[applause] >> booktv tapes hundred of other programs throughout the country all year long. here's a look at some of the events we are covering this week, the ford foundation in new york city where david roth, the service employees international union will discuss the movement to increase workers wages. in san francisco at the world affairs council, they will argue the financial practices that led to the economic crisis have spread to all-american businesses. law professor daniel hatcher reports on how state and local governments i'm is using federal funds that are intended to benefit poor families. the bookstore and café in

washington dc. on thursday at barnes & noble in virginia, former secret service officer gary burns talks about what he observed about bill and hillary clinton protecting the first family. and we are live with best-selling author and journalist sebastian younger on in-depth. he will take your questions and comments on many books including his latest on american veterans returning to civilian life on homecoming and belonging. that is look at the programs booktv is covering this week. many of these are open to the public. look for them to air on c-span2. >> who is samantha brinkman? >> guest: a criminal defense lawyer who left the office a couple years back in private practice, struggling to make a name for herself and bring her practice up, had a very tortured

past, traumatic childhood, probably twisted at birth anyway and the combination made her someone unusual. a suggestion she ignored and frequently does. >> host: is there a certain breed for a defense attorney? >> guest: good question. i am not sure. defense lawyers have a different mandate. a prosecutor has to think about a fair trial for everyone, has an ethical obligation to make sure it is not just about a conviction but getting convicted in a fair way so everyone's rights are protected. they have no such obligation. defense attorney only has to take care of her clients and that is samantha. she worries about her clients and what is fair and winning and that is all she worries about. >> host: the client have to be

innocent to defend? wikipedia >> guest: if it is only about defending the innocent that attorney would have no practice. you can't be that picky. your clients 99% of the time are going to be guilty. >> host: as a former prosecutor is the system weighted toward the defense? >> guest: we make it that way. someone is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt it is skewed toward the defense, very heavy burden. the prosecution has to work from that presumption and turn the table, turn it all the way over here to beyond a reasonable doubt. not an easy thing to do. >> host: what defense -- what is the plot of the book? >> guest: a celebrity case

basically in which a veteran detective charged with the murder of a young actress on the skid after being a child star fell into drugs, spiraled down and climbed up and find her way into a favorite television show on the brink of stardom and making it as a comeback kid when she and her roommate are brutally murdered. the detective is charged with her murder is because he was dating the actress and becomes a big celebrated case and samantha doesn't want to take the case, doesn't like it so her paralegal, her childhood friend says you haven't paid me in two months, you go get this case and she does. >> host: are your characters based on your career? >> guest: in a way. someone said another put herself or himself into every character and i think that is true.

whether i want to or not i am in every character. certainly in samantha. for sure all my life experiences find their way into these stories, characters that samantha represents. i used to be a defense attorney before i became a prosecutor so all those experiences, my experience as a prosecutor come to bear. >> host: why did you switch from defense to prosecution? >> guest: it was okay with me when i was defending drug cases and prostitutes and all that and started more and more handling violent crimes and wound up working on a case involving a double homicide and attempted murder in which the defendant, our clients correct a woman in and dragged her 17 times and throughout the alley died.

when it got to that i don't think i want to do this. i want to stand up for the victims. >> how long were you a prosecutor? how do the o.j. simpson case change your life? >> and so many ways i don't have time for. our conversation, to even describe it and in many ways i'm not aware of. it certainly did make me look at my life and decide to take another turn. had not been for the simpson case but that is really hard. but i did in that case. found a whole different life. >> host: this is your sixth book. what got you started? >> guest: i did a number of

things. speaking, lecture series and a lot of things and wound up being consulted on a 1-hour drama for lifetime and started writing scripts. the creator of that show and i started writing pilot and we sold pilots to a few networks and i decided i always wanted to write fiction since i was a kid, it was a childhood dream. that is what happened. >> host: you have one nonfiction book. >> guest: one nonfiction book is about the trial, without a doubt. it has been republished and out-of-print again. that is the only nonfiction book i have written. i have stepped away from reality and gone into so reality. >> host: do you find yourself defined by the one trial?

