nerdy. we are going right here. with that said, thank you to everyone coming tonight and they really, really appreciate you supporting "the house of secrets." thanks to c-span for supporting us always. i really appreciate it. [applause] >> okay, don't know just yet. really put the can to give them one more round of applause? thank you. [applause] >> lara heimert, what are some books coming out from basic baseball? >> i'm excited about one called were detected which is a memoir by the former editor in the former editor in chief in this dictionary who has been there for about 40 years until retirement in 2013. and in that time oversaw the complete transformation of dictionaries of lexicography in the english language.

for anyone who's read the professor read the professor and the "mad men," you can remember the description of what it was like to assemble a dictionary and was pretty much like that in the mid-70s as well. there were readers all over the world who would submit index cards and they be put little card files and eventually the usages, whenever the dictionary was revised come about every 80 years to make it in the next round. it took an incredibly long time to update new meanings of words or new etymologies they had discovered. of course nowadays all online. instead of readers all over the world you had crowd sourcing and people reporting tweets or websites and it's led to this massive democratization of language in this really interesting way. it's also led the oed to go back and relearn whole words with all of the newspaper's online outcome you you can discover usages that no one had ever

possibly heard a the last time the dictionary was revised. so what is this extraordinary about pollution and language. along the way he introduces us to these fascinating, through histories of words, my favorite is the word here in deputy, which was introduced in the language based on a story you had read. fair and that is the historical name for sri lanka. when you say fair and if they say, you are referring to sri lanka, which is something i'd ever known it has to did know there is a word to describe the place on a dog's back that it can't scratch. i didn't know was that the word gone jet had been introduced by the duke of wellington. all sorts of things on every page you learn about language. for the man who loves between you and me by mary norris. if anybody's interested in books, words, it is a fantastic

read. >> is mr. simpson in favor of this democratization of language? >> absolutely. one of the things that is great is his description of himself come in as an outsider. he was on an oxford or cambridge trained in realizing the extent to which the dictionary have been shaved have been shaped by upper-middle-class readers. the kind of people who have a lot of time to read or people who don't necessarily spend a lot of time working. the dictionary had really been shaped by these people who read milk and educationally assorted middleground detective novel. but it was very male and very white and very british. this is sloppy for the dictionary starts going online, forces the dictionary into the modern age. he gets interested in magazines like popular mechanics than reagan, a language of rastafarianism. there's a wonderful passage

where he brings amendment two is office because he's trying to find out the definition of skanky. this is the kind of language, an old gentleman sitting in his cottage in the countryside never would've done. it really is part of a mission i think for john to open the dictionary to new readers, to new writers and eventually to the whole world by putting it online, which is his great accomplishment as editor-in-chief. >> host: will he be going on book tour? s. the web salute you. he's done a lot of speaking at the oed and we are gearing up to have them do a lot more. >> host: how important is the book tour to sell in the book? >> guest: depends on the kind of book. for fiction it remains their import. for certain kinds of nonfiction it does as well. i don't think it is essential.

a lot of them are review driven are driven by npr radio. we see smaller and smaller resume the way that we publish and promote books. there's all these other ways of promoting books like social media for people to enter into people's homes and book clubs through these programs that i know nothing about. youtube, et cetera. the physical traveling of an author from town to town is maybe less important important than it used to be. >> host: what else you have coming up this fall? just go on an earnest that i have the caliphate and i do kennedy which is a book that is particularly important right now. the word caliphate is and what we spend a lot of time talking about before 2001 and suddenly it enters the lexicon for all of us as first al qaeda and not

isis talk about restoring the caliphate. kennedy is an expert on arab history at the university of london here's what the number of books on middle eastern history. this is his effort to establish the coffee both of the worst in the history of an idea. there's an obvious reason why the caliphate holds such enormous appeal for so many young muslims particularly because it was a time when islam ruled the world. baghdad had half a million people during the time when london and paris have maybe a few thousand. this was the muslim world at the height of his power. i think what he is trying to show is the caliphate for this incredibly heterogeneous quality, but there's no one caliphate. people cerda the idea of when a quality was led purely by

worship of god. of course like any political structure is much more complicated. they were callous or were deeply spiritual and deeply warlike. you can find a justification for almost anything. so i think this is a necessary corrective to this kind of rhetoric of the caliphate to be pure better time. >> host: one where book you have coming up? just go there's another book by a law professor criminologist and start edition which was about why we struggle so much in america with mass incarceration of how everything you think you know is wrong. don't about the war on drugs or private prison. at the root prosecutors in criminal justice. a lot of people haven't acknowledged the major factor behind these high levels of imprisonment in the united states.

