used that may get us started. better the occasional fault of a government that lives in the spirit of charity than the consistent omission of a government frozen in its own indifference. and that is from his acceptance speech for renomination in 1936. thank you. the second reads the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. those two quotations i think capture something of the mind of africa roosevelt and of what i call the rose about revolution.

the book is constructed in two parts. an extended essay on the place of fdr and the new deal in the larger context of american history since the original revolution. the second part is the collection of tea writings of his speeches, almost all of them as president or running for president. one of them his 5 beta kappa speech at harvard was 3 presidential. i selected them because they seem to be the key expressions ideology that historians don't recognize that they support the argument i am going to represent. this is not a collection of new details about the new deal. the new deal has been well told. it is a look at basic

developments from a new perspective. the perspective that reveals much about fdr and his mind and his work to an audience many of whom have forgotten or never learned of the critical role of roosevelt and his revolution in american history. let me elaborate. franklin d. roosevelt in the third american revolution argues that roosevelt avenue the achievements resulted in a revolutionary change in american life which ranks with the work of washington and lincoln, thus the third revolution. it was a revolution that grew not by chance through pragmatic political response to the crisis of the great depression but rather it resulted from a longstanding and well developed

political ideology and embedded religious convictions. the 18th-century enlightenment phrase adopted but never fulfilled by the french revolution was liberty, equality and fraternity. roosevelt's revolution worked to achieve the third of these ideals of just government which emerged from the thinking of the enlightenment but which matured and america. all three of these ideals have been part of the american democratic experience, washington's revolution focused on liberty for the americans. liberty from the british and the establishment of democratic liberties. lincoln's revolutions that the course toward genuine equality. franklin roosevelt's revolution emphasized as never before the

importance of fraternity to the health of a democracy. he brought to life the idea that americans working in common efforts would provide for the general welfare with greater justice and security. what constitutes a historic revolution and why does the work of roosevelt qualify? a revolution changes the way people live. not for lifetime or superficially but in significant ways for generations. this roosevelt accomplished. so did the original revolution led by george washington. it introduced a genuine democracy to the world for the first time and created a new nation dedicated to the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. skeptical european ruling classes laugh that the americans and they also worried.

they laughed because they thought the americans foolish peasants. called them farmers in america. should vote and hold office? that was simply not a reasonable 18th-century european idea. the enlightenment wanted rational government. very difficult to find and enlightenment thinker who was a genuine democrat. the idea that peasants should participate in government was not an enlightenment idea. they worry because they thought the american experiment might spread to there monarchical shores. none of the three revolutionary ideals were fully achieved immediately or completely. the struggle was a long one and at moments discouraging that the ideals born of the original

revolution work indelibly set as the goals of the american democratic experiment. liberty, a free people functioning in a democratic polity was the work of the original revolution and the decades that followed. by the era of andrew jackson in the 1830s universal suffrage was the norm in america. it was white and male to be sure but no other nation in the world came close to qualifying as a genuine democracy. the british have a parliamentary government but the electorate was so tiny it could not legitimately qualify as a democracy. european elites had good reason to worry because the american success was a broad participation in representative government became the model for reform groups in europe and radical groups in europe from britain to russia. reformers repeatedly invoked the

american revolution more than the french as an example worthy of imitation. but the stunning irony of that age revealed that this most democratic nation in the world was one of the last to abandon the institution of human slavery. this was a contradiction that could not indoor. the revolution for equality demand an end to slavery and the recognition of fundamental human dignity and that was the work of abraham lincoln. lincoln's great proclamation inaugurated the march not only toward emancipation but also toward realizing the ideal of full equality for all citizens. immediately after the civil war the first civil-rights act in american history declared the quality of citizenship. the civil war amendments

promised that equality constitutionally but it took 100 years of struggle to fulfill that promise and more to perfect it and the lives of all americans change. the third revolution, led by franklin roosevelt, ranks i believe with those of washington and lincoln in the profound changes that worked in the lives of so many americans. aimed to fulfil that third ideal of the revolution, fraternity. the roosevelt revolution raised the proletariat into the middle class and we calibrated the material standards by which americans could expect to live. the american experience, the american democratic ideal called for communal, fraternal action to provide for the general welfare. american historical experience always combined individual

