understudied and underexplained and is something, frankly, our current courts ought to look a very carefully. in 1857, the supreme court issues the dred scott decision, v and the other which would not allow the union to continue because it was afraid the union

would mean the end of slavery. theyollided and led to a war that nobody expected. there were no americans who thought that the war would last four years and that 620,000 americans woul die, more than all of our other wars combined, and i would say t ultimate starting point for this war was the supreme court overreaching and attempting to impose by dictatorship of the law a contract involving slavery across the whole country. that the country was not politically prepared to support. >> host: since you told us at the outset that this series on world war might be 12 to 13 novels all together, i guess there's not much time about this question but what about the revolutionary news on the topic? >> guest: we had talked about trying to do a novel about george washington. we just did a dvd called rediscovering god in america which includes a section on washington.

and i'm very intrigued with the extraordinary job that mount vernon has done in blding a remarkable education center, which i encourage everyone who comes to washington to go see. i would be very tempted someday to write aovel aut washington personally. i think washington's life is so amazing. he is such a personal odyssey in the development of freedom and he's so little understood, but it would be very daunting because washington is maybe the most complex american. i'd be pretty intimidated right now to try to explain his mind and explain how he operated. >> host: we have about 5 minutes left in our first hour of three with author, writer newt gingrich and also former speaker of the house and historian. we're spending three hours talking about his 14 books over his ceer so far. the next telephone call is from jacksonville, florida. you're on the air. >> caller: hello and thank you r c-span and congratulations to brian lamb on his presidential medal of freedom. mr. gingrich, you spoke earlier

about the balancing of the budget in the 1990s. certainly since then, the bget seems to be very much out of control. what went wrong? what needs to be done to hold some accountability both for the executive and the legislative branch to try and bring our budget situation back into some measure of reasonableness? thank you for your response? >> guest: yeah. i think that's a very insightful question. and it's something i've thought about a lot. and i think the mistake starts in january o 2001hen the republicans in congress decide they shouldn't do really aggressive oversight because they now have a republican president. and the republican president decides he's not going to veto bills because he has a republican congress. you know, no republican congress had been in power prior to the arrival of a president since

1920. and so you'd had a 80-year period where either the democrats have been in charge or there had already been a republican president. this is a brand-new moment in american history. and only under president eisenhower for two years had there been a republican president and a republican house and senate in a stretch that spanned from 1930 to 19 -- to 2000. over that 70-year period, there's only been two years in which you had a republican president and a republican congress. and genel eisenhower understood when he became the president was the job of the president was to veto bills. and he used his veto pen even with a republican congress. president bush decided for whatever reason that he wouldn't veto any legislation. the republican congss decided that they wouldn't do oversight even when things were really stupid. well, the result was the executive branch decayed. the founding parties want the congress and president to have

tension. they want the supreme court and the legislative and executive branch to have tension. our system is designed to stop dictatorship by maintaining a balance of power. and i thinwhen the president decided not to veto spending bills, the congressmen just frankly began spending like crazy and you ended up with bridges to nowhere and you ended up with things that i think is absolutely indefensible. at the same time, when we had catastrophes like katrina, the republican congress wasn't aggressive enough in oversight and we didn't get the scale of reform we needed and as a result i think we've been in a seven-year period where the and i hope we'll go back to the tension between the congress and the president. >> host: well, we have stacks of emails and only 2 minutes left in our top first hour here. i'm going to round out with two questions about the pearl harbor era. brad randall said when yamoto who is credited is we've awakened the sleeping giant. was there any question at all

for from the leaders? >> guest: he was deeply opposed to the attacking the united states. he thought it was an enormous mistake. he said to his government no nation who produces 8 million tons of steel can defeat a nation that produces 80,000 tons of steel. if we can't get to an negotiated agreement, we will be defeated. >> host: and this from todd cooper, tyler, texas, who profez his love on the american history. if you zin anything from the japanese with the chinese. do you realize how much we aided them at that time and what do you think our current future with china may be? >> guest: the chinese do realize we help them a lot. we sent volunteers for the flying tigers we sent equipment. we sent money. the chinese also are deeply embittered by some of the japanese behavior and in "pearl harbor," we have a very vivid chapter on the rape of nanking and how brutal the japanese were

in china. it was comparable to the nazi in germany. and it's a blight that they have not come to grips in a way they are appropriate. my hope is the chinese and american people will come together. we are the most powerful and the most populace two countries in the world. and if we and the indians -- ifth three of us could find a way to move into the future together, the human race would face a future of safety and prosrity and freedom that would be truly remarkable. >> host: northridge, california, you're on the air. >> caller: yes. thank you very much for taking the call. and god bless for having c-span just having the wherewithal to bring suchonderful guests. mr. begini i was patted on the head as a baby by kennedy. a couple of questions. there were many reserves 100,000 or so where the general could have crushed them there at the

