community or to institutions like marriage. to similar effect the image is today encourage and it knowledge meant a lack bodies and even black bodily pain but the interest in them is not naturally led to an appreciation of the communities more enduring losses including psychological, emotional and financial suffering. too often historians have interpreted the photographs according to the perspective that produced them. sure scholars worked to expose the pictures gracious -- racial orientation but racial orientation but we been slow to underline it by placing victimized communiticommuniti s on par with the photographs. today i do just that using black author lynching dram off. african-americans who lived at the height of mob violence in this photograph representation effects including plays that offer insights into the causes and consequences of mob violence that are not available through

those photographs. joining us on booktv is marji ross publisher of regnery. marji ross who owns regnery? >> guest: we have a new owner. it's very exciting we are owned by salem communications and as you may know salem is a very big and powerful media company mostly in radio. so they syndicate some of the biggest conservative talkshow hosts including michael medvedev and dennis kregor and hugh hewitt and mike gallagher and bill bennett and they also own over 100 radio stations across the country. of course that's one of the key drivers or book sales especially in the conservative market is to get onto talk radio. so now we have this wonderful synergy where we are going to be working with all of our salem family to try to get the message

out about our books. >> host: has your job change since the new ownership? >> guest: well it's become more busy and more exciting. luckily, the nice thing to read grocery is salem doesn't own art art -- regnery didn't own any. publishing operation at all so this is new to them and so they liked what they saw with regnery and kept all of us on board to try to augment what they are doing and build a new powerful aura within the salem companies. host go i want to ask about some of the spring titles coming out. it want to start with david archibald. >> guest: this is a fascinating book about natural resources. it's a book about energy but it's also a book about the haves and have-nots. i don't mean the individuals within the country, i mean countries and even continents. the haves and have-nots and this

is very interesting sort of megatrends book about what happens as we are entering a gop reed of scarcity. scarcer resources, harsher climate, energy battles and what that means for various countries and various continents. his warning is that america really needs to rethink our whole energy policy and natural resource policy and even our food strategy as we enter this new period because while we are certainly the biggest of the first world countries there is actually risk that we could become a third world country if we don't marshal our resources in a more strategic way. >> host: from your description it doesn't sound like what we would expect from a conservative author. >> guest: you know it's very interesting, it is a little bit off the beaten track for us but

it's still very conservative fundamentally in that it advocates a smaller government, less regulation and more private enterprise, more innovation and more free market solutions to try is the best way to navigate the new realities. >> host: is this book out on the market now? >> guest: this book is just come out and we are selling it i think starting on monday. >> host: another spring title hunting the president. >> guest: this is a really fascinating book by mel adin who is a expert believe it or not in assassinations and is written quite a great deal about the jfk assassination budding covering data in researching that he discovered there have been thousands of attempts on presidents most of which have gone unreported or uncovered or even hushed up to frighten

people because of the sinister nature of these. we are timing this to come out in april when a lot of people talk about the lincoln assassination but it's really a fascinating book about threats and plots and assassination attempts on presidents in the 20th century most of which you have never heard of and how they were averted and how the secret service and other agencies help keep the president safe. >> host: the people have spoken. >> guest: the people have spoken and they are wrong. that is what david barzani says and this is again a very interesting thoughtful air reverence and provocative book about the challenges of a pure democracy and what david argues is that we are not a pure democracy and we never worry a democracy. we were a democratic republic and in fact as people who don't

understand that or don't even like the ideas of a republic go further and further down a pure democracy road all kinds of unintended consequences occur. all you have to do is look at some of the countries in the middle east where we sort of exported a pure democracy where you don't always elect the people that you want or even the people who have the best interest of the populace that hard. his argument is we have to return to the constitution. we have to return to a democratic republic which really puts more of a responsibility on individuals to be educated voters, to be engaged voters, to be embossed in their communities because that is what the founding fathers had in mind.