one of the things that is fascinating about the book is a shows the very time the crime rate is dropping there is a surge in the number of prosecutors who are working for the u.s. government. as a consequence, you just start seeing an incredible surge in prosecutorial deal asking for much longer sentences, prosecuting a much higher level than they would have before. misses a crucial factor in creating the parser will state now, not necessarily issues of race or private prisons which people think of as the conventional wisdom about why we are where we are now. >> host: what kind of books does basic publish? just go that means about 90% of our authors are academics. a handful of journalists, statesman and politician. pretty intellectually high-end oaks.

>> guest: is an independent, part of a larger corporation? >> guest: and was part of the groove. it remains part of the boat group, but we have recently the fourth largest publisher in the united states. >> host: how does that affect what you do? >> guest: so far not much. i think it is a really good fit. it is known in the united states for publishing a lot of fiction. i think it is a really good counterbalance. it's been really lovely. they are taking the whole group and picking it up and moving it over. i still had the same staff in the same boat. it sort of minimally true magic. >> guest: heimert is the publisher of basic books.

this is book tv on c-span2.

speed is photo you sent me an e-mail in 2012 weeks or days after barack obama was reelected in 2012. it was at the top of an e-mail from a christian coalition of america. i was struck at the time because it came right on the heels between the election and banks giving and it had this caption underneath it. instead family prayer pennsylvania in 1942. is the image here. the black-and-white photo is a white family saving grace before a meal. and then add this line of text, further explaining the transition to the message. it said we will soon be

celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first innings giving. god has still not with all these blessings upon this nation. although we now richly deserve such condemnation. we have a lot to give thanks for coming give thanks far, but we need to pray to our heavenly father and ask them to protect us from those enemies outside and within who want to see america does. that is the message that comes from attached to this image after the reelection of president barack obama in 2012. at the time i wasn't working on the book quite at but immediately saved it because it seemed to me an artifact in a symbol of the visceral reaction to the reelection of brack obama in 2012. part of it is about unpacking when we see these kinds of reactions. this kind of throwback imagery to a previous time, a mythical golden era, what is behind that since the assaults a loss and

grief. the book is the end of white christian america. to prevent some confusion, what i mean really as a metaphor for the whole cultural institutional edifice that was built not exclusively but primarily by white protestant christians in this country they really did set the tone for national conversation and really shaped a lot of american ideals. many of you may have walked here. to block very far about tripping an institution that was started by white protestant, the ymca, ywca, the boy scouts would not be hard to find these things. and yet, these kinds of institutions in the world that they were really a part of its past from the american scene. that is what the book is about. you can see it in architecture. i want to focus on demographics

for the setup of the conversation. i'm going to show you a few more. it would be this one. this really shows us the changes that have been just over the last eight years. i've got shaded in this light grids appear to barack obama's president did. this is all white christians together. the percentage that are white christians, nondenominational, orthodox album together comprised of the american population. 59% of the country. by 2008 on barack obama was running for president, two election cycles ago. today that number is 45%. 47% in 2014 and in the next year our latest data shows that 45%. chester in the last two election cycles, turn president rod obama's presidency, we have crossed this amazing threshold.

we move from being a majority white christian country to a minority in just a short amount of time. so even if people don't know the stats that while, many white christians, particularly white conservative christians feel this shift in their bones that mrs. bharata the reactivity we are seen. just about one more symbolic issue across the same time. , i am putting up here support for gay marriage over the same period of time. if you had to go back to 2008, what you see is only for his tent of americans supported gay marriage when barack obama was running for president in 2008. the number two days 53%. ..