letter to america. >> galileo's first book. it is his arrest book. was printed in only 60 copies. .. >> to the protest movement was the moroccan monarchy. the monarch went and gave a speech on march 9th, the monarchy pledged maas i have reforms. >> all this and much more as booktv and our cox

communications partners bring you to oklahoma city and the surrounding area. >> where i sit are the problems of our country. i recognize that from outside this chamber is the outraged con science of a nation. the grave concern of many nations and the harsh judgment of history on our acts. but even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. what happened in selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of america. it is the effort of american negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of american life.

their cause must be our cause too. because it's not just negroes, but really it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. and we shall overcome. [applause] >> back in 1965, the most significant piece of legislation ever passed. it's the only federal law that allows national government to actually suspend in place a state law in order to protect the rights of individuals under the 14th amendment. the voting rights act was passed in 1965. subsequent to the violence at the bridge in selma, alabama, lyndon johnson went to his attorney general and asked for the toughest voting rights law that the federal government could craft. within six months the federal

government had passed a law that froze in place all voting laws in six southern states and part of the seventh and required any change in the law to be approved either by the federal court in the district of columbia or by the department of justice. now, there was a reason you had to do this. the government had been trying for decades to deal with minority voter acts as in the south. and at every turn whenever a federal court would strike down a jim crow provision in election law, these southern juris 2006s would find a new way to keep black voters out of the voting booths. even the civil rights of 1960 and '64 will inadequate, and -- were inadequate, and you had legislatures passing laws faster than courts could throw them out. so the congress simply assumed bad faith on the part of the states and put into place a formula to determine which ones

would be covered by the law. those jurisdictions to this day have to have any change in in tr election practices approved by the department of justice or federal court, and the burden's on the state. the state has to prove its clean. >> what was the reaction, you know, in the south to this act being passed? >> well, predictable resistance. in some areas, violence. litigation. several southern states litigated to attempt to limit the impact of the voting rights act, attempting to claim it was unconstitutional, it applied only to the narrow act of registering someone to vote. and what happened is the federal courts determined in 968 that the act applied not only to the act of registering someone to vote or allowing them to sign in to vote, but also to the creation of voting districts, representative districts. there are some practices that are historic in redistricting

that are used with the minor vote. packing too many minority voters into one district where you minimize their impact or crafting them among a bunch of districts where there's no prospect of the minority voters coalescing as a group to elect their preferred candidate or even what's called stacking where you create multimember districts and you subassume what could be a local minority/majority into a larger district where they have no prospect of electing their preferred candidate. the purpose of the act is to insure the minority voters get an effective voice and a fair opportunity to participate in the political process be. now, the good news is that after 45 years of implementation, it seems the states are largely learning how to comply. there's ongoing litigation and a new wave of challenges to the constitutionality of the act. we saw this initially in a lawsuit called north austin municipal utility district number 1 which brought suit regarding the constitutionality

of what's called the bailout provision of the act. the voting rights act, one thing we have to remember, the act is what's called emergency legislation which means that, um, it has a sunset provision. it's designed to -- it's an extraordinary act designed to deal with an ongoing emergency, and that ongoing emergency is the prospect of backsliding or discrimination that results in systematic disenfranchisement of black and now black and hispanic voters in various states. the one vulnerability the act has that continues to give it problems in the eyes of the court is that the mechanism for determining if a state or a county is covered is increasingly aging in terms of its relevance. the act, the trigger to determine coverage is based upon two criteria; did you use some sort of test or device to qualify people to vote like a literacy case or the use of english-only ballots by law, and then do you have voter turnout

or registration that's less than half of the adult-eligible population? now, that trigger picks up all or part now of nine southern states, and it also picks up parts of seven states outside the south, surprisingly including three of the five boroughs of the city of new york, so manhattan's covered by this act also. the constitutional issue is that currently to be covered we're basing it on turnout in 1972. so we're using voting data from two generations ago to determine coverage. now, the argument that is being brought regarding this constitutionality, the constitutionality of the trigger of the coverage formula goes, finds precedent in a case called city of burnny which is a texas-based case regarding an aspect of religious relic. it's a strange case. but in that case the supreme court had determined that