creek. what was his mindset in your historical understanding? and general jackson was late coming upon the field. can you give me some insight upon what he was thinking. and the second question, sir, in the iraq war, we have seen probably the greatest militar history campaign with respect to loss of lives with the people coming back to their country to try to civilized country. one the liberal media is not advertising this, if you ll, sir, and, two, will this come back to hurt the democrats big time if the republican machine decides to rehash some of these meetings. mrs. clinton certainly had her famous speech to general petraeus. and me saking personally i see a republican landslide in the presidential election. and again, sir, you're truly a great american and i really wish

hopefully you will come aard in the next administration. thank you for coming to service and i really appreciate you. .. i think that had a general mcclellan ordered an all-out offensive at any point during the day and elli element in the army attacking simultaneously they probably but believe it was brilliant in understanding the psychology of his opponents and he consistently kept mcclellan off balance. jackson was not late getting into the battle by design but

was it busies rendering union troops at harpers ferry and came up as rapidly as he could once those troops had surrendered a decisive role in the battle of antietam. in termsf iraq general franks had a brilliant 23 day campaign in 19, 2003 followed by an enormous political mistake in creang an american administration in june of 2003. i write about it at length that real changes would come in january and feel deeply and said so in december 2004, 2003i said publicly that we had gone off a cliff made a big mistake and we needed to get back to where general petraeus is now trying to get us. i moderately optimistic that petraeus who are one key is having a positive impact on the campaign. >> host: in our second hour we're going to focus on gingrich's public policy books the most recent of whi is "a contract with the earth". we talk about a bit.

it is co-written with terry maple who was in charge of the zoo atlanta. back in 1994 c-span cameras visit to the atlanta suit with newt gingrich and will show you a little bit of that during our break. >> i love animals in dealing with animals. what i was young i read all the books i could find on agreement and it bars at the new york is due, who built the great zoo in hamburg, and i love going to zoos. my parents used to take me down to the hershey is you end the philadelphia and the national zoo. in a different life i probably would be a zoo director for a curator or somebody o went out and collected animals or a ball just went into the jungles. i really am fascinated with nature and i love interacting with animals. i love the way in which you deal with whatever they are. >> what is your very different

animal? >> i don't have a rare animal. >> you have an analyst at home? >> my wife said i could have any animal your home. she gave some tree bole is over there and then given the zoo to rhinoceroses which are my favorite gift. i am not a tiny person so maybe i feel -- one of them, i wanted to name it for both because he had done so much to help me over the years and was active in the republican party. terry found the word of pomo which means fortress in kassel in swahili. one of the rhinos is named dumbo in honor of both calloway. it happens to shorten it to both. >> or did you get the rhinos? >> one comes from czechoslovakia where they had a surplus and a rosy, the female, comes from san francisco which has had a very

successful series of the breeding, a pair that has been a successful breeding pair. they have a pair of black rhinos that are really nice. i brought by relatives down, my nieces came down and got to feed it rosy when she was young. beyond the means still the size of a small town. my younger days went home and talked about how she love of rosy. as a little kid even though it was so big and she somehow bonded with feeding it. >> how you find a couple of rhinoceroses to buy? >> as you'd does it. there is a worldwide breeding program and terry maple is a research psychiatrist. he is the director of the zoo here and terry is a world-renowned research psychologist focusing on primates, chimpanzees and gorillas who was teaching at georgia techs a full-time president professor. zoo at la quinta called and

asked him to come and take over. he has been a brilliant director. he is part of of that endangered species breeding programs. we now monitored by computer for every black rhinoceroses is in zoos around the world safe intel with the genetic strains are so you don't have too much inbreeding and you do the same thilg with kimono dragons, pandas which are very rare, but terry would know the exact number. there are many species who are routinely monitored in zoos around the planet. for example, the recently had the baboons' right here and it drills are very difficult to breed in captivity. the guerrilla collection heres world famou [applause] government and would mature second hour of the "in depth" with newt gingrh. we're focusing on the former

speaker, analyst with fox news, a person that travels the country and the world speaking and writing about policy issues and during the second hour will focus on those books among his 14 so far that are on aolicy issues and the political thinking. i want to put to the list o the screen, mr. gingrich, of the books that fall into that category starting with@@@@@@@ r years. and of the third is the

importance of acting now to achieve change for the future which i think is a thematic ofe? >> guest: i think we need some fundamental changes. i would say it is very interesting, maybe because i am getting older, i am 64 this year and a grandfather, maggie is eight and robert is six. i don't particularly like large elements of a society that are going to growp in. i think it is dangerous, i think methamphetamine addiction is dangerous, cocaine and heroin and crack are dangerous. i think having schools don't teach anything about history is dangerous because it creates colorful and use up your o country third i think having an adolescent's or you are too old to be a child into young to be an adult and can't really be engaged in life and so you're supposed to watch mtv and hang out with people your own age is dangerous.

