society. c-span: your chapter, the conquest of human nature--i--i--if--first of all, what is it, and then where do the different party people end up on this subject? >> guest: the concept of the conquest of human nature arises out of a phrase in francis bacon, the philosopher of science, who spoke of science as trying to achieve the conquest of nature. before this, the--the old world view was that we are part of nature and we live in harmony with nature. and scholars talk about the enchanted view of nature. think of the american indians who believed that nature embodied spirits. and the modern view is, no, nature, in a sense, is separate from us, and we can conquer it. we can look at the amoeba at the micro--in--under the microscope we can traverse the heavens. we can, in a sense, seize control over our surroundings, and--and we have done it. we have conquered nature to a large degree.

.. >> we need to use it to reaffirm humanity. c-span: and what about antiaging

drugs? >> guest: life expectancy in this country 100 years ago was 47 years old. now it has been increased by a lot in the last century. if it can be increased even more, that is what science is for. the people who make me nervous or not the people that say let's try to use biotechnology to heal disease and extend lifespan. i think all of that -- those are moral gains and that is why it sciences good. is the old temptation in the garden that we can become a god, of course, we are like god, that is the old utb utopian thing. c-span: what you know about the silicon chips in the body? >> in the recent book about the inventor that talks about this he says pretty much computers

are getting smarter by today and the computer has be the best chess player player in the world. and it will soon have the capacity of the human brain. that man's creation of technology may overtake man unless man merges with the machine. that we must take this technology and expect to become one with it. so we hear a lot of robotics and this notion of it being in our bodies. one guy is actually doing it and what he does is he has chips in his arms and uses them to open doors, the secretary can phm, and he wants to put chips in his wife's body as well. he wants to speak to the internet, through it. c-span: how does it work? >> the silicon chip is wireless with the internet. it's a wireless device. c-span: what does it do? and makes it a very primitive

thing. you try very hard to integrate the chips kids with the processing power of the body. which i think that it is a questionable thing. that we are machines, our genes our software, and our brains are information processing. all that being the case that there is no reason that software that is within us cannot be updated through software that we are making. it's a radical notion and i think slightly crazy, but many of the best minds in the scientific world are pretty enthused about it. c-span: how would you sign your political views today? >> guest: i would describe myself as an independent conservative. what i mean by conservative is that i am a guy leaves and the crooked timber of human nature. i believe that human nature is warped and we need institutions and ideas to constantly rainout end. and the liberal impulses, it

tends to locate defects not in us but in society and to blame society for in a sense what we do wrong. a belief in freedom and personal responsibility and moral decency. those are my core beliefs. the way that they rss can differ. for example, i take the issue of inequality much more differently than i did before. why? because the old idea was a rich work for a company, you went and he you were tired and hoped to be well off. wealth was the reward for meritorious life. today it is kind of hard to argue with a guy starts a new company and for years later he is worth $30 million in doesn't have to work another day in his life. it's hard to argue the same point. i'm worried that when people believe this comic. in a sense, the lottery of success and the american dream,

the idea that we play by the rules, you get your reward, i would take up more seriously than many fellow conservatives. c-span: you came over here in 1978 and what kind of a person were you in india, and did you like the idea. i mean, how did you find out about being able to come here? >> guest: i was a relatively timid student who went to a high school that was run by jesuit missionaries. it never crossed my mind to come to america. but the rotary club mini presentation at the high school and they said that it would be a broadening experience that we could send them abroad to learn about america and other companies as well. and we will have an american kid come and stay in your house. my parents thought that was kind

of a cool idea. the idea was for me to come to a year and get a sampling of america and then go back and do what sort of aspiring indian families want, which is to get your advanced degree from london and then come back to india. but my life took a different shape. i came to america and i fell in with a group of people who are interested in very different things and i found my professional academic interest shifted toward american politics and towards philosophy and ideas. i was always writing, but i thought that was a hobby and i thought i couldn't make a living doing that stuff. c-span: what happened with the kid that went to your parents house? >> guest: he lived with us for three months and other families for three months. he went back and is today working for a bank in germany. c-span: when he came here you use of you have four different families? >> guest: i did. they were in a very small town called patagonia, arizona, 60 miles south of tucson,

