to talk about fall books, we bring spring books that have just landed, that was published last month. 2 books here on the economy, 2 divergent takes, perspective, robert frank, to simplify things, liberal economist for the new york times, teaches at cornell, this is the second book he has done for a, it is a collection of pieces about how to think about the current crisis through economic terms, he helps people come up with vocabulary to understand the garbage that you hear in the news, to sort through it, he has a lot of descriptive solutions as well. tom soul is a conservative economist at the hoover institution in california. widely respected. both of these men are enormously respected. we approach prof. stoll and said the the like you to read a book about what happened in the

economy and he said without a doubt i need to write about housing crisis because in his opinion housing crisis is what precipitated the entire economic boom bust. >> we have travel, the economy and this book by chris mooney about science in america. tommy about that. >> chris one is a child -- science journalist, he read the republican war on signs which was a best seller, he has moved on to the idea we have a problem with scientific literacy in this country. the argument he would make is when you read the front-page of the daily paper and look at the problems this country faces, an enormous number of them are scientific problems, problems that have scientific solutions, and one of the things we are in trouble with is we don't have the capacity or infrastructure, scientists who can help solve these problems. his argument is we need to increase scientific literacy in this country, that includes some obvious things like our

education system and also means scientists have to do a better job talking about scientific solutions to our problems in accessible terms for the public. >> this is the convention where people talk about their biggest seasons in the book industry, you would release your largest titles. >> consumers come out to span for the holidays, that is the assumption. when i was in retail, a 4 year business in december, publishers tend to push their biggest books for that type of year, a lot of illustrated books come out, illustrated books, we do a lot of history and psychology and things the jargon of the industry, the gifty books in the industry, i should add there is a catalog here, something that

book buyers and librarians, media, this is what you put together so they know what is coming out. >> publishers think in terms of seasonal lists. this is the fall list, what we do is descriptive copies for every book, it has a biography of the author, examples from the book. it was summarized perfectly, the main tool is for booksellers, use it for media, authors and agents to see what individual publishers are doing. we have to plan books in the marketplace, 9 months ahead of time. you have to have something polished like this so that the retailers can see what the final books will look like, some of them are still being written. we don't have a finish the book

to show. eugene grogan is a historian in oxford, what we think is going to be a major history of the era, he has taken an interesting approach, he chose to start this history in the 1500s. the concept is that is when the ottoman first concept -- conquered the arab lands and one of the defining characteristics of arab history is they have frequently been had occupied ethnic groups. he decided that was the key, rather than start with mohammad which is where other histories have started, this was the defining moment. he would argue arabs history, those of us in the west don't think about, their history is much deeper and richer, for most of their history they were a dominant power, and one of the things going on in the middle east is arabs are seen as -- the west looks down on them. that is inconsistent with their history.

it is important to understand arab history if you want to try to unravel what is happening in arab lands today. >> would you bring him to the united states to talk about it? >> we will bring him. it is funny because history is a little tough to get media because the media is obsess with what is in the news. even though i just tried to make the argument that it is relevant but that will be a battle when we try to pitch in. books about the economic situation easier. this is such an important book, we will bring him over and get some media for that. >> the second book you wanted to talk about. >> the founder and former editor of the new york sun, he is quite known in certain circles, he writes regularly for the wall street journal. he is -- he decided americans don't know enough about the american constitution. ..