efforts with neighborly cooperation for the common good. we often think of american development in terms of rugged individualism and indeed individualism was important especially in the earliest days of colonial america. if you word a rugged, tough be personal strong individual you probably died. but think of those days of nineteenth century america. bond -- bar and raising was the neighborly operation. removing huge sums from farmland. there was a rugged individualism that was consistent fraternal cooperation. otherwise there would not be survival. working people could live in decent housing, for higher education for their children, and leisure to labor and rest

secure in old age were the conscience goals of the roosevelt revolution and all were achieved. roosevelt understood that a healthy democracy demanded social and economic justice if it were to survive. this was especially so in the 20th century world of fascism and communism when many were inclined to despair about the survival of capitalism and democracy. roosevelt's revolutions saved them both. it is astonishing to read and recall how many important americans, journalists, commentators were despairing of democracy in the early 30s as the depression went on and seemed endless and how many important americans talk about mussolini's trains running on time and how much hitler was accomplishing in germany and how the future was in russia.

it was franklin roosevelt who saved democracy and capitalism and the capitalists have never forgiven. beyond national economic survival from the disastrous crash and depression which alone would have marked his administration a success, roosevelt abscission looked beyond the immediate economic recovery. he set his sights on permanent structural changes in the relationship of americans to the economic system and to each other. in a democracy, prudence and justice demanded that economic power strong enough to imperil the whole society must be subject to public scrutiny and regulation and for a long time it wasn't. roosevelt understood an increasingly impersonal and materialist industrial economy,

poverty and insecurity could endanger the very survival of a democratic society, thus the new deal. let me of letter agencies produced during the famous hundred days and after was designed to harness the uncontrolled power of capital in the public interest. in what came to be called the second new deal, security and freedom became the objectives of the effort for minimum-wage laws, unemployment compensation and social security provisions for the disabled and aged. the g i bill of rights redirected the lives of millions of americans. this was the work of the roosevelt revolution. as was the work of washington and lincoln war was needed and it came in the years that followed under truman and

kennedy/johnson years. for one progressive objective called for at least as far back as theodore roosevelt's 1912 campaign, a program for national health care was still waiting. since the 1960s we have experienced something of a drought in truly progressive legislation with a growing but erroneous assumption that government is a problem and not a solution. to see government itself as a problem is a dangerous idea in a democracy. in looking to the sources of the roosevelt revolution, the major biographies and histories of the new deal were not as clear as they ought to have been on two points. the importance of religion and the influence of a well-developed ideology on the

political thought and action of franklin roosevelt. there is repeated testimony by those who knew him best including eleanor of the importance of religion and particularly his christian faith on his ideas. this is confirmed by his own words including those in speeches and public documents included in the book which constitute an important part of it. roosevelt acknowledged the guidance of his father and the instruction of his head master for his moral and religious convictions. he repeatedly invoked the religious imperative to economic justice. tea often cited religious forces for his thinking and he was very much the child of the social gospel, so influential in america during his formative years. we all know franklin roosevelt

as among other things a shrewd political operator and political thinker. one of his speeches he quotes a papal honoring the 40th anniversary of leo xiii. both of these deal with economic and social justice and rail against the excessive concentration of power. knowing his audience, roosevelt quoted the to defend his program knowing his audience very well, he then proceeded to quote a rabbi and protestant minister in their speeches to the same effect. from his schoolboy train to his adult life religious ideas shaped his thinking of politics to an extent greater than is usually cited by historians and

biographers. i haven't been able to find much of that. even friendly historians often characterize fdr as a practical politician who produced a pragmatic response to the crisis of the great depression. the emphasis is on his pragmatism and he is seen as relatively innocent of well fought definitive ideology. the evidence of his life, his admiration for his cousin theodore's presidency, his deep commitment to reform in the wilson administration all helped shape a political ideology that ripened in his term as governor and then as president. he became a confirmed representative of the ideas of the progressive movement of the early century and brought his agenda to his state and nation. an examination of the ideas

expressed in his speeches and public papers included in the book reveals a carefully reasoned political ideology that informed and guided those practical choices that he made shaping the new deal. elements of that ideology included a commitment to a democratic society whose health and even survival demanded a government strong enough to restrain the unchecked power of capital for the common good. a government responsible enough to provide the general welfare and security of the people, government that would work towards the ends and just redistribution of wealth produced by the work of all and a determination to end special privileges of the few that were built into the existing system. roosevelt repeatedly referred to the economic royalists and those of special privilege.