i think we need some very fundamental rethinking about how america works. host: does our political system, that sort of change? >> guest: i think it is capable of it. we have had a huge waves of change. this is part of what i found american solutions and why i have written real change for january because i believe it is possible to launch a wave of change that isnormous. the founding fathers did it in the revolutionary war and then came back and did it as a federalist run in the constitution than the jeffersonian replaced the thrusts and the jacksonian erupted against the establishment and in the lincoln republicans insisted on freedom and national unity and then the progress of took over both parties and dominated both in bringing in a modern government. then the new deal democrats and fdr and finally reagan in the coract with america republicans. you've had eight waves of change, you can't get that changed inside the campaign system. i think it's a little bit like why i write books.

that scale of change is a longer format and takes more effort, requires you to go out and organize people over a period of years not over a matter of weeks. i think it can be done in both parties. >> host: as a tool of you seem to be fan as someone at all this for a long time of the multi point plans or bullet point analysis or less. is that from our history as a teacher? >> guest: it probably comes from my backgroundsn army brat. when you look at how military planning is done it is very clear, barry systemac and 1234. is strikes me as a good way to communicate and educate people. i try to be genuinely didactic in the original mning of the world that is genuinely teaching. my books are written to teach both my novels and nonfiction are teaching tools. the references to a conversation with people and get them engaged in thought and that is longer you'll get in a normal radio show or normal speech. it also is an excuse for me to

learn. in the amount i had to learn for example about the civil war. to write those novels wasust astonishing. i got involved with gordon reeves great books about the overlying campaign which i'm still reading. now i'm starting to do t same thing, our third volume in the pacific war series will be about the philippines and malsia. i find myself, once again having to immerse myself in learning. >> host: on that point when you read and how you fit in? how many books you have going at one time? and. >>uest: my wife and daughters would tell you i read all the time. my mother used to turn on the light and come back 30 lades later as a turn of the flashlight because i would hide in my bed and get under the covers and use a flashlight and keep reading for 30 minutes after i went to bed. i read in airplanes, i read in cars, i carry books with me and read every chance i get. >> host: we ask you about your current reading less than we thought it on screen right now. you can see it such as ross

kanan, michelangelo and the pope's ceiling, decembe8, 1941, what do people see here in this list? >> guest: too much of a bias about reading history. i wish i had more time and i try to read more about science. i have like six or seven books on dinosaurs sitting on my desk right now but how got around to them. but my natural bias is to read about history and read historical books. i think it is a storyteller in may. i am intrigued and have an irish and my grandmother was a gordie. i am intrigued with what actually happened and then i am intrigued with how to still the story of what actually happened and i can absorb. i leap read a lot of mysteries too. i will go through bookstores and pick up four or five books. i have a very odd role because i

read so much and i always read the job first. if i run across -- if i run across anything and robert parker writes, for example i will by automatically i will buy them automatically. there are a whole range of those kinds of folks. in stanford's books about minnesota, i can't resist them. the second i see the new one i buy it. i put all the serious writing that you had on the seen put aside. >> host: back in 1994 after winning a majority in the house you're recommended a reading to members and this is what it looked like back then. it included the declaration of independence, the federalist papers, indispensabl man, leadership and the computer, working without a net, and creating indus civilization. how does that list look to this many years later? >> guest: is still a pretty good list. anyone who'd understand america

should read the declaration of independence and should read the federalist papers. they are the basic introduction to the country will be, and to be quite candid nobody reads all of tokyo because the language is too obscure and floury. but to get a flavor of it is helpful. i tell every group i talked to of any background you should read the affective executive and paperback which is about 166 pages long. it is the most powerful book on how to be effective. tucker was the leading brand just and you really see such practical common sense ideas. i first read it in 1969 and reread it five or six times over the years. it really defines much of how i operate. >> host: also in 1994 you announced your contract for this book which immediately became controversial because of the advance. we have just a little clip from that time. at like to see how those events what do with the lens of a dozen years of history.

