what we are doing has to stop and that commercial fishing has to come into harmony with the natural order. it's not that anybody is arguing about that. it's not that, you know, the fisherman -- i open my book by saying there's no bad guys here. it's not that there are some people who are plotting to destroy the planet, and then we have to stop them to save it. it's that we have to arrive at formulas that work, and it's likely those formulas are, that's where the arguments are. and they are trying lots of things and some things work and some things don't work. but it's more about figuring it out than the law enforcement

problem. ..

>> that's more the kind of problem, so it's not a law enforcement problem as it's a problem of finding the right formula. >> thank you, mark. we'll take a question from this side of the room now. >> quick two concept response to the previous question. commons and trust. neither public nor private. my question, to me, it's apparent to what the solutions about our economic and ecological problems, and let's remember both the words come from the greek word oikros, how you keep a home whether it's the third ball of clay from the son. it's from permaculture, design sciences, and things like mimics that are organic. that's obvious to me. we need to use that at the home

level up to the nation state and beyond. the problem to me is that we're not willing to actually face the real problem of the pink radioactive elephant stomping in the room that has to do with an interlockingly based host of criminals around the world that control the energy industry -- >> thank you, do you have a question in >> that use nation states to bomb to get resources. >> i think we get the gist of your question. thank you so much. [laughter] >> matt, you want to take that on? >> so i agree with most of that question. [laughter] a quick pressure group point. big oil, it makes big money, but in california we need leading very smart venture capitalists making big bets on the green economy, and, of course, there's

an element of david versus go goliath here. could we get two new electric car ideas and how this competes as a driver on middle east product? with learning by doing and enough progress, even without a carbon tax, i'd love there to be a gas tax. the electric car could compete better against big oil if there's significant green tech progress. >> other views? lawrence or mark want to add to that? >> well, you know, this thing about the evil ole gar kyes, it could be true, but it's just to counterproductive to approach issues in that way. >> to arrest the criminals? >> yeah, yes, to use the kind of

rhetoric they're using is -- >> rule of law is illegal. >> yes, all of that is counterproductive. what you need to do in this world is understand where people are coming from and so -- and treat them with respect and find out what everybody's point of view is and try to work this out in a way that answer people's issues. i've been writing about -- i don't only write about environmental issues, but i have been writing about environmental issues since the early 1970s starting with nuclear power, and i have noticed that where environmental movements are most successful is when they listen to the other people's point of view, when they don't use this kind of rhetoric, when they don't talk in terms of the good guys and the bad guys because it

just doesn't get it done. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> okay, now we're going to take a question on this side of the room, and everybody think three sentences. [laughter] >> i applaud your optimism, but not your naivety. i'm concerned that the use of the term "tipping point" trivializes what could be a run away train in terms of ecological collapse. now, what my question is how do you propose to muster the global will to both recognize what is happening and to take the necessary action to do it? >> so it's a very fair question. at the heart of my book, "

"climatopolis" it's your family, what is the future of your family in climate change? if the city's quality of life suffers sharply, my family will sharper our day-to-day quality will suffer, our home falls in value. my model in my head is that individuals will catch on of the real threat that climate change poses and will vote with their feet to move to a city to have a better life or demand political accountability. the next mayor of los angeles that he or she is expected to step up. if there's water scarsty in l.a., right now, it's a half cent of water. $10 gas, $1 water. i'm a consistent man. [laughter] this is the beginning of getting ready for the scarsty we'll

face. it's the individual, not nations that will act to protect us. >> well, i understand what you're saying, and agree with that, but i'm concerned about reaction time. is it fast enough by that process? >> again, it's a very fair question. at the heart of the book, and i'm an economist, and everyone in the room loves economists. [laughter] i look like bernanke. [laughter] the model in my head is one of comparative advantage. the climate scientists improve their forecasts of the challenges they face and as an early warning system, provide this information so households live the best life they can, and we take action on the progress they make. if climate change is a tricky foe and we can't predict the consequences, your skepticism is well put, and i'm scared and

would be scared. >> thank you. a question on this side of the room. >> hi, there. i read somewhere that by one calculation if you get rid of cow burps, the spire equation would balance out and there's no global warming anymore. is vegetarianism the answer? [laughter] >> lawrence, you're the scientist on the panel. >> it's actually a good point. methane emission from livestock is significant in greenhouse gas, but unfortunately killing the livestock does not eradicate the problem, but it is a significant term. where vegetarianism comes into play though is that it takes an order of magnitude more biomass to produce roughly 100 kilograms of biomass in plant form to