he was convinced much of his opposition was resistance to giving up special privileges. these ideas inspired and impelled the achievements of the new deal. one is drawn to consider the importance of the roosevelt revolution in part by attempts to dismantle it. we understand a good deal about fdr and his work by the enemies he made. one is struck by the visceral intensity of those who opposed him. and extreme and impasse and conservative generated real hatred for the man. epithets like socialist, communist, un-american, spewed maliciously even from people who knew better. hard times, we know, feed

demagogues. bitter opposition to fdr came from the full spectrum of conservative politics in the 1930s. the president believed himself to -- much of the resentment because he challenged position of privilege that had so long been held by american elites without serious challenge. one of my favorite lines came from a historian who cites a connecticut country club and i will find it here. connecticut country club adopted a rule barring mention of the president's name in the club to avoid a health menace for its members. in the 1930s the connecticut country club was a meeting place for the elite. i think perhaps one of the

consequences of the roosevelt revolution is democratization of golf. al smith became anti roosevelt and the formed the liberty league. his motivation may have had something to do with the fact that he thought he should have been nominated in 1932. but his language against roosevelt by the 1936 election was ugly. it seems clear that what began in the gilded age was confirmed in the 1930s, that is the complete identification of american conservatism with laizzez-faire capitalism. the nineteenth century brought a

new superpowerful industrial and finance capitalism to the united states. monopolists like john d. rockefeller and j. p. morgan became the leader of our finance establishment that wielded more day-to-day power than the government itself. without the inconvenience obligation to answer to the judgment of any electorate.

p. morgan. morgan och conservatives became wedded to the idea that unfettered capitalism was indispensable to the survival of democracy.

that marriage has in toward. these were ingrained ideas raised to the level of feel logical dogma with little apparent concern for their intensely materialist character. these are ideas roosevelt challenged and discarded and thereby he saved both capitalism and democracy. this conservatives have never accepted and how he did it they have never forgiven. roosevelt's new deal, his revolution in some way became the victim of its own success. it produced a new and broader definition of middle class. it opened opportunities for working class and especially the uncounted numbers of the children of the working class to live well and prosper. it created a new generation of

americans who lost touch with or never learned the history of what besides their own good luck and effort, made their material success possible. for many of us support for progressive political philosophy tends to recede in interest proportion to hour in come. as prosperous americans, many of us have forgotten the great gift of the roosevelt revolution and we forget at our peril. thank you. [applause] >> if you have questions -- [inaudible]

>> i thought it was so clear there was no need. >> given where we stand now with respect to the political climate, what is going on and -- it seems almost that there is no progressive attitude that drives the politics. it all seems to be, even when it is, quote, beneficial to people it seems to be driven by a different kind of philosophy in terms of what is it going to get me when, and the question basically is is there the opportunity to get back to a progressive kind of philosophy that plays a major role in the

political nature that we are going to see for the next 20 or 30 years? >> i have been waiting for a long time. i think that is what i meant when i talked about the attempted dismantling but also the new deal being a victim of its own success. prosperity has a tendency to make conservatives of us all. i was commenting at lunch a little while ago that we have not had a surge of progress of legislation since the 1960s, over 40 years. i don't know of any period of american history since the revolution where we have gone 40 years without a surge of reformist activities. the revolution itself and that generation a few years later, the age of jackson was called

the age of the common man and a reform movement for every social and economic ills that you could think of. a few years later the great reform was anti slavery and then the civil rights amendments. you get a period of drought in the gilded age but that gives away to populism in the progressive movement of to the 1920s. conservative 20s gives way to the new deal. truman and kennedy/johnson. i used to think that maybe this was a progressive country that periodically got tired of reform and settled into a conservative period but basically a progressive country. these 40 years are beginning to convince me we are essentially a very conservative country with only occasional bursts of progressive activity.

