and in working by one now but as an acquiring initial what i do is look at proposals coming in, i will weigh in on proposals the publisher is reading, and let him know whether i think we can spend a full month promoting these books. that is one of the things we are thinking about, it's not just great riding first and foremost, cingular books, which there are in other books like out in the market but of also is this a writer and subject we can focus on for a full month beyond review coverage? >> twelvebooks.com is the website. cary col d'aspin is the publisher. mix a portion of the to these monthly three our live program, and debt. on the first sunday of each

month, we invite one author to discuss their entire body of work and take your calls. "in depth" also includes a visit with the author to see where and how they write their books. that is what you are about to see. >> when you are writing what is a typical day like for you? >> it depends what i am writing. because i do such a range of things. if i am writing a newspaper column for the new york post, my home base or usa today or another paper, the structure is pretty much i've even thought about the subject for a couple of days or if it is hit mining i will see what happened overnight, get up, decide that's what we are going to do today, and then go for a jog. and while i'm running i will structure the story and just basically right in my head.

get the hot line, put some meat in the bones, then i will come back after a much-needed shot or i will sit down and put it down. and newspaper columns they are somewhat formulaic although of course want new insight or clever language. and in newspaper columns cleverness has a place. it doesn't in more serious writing. so you get down very fast and then depending whether or not you are on a deadline, you will take as much time as you can to refine it. the deadline in this one, we haven't decided whether it is friday or sunday paper. one of the new yorkers get out of bed and get to the office, know if i get it to them by three or 3:30i will be fine. i like to have it to the post by 2 p.m. because that is when the guy that works late comes in and will be on his computer.

sometimes you have got 45 minutes to write a column. but this one because it isn't only headline driven i've got more flexibly with it. i wrote this, started thinking about it yesterday in my head when i was jogging this morning before the heat stroke, and i'm just trying to get it down. and once i get it down, get the ball to get it down, i think it will probably start having 850 to 900 words and i will hack at it and scalpels it and polish it until that is down about 700 to 750 words. and right now we are writing about the descent, not patriotism's highest form. let me see if i can get this down before i lose it. i am looking for an adjective now. you've got to keep the adjectives to a minimum and newspaper writing. but if you choose the right one

at the right time it can have great power. dissent must be based on fact, not some kind of the motion. i could just say not emotion but that is a place you could get the extra one to punch. i would use the word but it's not the right post so dissent must be based on facts, not the key motions. that isn't quite right. messy emotions? i might q1 in and come back so it doesn't hold me back. dissent must be based on fact, not, for now let's put in sloppy and oceans and that comes in close because i think on the extreme right and left much of it passes for dissent as sloppy, emotional, and critic reactions. i don't like those guys on the

other side there for blah, blah i always take everything i write and make it the serious i can. nonetheless with nonfiction it is somewhat more formulaic. even an essay takes longer to be a full article. maybe there is research but it's not hard riding. you just respect the audience and state your place case as clearly as possible. what i am writing right now is actively saying something nasty about one of my heroes. i invested in a wonderful reproduction, huge to volume dictionary i go to all the time because i just love to read it. but he said patriotism's last refuge is a scoundrel and by his definition old sam must have been a scoundrel during the american revolution he became a leading journalist wrapping himself in the flat demand in all those nasty colonial rubble's be hanged,

parenthetical although he rather thought hanging was too good. i will clean that up a bit but in that particular case a little bit there is mild parenthetical works effectively i think and maybe i will read it differently. writing a column for the new york post a fist fight their and each should land one good punch, said the job but if you get it right, said it up a couple of jabs and you will land haymaker and i am saying that as somebody that lost every fistfight he was and as a kid. i feel like the receiving end. it is the most fun i ever had is definitely writing for the new york post. it's a hoot and its serious of course because it's a privilege and you try to change people's mind or reinforce something but at the same time, they are some people to work with and what a treat to be able to do something

you love and work with people you like. the f-ing people must understand my advice to young writers from someone there is no shortage of talent in a nation of 300 million people. america is literally bursting into one, all shapes, sizes, colors, gender. talent is meaningless without work ethic. if you are not willing to sit down on a beautiful day like today outside and do the work and you're the kind of person that always has an excuse why i can't write today well, you are not going to write. and sometimes i do read things out loud to myself to get the rhythm right because the rhythm

in a newspaper columnist different than novels different rhythms. there is always that undertone. but when you are doing the rhythm for a newspaper column for the post you want the rhythm -- he wanted to point you toward a the next sentence and the next idea. i used the wrong word there. words have specific meanings. i was using the word declaim and didn't mean the plan. i don't know what pour i want to use sali will have to think about that. it is a harsh mode now because it is something i feel strongly about. that's not right either