>> our attorney had reviewed a list of of proposal for an advance into books, the product was a real book with a real publisher and it offered us financial independence for the first time in our lives. since house members and senators have been accepting it as is in writing books about critical, and i thought we had done the right thing. for example, no one had questioned then a senator gore's advance or his right to offer earth and the balance while many republicans to challenge his ideas myself included none have challenges in,. one news report indicated 29 senators have written books while in office and other reports indicated a number of authors had received a book advances which were larger than the amount we were getting for renew america. people who defend the world order will always attack us for try to get the message of change to the american people. however, we are accustomed to ou opposition from those quarters and would make no decision based on their routine and expected criticism. but because what we're doing in congress for the first hundred

days and beyond is so important to our country we do not want to distract from that effort. therefore we have decided to turn down the four and a half million dollar advance, to accept only a $1 advance to make the contract legally binding, to have the publisher paid directly research or is it writers of their fees and expenses, to accept only those royalties which the american people decide we should have based on their decisions about buying the books. we hope this decision to forgo four and half million dollars will convince anyone who has been skeptical but we are totally committed to restoring the house and legislative branch to a position unchallenged legitimacy and we're committed to do everything possible to focus on and pass the contract with america. >> host: and, in fact, a multimillion-dollar book of france's continue to this day as a reference but how does that hold. and the events surrounding this book look too you with some

hindsight? >> guest: i think we made a very big mistake which haunted most of my speakership. and that i didn't realize how much we had in rage to the left. by the act of winning. senator kennedy cited $8 million book contract. senator clinton signed a book contract was still being first lady so she got it before being sworn tohe senate. if you are a liberal democrat you can do almost anything and nobody cares. what i didn't realize was both on the ethics charges which came later all of which kept getting knocked down by the ethics committee there would be this continuing on ending assault that was personal because i had broken 40 years of power on the left and i had deeply offended the people who were in favor of a more liberl america. this was the first example. we were genuinely surprised that having done something that had

been done over and over again and somehow at was okay pour al gore but now newt gingrich was terrible. just as today is okay for hillary clinton or kennedy but newt gingrich was terrible. we didn't understand if you are a conservative and particularly serious coervative republican and there is a double standard but it is a fact. >> host: how well to the books sell? >> guest: it was a best-seller for seven weeks. about a half-million copies. >> host: financial did you do as well? >> guest: it almost never do as well. both events as have all sorts of meeting but we did very well and it was significant. >> host: let's go back to the book of last year that also fits into this nonfiction category which you referenced a few times "rediscovering god in america". i found a version of this as an appendix in an earlier book. tell me abut this project and how it got started and turn into this book. >> guest: is in four forms and has a life of its own. i think it is the most important book i have written.

it started much because of the parallel with the dread scott decision just as greta scott and the supreme court overreaching got lincoln engaged in thinking about slavery. when the ninth circuit court ruled that one nation under god could not be in the pledge of allegiance because it was unconstitutional i thought that was so fundamentally alien to america that somebody had to stand up and say it is time to change the court's decisively. but to say that you have to prove intellectually in a, and a straightforward historic way how wrong they were. i was deeply influenced by the book on lincoln in cooper union and the way lincoln had written the cooper union speech as a historic document looking back to reality. we started with the idea that is now a dvd which we're proud of, that if i take you to the national archive and i show you a political document called the

declaration of independence and that document says we are in doubt by our creator with certain unalienable rights how're you going to explain to amica to a student without talking about the meaning of the word krater and what it means to be the only country in history that says power comes from god to you personay and then you loan power to the state, which is why the declaration, constitution begins,e the people of the united states. no other country the world is like this. more research we did and events haley has been an extraordinary asset as our research director and has helped put together a really wonderful research in this topic, the more we did in the more appalling the modern courts were, the more arrogant, the more radical, the more ant religious bigotry there was as you look at the fax from american history. as late as john f. kennedy you have a president who says our rights come from god.

blatt, explicit. how can a court during the kennedy administration a rule the school prayer is unconstitutional and our rights come fromod? and so rediscovering god in america was written as a historic and take it as a gded tour. you can walk around the city. i think the people talk about a wall of separation haven't totally wrong. there is an active effort by atheists and sector rest to build a wall of separation between the historic america that has been here for 400 years and a radical secular society they want to build and use the courts as their instruments and it is profoundly wrong. i believe we're going to have a political explosion in the next decade over this and i think the average american is fed up with arrogant secular judges trying to impose a radically different erica on a historic country was ben. >> host: the reference to the video walking tour and we have a video clip of that. if you talk about this part of a project.