outdated information used to determine if there's a source of violation doesn't satisfy a federal preespecially of state law -- preemption of state law. so the problem with this trigger is the day the are so old, critics will argue it doesn't fit contemporary voting circumstances. and the fact is if you use current voting statistics, half of the south would drop out, okay? now, that being said, when the numatno case went to court, there was no strong voice. instead what the roberts court did is they failed to reach the constitutional question. they simply dealt with the statutory issue in that lawsuit and never got to the larger question of it is still appropriate. now, the problem is that if we were to look at the behavior of states, it'd look like they have been learning their lesson, you know, so we look at

redistricting cases. in redistricting cases the states were learning not to draw districts that violated minority voting rights. in fact, we only have one state that's been having real problems under section five in this cycle, and that's the state of texas. also, if you look at all these southern states, the states that have had section five the longest have the highest black and hispanic participation, as likely to participate as a white voter. and, in fact, once you control for socioeconomic status, black voters are more likely to vote than a white voter in most of the south. here's the problem, a lot of these states are now starting to run voter identification laws that are more restrictive. these all need to be precleared by the department of justice. three of these states are tangled up in lit gate right now, texas, florida, and south carolina. georgia got theirs precleared, but other states are running on

the voting rights act issues. and oddly enough, what we're seeing is the voting rights issues that in section five that have been mainly focused on redistricting, they're now back on voter registration, voter access. the original intent of the legislation from the 1960s. so we're back to the same old battle all over again. they updated the law in 2005 and 2006, and i was a testifying witness in front of the house and the senate. and at the time there were real questions about the relevance of the law. and my argument has always been it's not that we don't need the law anymore, we knew a modern voting rights act. we have rural voting rights issues, rural participation issues that are not adequately covered by existing voting right law. voting rights in indian country, for example, demand closer scrutiny by congress, and congress regulates our

relationship with the tribe more so than anyone. we have parts of the country where you have lower white and black voter participation outside the south than in the south in these section five jurisdictions. so what i had argued for at the time of the renewal in '06 was let's have a modern updating trigger, let's have a dynamic mechanism to continue to update coverage, and that way if you, if you're in a jurisdiction where you suddenly start to develop participation problems, department of justice can come in and engage in oversight. if you're in a jurisdiction where you start the to overcome your issues, you can petition for bailout. then if you backslide, we bring you back in. that bay it's an active monitoring system, but it holds out the process for localities and states that have acted in good faith to have restored to them the federal authority to their own actions. it's not just about national election participation.

i mean, electing an african-american president, it's epic. we talk about this in the book. that being said, even in these jurisdictions where president obama won only one of those jurisdictions did he carry a majority of the white vote, and that was in virginia. president obama will probably face tougher election prospects this next round in seeking re-election in the south. there's going to be less white crossover voting, and i don't know if we can get the level of black vote participation again. you need to ascertain whether or not the obama election constitutes the new norm. if that's going to be typical, that becomes strong evidence. we don't know if that's the case yet. again, at the time that we started the book, we actually thought we were, we were perceiving a great deal of progress in minority voter access in the south. and we were really thinking

maybe we can modernize this, maybe there are places where it can even go away. the problem is that subsequent history has shown that we still have issues. and it's demonstrated that we still have legal actors out there who will act in bad faith. it was unanticipated. we didn't anticipate it in '06, we didn't really anticipate it in '08, it's only recently coming into play. so i think that we have to gather more evidence before we argue that the obama election simply washes clean the slate of 100 years of jim crow voting practices. but i think we're a lot closer than the critics of the south would contend. it's a different south. john lewis said it, it's a different south. it's fundamentally different. but in part t of it people can't help but go back to the old ways, and that's why we have to keep monitoring. >> there is no constitutional issue here. the command of the constitution is plain.

there is no moral issue. it is wrong, deadly wrong to deny any of your fellow americans the right to vote in this country. >> and now more from oklahoma city. >> i'm jim tulbert, and i own the full circle bookstore at 50 pin place in oklahoma city. the store was started by a young man by the name of mark mcgee. it was a hippie bookstore, as it were. in 1978 i was running a significant public company and felt like i needed something more tangible and be something more in line with my fantasies, so i bought the little store, ran it on the weekends. over time it's kind of just growed. [laughter]

in 1980 there was a fire, and the restaurant next year we burned out of our location, and we moved into this building, and we've within in the building 3 -- been in this building 32 years. i think we survived by increasing our focus all the time on the nature of our customer, on the quality of customer service because we think it turns out that most places, particularly chains, weren't very good at that part. that was what we did very well. by emphasizing events and making it a center of the community -- not just the literary center of the community, but literally a center of the community -- and by projecting to the world our love of what we were doing and what was here. and that seems to have worked. and it continues to work. and we innovate all the time. we're forever trying to come up with new ideas and new approaches to doing things, new kinds of promotions, new kinds of events, new kinds of services to add to our book place. we do a service called book catering where we take books, anybody speaking in the city