>> i take it very seriously. i don't like the work of art because if there is any art in new it will emerge. don't sit down to write the poem or artistic masterpiece, respect the reader, deliver on craft. i like that image of the old new england, do the best you can within the context of that assignment or that project. always give your best whether it is for the daily intelligence or the "washington post," whether it is an awful or just something, a blur but you were given to someone else. always do the best you can. and i see so many young people want to make it now. it takes a long time a few people did that and sometimes their first novel was great and the second one isn't so great. but if you want to be a writer, you have to think in terms of decades and beyond. it is a career. for instance right now i'm

starting the line all the slogans and debates. listen to the rhythm. there are rhythms in their. mixing in all the different forms in different ways but it has a certain poll. all of the invokes slogans that cut short debates. it seems like it. flat sentence but it really works on this on a subliminal way as we read it to ourselves. now if i took -- to take out the info, nor are all of the slogans that cut short debates. nor are all with the info slogans that cut short debates. suddenly the sentence comes alive and it comes to life in ways people don't consciously

recognize. and that's the sort of thing you can't always calculate. you write a long time and learn how to do this and are doing it on a subliminal level yourself because this is where you do. one of the reasons i write especially fiction of course looking for trouble where i didn't want things to be lost because i cannot bear fought these things go away and that's the classic that superficial, understand but i don't care. that's who i am. i love the physical world around us. i don't need to see the hidden truth. i love the will to live in and always have. it is a delight. right now we have fresh raspberries in the woods and i go down when it's still chilly and reach in and pick out those raspberries and i bring them up

and have them for breakfast. what a gift. my wife and i fight over who owns this. this is mike libraries, first to. fortunately we both love books, hiking, adventure travel books are a great substitute. they are wonderful books that shape you and the way you think about things and for instance, this is not a terribly well-known book. it is a wonderful book from the mid-19th century. it is the daddy of all travel books unless you go back to marco polo and you have these old additions and he also wrote

massive history of the korean war but his troubles in the balkans and the middle east in egypt, the kind of traveler who nonchalantly deals with leaks and things like that and bandits and i do have a weakness for english prose of the last generation. not so much the current stuff but the great 19th century early 20th century writers you don't want to write like them because you are not living in that century but back to the wonderful prose. the other thing is this. look, the internet isn't going to kill the book. it might decrease sales, hopefully not mine, but how can you not love the feel of a really good book? mccaul these essays, this is a

book, looking at the building and the dust and the print is fine, it will strain your eyes a little bit but it's lovely. if you are going to read these guys will not read them in a good addition? philip braunstein, the history of the crusades, you want to deal with islamist terror was on what is going on today? you better read the three volumes of the crusades. we don't get the paper back on the plane but if you're at home the letter in your hand, the beautiful print bigot er tough print is, choosing the print, designing the print. but me show you if i may i love books. i love the feel, the smell of them. how can you not? i love the mountain and the skies and the rivers and the beaches and the books. here we are talking about

serious hobbies, reading books and talking about music. what i want you to do next is come with me to the rocky mountains or in the desert, deserts' have rattlesnakes and we can go out there and get the other side of my life. west africa is good, too. but books, i love books. i love the feel of them. this is a recently done english reproduction of a book that was done in the 1930's the four gospels, obviously the authorized addition, but look at the design. the print was designed for it, the illustrations designed. this is beyond craftsmanship, this transcends craftsmanship to art. it is a unity. ftse if we can find something else. obviously you are going to read the gospels and king james in

paperback and still get the language but there is something magic about the beautifully designed print, and as they came out the founding man simon by name, him the compelled to bear his cross. even if you're not religious or if you are hindu, how can you not love the language and the rhythm of the king james? if i could only take one book would be the authorized edition of the bible and if i could only take one part of the but obviously the gospels. you don't have to be a religious believer. i always tell people read the sermon. the sermon on the mount is the most radical document in the mainstream of history and its magnificent. the languages magnificent, and of course christians themselves kind of forget that part.

