>> i think that's a useful note to end on peer let me encourage you to stick around. if you're so minded, buy a copy of david's book and meet the author "after words". thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversation] >> when i tune into it on the weekends, it's usually authors sharing their new releases. >> watching nonfiction authors on book tv is the best television for serious readers. >> on c-span they can have a longer conversation and delve into their subject. book tv weekend, they bring you

author after author after author and you get to learn about the work of fascinating people. >> i love tv and i'm a c-span fan. >> what are some of the books that are coming out this fall question and. >> i'm very excited about one called the word detective by john simpson which is a memoir by the former editor in chief of the oxford english dictionary who has been there for about 40 years until his retirement in 2013. in that time he oversaw what really is a complete transformation of dictionaries or the complete transformation of lexicography in the english language. anyone can remember the descriptions of what it was like to assemble a dictionary in the 19th century. it was pity much like that until the mid- 70s as well. there were readers all over the world that would submit index cards with usages and submit them to the oxford dictionary where they would be put into

hard files and eventually those usages, whenever the dictionary was revised which was about every 80 years would make it into the next rock round. it took an incredibly long time for new etymologies or new words that they discovered. of course it's now all online instead of readers all over the world, you have people reporting tweets or websites and that led to this massive democratized station of language in an interesting way. we also have the ability to go back and relearn full words that with all of the newspapers online you can discover usages that no one had heard of the last time the dictionary was revised. it really is this kind of extraordinary revolution in language but along the way he introduces us to all of these fascinating, through histories of word. my favorite is serendipity which was introduced into language based on a story that was read

called the three prince's of serendipity. that's a famous name for sri lanka. when you say serendipitous you are actually referring to sri lanka. there is a place on a dog's back that you cannot scratch and there is a word for that. there's all sorts of things on every page so i think it's a perfect book for word nerds or has anyone who is interested in books or words, it's a fantastic read read. is mr. simpson in favor of this? >> absolutely. i think one of the things that's great about the memoirs is the description about coming to oxford. he was not from that class or that world.

realizing the extent to which the dictionary had been shaped by upper-middle-class leaders because the kind of people who have a lot of time to read and sending cards on, are not people who spend a lot of time working. they had been shaped by people who were very male and very white and very british. this was long before the dictionary started going online and he forces the into the modern age. he gets interested in magazines like popular mechanic and reggae and there's a wonderful passage where he brings a man into his office because he's trying to figure out a definition. he makes a man come to his office and show him so he can understand that.

it really is part of a mission for john to open the dictionary to new readers and riders and eventually the whole world by putting it on line. >> will he be going on book tour. >> absolutely, he better be. he's got a lot of public speaking as the editor-in-chief and i think were gearing up to have him do a lot more. >> how important is a book tour to selling a book? >> i think it depends on the kind of book. i think for fiction it remains very important, for certain kinds of nonfiction it does as well, i don't thinks it's essential, a lot are review driven or driven by radio review. i think we've recently seen smaller and smaller factors in the way that we publish and promote books but there's all these other ways of promoting books as well. social media where people can enter into people's homes

through book clubs. i think traveling of an author from town to town is less important than it used to be. >> what else you have coming up this fall? >> have a book on the history of the caliphate coming up which i think is a book that is particularly important. the word caliphate isn't a word we spend a lot of time talking about before 2001. suddenly it enters into our language. hugh kennedy is an expert on arab history and he's written a number of book on middle eastern history. this is his effort to establish the caliphate as it was and the history of an idea. there's an obvious reason why

the caliphate holds an obvious appeal for so many young muslim. it was a time when islam ruled the world. baghdad had half a million people during the time of the caliphate. london and paris had maybe a few thousand. this is the muslim world at the height of its power. what they're trying to show is that the caliphate had these ingenious qualities per there's no one caliphate. when it was led purely by worship of god or like any political structure it's much more complicated than that. there were caliphate who were spiritual and those who were warlike. you can find it justification for almost any kind of political audience. i think this is a necessary corrective to this kind of

rhetoric. >> one more book you have coming up. >> there's an interesting book in political science called locked in who is written by a law professor and a statistician which is about why we struggle so much in america with mass incarceration and how everything you think you know about mass incarceration is wrong. it's not about the war on drugs or the size of our prisons but it's more about our prosecutors. i don't think a lot of people have acknowledged the problem in the united states. one of the things that's fascinating is that at the very time the crime rate is dropping there is a surge in the number of prosecutors who are working for the u.s. government. as a consequence you start seeing it with an incredible

surge since the 1990s. it's not necessarily issues of race or private prisons which is how people think of the conventional wisdom behind where we are what we are now. >> what kind of books do you publish? >> we publish only serious nonfiction by already published authors. pretty intellectually high-end book. >> is it in independent or part of a larger corporation? >> that's a great question. it was until two months ago, an independent publishing company. it remains part of the perseus book group but we have just recently been bought by another company which is the fourth largest publisher in the united

states. >> how does that affect what you do? >> so far not much. i think i have to learn all sorts of new computer systems. i think it's a really good fit. they are known in the united states for publishing a lot of fiction, perseus is all nonfiction so i think it's a really good counterbalance. they have been really lovely. they're just taking the whole group and picking up and moving it over. i still have the same staff in the same books and the same boss so it's minimally dramatic as a buyout can be. >> there the publisher of basic books. you can look for some of their titles this fall. this is book tv on c-span2. >> here's a look at some authors recently featured on book tv "after words", our weekly author interview program. senator barbara boxer of california look back at her life and career in politics. senate mitch mcconnell discussed

his political philosophy and his time in the senate. and vice president of policy and research talked about america's new working-class and its potential political power. in the coming weeks on "after words", they will profile the women instrumental to the development of the space program in the 1940s and 50s. historian pamela haig will look at the history of gun ownership in america. also coming up, they discuss his time in iraq working as an interrogator for a private military contractor. this weekend, they look at the history and the rise of isis. >> the rise of isis was a direct result of deepening sectarianism and the civil war and the arab east and the vacuum that exists

in iraq and syria and the deception that somehow the arab spring could not really change the existing order, the leader of isis who basically replaced, because basically the motto is that change would come not by through the electoral box but through the battle of the gun. >> "after words" airs on book tv every saturday at 10:00 p.m. and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch "after words" program on our website, book tv.org. >> this is book tv on c-span2. television for serious readers. here's a look at our primetime lineup. oscar martinez on the origins of violence in guatemala, honduras and el salvador. on "after words" at nine eastern , they provide the

history of isis. at ten, at the history of the genetic code. we wrap up book tv in prime time at 11 with ali con on the deadliest diseases and the measures that should be in place for the next pandemic. that all starts next on c-span2 book tv.