60 miles from the mexican border. my high school counselor, who had nothing to do took me under his wing and said, you will be my project for the year and so on. so in a strange way i kind of ended up almost by a series of accidents, becoming interested in trend to politics. c-span: the host families. >> guest: that's right, the idea if he spent three months with each family and you would get a cross-section of american life. and i did. i stayed with a wealthy rancher and a clergymen who every time charlie would come on the radio, he would come and turn it off. you want to protect the nice indian boy. a lot of my comfort came out of that year. because i saw students who came to college and felt alienated.

even though they were on a beautiful and pristine campus. they felt like that and i haven't felt that way. i thought my year as an exchange student was instrumental in giving me an insight. c-span: was there one person that was a strong influence on you? >> guest: i would say that the person who had a good influence on me would be my mentor, which is in english professor at dartmouth. here is a guy that was conservative, but not in a boring way. he was playful and would sometimes walk around the campus and a raccoon coat and it was an idea to infuriate other professors and get them to argue with him. he was a very colorful individual and he opened up the world of philosophy that has affected my life. c-span: is he still alive?

>> guest: yes, he is not teaching anymore, but he lives in retirement in a community outside of dartmouth. and he is living a very full life. as far as i can tell, very productive. c-span: what book is for you? >> guest: this is my fourth book. i have written about political correctness, about reagan, this is my take on the economy. c-span: how old are you now and what is your life school now? >> guest: i'm 39 years old and i realized that life wanting to do is 14 or 15 good books. so i'm thinking, what is the contribution that i can make it work in academia, i worked as an author. my life has a tremendous balance. i can think and read and i go out there and spend a lot of time talking to students and business groups getting ideas out there. so i feel like i'm doing what i

am gifted to do. i feel very grateful about that. he won our guest has been dinesh d'souza, this is his latest book, "the virtue of prosperity: finding values in an age of techno-affluence." thank you very much. >> guest: it is my pleasure. >> the redesigned website features notable authors about their books. there you can view the programs and use a searchable database and find links to the authors blogs, and twitter feeds. book notes.org. here's a look at some books are being published this week. in "killing jesus: the history", martin daugaard details the death of jesus and the events leading up to it. and the development of richard doc dawkins in his book "an

appetite for wonder", making a scientist. and in the book by keith ellison, "my country tis of thee." and max hastings explains the books europe goes to war. in fighting the dragon lady, monique brinson gallery presents the first lady and her exile since 1987. and the plan to bring the planet back to its natural balance on our last best hope for a future on earth. and in kansas city lightning come in the rise and times of charlie parker, he recounts the life of the late alan weisman.

watch for these authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> since 1998, booktv has shown over 40,000 hours of top nonfiction authors. including bob woodward. >> he preemptively felt the this was right, and i was horrified. and i was delighted. >> i was so that people were different. they obviously rose to that occasion, that if i can create something that is so moving and this can be the distance that you sometimes need. and people understand and understanding is exactly what is fundamental. >> the point is that none of the relevant factors considered in this is regarded as one of the

half-dozen cases where the theory entails the use of military force was legitimate. >> the only national television network devoted exclusively to nonfiction books every weekend. throughout the fall, we are marking 15 years of booktv on c-span2. >> we are in prospect gardens in new jersey. this is a garden that alan wilson originally designed. when she was in the white house, she brings the white house gardener back here at prospect house and she says to the gartner, let's re-create this section of the garden at the white house. this becomes the famous rose garden at the white house. ellen tragically doesn't live to see this completed. however, she is dying in the summer of 1914 and wheeled out into the space outside in a wheelchair.

but she doesn't live to see the completion of this vision that she had the roses blooming at the white house. >> meet this first and second wife of president woodrow wilson. tonight, live at woodrow wilson on c-span and c-span3 and c-span radio. >> welcome to fredericksburg on booktv. with the help of our our communication cable partners, for the next half hour we will explore the history and literary scene of this virginia city located about 45 miles south of the nation's capital. we will explore how media coverage has affected the election and meet other authors who help us understand the roots. >> james monroe is president of the united states, born in virginia in 1768. he visited fredericksburg for about three years during the 1780s. >> we begin our special look at fredericksburg as we learn about

james farmer. >> i wept during some speeches, especially during the speech of a rabbi and walter rizzo of the united autoworkers, and particularly during the now famous speech of martin luther king jr. certainly in my memory, a time when people become larger than themselves and maybe the coin a phrase, larger than life. because hundreds of thousands, white and black, prompted them to believe in something that was outside of themselves and bigger than they. >> james farmer taught from 1985 until just before he passed away in the summer of 1999. he was an incredible teacher and

