or term. what's been interesting is that since hoover, no fbi director has hit that ten-year limit. and i think with robert mueller what we're actually seeing right now is an almost cal ripken-like record that we have never seen since hoover and are unlikely, i think, ever to see again. mueller was sort of this right mix of a low-profile individual who was very driven, very ambitious but didn't seek out the spotlight and was able to weather a lot of controversies and a lot of storms, serve his presidents and his attorneys general well and is on track to leave office in september with what almost everyone seems to think is a very successful ten-year term. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> grace elizabeth hale, in your book, "a nation of outsiders,"

you devote a whole chapter to j.d. salinger and catcher in the rye. why? is. >> guest: well, i think salinger was interesting because his character, holden caufield, is the first extremely popular rebel figure who really comes from an elite at least upper middle class background in this postwar period. he is not alienated because of his race or because of his class background or because he decided to be a bohemian. he's a prep school dropout, he's a resident of a fairly nice new york apartment, and this is really the dawning of a new kind of rebel. >> host: what was the effect of that book in 1951? >> guest: 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 slanggy, almost bratty sort of dialogue style that really caught the eye of young people, people of all

ages, but especially younger people. and the book really made quite an impression on readers at the time and really throughout the '50s and into the '60s. today as well, for that matter. >> host: subtitle of your book, "how the white middle class fell in love with rebellion in postwar america." besides j.d. salinger, catcher in the rye, what other rebellious figures were out there? >> guest: well, in the initial postwar period white middle class folks were really attract today a host of different figures that they experienced mostly through popular culture, through television, through magazine, reading, "life" magazine especially, those sorts of venues. and also the movies. so particularly in the '50s rock and roll, the birth of rock and roll, particularly folks like elvis presley, certainly a huge favorite of young people and some older folks as well across the country who really made a name for himself acting,

very deliberately putting on a performance of blackness, of black styles, black dress styles, black musical styles though he was, of course, white. and other figures followed him. so rock and roll would be one place that people really fell in love with rebels. also youth movies. james dean, of course, "rebel without a cause" became a kind of catch phrase for the rebels of the era. that phrase would certainly apply to holden caufield as well. they don't have a class problem, but they're alienated all the same. so all of dean's movies, marlon brando, many of his early moves i haves, "the wild ones, "for example where the young way tres asks him what are you rebelling against, and he says what have you got? and also bohemia becomes more popular at the time. "life" magazine does a great job

of bringing people from the fringes into middle class homes across the country, and so people are able to pick up their "life "magazine and look at pictures of beatniks and beat writers like alan ginsburg and look at avant-garde writers and folks they probably wouldn't have known that much about. most middle class white americans wouldn't have known that much about, so those folks as well. >> host: william f. buckley as the ultimate outsider? [laughter] >> guest: well, buckley is a really 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, liberalism of professors really dominates not just the campus, but the academic offerings, that there is a kind of intellectual

orthodoxy at yale constructed by these liberal professors and that you really don't have much room to stray outside that. and he comes to school from a very conservative family, a family that half of it 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 him to yale and feels very much that he is a rebel against that yale ivy league, liberal culture. >> host: so we've been talking quite a bit now about the '50s. what's the effect of all this, this white redell bell onso to speak? >> well, i think it really begins to grow in the '60s, and people begin to make the leap from being interested in the 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 folk music revival. it's really a very important venue for that kind of thinking. people start out maybe listening to the kingston trio or even harry belafonte, and before you know it, they've graduate today the library of congress, scratchy library of congress recordings and other field recordings made. and then before you know it they've bought a guitar, and they're picking out songs in their bedroom and thinking about how they can cast themselves as a kind of folk music hero. and, you know, the ultimate example of that, of course, would be bob dylan. but there are many, many other folks who don't become famous but who take their guitar to washington square park and be sort of put on the folk and enjoy the music, try to find a way to play it in what they think of as an authentic manner. and this leads a lot of kids into new left politics. >> host: who are the new white negroes? >> guest: well, i use that term because at the time in the '50s and '60s it's really

used pejoratively by southern traditionallies and segregationists. they call anybody who's interested in -- who's white -- who's interested in or supporting the civil rights struggles of southern blacks, they are often called white negroes. southern sheriffs yell that at white activists, those kinds of end at the times -- end at the times are used, writings to folk sinks like pete seager get hate mail calling him a white negro, white nigger, so i use that phrase to describe white, mostly middle class folks, who take up an interest in black politics moving through the folk music revival and into support for -- some of them -- into support for civil rights organizing. >> host: if we're a nation of outsiders, who are the insiders? >> guest: i think those would be the ultimate outsiders today,