>> i don't define myself. >> host: to other people define you that way? >> guest: other people do or not do. since i have been writing fiction less so. people less and less define me that way and some even, the younger ones don't know. and the author. i love that. a lot of people do. a miniseries on fx came out. people have reinvigorated interest in the case. a lot of people associate me with that. more and more coming to associate me also with being an author and writing crime fiction which is great. >> host: did you work on the fx series? >> they didn't consult any of us at all about that series, i had nothing to do with it. >> host: what did you think of it? >> guest: i thought it was

great. it was phenomenal. incredible. >> guest: true to life? >> guest: i can't speak for all of them because i didn't know them that well but from what i did know of them, true to life, very well done, certainly sterling brown did a wonderful job and sarah paulson, marco my god, she did amazingly, how she did this i don't know, and feeling on the inside, don't know how she news at. it is incredible what she did. >> host: how has your writing changed since your first book, guilt by association? >> i hope it gets better. when people say the books i read, the most recent one, i hope every book i am getting better, improving. the first four novels i wrote

were based on a prosecutor in los angeles. you are constrained. when you write about a prosecutor there are ethical boundaries you can't cross because of the people won't like it better very much. and prosecutors do have as i said ethical obligation to make sure a defendant fairly convicted treats fairly in the system. when you go to the defense side you don't have to worry about that. i wanted to write a darker more complex or wild character and that is why i turned to samantha brinkman. >> host: there has been a lot of talk, national conversation on our justice system. what is your take. are we over incarcerating? are we overjailing? are we too zealous in our

prosecution? >> guest: there is no such thing as being overzealous in prosecution. we prosecute them. what you do about that is the question. does everyone who deserves to be prosecuted deserve to be incarcerated? in my opinion know. so many of the people i defended and prosecuted deserve rehab, they needed to be helped, did not need to be incarcerated, we are wasting bed space, taxpayer dollars and lives. people can be rehabilitated. they can go out and become good citizens that contribute to society. instead wasting their lives in prison. they don't belong there bleeding california we are walking back on a number of things, sentencing in terms of three strike sentences and drug

prosecution and minor theft cases. we are walking back on the incarceration rate and making the misdemeanors and finding ways to put them in divergent programs. that is the right path. >> host: there is a new book by basic books about prosecutors and the increase in the number of prosecutors and the fact that they were given the laws and went after a lot of criminals. are there criminal prosecutors? >> guest: i don't know. across the country i couldn't comment. in california it doesn't seem so. prosecutors seem to have pretty big caseloads to indicate there are not too many of them. when there are not many prosecutors there are not capable hands to handle that amount and they are using the caseload like i said exponentially by reducing these crimes, crimes that were considered felonies, have been reduced to misdemeanors, they have reduced drug crimes so you

get divergent programs. a lot of different kinds of crimes, even reclassifying criminals as victims, girls who have been trafficked, human trafficking, now being handled as the victims they really are and being divergent so when they get arrested for prosecution, theft, find out they have been trafficked, they wind up with no conviction whatsoever and get put in programs where they can find lives and stand on their own two feet. in california, finding ways were not overprosecuted. >> will they learn how the system works? >> they will. and to show how it works, the story is fictional although

there are pieces of it based on my life and experiences. and the way it uses the media, twitter and the rest of the current society, legally and socially i tried to make it as realistic as possible. >> host: social media in 1994. >> can you imagine? i can't even think about it. it scares me. imagine if that kind of high profile case was out today with twitter, snapchat, instagram, it is mind-boggling. you will never hear the end of it. it was relatively new back then, imagine, we don't use faxes anymore but back then it was new. it was an office machine. no one had a personal fax and they were blowing up fax machines. we were getting thousands of factses today with people

commenting. it was crazy. i can't imagine social media. what i can imagine is with our cell phone technology at the very least thinking scientific advances we have made in the last 20 years just cell phone technology alone would make a big difference because we could tell based on what people were doing with their cell phones where they are. we could tell you all those layers all day, all night. down to the second talking about o.j. simpson, where is mark berman. we would be able to track everybody's movements. it would be a very different thing. >> host: a little big brother? >> guest: we are all dealing with that. the technology makes our lives so much easier and faster is also technology that opens doors into our lives. >> host: as someone who lived it, using cameras in the courtroom are a good idea?

