i reread it last summer and i was just astonished by how i'd forgotten how good it is. he was a gifted writer and he wrote that just after world war ii. it's a little racy for the time which is probably why it sold so well. that he won a pulitzer prize for it. it's so intricately put together, the characters. you can still see willie stark and jack martin and you can of the our and you would see the families difficulties in the pictures of life in louisiana. that's such a powerful book. another book which is not fiction that i have been reading for months is t. lawrence's book called the "seven pillars of wisdom." that may sound kind of strange that this was lawrence of arabia, this is a book he wrote about his time in the desert back there in the world war i time.

and according to his preface, he lost, he didn't take notes and then he lost the first draft or two, got burned out and he still wrote it. if you read the book it has all this enormous detail about this and did and what happened the day of his work on this movement. i don't know how he could've possibly remembered it but it is some of those elegant writing i have ever read. so i read it at night to go to sleep i read a little bit of the "seven pillars of wisdom" and after about a chapter i have a soft. >> host: do you have enough airplay time to read traffic i don't read books on airplanes very much. i just go back and forth to tennessee. that's about an hour. i usually and reading the newspaper or are catching up on work or sleeping. i read when i'm by myself that i read at night if i go to bed, or sometimes early in the morning.

or in the summer i go fishing usually for a couple of weeks and i will take some books to read. >> host: mrs. alexander is also a reader. >> guest: a time. she loves to read. we went to a discussion recently in nashville, and she was talking about the best, list of the best books which she done for parade magazine. as she went through them i found my wife to almost everyone of them. i knew very few of them. >> host: senator lamar alexander, former governor, army university president. we appreciate your time on booktv. >> guest: thank you. >> here's a preview of some of the books being published this fall.

>> look for these titles in bookstores in the coming weeks and months, i want for the authors on booktv.

>> we are living in the moment when a man who is in the white house right now is a constitutional lawyer by trade, and training, who won the nobel peace prize, who was portrayed as a transformative figure in american politics, and is presiding over a global assassination program. is presiding over the most intense, presided over the most intense persecution and prosecution of whistleblowers in u.s. history, has used the espionage act more during his two terms in office than all of the presidency's in u.s. history combined since the act was signed into law in the early 1900s. this president, obama, is viewed as this great liberal leader who had incredible support, and yet

dick cheney, i imagine him flyfishing somewhere in wyoming, having a good chuckle over how great this period has been for their agenda. for the agenda that john mccain would have never been able to implement. for the agenda that mitt romney would never have been able to implement. barack obama -- [applause] -- has used his credibility, has used his credibility as a popular democrat and a constitutional lawyer to seek to legitimize what amounts to a global assassination program. you know, that every president since gerald ford has upheld an executive order that said that the united states does not assassinate people. and yet the u.s. congress has not only avoided legislating that issue or defined the term

assassination, but has actively refused to do so. and the reason is because if congress actually defined assassination, if congress i just said okay, that's an executive order and we are what you translate that into law, would think you would have 500 plus lawmakers who would be also responsible for this policy. so instead of assassination, what we are told is where engaged in targeted killing. we are engaged in a high target value campaign. no, no, no. what we are engaged is a global hit squad program where we are embodiment of what richard clarke who was the counterterrorism czar under clinton and then came over into the bush era, he told congress in a secret hearing shortly after 9/11 that the reason that clinton did not want to do all of the kinds of things we are seeing right now is he didn't want to give the perception of running an israeli style assassination program. you fast-forward to the present

time and we have a popular liberal democratic president who has basically said that it is legitimate for the united states to have a parallel judicial system whereby people are sentenced to death by committee that meets on terror tuesday and puts people terrorist statistics on what to call baseball cards and the ghost of ridiculous chain of command at at the top of that is the president of the united states who asked in the spirit of an ever and decide to live and die on any given day, because he says so. i want to know with all the liberals who have supported this policy and at one point it was 70% of self-described liberals said they supported drone strikes abroad, i want to know how many of those people, when they do the phrase president donald trump kill list are going to do believe in that principle. because i'll tell you something,

there's no such thing as a democratic or republican cruise missile. there's no such thing as a republican or democratic drone strike. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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