on authors and books. keep watching for more on c-span2 and watch any of our past programs online at booktv.org. >> here's a look at current best-selling nonfiction books according to the chicago tribune. topping of the august -- the august -- list --

>> that is a look at some of the current nonfiction bestsellers according to the chicago tribune. >> you are watching the tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> here are some programs to

look out for this weekend on booktv. first we are live all weekend from chicago at the printer's wrote it fast. you will hear from authors like former obama adviser david axelrod, lusitania author eric larsen as well as pulitzer prize winner lawrence wright. he is our guest for "in depth" this weekend and from noon to 3:00 p.m. eastern he will take your calls. he has written books on terrorism and al qaeda, the middle east peace process, scientology, noon to 3:00 p.m. your phone calls with lawrence wright. also coming from new york city where we take a tour of the new york times book review, the center for research and black culture and we will also feature an interview with publisher adam bellow. all of that plus michele malkin, carly fiorina and the nobel prize winner joe sticklist on

the great divide. you can follow our schedule by looking at the bottom of your screen, updates throughout the day will be put down their. you can go to our web site at booktv.org. follow us on twitter at booktv is our twitter handle. finally your cable guides should give you accurate information about what is coming up on booktv. all that to look forward to in the next 48 hours. >> booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. >> i have had some good reads this summer. the other day i happened to have the privilege of meeting gene cernan, the former astronaut apollo astronauts, he gave me an autographed copy of his book called "the last man on the moon". a very good read. i am not quite through with it yet. he made a couple of trips to the moon, the first was apollo 10,

when he circled the moon the first astronauts to do so with his other crew members and then he came back again and was the last man to walk on the surface of the moon. we haven't seen anyone back since then. very relevant for me because i represent nasa's facility in texas district 36 which is the johnson space center and also served on the house space subcommittee and the science space and technology committee. very interesting book and i really enjoyed meeting him and visiting with astronaut gene cernan. he is 81, 82 years old now, extremely interesting fellow. a great american who did a lot for our space program. another book i am getting ready to read, one of my colleagues

from texas, congressman sam johnson is giving me his book which is called a captive warrior. a vietnam pow's story. and johnson was a u.s. air force pilot shot down in vietnam and spent a number of years on the infamous hanoi hilton. i am looking forward to meeting that one and i enjoy and very proud to serve with sam johnson in the u.s. congress in the house of representatives but we have had some good reads. when i get for with gene cernan's book i will start reading sam johnson's. >> booktv wants to know what you are reading this summer, tweet as your answer at booktv or you can post it on our facebook page facebook.com/booktv. >> syndicated columnist michele malkin talks about contributions american innovators have made to the country and the backlash

they faced for being successful. >> my privilege to introduce today our feature speaker and to share a few reflections on the young american foundation, welcome to those of you watching on c-span in santa barbara, calif. young americans foundation committed to educating and inspiring increasing numbers of young americans across our nation with america's founding ideals of individual freedom, strong national defense, free enterprise and traditional values and for our students conferences like the one we are all attending today one of the american foundations primary means of inspiring the next generation of leaders with a bold message of america's founding principles and american exceptionalism. as mr. larsen mentioned it was the first time at the reagan ranch four years ago. ..

if we do nothing. president reagan's call to action inspired me to take responsibility in action in my own community for the future of my country. i found that young americans freedom chapter on campus of my high school in california working closely to found another chapter at smu in the fall of the coming school year. [applause] i just wanted to share with you briefly some.

things that learned as a young american that inspire me most about this great country. america stands proudly upon the foundation of a rich western heritage stretching as far back as athenian democracy of roman republic in the second and third century are bc. many of the them that came afterwards are magnificent they lack ad element like the united states with the unique freedom of opportunity it is. freedom of opportunity afforded by the free market system of capitalism conceived in the 18th century by the british philosopher, adam smith in the wealth of nations. creates so much wealth and opportunity for some people. president ronald reagan understood this. that free market principles were a critical component of america's greatness. he reminded us only when the human spirit is allowed to invent ant create, only when

individuals are given personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success, only then can where she worked as editorial writer and weekly columnist n 1995. she was named warren brooks fellow at competitive enterprise institute in washington, d.c. as a entrepreneur she built three successful conservative websites. mesh medical malkin.com hot air