but nonetheless even if you're not religious, the king james bible is the thought and the gospel is part of that, and of course the king james bible isn't simply just magic. the king james bible is at least the third or two-thirds of the new testament. let's do the old thing of the opening a random spot and see what we get i had a book mark on that one for some reason. this is early 16th century translating the bible. when you see jerusalem, understand the desolation of the same. then them fly through the mountains and let them which are in the midst of a depart and not then enter the country's they're

in. you know when you hear that now? street preachers or black churches, that repetition, and let them, and let them, and let not the them, the powerful rhythm of our language of this magnificent english language. i speak a number of languages. nothing comes close to the versatility. we even have the best four-letter words because one of their words are four letters. i cannot comprehend anybody who says they want to be a writer and doesn't travel in the possibilities of language. how can you not? it is so rich and fertile, but again as we all know, when it comes to any of the arts or crafts there are plenty of people that love the idea of being an artist but they don't

have the grit to become one, the hard work, the romantic idea of being a writer. i will tell you it can be a great life that there isn't much romantic about sitting on your butt sunny day after sunny day when he would rather be outside walking or hiking or jogging or just goofing off. it really is about the work in the end. >> how long has it taken you to collect all these books? >> there's more walks downstairs and there's books upstairs. i've just always loved books. always did. and even when i was an enlisted man in the army in germany on collected books. these grand books and and a lot of serious things. this beautiful addition of

seapower and history. it is an american book but i found it in a little london bookshop and so many of these books are technically couldn't afford but i bought them any way. if you read george -- no one reads that book anymore. but nonetheless, he talks about how this donner will forgo his dinner to buy an old edition he loves of the decline and fall of the roman empire, if i'm remembering correctly. while i am not want to forgo my dinner because by god i like a good meal and wine, please, but nonetheless, i would scrape my money together to buy books and art that i couldn't afford. but why not. if all this appears to mauro god forbid i will be fine without the material possessions as long as i has got my wife but since i've got them i try to enjoy them. the other thing about books i

think if you own a really good guitar you got to play. can just let it sit, a good acoustic guitar. the need to be played. it helps develop the wood and the age. likewise with books i feel you shouldn't just collect them. i don't think of myself as a book collector. i read them and i like to read the nice additions. if i am travelling to africa or iraq i might take a paperback or something because i don't want to destroy the good books but i like to hold a good book in my hand. there are other things i could hold in my hand, but books are okay. >> you are immersed in one of these books you love. where is that? where do you do that? >> right there. my wife and i fight over this chair, not violently but small campaigns to get their first on a sunday morning. but there's also -- shares are great. why not have a comfortable chair

and yank out this one today and be very serious. nice chair, my spoke, a glass of wine, beer if it's hot, living ma aveda libre. when i was a town kit in small-town pennsylvania, books were the way out. one of my favorite novels, and i make myself a pledge when i went to germany had a smattering of germany and not much but i promised myself when i went there january 77 when i left germany i would be about to read thomas in german and by god i did it. several years ago when i finished an awful, i usually take a trip, not an expensive trip but go somewhere or i will get one thing, something for my

wife usually but my degree board for finishing an awful was to track down this new set of the three works of anthony trollope and this is right now than it used to be but he's always in the shadow of dickens and the horrible george eliot so full of herself she's on billable -- unbearable. but the way we live now is the way we live now. people saw them on tv but the novel, the five and a half novels -- there is no better portrait of political life in any space system anywhere from any time that i know what. the largest living characters. trollope didn't write -- he wrote work them like pros but he could tell stories, and he had sensitive politicsnd what works and also the politics of the church in dorchester series

so i came to trollope late but i love him, i really do. if you like writers for different reasons. he has really gripped life by the tail. anthony i came to light, and he is as early as twentieth century functional, a dance to the music of time. but 12 novels collected in those volumes he's terrific. i don't just read old port stuff, i read contemporary stuff, but the contemporary stuff needs to age and goes down in the cellar. this is where you put the writers that have proven themselves. the collection of comrade i've bought this when i didn't have the money, it was expensive by standards i founded in london and this used to belong to this

collection, actually the the plate is not in this one, but this set belonged to daphne. good worker reuter and it does not mean anything but i like the thought that someday, you know, after i die at a healthy age of 165 climbing a mountain that other people will hold these books and value them and they will be passed on to. it's romantic i guess, but the books little for me and in dark times the books are there for you and they remind you people are always people. mark twain is over here, chuck gough, i love checkoff and

tolstoy. if you want to read about the russians, and i have been a russian head, if you want to read about russians, read him. but if you want to learn about humanity, read tolstoy and let's not forget [inaudible] the most perfect single book in russian fathers and sons and i loved that book. i read it every ten years. there's only a couple of books i read every ten years, the great gatsby to me it is truly one of those rare stuff rear things, perfect book. for the books i've read in the 20th century, fiction, there are three perfect models. the great gatsby, a small miracle book that doesn't fit with of the rest of her and

