r interviews and panel discussions. at the beginning of september we're live from nation's capitol for in the national book festival celebrating its 15th 15th year. that's few of the events this summer on c-span2's booktv. >> here's a look at some of the current best-selling nonfiction books according to indy bound which represents sales in independent book stores throughout the country. topping the list, david mccullough recount thing birth of flight in o'the wright brothers" followed by "tidying up." david brooks latest book comes in third in roy the record to character" looking at the lives of ten historical figures as examples how to achieve discuss. next o'dead wake "recounting the sinking of the lusitania. and "with" an examination end of life care in being mortal.

a look at indy bound's best sellers list continues with h is for hawk by el lend mcdonnell until and j.k. rowling followed by john -- discusses sexual assaults at the university of montana in missoula in ninth oliver sacks recounteds his life in "on the move," and wrapping up the best sellers. tom brokaw discusses this personal battle with cancer in "a lucky life interrupted." that's a look at current nonfiction best sellers according to indy bound. >> from our recent visit to new york city, booktv interviews adam bellow, editorial director of broadside books. he tacks about some authors he has worked with the past as well as titles soon to be released by broadside.

>> one thing we like to do at booktv is go behind the scenes and meet some people involved in the publishing industry. today adam bellow, an editor in the publishing industry. where do york work and that do you do for a living. >> i've been a book editor for 26, 27 years. i currently work at hamper -- harper collins. i publish book biz conservative intellectuals intellectuals and political figures and i have been at harper for six or seven years and i work at other places in the industry. i work at doubleday for seven or eight years. 0 work at simon & schuster. smarted my career at a small intellectual academic crossover imprint called the free press and so when i started out i was

really an academic editor and my job was to go to academic conferences and visit another departments and talk to political scientists and historians and social scientists and try to sign up their book. >> host: what are some of the authors you have worked with. >> guest: over the years i have -- some of the people i've worked with include james q. wilson whose book -- one book i'm proudest of having published, jim wilson is one of my intellectual heroes a great social scientist criminologist. his book was called "a moral sense" and when he died and i read -- one of his former students said that the moral sense was his favorite book the one he was proudest of having published. that was wonderful. i became known for publishing

books by conservatives by fire brands young fire brands, back in thearm '90s i made my first splash with a book by -- called "ill liberal education" one of the first books to deal with the problem of chit political correctness on campus. i followed that up with a book by davidbrook, who was a conservative called the "real anita hill" a forensic look at the evidence given in the anita hill hearings. major best seller i published after that was called "the bell curve" by charles murray. and since then, books of note, one of the books i'm proudest of having published is called "demying he holocaust" a book we had to wisconsin her to publish because she didn't want to give holocaust denial a forum.

she said it's not a good idea to publish a book bat them because that's what they want. they want to be taken seriously. we persuaded her it was an important subject and interestingly enough she was sued for -- in a british court by david irving, a famous holocaust denier, and she won and so -- i believe he went to jail. so very satisfied with that outcome. a few years ago back in the beginning of the earlier part of the 20012000s i pushed lib rat fascism, and recently sarah palin's "going rogue" and "america by part," and currently "clinton cash" which has been on to the bestseller list for many weeks. with many of these author is have published multiple books. souza and i published five or

six books together. and i've been reunited with many of these people as i've moved around from house to house. one of the nice things about longevity as an editor and as an editor your stock in trade is your list of authors and your relationship with you authorser verse important and when you move houses you hope they will follow you from house to house and that's largely been the case and it's very gratifying. it does require patience. i always say that editors have to be patient people because it's sometimes takes years to get a book out of somebody. a good example is arthur brooks, head of the american enterprise institute. i met arthur five or six years ago, before he was made president of aei. he was then -- already published a number of serious interesting books. i was very interested in him.