and twitchy. she is frequent speaker for young america's foundation on college campuses spoken to student audiences at syracuse, market the university of techs sass and earlier this month on campus of south today tote at that state -- dakota state university. the culture of corruption ranked as "new york times" best-seller. her most recent book all of us students have been privileged to receive a copy of, who built that. ought inspiring story of america's entrepreneurs. champions the proud history of entrepreneurs in this country those tinkerers whose ideas and inventions conceived in their basements, garages and backyards became corporations, employed millions of americans and people around the world and i proved the standard of living for entire world. one of my favorite brief examples of the book in miracle of america. story of tony who was a croatian

immigrant from a poor island in the adriatic sea. he was born close to the end of world was two. he came to america and ended up founding mag instrument and invented the mag light torch. miss malkin works with same entrepreneurial spirit that carried tony from war-torn croatia to opportunity in america. her conviction and belief in freedom resound in all she does. she is shining example of patriotism to americans everywhere. ladies and gentlemen please well join me and welcoming michelle malkin. [applause] >> thank you so much. thank you. all right. let's get started. this is amazing.

i can not tell you how at home i feel here and and how perfect a setting this is. i couldn't think of a better place. i owe so much to young america's foundation and the race began ranch. these are two of the finest liberty-promoting organizations we have in america. and i want to thank everyone who works for that organization. ron and michelle, who have been friends for so long. andrew and each and everyone of you who has done your part to support the work that they do. thank you. give yourselves a hand. [applause] i also definitely want to give a shoutout to c-span and booktv, who are here. over the course of my almost quarter century career now as an out out of the closet conservative journalist c-span has covered

many of the events that i have done over the years. they welcomed me for "washington journal" last week and it is always an incredible ride to get phone calls from c-span listeners and to get that no-holds-barred, fully transparent discussion that so many of the hacks and flaks in d.c. say that they support right? this book, who built that, was a very special journey for me and as i write in the introduction of the book, most people know me as that angry brown lady on the tv set who is always yelling at liberals. so i vowed when i launched this book that i was going to put on the happy smiley face right? [laughter]. but then ininevitably on cable tv they will put me against some meat ahead from the left and there i go again. some of you saw me last weeks on

some of the fox shows. i think you know, when you're in this business and when you especially when you kids are on your college campuses representing the voice of freedom, of free-market capitalism, of the best founding constitutional principles that we all adhere to, you got to pick and choose your battles obviously and it all depends on the time manner and place, how you present yourselves, right? a full picture of who we are. and that is what reagan did right? he was a happy warrior and was both sides. when he needed to reprimand those berkeley children many of whom were 50 and 60 and 70 years old he knew how to turn it on. yet he remains such a beacon for people across class lines across color lines. he gave people a reason to

aspire and that overused word, these days, hope. hope rests in the founding principle of the promise of social mobility. that we're not all relegated to one rung of the ladder. so when i when i heard this insidious phrase, you didn't build that oh, it still feels so raw doesn't it? and i thought this is it. we've won. we've clinched it. can you believe this guy getting up in the public square and openly denigrating america's makers and builders and achievers? how could he get away with that? then he did. and did that not just feel like it was stabbing you in the heart, that what is going on? what is wrong here? what have we failed to do?

to connect the dots for people so that they could see that he wasn't merely saying that we have helped along the way. that is innocuous statement and tenet right there. of course we all do. we all stand on the shoulders of our founding fathers. let's thank them. but, no, that is not what he is saying. in the introduction of the book i excerpted the full context of the passage of those remarks which again the context is very important. why was he saying what he was saying? he was crusading forever more punitive taxes on business owners on small business owners on self-made independent entrepreneurs. and before he uttered that phrase, you didn't build that, he had this dripping hostility for people who rightly believe that it was their own initiative. that, yes, they borked harder,

and yes they were smarter. i was horrified not just when he said they think they are so smart. they think they work harder. but was even more horrifying was the rousing applause that create greeted his remarks. so i completely cop to the fact that that when i started the book oh, i was angry! [laughter]. but as i embarked on research for the book, and i took this incredible journey through american history, i ended up with the biggest confused grin on my face. you should have seen my entire family, because every time i discovered some new fact, some new unsung entrepreneur, i will get to a couple of them momentarily here, they had to hear every last detail. [laughter].