produce a few kilograms of meat. it's highly inefficient, and of course along with that comes much larger consumption of energy to consume the food in the first place. i think vegetarianism is efficient in curbing greenhouse gases by curbing food production to people in addition to the methane gas you referred to. >> is there an estimate if we all became vegetarians how much climate change that prevents or how much greenhouse gases a year that curbs? >> i haven't seen the global study, but regional studies have been done. it is a significant impact. >> so, there's a question if the brazil rain forests gets shopped down in part because of pursuit of cattle raising, so it depends what land is used and whether

that land was with carbon, and that's a hot research topic for nerds. [laughter] >> no, that's a huge issue because the rain forest in brazil is being cut down for soy beans to feed cattle and also for cattle grazing. that is the biggest factor in the destruction of the amazon. the indonesian rain forest is cut down for pom oil, another issue all together. >> two questions, one for lawrence and mark? please? [laughter] >> okay. >> lawrence, should the republicans demand that the epa be lowered as they want to have obama pass the budget? that's one question. >> one at a time, and then we'll get to the next one. >> could you repeat that question? >> repeat that please.

>> the republicans want to lower epa standards to pass the budget because it'll help the economy. how do you feel about that? >> put simply, that's short sided. [laughter] [applause] >> matt, do you want to say something about the epa budget? >> two words, if jim morrisson showed up, he'd be shocked. the epa has done a world of good making our cities livable, healthier places, and there's huge economic benefits from that that the republicans should factor in, in houston as well. [applause] >> you know, the really great progress that was made on environmental issues all happened in the 70s, oddly enough under nixon, the clean

air and endangered species, and we've been living off of them and profiting from them ever since and kind of taken them for granted. we really haven't progressed much from the 70 #s in terms of legislation, but we've greatly benefited from that legislation, and i think it's made a lot of people just kind of lackadaisical about environmental issues in forgetting how hard these things were fought for and how important they are. >> well, i think it's true that the big laws were passed 30 years ago, but actually there's been a lot of revisions and regulations and new air pollution laws since then, and particularly in california, so -- >> the basis -- >> nobody's been sitting on their laurels. the air has been, you know, really bad here, and people are, you know, california's been

passing legislation, and there was the crackdown on acid rain in the east, and there's just been a lot of activity since then, and all that -- >> it's based on things that happened in washington in the 1970s, and it's -- we've lost site of the kind of things that you're talking about, we've lost sight how that happened, how that got started, and, you know, the effect of rolling back -- what the effect of rolling back on these things would be. >> if we can only keep reminding them that the environment is the republican issue; right? >> that's right. >> yes, you had another question? >> the nuclear reactor at fukushima is releasing chemicals into the waters, the pacific

ocean, how safe are the fish we consume here in california and are they safe with elevated levels of radioactive materials and there's 75 million levels of radiation they detected. i go to the local retailer. i like white tuna. a teacher said we better get a stock of all of this now because it's not going to be edible. >> okay. >> got it. i'll give you the honest answer they are all thinking but nobody's saying. i don't know. [laughter] you know, to tell you something else, we don't know what the effect of all of the oil that's been spilled in the ocean is on fish, and we don't know what the effect of all the plastic that's floating around in the ocean that fish feed on is, we don't know the effect of climate change on fish. there's a lot of research that

needs to be done about these things. it's remarkable that we live in a world where we do these things, and thing there's funding to research what we've done. [laughter] >> mark, we may not know about the radiation, but we do know about mercury in tuna, don't we? >> in terms of us? >> yeah. >> yeah, in terms of the effect on us, but we don't know as much as we should about how mercury and chromium and the other things effect the life cycles of fish. you know, when you do things in fishery management that are supposed to have a result -- for instance, you close off an area from fishing, and you fish in another area, and the idea that you closed off, the stocks rebuild, and sometimes they don't, and we don't know why. that's because there's a lot of things going on that we don't

understand. >> thank you. on my left here. >> yeah,s movie, "inconvenience truth" brings the idea of climate control to the fore front -- >> could you speak into the microphone, please. >> sorry. the movie, al gore, you know, the " inconvenient truth" movie brought climate control to the forefront and afterwords there was push back and scientists wanted to debunk the statistics in that movie. did that have positive or negative effects on your research afterwards? >> lawrence, you can take that on since it's about science. >> yeah, i'd be happy to. as a life scientist, i dreaded watching that movie and put it off for two years before i watched it because i knew it

