recognized as this very fertile, fertile kind of garden of eden on the west coast. in fact, it was the astorians refers to explore. they knew it was a very rich agricultural place. it became this tremendous magnet for the some of the west and the western ford movement and for these wagons and settlers to get out there them to come out, find a way out. it was the astorians route they found. they were greeted by marie doreen. well, thanks. you been a wonderful audience.

schedule for coming. call. >> on nine me my glass of water cells. >> thursday book tv in prime-time features books about the civil rights movement. at 8:00 p.m. and discussion with the author of an idea whose time has come

>> the competition up capabilities more and more. some disagree on this, but i personally consider the smart phone now we all carry around with us early 70% to be a trademark example of the internet of things. we are becoming human senses because we're all carrying around an extremely powerful computers in our pocket, but it also takes the form of sensors that exist in the physical world , the form of radio frequency identification readers we pass and anything when we access easy pass on the new jersey turnpike. it takes the form of whether sensors that are all around. certainly surveillance cameras that collect data and then send them somewhere else. this is all part of unit, the imbedding of computers and to our real world.

>> on afterwards the deputy editor of the futurist magazine, world that anticipates your every move saturday night at 10:00 eastern and some in at 9:00. online our book tv collection, ben west, the wrong war. read the book and join in the discussion at booktv.org. and a live look for our next in-depth guest. felipe rodriguez, former gang member turned author and poet. his work includes the award winning work on gang life, always running, and his 2011 release, it calls you back. book tv every weekend on c-span2 discussion about the book our america, the hispanic history of the united states. this is an hour. [inaudible conversations]

>> thank you for being with us. >> thank you for taking an interest in my book. >> it was quite an interesting one. we can start off by talking about the population of hispanics in the united states. in 1980 there were about 15 million hispanics in the united states. by 2012, nearly 53 million, and by 2050 we are expecting a hundred and 20 million hispanics your backups to give us the foundation and explain how this population of arrived in the country and how -- potentially -- it will talk about where is going. >> well, thank you very much. very kind of you to say that. immediately focus on the reasons. in which the profile of this gets the call has been revolutionized.

be schmitt cherries, nurse. as you start the books in the 1500's in puerto rico and it was interesting to me when you contrast mythology of the english settlers in the north with the three pigs and a that landed in puerto rico. tell me about that. >> guest: when the spanish colonized producing livestock with the idea that when the human commerce arrived there would be something for them to e and they were the first prominent european of what is

now u.s. territory with three pigs and some goats in puerto rico in 1855 which is the english colony established on the soil of this country. i'm not taking anything away from the tremendous creativity and achievement of the anglo history of the -- united states because i think the wonderful stories of pioneering and fortitude and fusion which are very impressive the needs to adjust his good but which constitute the side of the story i think possibly have not been exhausted so i just wanted to get people to see a little bit more of that, the history,

not to displace the image of america but going back to modify the aspects which you have indicated. >> host: is quite timely given the fact of the population is growing and we keep hearing about hispanics or latinos in the united states on a daily basis and you and i before the show were talking a little bit about how businesses are trying to attract that marketplace and the growing market. it's a young market in a bilingual market so it's obviously an interesting time for the book to appear. >> guest: i came across a jcpenney photograph on the web that said now hiring bilingual speakers need not apply and that is sort of an icon at the time. president obama gave people the impression that --

[inaudible] buts bad impression is true it tells you something about america and about the united states today which is a very strong perception that the country is being transformed by the hispanic demographic. >> host: very much so and obama however i want to drill down on that point a little bit as obama did when in the last election more than 70% of the hispanic votes. >> guest: there are places like new mexico and colorado and florida which are important marginal swing states which are always going to be critical in general elections in this country where you could have a situation but i think if you really break down the statistics in the case of obama's last

election that he won by such a margin that he would have won even if it was 50/50. >> host: you mention florida and talking about obama just now and florida is in the first chapter of the book and that is where you say was the first time anglo-americans and spanish americans fused. what did you mean by that? >> guest: well it started in places very far removed. that is really because spanish empire had preempted all the parts of the hemisphere that were accessible from the outside and that were economically exploitable in worth colonizing. ..

well, at the same time the english word seeking. and the first region, the exchange between the two empires >> host: and in the 16th? >> guest: the 16th and 17th centuries, a very general name for a large part of society, what is now the united states, including what was now georgia dome and in some respects the when it stretches right up into the chesapeake.

the control or at least to found the presence. there is always this point at which the colonization -- of course, all surrogates, especially germans. >> host: the detail in this book was quite amazing. tell me a little bit about the research that you did? how long did it take you to pull this together? what kinds of documents we looking at? >> well, i don't know how long it took. i am a historian with the very bad memory for dates. incidently i'd just ascribes the air force academy. i can't tell you what your that was, but i always read my books

in my head. i think about it for many years before i start to get them down on paper. the thinking kind of messrs., like fruit. i don't extruded until it has got very corrupt. as far as resources are concerned, i've wanted to make the book human. i wanted to tell the stories about individuals. i did not think it was necessary to go through u.s. history. it gets drilled into them year after year. steady this american history over and over again when you are going through the school system in these countries. i did not think it was worth taking a high level of analysis. i looked for individual stories and memoirs. i mean, it has always been my

practice -- it is a terrible vice which my fellow historians would condemn. i always, you know, work in serendipitous ways trying to find things that you would never find. the books that accumulate a lot of dust on them and have not been read for a long time. that's all i find some of the, i think, more vivid stories in the book. you know, the 18th-century mistake in new mexico or agnes morally, the sympathetic attitude for hispanic heritage who robo wonderful memoir about life. those are the kind of people i was looking for, the human interest stories.

