hear it, you can escalate later and do more, right? but, you know, just try to say it, and don't worry about what you should do. do whatever you can. because the littlest thing can turn out to have the most enormous influence. i just got an e-mail, wonderful e-mail today from a young woman, i mean, you know, she's now in her 30s, but she'd been a teenager in the south someplace who asked me a question about the draft, what i thought about, you know, should women be drafted or something. and apparently i said to her, what do you think? and that was the first time that somebody had trusted her to have -- and she's writing me now 25 years later, you know? so, you know, you really don't know what is going to have an impact. so you might as well do it. [laughter] i'm telling you, it is fun. [laughter]

so much more interesting and fun than not doing it, i promise you. >> and if i could just segway very quickly, what kind of interesting and fun things do you have in mind next, right? tell us. what do you have in the pipeline in terms of your next research projects or going on the road? >> yeah. well, i'm hoping because, you know, this book has pushed this to be a part of a documentary on flo kennedy, because she's so visual -- [applause] yes. so that's, and then working on my next project which is on african-american women political exiles in cuba. so that's my next project. >> awesome. looking forward to that. what about yourself? >> well, before wilma mankiller died -- do you know all know she was the chief of the cherokee

nation? [applause] right. we were working on a book together. and i'm not 100% sure i can do this by myself, i don't know. but i'm going to try because it was looking at features or practices of indigenous original cultures all around the world that we could learn from now. trying to make a bridge, a really practical, inspirational bridge. because for one thing, it helps, i think, to know that there were all these cultures that didn't have even gendered pronouns. people were people. there was no he and she. what a concept. didn't have a word for nature because we weren't separate. didn't have a word for race because they didn't believe it, you know? i mean, the cultures that were organized on a circle, not a pyramid, that really saw us as linked rather than ranked. so it leads into those cultures. and also, i think, we can get

very practical ideas. for instance, talking about the prison industrial complex here -- thank you, angela davis. she gave us that phrase, right? >> exactly. >> it is in some or as far as i know in many original cultures if somebody did an antisocial, destructive thing, they were, indeed, punished with isolation. because we're communal creatures. so perhaps isolation is a universal treatment. not like our solitary confinement, but some degree of isolation. but when that person was brought back into the culture, the society, there was a long ritual amount of time in which everyone who knew that person told that person every good thing they ever did. i mean, we do the complete opposite. >> right. >> we continue to punish. and you can't vote and you can't work -- >> right. >> you know?

we understand positive reinforcement with children, i think, at least i hope we do. >> right. [laughter] >> intellectually. >> but anyway, so our idea was to take features of original cultures which, after all, were 95% of human history. this last 5% of fucking up is, you know -- [laughter] and bring them forward. now, i don't know if i'll be able to do that. but if any of you know of, you know, something that should be brought forward, i hope you'll tell me. >> all right. well, i think i'm sure that everyone else would say that we are looking forward to what comes next, and i'm grateful for this deposit that you have left in the earth in these projects. and, again, go yet this book, these cooks if you do not have -- these books if you do not have them. thank you so much. [applause]

>> thank you. thank you all. >> we will have a bank signing for these authors -- [cheers and applause] >> wonderful, wonderful. >> hey, thank you. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> many of this year's presidential candidates have written books to introduce themselves to voters and to promote their views on issues. and here now is a look at some of the candidates' books. in "reply all," jeb bush catalogs his e-mail correspondence during his time as the florida governor. presidential candidate and former neurosurgeon ben carson argues that a better understanding of the

constitution is necessary to solve america's most pressing issues in his latest book, "a more perfect union." former secretary of state hillary clinton looks back on her time serving in the obama administration in "hard choices." and in "a time for truth," texas senator ted cruz recounts his journey from a cuban immigrant son to the u.s. senate. and john kasich calls for a return to what he sees as traditional american values in "stand for something." more presidential hopefuls include florida senator marco rubio. in "american dreams" he outlines his plans to advance economic opportunity. the winner of the new hampshire democratic primary, independent senator be bernie sanders, recently updated his 1997 autobiography, now titled "outsider in the white house," to include his time in the senate and the launch of his presidential campaign. and businessman donald trump outlines his political platform in "crippled america."

gary johnson is a presidential candidate for the libertarian party. in "seven principles of good government," he discusses his political philosophy and time as governor of new mexico. booktv has covered many of these candidates, and you can watch them on our web site, booktv.org. >> booktv continues now with barry latzer on "after words." the criminologist tracked violet crime in the united states -- violent crime in the united states from the 1960s to today. he's interviewed by samuel buyler of the urban institute. >> host: with high profile spikes in violation in milwaukee, chicago, washington, d.c., the question and the issue of violent crime has acquired a national salience that it hasn't had since the 990 -- 190s. barry latzer has written a new book. barry, what inspired you to

reinvestigate the issue of violent crime? >> guest: no one had really studied in a comprehensive way the history of violent crime, and i felt that that needed to be done especially because, as we both know, the violent crime rates had skyrocketed in the late '60s and really became a major concern for the entire nation for the next several decades, two and a half decades really. so i felt, given the significance of violent crime in the postwar period, a major work on that needed to be done. >> host: now, you do something really unique in this book. most people when they talk about violent crime, they really start in the '60s and '70s with the first spike. you start your story in the 1940s. what made you decide that you

wanted to take a longer perspective on violent crime? >> guest: well, actually, when i wrote the manuscript, i actually went back even further than that, but they only decided to publish the period from the 1940s on, the period within the memory of people who are still alive. but i feel that to really understand violent crime and most major phenomenon, one has to go back in time and see how things developed, and that's true with crime as well because i've learned that crime has its ups and downs, and there are good reasons for it. and without a historical perspective, one just can't really fully grasp that. so as you well know, sam, many criminalogical studies, they'll

study maybe a year's worth of crime, and these have great value. i'm not knocking them. they're very significant. but they don't give you a broader perspective, and that's why i wrote this book. >> host: so before we get into the story of crime in america, let's set the stage for our viewers. what is violent crime? what kind of crimes are we talking about here? >> guest: well, the criminologists define it, essentially, as four different crimes. murder, but, of course, that could be treated as a manslaughter if there are certain what we call elements of the crime present or not present. so together we might refer to those as criminal homicides, so so that's one crime. and then rape, of course, is considered a v