would be so painful in inaccuracies. i was surprised. the science was 90% right and he even had the very latest ice core record from antarctica. war really brought on some very prominent climate scientists. that said, i think it's unfortunate that it was al gore in the movie because that instantly politicized it, and it was a matter of federal science to a political debate when it's science. it's not political at all. the -- as far as the speck times push back, there's no bones about it. they may have scientific training, but they work in privately funded institutes funded by, you know, big oil and so forth, and the -- i'm amused,

if i may take a moment -- as a climate scientist, i'm amused by the idea that somehow scientists are all in kahoots to get more grant dollars. i'm amused. the truth is the way scientists work is we are in competition with each other for ideas and breakthroughs, and if i could prove global warming was wrong, i'd do it in a second. [laughter] i'd be famous and it would make a name for myself. no, with the serious sign tisk communities moved on from is it real or not to, okay, how fast is it happening, what are the sources and things, what is the tipping point, and how quickly will it unfold, and that's the impact? the al gore movie if you want a good review of the science at that time, and it's moved on, but it is quite excellent. >> thank yous, laurence.

>> i have two questions, one national, another international. i want to direct it to matt. from from south america where despite mining practices, most of our rain forests are still pristine and the government proposed the developed country in north america and europe pay us to not do anything else to the forests. what does climb economists in a developed country think when he hears something like that, is the first question. >> let's go with the answer to the first question. >> it's a free market environmentalist, and i love it, and my wife gives our money to the nature conserve and money is collected in a land trust in the u.s. and land is purchased from developers and set aside to just be pristine, and what you

outline sounds similar. i -- if there's a question with the money collected say from the united states to your country, there's a question how the money is distributed. if i'm a poor person, do i get the dime or is it captured by the political elite? i having never been to your country, i want to believe the first one. >> they are full of practice call problems. >> yes, international trade in protecting natural capital in return for capital flows to your country, all economists say that's a great thing. >> okay. my other question is eight years ago when i moved to l.a., my friend was very angry with me because i didn't buy a prius, but i couldn't afford one. >> are you outing me? [laughter] >> my car is about to die now and still can't afford a prius

or solar panels and all the other neat stuff i want in my house. is there any indication when all this great stuff trickles down to the layperson? [applause] >> i'm just going to say one thing about that, and then i'll pass you to the economist, but i bought my prius secondhand, and it really was very cheap, i promise you. [laughter] >> i keep forgetting to turn my off because you couldn't hear it, but -- [laughter] i think there's a very large issue there. you know, when you talk about $10 a gallon oil, and you said that's the first thing, what came to my mind is how are you going to operate a fishing boat? a dollar for water, i'm constantly pointing out that fish has to be more expensive.

people like mike talking about making produce more expensive where solving the world's problems by completely excluding court people, and at some point we have to come to terms with that, so there's two pieces, and mark, i'm surrounded by good debaters. a key question, imagine if we had kahn's $10 gas and $7 was tax revenue. the state of california has billions of extra dollars in tax revenue. the correct question is what do we do? we say give it to ucla. [laughter] a more reasonable person would say there are poor and deserving -- that this was price gouging, let's lump money back to the deserving poor. it's to make others have price

consumption, but recycle the money back in a second step for those who have trouble oikros justing, -- adjusting, but future boats due to technology advancements are less research intensive, but economists are more politically correct than you would guess, and that there are ways to protect the poor while simultaneously making people face the costs of their actions to face the right incentives. >> there's a really interesting little section in "climatopoli" that matt talks about and people in l.a. waste water, and sprinklers going all the time, and yet water is cheap, and you use the official of a crept or whatever, and people don't think anything of spending $1 # --