i would like to see -- i am not all that optimistic. >> you open your presentation with a remark or a quotation decrying in difference and yet i think some would say franklin roosevelt as the war progressed was seemingly indifferent to the fate of the jewish people under the nazis. could you comment on that? tea change it is a serious question outside the area of my study. it has more to do with the horrors of the war. there are a couple of areas where roosevelt and his

administration are frequently criticized. the complete justice of that criticism is the problem. some of the talks this morning we heard about how slow the new deal was and how reluctant roosevelt was in terms of extending black rights and to a certain extent that is a legitimate criticism. but one must also judge in terms of context and in terms of black rights the solid south was entirely democratic and he would not have gotten very much past if he couldn't get those southern votes so that was a restraining force although there were some important key moments of commitment to black rights by roosevelt and especially by eleanor. your question has to do with very complicated matters involving the war, the question of bombing the camps, welcoming

jewish refugees when in fact they were turned away. one must acknowledge this. i am a believer in american exceptional as an but there are ugly chapters in american history and we have to confront them. but we have to confront them in context and it is too complicated a story to give you a brief answer. >> back to your original concept, that there has not been a lot of progressivism in the last 40 years, could we say media had a part in pushing some of the progressive things that did happen prior to that and if so, how has the new media of television, much of what is happening today and the coming of the newest media, the internet, might play into what

could happen with pushing progressivism? >> the internet is a powerful instrument and given what is happening around world, masses of people are capable of expressing themselves and getting movements going. whether it is going to happen in this country i don't know. all the stories in newspapers recently about how little our young people know of american history does not encourage one. but you are right about the media. you are right and wrong about the media progressing progressive ideas. the media was important. especially because this was the dawn of the age of radio and roosevelt was the master of the fireside chat. he went directly to the people in those fireside chats that were enormously powerful in generating support. we also know that the newspaper media which dominated the age,

working reporters in the field tended to be friendly in part because of the great access he gave to them and in part because they liked him but the publishers were almost uniformly opposed. at one point in the book, the chicago tribune refused to mention the president's name on the front page no matter what the news was during the campaign in 1936. of course we know the -- what is the magazine? literary digest? is that what i am thinking of? that did the poll in 1936 that confident we predicted that alf landon was going to sweep the election. it was an accurate poll that expect -- reflected the publisher's prejudices but they didn't cheat it said they polled

people who own automobiles and had telephones. in the middle of the depression those people were going to vote for of landon. ralph landon. >> with 1% of the people in america voting more than a 30% of the wealth, how is it that the public at large is demonized by the concept of the sharing of the wealth? >> that is a real puzzle and as a teacher i can remember going through the gilded age years when the rockefellers and the morgans swept everything to the top and we have really returned to that idea of 1% controlling this huge percentage of the

wealth of the country and the thought then to me was why did the middle class say anything because they paid of lot of the price for the situation they lived in. perhaps because they thought they might one day join the ranks of the richest. but the silence of people who were not rich in the face of the thievery of the rich with the puzzle for the gilded age and i am just as puzzled now. i don't know why. why a proposal to raise the tax rate of those people at the highest level of income gets great hostility from one side of the political debate and silence from the other side seems to me

that somebody who might be president now might think that there would be some political advantage in that but maybe there isn't. >> quick question. you made mention that you haven't really seen any sort of liberal legislation and there hasn't been much over the last 40 years since johnson. obama in his first two years did pass some legislation, universal health care, there has been some wall street reform. a lot of it has been bitterly opposed. just in terms of looking at where -- what his accomplishments as they are our, where the thing that stands? they see them taking hold? do you see them as not being significant? >> i didn't mean to leave the impression that there has been no progress of legislation.