>> host: marji ross we are at the conservative political action conference a lot of potential gop presidential nominees that are here speaking. they will probably be coming out with books as well. do they sell well? >> guest: sometimes they do. most of the time they don't. we have all kinds of theories about how looks by serving politicians can be difficult to sell including the fact that most of the general population and probably me included think that politicians have an agenda when they get in front of a microphone and it's not necessarily something that is all that interesting to read about in a book and honestly i can turn on tv and turn on c-span any day of the week and hear what all of the politicians have to say for free. i don't need to write -- buy a book about it. that makes it particularly challenging to publish books with politicians and every once in a while you will have that

really clear message and that really engaging author that is the exception to the rule. >> one of the books you are publishing this year is by rick sen forum potential presidential candidate. >> guest: he is and of course he was a presidential contender last time around and we felt and a lot of people i hope felt the same way that he had a message and was talking to a constituency that was really in many ways overlooked by some of the mainstream politicians by both parties and he became sort of the spokesperson for the working class, hard-working fabric of the community, voter and american and maybe not so much a voter anymore, someone who feels ignored and probably stayed home in the 2012 election.

these are the folks who are the high school basketball coach and the boy scout troop leader and the mom who organizes the charity auction for the church, the sort of fabric of our communities but they are not the stars. they are not the high-flying entrepreneurs who make millions by starting a high-tech company and selling it to one of the big folks in seattle or san francisco. i think his message was that the folks in our communities are the back lawn of our communities and the back bone of our country and both parties to a certain extent have forgotten about them. they don't represent them and they don't talk to them. they don't engage with them and yet their values are very conservative, are fundamentally conservative and it's an opportunity for the gop. that's what the book is about.

>> host: dinesh d'souza. are his legal troubles today conflicting with the book publishing? >> guest: as funny say that because he just found out as you may know that he is going to trial. i can't comment much on the legal issue but it certainly seems to me, my opinion that is the case of targeting and harassment of someone who was very publicly against this administration and i think he is going to possibly be talking about that a little bit in the luck when it comes out. it is now scheduled for public public -- publication date the first of june and the book is called america, what would we have done without her? the point is america has stood for liberty and freedom and opportunity as a shining city on the hill for centuries and

perhaps it no longer is able to stand for what it has always stood for for people around the world who want to come here and have an opportunity and the danger is according to dinesh that we are sort of losing sight of those fundamental values that made us the place everyone wanted to come including dinesh d'souza himself. >> just a quick preview with marji ross publisher regnery and some of the titles coming out from the company this year. you're watching booktv on c-span2's. >> one we analyze the arab spring we have either a very optimistic view, these are the rebels. the changes happening. it looks like eastern europe and it does not. and then you have a pessimistic view that the entire domestic spring is about the islamists and nothing can be done in the societies are not ready. in my book and make the case

that it's neither one or the other. it's both at the same time so you are right from 9/11 until 2011 that decade had gigantic efforts in the region. we removed the taliban. we removed saddam hussein. we gave space in those two spots for societies to emerge and to play the game of democracy. nanny in washington forget that the next peaceful nonviolennonviolen t revolutions which have failed that they were there were impressed by what was happening in afghanistan and women for in the parliament. it was not only the baath party but many parties. it was a mediocre democracy but that is how democracies begin. so i make the case in this book that the arab spring was influenced by two presidents. one was the -- of lebanon 1.8 million people in 2005.

it was not entirely successful because hezbollah's rap -- weapons remain in the green revolution in iran in june of 2009 against the ayatollah. now the arab spring had its own experiments and to answer your question they jihadists who have been removed from afghanistan have re-created hubs over the region. they are back in iran. they are in yemen, in somalia and what is happening in syria where al-nusra has expanded into lebanon. egypt is fighting them in sinai so statistically speaking to defend a one point guess we may have taken out bin laden and al-awlaki but this is the generation of the ancestors of al qaeda and now we are talking about a third generation.

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>> please turn off your cell phones. we will be on c-span today so this will be recorded. i'm a staff writer for the la times and we are talking about the realities of war with three distinguished writers that have attacked the subject from very different angles. america's been at war now for 13 years and the statistics are the 22 veteran said they are killing themselves and of the 2 million u.s. veterans who've been to iraq or afghanistan some 20 to 30% are afflicted by posttraumatic