>> here is a look at some of going back shares in festivals. this weekend book tv will visit charlottesville, virginia for the viejo festival of the book. look for our coverage in the upcoming weeks on book tv. also this weekend, met and will host the fourth annual rainbow book fair, the longest-running lesbian gay and bisexual and transgendered book fair in the country. on april 14th the university of california irvine will host the sixth annual literary orange, the festival featured keynote speakers paula mclane and lisa c. the sixth annual philadelphia book festival will be held april 16th through the 21st, and then on the 21st and 22nd book tv will be live from los angeles times festival books at the university of southern california. a visit booktv.org for a complete detailed. we will be conducting interviews , taking a dense, and taking your phone calls from the mills, and treats all weekend long.

for a complete list of upcoming book fairs and festivals visit booktv.org and click on the book fair stab at the top of the page. also, please let us know about book fares and pistols in your area, and we will add them to a our list. e-mail us at booktv.org at c-span.org. book tv recently visited tourist a university to interview professor michael kazin about his latest work, american trainers. this interview is part of book tv college series, about half an hour. >> if we could, let's start by defining some terms, beginning with populism and your new book american dreamers, how the left changed the nation. what does populism me? >> populism can be lots of different things. originally it was a radical movement. small farmers, also workers mostly in the south and west.

..oogooooóóóó]ogwwwwów]ógó >> who are some well-known american poppist in our past? >> tom watson, who ran for president a couple times on the people's party ticket. he was later on a senator from georgia. and -- had the populist

nomination in the 1890s and gave some powerful pieces calling for people to liberate themselves from the gold standard, from the producing masters of the world to free themselves from the bank on england, and also there's some unusual people who -- usual in the sense of we think of them as populist -- temp prance organizers, the women's christian temperransans union. so these are some of the leading figures at the time. >> host: what do you mean when you tack about raid -- radicalism. >> guest: goes back to the latin meaning. radicals believe in transforming the structures of society. not just making the forms here and there to basically just --

radicals believe in tearing up the system, knopp violently in most cases but sometimes through violence as well. >> host: some are some of the famous radical grist our history and today? >> guest: not many famous ones today. the radical movement has shrunk. the "occupy" wall street are the sprouts but they're against having big leaders, but in our history, people like eugene debbs who ran five times on the independent ticket, was an important radical. important figures had a lot of impact on the country. woodie guthrie, "this land is your lan" part of the communist party when he wrote this song. there were other figure like martin luther king, jr. was a radical. he called himself a democratic

socialist. he definitely wanted a system that was much more friendly to the poor and workers than to people who owned factories and companies. and in fact his program would now be attacked by most democrats and most republicans. far too radical. he wanted guaranteed jobs. he wanted guaranteed income. he wanted government-sponsored health insurance, and also he wanted american work overseas to be pulled back almost like ron paul. so private socialist like king, and we honor him in a national holiday. you think about social figures like woody guthrie. like -- seuss, -- dr. seuss, who was a member of the popular

front in the 1930s and '40s. a social formation formed by the communist party but not controlled by it an impressive list of people. even though their influence on politics has not been as powerful as the influence on the culture. >> host: what does the term progressivism mean? >> guest: the original term was ideology, a faith, if you will, of a lot of perform areas in the early part of the 20th 20th century. people like woodrow wilson, jane adams, people who believed that american society had become less democratic and less efficient, with the rise of being business. and they wanted to adjust the structure of society so they would serve the majority of the people better. the progressive era led by progressives, of course, we have

to thank for that, the federal reserve system, some government regulation of banking and finances, the 16th, 17th, and 18th amendments for populist senators and income tax and for prohibition as well, which was to moralize society and force americans to be more self-disciplined in their leisure time. so, progressives were reformers. they were what we now think of as liberals but a different kind than most liberals now. liberals now are not for prohibition. >> host: you say this book was inspired by dr. seuss. what do you mean by that? >> guest: a little bit of -- i don't know -- trying to draw people into the argument but i loved dr. seuss books when i was