we had a long conversation. then he became an institutional figure in washington and was too busy to write books for a while but now finally five or six years later have a book by arthur come naught july called "the conservative part," a book i think is actually very important because it opens up -- i think it will -- i hope it will open up a new kind of discourse on the right, one that counters the left brain focus of the conservative movement and introduces a little bit more of a right brain element a book that tries to balance the -- well really in a way a book-end to a famous volume by russell kirk called the conservative mind. a book that is considered to have launched the conservative intellectual movement. now it's sort of 50 years later or what have you and we're publishing "the conservative

part." and arthur's idea is that conservatives -- that liberal policy goals can best be achieved by conservative means. and so it's a brilliant subversive book. i'm looking forward to publishing very much. forthcoming also, ted cruz, a book we'll publish in june i'm sure that will get a lot of attention. these are some of the books i've published. >> host: how did you become a specialist in conservative or fire brand books? >> guest: it wasn't something i set out to do. if someone told me that is what i was doing i might have -- i wouldn't have reconsidered but might have diversified myself a little bit. i started out as a general interest nonfiction editor and

published books in a wide variety of academic disciplines history, politics, anthropology, religion books on jewish subjects always been an interest of mine. but the conservative books were the ones that were the most successful and within really within two years or so of starting to work in publishing, i had a hit with the souza book, and what happens is where i learned about publishing is that publishing is not -- the publishing industry is not run scientifically not very organized. and it's sort of like the great barrier reef. a very complex structure with all kinds of little caves and holes and little brightly colored fish darting in and out. if you're a writer and you want to place your book with the right -- you want to find the right publisher and editor you need help. that's why agents exist.

it's a matchmaking function. so it's very difficult to find the right person. and who is the right person for you as an author. it's the editor who resonates with your book, who is passionate about your book, who will be your most energetic champion anded a -- advocate and that's who you want. very difficult to find that person. therefore, what happens naturally in publishing as you get to be known for doing a certain kind of thing the agent community and the world of authors identify you as somebody who does a certain kind of thing, and so you get submissions in that area. you can -- just as well if you're a science editor or a religion editor or whatever it is. you -- the pressure, institutional pressures on you to specialize, and for a long time that seem like a good

thing. at a certain point one can begin do feel it's confining. i have not felt that way however, because within the world of conservative publishing there's a great deal of variety. ideological variety variety of genres of books and i'm not limited to publishing conservative books. i'm also an executive editor at harper collins and many of the book is publish -- one thing that is interesting is more and more books by conservative authors are being published on the main harper list, which -- for example clinton cash, which is a book by a conservative journalist published on the main list. ali's book, "hairtake" --"" heretic "on the main list and conservative users are becoming more acceptable.

when i started out in this niche, there was no presence of conservative books in main stream publishing. there was only -- a sectarian outfit that is outside and so proudly so outside the -- stands outside the main stream. we at the free press were engaged in an effort to break down barriers to conservative ideas, and expressions and it was an exciting and consequential thing to do. after some time, after ten years or so, when we had enough success at the large publishing companies woke up and real iowaed there was a mass market, a sizable market for conservative books then special

interests began to be created and there are now four at present count dedicated to conservative imprints at the mainstream houses, and beyond that editors all over town are -- happy to publish booked by conservatives if they think they will sell. so we're in a completely different context now as political publishers. >> do you have to agree with your author to be a good editor? >> guest: well no. in fact it's better if you don't in some ways. it's not -- this is a very good question and one that is somewhat difficult to answer in a general way because each book and each author is different. i would say it's always your -- your intellectual editor or somebody who publishes books intended to advance an argument, you're doing the author a service if you challenge him or

her. even if you do agree with them. the most important that the argument be made in a way that is iron clad, that is properly substantiated and expressed in a way that is persuasive. i don't consider myself to be a sectarian editor. i have for a long time thought of myself as somebody who was original lay liberal and in many ways i'm a sort or -- like many conservatives, nominal conservative. i'm a new yorker first. i grew up here. i'm from new york. that is sort of a -- many of my social attitudes are liberal. everybody i live among my family friends my colleagues, are all liberal, and i don't like to differ with people i live and work with too

