that u.s.s.r. continues to favor measures to reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear weapons. and the head of the soviet union restorations right after he was reelected and said we are prepared to seek most radical solutions which will allow movement towards a complete ban and eventually liquidation of nuclear arms. at that point, reagan had agreement that the soviets at least were claiming that they wanted to do the same thing he wanted to do, and he said let's take them at their word and say okay, you agree with us, let's work on a way to do it.

there is one final document, we have the first page, this is from 1987. from september 8th, 1987. these are the minutes from that national security council meeting on arms control positions. the next page, in fact, is a summary of some of the things that reagan said in the meeting that we have selected. and i want to read to you as a conclusion before we take some questions, one of the things he said in that meeting, which of course is 1987, preparing at that time for gorbachev to come to washington to sign the treaty on the elimination of intermediate range nuclear missiles in europe, both those

in the united states that we had placed, and those in the soviet union which are aimed at western cities for along time. and the president says you have got to remember that the whole thing was born of the idea that the world needs to get rid of nuclear weapons. we have got to remember that we can't win a nuclear war and we can't fight one. the soviets don't want to win by war, but by threat of war. they want to issue ultimatums to which we have to give in. if we could talk about the basic steps we need to take to break the logjam and avoid the possibility of war, think about it, where would the survivors of the war live? major areas of the world would be uninhabitable. we need to keep it in mind, that that is what we are about, we are about bringing together steps to bring us closer to the recognition that we need to do away with nuclear weapons.

so that is what reagan was doing, and maybe what some of our leaders today are trying to do as well. so i think we will have some questions. >> we have a few minutes for questions for anyone who does have a question, if we could ask you to come forward and stand at a microphone as all of this is being broadcast by c-span, we want to make sure they can hear your question. are there any questions? >> if you don't have any questions we will keep talking. >> i think we have one right here. >> thank you for coming and sharing this information with us. i was wondering whether in your interaction with president reagan, whether he had, i am a senior professor and i find most of my colleagues were legally avoiding the of viet nam war by staying in school, so they are

going to write things not trying to give mr. reagan much credit. did he have a sense of how history would be written or how history would say it, there are a lot of complaints about his bellicose rhetoric in his first term and after the soviet leaders stopped dying on him he was able to deal with mr. gorbachev. was it something he just thought he had to do regardless of the historical interpretation? >> i think there are a lot of people who got wrong idea about reagan. what he was doing at the time, when people got upset in '83 and '84, was that he did something that was unusual. he started putting together a large cache of huge weapons, all kinds of weapons. the reason he was doing that was because the soviet union was trying to get ahead of us and they were ahead of us. they started getting ahead of us inecember 9th and by the time

he took office, they were way ahead and they keep getting further ahead. some people wondered why he didn't sit down and talk with them. his attitude was i will sit down with themhen we have arms ready to go and that is what he did. he got enough strong weapons with him, he said you want to sit and talk? let's do it. while he was doing that, a lot of people got a wrong idea. but when it turned around and went the other way, i don't remember any of those people saying he went right way. you are right. somebody else want to try something? >> thank you. president obama has mentioned the desire to 11 nuclear-weapons, and that scares

me. that would leave israel defenses, we can't trust south korea. did china eliminate all nuclear weapons? with his desire to do that, something obama could use to launch his campaign? >> what you are saying is of the dallas everyone believes was to be the case but it wasn't. what reagan was doing was saying he wants to get rid of nuclear weapons if, there's a big if in there, that is why he wanted, you can bring down nuclear-weapons but at the same time, the person you are working with, they are coming down. the next problem is what if they cheat? a lot of our people thought that other people would cheat. what reagan decided was you need to have star wars. that is one of the main reasons

he had star wars. what he wanted to do was make those so powerful and so strong that nobody could try to come in on the united states. what he said all along--that is exactly what obama is saying now. he is not saying let's get rid of all nuclear weapons, nobody wants to do that. what they want to visit you to reduce the number of weapons you have so that you are not going to kill us all. as you are doing it, be very careful. the further down you go it will get very tricky and delicate. that is what is going to happen and you are absolutely right. do we have time for one more? >> can we talk about the pope? >> absolutely. >> this is an interesting thing we ran across when going to the classified documents.