a child. my mother read thome, and my children now who are grown up, i read those books to them when they were growing up, and i began to think, you know in 2000, when i first began to think about this book, president bush had just been elected, at least the supreme court said he was elected. and of course he was, he did become president. and i was going to say, well, what has the influence of the left been in america? kind of the spirit of the time as a person who didn't vote for george w. bush. i began to think who are the influential. and you look at dr. seuss books, the lorax, these are very skillful works of political assertations, people might call propaganda. they're funny, they take off after people who are arrogant,

who don't like people of a different race, who want to destroy the environment, like in the lorax. books really which take a stand in the traditional way that left americans always take a stand, for the underdog, for minorities who are being opressed by the majority. and so i began to think, well, dr. seuss to most people not recognized as a leftist, and perhaps his influence, in a sort of sir sir repetitious, some might -- might be a come them for a lot of american radicals, like woodie guthrie, who we don't think about as bag left does being a leftist but he was an important art of the left and had an impact, sometimes

indirectly, on american thinking. so that is the theme of the book, really, that the left changed the nation, not by instituting nationalization of major industries, not by having workers in control of their factories, not by having a radical third party which has any strength, any lasting power, but by helping to change the attitudes of americans. how we think about rights. how we think about social tolerance. how we think about -- what is just in american life? that's the argument of the book. >> host: when you think about the american left today, when did it emerge? and what kind of power does it have today? >> guest: today? >> host: yeah. >> guest: i think it emerged 200 years ago. i start the book with three documents written in 1829. i won't go into details about them but basically an argument

by a leading feminist at the time, and one by a radical craftsman, and they are documents which at the beginning of the movements for women's equality, for racial equality, and for social justice in the work place, i think it's only the 1820s that you begin to have mass movements, and in order to have a left, or to have a progressive movement, you have to have a movement. you have to have a lot of people who dedicate they're lives, or a large portion of their lives to try to change society in a way they desire. so that's the left began. today the left is -- well, first of all, the term itself, is, i think, used in a way that sort of muddles the meaning. the american conservatives say the left this democratic part but if you say that, can you

really compare harry reid with noam chomsky, a devout -- some distinction has to be drawn, so assuming there's still a liberal left today and there has been for some time which i think president obama is part of and most democratic leaders in congress are part of. to me the left historically has meant people who are radicals, to the left of the existing structures, whether of government or cultural structures or economic structures, and they're trying to change those pretty transformatively, and so today there's not much of a left of that kind. at one point, 100 years ago, the socialist party drew 6% of the vote in presidential election of 1912, and elected thousands of

local officials all over the country, including places like antler, oklahoma, a little town of 700 people. we don't think of oklahoma particularly strong to socialism but it used to be one of the leading states for socialism. 12% of the population voted for sociali candidates at the local and state level. today the left of that kind is sort of collapsed. most people on the left are less inclined to vote for democratted. they don't have a party to vote for of any size or importance. but "occupy wall street," which just began last fall, in september -- a lot of people in "occupy wall street" have begun to talk in traditional ways that leftists talked about. economic inequality, trying to change the structure of mesh capitalism radically in order to bring about more of an

egalitarian economy. so, when i wrote the book, "occupy wall street" hadn't begun yet but when the book came out last fall, all of a sudden i got lots of calls from people, from all over the country and the world, saying, well, you wrote this book on the american left so how do you understand "occupy wall street" in that context? so, in that sense it was timely book. >> host: would you consider somebody like ralph nadar as a part of the american left? >> guest: very much. so he started as a progressive. someone who was trying to -- he was in a muckraker in many ways, investigative reporter and investigative scientist, trying to see some of the -- be pointed to some of the problems with some of the car manufacturers, and how unhealthy -- unsafe

their cars were. but more and more he migrated to denounce the whole economic system, which he thinks is controlled by a very few people. and of course he ran for president, as we know, in 2000 and 2004 as a candidate or one of the few parties that still exists, the green party. doesn't have much clout, hardly any elected officials. most people don't know exists probably. but he wanted to -- like socialist used to do -- draw attention to the issues he was talking about. he had no illusion he was going to win office, and of course, in 2000, to the regret of many democrats, he might have made a difference in florida, handing that state to george w. bush. >> host: newt gingrich has been