sharply... i have always thought of myself as bringing news to

the outside world, if you we will, to american liberalism command is particularly powerful in the media, the new york times where unbeknownst they sort of all generally agree with each other and don't think of themselves. you know there are certain institutional habits of thought that develop. so they become sort of impervious to other points of view and in practice have the country is conservative. and i find that there are many more conservatives rising up and down an elevator your office building than you might think. so that is sort of my sense of mission. although i would add over the course of the years that i have been doing what i do the surrounding conditions have changed. of changed. i think not in a positive way. i started out the parts that

are controversial. of course, personally and professionally i get a kick out of starting argument. published a book like education or bell curves'. use it in your office with an inbox and physical pieces of paper. reviews and columns and articles and finally letters written to the editor of small midwestern newspapers responding to your book. it was very, very satisfying. he made an impact. people heard about it. that is what publishing is. when people ask me to talk about publishing i always say martin luther knowing his 99 species to the door

at wittenberg cathedral. that is what the publisher does. you know, you have these -- imagine, 15 whatever. you're sitting in your cold you know apartment studio. you are uncomfortable in your very pissed off. in your writing and your writing and your writing and you come up with this list of arguments and save yourself, what do i do? what am i going to do with that? the world has to know. so he wrote to town square and nailed it to the door of the cathedral because everybody is to see it that way. that is the sort of spirit of publishing i like to do. and so in the old days i want to say is this, it used to be possible, almost too easy to set off a national controversy around the cost. there was at that time one

wheel platform, one real, you know, microphone for one megaphone command everyone was competing to get access to it. the culture was sort of unitary. only three broadcast networks. his -- major newspapers and magazines. so we -- and there was no one culture. it was a question of, well well whose voice is going to get access to what.of view be broadcast to that platform. over time, as we all have seen that has changed. the culture changed. the culture is no longer unitary, no longer unified. there are many many competing voices and now with some platforms in different media. and as that has developed i find that it has become increasingly difficult for almost impossible to generate a controversy around the book. it has been some years in fact, since i found that it was possible to do that. that. the reason for that is fairly clear. political media has divided

kind of bifurcation between the media on the right and the media on the left. and the people who agree with that.of view and those messages read or listen's too was broadcast and published for the us. the political culture has become polarized's and it has been harmful to the culture and an obstacle to us and publishing to feel that there's a positive value. only conservatives are going to buy. not going to get.

it's a very interesting question. seems to me. originally it in my view that they were making an argument this time in the early 90s when they're were a lot of people on campus. it was a movement to introduce a multicultural curriculum. courses that reflected the greater diversity and also there was a demand for a demand for a bit of diversity and faculty, and a debate about how to revise and whether we should be better off reading my answer and -- not just her but that's an example. and there was, at that time on campus the sort of educated liberals.

and this was a rift between the radical avant-garde campus avant-garde the multicultural movement and the traditional movement the people who have been raised and educated and brought up and it had value. they wanted to preserve its. nasa much with the idea. being more inclusive letting more voices and. the idea things that were really civilized. shakespeare being a good example. and so you know you know,

that comment, i think, view of the conventional middleground liberal is, you know, the radicals on the left have basically well-intentioned's. they have the right idea, but they are little hasty, a little audacious, may be moving too fast or maybe throwing something away that has value and should be thrown away. so what i found be the case command this was in hindsight looking back to when you publish a controversial book he basically getting a rorschach of the public mind. then you have to study it and interpreted and decide what it means. means. in this case, what i concluded from our consideration in fact they came along and made their argument that many -- the.of view that many liberals

philly probably agree with but did not really have -- there were too timid basically to express our faculty meeting. they didn't really wish to take upon themselves the role of doing that. they did not want to be bullied and intimidated and ostracized which is what happens in the 70s. so when he came along and made this argument there was my 1st of all a knee-jerk reaction from the forces of the multicultural movement which created attention to the end of the conservatives. they came to it but also many of those middleground centrist liberals traditionalist liberals who noticed the book because of the controversy around it and you decided to open up and read it command that is where my editor -- my role the editor, is critically important. we agree.