and so my kids got to see a very different side of me. not just angry cable tv lady, but nerd mom. oh, my gosh, there she goes again talking about a patent drawing after bottle cap. stop her! but the fact i've always been somewhat of a frustrated tinkerer myself. i talk about some of the things that tried to make with my kids. this is why they're always rolling their eyes. because they know it will never work. the soda bottle submarine that sank to the bottom of the tub. marshmallow shooters, marshmallows stuck wedged in the pvc pipe. a weber grill that i tried to modify almost sinked my eyebrows off -- singed. who better to write about the successes of the course of the american history from the industrial age to the internet

age than someone who is such a wannabe, such a total failure? it is almost somewhat of a cliche when people talk about successful entrepreneurs they mention family was such a huge ingredient and motivator for them to continue. there were some statement even just, in the last couple of weeks that that have emphasized and underscored some of the things that talk about. in the introduction of the book, which is really my, sort of personal manifesto against this wealth shaming agenda, the open denigration that we hear not only in statements like, you didn't build that but other statements of obama and his minions. at some point, he said, when he was lobbying for the dodd-frank financial monstrosity at some

point he said, you have earned enough money. because he is the decider. how about biden who has said that every every great idea of the 19th, 20th and 21st century is as a result of government vision? how about mr. bernie sanders happened it to me on a silver platter this week, he is kicking off his campaign. speaking to financial journalist john harwood and he says, one of the core problems with america is that there are 23 types of deodorants on our store shelves and 18 types of sneakers. and because consumers have so many choices it is these selfish people who are either consuming all of these innumerousable products and all of the people

employed manufacturing them that are the cause of childhood hunger in america. so next time you're doing this, hunger is your fault. [laughter] by the way i need somebody to go to the bathroom really quickly before i for get and get me a roll of toilet paper? can somebody do that? anyone? volunteers? thank you. i will get back to that in a second. so, so this is perfect. because, and everything will be safe for work, so don't worry about that. so here we have bernie sanders who by the way who are some of his biggest donors and friends? ben & jerry's from ben & jerry's ice cream. oh, and how many flavors of ice cream do they sell? [laughter] i propose that bernie sanders

first act as theoretical president be that ben & jerry's only allowed to sell one flavor of ice cream venezuelan vanilla. okay? could this be more perfect? the ideas that somehow we should be punished because we have choices, a myriad of choices. guess what? bernie sanders you can buy my book at amazon, barnes & noble bj's sam's walmart costco. and god bless america for it. [applause] there's my toilet paper. [laughter] how many types of toilet eppa are on the shelves at safeway and walgreen's? thank you. we can get it quilted. we can get it two-ply

three-ply, four-ply, scented or unscented. it is not thankful to the federal department of innovation that we have toilet paper and because russia and venezuela venz don't. no executive cord create ad single roll of toilet paper. many of you because you have parents and committed teachers and homeschoolers who understand that education is a failure if you do not inculcate an appreciation of basic free market economic values. many much you are very familiar with the iconic essay by leonard reed called, i pencil, right? yes, come on. raise your hands? yes. that should be mandatory. if i had a common core curriculum i pencil would be

taught in second grade or first grade. this was his way of illustrating the miracle of millions of voluntary exchanges that go on, obviously in our country, every day. and around the world, where they can. of all of the cooperation that goes on without any centralized top-down hand coordinating it. and that the engine the fuel for producing something as simple as a pencil comes from allowing people to pursue yes their self-interest. and it is the same thing with toilet paper. why one of the chapters i wrote in "who built that." it is called, i toilet paper. boy was it fun writing in the voice of a roll of toilet paper. and what i found was and this was just this is what i talk about, when i say that it was

such a joy to take a break from the daily wear and tear of the cable tv world where there is so much focus on the negative and just to be able to breathe in this incredible legacy. the history of toilet paper can be traced back to our founding fathers. many of them who were private venture capitalists in the paper mills across pennsylvania. benjamin franklin was one of them. by the paper mill owners who never ever thought we would have them to thank for the comfort of this right? they were just trying to put food on the table and make a live, and yes make a profit! right? they said it with a happy smile on our face whereas these days, do you hear how people say the words profit? in the beltway swamp as if it is profanity.