anywhere that has a book, we'll take books to that event. that's not, that's turned out to be a very helpful thing to us. sometimes the author comes to the store, sometimes they don't, but often they sign stock, and signed autograph stock of somebody who's been in the city makes a difference. i think obama city is probably -- oklahoma city is probably like most places, customers read mysteries and popular fiction, and we probably have most of the market for literary fiction. a lot of nonfiction, of course, biography in particular seems to do well. current events does well. right now politics does well. it's a broad spectrum. and then books, we do, we place a great emphasis on things that are about oklahoma or by

oklahomans, and that results in us having a lot of authors here with that focus, and that inclines people to be more interest inside those books. well, when i originally got into the business, i was going to go gracefully into old age in the book business, sort of smoking a pipe. as it turns out, i don't smoke a pipe anymore, and it's become brutally competitive. competing initially with the chains was something we learned how to do because we cater to people who were serious readers, and we structured our pricing and our sources and our promotions around that idea. we had the most knowledgeable staff by far of anybody in the city, and that worked well competing against the chains. then came along competing against amazon, it got tougher, but we held our own. electronic books are another matter. that's taking a significant percentage of the market away and completely out of our

opportunity to participate. there's no way to directly compete with them except to convince people that they're foolish to go to them, and that's not going to happen. but what i think i've found is that that seems to be, i won't say it's peaking, but it is not -- the new adapters have evolved, and the market is not growing as fast for electronic books as it once was. and i think there will remain an itch for real books, more than half of the market will remain for real books, and be as long as that's true, we can compete. >> what's your advice to somebody that wants to start an independent bookstore? is. >> don't. and i don't mean to be harsh. this is not a business for someone to build their life around in the future. it's a great business for people like us to build, to live with, and i certainly hope that someone succeeds to this bookstore. but to start one from scratch now, i think, would just be beyond challenging. >> up next, booktv takes a look at the chickasaw nation

with michael lovegrove, author of "a nation in transition." the tribe migrated to south central oklahoma in the mid 1800s and have worked to preserve their heritage ever since. booktv talks with mr. lovegrove in oklahoma city where we visited to explore the area's history and literary culture. >> henry johnston was governor of the chickasaw nation from 1898 to 1902. constitutionally, the governors could not succeed themselves more than two terms, so he had to step down in 1902 when his successor, palmer mosley, was elected governor. and, essentially, after mosley's term he was, johnston, was appointed governor from 1904 to 1939, until he died, by president theodore roosevelt. so e essentially, once he was appointed governor, he was

governor for the rest of his life, serving longer than any native american chief executive in our nation's history. he was a man who was very progressive, he was a very well educated, very steeped in the southern tradition. he was, his ancestorslied in mississippi -- lived in mississippi, they came across the so-called trail of tears which all the five tribes as a result of the indian removal act of 1830 made the journey from their ancestral homeland in the southeastern part of the united states over land to what is now the present-day state of oklahoma. and the cherokees are the most noteworthy and the most well known, but all of the tribes suffered death from disease and overexposure and malnutrition and so on. so the story of the chickasaws is that not only did they survive their own trail of

tears, but they survive and flourish when they came to indian territory here later becoming the present-day state of oklahoma. so he comes from a long line of very forward-thinking, very progressive, very well educated leaders. he was very committed to being what we would consider a modern day warrior in that he fought his battles with logic, he fought his battles with words and good thinking and good ideas and, essentially, playing in the system that the white man prescribed that he be in with the congress having the final say so in all tribal affairs because of their plenary power. they were always under, in some form, under assault, if you will, for their tribal sovereignty. in other words, technically they had agreements with the federal government, but congress with its plenary power could change

those agreements to, essentially, heads we win, tails you lose scenario anytime they felt like it because of their plenary power. and one of the things that douglas johnston had to deal with was the fact that there would be times when they would not be able to obtain their federal funding for the schools which the chickasaws understood very early on that education was power, and they needed the funding to maintain the schools. of course, they provided tribal funding on their own, but the federal funding supplemented the funds that they had allocated for education. so he was constantly battling for education dollars and be, also, the fact -- and probably the most difficult battle that he had to deal with which the choctaws and the chick chickasas combined subsequently won, was by virtue of a federal law that