we agree that those were our real audience, those people, the sort of open-minded liberals were our real audience. we are writing the book to persuade them, not to beat up the left's. but of course i don't -- and not partisan in that respect. there clowns and they are clouds and falls on both sides, easy targets ridicule but the vast majority of book readers in this country are or were educated liberals. and so we decided that the book should be written in such a way that it could persuade's and open-minded liberal reader something to be said for this.of view, and that view, and that was part of the effort to bring conservative viewpoint into the circle of enlightened opinion. and that was what we were trying to accomplish.

in short, and i still have not mastered the art of giving a short answer. i feel it's okay. the value in publishing a book like that is that it creates a controversy that generates attention and then draws people to the book and in the book has to stand. has to stand on its merits. and it was my commitment to making sure that every book that i published were particularly controversial books were written and argued in such a a way that they could persuade and open-minded person on the other side. now, we fast-forward 25 years. here is a book that takes on the clintons bill and hillary, and it works in an investigative way at the operation of there foundation and does not

specifically draw any conclusions' the simply says, here is a pattern of activity that looks suspicious. where now saying that they did anything wrong, but maybe some competent legal authority should look into this. what is interesting is that in the same way as they uncovered a rift within the liberal academy they uncovered a rift. the liberal mainstream media which is to say that some people believe very strongly try not to trust them so much. be honest about it. as far as i remember when i 1st came to washington

there was an ambivalence about them. it was unclear what the history was an dealmaking in arkansas and then the use of the lincoln bedroom from a promiscuous use of the lincoln bedroom people on both sides. so the book comes out. -- presents evidence that is persuasive to many serious liberal journalists. time for the "washington post". notwithstanding the fact that peter schweitzer this conservative and doesn't have that. facts are facts. they can't be denied. i think you see the same. the books that come along in a certain time that somebody

was made that a certain group of people would like to here made. it's an it's an argument that is wanting to be made, wanting to be heard. and when it's made it divides the fields of public opinion in such a way that people have to choose sides. and then you.out what people really believe. in the peter schweitzer but they had to do some corrections. >> a couple of points to make. every book has errors. i remember years ago the famous book backlash which was all about how women are coming you know, presented -- prevented from advancing.

hugely successful, hugely popular book. somebody nano to the catalog of errors in the book. they brought it to me as a manuscript. we should publish this is a book. for the 1st time someone suggested that's me. published about the catalog errors. but that just indicates that everyone in publishing knows this. the new york times runs corrections everyday when they have a large structure of internal checking and oversight. it is almost impossible to publish a book that doesn't require corrections. still less a book written and published under the pressure of time to get a book out quickly. and it's inevitable that there's would come to light. what is distinctive were special to this case is that there is an apparatus political apparatus that has

been assigned the clinton machine basically assigns its members to research and study the book and fact check everything in it. this operation, of course, is run by my old friend who had this done to him when he published a book about anita hill and then one about hillary back in the 90s. and he learned how to do it from the machine. so this is what they do. it's as i recall back in 94 think it was there was an effort to fact check. every fact in his book was checked by an adversarial operation and then come as i recall, the new york published an article attacking the book and

citing its errors. how many were they're? three. they found three errors in the book, and one of them was something he addressed at the video shop where class thomas had supposedly rid of the pornographic video. you know, this is a game. this is how the game is played. obviously we want a book to be accurate. you bring in error to our attention and we were corrected, but the idea that somehow the findings of the book the general argument of the book officiated by the fact that there is is just a misunderstanding of the nature of investigative journalism and publishing. >> you wrote and the national review if you can control the use and even meaning of words as orwell showed an 84 they cannot be used to express for formulate the thoughts that might inform such intellectual resistance. the left is always

understanding the importance of language. >> in your question is. >> explain that. >> okay. the context of the article and which the quote is a cover piece that i published last summer and the national review. scone let your right brain rent-free. and it is -- there was an article announcing it's the emergence of a new wing conservatives, of the conservative movement a cultural wing commander story just very quickly to give you background on this. as i said, i have been a nonfiction nonfiction editor throughout my career, but beginning a few years ago i began to hear from conservative authors of my who had written novels.

