for being from wisconsin. why are you writing about detroit? >> i was born in detroit in 1949, my first seven years of life were in detroit, my primordial memories were there, ginger ale, hudson's department store, and it was actually the first chrysler commercial front detroit with eminem driving through the streets of detroit that sparked something in me. i choked up watching that billion commercial land it got me thinking about the place from which i came and i wanted to water in some way so i wrote this book. >> host: once in a great story, the detroit story is the book, booktv covers you in d flat at the beach with historical society. you can watch the full program at booktv.org. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, a television for serious readers. here's a look at what is on

prime time tonight. at 7:00 p.m. eastern, a look at the history of occultism and the desire of many to communicate with the dead following world war i. fox news's greg gut field talks about techniques to make conservatives more progressive. the escape from north korea at the age of 13 and tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern on booktv's author interview program afterwards bill to prize-winning journalist reports on the big business of college football. and at 11:00, gloria steinem recalls her life and career. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> as 2015 comes to a close many publications are offering their recommendations for the best books of the year. here's a look at some of the book washington post suggests to its readers.

the story of a russian whose spies for the americans during the cold war is recounted by david hoffman in the billion dollars by. lillian provides a history of gay-rights in the gay revolution. in isis:the state of terror jessica stern looks at origins and growth of the islamic state. the washington post also recommends hyaline pollack's the only woman in the room which looks at the discrepancy between the number of women and men in the sciences. and will a good examines the life and impact of the first african-american supreme court justice thurgood marshall. >> the magnet to me what this marshall -- five days stretched over 12 days, nomination in limbo for next week for marshall. the supreme court has been all

white. before him no nominee had lasted more than a day. with southerners leading the charge by knew there was great drama in wanting to figure out why that happened. >> that is a look gets some of the boat the washington post recommends from the past year. booktv has covered many of these authors and you can watch the full programs on our web site booktv.org. >> joining us now this ronald goldfarb, editor of this book "after snowden: privacy, secrecy, and security in the information age". you are the editor of this book but in your own opinion what has been the impact of ed snowden? >> the impact has been extraordinary. revelations made public, the

world has changed in a way that never would have happened if they didn't, whether you believe he is an angel or devil and people have strong feelings about that, you can't deny courts have now ruled the procedures that he questioned were illegal and unconstitutional, the white house has had 46, i think, different changes that they issue as a result of his disclosures, the european union just passed a resolution honoring him and saying he should not be extradited to any member countries. the major social networks, microsoft and yahoo! and google, to change their practices because it turned out they lost $40 billion when disclosure became public and it cuisine that people who use those social

media were not guaranteed the privacy they thought they had so no question the world has changed in dramatic ways, i would argue for the better. >> you had john brennan, the cia director coming out saying we are being hamstrung the weekend get this information that we need to prevent terrorism. >> the cia and nsa have been called to account for some of these procedures. their position is when national security is in danger and they ought to be given -- is not car launch, but doing what they need to do, nobody would argue national security isn't crucial and important and especially dangerous signs of terrorist acts like we have seen just this week, the we have to be very dutiful in terms of what we do and have done in our name.

anybody who would argue wise -- otherwise, a famous quote of justice robert jackson, the constitution is not a suicide pact. on the other hand that doesn't mean anything goes. after world war ii which was considered the great war where we fought against fascism, tens of thousands of american lives were lost, in the history of those times we came back to question some of the things we did even in that, quote, great war such as internment of japanese-americans citizens. now in the wake of 9/11 we are questioning similarly things like extreme rendition which is really the kidnapping and torturing of suspects in crime. our book takes the position that national security and constitutional liberties are not an either/or proposition. we have to strike an exquisite balance between assuring both of them.