was passed, negotiated by the tribe from are a hand-picked group of lawyers, a law firm known as mansfield, mcmurray and cornish. douglas johnston was introduced to this law firm that was, at that time, based in mcallister, oklahoma. and the situation was that there were people who were fraudulently being included on the tribal rolls that did not belong there. they had no legitimate claim whatsoever, but yet they were able to, through legal representation and be -- and persuasion, were able to gain access to the tribal rolls. and at this point in the beginning, in the early part of, early 1900s the dawes commission which was an adjunct of the earlier dawes commission that dealt with plains tribes,

civilized tribes, they were in process of allocating or the legal term is allotting indian land which, i'll give you an example. let's say you drove a vehicle here that has four wheel on it. well, it belongs to you, but the government passes a law that says you have to retain one of the wheels for your car, and we're going to keep the other three, plus the car and anything that's left over, we will sell or do with as we wish. so you're taking property, real property or land that belongs to native americans and, basically, taking what you want of that and then giving them a portion of it. and in order for a person to receive any tribal land at all, you had to be included on the tribal rolls. and as i mentioned earlier, they had people who were fraudulently being allowed to be on the rolls that should not have been there.

and the reason it was so attractive for a person to be on the tribal rolls is that as it will be determined later on by this law firm of mansfield, mcmurray and cornish, the citizenship will essentially mean that a person has assets that will include real property and other assets of being a tribal member to the tune of about $5,000. and in the early 1900s, this was a considerable sum. so johnston was introduced to the law firm of mansfield, mcmurray and cornish by his half brother, tanty walker. so they came to what is known as the chickasaw white house, and they met, and george mansfield who was the legal mentor of the other two, mcmurray and cornish, he determined that upon examining the statutes that if a person made a claimant against

both tribe -- or one tribe only, they had to make a claim against both nations in order for the claim to be valid. so what was associated was an agreement through congress known as the supplemental agreement of 1902. and what this did to my knowledge is it gave the chickasaws and the choctaws the only two tribes in united states history the right to determine once and for all who was lawfully on their rolls and who was not. so this was a tremendous victory for the tribe because then they could, through the process, eliminate these courts at their, quote-unquote, court citizens deemed only by the court. and once they were able to, the accounts tell us that there were often cases that it took not more than five minutes to see that the person didn't have a legitimate claim. and in the end what the law firm

of mansfield, mcmurray and cornish did was save the chickasaw something like approximately $20 million from people that were coming on their rolls who were fraudulent. the other really legislative victory had to deal with the choke case that was filed by a person who was challenging at that point, essentially, brand new about five-year-old state of oklahoma -- oklahoma became a state on november 16, 1907 -- so some five years later in order to generate state monies and state revenue, the state decided that it would pass a law whereby they would begin to tax the various tribes. and, of course, george choat filed a case that went all the way to the supreme court to

decide whether, in fact, that the chickasaws and, in this case the choctaws because they're combined, they share a common ancestry through their ancient heritage, that if these two tribes would be able to resist taxation by the state of oklahoma. so it went all the way to the supreme court, it was decided in may of 1912 that the state, in fact, did not have the ability to tax the tribes because federal statute and the relationship with the tribes on a federal level superseded any powers of the state. so once again we're talking millions of dollars that the tribe was able to save because of working with the white man's legal system, working within the white man's court and the rules that they were forced to go by. they had no choice, but yet in the white man's system, they prevailed most especially on these two occasions. these people produced very able

and capable leaders to deal with very difficult situations doing the best that they could to get the best, negotiate the best deals for their people that they could. but under a government that, basically, can change the rules anytime they feel like it through congress and its plenary power. so they, on balance to me, are -- and i don't see them as a beleaguered people as many people see native americans because, to me, the story of the chickasaw people is that there was resilience always after their sovereignty, their well being, their livelihood was challenged, they always rose to meet those challenges in a dignified and a professional and a way that anyone could deem as being very american. we hear so much these days about

things being un-american. well, they were very american in their way of doing things, and they're flourishing. their tribal businesses are doing well, they're providing a very competent and professional health care system, an education system to educate their children. the chickasaw nation is alive and very well. >> and now, more from oklahoma city. governor mary fallon tells us about what she considers the most important political books available. she was elected the first female governor of oklahoma in 2010. >> for students that are interested in getting into politics, what books, um, have you read over the years, the course of your life, actually, that you would recommend reading and why? >> well, one of my favorite books that i hope students will look at -- and i've actually encouraged many students especially at graduation