they call me up and wrote me and said i've written a novel. a novel. would you read it consider publishing it. so i read a good number of these. and. and i talked to my publisher at harpercollins about whether they could be published. the upshot the upshot of our discussion was, well these novels are a little too sectarian. when we at harpercollins published works of fiction their publishing them for the broadest possible audience. so these books which were -- and i should be clear they are basically genre novels. they are thrillers, political potboilers science fiction, fantasy science fiction, fantasy detective novels, what we call pulp fiction or genre fiction's play classic instances of the genre with some kind of conservative theme or cast. maybe the private eye is a conservative. like sam spade makes cracks wise once in a while. his commentary is you know,

conservative cast. so it is not, you know, like novels about the keystone pipeline for example which is one of the obsessions of the political right today, but just sort of a sensibility your.of view that informs and infuses the work of narrative fiction. so at a certain time i started looking into this and realized that it wasn't just a hue an issue, writers here and there. it was dozens, scores hundreds of people who right wing, libertarian, many libertarians actually who had, it seemed to me, been inspired by the advent of amazon, the advent of digital self-publishing technology to write and publish their own works of fiction. and yet they were having a lot of difficulty's finding and connecting with the natural audience.

it seemed to me that the best thing to do would be to create a place a home on the web, website as a platform for a new conservative fiction writers. and so i founded a website called liberty island which can be visited at liberty island mag .com. it is a short story magazine short fiction magazine where fiction is written by and for conservatives and libertarians writers and readers. the.of my article in the national review was to make a broader.that there was -- that this what i call a bit of research, the the right brain, conservative) was not just limited to fiction. it was a broader phenomenon that we find across the

spectrum of creative endeavors command you find it in popular music, film, video graphic art comics. there are even videogame designers, libertarian and conservative videogame designers. it's about cultural movement, and the argument of my article is that it amounts to a counterculture. and in order to set the stage for this argument i looked back at the counterculture of the 60s and 70s, the era when i grew up and made the argument that what had begun as a counterculture in those days had become the establishment culture and that now in the nature of things is natural that establishment excludes points of view with which it does not agree and a certain pressure builds up at the margins of people who feel

that their perspective is not being reflected in the national media, and the panoply of popular culture and so by countercultural energy, countercultural spirit arises' command that is what animated the new conservative) creators. so i will call attention. in the car that you quoted really refers to the experience that i had as a young person. i told the story about having on to a onto a science-fiction writing workshop, the clarion writers workshop back in 76. and encountering for the 1st time when i was 19 i encountered for the 1st time an ideological.of view that was progressive. largely feminist command i was told by advocates of

this.of view that there were certain words you could not use, certain ideas you could not express, that it was wrong, that it was harmful dangerous. and i realized two things. words do have consequences. language is important. there is a struggle for meaning of content of words not just the words are allowed to be used for what they actually mean diversity for example. it means one thing to me and my mean anything you. we have to argue about the content of these words and the meaning. there also is a power struggle, cultural or a dual going on within the creative arts. and i found that conservatives today are

unaware and sort of lies the detached from the aspect of the culture. i have been a culture war ended with for a five years published many controversial and significant books in the efforts to break down barriers to conservative ideas and perspectives, but i found that the conservative movement as a whole had completely abdicated the field of popular culture as though it did not matter's. well, it does. and so i'm trying to have and this is separate from my day job at harpercollins for my own enterprise trying to participate to step in and play a role. when i came into the conservative intellectual there are number of institutions that have been created by farseeing

visionaries visionary individuals, people like irving kristol the guy who got me my job in publishing. these were people who saw that conservatives scholars was forced out of academic positions or were able to teach. the thought that an alternative system needed to be created. foundations had to be in doubt to support those. magazines had to be created to publish the views of the people in the think tanks. there was a whole controversy designed enterprise and it was brilliant and successful and i consider myself to be a product import and a beneficiary in large part of that farseeing visionary enterprise.

