but this summer he has one coming out, as a joke. he's a practical jokester and i wanted to ask him one day why i always wore a bowtie and he said did you not know? i'm president of the international bowtie society and i just made it up for of the moment. so the idea took off and so now this year he is writing a book, he just got the option covers so it will come out this summer, it's called the bowtie bible . so it's kind of a parody, a fun tiny short book but ... >> host: does he teach you how to tie a bowtie also. >> guest: how to tie a bow tie, how to wear a bowtie, he had a lot of fun with it and it's just a fun application with him. >> host: tell us aboutlife equity .

what the process was like, what the topic is, where it came from . >> guest: it is just a term that i used many times when i was talking to women about the value of investing in themselves. and we think in terms, being a small business owner you think about holding equity in a business . you think about building equity in a whole. you think about building equity as you want to grow your nest egg and you are building equity in that but how often do you apply that yourself and to your resume? and about the equity that you are building for you. because every skill that you develop in and acquire is adding to that. you know,all skills are transferable .many times especially women they think

that if they were successful in the volunteer world that it's difficult to transition to the for-profit world or maybe they need to go back to zero. but they should look at lateral moves or step ups and not be thinking in terms of going back to square one area so we talk about how to utilize those skills and your life equity is your passion plus the skills that you have developed push your goals and you use all of that to invest in yourself and to design yourself so that is your life equity and the key is putting that to work for you to help you achieve what is for you the american dream. >> host: what was the process like writing and where did you write it? >> guest: i took it from speeches that i have given

over a couple of decades and i worked with chart wheel literary and debra lee darnell and work with her to pull it all together and pull the profiles of women that i know who have reinvented themselves and have redefined themselves and have used that as a part of kind of their life expertise and sometimes to define themselves, that's what they do and women have a tendency to define themselves by their families . looking at it more holistic lee, your job and all those skills you bring to the table , that can be used to help define the strength that you as a woman bring to either the private or public sector and i tell a story in life equity about being out campaigning, i've been in the state senate and now i was

campaigning for congress and number one in tennessee, no one had ever on their own on the ballot gone out and run the race, i was the first woman elected in her own right. we had four women who had followed a spouse and i was in the county that had a little what we call a meat and three, a little cafc. if your plate is on meat and three veggies so we call them meat and threes and i had gone in in this county, they didn't have many women that served in elective office so i was passing out my campaign materials and i went over to this gentleman that you could tell had been out and a foreman and i gave him my card and i said i'm state senator marsha blackburn, i'm running for congress and i sure would appreciate having a vote. so he looked at me and he

said little lady, what qualifies you? that's agiveaway . being called little lady. what qualifies you for the us house of representatives and i thought, well you know, i've been to three choir directors, the girl scout cookie mom so i think i probably could handle the us house of representatives because i handled those jobs and bear in mind he didn't want to talk about that i was a state senator and just had led a four-year fight to keep us state income tax-free. that didn't go so i kind of threw that out him and i was like you know, those jobs being the three-year-old choir director and the chairman of the girl scout cookie mom, these are true life skills that do prepare you for working with people. working with diverse groups

of people. and with being able to help lead groups and entities and organizations, part of that istransferable skills . so people will undersell a woman when it comes to the job she can do. did that impressed him? >> guest: i think it did because he called me back to the table, he motioned to me like this and he looked at me and he said little lady, if you win this thing where we going to call you? congress girl, congress lady? i said congresswoman suits me just fine so he chuckled and i hope i got his vote. >> host: do you ever get recommendations from books from your colleagues? >> guest: yes i do. from time to time i will and i also have constituents that know i'm a voracious reader and a writer and they will

say you know, you need to read this or they will send me an email with the book review and say, that's how i came across food and also bringing out the best in people is how i came across that. it's things that were recommended to me like people who know what i like to read and recommended that i read those. >> host: is there ever a chance for what you call a beach reading, maybe nonfiction ... >> guest: not enough but the thing about reading fiction that is really interesting and i know brad thor has a book coming out soon, i think it's called or an agent and reading things, a clancy book or something like that is that you get way over there in letting the mind just go and thinking about the possibilities and every once

in a while people will talk about washington and they'll go this stuff coming out there now you, you couldn't make this up and so i think that sometimes reading fiction or reading some of these comedies, these parities, it can be good because it allows your mind to just sink. >> host: speaking of washington, do you read books about washington, about the congress, kind of contemporary narratives? >> guest: not a lot. i just, i don't know. i guess i just don't have the appetite for that. maybe i do so much periodical reading, i spend hours every day reading so maybe i'm too immersed in it to appreciate that. >> host: if you were to recommend a book for your district to read for example, maybe a district book, where

would you go? >> guest: i think reading the constitution is a great place. i think reading the federalist papers, things like that that are foundational that are just intriguing. i think for children, one of the benjamin franklin books. those are exceptional because of the appreciation that he had in his life for a lot of different skillsets . and the way he worked to develop different skill sets, i think the same thing for jefferson. a lot of different skill sets being someone who was an agrarian and a farmer who was a financier, who had interest in just a lot of different sectors of his life.