>> guest: i have had a lot of back and forth. i have always been ambivalent about it. when i finished the trial i thought they are terrible, we shouldn't have them. goldman never agreed with me and said no one would know the travesty if they hadn't seen it, if cameras hadn't been in the short room. he brought me to his way of thinking. having said that i think there need to be limits. cameras should not be in the courtroom if the jury is not there. when you have hearings the jury shouldn't here you shouldn't have cameras either so the jury can't somehow find out about it. you have to be careful about how much you televise. >> host: you referenced you always wanted to be a writer since you were little. >> guest: i grew up all over the country. if we moved immediately after that and all over the place in

washington and texas and california, southern california, northern california, detroit, maryland, new york, we came back. >> host: what work did your parents do? >> guest: my father -- federal government, they bounce you around a lot. >> host: at what point did you decide to be a lawyer? >> guest: i didn't decide i wanted to be a lawyer until i had graduated from college at ucla with a degree in political science with a minor in international relations focusing on the middle east. i wanted to be in the state department and in the foreign office, in the field and especially back then, not so crazy they were about having girls in the foreign office and at the time i spoke french,

hebrew, english, some spanish, this could be good and they asked me if i could type. >> host: what was your response? >> guest: i said no thank you. i wasn't good at typing. >> host: you went into law school. >> guest: i went into law school. >> host: prior to the o.j. simpson case or cases that you work on? >> guest: i had been in the office, i started in 1981 after having been a defense attorney for a few years. in 1980 -- 1985, i believe, i wound up in the trial unit which was the elite unit for high profile cases.

ali handled were the big cases that tended to be murder cases, capital cases. there were complex high profile cases and a small unit for older men and when they brought me in that was the only female, i had been in that unit close to 10 years by the time the simpson case rolled around, handling high profile cases for quite some time. >> host: name one of the cases you worked on. >> guest: i handled a case regarding a stock or who murdered the actress rebecca shafer. one of the earlier notorious cases before we knew what it meant, what stocking was all about. >> host: are you still lawyering in any way? 's >> guest: i am still lawyering.

i'm handling court-appointed appeals mccrindle appeals. in california when you're convicted of a felony are entitled to one direct appeal to the court of appeals and if you can't afford a lawyer they appoint one for you like a public defender only in private practice so most people who get convicted of felonies are tapped out. they spend it all on their trial lawyer so by the time in the state prison they need to file an appeal they don't have any more money so the court appoints people like me, we have an appointment for you, and it is all in writing and it is all written work. what is cool about it i see the entire state of california and i get to see how things are tried today, what level of evidence, what science are they using, what are the jury's like, what are the verdicts like and do something good for society. >> host: what is the secret to writing a murder mystery? >> guest: i don't think there is

a secret. it is always a matter of inspiration. what is intriguing to you. what are you thinking about? what is happening in the world that intrigues you? writing about that, you have to find that because you live with a book for quite some time. if you are not intrigued by it, it will not be for a long time which will not work because if you are bored the reader will be board. i was addicted to crime since i was 4 or 5 years old. it was ridiculous. that is kind of young, crazy. i love it. i really love it. i have constantly seen things and thinking about things that intrigues me. not necessarily always crime but wrapped into a crime somehow. that is the secret, writing about what intrigues you most recently. >> host: have you considered leaving la? >> guest: i thought about living

somewhere else but i know it so well. my kids are in the bay area, don't want to go very far. i will probably stay there. >> host: marcia clark, most recent book is "blood defense". here is the publisher. this is booktv. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here is a look on what is on prime time tonight. we kick off the evening at 7:00 eastern with thoughts on liberty and justice from his most recent book if you can keep it, the forgotten promise of america liberty. at 8:15 on the 1-year anniversary of legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states, the book love wins. at 9:15 eastern, the influence of women in the tea party. and at 10:00 on afterwards,

historian pamela haig provides a history of guns in america. finish up prime time programming at 11:00 with former state department official hale weston whose book the mirror will look at the impact of war. that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> i want to tell you about the mark twain not everybody knows about. most people think of this witty author of huckleberry finn who fought racism and imperialism, that is all true. but he was also an eternal bad boy. he liked to drink, smoke and curse, he married an heiress who paid the bills but loved to gamble on pool and poker and unfortunately for him on startup companies. all these traits caught up with him. imagine being a comedy kingpin of the united states and at age