there was some under clinton and you pointed out what has happened in the first two years of this administration. but not a surge of progressive legislation and even given what we have had the enforcement of the restraint on capitol comes very late. i am not sure they are as vigorous as they could be even now. we repealed the glass-steagall lacked -- act. we repealed the restraints on the savings and loan industry and savings-and-loan industry collapsed. in the 2,000s we repealed restraint on the banks and the bank's collapse. i don't know how long it takes to learn the lesson. but the idea of more regulation is not a popular one. this administration has done some but i wouldn't qualify it

as a surge of progressive legislation. as an old admirer of the new deal i find it a little bit discouraging. but i didn't mean for this to be an essay on current events but a perspective on fdr. but inevitably my wife keeps telling me that this book should be a best seller. i won't quarrel with that. her argument, lessons for us today. >> time for one more question. >> i don't know if this had been addressed. how does this address contemporary critics and historians that maintain that

the depression was logged by roosevelt's policies? >> i would say immediately they are welcome to their erroneous opinion. i would direct them to the evidence. by 1936 all the numbers were going in the right direction. and one thing we sometimes forget about roosevelt was he once called himself that kind of liberal because of that kind of conservative. in some ways particularly economically he was a traditionalist. those presidential advisers, that keynesian economics which is counterintuitive, you are

going broke, not enough money is coming in, lower taxes and spend more. you certainly don't want to do your personal budget that way. everything is going in the right direction. maybe you can go back to sensible economics and balance the budget. there was a recession in 1937 and all the numbers went the wrong way again. he called a special session of congress that enacted something like $5 billion spending program which was enormous for those days and by 1939, on want to emphasize this point, all the numbers were going in the right direction again. the kevin harvick is he never ended the depression. it was the war and more spending

that did it. 1939 the great war spending hadn't begun yet and unemployment was under 8%. all the numbers were going in the right direction, profits were up and production was up, steel production was up. this was before the government spending for the war. the evidence is that indeed roosevelt's policies ended of the depression and would have ended the depression even without a war had he continued in the way that he had. [inaudible] [applause]

>> more of booktv's live coverage from the rose about reading festival in hyde park, new york continues in a moment. susan dunn discusses roosevelt's purge:how fdr sought to change the democratic party. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> i am susan collins, senator from maine. i have always been an avid reader. i usually have a book going here in washington and one in maine as well. the book that most recently finished reading is scott brown's memoir. he is my colleague, the senator from massachusetts. this truly has been an extraordinary book. it is very well written and moves right along and gives me a lot of insight about scott brown and his very difficult childhood. it is absolutely amazing that he has accomplished as much as he

has given what an impoverished and difficult childhood he had. anyone who loves sports will love this book because in some ways it is basketball that save scott brown. a book that i am reading right now is michael connolly's the fifth window. this is the series of books that involves a lawyer who largely practices out of the back of his car so they are often known as the lincoln lawyer series. it is great fun. it moves right along and is a nice read from all my briefing books to read before i go to bed. this summer i am going to read my first the book. i realize everybody else has been reading the books for years. this is my first one that i've

purchased, cutting for stone. it is supposed to be a terrific book and i am looking forward to reading it. it also has the advantage that it can travel with me very easily. finally i am looking forward this summer to reading david brooks's new book called the social animal. i think david brooks is absolutely brilliant and i am looking forward to learning more about his insights. i understand from talking to him that he did a great deal of research on the brain, gathering together many studies and i think it is going to be a very compelling book. >> tell us what you are reading this summer. send us a tweet at booktv. >> we have in our society this view that we are divided selves. we have reason over here and emotion over here and the two are at war with one another like

the see-saw. if you are emotionally or not rational and irrational your naughty emotional. and as society progresses to the extent that reason which is trust worthy can suppress the passions which are untrustworthy. so this bias has led to a view of human nature that we are fundamentally rational individuals who respond straight to incentives. it has led to academic discipline that try to study human behavior using the methods of physics, emphasizing what they can count and model and ignoring the rest. it has led to an amputation, shallow view of human nature wary emphasize things that are rational but ignore our inarticulate things about down below. it has created a culture in which we are good at talking about material things that bad at talking about the motions. really good at talking about health and safety and professional skills but about the most important things like character and integrity we often have very little to say.