>> those who have not been to the jefferson memorial may find it surprising to see it included in a walking tour. >> after all thomas jefferson was the author of the famous letter calling for a while separation between church and state. however, while jefferson often stressed the importance of questioning of things including the existence of god his writings and the way he governed make it clear. jefferson believed that american read a

book will watch a dvd. we believe partly what we're trying to do it is picking up physically wherever you are in america and transfer you too washington and say too you, here is the lincoln memorial. the second inaugur by lincoln is 703 words, 14 references to god, to quote in the bible. how are you going to describe lincoln in a modern secular school in which you can't explain, it is crazy. our current academic institutions are not. they are intellectually dishonest, there are fundamentally try to propagandize america and we need a large national dialogue about this. it is fundamentally wrong to rewrite america as a secular society and it is historic week false. the purpose every discovering god in america i about a

gingrich as a conservative or theology. it is about historical fact. is it a fact that jefferson used to go and worst warship in the house of representatives which it is church until the 1860's, is it a fact that george washington in his farewell address talked about the importance of religion as the base of freedom? it is a fact that lincoln as i said both wrote one nation under god it in his address at gettysburg b also cites got 14 times and quotes the bible twice in 703 words. the other example of roosevelt is this wonderful six and a half minute radio prayer where franklin delano roosevelt on d-day as americans areanding in british in normandy goes to the country and praise for six and half minutes. when you hea at it sends chills down you because it is so powerful. he is so deeply sincere. he described world war two as a

war between our christian a civilizations. and paganism. i think we have been hijacked by radical secularists in the courts and academic world and news media. it is time to have a fundamental debate in this country and change the rules of the game. >> host: back to calls. tampa, florida your on the air. >> caller: it is an honor to have this chance to answer my question. i have a two-part question. how can americans can to you to ensure our national sovereignty is not usurped by any supranational body or global governance which has been written about in depth which also seems legislators are trying to accomplish by crafty politics and activist judges rely on international court decisions? the other part is, do you agree with me that the foundation riding of islam have similarities to the cult mentality we see in death cults today? >> guest: those are two

radically different questions. first of all, on 70 jim pinkerton of the columnist has done a terrific work on this annual seek sovereignty caucus in both house and senate. i do think it's important for us to reassert that america is unique, we are in doubt by our creator with inalienable richts and i think we should pass a federal law that no federal judge can draw on that foreign judges ororeign courts as a citation for any kind of judgment. this recent pattern where u.s. supreme court justices start citing the court in zimbabwe or the court in brussels is nonsense. we are unique civilization and we should have a sovereignty caucus and both the house and senate. we should protect our sovereignty against international bureaucrats and international efforts to change to the core nature of america. in terms of islam is a very complex religion. i think it has to be dealt with all of its complexity. there's certainly a wg of islam which i describe as the reconcilable wing of islam which

not capable of living in the modern world and i think we will have to have a vastly more powerful strategy to help moderate muslims and to defeat an irreconcilable islam before this process is over. >> host: or e-mail address is www.cspan.org and we will get through a few we're getting here. would you like to repeat your offer? >> guest: anyone who wants to call in i will personally make sure we answer all of your e-mail's so if you send them in during the course of the day c-span will t them to me and i will send you an answer back. >> host: that is book tv at www.cspan.org. we have an hour-and-a-half to go in our conversation with newt gingrich about his books. the next call is from springfield, illinois. welcome. >> caller: mr. gingrich, it is an honor to speak with you. you're one of the few republicans i respect because i don't feel you are an ideologue but you are doing what is right for the american people. you talked about some other issues being explosive.

i think health care for middle america is going to be a make or break a problem for america in the next 10 or 15 years. you have a both blue-collar workers and middle class white collar workers facing horrible decisions related to health care. they just can't afford it. what is your solution to this problem? we have discussed in historical context that some things can't be done by private enterprise for example, the post office. and that was settled years ago. some things can't be done by private enterprise. >> host: let me jump in. >> guest: i see that as a great question. i wrote two books called "saving lives and saving money" which we wrote in december 2002 and was our effort to begin to refrain the entire health system. i helped found the center for

health transformation and then with the president and ceo for the center of administration who wrote a book called "the art of transformation" i think you'll find both of those helpful. if you want to go to hell transformation it did not. i agree with the thrt ofour question we have to find a better system. if we required every doctor and every hospital and drug to post price and quality and you have the ability like you to the airlines or hotels or other thingc, if you could go on line and have the travel loss to the equipment for health care you would dramatically change the pricing structure of whole system and then every did the same thing for insurance and it available for everyone to buy into group insurance we would bring down the cost of interest dramatically. i think it is possible and has to be fixed. and although the chrysostom is sustainable but take a look at held transformation it did make and look at "saving lives and saving money" and "the art of transformation". >> host: the rest comes from the pittsburgh.