lecturer. i would argue that his time in the classroom was one of the most significant moments in american public education were a great leader had an opportunity for more than a decade to interact with students on a regular basis and regale them with the civil rights movement. >> many people wonder how it started. doctor king one day said come on, you all, let's march and everyone got together in march. were whitney young were others. >> he brought the strategies of peaceful nonviolent resistance to the movement in the early 1940s. he was the founder and organizer of the congress of racial equality and he was the inspiration for the 1961 freedom

ride. he thought that any of the civil rights organizationsride. he thought that any of the civil rights organizations that existed in the 1940s and 1950s were ill-prepared for the test because they focused on one particular thing. the fellowship was a pacifist organization. the naacp and the urban league's use economic tactics. and he thought that instead a grassroots organization that would bring together folks of different faith and background and political beliefs, they could spring up spontaneously at various moments in various places in effort to the larger and broader movement that was absolutely critical. the history of the civil rights movement demonstrates a score and both that he gave to the groups throughout the country was essential to the success. james farmer's wife was always

present at the creation but never there for the big moment. so he retells in his autobiography of the march on washington that is a big event. all of the civil rights groups were coming together and it was going to be a significant and historical moment in the nations history. but he wasn't there. he was scheduled that day to be one of the dozen or so speakers who left remarks, but instead he was put in jail. >> i watched the march on washington on television. our local citizens of this town in louisiana talk about this in the parish and brought me a television set and the jailers allowed them to bring it up to myself. i watched it and i was impressed. i wept during the speeches. i wept especially during the speech of a rabbi and walter

rizzo of the united auto workers and particularly during the now famous speech of martin luther king jr. i have a dream. i wished, of course, that i had better. >> is one of the nation's distinguished civil rights leaders, he was given the opportunity to leave, but he declined because he would've left behind those that would be marching with him and he chose not to do that. >> one of the things that he always enjoyed telling in washington was his days debating malcolm asked. malcolm x. was the fiercest debater of the american political scene of the 1960s. while most of the civil rights leaders tended to stay away from malcolm and urged them not to be with him, he said absolutely not, he chose on numerous occasions to engage milk and

verbal argument. >> after we had five or six debates, he suggested that we stop debating each other and i agreed with him. he invited me on 25th street have coffee with them in there with him was a gentleman and he said, james, i think we need to stop debating each other because we are not doing anything but conducting a search, two black guys belting built each other's brains out for the amusement of largely white audiences. and you know what i'm going to say. i'm not going to convince you and you are not going to convince me. i can make a speech for you and you can make a speech for me. >> farmers, freedom rides, it was an explosive and troubling and threatening episode for the kennedys in the early 1960s.

a new president trying to establish his presidency, of course dealing with the soviet threat and he had a renegade civil rights leader that was going into the deep south and causing a ruckus and turmoil. to the extent that he was a leader of the freedom rides forced the kennedys to move aggressively and ultimately bring in the national guard for protection for the freedom riders. which was something that the kennedys didn't want to have to deal with. of course, when the freedom rides made national news, and in fact, it international news, which is here in the history books across the nation, when that happened and it became evident that there was a serious race problem in one of the kennedys would have to deal with, it changed the national

conversation. we will never know the degree to which john kennedy himself would've pushed for some of the momentous civil rights legislation that occurred immediately after his death. his assassination. but certainly we can say that james farmer was one of the kennedy administration had to deal with the race problem in america that happened sooner than they would have liked. one of the stories that farmer tells is that he sat with lyndon johnson during the momentous civil rights legislation and made the case for an argument of what we know as affirmative action. some historians have referred to him as the father of historic affirmative action. president william clinton presented him with the medal of freedom. and in doing so, he said frankly

i don't think that he has gotten the credit or the recognition that he deserves. and i think that that is probably a fitting legacy. he was in many ways the unsung hero of the civil rights movement. always there, always missing this on the big stage. what he did was to recognize a lifetime of achievement, which was a significant contribution to the american story. he becomes familiar with the story, and i would hope that they take away the idea that one person who dedicate themselves to a cause greater than themselves is able to make a difference. that is certainly what he did. that is what his life story was about. that is the beautiful gift that he gave to us here and to students across the country.