if it deserves bleep or pixel ages like muhammad cartoon. don't say profit. can't say profit, right? there is reeking hypocrisy of obama going after private venture capitalists just a couple weeks ago at georgetown university. it was poverty summit. i'm sure you all saw this. i wrote a piece about this in "usa today." he denigrated he just picked at random of course, the top 25 hedge fund, hedge fund managers in america to denigrate. he called them, quote, society's lottery winners. as if their success their achievement, the creative capital that they had the decisions, successful decisions they made to invest in other private businesses was somehow distributed like a powerball drawing and some people get lucky and everyone else doesn't

and they're stuck and really bated -- little la gated to those positions for life. nonsense. not only nonsense and seethes lag warfare, it is %nti-america. it is anti-america because it is anathema to everything this country represented in the past and why we have been such a success for so long. this man is ignorant of history. and people like him these, capitalist-bashing america-hating progressives need to be called out and that is why i dedicated "who built that" to president barack obama. [laughter] [applause] this will be show-and-tell. but before i get to some of these really cool things, and by the way, i have a whole bag of these bottle caps. so if, kids, if you want to have

a token a souvenir before you leave come up to me and i will give you some of them. but i do want to talk a second more about ronald reagan and and how he affected my life and what he meant to my family and me. so i have told a lot of students who i speak to across the country, that i always, i didn't always have this big mouth i know you're so shocked. [laughter]. and it was always incredibly difficult for me as a child to get up in front of an audience, believe it or not. i failed my very much venth grade speech class. i will never for get it. because it had a reagan tie. we were told to write about anything we want to write about and speak for three minutes. was always adept writer, if i could commit it to paper i get an as but actually having to

deliver it? i wrote my speech in 1982 about a government official, a civil servant named lenny scutnick, who dived into the potomac. i don't remember the airline oldsters. air florida. mark would know. >> old sisters. >> like the geriatric mem by bank, thank you. this is ordinary guy who did extraordinary thing. he saved several passengers lives in the icy potomac. january 1982. i wrote a great speech about this. because what president reagan did was launch ongoing tradition of honoring an ordinary american who dead extraordinary things during the state of the union. and that tradition continues today. so i got my neatly-written

paper. i get up in front of the podium. [laughing] i failed. i went home to my mom. i cried and thank god i had not just a tiger mom but a mountain lion mom who was completely unsympathetic. she said words that ring true today in some contexts and i'm sure that many of you students have had moments like this. she said, if you don't speak for yourself, no one will. and that is how i felt on my college campus. grant mentioned or was it mark that mentioned, i went to oberlin college. this is the best second quarterly of the midwest. berzerkly of the midwest. one went to madison, wisconsin no my school is the berzerkly of

the midwest. i went to school that lack of diversity on campus was not something to be ashamed, they were proud of. at some point you realize that these self-anointed progressives who claim your mind because of your chromosomal make up, right gals? feminists just assume that you belong to them. and a lot of the racial grievance mongers this is perfect, michelle obama spoke at ober lynn commencement, match made in heaven, that somehow leftists should claim every last minority on campus and in the inner city by virtue of your skin color or ethnicity. that sense of entitlement they have needs to be pushed back

against by people with an alternative view of what constitutes hope and change. yes -- so -- [applause] so that is why i said it, it was it was such a perfect setting to come here because when i wrote this book, i just didn't want to write it for folks who hear me on tv, agree with what i have to say, and this is why i'm so glad booktv is here to reach out to, you know, a much wider audience but i am in particular wanted to make sure that young people heard this message because we've got a huge problem thanks to fed ed. if only we had fulfilled reagan's vision of eliminating the federal department of education we wouldn't have as many problems we have at the elementary and secondary level. we have the common coreification, not just of english, not just of math oh,

and don't get me started on common core math or maybe you do. that would be a second hour. it is also history. it is the progressive architects of things like common core and no child left behind and ouscome based education whatever else there has been that came before it, these monstrosities are always morphing like transformers. and the same architects of the common core regime are now revamping the ap u.s. history standard and they have even more of an overt marxist socialist anti-capitalist bent to them. all the more reason to make sure that there are alternative curricular choices, that there are alternative voices, that we have yes representatives not only on college campuses but reaching out and of course we

have high school programs here too, which are so vitally important. it is important to telecom pelling stories and narratives. that's what the last unsufferable two terms of this administration have taught us, the fab youist, not fabulous, in the white house is an expert story-teller of false tall tales. and one of the tall tales he is always talking about idea as he mentioned, with this, you didn't build that refrain that we, the makers, the builders, the creators the wealth generators of america owe him right? we owe them because we wouldn't be able to do what we do without