referring to sol olinski. >> guest: he was an interesting guy, a sociologist from chicago. which used to be the crowning place where you wanted to do urban sociology. at the university of chicago. he became a union organizers in 1930s. worked with john l. lewis from the great industrial union organization of the 1930s, and then he began to think that the kind of organizing that labor was doing at the work place should be done in poor communities, trying to help people get better streets, better service from the city, to demand their share of public works jobs, this kind of thing. so he began to be a community organizer, one of the first people to really call himself a community organizer in america, and he worked in the back of the yards in neighborhoods in south chicago, stockyards,

predominantly catholic neighborhood where he probably unknowing to newt gingrich, actually was able to be successful because he got support from the catholic hierarchy in chicago. the bishop shields was a leading bishop, and parish priests, which is a 98 catholic neighborhood. then he moved on to black neighbors in chicago. spawned a group which still exists. the robe why gingrich likes to bring up his name is because for three years in the mid-1980s, barack obama worked for an organization in chicago which had been originally inspired by saul olinski's work so newt newt gingrich is trying to say sew lynnski is a dangerous radical,

and barack obama worked for him, he is also a radical. saul olinski believed in local organizing, grassroots society, and denounced socialism and communism for example. >> the importance of the women's movement in the american left's progress and who was robin morgan. >> guest: okay. she still still alive. >> host: who is robin morgan. >> guest: a lot of people don't know the feminist movement we think of arising in the 1960s and '70s, was really created in many ways by leftists. betty free dna, the author of a popular book, the feminist mystique, had been close to the communist party in their youth. wasn't anymore in 1960s but the book is a radical critique of women's place in american

society, which among other things indicts corps and -- not anticapitalism but anticorporate. >> robin is a young new leftist who had been a popular tv child actress in her youth, of course, and then she stopped being aning a -- actress, and then out of the antiwar movement, as a young radical new left of the time, she and other women began to basically criticize their own movement for saying, if we're awful about equality and -- if we're all about equality and democracy and equal rights for everybody, how come women are still running the mimeograph machines, making coffee, expected to sleep with member in whore powerful. so robin morgan and other people -- in new york city,

radical emfeminists -- they called themselves -- drawed attention to the critique not only of the left but the society in general, and their first demonstration was at the miss america contest in atlantic city in 1968 where they decided to throw all kinds of instrument0s of women's oppression, as they called them, into a freedom trash can, included bras and girdles and cosmetics, and some of the reporters reported they had burned these things, including bras. so the term "bra burner" became popular amongst some people in the media. they never burned anything. they would have liked to but atlantic city forbids you to have a fire on the board walk so they couldn't burn anything, but the term took off. she edited a very popular book which sold millions of companies

and the feminist movement, i think she and other radical women helped create in the '60s, perhaps had more impact on american society, on american culture, and on the world for that matter, almost more than anything else that the radicals did in the 60s. they did a lot of things that were unpopular at the time, but as this was originally as well. but if you think about the changes that feminist movement has made in women's lives, and men's lives, too and assumptions we make about what women can do and can't do. completely changed. my students today in 2012 are -- women students just assume they can do everything a man can do. there's no job they can't apply for because they're a woman. that was not true at all in the 1960s and it was the radicals in the women's movement who kicked off the process of change. >> host: what is robin morgan doing today? >> guest: i think she is still

writing, she has a web site, i noticed. in order to use photos of hear i had to get permission from the web site. she has grandchildren. i think she is writing poetry and giving speeches. >> host: michael kazin, when you think about abolitionism, prohibition, civil rights, labor movement, women's right movements, are those all antiwar moment -- are those all causes of the left? >> guest: primarily. not all of them. i wouldn't want to argue -- we're always qualifying things and getting everything right as an historian. i wouldn't want to argue that only radicals were involved in these groups. today, for example, ron paul is antiwar, but he is not a leftist. but there are people who made arguments against america going to war at different times. arguments for women's rights, who are new on the left. i think the left wing movement,