i ran across some letters that the pope had sent to reagan. reagan sent back to the pope. i would really like to get some of those but you can't get them because the vatican has them locked up. i believe if they died, then you have to wait for 50 years before you could see them and that is higher than the cia. while we were going through these documents, we did find some and we will show you what is going on. reagan and the pope were very tight. they got together. on december 15th, you worked on that one. >> on december 15th, 1981, the secretary of state to the vatican came over and met with

ronald reagan and they met in the map room, a secret meeting, and the envoy from the vatican to the united states, they talked about poland, where martial law had just been declared, but they also talked about nuclear-weapons and about nuclear strategy. and the cardinal makes a statement that the united states is the sanctuary for the world. and he is expressing the view that the united states can do certain things that the vatican cannot possibly do because of the united states's position in the world and reagan said i hope i am able to fulfill your trust in me. so there was a close

relationship. pope john paul ii was really terrific. reagan had written a couple radio commentaries when he went to poland in 1979. reagan was already familiar with some of his views and the fact that the pope was not only anti nazi but also anti-communist. reagan and the pope shared an anti totalitarian view of the world, and the view that not only freedom to worship and to choose one's line of work and to travel and have dignity, especially religious freedom in the case of the pope, of course, but also for reagan, very important, they shared that. the pope came to certainly understand reagan's view of what he had to do to bring the

soviets to the bargaining table and ultimately achieve a reduction in the threat of nuclear war. >> the letter he gave? >> reagan sent the pope a letter in january. he expressed the view that he had already taken steps and did it as a first step in eliminating the threat of nuclear war and reducing nuclear weapons, already proposed zero for the soviets and zero for the indicted states on intermediate range nuclear forces in europe. what else? >> to the end of this book, what he had said towards the end, the basic idea, i forget the exact words, he and the pope together are responsible for whether or

not we will all die. it was that simple. and they were. by the way, i have often thought that if you take the size of the united states and the size of the vatican, that is pretty good together. >> any other questions? >> they are free. >> dr. anderson, please accept our thanks for coming here this afternoon. you deserve a round of applause. [applause] >> martin anderson was formerly an economic policy adviser in the reagan administration. he is currently a fellow at the hoover institution and co-author with annelise anderson of reagan's path to victory, reagan in his own hand and reagan:a

life in lenders. annelise anderson was an adviser to the presidential campaign of president reagan and soviet director of president reagan's office of management and budget and is a fellow at the hoover institution. the ronald reagan presidential library in california hosted this event. for more information, visit reaganlibrary.com. >> book expo america in new york city, 2009, publisher of basic books, what does a publisher do? >> the publisher is the title i have. i run the imprint of basic books, we have editorial marketing and publicity, design, and the final decision on things, i say a lot of yes or no. >> what do you say yes or no to? >> whether we are going to acquire a book, how much we're going to pay for it, what resources we put into marketing and promoting it, the final call on which jacket, a lot of a over

be, what the price will be, how many we should print, small decisions. that adds up to big decisions, but small ones along the way. >> how long have you been in books and where did you come from before? did you always want to be a publisher? >> i found the book business, i was in retail, i ran a bookstore in washington for ten years and decided i enjoyed it so much i wanted to try something different from retail, publishing was the obvious choice. this might be almost 20 years of book expos, half of them in retail and half of them in publishing. >> let's talk about books you said yes or no to. we start with rick steve, the travel memoirs. >> a lot of people will recognize europe through the back door, his travel ceres. he has the best travel -- best travel book on the market, politically is very active. the travel guide, it is not a