$100 a month on cable, but they would scream if their water went up $20. >> i wondered why l.a. has green grass, and when we moved to l.a., my wife ripped out the grass, and our neighbors want to speak to us even less. [laughter] i'm a believer, in a desert, there's so many swimming pools and green grass, i don't deny you the freedom, but if that's what you want in an age of scarcity, i want you to face the costs of your actions, and we will make better choices if we do. [applause] >> okay. we only have five more minutes which means a very quick question and a very quick question there, and short answers. >> okay. this is maybe more than a five minute question, but i keep hearing people say that the only

way to reverse global warming is to go nuclear. what do you think? >> laurence? >> i was hoping not to get that question. [laughter] of all of the carbon-free sources of energy out there, nuclear is the one that's most ready to go -- no, not ready, but they have the most presence already here and now. you know, 15%-20% of the electricity portfolio in the world were higher in the case of france and japan. it's carbon free. it really is. that white smoke -- >> [inaudible] >> carbon, in terms of co2 emissions, the white stuff coming out is water vapor, not co2, but, man, look at what just happened, look at the incredible damages. i find myself really torn over nuclear. i don't have a clear answer for

you of all the energy sources, it's what i struggle with the most. >> okay. going to this gentleman over here with the last question. >> there's a lot of talk of $10 gas and depletion of the resources. how do you comment on our country's approach to ethanol and subsidizing corn. does that make since -- sense the way we're doing it? >> i have a section on it in the book, and i'll pass it to matt. simply, corn ethanol, bad. sugar ethanol from brazil or caribbean that are islands of sugar, why not develop caribbean economies and why we don't is beyond me. >> matt? >> i agree with my esteemed ucla colleague. [laughter] i -- >> ucla. [laughter] >> the only intelligent point i

add to that -- [laughter] is government doesn't have a great record at picking winners, and i prefer government send price signals of what is scarce and leave it up to the 300 million americans to grope around and to experiment and to try different efforts to see what will workment. top down scares me and i like california's ab32, and i think, this may be wishful thinking again, we will set up a series of incentives sending signals to the bright entrepreneurs and individual efforts launched to decarbonize our economy. >> thank you very much to coming, to our panel, and congratulations to our panelists. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> that was a lot of fun.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> that wraps up the first day of live coverage of the festival of the books. it's now in its 16th year, and it's the first year at usc campus which is where we are now. the crowds are still pretty intense here. we're told over the course of two days, 140,000 people are expected to come through, more than 400 authors featured here, and hundreds of exhibitors as you can see. you can see them over my shoulder here. more coming up tomorrow. this is the first sunday of the month tomorrow, the day we do our in-depth program, and we'll feature a libertarian writer, author of more than 30 books live from the set here at usc. following that, our coverage of the day two of los los los angeles times festival. we'll be here with a number of panel sessions covering live on

nonfiction books, and in between, a number of nonfiction book authors take your telephone calls including walter mosley. look forward to spending more time with you tomorrow. >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us at twitter.com/booktv >> tomico brown is-magin is the author, and that was the importance of the civil rights movement? >> it's not discussed often, but it was the home to several national civil rights organizations, and it's the place i wanted to explore because i thought that it would

be a success story. it's usually considered of interest only because it was the home of martin luther king, j.r., but i wanted to explore atlanta because i knew it was a home to a sizable african-american middle class, many black college, and i thought that in part because the white city fathers always considered it a place of racial moderation that it would be a good place for dynamics and the rights movement. >> what did you find? was it a success story? >> well, in some ways it was a success story including for many members of the black middle class who came of age after the land moshing civil rights legislation of the 1960s, but the story that i tell in my book is a little bit more complicated. it also shows that for many

african-americans in atlanta, a city that one would think would be a perfect place to tell a story about civil rights, except it wasn't. it wasn't successful for everyone. there was a lot of failure including for a group of african-american women who were welfare rights activists, and i tell their story in the third part of the pook who challenged not only whites, but the black leadership in the 1970s saying they had been left out from the success of the civil rights movement. >> when you use the word "dissent" in the title of the book, who is dissenting? >> right, i talk about three waves of dissenters in the book at three different historical moments. the first waves are pragmatists, people who are members of the african-american middle class

who were interested in collaging jim crow, but without giving up the social and economic capital that the black middle class had been able to achieve under jim crow, so this meant, for instance, that they were interested in economic, preserving their economic status. they were interested in educational equality, but they your not so interested in school desegregation because that would have meant that black teachers might lose their jobs. >> was there a fear by the black middle class in atlanta that they would lose what they had? >> absolutely, there was. to some extent, that fear was well-founded. the last third of my book, which explores these dissenters whom i talk about and welfare rights activists who were poor themselves, i discuss how the black middle class pushed back