their roads without their bridges, without government investment. and this is why i picked, in one of the chapters, to highlight who it was that built the brooklyn bridge. okay. show-and-tell item number one. this is a letter opener that i acquired that was forged from robelin wire rope. it is really cool. yeah i got it through tsa, believe it or not. [laughing] the story of public infrastructure in america is not a story of how government built these things for us. it is a story about how countless numbers of private capitalists were able to pursue

profits for themselves and their families, build businesses that lasted for generations not because they cared more about the people. if there is one thing that young conservatives can do to help educate your peers it is to pierce this bubble this idea that we settle ish, profit -- selfish, profit-seeking capitalists don't care. the people who proclaim to care the most in washington are the people who caused the most suffering in america. stop caring for me. get out of my life. butt out of my business. because when people are free he to pursue profits and businesses like roblin wire rope and coconora works which his sons founded in trenton, new jersey. . .

deep, if you really look at what is responsible for a bridge being directed, government bureaucrats, department of transportation, secretary of the department, i don't know. some hack getting paid off, if that is the case, tell

government is -- when you dig deep into the story you find a man who was dissatisfied with layers and layers of government bureaucracy in his home country. john was a civil engineer in a province that was formerly prussia. he had a grand vision of building a suspension bridges, bureaucrats who oversaw his work could not envision. what he was designing. i seized on that because we all hear about the vision. obama, the blandest man in washington d.c.. he always talks about vision i have a vision. what version? you can't envision yourself out

of a paper bag. i quoted from diaries, washington had to john worked himself to death, standing on a piling overlooking construction the east side of the bridge. it ran over his foot and he died in the result of the accident, washington and his wife emily, and marked the 137th anniversary of the speech. the confluence and serendipity, the connections you made with the book and one of the things

that naturally happened, and you never know when you embark on some journey, some endeavor where it is going to end. capitalists take risks. end take responsibility for the failures and deserve every iota of credit for having success. [applause] >> a lot of people ask me how did you decide who to highlight? and realize connections the scene to be very random and disconnected entrepreneurs, i talk about this as the miracle of the mundane. in the internet age, my 14-year-old laura leva and-year-old are not impressed

by this. isn't it amazing? the effort it took to come up with the design is simple as this do you realize the impact william pager who found and patented the crown cork which is essentially the same design of a bottle cap today. so bottles and the entire beverage of packaging industry. and i know -- whatever -- this is the joy the optimism we are trying to spread. you get so many political hacks and pundits that get on the

podium, launch another campaign, and the mental teleprompter, do they feel it in their bones? can they do that? one of the stories i read about is how william pager who's spent his entire life, this guy did not rest. these guys never take vacations. they don't want to. they don't want to waste a second they have on american soil because they have the vision and they want to continue perfecting their ideas and always have new ideas. one of the incredible things about tinkerpreneurs, one or two things over the course of their lifetime hundreds of things and they inspired other people to do

the same thing. william pager hired a guy named gillette who was the salesperson who traveled up and down the east coast convincing people about the miracle of the bottle cap and other products. he was a representative in england for them as well, came from a family of inventors was a frustrated inventor himself. took him under his wing caught up with something like a painful need william died, before he could see king camp gillette. in all cases these companies continue to exist today, it is part of a 9 billion -- when i

say billion i say with a smile, millionaires or billionaires. that is the thing to celebrate. not something to be ashamed of. the considerable concentric circles of creativity and entrepreneurship overlapping exactly what leonard reed was talking about with a pencil. the roll of toilet paper we talked about. people don't need to proclaim themselves the doers of good to do good. progressives have it upside down about the american dream. because it is not the people who dedicate their lives to working in government to do good for other people that benefit us the most.

it is people who are allowed to pursue their own self-interest in their own way and make as much money as they decide to make and stop working when they decide to stop working and higher who they want to hire and pay them what they want to pay that are the engines of progress and innovation. in america. one of the things i got to do which was so amazing was visit anthony, i have to tell you is this man was such an inspiration to me. he is in ontario, calif. where his headquarters employ 800 american workers. this guy is 84 years old, gets up every day at 5:00, 6:00 in the morning, the last one to clock out at the end of the day, continues to innovate continue to file patents, he came here