speeches for students to look at for leadership is "lincoln on leadership." this has been one of my favorite books. it's a little bit worn out right now, but i read this many, many years ago, and it talks about abraham lincoln's principles and how he was able to get things done. and one of the things it talk ts about is he would go out among his troops, especially during a time of war, he would depend upon his top lieutenants, per se, to give him back information also. he valued the sad vice of -- advice of other people. he didn't think he had to know all the answers, he actually sought out wise counsel from other people. he was also a very honest man, a very important character quality in any type of leader, and he was just a great role model for not only our students looking towards the future, maybe doing? politics, but even for people like myself who have been in politics for quite some time.

>> i noticed you have other books there. >> i do. >> which ones -- how did they impact you and why? >> this is one i hope to finish reading, i started it, but it's called "the black swan." and it's about the improbable. you know, as people we tend to think about things we know, but it's what we don't know that we don't know that brings out the creative spirit in ourselves. and it also talks about events in history, events in current day that happen, that causes unpredictable things to happen on down the line. it talks about, you know, the thought of how people that invented google, how it just changed the world instantaneously. so it's a very fascinating book. i've read portions of it. this is one i haven't started at all, but it's one of my favorite people, billy graham, and it's a book called "nearing home."

and as he has aged, he's now talking about nearing home, going to heaven. and, of course, it reflects upon his life and his faith, so i'm looking forward to reading that. because he's had, certainly, a life that has touched so many people around the world. he's had a huge impact on the soul of people. and now he's reflecting in this book. and once again, i haven't read it yet, but so "nearing home." is i think that'll be a fascinating perspective and a man that's counseled so many and talked about his faith and led so many people to strengthen their faith, that now he's reflecting upon that and what it's going to mean for his eternity. in and one of my favorite authors, she's got many, many -- [inaudible] ms. joyce meyers. she's got many books on leadership and be about overcoming challenges in her life. she was an abused child in her early years of her life, she

went through a lot of struggles, and it's about how ordinary people can do extraordinary things in their lives. so i always like to read encouraging, inspiring books on those topics. there's always more things i'd like to read, but limited time. but these are some of my favorite topics. >> oklahoma university president david boren talks about his book, "a letter to america." the former u.s. senator details what he feels are necessary steps to insure the country's survival as a global superpower. >> what is "a letter to america"? >> >> well, it really is, literally, an attempt to write to the people of the united states about the problems we face, the challenges we face, what our future needs to look like, what we should be doing, and i decided to write it in a very simple letter form after i had an experience. i was interviewing some of the brightest young people in america who are competing for the rhodes scholarship. and i asked them the question,

how long do you think america will be one of the world's leading superpower, or if not the leading superpower? and they had answered every tough question up to that time very, very quickly. there were about a dozen of them. i asked each one of them the same question in turn individually, and they couldn't answer the question. they looked down at their feet, they paused. i said, you know, we're just 6% of the world's population. china and india are going to have economies at the rate they're growing that'll be in gross terms as large as ours. they have ten times as many people. what makes you think we're always going to be the world's leading superpower? and they literally had not thought about it. and i thought we're knot in the top 2 anymore in our educational scores, k-12, our middle class is shrinking, our share of the world's wealth is going down 1% a year, very quick drop. why aren't they thinking about it? so i tried to help them, and i said, well, what are the things

you think will determine how long we're the world's leading power and most influential country in the world? and finally after a minute or two one of them said, education? i said, well, that's a good place to start because that's one of our great assets. if we're going to be the leader of the world we're only 6% of the population, we have to have all our intellectual talent in this country fully developed. we do right now have 90% of the greatest universities in the world according to world surveys even though we're only 6% of the population. so that has to be part of the answer. but what really worried me was you could tell they wanted to say forever, they just hadn't thought about even the possibility that we wouldn't be. and, you know, the interesting thing is ask that same question about six or seven years later to a group of honors students that i was teaching. and it was a totally different answer. instead some of 'em said ten years, twenty years, short