>> booktv recently visited fredericksburg, virginia to bring you some of the literary and historical culture. next a look at media coverage of presidential elections over the years. >> in the book, the nightly news nightmare, in this book you look at the elections going back to 1988 and we see pretty much a downward trajectory in terms of the seriousness of the coverage. not only do we see a decline in terms of the coverage of this, which is our biggest concern, and perhaps the most important for the viable local conversation after the election, but that is a very important part of what is going on here. in 1988, network television especially still ruled the political conversation.

there were newspapers out there and political elites and others who are paying a lot of attention to politics if you're looking at the newspapers. but most people by the 1980s were getting their news in the same way that they did in the 60s and 70s. that was primarily those news hours that nbc and cbs had. there was no fox news. there was c-span, but the coverage that most people were paying attention to included no internet, but the ordinary people, they were not online in this era. cable was still out there, but the audience for cnn was a fraction of what you're seeing with the big three networks. as we look at the media today, it is pretty lowly regarded by the american public. the mayor asked to give a grade to the media. the grades are routinely lower

than most college students would want to receive. ac or sometimes a c. in other media outlets are in the campaign. you have a situation where you are really looking at a difficult environment for the media. the audio audience is also shrinking and the traditional media of a generation ago. the audience is smaller and the attention is reduced. the revenues are falling and this creates a difficult problem fast food journalism is the way to think about it. what you have is a complicated matter. let's say you want to fix america's health care situation where the deficit. a 102nd sound bite, how do you explain about how you want to fix these problems. and it's short attention span

comes to speak about this. those segments are 90 seconds and not a really long one, that's not a long time to speak about he and he said she said or the video about this 47%. this is something you can hone in on because story is simple, the nerd of the square. in many ways people are not programmed. one of the things that happens is if you are used a lot of the junk food journalism that television provides, you're going to look for more and more of that. television had created a big problem for themselves. and so how do you get the economy moving again? how are you going to fix health care and the tens of millions of people who are working but don't have health insurance. those conversations are very

complicated. it is a lot more fun to talk about bill clinton in his personal life than it is to talk about his plan for fixing health care and it's a lot more interesting to talk about barack obama and where he's going to go for his summer vacation and these issues of what is going on with the first lady and how much it cost to travel when the white house goes around the country. these things are very simple to grasp. so here's where we are with respect to austerity and infrastructure spending and where we are with these other issues as well. at its best the media to really inform the public and create an environment in which there could be an effective conversation. ideally the candidates themselves would also provide a lot of substance with what they have to say. but they have to get on the media and they want the free media. so even though they maybe have very detailed plans like romney

and obama did, it's not really about those plans but the conversation is about a trip to europe and whether obama should have gone to berlin and john mccain spent his day when obama was in germany, having lunch at a german restaurant in ohio talking about why the campaign should be conducted in the united states. it is lovely from the point of view of news. you package it in 60 seconds of your done for the day. but from the point of view of a country and word is going, when you think about problems that we had back then, it is really not satisfactory. it creates a real problem. the public owns the airwaves. the network has a public duty to inform us and that is part of the deal that basically allows them to print money.

honestly this is a limited broadcast spectrum. in washington, for example, its channel four, channel seven, channel nine. there are a lot of people who would like to be his channel four, channel seven, or channel nine. that someone marty has that end they can make money in exchange for this license is this public trust, this duty to inform. some places do a better job than others. what we see is that it is a downward spiral and we think it's a really important thing to draw the public's attention to and i talked to reporters about these findings in one of the things that they often say is that they are under so much pressure from their editors and they have to limit it and keep it simple. they have to assume the worst about the american public about

how sophisticated they are about politics and how interested they are. as a result, it is part of this election. for motivated citizens, you can use the internet and get all of the information on the internet. but one of the things that is a problem that people have is that they are not editors and they don't know necessarily about spending a lot of time thinking about the quality of the source of the webpage that they are looking at or to actually generated this that they are looking at. if you rely on what pops up on a google search, for deficit, you may not get an effective and understanding of the financial problems of this country and what we face. this is like the media and campaigns are so important. if you don't have this judgment they give you what you need to

know, it's a lot more work to figure this out on her own and most people are not going to stick with it. this is one reason that we are not having a national conversation but these little conversations in these different groups. the people that will listen to this and the drudge report online. they have different ideas about what is going on and what the problem is and how they would define it. so you have this in the media environment for politicians to govern. part of the reason is that the media doesn't do a better job of laying out the challenges. print is a better job in television but it has to compete with television. even when you look at the ways that "the new york times" or "the washington post" had covered the campaign with michael dukakis and george bush.

