categories, and the quality was just incredibly high. everyone had about three or tour minutes, so you didn't have much time to get across the feel of your work, but it was incredibly impressive, and i felt honored to be in that company. >> host: which story did you tell from "the unwinding"? >> guest: i read a passage in which one of the main characters, dean price, is thinking about the landscape of his home, the piedmont region of north carolina, and what's happened to it recently. he has a kind of, he's sitting on his front porch at night with a glass of jack daniel's, and he's listening to these trucks go by and thoughs that some of them are filled with chickens headed down to slaughterhouses which happens in the dead of night, and he begins to think about where those chickens go and how they come back to the bo jangles that he owns and he sells the meat to his customers. and it's an elaborate and kind of dark picture of an economy be

of fast food and imported oil and people getting poorer in his part of the country. >> host: george packer, do you see what's going on in the country today economically as different from other transformations that we've had in our mission? nation? >> guest: yes, with an exception. i think the analogy would be to the early 1900s when we had vast inequality of wealth. we had a handful of robber barons at the top consolidating immense wealth and also political power, and then we had a lot of new immigrants who were struggling to survive. fifty years of what i call the roosevelt republic in which middle class people began to get ahead started to come undone in the late '70s, and now we're back to something like that vast inequality of the early 20th

century without some of the protections and some of basis for equal opportunity that we put in place. so in a way it's a repetition, but it feels new in that there's not the energy and the vision of transformation that led to the progressive movement and the new deal back then. now everyone feels sort of isolated in their own troubles and trying to find solutions for themselves. but there isn't a national movement, and that's what makes this a more troubling time, i think. >> host: three out of the five nonfiction finalists, new york staff writer. >> guest: pretty good. and i think dade rem nick is probably -- david rem nick is probably feeling happy tonight and also feeling incredibly impartial. it's a tribute to what he's done with the magazine and what kind of talent there is across the board at the new yorker, not just the three of us, but really across the board. [inaudible conversations]

>> host: and now joining us is another finalist in the nonfiction category. this is wendy lower who is a professor of history at claremont mckenna college in california. >> guest: correct. >> host: and the author of "hitler's furries." where did you get the idea of writing about women in the third like? >> guest: i got the idea in the around a kentuckys. i didn't go on a specific search for women, i actually went to europe and found some documentation on them, and that was the beginning of this book. that was in the summer of 1992, and i ended up over the course of, you know, 20 years or so collecting more documentation from all over europe and north america and all across washington, d.c., and, you know, i had enough material to actually complete this book project. so and biographies of women from

from -- 13 biographies of women who responded in different ways. >> host: were you surprised at what you found. >> guest: yeah. especially getting into the wartime investigations of the killers, really shocked what they did and that they did it on their own without following orders, and that, to me, was quite astounding ask disturbing, yes. >> host: how did you find out you were nominated? >> guest: sorry? >> host: how did you find out you were nominated? some. >> guest: oh, my gosh. well, i got a phone call. i had just come back from my, a book tour, and i got a phone call from my editor and my agent, because when it was announced on morning joe, i was in los angeles. so that was like 5:00 in the morning my time, so i didn't know, you know? it was just really such incredible news. really, i'm still kind of high, if i can say it. i just feel an incredible excitement about this, about being part of this and being

with these authors, people whose work i admire to deeply, and being here tonight is such a privilege, such an honor. really grateful to the national book foundation for recognizing my work and putting me in touch with all of these writers. >> host: you're representing the west coast tonight. >> guest: i guess so. yeah, i am. that's right. well, george packer, i think, spent some time on the west coast. but, right, i flew in yesterday, and i'm still standing. a little jet lagged, but still standing with all this excitement. >> host: wendy lower is one of the five finalists for the nonfiction book award this evening. could you hold up your medal for us so we could see that up close a little bit? >> guest: i received this medal last night. we had aer is mopeny where -- ceremony where we received these and these lovely gift bags, and the judges crafted a beautiful citation and a certificate. so i'm going to proudly display that