arts education means that all they want to cultivate certain understanding of politics and certain habits of mind that will be essential for leadership part of it in a liberal democratic country are going to be very open-ended and subject to serious questioning and that is something that those who think about the national university are acutely aware of early on. they want to really sort of teach the range of ideas about politics and government and even while trying to cultivate a particular understanding of think you see some of that west point. we have seen that beyond west point in many ways. we are very open when we teach in terms of liberal arts about the varieties of political experience and we really want to be critical of the little colon "there goes my social life" chen's and yet most of us and most of the institutions themselves are self-consciously

committed to some sort of democracy. it's not like we are saying we don't mind if we produce a bunch of students that are marcus and we think that would somehow, we would have done something wrong along the way. >> host: professor thomas with the decline in liberal arts education overall in the country are we losing civics? >> guest: that's a great question and should be a serious concern to us. in fact at the end of the book i oppose the great challenge in our day really is the potential commercialization and the career turn in liberal arts education which threatened to eclipse the more robust liberal arts element and when you think of how in the founding generation the biggest threat in some sense might have been from religion in our day

the biggest threat will was a commercial nature which in interesting ways it's probably because of the success of american constitutionalism. the forward-looking version of it really wanted to create a thriving commercial society and we have done that but now do we need to correct back the other way and tend more to public obligations and have our institutions asked whether they have real civic obligations and whether they want to nurture those and their students? >> host: george thomas government professor claremont mckenna college founders of the idea of a national university -- "the founders and the idea of a national university" constituting the american mind is the name of the book. this is booktv on c-span2.

>> host: bob weil is the publisher of live right which is a division of backs. >> guest: w.w. norton and the oldest senator in america. but what kind of books do you publish? >> guest: mainly serious nonfiction literary fiction with a little edge to them. books that can change the culture. >> host: we are here to talk to you about some of the books are coming out this fall and let's start with the series one. >> guest: it's by david daily and it tells the story of how the country has been redistricted since 2010 to shift all these congressional districts over to republican space. most of the architect of the program have this token and they will travel visa sex.

you will see districts go to a garbage dump and pontiac michigan and it shows how the districts were created. the word was used by edmund wilson as early as the 1920s. >> host: we are being polite or use of the word that the whole word is on the front of the book, is no? >> guest: no the whole world is not. it's not on the front of the book. there are two asterisks and we call it -- but it was used by woodward and bernstein. it's a longstanding where they can that's political espionage and dirty tricks and sabotage. >> host: another book that they cannot already but it was a finalist for the pulitzer. >> guest: marching home is just a paperback, the first book i brilliant young historian and it details what happened to all the veterans when they came to the north, how they were forgotten. research is one-of-a-kind and it

was just so unusual to get a finalist for the pulitzer. we are very proud of it. plus who is wendy warren? >> guest: a lot of young historians. when the mac is a historian at princeton. she has rewritten art constitution. she's knows how slavery was indelibly linked to the founding of america. 50 to 70% of the ships coursing of the new england harbor all were going to the west indies in the caribbean. she shows that many of the founding fathers like winthrop invested heavily in shipping. john winthrop, his son was in barbados in 1928 comics use may may 1626. not for tourism.

>> host: he was there for? >> guest: i was assuming he was prospecting. his father came over later. wendy warren has written a major book. >> host: who is shirley jackson? >> guest: there's a huge renaissance and choose one of the architects and fiction of quality fiction in this country. she was franklin who is the author of this biography says she's the heir apparent to too and to hawthorne and she creates this woman's life through her novel. it predates feminine mystique and is a stunning biography. >> host: why have a a lot of us not hurt her for? >> guest: most people have heard of or through the lottery. the lottery is one of the most famous short stories written in 1948. she was forgotten. suddenly america is filled with fiction revival and she is

suddenly over. as good as a novel coming out by allen moore. what is this book? >> guest: is one of the hottest novels in the world including in america. it's coming out in september. allen moore is a graphic novel is that this is a tax novel which he worked on for 20 years. he lives a hermit like existence in northhampton angle and and he has written the story of life and the story of one family over 10 or 12 centuries. it's really an epic and it's getting crowds of people. new york, everyone. it could be one of the monster works of fiction of this year. >> host: is called jerusalem and its 1200 plus pages. guess who it is. jerusalem is a poem by william blake and it's the story of blight and a family and the universe.

i think it's a work of fiction that will last for hundreds of years. g for victory, a huge, huge fanbase. watchmen and you are going to see an explosion of interest in his work. >> host: is about the city of jerusalem? >> guest: it's about the underclasses of northhampton angle and that jerusalem was written by william blake and it's about the poor people of england in the 1600's and he transposed it to northhampton. the characters would remind you, lot of the characters are -- it's a very ambitious exciting book and i think it will explode. >> host: a couple of more books from live rightly want to share with you that are coming up. eric j. berlin. >> guest: a lot of people in your audience know of him. he has written a four century history of lighthouses starting with the boston lighthouse even

until today what has happened to lighthouses. he tells the story of america through the lighthouses and what they do the more. he was a lighthouse keeper. technology versus old-fashioned. it's a riveting book which for anyone traveling there are hundreds of lighthouses around michigan. he wouldn't know where they are in america. tells the story of the most unusual source and who doesn't like a lighthouse? shaneen digiovanni is one of the most pronounced -- profound war correspondents back in the world. she's everywhere whether this great danger going on. the morning they came for us is all about what happened in syria. the prose is vivid and it's a remarkable story of one courageous war correspondents effort to portray a country which is under siege.

>> host: bob weil we don't cover many novels on booktv but we have covered this author, winston groom several times. >> guest: this is his first major novel since "forrest gump." it's based on years of research. any american history of the early 20th century and he takes you through these east coast industrial -- have to come down south to protect their property against wachovia. it's page turning fiction for anyone who really loves american history and wants to see the intersection of history and fiction in vivid historical character. >> host: bob weil is the publisher at live right and those are some of the books coming out by that company. ..