grassroot organizers, really -- people who really wanted to make america a more egalitarian society. they wanted to make causes prominent, got them noticees, made trouble, if you will, for the causes, and that's why i think they should get most of the credit for whatever success those causes achieved. >> host: you break your book down by eras. and in the most recent era it's rebels without a movement. what do you mean by that? >> guest: a lot of radicals, leftists around today, people like michael moore. people like noam chomsky. howard zen sold two million copies of his book. but i don't think we would all -- except for "occupy wall street," we don't have a mass movement which is sustainable, which is clearly -- people can

point to having leaders, having figures who are important in the national dialogue. we mentioned ralph nadar. when is the last time we heard anything from him that people paid tension to. he ran for the united states and got a million votes. so i think that's what i meant here. not since the feminist movementin' 1970 -- excuse me -- the liberation movement around the same time, late 70s, early 80s, have we had a sustained movement on the left which is putting forth a coherent critique of american sew society and a coe current alternative to american society, and at least until very recently with economic inequality, part of this is there's not been really one big issue. one burning issue, that people on the left can rally around, which there always was before.

from slavery to the monopolization of the economy, to the rights of labor in 1930s to lethe rights of african-americans and women in the 1960s. since then we haven't had this one big issue which people can rally around, and the politics generally and certainly for people on the left, you need that one big cause, and perhaps the recent emphasis on economic inequality will become that big issue but it's a little early to know whether it will have the same power. >> host: professor, when did you get interested in the american left? >> guest: well, when i was a teenager, when i got involved in the antiwar movement, in high school first in the mid-1960s, and then in college in the late 1960s -- in that sense this is a personal book, more than some of the other books i have written. i was a new leftist in the

'60s in damage. i did organize antiwar demonstrations. my chapter, students for democrats, harvard, did take over the university building. i did have some contact with police, and so it's hard to know when i decided i wanted to write about it as opposed to taking part in it. but whenever you're part of a social movement, you have less ideas about, how are we doing? what are we doing right? what are we doing wrong? what can we do differently? even when i was a self-conscious revolutionary, which i'm not at all anymore -- i was beginning to think, well, it was we're doing really helping? are we getting to the american people or not? and so i began to think about what did the left do right or wrong, back then, 40 years ago.

and then when i started to go to grad school, it became one of the things i wad studying, and i think it's one of the things i always try to do in my work is to talk about issues that -- historical issues, historical matters in a serious, responsible way, like good historian, but also ones that have some relevance to what people are thinking about now, or even fighting about now. i've always been a journalist as well as an historian. i have an online:almost for the republic, i edited a magazine which is a left wing magazine, and so to me this book is about the present as we were just discussing, but of course it's how the past can inform the present, which i think is what history should always do. >> host: that do you teach here at georgetown? >> guest: lots of different things. a cores course on then 1960s.

students still like the '60s, even though by now it's the grandparents' generation somewhat. i teach courses on ideology a lot. radicalism. conservativism. liberalism. i teach courses on american politics because i wrote a biography of william jennings bryan who was a devout clip and a devout liberal, or progressive as he called himself. so i like to teach courses about things i have either written about or am in the process of writing about. so -- i teach graduate course on social history and social movement. >> host: why are you no longer a revolutionary, as you said? >> guest: i realize there are lot of things in america i wanted to conserve. it didn't make me a conservative

but i was angry at the people who ran the society. and because of the war in vietnam primarily and because of race -- racism also. we are a democracy. we are country where people believe in individual rights. in part because of the things the left has done, pushed the envelope for individual rights forward. is a mentioned before. women's rights, black rights, labor rights. i began to think that it made more sense, both morally and practice particularly to try to dd practice particularly to try to get change within the system. social movements matter. you have to push on democrats, on republicans, on business, on the media from outside in order to get them to pay attention to issues. but at the same time i no longer