against segregation because of employment discrimination, or at least the fear of employment discrimination against black teachers and principles. >> what was the relationship between thurgood marshall and martin luther king, j.r.? >> well, it was complicated. this is a story i tell in the middle third of my book talking about discenters who were street demonstrators and lawyers who represented them. it turns out that thurgood marshall was not enamored with student protesters. he told students at the beginning of the sit-ins in 1960, that they should not engage in street protests. he told them they were going to get people killed, that they were invading the property of whites, and was very negative

towards sit-ins, and he believed that martin luther king, j.r. had inspired the students to go into the streets and protest, and, of course, for very good reason because of king's leadership on the month come rights montgomery busboy cot in 1975. >> it's looked as as monolithic and disagreements, were you surprised at the disagreements you found? >> well, i was. i think that's the most surprising thing that i found in my research, just how much we don't know about the movement although many, many books have been written about the civil rights era, that there was so much conflict, and, again, i talk about these three historical moments of conflict,

so much conflict over whether to desegregate schools, how much emphasis to put on voting rights, whether to desegregate housing, whether to engage in street protests or to negotiate with whites -- these are points of contest that historians have not written about in part because we want to tell stories that are simple, stories that are consistent with a progress, american progress, and for so many years, those stories have turned over brown vs. board of education, the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, and the long rights movement asked us to go back and talk about the 1930s and 1940s and to push forward to the 1970s, and so not to stop at those conventional points in the story. >> professor brown-nagin, if you

had to pick a date that the civil rights movement started, what would that date be? >> well, historians these days are really very spectacle of picking a starting point for the movement. i can tell you that my book begins in the 1940s in the post-war era after the war, world war ii, provided a jumping off point for civil right agent vism including because there -- activism including because there was such a conflict in pursuing democracy abroad and the states in which african-americans found themselves, jim crow not consistent with democracy, so i talk about the 1940s as a jumping off point for the movement. >> published by oxford, tell us about the cover of the book. >> right. i love these photographs on the

book. the first photograph is of ap waldon, one of the south's first african-american lawyer. he's known little today, but what i show him doing here is challenging the white primary convention that excluded african-americans from voting in the democratic primary in georgia and throughout the south, so he's actually here trying to vote, and so -- >> what year was that? >> this was 1944. >> okay. >> as you can see in that photograph, he is squaring off against this gentleman who is the registrar, and there's a lot of people gathered around looking at this really dramatic moment in the history of atlanta. the lower photograph goes to the 1970 #s where i show a woman by the name of emma may matthews,

the leader of the local group of the national welfare rights organization. she was a strong dissenter in the african-american community. she's at a welfare rights protest there, and what she's saying there is that the civil rights movement has not worked equally well for all blacks. she's demanding adequate income. she's demanding integrated schools, affordable housing so the cover is meant to depict the nuances of the book. >> professor, is she still alive? >> she is not. she died in 2005. >> did you chat with her children or relatives or anyone? >> i did not chat with relatives, but had extensive interviews with her which was just a joy. >> you did? >> i did, yeah. >> you've been working on this book for several years in other words? >> oh, absolutely. this book represents about a

decade of work. i started on it as a dissertation, and i worked on it for many years, and the result is this 500-page -- >> dissertation. >> that's right. >> so in talking with ethel may matthews in your research, what was she like 30-40 years later? >> uh-huh. well, she was a remarkably strong woman. she was very passionate. she was very clear in her son that politicians of all ideological stripes, of all races, had not been attentive enough to the poor, and that's what she said to me in no

uncertain terms, and that was quite surprising to me. she really opened up to me, i think more than nip else whom i interviewed, and i conducted about 30 interviews for this book, that the civil rights movement was much more complicated than even the stories that i had learned in graduate school and certainly in law school. >> if somebody said to you, professor, that the civil rights movement was a middle class movement, what would be your response smit -- response? >> well, i would say that it's an apt description in many ways in terms of its impact. i don't think that leaders of the civil rights movement, like thurgood marshall, certainly not dr. king, and others set out for it to be that way.