periods of time. so they'd gone from just assuming we would always lead the world to really having a pessimistic outlook just like two-thirds of the american people who think our future won't be as great as our past. so i was very disturbed by the reactions in both cases, but for very different reasons. >> what disturbed you? >> well, i think, first of all, in the beginning that we weren't talking about the important things enough, you know? we talk about scandal, or we talk about entertainment, or we talk about sports. not that i'm against sports. all those things are interesting things, but we needed to be talking about what's going to determine the future of these young people, how can we make our system start working better and come to better conclusions? how can we make sure that more young people are going to college? we've dropped from first in the world to 12th in the world in just eight years in the percentage of college-age population going on in the population. from first to 12th in eight

years. so we've got to get engaged. and out of frustration, i wrote this letter to my fellow americans saying, you know, we have a lot to think about. we can do it, we need that can-do american spirit, we don't need pessimism, but we better get about doing what needs to be done. >> what impact do you think the book has had? >> well, it's been interesting. i'm sure it's had influence with some, you know? you never think it's had a huge amount of influence, but various people who got interested in the book, some of them took it on themselves to send every member of congress and, in fact, every member of all the state legislatures a copy of the book. and it was amazing the number of letters i got back from that. some, for example, at some of the other state universities people got interested and began having the freshmen read it. and that made me feel really good. so there have been, there have been places in which i think it has been read but, you know, you just think about some of the

shocking things we need to work on, that only 7% of the students in the united states, college students, have to take a single course in american history or american government to graduate from college, and they don't know their history. and, my goodness, the high schoolers, half of them didn't know which side we were on in world war ii in a recent study half of them thought we were on the side of nazi germany. i mean, how are you going to build the kind of future you need for your country without knowing what happened in the past? and not to mention the cost of campaigns, what's happening, the grassroots democracy in our country. when the cost has gone up 30 times just since the carter/ford race. and now we have superpacs where people can write $5 million checks, and we've seen it change the course of how a primary's going when the money comes flooding in. so things like that and the fact that the democrats and republicans have forgotten how to work together. you know, there are a lot of things we can work on.

we have to unite and get together to do it. >> where did the idea come to write this book? where were you, what came to your mind? >> well, i guess from having that first experience in the rhodes scholarship interviews i started thinking about it. i thought, you know, if best and brightest in this country are not really thinking long and hard about the ten or so things we need to do if we're going to assure america's future, think about the rest of the population. we're oblivious to the kinds of challenges. you know, if you have a pearl harbor or you have something dramatic that happens to your country, we get together as americans, and we unite, and we make things happen. but when you're dealing with an emotion of our strength -- erosion of our strength not as just a dramatic single-day event like pearl harbor, sometimes we don't pay enough attention to it. and, you know, whether something destroys you like a thunder clap of some dramatic event or whether over a 10 or 15-year

period the leadership is really taken away from us in terms of the rest of the world, the result's the same. and a diminished experience, diminished opportunities for the next generation. so i just thought -- i wanted to sort of shake the american people and say pay attention, pay attention, you know? our middle class is shrinking 1% be o year, our two parties can't agree on anything. what would have happened at the end of world war ii if democrats and republicans hadn't gotten together and had the marshall plan? how hard was that? can you imagine what the republicans could have done to criticize the democrats for raising taxes on the american people to give it to countries like germany and italy that had fought against us and killed americans during world war ii? think of the 30-second attack spot you could have had. but instead there were some republicans like senator sanden burg who said, look, we've got to work together. i've got to work with secretary marshall across party lines because with otherwise the

communists are going to sweep in and take over all of western europe. so where is that spirit -- where has that spirit gone? our government's become dysfunctional in terms, all the two parties are doing is fighting each other in some way. and be i suggested in the book someday we're going to have to administer some shock therapy to get the two-party system working again, and maybe the way to do that is to get a democrat and republican to run together and be say we're going to set up a cabinet of half democrats and half republicans. we're going to have to do something really dramatic to shake this system back to its senses again and work together to take care of our budget deficits. everybody's going to have to join in, everybody's going to have to sacrifice, to think a little more about history before we plunge into someplace like afghanistan where al sander the great couldn't tame -- alexander the great couldn't tame those

tribes and neither could the british or the russians. we need to sit back and really, seriously, pool our best thinking in this country and work together again. >> since you've written a book, what has changed? >> well, unfortunately, i've written a little postscript that came out last year in a new little edition of the book. i don't think things have gotten better. they've gotten worse in a number of ways. the cost of campaigns, that's gotten worse. the inability of the two parties to work together has gotten worse. the shrinkage of our standing in the world, i mean, in terms of our share of the world's economic output has escalated, it's accelerated. our rankings in education, k-12, have fallen even more, and as i said, the percentage of our students going on to college, we've dropped from twist to 12 -- first to 12th in eight years. so in this period of time since i've written the book, i think our challenges have gotten even