alastair mcintyre, the great philosophers said we live in a system where we have words for important things like virtue and honor and vice but don't have basic understanding of how they fit together. he said imagine we had a word like a neutron or gravity but didn't understand how physics works or how they fit together. that is where we are. i do think we have this amputation which blows us in a certain way and it blows us in the direction, this prevailing breeze that we are not always satisfied with. i went to high school in wayne bid -- pennsylvania. you see parents in many places around the country trapped into a certain style of raising their kids so you go to an elementary school and the third graders come out wearing these 80 pound backpacks. if the wind blows them over there like beetles stock on the ground because we want them to study and do homework and be

ready for the harvard submission test. they get picked up by sobs and audis and volvos because it is socially acceptable to have a foreign car as long as it is from a country hostile to foreign policy. it is raised and picked up by this creature i wrote about called hoovermoms who have taken time off to make sure their kids get into harvard and they weigh less than their children and they are doing little but exercises at the moment of conception in the delivery room, cutting the umbilical cord themselves and the mandarin flashcards and learn chinese and so they turned them into little achievement machines at as a tea prep oboe practice. they don't think this is the most important thing but to tell your mom down the street is doing it and they feel trapped into a system which they ridiculed but can't renounce.

they are often in a system where they into that morality and character matters most but they don't have a vocabulary for it so when people talk about morality we talk about shopping. we have the ben and jerry's ice-cream. i speak to someone on foreign policy i joked out there that ben and jerry should make pacifist toothpaste, doesn't kill germs, just ask them to leave. a whole foods market in the grocery store where all the cashiers' look like they're on loan from amnesty international. my household we buy their seaweed based snacks, for kids who come home and say i want a snack that will prevent colorectal cancer. and so i think what this is -- the world we are trapped in, but we realize that that is not all

there is. there is more to life and more we should be experiencing. i was thinking about this problem and i became aware of this other sphere of life that is looking into deeper things and it was not theologians although i read a lot of theologians and it was not philosophers but people who study the human mind. we are in this exciting period in the study of the human mind being done across a wider range of spheres like neuroscience or cognitive science or behavioral economics. people are looking into the human mind and it is a revolution of consciousness because when you synthesize their findings across these many spheres you start with three key insights. the first is the conscious mind rights the autobiography of our species. most of the action and most impressive action is happening and consciously, below the level of awareness.

the human mind can take in twelve million pieces of information a minute of which it can consciously process about 40. all the rest is being done without our being aware of it and a lot of things that are going on are somewhat of a. my favorite research finding from university of buffalo scholar is people named dennis are disproportionately likely to become dentists. people named lawrence are disproportionately likely to become lawyers. and consciously we gravitate toward things that are familiar which is why i named my daughter president of the united states broke. things that are going on unconsciously are impressive. it is not to table web of sexual urges that sigmund freud imagined. it is a different way of understanding the world and often yielding superior results. one of the tips i read about is if you have a tough decision you can't make up your mind, to yourself you decide by a coin

flip and flip the coin but don't go by how the coin comes up but by your emotional reaction to the coin flip. are you happy or sad it came out that way? that is your unconscious mind having made the decision and tell you what it thanks. the third area that happens unconsciously is the most important. how do we relate to people? how do we understand situations? these are the fundamental factors in whether we have a successful or unsuccessful life and a lot of that action is happening unconsciously. the second insight is emotions are the enemy of thinking. emotions are at the center of thinking. people with strokes and legions who can't process emotion are not supersmart. they are superdumb because emotions aside value to things. they tell you what you want or value or don't value. if you don't have that valuation device you cannot make rational decisions. emotions are not separate from reason. they are the foundation of reason. i am a middle-aged guy and not

comfortable talking about the motion particularly. one of the scientific experiments that i ran into which is a powerful begets at the truth is they took a bunch of middle-aged guys and put them in brains can machines and had them what a horror movie and had them describe their feelings for their wives and the brain scans were the same in both circumstances. sheer terror. i know what that is like a. my wife says writing a book like emotions is like don the writing a book about gluttony. is not a natural thing. emotions really are the center of how we perceive the world. >> you can watch this and other programs on line on booktv.org. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> what i read recently is a wonderful book that i wrote.