60 losing it all? he was dead broke, and lost all his money and all his wife's money, i can't imagine losing his wife's money, so terrifying, torture implements that haven't been invented. after a while, the family of samuel clemens could not afford to live in their own beautiful home. how sad is that you it is a quirky wonderful house, he had a fireplace built with a window over it so the smoke could go on either side and he could see snow falling when flames were coming up, he adored the house, he had a loopy family life. they had three dogs and twain names one i know, the other you know and the third don't know. he also enjoyed acting with his

daughter susie, they had a tiffany drawing room, 7 servants, it was never enough for twain. the poor missouri boy wanted everything, and a literary other. he wanted to be a family man but also a poker playing rogue. he was so full of conflicting desires, he liked down-home folk and wanted to be rich as a rockefeller or vanderbilt. he wrote few can understand prosperity. and he was a magnet for conmen. and james w page, could persuade a fish to take a walk with him. twain was losing his shirt. a lethal combination for an investor, moonshot enthusiasm or

patience for details. a profit loss statement that even his daughter could understand. gene was two years old at the time. twain thought the following invention would change the world. you don't recognize it? this is the page typesetter, it weighed four times, 18,000 movable parts and was supposed to revolutionize the printer. if it worked, it worked once. at first twain called james page the shakespeare of mechanical invention. twain began fantasizing about capturing a certain part of the anatomy in a steel trap and watching him slowly bleed to death. so the page typesetter cleaned out claim's bank account, this next investment, starting his own publishing company put him

$80,000, equivalent of $2.4 million in current fervency is currently in debt. they started incredibly well. published grant's memoirs. enormous success. and huckleberry finn. twain accepted those royalties receiving no royalties. this is their final list of titles. i don't know if you can see but any publisher who goes out with stories from the rabbis is probably going to be in a little trouble. headlines in the newspaper said mark twain fails. it was brutal. failure is humorous. a literary superstar, he gets two main advisers. one is henry rogers, one of the wealthiest men in america, the right-hand man of john d rockefeller, federal steel, his

nickname was hell hound. this robber baron wants to play hardball, offer $.10 on the dollar, twain's other advisor is his wi, libby. she has no business experience. she writes i want the creditors to know i will have their interests at heart much more than our own. libby -- we have some bankruptcy experts in the crowd here. libby wanted to pay them in full as soon as possible. never bet against the wife. twain agreed to pay everyone back in full so he needs to make big money fast and his books are not selling. the most recent title was the american claim list. not exactly a huge seller. the quickest way to make money is to go out on a standup comedy tour. from the bottom of his heart,

and dreaded public speaking for large audiences, it was not as much stage fright as humiliation. he thought of himself as a literary author. once an audience sees you stand on your head, they expect you to remain in that position forever. >> you can watch this and other programs on booktv.org. >> sunday, july 3rd, live with best-selling author, and documentary filmmaker sebastian younger on in depth, live monthly call in show, the author of several books including the perfect storm, about a commercial fishing boat caught in a catastrophic storm later adapted into a feature film. the other was war, an account of

his time with the war in afghanistan and a death in belmont, investigation of the murder in the author's hometown. recently mister younger appeared on booktv to discuss his latest book tribe, which explores the effect society has on returning veterans. >> it is hard to know how to live for a country that regularly tears itself apart along every possible ethnic and demographic boundary. the gap between rich and poor continues to widen. many people live in racially segregated communities. the elderly are mostly sequestered from public life and rampage shooting happen so regularly that they only remain in the news cycle for a day or so. to make matters worse politicians occasionally accuse rivals of deliberately trying to harm their own country, a charge so destructive that most societies would have punished it as a form of treason. it is complete madness and the veterans know this.

in combat soldiers ignore differences of race, religion and politics in their platoon. no wonder many of them get so depressed when they come home. >> host: sebastian younger, taking calls, tweets and text messages on booktv's in depth sunday, july 3rd, noon to 3:00 pm eastern. ..