as well as the internet age. the challenge today is politics. it is more than just winning a news site. it was much easier to be a politician 25 or 30 years ago. you have to focus with cnn and "the washington post." if you could do that, you were golden. they ran the story in a way that you wanted to frame them. and all is right with the world. nowadays you cannot win us and call it a day. you have to win the cycle on twitter, which is instantaneous and facebook is also instantaneous. so you have to work so much harder to try to control this not just on network television, which is still important, but also to bring the younger voters to your site. in many ways, one of the bigger

problems, because it has to be so instantaneous, coverage is resulting in reporters making one of mistakes. to put everything into the proper contents and balance. i did it before that twitter age. i didn't have to put something out that moment. i have time to think about it and make that extra call. what you're seeing now is the rush to be first. even on the webpages of news organizations, with the breaking news channel of cnn or fox news or whatever you might go for that. it creates a great temptation to be fast rather than accurate. and these are things that are in conflict. to get it right takes time.

but you don't have time in today's media. things are set, they are unset, and the difficulties are really hard. because the old mark twain adage that a lie goes all the way around the world is really, i think, it's a warning for us all on the twitter and facebook page. so on the other hand we also have a much greater responsibility for what is true and what is not. >> more from our recent trip to fredericksburg, virginia. we visited the area with the help of our local cable partner, fox communications. >> today at the james monroe museum at fredericksburg, virginia, we are talking about james monroe, the president of the united states. like all men of his class in his

era were great readers and they all had a great love of books. monroe did not have an extensive library like thomas jefferson or john adams had. but he did own and collect books and he bought books, jefferson gave him a copy on notes of virginia, and they gave him the books that he was writing on slavery in these sorts of things. then he would buy books. and some of them were on law, government, history. these sorts of things. various language, but in french which was a diplomatic language. a lot of folks spoke in french.

those books in spanish and german, all of these part of the international library makes it eclectic. but it is contemporary and he was also interested in writing books and was not very good at it. he was not exactly successful. he started working on an autobiography that he never finished and working on a more analytical political thing which he wanted to explain why the united states was succeeding as a republic when the republic's history had always failed, going back to classical groups and he never finished and it has since been published. but it really was not a successful book. what we have here is when monroe

went to the diplomatic mission in france in the 1790s, right when he left, france broke relations with the united states. and monroe was a jeffersonian, being a jeffersonian diplomat and being a diplomat under a federalist administration, the federalist administration blamed him for the break in relations and he was said to have bungled the mission. this interpretation still gets thrown around. munro responded to this by publishing a book and arguing that it was the policies of the adams and administration and it wasn't anything that he did. and he actually had a break for

the four years he was in paris. he wrote a 65 page program, and published another 200 pages of documents. schilling that it really wasn't his fault that it happened, but that he was part of an administration policy. the book received a fair amount of currency and it was something that was still being debated. he had lost his currency because it was no longer a very public issue anymore. we began working on the papers of james monroe in 1989. the first step is to know how

many documents are are and what they are. and there were some that we knew about. there's another major collection at the new york public library. the collection here at the monroe museum there are various others around us while we knew that this was due to his long standing with the government. we are talking about the papers and the state archives as well. we printed up these little cards that we sent round to libraries that possibly have these collections. do have a law, a few, and we had a fairly good response to that. once we had that core, we began

to research the documents and prepare them for publication. there are a number of projects like this, jefferson papers, the abraham lincoln papers, giving them coverage. there are three sorts of progress situations going on. the big project that started in the 1950s, the washington papers from the madison papers, publishing everything they can find. letters to and from and doing a comprehensive project these comprehensive editions of the papers. it's trying to publish everything they can find related to jefferson. these are part of the project and it started in 1950 and will

go for another 25 or 30 years, probably. there was no one who is really willing to pay for this sort of undertaking. so we are doing a more se we are addition wking. so we are doing a more selective addition we are going through the papers that we are pulling out the documents that we consider critical to telling munro's story. so we will do approximately 10 all humans, which will be about a 500 or 700,000 documents out of the 700,000. what we are really aiming at in the publishing of his papers is how does this one individual of the choices he makes the decisions he makes, how does that influence the formation of the country.