at different times in different periods the pendulum could swing as to how much we want to give interest in competition with another. that will always be changing from time to time but it is important even at times of great pressure like this to say we want national security protectors to do everything in our name to ensure domestic tranquillity. but that doesn't mean anything. torture for example. i don't think most americans would condone that. we have to ask ourselves what particularly mr. brennan and others want that they don't already have and we don't feel this excessive. >> host: from "after snowden: privacy, secrecy, and security in the information age" in your riding, in the history of the united states it could be said about most if not all, when

national security, domestic terrorism and personal provocation clash with the collapse of liberties, the former prevail, that is human nature. >> that has been so historically and we are very attuned to it particularly this week in the wake of what happened in paris recently. the citizens there and the watching world, would be naive to think that a time like that, you don't want the police and national security interests to take every measure to assure the perpetrators of those acts of terrorism are caught, and that the powers that be are doing everything they can to see that it isn't repeated. but that doesn't mean anything goes or we find ourselves not being in a democratic state. there's always the question of balance. it is easy for national security interests to say it is a ticking

bomb and if there is a ticking bomb don't you want us to do everything? the answer is yes but you can't live in a democratic societies that everything is done in secret where there are no controls, no checks and balances, the heart of a democratic government, our democratic government is do we have a system of checks and balances. what we have seen in the wake of 9/11 is concourse was not overseeing national security establishment as well as we had hoped. responsible people like senator gramm, former governor of florida, have been very critical of congress failing in its role to be checking what it is the security establishment is doing. similarly the courts, the courts have been totally passive and deferential to the executive whenever the executive says state secrets are involved, we

have totally 1953 back off and don't examine the validity of those claims. i am not saying all of those claims are wrong, but some of them have been excessive. we determined in hindsight, we need the executive in our name, we need to be sure congress is checking the rules that they have established have been followed and that is not the view post 9/11. lot of people in congress now and the courts are doing what they should be doing. we have chapters in this book the deal with each of these questions. the goal of this book wasn't to decide or advocate whether or not ed snowden was the hero or not but to explore that issue his revelations made public. has the press been active enough? to leave protect whistle-blowers

inappropriate cases feature what is the role of leak in national security cases? what is the role of the courts? what should the role of congress be? what happens with regard to citizens' privacy in a digital age where so much is made public voluntarily but the understanding or assumption, that doesn't mean total x-rays of all of our lives. those are complicated but very important issues and we have six varied world class students of those subjects contributing valuable chapter is to those questions. >> host: who are those contributors? >> guest: carter writing about the press, was supposed to be here but health reasons kept him from getting to the fair but was a longtime editor of a newspaper in mississippi and also was assistant secretary of state in

the carter administration so has been on both sides of the table as a newsman pushing to project information to the public, even when told by the executives that you shouldn't be doing that and also an official of the government, in the state department, needing to withhold in certain instances information that can't be made public so brings a balanced, probing perspective to the question of the role of the press. the dean of the berkeley journalism school and a columnist for the miami herald rights at chapter on whistle-blowers which i think -- the best man on the subject pointing out that in the case of ed snowden he turned his information over to three

people, laura who won an emmy, not an emmy but an oscar for documentary on the subject, into two print journalists, one for the washington post, one for the guardian who both won pulitzer prizes, but ed snowden who is the source of the information is indicted for espionage, there is a disconnect there. either this is valuable information that the public has determined was very worthwhile and prize-winning at that or it is criminal that it can't be both i would think. tom blanton who runs the national security archive in washington knows more about classification of documents than just about anybody and he has written a very interesting chapter on classification which gets to one of the points of the balance we talked about earlier.

in the wake of 9/11, brennan has been in the white house, and others said we need to gather the biggest haystack of information because we don't know what we don't know. we don't want to miss anything, we need to have the biggest haystack. critics of that have taken the position that we don't know what we do know because the haystack has been so expanded that the needles of information to use that metaphor have been lost. >> host: your book you quote the wall street journal as saying 75% of all u.s. internet traffic is being vacuumed by the u.s. surveillance program including private communications. both u.s. and foreign citizens. ..f u.s. and foreign citizens and government agencies, classified thousands of documents every day, millions of documents so many documents are classified as no meaning anymore.

after ed snowden, privacy, secrecy, security in the