telling the story of, you know, this hispanic experience in the united states in the late 19th and 20th centuries. i look for books the recorded the personal encounters, the experience and what it was like to cross the border for a mexican immigrant or to, you know, secord gone to made up picking or if you are a worker. those are the things that i would make the book interesting. in a flash the statistics. you know, stories of heroism and suffering, achievement, triumph and tragedy which are really the tissue of story. everybody in the united states, you know, an easy place to live in, the typography, the vastness

of the land, the huge nests of the economy, and in places, long journeys and such. combining triumph and tragedy. some of these hispanic immigrants, you know, they have to endure discrimination and impoverishment and the menace of deportation. it is moving. >> host: going back to the sort of methodologies and the mess that you are working through in this book, you mention in the second chapter where we are going from mississippi to the rockies and we hear this story. then you mention that the spaniards legitimize their conquests through their writing.

can you tell us a little bit about that? how was that part of creating this mythology? >> well, the culture of the spanish monarchy and empire as some people call it in the early modern. a very strong element of conscience connected with the catholic religion. unlike the british and french and dutch empires in the americas which you don't find people bellyaching about the justification for being here, what right have you got to boss these natives around. in the spanish it's an almost inescapable part of almost everything that everybody becomes and the new world. the spanish crown was continually demanding of conquistadores that they produce

justification's. why they had a right to. >> host: quite supportive or protective of the in diaz? >> guest: yes. it is interesting. it does not really contrast with the european community's who came to the spot. because, you know, you've got to say, i mean, the crowd wants to protect, keep them alive. not to my don't think, really because band-aids, that is obviously not the case. but because of going to the ecology of the kinds of areas that the spaniards took into their monarchy, the americas joined the spanish monarchy

either by conquest or prescription. you've got a very peculiar kind of environment in which the labor is absolutely critical. so you had to keep them alive so that they would perform the labor that you needed. you have to keep them alive otherwise you could not. exterminate whereas spanish-american try to conserve them and keep them alive. it is not to do with different moralities. is to do with different environments.

>> host: as the spaniards are making their way, particularly across texas and mexico and are engaging and combating, how did these interactions differ from what they had experienced in the caribbean and florida, for example? as the native tribes that they were encountering. >> very crudely, the question compels me to respond with a level of generalization. very crudely speaking in the caribbean florida and indeed in mexico in mesoamerica and the andes, the spaniards made mutually agreeable accommodations.

they could make use of each other. they did not see the spaniards in that way. they did not see the mess useful they saw them as enemies to pillage our potential conquers. that created a different dynamic in the northern fringes and the new world. they are very different people. people who, there are very large numbers in order to create an empire of their own. controlling and exploiting other native american peoples. the apache were much more a group of loosely related peoples who could never collaborate in

creating an enormous stage in a way that the comanche did. of course, you know, because these three worlds met in what is now the southern united states, interactions between them. the spaniards were tremendously respected, particularly when they recognized the interior people and all kinds of really peaceful trading in interactions , alliances with comanche and spaniards against a patchy and more commonly spaniards against the comanche. a bigger threat and much of the -- what is now southwest. >> host: you mentioned the word empire.

>> guest: well, i don't share this reluctance. i'm a foreigner. why should people in the united states, the arrogance. so in some ways it actually helps to be objective. the difference and therefore helpful way, immersed in the country. so, yes. idc the united states as an empire. if it looks like them part of all walks like an empire, quacks like a vampire, it's an empire. and, you know, this was the country which was created in the 19th century by conquering land at other people's expense, namely for native american

indians. canadians and then the mines. but it expanded, like every other conquest, by taking over other people's territory. you know, that was the way the united states continues to be shipped until 1917 which was the year in which the vast our seized territory was exhumed. there is this one history of imperial construction of a heart, the making of this country. and i don't think, you know, it detracts from arcing greatness. again, i think you can only -- really genuinely love someone. you can only genuinely loved if your knowledge the imperfections which are deeply etched in the

parts of the united states. >> chapter three, you describe the english and the legacy that they left. >> you know, the big analogy between the english. my mother was english. but i'm always, if you go to england and spain people tell you they're very different. you can always see the difference. and if you asked the producer

who is watching on screen in washington d.c., if you ask her to describe she will say -- hence the second mile, the differences. some sort of visitor may would say, oh, well, these weird creatures. so it's really all a question of perspective. because i'm trying to see them. and also, people who as a result

of that experience carry the culture to a very distant parts of the world. more successful than the spaniards in shaping the world, the language of the united states in the end the sports. it's incredible. a very important part. the games were invented. and even beyond the british empire's cultures, in no way part of the imperial reached which adopted these forms of english culture like sports, parliamentary crusade. >> host: one of the other myths that comes up is the myth

of the program. tell us a little bit about that. when you talk about how american students learn their american history, one of the images, i think, that we all have as unamerican is seeing that image, particularly on thanksgiving. >> were you taught the history from the founding fathers. >> host: is one of the iconic image is that american children are always taking away. by the way to my liftoff therefore a few years. but the pilgrim fathers, i think, something that we as americans -- >> absolutely. i just thought that maybe, you know, and junior schools they're giving away and adopting a more pluralistic -- >> it has been a while.

[laughter] >> but the pilgrims -- don't get me wrong. i am not against myths. i think that, you know, the truth has unique virtues, but the project to sometimes from some unpalatable truths that they make, coexistence and compromise possible sometimes. between people who are totally candid, just would not get on. so. [inaudible] but i think one should value for what they are. the pilgrims, the stories that are commonly told an american history books. it just isn't true.