they intended for civil rights legislation, for instance, for civil rights litigation to have a wider impact, but for a number of reasons, the civil rights movement did end up being most beneficial to members of the middle class. those were the people who were in the best position to take advantage of the opening up of the workplace to african-americans, the opening up of schools to african-americans, but for those like ethel may matthews who was the child of alabama sharecroppers, who just was not very well educated, she was very smart, but not very well educated, it was a harder thing to do to try to go in and interview for jobs and be successful even after the

employment discrimination legislation was enacted for instance. i talk about those things in the book, why it was so difficult to have a successful movement that brought in black benefits for a greater number of people. >> we're talking with professor tomiko brown-nagin here at the festival of books. what is your day job? >> well, i'm a law professor and a history professor at the university of virginia, a job that i enjoy very much. >> what do you teach? >> constitutional law, constitutional history, and i also teach a course on education law in policy. >> how long have you been doing that? >> at the university of virginia for five years. before teaching at uva, i taught

at washington university in st. louis for two years. >> what's your education? you were editor of yale law review i believe? >> that'sing right. -- that's right. i was an editor of that journal, so i tended yale law school. i also got a ph.d. in history from duke university, and prior to that, i got an undergraduate degree in history from thurman university. >> where did you grow up and what did you parents do? >> i grew up in a small town in south carolina, greenwood -- it's called. my parents, well, like ethel may matthews parents, my father was once a sharecropper. he later on worked in a factory, both of my parents attended segregated schools in south carolina. my mom later, actually when i

was in law school went to college, and she became a teacher which is something she does now. >> we have been talking with tomiko brown-nagin, author of this book "courage of dissent". >> you're watching booktv on c-span2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. >> we're here at the national press club talking with paul greenberg about his new book, "four fish". can you tell us why they are the future of the last? >> we have chosen four mammals, cows, pigs, sheep, and goats. there's four birds we eat, and right now we're at the verge of really choosing what are going to be the domesticated forms of

fish for, you know, the future of the ocean, and the choices we make which fish we choose to domesticate and which we choose to leave wild has ramifications for the future of the ocean. >> how so? >> if you look at salmon, a popular farmed fish, salmon requires 3-6 pounds of wild fish for food. if we take all these little fish, gripped them up, feed them to salmon, we deplete the ocean and cause population declines of other fish in their place. there's other fish out there that doesn't require that kind of huge deductions from the ocean. talapia is a vegetarian fish and sustainable of the it's an option that's possible guides for going into the next, you know, farm fish of the future. >> are you advocating staying away from certain types of fish

in favor of others or just finding a different way to feed the fish that we eat the most? >> well, you know, it's a combination of things. a lot of it is just better practices. farming salmon the way it's done now, you tend to farm salmon where wild salmon live, and so disease spread from the farm to the wild, you know, but there's ways of farming salmon, you know, in, you know, in better environments, you know, out of the ocean entirely close to gaming systems, but a lot is about choosing the right species to farm. another similar fish to the salmon that works on the farm is arctic char. the reason is because they are arctic, live in environments naturally that freeze nearly solid, so the fish are used to crowding together and have high disease resistance. you can grow that outside of the ocean in the closed con tapement facilities where there's no, you know, threat to the wild population, and it's generally a

better farm fish. if you want a salmon [laughter] like -- salmon-like fish, that's the choice. >> thank you very much for your time. >> is there a nonfirst author you want to see on tv? send us an e-mail or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> grace elizabeth hail, in your book you devote a whole chapter to jb and a catcher in the rye, why? >> i think he was interesting because his character is really the first extremely popular rebel figure who really comes from an elite, upper middle class background in this post-war period. he is not alienated because of his race or because of his class background or because he's invited to be a bohemian, but he's a prep school dropout, a

residents of a fairly nice new york apartment, and this is really the dawning of a new kind of rebel. >> what was the effect of that book in 1951? >> it was really huge. the book's style was very different from a lot of published fiction at the time. it was a kind of slanging, almost bratty kind of dialogue style that really caught the eye of young people, people of all ages, but especially younger people, and the book made quite an impression on readerrers at the -- readers at the time, and today as well for that matter. >> subtitle of your book, how the white middle class fell in love with rebellion in post-war america. besides catcher in the rye, what other rebellious figures were out there? >> well, in the initial post-war period, white middle class folks

were really attracted to a host of different figures they experienced mostly through popular culture through television, magazine, reading, life magazine especially, those sorts of venues, and also the movies, so particularly in the 50s, rock n' roll, and elvis presley for a favorite of young people and older folks as well who really made a name for himself agenting and put on a performance of blackness, of black styles, black dress styles, black musical styles, though he was, of course, white. other figures followed him, but rock n' roll is one place people fell in love with rebels. james dean, "rebel without a cause" was a catch phrase for rebels of the era. that applies to cough field as