those help children to realize they don't have to do just one thing. >> host: do you have any authors who live in your district? >> guest: yes. we do. we have plenty of authors. johnmeacham lives in asheville now , for lives in nashville. you've got stephen mansfield who is in nashville and contemporary christian world, you've got michael w smith who is there, amy grant, steve buchanan, he's also in the church with us. >> host: there's a big publisher intown named thomas nelson in nashville . >> guest: the southwestern company is also there. they are too often nashville's oldest companies and people many times will say how did printers alley, about? they think it's a bunch of

honky-tonk, they don't realize it was actually the back door, the alley off the back door of all printing companies and thomas wilson being one of those and southwestern who started with five and expanded to educational books and i worked with the southwestern company, working my way through college. so i it paid for my tuition. >> host: marsha blackburn, have you ever spoken or been involved with the southern festival of books. >> guest: i have not.i have gone a couple times because i love it. authors in the round or things that bring authors together, those are fabulous. alice randall who has written a couple of bestsellers is a very dear friend and she's been very involved with southern festival of books, also an asheville gal, she and her daughter caroline, great authors.

>> host: recently it was the 400th anniversary of william shakespeare's death. are you a shakespearean in any way? >> guest: appreciation, reading, i have always thought that it would be a good excuse for a trip to italy to go. it's right around lake como or florence and see the balcony that inspired romeo and juliet. that would be a goodexcuse for a trip . i'm sure plenty of people have used it for research, right? [laughter] >> host: representative blackburn, when you return to a favorite book what is that book you pick up every couple years and reread? >> guest: i go back through this heaven evans of stephen kobe's books, i keep those grouped together on my shelf and it's great to pick those up every once in a while and

also a snow day, something like that and i just go back and hit the chapter topics that keep your mind thinking about prioritization, organization and keeping first things first and we all need those reminders. when i need to bolster myself for the fight, i will pick up atlas shrugged. it is just one of my favorites, it's one of those along with road to serfdom, the hyatt book that i make my kids read. [laughter] you know, you've got to understand that. >> host: finally, you mentioned you keep files area so is there another book in the works? >> i would love to do another book. on leadership for women and focusing it on women. there are so many women that

you know, women have a sick tree with his life in getting to a career. you take time off with a family, you kind of work part-time and manage rearing children or maybe an elderly relative that is ill and you are providing care and then you want to go back into the workforce and understanding the value that their life and that securities route brings to their work process, i think it's something that is valuable to do. so i would probably write again and write onsomething to do with women and leadership . >> host: this is an extended look on book tv at marsha blackburn's reading habits area this is tv on c-span2. >> this is book tv on c-span2 and we want to know what's on your summer reading list. send us your choices at book

tv is our twitter handle. posted on her facebook page, facebook.com/ book tv or send an email to book tv at c-span.org. what's on your summer reading list? book tv wants to know.>> i wrote in 2006, i published a book called the state of war as you mentioned which was about kind of the first few years of the war on terror and many of the abuses of power that the bush administration and the cia and other parts of the government wereinvolved in secretly . it revealed the nsa domestic spying and talk a lot about other aspects of what the government was doing. pay me price, i look at as a sequel to state of war. it's all about the corruption that has come in the war on terror 15 years after 9/11. we now, i like to think the

theme of this book really is that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, america thought we were going to have a search for justice or a search for retribution against the terrorists, whatever phrase you want to use but we all felt at that moment and 15 years later it's become a search for cash area and a search for power. and there are a lot of people who have found that the war on terror it has presented enormous opportunities for them and have taken full advantage ofit . the war on terror has become a permanent state of being for the united states and we have this sense of an endless war that we are paying for in hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars and so what i tried to reveal in pay

any price is to turn over a rock, lift up the rock and show you what's really going on behind that, the economic and financial side of the war on terror and the degree to which people are making a lot of money based on the war on terror and people in the government who are, who have used it to increase their power or status. so i think it's both financial and status and power are all kind of wrapped up into different motivations . one of the problems i have seen is that we as a country have allowed fear to take hold and so the balance that has traditionally existed between civil liberties and security has been badly skewed. by the government and by kind of this endless fear

mongering over the threat of terrorism. i often try to compare this time. to the early cold war. now known as the mccarthy era when immediately in the early days of the cold war right after world war ii, americans didn't really understand the soviet threat and because we didn't really fully know much about the soviet as a country, we allowed fear mongering to take hold and you know, it epitomized i senator joseph mccarthy's paranoid witchhunts against people and it increased that sense of fear increased the demands for greater involvement in foreign wars like vietnam. and i think today, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11

we had a similar, we've had a similar fear. of fear mongering because we had the sense that we don't really understand terrorists threats and it's similar in some ways to our failure to understand the soviet threat in the late 40s and early 50s and because we as a country don't fully understand the muslim world or what's happening among islamic radicals we have allowed ourselves to treat them as an abstraction and when you treat something that important as an abstraction it becomes easy to conduct fear mongering about that. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. c-span: created by america's television companies and brought to you as a public service by your cable or satellite provider.