suddenly escalated and by 66, we had 500,000, we had, we had half a million men in vietnam. the events of vietnam in that period from 65 until 70 dramatically framed what led up to this. it was a loss of innocence. we lost kennedy and 63 and martin luther king in 68. we mentioned this already. they had a wonderful description of jim rhodes. he said he looked like a football player turning to a

mortician. i would be glad to sign books if anyone has them. thank you very much. i appreciate it. [applause] >> the book signing will be out here. [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] >> now joining us on book tv is melissa warren

runs the show there.

so he moved to downtown vegas and allocated a bunch he was sort of joining a momentum that was building to make a downtown sector for native las vegas that wouldn't focus as much on the tour toist industry that the strip focuses on but also the local population. writer's block was opened by myself and my husband scott. scott has more of the literary background than i do. he ran a hit area not-for-profit in new york, he was the co-founder and executive director of 826nyc which is part of a national network of not for-for profits -- not-for-profits. we were told that they were interested in opening something similar to 826nyc where they

would offer literacy education for students in the area. vegas ranks between 49 and 50 most of the times in education rankings for public schools, and the creative writing program here had sort of been gutted, again, for public school, so there's not a whole lot of quality literacy education we were also drawn to vegas because we felt the literary needs of the city weren't being met in terms of having a good independent bookstore. there's a lot of really great, like, big readers here, and there's a pop bigs -- population of excellent writers. this city has a little more literary vibrancy than i think people are aware of, so it was an exciting time to come for that reason too. like in new york, especially new york but i think in a lot of other large american cities, the literary scene is, it's very large, and it's very entrenched, and here it's a little bit more -- there's a certain openness to it, i think.

because the city itself is still very young. i think one of the big differences between the literary scene here and in new york is that the literary scene in vegas is far more accessible and transparent. like, in new york i think it's because there isn't, like, a singular, like, monolithic literary scene in new york. there's many of them operating on top of each other, side by side, like all over the place. there's just a lot of, like, little spheres of literary activity, and a lot of them are quite exclusive because so much of publishing is located in new york. whereas in vegas, there aren't as many literary circles here, but as a consequence the ones that are here tend to be a little bit more accessible to just about anybody. so one of the things i like, for example, about the black mountain institute at unlv is that those events are all open to the public, and just about anybody can go. and my customers who come here,

their day jobs might be in an office, or they might work in hospitality, but privately they're big readers, and they can just go ahead to one of these big events, and it isn't closed off to them. it's something that in new york it's a little harder. our first year of business, year and a half of business has been great. it's been really reassuring. we're pretty much where we expected to be. like, we created a business plan, as one does, with projections, as one does. and those projections, as they usually are, were, you know, one part, like, informed estimations and one part guesswork because you don't ever really know. but we just tried to put something together that seemed reasonable. you know, we, you know, anticipated that we would sell a number of books that would be reasonable for, like, any business, and so far so good. and that's been really a huge relief to us just business wise. and i just in terms of seeing people come out of the woodwork to shop for books but also talk

about books and recommend books. it's been really wonderful, i think. the literary scene here is somewhat small just because it is a somewhat small city, and i feel like we've been able to witness that literary community come together, to some extent. and that's been great. i feel like a lot of people in the city may have felt like they were kind of lone agents reading on their own, and i'd like to think we played a little bit of a part in, like, allowing people to come together a bit over their love of reading. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to las vegas and many other destinations on our cities tour, go to c-span.org/citiestour. >> colleen boyle is a publicist at princeton university press. colleen, what is coming out this fall from princeton? >> so we have some great titles coming out this fall.

our lead title is the curse of cash by kenneth rogoff. he makes the case for phasing out paper money. so he argues that the economy would benefit for getting rid of cash, so think large bills, $50 and up. and his reasoning is twofold. he says that, first, people who are involved in crime and corruption choose cash as their payment of choice. and then he goes on to argue that economies would benefit in times of financial crisis by being able to lower interest rates to be negative, and with a cashless economy this would be more possible. so he goes on to address the challenges that go along with switching to electronic currency and makes a really great case for it. >> what else have you got coming out? >> next up in terms of science we have welcome to the universe by neil degrasse tyson, richard g be ott and michael strauss. so you'll, of course, know neil degrasse tyson as host of the cosmos tv series and director of the hayden planetarium in new york city. michael strauss and richard gott

are leading astrophysicists at princeton, so this is your personal tour of the universe by three leading voices in science today. and so they look, they zoom out from the earth looking at things like stars, galaxies, some more quirky things like worm holes and time travel as a possibility in the universe. and in true princeton fashion, this book goes a little bit deeper than just naming different phenomenon, it describes the science behind what scientists know about the universe today. >> okay. one more title that's coming out from princeton university press. >> sure. so face, fashion and fantasy by roger penrose. so roger penrose, of course, one of the most influential and important theoretical physicists of our time. and this is basically his take on 21st century physics. and he's looking at it through three lenses. so faith in terms of our faith and belief in different theories. fashion in terms of what is envogue in the field at the time, and fantasy in terms of