>> jeff mcclurkin joins us to talk about his book now. the local author sat down with us. he talked about the reintegration of confederate veterans to their families and to the united states following the civil war. >> is about the impacts of the war on the 3400 men and their families in danville, virginia, and it is also about the way that those confederate veteran families in the county and in virginia attempted to deal with the consequences of war and what happened to those who lived in what happens to the family. you'll one of the things that i talk about quite a bit in the

book is a conflict of southern social welfare. welfare is typically a that is given to those who are needy in society. for much of the 19th century, that kind of aid to the poor were widows or others did not happen at the state level. it happened in local areas, family members would help each other out and churches would help each other out, local elites would help the media out. talk about each of these options and opportunities in the context of this time. but the problem is that there are so many people who benefited in the aftermath of the civil war. but they ultimately break down. the state of virginia has to help him and stepped out and do more than they've ever done before. they want to do so and pretty limited ways.

it does so initially in the context for soldiers who have lost an arm or a leg and it's a brief movement toward that during the civil war, but a sustained movement and it happens in virginia and many of the confederate states of the north. that is basically it in terms of state welfare until the 1880s. and you see the state government began to do what is known as redemption in other states and that happens a little earlier in virginia where the republican dominated governments are kicked out and conservative board democratic government comes back in. we began to see a lot of investment and assistance to the confederate soldiers and confederate widows in some cases even to the daughters of the confederate soldiers.

traditionally we talk about that in terms of pensions. you know, annual payments of $2130 per year. these pale in comparison and we need to start offering most pensions and payments in 1862. for the word is halfway over. and in a confederate state, you don't see is really into 1880s. so they have had to sort of survive for 20 years even to get to that point. but at the same time we're not talking about a bunch of money. it's not even what we think of as an annual salary for our cultural labor at the time. but it does matter and we have kept some families out of the poorhouse as has been announced. and then you see increased pressure on the part of virginia and people to provide this

system. they are writing heart-wrenching letters to the legislators and the governor is asking for assistance and help terri and pointing out that they could be making sacrifices for the state and the confederacy. one of the confederacy doesn't exist anymore, there are still that these men have sacrificed, family members have sacrificed. but they deserve some kind of support. so there is a southern social welfare system that i talk about emerging in response to the failure of the old judicial system of families and elites and of churches. being able to provide enough support for everyone. in interviews expansion of the mental institutions. one of the things that i found them going into the admissions records and estate records of those who were sent there is that over a decade, about 12% of

the admissions were there because of the war. also what became clear in studying this is that these are the people who are the most violent and had no one to care for them. these were the people who would wander off. it was a danger to themselves or others and they represented in many ways the tip of the iceberg of the psychological impact of war. and that is a very important piece of southern social welfare. before there was such a thing as ptsd, there were clearly people suffered from things that look like ptsd. we have to be careful consideration of these modern definitions of the past. but there is something substantial that is important going on. there is a parallel tween experiences of returning veterans of vietnam and returning veterans of iraq and afghanistan and returning veterans in virginia as well.

so here we are talking about the subsequent tenniel and it wasn't really that long ago that we were paying them to support this. sporting a legacy of that. i think that is amazing. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to fredericksburg, virginia, and other cities visited by her local content vehicles, go to c-span.org/local content. >> about every four years, some for global power has tried to come in and dominate afghan and control it and use it for its own purposes. there have been periods of afghan history when the rulers of afghanistan have taken advantage of the geographical position of afghanistan to play a sort of neutrality cause using

the favoritism towards one global power, weighing that out against the possibility of leading towards the other global power to keep both of them somewhat at bay. this has been the diplomatic strategy is successful afghan rulers wherever there have been many. the cold war, for example, was a notable period, both the ussr in the united states were interested in afghanistan and competing to enlarge their influence in the country, somehow because of the counterbalancing of those two forces, there was a period when the afghans were sort of in control of their own destiny. during that period, we saw modernization of change in afghanistan that was more rapid and sort of dramatic that you have seen anywhere in this country. that period ended when the pendulum of trying to sway back and forth between afghanistan and the outer world, it just

started to swing so fast and so far that it finally crashed and the country succumbed to a coup by the small communist group, which was then quickly followed by the soviet invasion. i would contend that from that database, we are still the aftermath of the after effects of the soviet invasion. the soviet invasion pretty much destroyed the fabric of the country. you know, the 6 million refugees drove out of the country, the destruction of the villages, the tearing apart of the tribal structures and the creation of a state award in which the old traditional afghan systems for generating leadership gave way to a new system which was in a state of chaos and if you had a gun and were good with it, you would probably end up being an important guy.