well. these are folks who don't have a political problem, a class problem, but they are alienated all the same, so all of deen's movies, marlin brando, for example, and the young waitress asked what he's rebelling against, and he says, what do you got? that's the places you see rebels, and bow homian is popular at the time and "life" magazines brings fringes into middle class homes across the country, and people pick up that magazine and look at pictures of beat necks and beat riders and look at writers like jackson pollack, folks they wouldn't know much about unless they were interested in the art world, but moat middle class white americans would not know much about. >> william s buckly is the ultimate outsider? >> well, bucly is an interesting

figure because he goes to yale in the late 40s. he's at yale, and he would not have been an outsider most places in america, but he really feels very much that he is at yale because he believes that the liberal, the liberalism of professors really dominates not just the campus, but the academic officer -- offerings, that there's an orthodoxy at yale presented by the professors, and you don't have room to stray outside that, and he comes to school from a very conservative family, a family that half has roots in the deep south, and the other half not, but a very conservative catholic white family with very conservative politics, and so he brings those politics with them to yale and feels very much that he is a rebel against that yale ivy league liberal culture. >> we've been talking quite a

bit now about the 50s. what is the effect of all this? this white rebellion so to speak. >> well, i think it really begins to grow in the 60s, and people make the leap from being interested in people they see as different or rebels into imagining themselves as rebels or outsiders too, and you see folks making that leap particularly young white college students through the music revival. it's really an important venue for that kind of thinking. people start out maybe listening to the kingston trio, and before you know it, they've graduated to the library of congress, the scratchy library of congress recordings and other field recordings made, and before you know it, they bought a guitar picking songs in their bedroom wanting to cast themselves as a hero. the ultimate is bob dylan, but

there's other folks who take their guitars to washington square park and put on the folk and enjoy the music, try to find a way to play it in what they think is an authentic manner. this leads a lot of kids into new left politics. >> who are the new white negroes? >> well, i use that term because at the time in the 50s and 60s, it's used by southern traditionalists and segregationists. they call anybody whose interested -- who's white drs who's interested in supporting the civil right struggles of blacks. they are called white negroes. they are -- writings to the student nonviolent coordinating committee folks, folk singers like pete sieger gets hate mail

calling him a white nigger, and i news that phrase to -- i use that phrase to describe white folks taking an interest in black politics moving into port for civil rights organizing. >> who are the insiders? >> nose are the ultimate outsiders today, aren't they? the people who claimed the center would problems are not a very large crowd, but would perhaps be the ultimate outsider if you think about it since outsidism is so popular. i think we are really a nation that thinks about difference these days, and i think that's one of the things that is the romantics worked to change. in the early 20th century, there's a powerfulceps of white middle class culture as universal and the way of life

that all americans live or the norm, the way that we should live, and this love of outsiders has a positive effect in helping people to see and republic -- recognize difference. by the time you have george w. bush running as an outsider in congress, went to harvard and yale, son of a president, and yet he runs very effectively as an outsider, so one of the things i wanted to highlight is how much that means, our understanding of outside and inside, centering margins changed if we can see somebody like george w. bush as an outsider. >> who do you consider to be outsiders today in >> well, i don't actually think about it in terms of who i think is an outsider, but why people see themselves as outsiders, and why they position themselves that way in public, so i i think it's interesting that obama is one of the recent presidential

candidates who really hasn't pushed himself or run a constructive narrative of himself as an outsider especially in his recent writings, and race has to do with that. he's trying to down play his difference as an african-american, and thus one of the more recent successful can dates for -- candidates who didn't per sue the narrative. think of bill clinton, he ran as an outsider, already mentioned george bush, so that's interesting. a group that's really very much working the outsider stick today would be the tea party, very, very energized by that sense of opposition to a kind of corrupt mainstream america that's gone astray. >> how did you grow up, white middle class? >> i did, i did. >> were you attracted to outside causes or events? >> i think it's really hard to

be -- to be a young people in america since the 50s, especially since the era of holden cofffield, and not see yourself as an outsider. i was attracted to that too, went to chicago, then to the university of georgia, which at that time was breaking out with crazy musicians, rem was playing for free in venues around town, and people thought it was the music capital of the nation -- capitol of the nation, so, yes, i enjoyed that and certainly took part in it. >> what do you teach here at university of virginia? >> i teach 20th century u.s. cultural history, and the history of the u.s. south and do work for the history department as well as the american studies program. >> how did you get attracted to that area of study? >> well, one of my daughters says, mom, you have the greatest job in the world.