more severe. and above all i really worry about the pessimism in this country. i think some of it comes from some of the things i've mentioned. people, when you ask them do you think congress represents people like you or cares about people like you? you know, only about 8-10% say yes. 90% say no. they know the average member of congress gets far more than half of their campaign contributions from people outside the state, have never even been in their districts. they don't feel like we at the grassroots have the ability to do much, because this is awash in money, and the candidate, 95% of the time, with the most money wins. they really become cynical. that's frightening. cynicism is a frightening thing. it begins to break the bond between representatives who are supposed to represent us and government and ourselves. and i -- and then when they say two-thirds, sometimes three-fourths say i'm

pessimistic about the future, i don't think my children and grandchildren will have as good a chance as i've had, i almost want to shout back at them, that's not american. we've always believed we can do it, we could provide even more opportunities for the next generation, and every generation of americans has had greater opportunities. so i want to say, no be, no, stop that. instead let's get together. we can solve this problem. we're a free country, so i'm an optimist. i don't think that china, for example s going to overtake us in the long run. why? we're a free country, they're a controlled society. i think freedom itself creates an environment of opportunity and creativity. look at the number of nobel prize winners we still have compared to the whole rest of the world put together. we dominate. so i'm going to believe in our future, and, you know, the other

thing is these students that i teach at the university, that i'm with every day, they make me optimistic about the future. we have hundreds of thousands, literally, of volunteer hours performed by our students who are already getting life experience, out helping the rest of the community, working with nonprofits. for example, our journalism college has an advertising agency where students are doing pro bono work for nonprofit organizations, and they're learning how to do a job and work at the same time. i could go on and on with the kinds of opportunities, and we also have them out seeing the rest of the world. in the u.s., only 2% of students study abroad. that's where we were 15 years ago. now we're up to 25%. so we're doing things to try to

prepare our students to live in this global society, and they're all going to be living in it. >> you mention pessimism, if we could go back, if you've noticed an increase in pessimism. how do you think your opinion, your plan to -- could change that? >> well, i think that, perhaps, there are a couple of things that give us the most pessimism. two or three, maybe. one is we're wise enough to know you can't live beyond your mean forever. even if our politicians don't have the courage to say, look, we're going to have to increase our revenue, and we're going to have to reduce our spending, we're going to have to do both, and we're going to have to touch every single american in the process. shared sacrifice. instead one party says don't touch our constituencies, the ones that get entitlements, and the other ones say don't tax the top 1%, even if they have 30% of the income anymore.

we'll have to do all of that. there can't be any sacred cows, democrat and republican, they're all going to have to share in the sacrifice. there's something more important than these two parties. it's called the united states of america, and we have to get together and do that. i think the system awash in money, i think that makes people feel representative democracy is not working because it's bought and paid for. they don't listen to most of us unless you can write a $5 million check to a super pac, who's going to listen to you? i really think that's a big part of it. i'd like to see the

. >> and senator chuck hagel, a former republican senator from nebraska and i, former democratic co-chair, we try to give bipartisan advice on sensitive national security issues to the president. the group works together very, very well, and i think it could

do the same thing with key members of the current congressional committees, and it's something that really ought to be tried, and whoever gets elected president this next time, i hope they'll try something like that. >> you mentioned the advisory board. can you tell us a little bit about that? >> well, i can tell you a little bit about that. the -- it's mainly composed of more senior people, for example, i chaired the most sensitive, secret programs of the government and helped to oversee agencies like the cia and the rest of it. many of us have experience on this committee. others are out of public office that dealt with national security issues. so the president, when he has something really sensitive going on, he wants input, advice or even advice about broad issues.