penniless, he taught himself english from a dictionary, he failed many times at other endeavours before he arrived in california, which has a slogan, city of achievement. he literally started out in a garage. people ask me and a lot resent the fact that make some say tinkerpreneurs, say that ten times. the idea was to highlight people most of you never heard of unless the hometown hero who make things like this. a beautiful sleekly designed utilitarian, i can use that as the weapon the shorter than me for it to -- okay. he inscribed it to me which is

really cool, really cool thing for me. literally started out in the garage, which is one of those people, many of you who are like this. i don't mean to be gender discriminatory, there is a dad, uncle, brother grandfather, tinkering around and fixing something and talking with someone earlier about it bugs me, because talking for a second, raised in california, a okay i had to make him go on an rv trip and to the hookup, never gotten his hands dirty and the mentality among my generation of i don't know how to change the

windshield wiper i will have someone else do it. we are not the fix it generation. the idea of restoring this, officially among young people is really important and actually there's a lot of promise in that. we have a resurgence movement of makers. any of you read make magazine? that is what i read on the airplane with people magazine too. but you know, they are using the little bits to do electronic circuits and robots and the last chapter of the book talks about many young people who are developing the next generation of prosthetics in this country powering them with legos and prototypeing them which reminds

me, obama was at one of the science fair is a couple months ago and there were a group of girls scouts from the heartland who had come up with the lego powered page turning device, really cool. obama gets down there asking about how they made this really smart little girl said we prototype's it first. i love watching, and she says what have you ever thought of? there is no teleprompter, he would not -- i know some of you in the new know what he said. creepier yourself. he said health care.

and i really -- the only thing that would have made this a bear killer viral videos if a girl scout had laughed in his face. if my daughter had been a girl scout asking that question yes. he said now i hope all the parents of those girls out went home and told their girls the rest of the story. he came up with health care. they destroy things. the upshot of that is you have these kids they're doing amazing things, that is where i derived some sense of optimism about the future of this country because they're still our parents and grandparents out there teaching their kids to make things with

their hands. i have been incredibly blessed and fortunate to be a mere internet entrepreneur, to make a profit and make a living and put food on the table with words, with bits and bytes, with my big mouth, and it is not some sort of imperialism. to a search because we know from this journey through history i have taken that hopefully you are embarking not only on your college career, separate outside the classroom or not. this was uniquely american. only in america has this been

allowed to flourish in a way that it has. no where else on the planet. the founding father bequeathed to us but is under great threat and that is our unique system. to we have any patent holders in the crowd? what did you patent? excellent. medical devices little fun. which are taxed under obamacare. >> when that paper. >> awesome! [applause] >> i loved it. are you a plant? no. didn't i pledge you there?

couldn't pay you enough's. the constitution guarantees the right of inventors and doctors the right to profit from the fruits of their mind and the fruits of their labor. no where else upon the planet has this idea been embodied in a founding document because our founding fathers understood that the ability to profit benefited the public good and this is a formulation that if you ordered it on m snbc every head will explode. private profit is a public good. in and of itself the ability to profit is the public good. not because of the founding principles of protecting intellectual private property

and what happened was in the development of the patent system overs the years has enshrined this idea that it is the inventor's that are the first to invent who should be able to benefit. under obama's radical transformation of america that very founding principle has once again been turned on its head. i need dramamine when i talk about these people. everything is upside down. in 2011, i have pains of pain when i think about this. i wasn't paying attention because patton laws are not one of those things you see on cable tv debate about. this is what is so insidious about the progress of the cause we are so busy putting out so many fires and fighting so many big battles, meanwhile they are slipping under the table radical changes like this.

what they adopted was some bipartisan support, bipartisanship -- bain and payne. they turned our patent system principles on their head so rather than the first to invent those who are rewarded now are the first to file. where did they get this idea? harmonization with the rest of the world. the rest of the world beating our butts on innovation for so long, right? why is it that we had to now conform to international standards that have proven to be less successful than our unique system? because anything that is unique to america is anathema to progressivism.