that brought into being another class of afghan leaders corps commanders. now they call them warlords. and that answered the call. those guys started tearing the cities apart. in the wake of that, now we are in the country and i think that we have come in was something of the same idea that the soviets had. which was this was a primitive country in a lot of trouble. if we can restore everything produced material benefits for the people, they will be grateful if come to our side. there is more to it than that, however, afghans are very interested in material benefits like anyone is. but there is a question of the reconstruction of the afghan institutions and societies and the soul and the family structure and the reconciliation of all of these contending factors on the afghan part.

the taliban business is not completely separate from the contentions within afghan society over dominating the identity of afghanistan. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here are some of the books that were published in 2000. booktv's third year on c-span2. first they killed my father was released. she was on a booktv in 2000. >> the vietnamese had invaded them and i am staying with my brothers and my sister at the internally displaced camp. the people's camp and they had caught a member and they have put them into prison. but the people rioted in demand and they gave them over and they

had a public execution. and i was nine years old and witnessed my first public execution. >> you also write that the soldiers had been hanged bobbing up and down like a chicken, blood flowing down the forehead and ears in dripping from his chin. the man i almost feel pity for him, but it's too late to let go and go back. it's too late for my parents and my country. as you hear those words, do you feel that moment? do you feel fear? >> yes. i have spent so many years wishing that i never saw it. it let and printed memory. it was too late for them and it was too late for me. >> political commentator bill o'reilly spoke and he was published in 2000 as well as the

drudge manifesto. flags of our fathers is also released that year. his book, which later became a movie, recounts the military service of the sixth man in the iconic iwo jima flag raising photo, one is his father. >> ready to get the idea for this book? >> i wanted to find my father. he died at the age of 70 in 1994. he had never talked about it. i phoned my mother after he died and i said, mom, there must have been pillow talk and tell me what what dad said about iwo jima. and she said he only talked about it once so won't take long, on our first date. seven or eight disinterested minutes and never again did i hear the words iwo jima from your father. well, what was going on is that my brother mark was in my father's office suite and opens

the secret closet door. two cardboard boxes, plain and ordinary like john bradley. in those boxes were surprised to learn that my dad had saved 50 years of iwo jima memories. at the bottom of one of the boxes was a letter that he had written home to his parents three days after this. in the letter he wrote that i had something to do with raising an american flag, and it was the happiest moment of my life. >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week. in killing jesus, that history, bill o'reilly and martin daugaard detail the events leading up to the death of jesus of nazareth. richard dawkins recounts his childhood and the development of his intellectual curiosity at oxford university, which led to the writing of his first book in his book an appetite for wonder, the making of a scientist. in my country, to the the, keith ellison, the first muslim to be

elected to congress presents his thoughts on what needs to change in government to accommodate the variety of beliefs and the united states. and military historian max hastings explains events that led to world war i in catastrophe, 1914, your best war. in fighting the dragon lady, monique princeton every presents the first interview with the south vietnamese first lady since her exile in 1987. and alan weiss and in bringing the plant back to its natural balance for our last best hope, a future on earth. earth. and the rise in times of charlie parker. the family recounts the life of a late saxophonist. look for these titles and more this coming week and watch for the authors on booktv and on booktv.org. >> the c-span online archives will redefine social studies education in america. thanks to the video archiving

capabilities, the video library is a great resource for you to view and share content anytime. it is easy. here is how. go to c-span.org and go to the video library to watch the newest video under the most recent tab. click on what you want to watch and click on play. you can also search for a keyword or find a person, just type in their name and search and go to people. go to their biography page and scroll down to their appearances. you can also share what you're watching and add a title and description and then click on share and send it by e-mail and facebook and twitter or google plus. the c-span video library is searchable and easy and free. created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local cable and satellite provider. >> from the 28th annual eagle

forum summit, greg autry discusses "death by china." confronting the dragon and a global call to action. next on c-span2. >> let's move across the pacific ocean ocean and talk about china for a bed. greg autry is an entrepreneur, writer and educator who focuses on china. ..