>> caller: this is pittsburg, michigan. no civil war here. i would like to know what mr. gingrich thinks about the cia. i would like to know if you read legacy of ashes the recent national book award winner and one more thing i would like to say, i'm an agnostic and don't have a problem with government officials speaking about god or the creator or the supme being. i would be happy if presidents went to a different church synagogue or even a mosque every weekend, if they went to a different one. it is when it gets into being as specific form or an individual form of christianity that makes me very uncomfortable and thank you for taking my answer of the air. >> guest: that is, your question is a good one. the founding fathers wanted freedom of religion. president washington wrote a

veryouching letter a synagogue in ryland emphasizing that jews are explicitly included and freedom of religion. jefferson's famous letter describing the wall of separation between church and state was to the danbury connecticut baptists and he was promising them he is opposed to the government imposing any particular church. in that sense you are right. i'm much more sympathetic to soone who is agnostic because you at least concede you don't know whether god exists or as a theist take on a big burden of hubris when they suggest they note got it doesn't exist which strikes me as impossible. the way you frame it is a pretty grizzled position. and actually fairly close to the founding fathers who brought the recognized the existence of god who was an intervening gone and id openly doddad been on the american side in the war and without his intervention in the americans would not have survived. nonetheless did not suggest any particular sector or branch of

religion as one that deserves to be more explicitly favored. however, they were for freedom of religion, not freedom against religion. we have perverted that in the last four years in our courts into a brutal anti religious bigotry that is fundamentally wrong. >> host: to e-mail's relating to it religion and politics. one of the current campaign from livingston, texas. romney is a mormon and some believe the mormons are called. the problem with being defined as a member of the cold is romney would be controlled by someonelse. this seems a something like the catholic religion and brings back a flood of john f. kennedy in the '60s. >> guest: i think governor romney as to make a speech comparable to president kennedy's houston baptist alliance a speech in 1960. governor romney's is clearly not a member of a culprit governor romney is a brilliant competent manager and a very happy and faithful to establish family man. he is a terrific citizen.

it is inconceivable to me at least that he would be controlled by anyole. he is totally his own an. even you can before against him but on the grounds of any ncern of is being controlled by some else. >> host: this is from san diego. jim brown on the question of rediscovering god in america. how can he assert rights are based on religion? to reagan's assistant with separation of church and state inhalable rights of individuals must come from non religious origin. because it is based on faith rather than reason any religion based just occasion of individual rights is open to attack by other religio but to view including those would violate our individual rights out to mr. gingrich think religion can preserve our individual rights? guest: let me say he is not arguing with me. he is arguing with thomas jefferson, franklin, john adams, george washington, alexander hamilton. he is are you with all the founders of the country. the document that gives him his rights is in the national

archives. we talked about that in "rediscovering god in america" and we show you here is the declaration of independence. it says we are in doubt by our creator. with certain unalienable rights, which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. the talks about nature and nature's god. he is having an argument with the founding fathers of america with factual history and he is plain wrong. the base of american liberty is the belief that you personally have been in doubt by god which also means that if somebody attacks you o somebody kills you or rapes you they are violating a grant of god and it is much more powerful than a purely secular society and it is held us together for more than 200 years that bill other side of the planet can claim. >> host: three hours of books and ideas, once a month on book tv and our series called "in depth" and our offer this month newt gingrich is a cult author or co-author of 14 books and the

15th is on the way. publication day is this fact it is in late may and it is called a real change. >> host: how to get started and what did they bring to the table? >> guest: marjorie ds a terrific job and we have had a great working relationship on a number of ideas. we are very proud to work with them. i'm excited about what i see is coming it is fun because difference systems have ever behavior. we have a good russian ship on historical novels. and we contend it to continue to work with them on a regular basis. at the same time we have done very well and a thomas nelson ended up publishing and "rediscovering god in america" and they are the leading a religious publisher and have done well thus. >> host: next question by bone comes from chicago. you are on the air. caller: does government on knowingly torture americans

might. and by not u.s. presidents. with another 100 million made poor as being forced have the time of my pain and it to hospitals causing have of bankruptcy is. and how's it to the price of non pharmaceutical pain relief been a jack up one thousandfold by government forcing it into black-market exchange for guns and are a great feeling that aids cris by needle sharing and a break in jail. can we bring competition to pharmaceuticals by low-cost generics? is in the violence in america increased tenfold by increasing the jailbreak in the same way over the war on drugs? >> guest: that was a lot. i would have to say the color describe my answer would be no. but it is an interesting

question. if he is raising a more fundamental question is it doing need to rethink how we dealt with drugs in america@@@@@ rrkb first step toward legalizing drugs and i am opposed to legalizing drugs. there is no evidence from the experiments in europe that it does anything positive for society and a lot of evidence that increase dependency and increases the degree to which will destroy themselves. >> host: san diego are on the air. >> caller: thank you for taking my call and thank you for c-span. i find you mr. gingrich to be very intelligent and insightful.