it gets worse. that wasn't enough to file so-called american inventor, u.n. million titles of these massive pieces of legislation. it is opposite world. america won't invent act. even this last weekend the next couple weeks there will be a debate in the senate over more pieces of legislation to further recodified these ideas and i have to tell you that i have already heard from so many independent tinkerpreneurs, small-business people who are filing patents, a affirming what i talked about what i have written about and heard from for many patent cross dollars to have their heads to great about this and understand the constitutional foundation for

innovation and progress. i have to be used as quote. i think it says it best about the miracle of the mundane. famous observations about not only the american work ethic but in particular innovation. he said, quote, what most strikes me in the united states is not the extraordinary size of a few projects it is the countless numbers of small ones. we put this at the beginning of the book said something very similar. the great glory of the americans is in their wondrous contrivances, in their patent remedies for the usually troubled operations of life. the small things, this is what i meant about the miracle of the monday in. because out there right now so

many millions of these independent inventors and innovators making famous that are small, that get taken for granted, things that we mock. a couple doors down from the guy who originated the selfy stick, i had my first encounter with. and bernie sanders's world, who needs a selfy stick? mr. decider of need and wants. does that describe so many of these do-gooders' and control freaks in washington? why do you get to decide what i need? what i want? what i deserve? what i am entitled to?

why is it i am the selfish one a u, the cor sir, you the liberty in his better are the doer of public good? it is opposite world. to be able to not warmly expose this but to do it with at happy smile on your face because we are the ones that are trying to allow people to achieve the american dream they are all paying lip service to. when i end up on cable tv a lot of times if i'm doing raucous debate at the end of its a lot of people come up and they are very depressed. you look at the havoc across the american landscape not just over the last several years but decades and people are ready to give up and i understand that.

is hard to fight on a daily basis when you know where we have been, when you know what it has taken to get where we are and when you see the road ahead. like i said i derive so much inspiration from the people thought i highlighted in the next generation of inventors and businesses and makers there's another girl scout troop that invented the l.a. go powered prosthetic hand for a little girl with a congenital defect and these little girls understood the magic and this means we have made it. you did build that and making it in america means being able to profit off of that hat. 84-year-old anthony told me, we work in his sonfield cafeteria,

this guy looks like a cross between mark twain and albert einstein with wild hair and has it looks like the mechanic -- a picture of in the book, a little mechanic's jacket and it says tony on there and this idea that ceos and these rapacious beings who just are ripping the crack on their employees the employees stream by calling by his first name how is it going, tony, hugging him on the factory floor and despite the setbacks he has had, the federal lightbulb ban prevented him from going forward with some incandescent bulbs, in novation he had been planning, the outsourcing that has been going on that he fought tooth and nail the competition from china $100 million he had to

spend fighting off patent infringement not only at home but around the world, 84 years old and he is still going and i am thinking this guy doesn't want to stop. he understands what the value of the american dream is he's not going to quit so neither am i. and neither should you. thank you so much. [applause] >> is there and nonfiction author or book he would like to see featured on booktv? send an e-mail to booktv@c-span.org, tweet us at booktv or close on our wallpost on our wall facebook.com/booktv.

lawrence wright is the author of nine books on topics ranging from modern religion to the september 11th, 2001, terror attacks and camp david accords. is more recent titles include a look at former panama dictator noriega in god's favorite, a fictional account of the dictator's last years in power before his capture in 1989. he also ruled the looming tower which won the deal to prius, an examination of the rise of al qaeda, osama bin laden and the fbi agents responsible for tracking their actions prior to september 11th. lawrence wright investigated scientology in going clear which also became an hbo documentary. his latest book is 13 days in september, an account of the peace agreement between israel and egypt in camp david in 1978. his previous books covered topics such as growing up in the 60s and 70s, profiles of religious leaders and was identical twins tell us about

inherited traits. lawrence wright why on booktv on sunday june 7th on "i am, unfortunately, randy newman" you can participate via phone, social media or in person at the chicago tribune printer's row lit fest. >> booktv and c-span2, we want to know what is on your summer reading list, send us your choices at booktv is r. twitter handle, you can also post it on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv or send an e-mail to booktv@c-span.org. what is on your summer reading list? booktv wants to know. >> the printers row lit fest killed in downtown chicago.

over the next seven hours you will hear from several of his including eric larsen kenneth davis and brian borough. we begin today's coverage with a discussion on politics featuring former president obama adviser david axelrod, offer of believer, nationally syndicated columnist clarence page, author of culture warrior. live coverage from chicago on booktv. >> all right, welcome to be 31st annual chicago tribune printers from it fest. before we get started i would like to send a special thank you to all of our sponsors. today's program is being broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. if there is time at the end for a q&a session with our authors

we will ask the line up in front of the microphone so the home viewing audience can answer your questions leave it can keep the spirit of lit fest going year round with a subscription to the printers row journal, the tribune's premium book section, fiction series end of the ship program. ..