finally, penelope fitzgerald, the blue flower. i am not a celebrity count but would love to meet that woman. starts writing in her 60s and there's a couple of so-so novels than she hits this streak and the blue flower is about the german poet and i resisted reading them at first because i love the german literature. german literature is much livelier than people would expect, and i felt a woman who grew up and came of age in world war ii couldn't have -- couldn't possibly have the sympathy to write about german poet, she wouldn't get it. finally i was pushed into reading it and i read it and i was stunned. as a writer it is heartbreaking to read something that you will

never yourself write anything that could, you just won't. and the blue flower is just a perfect graceful gracious beautiful book, literally a haunting book to read and of course there are plenty of other good things to read the interesting thing about those novels that are the perfect novels in english and twentieth century, the great gatsby and blue flower, and they are all short. a couple hundred pages, and it's impossible to sustain that quality. even a truly great book, the parts don't work, but also books are living things. think about this. these books are on the shelf, gather dust and i don't get in here and dustin them when i should. this is my place, i take care of

this room. but these books do live. the change, they mature with you. for instance when you read this as a young man or woman it is about the romance of the dashing officer. but you read it in your late thirties and forties and suddenly you see how superficial they really are although he wants to do the right thing he's not a bad guy just irresponsible but he is a cold fish bureaucrat who puts up with all this nonsense and his fairness by the context of time to words ana and with fathers and children, fathers and sons come to can translate it either way, you read it as a young man and it's about 4 billion etc., etc., throwing off the old regime.

you read it 20 years later and suddenly you understand that the father's plight and the man isn't that impressive as all and you sympathize. suddenly you understand him and his research, and i always think that that is his unlawful, but it is the one great thing. by the way, shakespeare -- let me settle once and for all the idea shakspere couldn't really write all those books because he was a country grew from stratford. that is jealous academics talking. the proof that streaks beer wrote shakespeare's books is that if he hadn't, other jobless

writers would have let the cat out of the bag. you think writers that he took him like robert green would have said something at least after he is dead. that sucker. folks who don't like the fact shakespeare was not a member of an oxford or cambridge and didn't have all sorts of degrees will go on to the end of time denying any country boy could have written those plays. but the genius is where genius is. shakespeare wrote shakespeare and dickens theater, he is and theater for god sakes. they couldn't have written that stuff. shakespeare has to be there to make amendments. i don't want that to say that, i'm not going to do that. so he has to do the amendments. he can't be just a straw man. plus who is a nasty year or more backbiting than theater people, and he is a second-rate actor and they would have trashed that

guy you think shakespeare wrote that? let me tell you, shakespeare was getting drunk as a skunk and doing the switch hitter stuff and earl box for this right and all of that or whoever. shakespeare wrote shakespeare otherwise humanity couldn't have kept its mouth shut, they would have told. i will pick one at random here. these were books that women but carry in their gloves or their purses in the 19th century. so you always had something to read when the guys were doing stuff and you were bored. the tragedy of king lear, the striking upon his misconstruction when he continent and flattening his displeasure kept me behind. that is cornwall going up there. so these are just a neat little

thing. william shakespeare, the book may be a miniature but the soul was immense. ladies and gentlemen, you cannot go wrong with john stuart mill on liberty. notice, live by it. eat for breakfast, it will make you strong. ask my english body, john stuart mill. if you vote street party ticket, you are a sucker and patsy because sometimes republicans are red, sometimes democrats are right, and additionally the answer is in the middle with the american people and the politicians are ignoring. but again if i could only take one book, a political book worth preserving in that proverbial desert island, it's on liberty, john stuart mill. john stuart mill like darwin and freud, he's one of those guys people take on the little things

for those viewers that haven't read john stuart mill, to give a sound bite he basically says that the individual should have the freedom to do anything he or she wants as long as it does not harm others or society. obviously and turn in different ways, but basically think about that. that is what america is about. you know, as long as i don't wreck the neighborhood i can do what i want in my house. and it's always a struggle to much freedom should there be in society? when does something began to hurt others? is a just property values in the neighborhood or physical harm or psychological danger? we will have those debates until the end of time or doomsday or whenever but the basic proposition that i, the citizen should be able to do what i want to do as long as i don't hurt

you or do tangible damage to society. that's one of the big ideas that matter. for instance, you know, i don't have to read what other people want me to read. i don't have to write to fit a political ideologies, and by the word ideologies, a word we throw around. ideologies, a battle of ideas. the word in theology first appears in 1796 in the wake of the french revolution. it's a new word associated with age of reason. the age of ideologies and what we are doing today in the world with religion, faith, believe, passion, fanaticism if you go to dr. johnson's dictionary in the late 18th century ideologies isn't in there but fanatic is,