pretty they have photo activism and travel guide because people want to make their own decisions, but this is a long essay on the fact that when you travel, you are committing a political act. when you travel, you should -- you should consider where you are going and how you behave when you are in a place, americans need to basically travel better and you can learn as much from the culture you are going to visit, you will see the cover has the suitcase on it. the idea is 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. it is a political essay on travel. >> the idea of you being the publisher, did you make a decision on the cover? how did that come about? >> that originated with one of the marketing people at perseus, we struggled because we knew it couldn't look like a conventional travel guide, couldn't have a single destination for, but we didn't want it to seem too overtly

political, we wanted it to seem accessible, fun, old-fashioned, that is a suitcase that rick steves boned and we put stickers on it. that is not a stock photo. we put it together and designed around it. i liked the way it is clean but fun and it gets the message across very clearly. >> people at the bookstore no lot is put into these covers. >> we agonize. the cover is 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 voices and trying to pick the one that i think is going to help us in the long run. >> all the books we're talking about on the table are out right now. these are spring titles. >> this show is usually to talk about all books but we also talk about spring books that have just landed. that was published last book. 2 books on the economy, two divergent takes on the economy. from 2 -- from two different

perspectives. robert frank simplifies things, a liberal economist who writes for the new york times, he teaches at cornell and has done this economic naturalist, the second book he has done for us, it is a collection of pieces about how to think about the current crisis through economic terms. he helps people come up with a vocabulary to understand the garbage that you hear in the news, sort through it. he has a lot of prescriptive solutions and on the other side, a conservative economist at the hoover institution, tom sowell, we approached and said we'd like you to write a book about what is happening in the economy and he said without a doubt i need to write about the housing crisis. in his opinion the housing crisis is what precipitated the entire economic boom/bust. we have some travel, the economy. >> and this book about science

america. kelly about that. >> chris one is a science journalist. t. rowe book a couple years ago about the republican war on science which was a bestseller, now he has moved on to the idea that we have a problem with scientific literacy. when you read the front page of a big daily paper and you 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're struggling with is that we don't have the capacity, the infrastructure to build scientists who can help solve these problems. this is an argument saying we need to increase the scientific literacy in this country, that includes some obvious things like our education system but also means scientists have to do a better job talking about scientific solutions to our problems in accessible terms for the public. >> you mentioned this is the convention where people talk about their fall books, fall being the biggest season in the book industry. you release your largest titles.

>> the consumers come out to spend for the holidays, that is the assumption. the assumption about the business in november and december, i don't know if that will take but publishers do tend to push their biggest books. a lot of illustrated books come out. we do a lot of history and science and psychology and things like that. we tend to put the most giftey books that come out. librarians, media, this is what you put together so they know what is coming up. >> publishers think in terms of seasonal lists. most publishers have 2 or 3 lists to year. this is the fall list.

what we do is descriptive copies for every boat, it as a bio of the author and jacket and quotes for examples from the book. the main tool is for booksellers but publicist's use it for media, authors and agents so they can see what individual publishers are doing. we have to plan books into the marketplace, 6, 9 months ahead of time. you have to use something that is college so that retailers and publicity folks can see what the final book will look like because some of these books are still being written, we don't have a finished book to show. >> let's talk about two of them. >> eugene roading is a historian at oxford. this is going to be a major new history of the year. he has taken an interesting approach. he chose to start this history in the 1500s, his concept was that that is when the ottoman's

first conquered the arab lands and one of the defining characteristics of arab history is they have frequently been an occupied ethnic groups. he decided that that was the key, rather than start with mohammad, which is where other histories have started, this was the defining moment. what he would argue is arabs value history in a way that those of us in the west don't think about, their history is much deeper and richer, there was also for most of their history, they were a dominant power and one of the things going on in the middle east right now is arabs are seen as, that the west looks down on them, and that is something that is very inconsistent with their history. it is important to understand arab history if you want to unravel what is happening in arab lands today. >> would you bring him to the united states to talk about this? >> we will bring him to do -- history is a little tough to get