wouldn't they? the people who actually claim the center would, perhaps, are not a very large crowd but would, perhaps b the ultimate outsiders if you think about it since it's so popular. but i think that we are really a nation that thinks about difference these days. i mean, i think that's one of the things that row plantization of outsiders helped to change. in the mid 20th century, there is really a very powerful sense of white middle class culture as universal, white middle class way of life as the way that a almost all americans live or the norm, the way that we should live. and this love of outsiders really has a positive effect in helping people to see difference and recognize difference. it maybe goes overboard, i mean, by the time you have george w. bush running as an outsider for president, here's a man who went to an elite prep school in new england, harvard and yale -- >> host: son of a president. >> guest: son of a president and yet he run very effectively as

an outsider. one of the things i wanted to highlight is how much that means, our understanding of outside and inside, center and margins has changed if we can see somebody like george w. bush as an outsider. >> host: who do you consider to be outsiders today? >> guest: well, i don't actually try to think about it in terms of who i think of as an outsider. i'm really interested in why people see themselves as outsiders and why they position themselves that way in public. so i think it's interesting that obama's one of the recent presidential candidates who really hasn't pushed himself or run or constructed a narrative of himself as that much of an outsider, especially in the his more recent writings and in his performance during the campaign. and i think race has a lot to do with that. i mean, he's trying to down play his difference as an african-american and, thus, as one of the more recent successful candidates for the president who didn't pursue a narrative for himself as an outsider.

bill clinton absolutely ran as an outsider, we've already mentioned george bush. so i think that's interesting. certainly a group that's very much working the outsider shtick today would be the tea party. very, very energized by that sense of opposition to a kind of corrupt, mainstream america ha's gone astray. that's gone astray. >> host: how did you grow up, white middle class? >> guest: i did. i did. >> host: and were you attracted to outside causes or -- >> guest: i think it's really hard to be a young person in america since the 50s, especially since the era of holden caufield, and not see yours as an outsider. -- yourself as an outsider. and, certainly, i was attracted to that too. i went off to college in suburban atlanta 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. so, yes, i certainly enjoyed that and certainly took part in it. >> host: what do you teach here at university of virginia? >> guest: i teach 20th century u.s. cultural history and the history of the u.s. south and to work for the history department as well as the american studies program. >> host: how did you get attracted to that area of study? the. >> guest: well, one of my daughters says, mom, you have the greatest job in the world, you get to watch movies all day. i said, well, you know, if you live your life correctly, someday you can have this job as well. in all seriousness, it really is a wonderful joy to be able to spend your time, you know, reading 20th century literature and poetry and watching films and listening to music, and i've just always been profoundly interested in the period. really started out more interested in the earlier part of the period, the 1920s, and

then the '30s and then kind of leapfrogged into an interest in the '60s and '70s. haven't really worn out the decade, i mean, the century yet. >> host: so, professor hale, what at the end of the semester do you want your students to take away from oneover your classes, and what do you want people to take away from "a nation of outsiders"? >> guest: i want my students to be able to think historically and critically about the categories they use to make meaning in their everyday lives, to think about ideas and concepts as having a history and not just people or nations. so, for example, if we're going to talk about racism, i want them to be able to understand that that doesn't mean the same thing in 1860 as it does in 1890 as it does in 1960, that that is a concept that really changes over time, and the concept of racial identity as well changing over time. that would just be one example. but i want them to be able to think about ideas and concepts

and categories as having, having a history too. so the folk, for example, that doesn't mean the same thing across time and space, and i think it's really interesting to think about these kinds of things. >>st this is the book, it's published by oxford, "a nation of outsiders." it's grace elizabeth hale's second book, subtitle, "how the white middle class fell in love with rebellion in postwar america." >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. here's our prime time lineup for tonight. starting at 7 p.m. eastern, the sister of president obama, read her book "ladder to the moon "to a group of children in washington d.c.

>> we're at the conservative political action conference talking with author mark joseph about his next, upcoming book. please tell us what it's titled. >> "wild card: the promise and peril of sarah palin." >> and tell us about the book and how you came up with the idea. >> sure. i wrote it during the '08 campaign and continued to write it since then. my publishers didn't think it'd get out in time for the campaign, so it gave me the chance to update it over the last two years. you know, it's really an overview of her life, politics and since then, of course. >> so with all of the books that have come out about her since '08, what do you think is going to be new in yours that we haven't heard before? >> yeah. i think that our book or my book has a chapter on her faith that is, i think, unique among the