religion, etc. so we are so sloppy with language it offends me on behalf of our wonderful english language, wonderful growing flexible inexhaustible language there were two lease the words to use accurately and our president obviously not very capable of language, but he frustrates me when he talks he says we are in a war of ideas. he doesn't have a clue. i think george w. bush means well but the road of bad debts paper, should say road to fallujah. but we are not a war of ids. we are an asymmetrical conflict between values. we have values. democracy isn't and ideologies. democracy is a technique that uses a tool and you can lay your

ideologies on to it as we try to do sometimes but basically we are practice fighting for our values, our islamist extremist entities are fighting for faith. religion can acquire it the logical subsets in the hand of absolute cynics religion has never a subset of ideologies. so we are fighting faith versus values, not ideologies versus a theology. think how much more acute the national debate which is a shouting match with both sides covering their ears and shelton, how much more acute it might be if we paid attention to what words mean. we are so lazy. you know why? america you are overweight because you don't pick up the dictionary. pick that sucker up, pick up the dictionary every day, 100 over the head dictionary presses you will lose weight and be smart. by the bay, love merriam-webster

but oxford dictionary, folks. if you are in the military or retired you have the i love me wall where the have the plaques and rabin said, i don't have that. my home is demilitarized except a few model soldiers given to me, military staff doesn't belong in your home that my i love me wall is all of the foreign and traditions of the books, the books go here to hear but you get all of the foreign editions. why would i say foreign editions because when i'm old and burned up i want to pull out the italian edition of my novel. i love the italians, you know. tiffin is italian food, three meals a day. but at some point they are going to issue a copy of the bible

with a topless model on it. this is a dark, trust me, she's not in the book, folks. [laughter] battalions are italians they can't help themselves, and of course you get, let's see to give another example how nations come through for themselves, let's see if i can find the polls, that dark no-nonsense, life is black, we all live in the basement national characteristics come through. at any rate, this is preposterously ridiculously day and but i do save one copy of every edition of the books that's the old rebates these brilliant song writer people take pictures of each other to prove they really existed. well, improving i really exist.

this room -- in the house we don't go for the inferior decorating school advertising, this is for us. my wife and i travel, she reported on the war in somalia and covered the sinai etc so you bring little things home and they have meaning and the library obviously the most cluttered room in the house the other rooms we tend to be more austere about things that this is where all the things from pakistan or india or iraq or indonesia where they end up and things have soared sort of hidden values. religion fascinates me so you get the southeast asian religious figures of course, but it tells us to behave ourselves, a little stream, put it around your neck.

it is a begging bowl from afghanistan picked up in a bizarre. the work is very fine if you look and the thing is you don't want to publish something like this. let the dirt of the sentry on it. my brother gave me these for christmas because we had some when we were children and it's just a reminder of when we were kids. they are called britain's, these little soldiers. but the most important thing in this room by far even more important than the books, pictures of my wife. they are all over the house. when i write, my goal is not to disappoint my wife, not to dismay her. it doesn't mean i want to make her angry. we want to disagree on things but my test is have i written

sufficiently honest with enough integrity to pass the kathryn mcintyre peters test and i have another test at penn state as an undergrad back in the 60's, 70's when it was voted number one party school of the country three or four years i was there and i like to take credit for that i had great writing teachers, wonderful. and the best of the best was a man named rubinstein and i've kept in touch with him over the years that he was so strict and he would pass papers back with comments to other students and i would get mine back with red ink all over it and nasty comments and i was frustrated because i'm doing better work than any of these other people and then it dawned on me he thought i was worth saving. raising the bar because the purpose of being a writing teacher is and to teach people how to write, it is to discourage them from a life apart brick if they are not meant to write, and number two,

save the ones that will become writers. a good writing teacher can't teach how to write, they teach you how not to write the mistakes beginners' make, they get you through those quicker and it is your first editor. but i would write him for years and years to myself thinking with this past muster, leonard rubenstein and i'm still not sure i've made that but i am doing the best i can by god. but as a writer especially writing tv columns on deadline you're not always going to get it right but getting it right most timely and personally proud of my track record. i have written things like i shouldn't have published that. that's the human beast. but the point is while you make mistakes or from calls you never write anything to be ashamed of on the integrity level.

don't pander, don't ever tell a lie for personal advantage. there are things i've written in in there i would like to retract. that's the danger of 24/7 in the daily journalism but on the whole, i can live with what i have done. readers can judge whether it is worthless or of value or whatever. but i am not ashamed of it and that is an important thing, just to have tried to live your life with fundamental integrity to write things that are true or you believe to be true maybe artfully expressed maybe not. but i have never understood, and i have known people there really are literally tens for higher they will jump back and forth. they are on this side this time, this site the other time. you even see people in