they're amended all the time. some people use that as a criticism of state constitutions. i actually think that might be a strength. the united states constitution, partly because it is the most difficult to amend constitution in the entire world and partly because of this degree of veneration, has been amended extraordinarily rarely. i mean, if you put the bill of rights to one side because that's really part of the politics of the original ratification process, since 1791 there have been 17 amendments. and and that's extraordinarily few. this leads to all sorts of consequences. from my perspective, one of the consequences is that the constitution is tremendously out of date with regard to some of

our basic structures which are very, very much the ones that were given us in 1787. but it also means there's been a lot of what lawyers have come to call informal amendment where congress or the president will act aggressively, and then the supreme court will basically uphold it. or on occasion the supreme court is innovative, and what in some of the american states or in other countries might actually be the subject of formal amendment in this country takes place in inform always in part, as i say -- informal ways in part, as i say, as part of a mixture that the constitution is extraordinarily difficult to amend and anybody who suggests amendment is going to run head-on into newspaper

editorials and the like of how dare you think of amending our perfect constitution. i don't think our constitution anywhere close to perfect. i really wish we had a dialogue, popular dialogue that addressed the need for more amendment. one of the things i find very interesting about the presidential race that's already occurring particularly among the republicans is that there is talk of constitutional amendment even though these candidates fall over themselves in competing with which loves the constitution more than the other. but this doesn't stop them from saying even though they love it, they would like to see certain things changed. so that rick perry, the governor of texas, has proposed repealing the 17th amendment -- >> host: which is?

>> guest: allows for popular election of senators. and it is, in fact, a very important amendment because prior to the 17th amendment, senators were at least formally chosen by state legislatures, and you could make a halfway plausible argument that the senate had something to do with protecting federalism. because you could construct a story whereby senators would worry about keeping their jobs, to keep their jobs they would have to have the goodwill of state legislators, and this meant that they would have to be concerned with protecting the progress thetives of state government -- prerogatives of state government, things like that. once senators are popularly elected, they don't need to worry about state government. what they worry about is bringing home the bacon. and so from my perspective, the modern senate is nothing more than an affirmative action program for the residents of small states. and i think that of all of the

affirmative action programs in the country,s this is probably the least defensible. but, yes. i mean, to go back to your initial question, i think americans have at times the most ridiculous veneration for the constitution, far more so than framers themselves who recognized that they were -- and i mean this respectfully, not as founder-bashing -- that they were making it up as they went along because there was no precedent for the united states constitution. they were in this very, very hot philadelphia summer trying to figure out kind of a first draft. and i think they would have been astonished at the fact there has been no national convention since 1787 even though article v provides for the possibility of one. and i think they would be astonished at how few amendments

there have been. >> my earliest memories were actually as a refugee. i came at 4 years old, and my first memory was being taken away from my parents and being given to a white foster family because that was the only reason to leaf the refugee family. and that's always stayed with me, this idea that the war has been imprinted on me like an invisible brand stamped between my shoulder braids. my parents -- blades. my parents survived war and famine, but they exuded the force of that memory through their actions and their feelings. and so did everyone else in the vietnamese-american refugee community that i grew up in. as an american boy growing up, i was very cognizant of the fact that the vietnam war was something that was very important to the vietnamese-american community and the american community as a whole, but americans only saw one side of the story. apocalypse now, for example, scarred me for life -- saw it at 10 years old --

[laughter] my own personal life is very uninteresting, frankly, whereas the novel is my revenge on hollywood, francis ford coppola -- [laughter] also my attempt to also tell the history of the vietnam war and the story of the vietnam war from a perspective that most americans have never heard it before, which is how their own allies, their friends, the south vietnamese experienced this. and my narrator is a communist spy who is also giving us the communist perspective on it. and when he arrives in the united states, he is telling the -- he's giving us the viewpoint of how the vietnamese see american culture which is not necessarily in a positive light. so there's a very satirical dimension of the novel as well. i get white people to think about what white culture actually looks like to people from outside of the country. but i think the topic has been hard to exhaust for me which is why i had to write a nonfiction story about it, the much larger

context of a hundred years of american warfare that's been waged in the pacific since 1898 when the united states took the philippines, guam, hawaii and now iraq and be afghanistan as an extension of a century-long american campaign. that's why i needed to turn to nonfiction. i couldn't say those kinds of things in a novel. >> go back to that for one second. one of the sort of contextual questions i had for you is whether your experience writing the novel did anything to reform your sense of the vietnam war in any way. >> well, definitely so because i wrote the novel to criticize everybody. so there's something for everybody just like in this novel, because it criticizes a communist, it criticizes south vietnamese, it criticizes the americans. the theme of the novel is sympathy for the sympathizer. and i took away with that is the easiest thing to do is sympathize only with our own side. and the virtue of the flaw of my

character that he sympathizes with everybody which makes him a great spy and is also going to lead to his downfall as well. and that's what i learned from writing the novel. if there's any hope for peace and reconciliation and things like that, it really requires the expansion of sympathy and empathy to a much larger human community. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> here's a look at the five finalists for this year's national book award for nonfiction. african-american history professor inn ream -- provides a history of racism in america in "stamped from the beginning." zonologist arleigh russell hochschild in "strangers in their own land." in "nothing ever dies," the vietnam war. andres reseven december looks at

the enslavement of native americans in "the other slavery." 9 heather ann thompson reports on the 1971 uprise aring at new york's attica correctional facility. the winner of this year's national book awards will be announced on november 16th in new york city. .. from the 21st annual texas book festival. we are halfway through our coverage with a few more authors to go and you can follow us on social media to get the complete schedule with behind the scenes photos and videos on twitter. @booktv is our twitter handle. on his to grandma or booktv and

facebook.com/booktv. here is jessica luther on the culture of college sports. inaudible conversations]÷÷÷÷÷÷÷ >> good afternoon. good afternoon, everyone. we are going to get started. thank you all for being here, welcome. this beautiful fall afternoon, the great state of texas, we are excited to talk about football. it is fall, after all and i