it is called the speech and i reread it. it is a good book and deals with the filibuster in december talking about a very bad agreement by repair -- president and republicans on extending tax breaks to the wealthy and also goes into some details about why the country is collapsing and also talks about the growing inequality in america and what it means for the future of the country. a little self advertising. it was my book and i did really did. there was another book i read recently which i would like very much called third world america by arianna huffington. it is a readable book. she is a good writer. she touches on the trends we have been seeing for a number of years in terms of our physical infrastructure, in terms of education, in terms of health care but frankly if we do not

reverse and this is her point we will end up looking like a third world country. what that is about as a friend of mine came back last year from china. he was in an airport in china, flew into the united states and when he was waiting for a plane back to vermont he was sitting on the floor and his plane was delayed and he was wondering which was the third world country, the united states or china? a lot of trends moving as in the wrong direction in terms of physical infrastructure, more and more people without health insurance and the gap between the rich and everybody else, big money interests and wall street and her point is we have to get our act together and reverse those trendss to become the great nation that we know we can and should be. another book i am reading right now is a book about the life of

somebody i have known for a number of years. i would not say he is a good friend but i have known for many years and that is willie nelson. it is called wilson -- willie nelson:an epic life. it is not the most readable book in the world because what is joke does is give us the name of everybody in the world who had anything to do with willie nelson but given the fact that willie nelson is one of the more -- is clearly one of the great entertainers of our time and is really an icon and a unique type of individual because of who he is and his entertainment qualities. in vermont where i had seen him a number of times he brings together just a huge range of people. most singers will appeal to this group of people with that group.

will leave brings the mall together and that has a lot to do with his personality and his decency as a human being, his gentleness. he is a very gentle man. his decency is -- a strong supporter of rural america. people are interested in learning about life of a guy born in arkansas and his family migrated to texas, he worked in the cotton fields, grew up very poor and he has a unique tie to working americans today. i am a big fan of his and this is a good book that talks about his life. last book, pretty interesting, the topic might be considered boring, a book called the financial crisis and that was put together by the commission congress established to look at

the causes -- and how they ended up bringing us where we are which is the worst recession this country has experienced since the great depression. it is tough reading because what you are seeing is the incredible recklessness from these people on wall street, producing worthless financial instruments, and talking about the power of business models. if anyone understands what is going on in america today you have to understand wall street and the incredible power they have economically and politically. some of what i have read.

>> tell us what you are reading this summer. >> welcome back to booktv's live coverage of the 2011 roosevelt reading festival from the franklin d. roosevelt presidential library and museum. up next, susan dunn's efforts to exchange the democratic party. [inaudible conversations] ..

>> and this year's group of authors reflect the wide variety of research done here. we are delighted to highlight our researchers' work at book talks throughout the year, and especially with this, our annual reading festival. before we get to our speaker, i want to quickly go over a few housekeeping matters. first, if you have cell phones or pagers turn them off or turn them to vibrate. also, after our speakers talk, we will move out next to the new deal store where you can purchase your books and have the authors sign them. and i would like to acknowledge the presence of our friends from c-span who are here today. we appreciate, as always, their support and participation and the good work they do at bringing the festival into the homes of those who are not able to come to hyde park in person. and now it is my pleasure to introduce our speaker this afternoon, professor susan dunn. in addition to being a great friend of the roosevelt library, she is also the preston parish third century professor of arts

and humanities at williamstown college located not far from here in massachusetts. professor dunn will be speaking today about her latest book, "roosevelt's purge: how fdr fought to change the democratic party," that was publish inside 2010 by harvard university's bell nap press. it has justly received the henry adams prize, and it was a finalist for the los angeles times book prize in history. professor dunn is also the co-author with the incomparable james mcgregor burns of the three roosevelts, patrician leaders who transformed america as well as a 2004 biography of george washington. among susan's many other books are 2010's dominion of memories, and sister revolutions: french lightning, american light published in 2004. and now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome professor susan dunn. [applause]

>> thank