i want to get your opinion as two why the bush administration has not taken advantage of the millions of americans on our soil and the fight against terrorism of. i'll take care call off the air. >> guest: i think the government bureaucracies are so slow, clumsy and a generally incompetent that it is a major source of frustration. i did a video on the youtube called the fed ex forces and federal bureaucracy about three 1/2 minutes longer. it has been seen by about 1,000,002 a thousand people and i compare the speed and accuracy of ups and fedex which track between of 23 million packages a day with a stunning incompetence of the federal bureaucracy which can find between 10 and 20 million people who are here illegally even if they're tting still. if you take that model and apply tot you said. obviously the first thing we should have done everywhere that we're dealing with islam is found americans who are modern

worshipers of islam but who are modern people and believe in rights for women, free speech, believe in selling things peacefully, opposed to suicide bombers, and we should have integrated them from the voice of america through our foreign aid program to the ierpreter for military and we should of cautiously recruited in those directions. i found working in a variety of it lies three roles i had beating your head against a wall to get to the p to understand that in the end you need all the help you can get and you needed from people who have come to america voluntarily who become successful in america who understand the complexity of our freedom and who can explain it to relives back home with much greater believability then we can through our government institutions. a very sound question and a very good point you made. >> host: saint louis was intrigued by your description of how many books you read it and wanted to estimate how many books you read in a year and in what city you must enjoy

reading. >> guest: i enjoy reading almost anywhere so i don't think i can give you an accurate. if you count novels i've probably read somewhere between 40 and 75 books a year. >> host: this fuhrer was to follow up on the discussion we had at the start of this hour about the state of the country right now. rick asks an historical perspectives and couched in the rise and fall of great civilizations where did you feel are wonderful country resides, are we on the encorps flow? >> guest: we are at the edge of a renaissance comparable to florence in the 16th century. i think we are going to have a ford to sevenfold increase in scientific knowledge in the next 25 years. we will have an explosive increa in the ability to learn. i think we'll have an external transformation of our health system. i think we will fundamentally change our energy system towards tighter agenda and composite terials. and i tnk america 30 years

from now will behe leading country in the world wl be pulling away in net wealth and capability but it will only come by going through enormous transformation of our current billing bureaucracies and requiring we move from the world that fails into the world that works. that will be an enormous political fight. >> host: told us earlier you just turned 64. >> guest: yes. >> host: statistically speaking maybe 20 or 25 good years ahead of you just h long people live, how do you most want to use that time? guest: a great story about a health expert who said when he was born in stland he thought life would be short and british and death seven. when he moved to canada he thought life could be pleasant and would die eventually and when he arrived in southern california he realized death was an option and he didn't want to exercise it. there is an american belief, i was very privileged and studied under edwards when he was 94 and i took a 60 hour tutorial from him and he talked ford is a week 10 hours a day.

i sought advice from peter drucker when he was 89. so my view is if you work with hemind and if you stay active and do things, henry kissinger in his eighties who hops on airplanes every day going all over the world, my current planning horizon i have told my team is to plan out about 2016 when i will be 73. i want to see at american solutions in dandridge communications and productions which are the companies we have, how we can optimize my ability to be effective and helpful over the next decade or so. i think that is as far had want to look. >> host: san clemente, you are on the air. >> caller: thank you. mr. speaker it is a pleasure to talk too you. i have a book next emmy called and never call retreat which your gracious enough to sign for me. thank you very muc 16 years ago i started a

research project and was watching a show called a civil war. i was fascinated by it and for 16 years i have been doing nothing but reading civil war books. my wife thinks i am boring. i stumbled across something about stephen a. douglas. he was a vile little man who had speculated on the real estate between chicago andllinois and the west cst. because he wanted the royal road to go to chicago and not through an expert, mississippi to the west coast through the gadsden purchase. and i started to thinking of what was abraham lincoln's involvement? he was from illinois. what was his involvement with the railroad? as i did my research i found out his son had died a very rich man because he had gone into railroad. i tried to get a hold of lincoln's well just to read how much real estate he owned and at the time was speculating on the railroad? i came up blank. can you help me out with us?