obviously, the world's going to change as we wind down the wars in iraq and afghanistan, and the role of the intelligence community is going to change. it's kind of like when the cold war ended, and you had half the intelligence community, maybe 90 percent of it, focused on the soviet union as a target back then. well, obviously, the world became much more complex, and you needed to know a lot of things, and it wasn't just one country you were watching. so it had the change. we try to give advice on big, broad questions like that and sometimes on very small, specific, secret programs, are they doing what they should. so i think it gives the president a good sounding board for outside advice. >> given the political climate today, are you pessimistic or optimistic about our future in reference to historical context. i heard you say it earlier, if you don't know where you've been, you're not going to know

where you're going. >> well, still with all the worries i have, the parties must relearn history, i really worry about budget deficits and, again, just like the marshall plan, it's going to take the cooperation of the two parties to happen. they're going to have to quit worrying about taking the blame game. in spite of all of that, i'm still an optimist. and as i said, part of it is my faith in a free society. i think a free society is going to defeat in the long run economic competition or whatever. they're going to win out over a controlled society. and be, but above all else it's my contact. i feel like the luckiest person in the world to be with our students who are our future leaders. they are just an inspiration to me. i can't tell you how deeply i believe in them, and i can

hardly wait to see when they're in charge of the country. we're going to see a lot of improvement. i believe when they get in charge, we're going really make great strides. i just bereave in them, and i'm so glad i have the ability to be president of a university at this moment, and i get to share friendships with them, and i get to be with them, and i get to try to answer their probing questions and all the rest of it and to feel their energy, their talent, above all, their desire to give back. they're just people with good values, so that makes me believe in the future of america. >> president boren, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> booktv is in oklahoma city, oklahoma, this weekend. with the help of our local cable partner, cox communications, we bring you some of the area's literary and historical churl. culture. >> i'm carey mcgruder with the

university of oklahoma libraries, and we're a premier research facility in the field of the history of science. we have nearly 100,000 volumes stored in two climate-controlled vaults. part of the history of science program brings students and scholars from around the world to use these books. galileo's first book is here. it's, it's his rarest book. it was printed in only 60 copies. it's called "on the geometrical and military compass." the operation of the compass, geometrical and military, by gal gal lay low galilei, printed in 606 -- 1606. but i'd like for you to note if you, if you were here and would rub your finger across some of the letters like that o, the type was very crisp. the metal type, it bit into the

paper. and you can feel every crease. youyou could almost read this blindfolded, and that's because this is the first copy off the press. this was the copy that galley low -- galileo corrected. it's his own copy, it's his proof copy, and it contains corrections in his own hand that are found in every other printed copy of this book. so this is the first book that galileo wrote and his own copy of it. the second -- oh, let me show you a later edition of it includes a depiction of the instrument. it's an ancestor of the slide rule with two arms that would pivot, and it was useful for a wide variety of tasks including

surveying uneven topography, building fortifications in a field, estimating elevations and distances. it's a remarkable instrument. is so this book is the manual for how to use it. the instrument was publicized by one of galileo's students who plagiarized this manual, translated it into latin and made it look like he himself was the inventer of the instrument. so galileo's second book was a defense by galileo galilei of felon teen nobility against the impostbers from milan. imposters from milan. so this is where galileo explained court proceedings in venice that proved that he was the original inventer of the instrument and not capra. this is galileo's handwriting. he gave this copy to a friend of

his who was a physician in venice. it's bound with his copy of his first book. so the first two books of galileo both contain his own handwriting, both quite rare, written when he was an obscure mathematician in the republic of venice. now, what made him famous overnight was this third book. one of the most famous books in the his right-of-way science. history of science. it's the earliest published report of observations made with the telescope. with the telescope galileo observed patterns of light and shadow on the moon that showed that the moon has real surface topography. that white spot would be a mountain peak illuminated by the sun, the white triangle pointing toward it, that would be foothills rising, rising toward the peak. the next night it might look something like this where two

chains of mountains are converging toward it, and the night after that it might look something like that which we call a crater. so galileo wasn't mapping the moon here, he was showing that there's something there to be mapped. and this discovery set off a 17th century race to the moon. not a race to go there, but a race to map it. so mathematicians across europe were persuaded by galileo's argument that the moon was not smooth like a marble as the physicists said, but it was rough and earthlike, and maybe the earth, also, could be a happily body -- heavenly body if moon were a heavenly body. the grand duchess, christina, began to be uneasy about galileo's defense of coperson kim. she had some advisers who told her that to think of the sun being in the center of the universe was contrary to

scripture. so galileo wrote a letter to the grand duchess christina that circulated in manuscript and be was only published posthumously. this is the first printed edition of it in which he showed that scripture tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. and the bible is true, but -- and it never errs -- but its interpreters sometimes err. and there's a unity of truth between science and scripture if both are interpreted correctly. so that one should never let what is obscure in one interpret what is clear in another. this study of scripture and science was endorsed by pope john paul ii in 1992, and he cited st. augustin throughout. his method of approaching scripture had a lo