my mentors, the mentors, the people who i consider to be the grown-ups in my field. there gone. i feel that if they were here today they would be active in the a few field of popular culture, take the steps are necessary to raise awareness, to create energy and focus to materially -- what i find is the more i have gotten out of my publishing corporate publishing box and gotten out into the broader world of conservative and enterprise i find that there are many other people who are working at this area people who are creating film companies and animation and

graphics. but these people don't talk to each other. i was on a panel recently in washington the national institute and we had a segment on popular culture. it it was me and two guys from the hollywood film industry it was really fun. i learned a lot. the main take away is that we in different industries don't talk to each other enough. the thing that distinguishes me, one thing that distinguishes me from most other editors in american publishing is that i've i'm not just in it as a business person. of course i'm in business and i need to choose and publish books and make money the intersection of ideas

and commerce. the capitalist. and commerce is important. well, he made the wrong decision. but i think that beyond that goal i really am to some extent, part of extent part of a larger movement, part of an enterprise. ..

it isn't my job to tell them that they are wrong. it's my job to help them be more right and to be more persuasive and it's a technical skill to the facility that i have. but so i'm not an ideological conservative. i'm not pushing a particular line and there are topics that i'm not interested in pushing because they don't appeal to me or i don't have a visceral sense of identification. for example i would never have asked, i never did and was never interested in pushing books about marriage. i don't have any problem with marriage. i have a lot of friends. i grew up in new york. what does that mean? does that mean i'm not a real conservative?

no it means i don't choose to take a stand on that issue. that's not my issue. i have issues that i do care about among my friends and we were talking over a beer you might hear about it in -- but in my role as an editor i'm not an ideologue. i'm a facilitator someone whose job it is to help you make the best possible argument. in my opinion the conservative movement to the extent that i consider myself a part of the conservative movement, which i do it's my judgment that we have certain problems that need to be addressed on the idea side but the big problem that i see is the abdication of the field of popular culture and in my capacity as a private citizen and an entrepreneur i'm trying to do something about that. >> host: liberty mag.org. a couple of new bush -- books

being published a couple of autobiographies about your father. >> guest: oh we are going to pout talk about dad. let's go now matches mentioned him. he is not our focus today. have you been asked to review them? >> guest: no one has asked me to review. we are talking about in case people don't know my father saul bellow the noblest disease for 10 years and there's a new biography that has come out volume one of a 2-volume work and also a collection of my father's nonfiction pieces which is wonderful and no i have not been asked to review either of those books that is actually an interesting idea but i have read them and privately. i talk to people and people ask me what i think and how i feel and what i make of it all and i

guess i would say let me put it this way, last week there was a reading at the second street y. on the upper east side of manhattan. a group of writers including my father's biographer and his widow got up and read selections from his work and that was wonderful but the event opened and closed with a recording recordings of my father speaking speaking, reading or just talking or being interviewed and i have to say i'm glad somebody writes a biography of your father you have to be grateful. i'm not -- zachary did a lot of work that i was never going to do to take up all kinds of fascinating obscure facts and information about my father and

his family and the whole history of our family, an immigrant family that had a classic immigrant experience in many ways and i learned a lot about my own family. if you could commission somebody to write your family history i'm sure you would do it. you would want to write it yourself but i have to say this one minute of listening to my father's voice speaking reading or speaking extemporaneously is worth the thousand pages of biography because the fact is and this is where i have to admit i really value and miss my father very much. there was nobody like him. i have known a lot of smart people. i work with brilliant people all the time. i have never known anyone who could hold a candle to my old man and i miss him and hearing his voice brought him back to life in a way that really moved me very deeply.