>> guest: that is a very good question. you might contact either the lincoln library in springfield, illinois which is a terrific new facility there or you might contact harold holzer at the metropolitan museum of art who is one of my favorite like scholars. i am certain that if the will actually existed it is a fe somewhere and i am certain, you might go online. all of lincoln's papers are on line and you can track them down. they are available for free and you can and should pull it up. i suspect you'd find the will there because it had to be filed in order for it to be executed. >> host: there are the seeds of the historical novel in that act of his recent. what of the transcontinental will help really had gone south? x telephone call, fort wayne, indiana. welcome to our conversation. >> guest: i'd like to address a couple issues and this was it turned around district.

matt asks us to ignore whatever has happened since the constitution and bill of rights. that i don't agree with. you have to take into account the there have been the evolution of things learned and archaeology has told us a lot so we have to work in a god in that equation so worn out. also you guys seem to want to ta us back to the past and that is what i think is what is kerry with the conservative republicans. the only thing is the conservatives mostly want to look out for the second amendment but when it comes to all the other amendments they seem to ignore those and get down on the aclu's case and everything else. when it comes to the second amendment that is the only one they want to concentrate on. >> guest: let me say we discovering god and america's about the first amendment which

also has provision that congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech which is why i believe the mccain fine gold is on cost intentional and should have a campaign system that allows you to give as long as it is filed every night on the internet so people can find out where candidates are getting their money from. the founding fathers clearly intended to have no censorship of your right as a citizen and free speech and unfortunately congress has violated that and many state legislators while it that with all sorts of campaign laws i think are fundamentally unconstitutional. i'm very concerned about the first amendment. i also suggest you the concept of strict constructionist the judges and it doesn't mean you don't involve more time. it does mean the evolution should occur by cstitutional amendment which involves the elected officials and not by nine people who are judges appointed for life. thomas jefferson was asked in 1820 what he thought of judicial supremacy and he said that would be an enormous mistake. it would be an oligarchy and

despotism because you can't give that level of power to nine people. that is fundamentally right and we need to reestablish the balance between the two elected branches, legislative and executive and is a judicial branch, we need to eliminate this nonsense of thinking about judicial supremacy. there doesn't exist in american history and is a modern irrigation of the legal costs. >> host: this question from washington, kevin crawford, with the political dynamics of the middle east be changed by the u.s. achieving energy independence. >> guest: the united states could develop not just ourselves but for china, india, europe and japan if we could develop a hydrogen economy and we could return petroleum to been primarily a petrochemical feedstock for plastics unit overnight change the balance of power and you would have an enormous shift away from men as well, saudi arabia, iran, iraq, russia and that would be much healthier for the world at

large. >> host: this next caller has a question about energy virginia. >> caller: mr. speaker, i have a comment and question and you just partially answered it. seems to me that high standards of living are directly related to our energy consumption and the question is, how do we achieve achieve energy along with conservation and at the same time finding new energy sources? >> guest: q2 simultaneously for things. first you go and strengthen subsidize renewals, solar, wind, and biofuels because all those are available. second, you work on conservation including composite material. ups has a new then there are expementing with that is a composite material rather than steel, reduces the weight of the van by 2,000 pounds, improves its gas mileage b0 percent, boeing is building the 787

streamliner with composite material so you'd have lots of conservation as a second strategy. the third strategy is nuclear power. if we have the same percent of american electricity coming from nuclear power that france does we would reduce the amount of carbon loading in the atmosphere by 2,200,000,000 tons a year. that is 50 percent better than kyoto. interestingly the greatest american state for market 71.2% of its electricity from nuclear power. it is possible to have a dramatically cleaner nuclear power program that doesn't rely on the middle east or venezuela dictatorship. finally we really want to aggressively pursue a prize of $1 billion tax rate for the first hyogen engine because when you get to a hydrogen economy to change every occasion. it is totally free of pollution. it is dramatically based on the most easily available material in theorld. it eliminates any dependencen foreign dictators. >> host: next telephone call and our eight minutes left in the second hour is from gibson,

new york. >> caller: good afternoon. i have to start saying that i find it impossible to agree with you most of the time, but i would like to go back to the remark about colt's with mitt romney. i believe that you are a member of the same cult as mitt romney is and its leader is norquist. this is called requires that we try to minimize taxes regardless of theell-being of our country at any cost in your remarks about the ineptitude of the federal government has been shown to be intentional effort by the republicans to put crony capitalism and incompetence in charge so they can turn around and say the government does or can we don't want this government program. that brings me to the estate tax question of. would you prefer if you have to have the choice of creating an

aristocracy by allowing the state tax to be repealed thus allowing all the power in this country shifting to a few hundred families or would you prefer a democracy? if you have the choice? >> guest: the number of assumptions in that particular question are mily amusing. first of all, i am not against taxes at all times. clearly to have a society you have to have a tax base but i was a just at the size of the current federal government and the size of the new york state government at the size of new york city government maybe we could find ways to save money without raising taxes. i don't think those two positions are irresponsible. since i think you are from new york i recommend you go to the times and look at the series ended on medicaid new york state in 2005 or the reported 10 percent of new york state pure fraud. $40,400,000,000 medicaid pierre fraud. why should we pay raise taxes to pay for fraud? there is a recent