we went to a discussion recently been in patchett who lives in nashville was holding and she was talking about her list of the best books, which she had done for parade magazine. my wife knew almost every one of them. i knew very few of them. >> host: senator lamar alexander, former university president. we appreciate your time on booktv. >> guest: thank you.

>> it now, the book is about what happened in the bottom of national security and there have been people who have proposed national security, but i wanted to see what goes on inside the courtroom because that is where the issues of guilt and innocence, that is where the issues of the power of the log are most clearly shown and

demonstrated. it is actually fascinating to watch the difficulty is that courts have a national security cases. >> we asked members of congress what they are reading this summer. >> i read about 100 books a year and i've been in a book report on everyone of them since i got out of graduate school. and it's a nice reference for going back and finding some other reading occasionally. one of the things i'm doing now is re-reading some of the mastering books that i have read before. there is an named cj bott who writes for nominal stuff about joe pickett in wyoming who winds up solving them out to any mysteries as well people with

wyoming and a special thing they are. i get advance copies of his book usually. this one is free fire which is yellowstone park. i'm not one, i actually got to be involved before he wrote the book because there was his own part of idaho, but nobody thinks they are. it was a jury of your peers and consequently, maybe you could commit murder their peers so he asked me to make sure that wouldn't be a possibility before the book came out and encourage people to kill people in the part of idaho that is yellowstone park. fascinating person. on other wyoming author that every reading is craig johnson who attends the law minor share of series, which is on television, too. the television is not the same as the book, so i encourage everybody to read the book.

another phenomenal character study writer. do a little international reading. i've been to botswana to work on the aids problem. i helped write the bill president bush surprised us and said i put $15 billion into solving the aids problem. back on her attention and i got to help write the bill. after we wrote the bill come and they sent me over to see what the problem was. that's how we do things. botswana is one of the places i went to and there's a series of books called the number one ladies detective agency that's great on bringing out the culture of a lot of africa, particularly botswana. i carry books with me all the time. that is why i have these. everybody has to have their cell phone with them. there is a kindle app and i'm not one right now i am reading my 60 years on the plane and

that is about a guy who was a trapper and an indian fighter. in his diary has been written into a book which didn't come out very long ago. fascinating stuff about the last i carry a kindle with me. it will fit in my pocket really easily. it's a little easier to read outdoors because it doesn't have the color depth that the other does. i miss when i'm reading girl on the train right now. a really strange they written but i'm a totally different style of writing and some people would consider it a chick novel, but i thought there was a top 10 reading list, so i thought i'd better breathe out when, too. and i have. i haven't finished it yet. i'm about a third of the way through it. i also read some technical books that has to do with my job. one of the reasons i read

several books at a time as you can get tired of reading one book of one style, so you search around and it keeps the interest going, particularly if they are textbook types. one of them that i've been working his deathbed ruling. that fits in with my budget work because this is about the people that wrote the budget act, who were all either dad or former senators. there's some problems. i'm trying to redo the budget act right now. there is another excellent wrote that i am going through. when i read a technical book, i actually tried to get just from the introduction and then i tried to such of the last chapter to see if they've got any good suggestions. if they do, i read the part in between to see how they got to that point. i suggest that for any of the technical reading. you can tell between the first

shot her in the last chapter the middle part of the book is going to be worth reading. i also dogeared books. i dogeared the books and write in the margins as they come up with ideas as again something i've learned in graduate school from a guy teaching complex enterprise, which shouldn't have a lot of reading, but he gives us a reading list of books that didn't have anything to do with business and had us write down the ideas we got as we did that. a very thought book that takes a little different approach than some of the ones that are anti-federal reserve's son that are pro-federal reserve. this goes into the history of money and actually has some good suggestions in the last chapter and i'm trying to fill in the pieces in between right now. so another part of my reading

every night when i finish up the fight to get my mind off of what i've been doing. if i keep working how their work in education or working pensions are a small business or whatever committee i'm really felt was time that evening. if i go to sleep, i keep working on it. unless i read something different. that is when i read some of the novels. i always finish up by reading some of the books that have the religious background. right after 9/11 i got a copy of the koran. i started reading matt and i had to go see the chaplain. it's really a bloody book and really concern me. he said you need to go back and read the old testament. the difference of course between the koran and the bible with the new testament is the new testament is the teachings of jesus, which are recognized by

the other religion and much more peaceful. so i am reading another translation of the koran now that was given to me by a muslim who said that you will find this to be a less violent version. it might be, but there is still a lot of violence whether you believe or you don't believe. a reading biography of billy graham also and i particularly like the chronological bible. the different books of the bible were written at different times and even some pieces of them were written at different times. somebody took and compiled it so that it flows straight through and you find out they were sent into battle on six different times. it was a punishment primarily once. the gospel is probably a little bit shorter than the gospel

because there is some repetition in there. they don't repeat the same verse were times because it was in the four gospels. that is a pretty good way to read the bible. i was also challenged once to read the bible over a short period of time. suggested she read it over three months. my son and i both took the challenge and did it and you can do up with any bible. you just look at the number of pages that got him to divide it by the number of days in those three months and then you read that many pages each day. the advantage of doing not if you are looking at the big picture then instead of the individual verses, which we sometimes get hung up on. so that's a little bit of what i'm reading and what i'm doing with my summer. i penetrate to wyoming pretty much every weekend where if you have to come back and vote. that is a three book trip.