media because it is about what is in the news. even though i try to make the argument about why it is relevant, there will be a little bit of a battle. books about the economic situation, easier to 4, we thought this was an important book, we would bring him over and get some media for that. >> the second of you to talk about. >> he writes for the wall street journal. he decided americans don't know enough about the american constitution. you can buy constitution for $1, a pretty short book. he decided people don't read the constitution because they don't understand the context of it. his it is to do an annotated constitution. it is the full text of the constitution but for each amendment and each article of the constitution he looks at the historical context into which the amendment or the article was

written. she looks at the way it has been applied throughout history, he looks at it in terms of the way the court has applied it. i wish i had this book out right now because he would be quick to comment, we are talking about the court's interpretation of the constitution. there will inevitably be another supreme court justice to be nominated and approved, we will be ready to roll this out. a very well-known conservative journalist, we are excited about this, his first book, it will get a lot of attention. >> former bookseller, currently publisher, basic books, thanks so much. >> what are you reading? >> congressman, person, what are you reading this summer? >> i always have two or three books at the same time.

one person who i always read on a regular basis is my hero, thomas jefferson's writings. nodded day goes by that i haven't read something that he has written, continuing to work my way through his letters in particular. mr. jefferson wrote so much that although i have spent the last almost 30 years reading through his works, i only made it may be halfway through. i will continue to work on reading, stephenson's letters. i always had a particular fascination with history so i will continue to read birks by a number of different authors, one of them i am working through right now is james mcpherson's bullet on lincoln's role as commander-in-chiefook on lincol commander-in-chief during the civil war. the outrage by liberals about george w. bush's interrogation

of these killers in guantanamo which has saved lives, dropping a caterpillar and a box with a terrorist is not my idea of torture. the choice between giving a guy's head in water and saving thousands of americans, i would it is head and water. if you read about what clinton did during a civil war, lincoln as commander-in-chief exercise incredible power in his authority as commander-in-chief, which is what george bush has done. president bush, just as abraham lincoln did, took his role as commander-in-chief very seriously, and use the very broad grant of authority given to the president by the constitution to interrogate these killers and find out what they're up to and save lives particularly in los angeles. there would have in thousands of deaths in downtown los angeles but for the interrogation of those terrorists. lincoln suspended habeas corpus, 13,000 americans simply for

speaking out in favor of the confederacy's right to succeed, suspended habeas corpus nationwide, use his powers as commander-in-chief to do all sorts of things that caused outrage during the war and nobody questioned the. i always have a particular interest in constitutional history and the war between the states. i am finishing this book, i highly recommend james mcpherson to anyone. i always keep several books going at the same time. a whole secondary i work on continuously are diaries of texans during the war between the states. in particular i found this one. i can't recommend this one highly enough, it is hard to find, but it is a soldier's letter to charming nellie, he does a great job writing in technicolor, a wonderful personal anecdote of texans in the war. you can see on the cover the lone star which means a great

deal to me personally. i am a passionate jeffersonian republican/libertarian and believe passionately in an individual's right, i want the government off my back, out of my pocket and out of my life and that is what the lone star stood for. i collect the stars won by texans and the army of the republic of texas and the war between the states, some had a particular interest and fascination with texans, texas history, i will be reading a lot of texas history as well. i am studying the coming generational storm, this is a particularly important subject to the attention to because we have about 5 years to act, to get spending under control or we are on a path that will lead to the day in the -- 12 years from now, when the u.s. treasury, the biggest investment in the history of the world, will be

the greatest jump on. that is outrageous. i voted against $2.3 trillion of spending under george bush, voting $1.6 trillion spending and the this new bunch, there's an money. and americans need to pay close attention to the approaching hurricane, financial hurricane that is coming, medicare, medicaid, social security, bankruptcy, if we are not careful, i don't want to america to become argentina. ..

>> in 2004, dorothy rabinowitz was a guest on booknotes to talk about her book, "no crueler tyrannies," accusation, false witness, and other terrors of our times. it combines s