if we would not have stayed the bottom half would not have been fully illuminated, that's my view. it's 8:00 o'clock. i would love to sign books for you. thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible] >> thank you for coming. [inaudible conversations] >> book tv is on facebook, liketous get publishing news and scheduling updates and behind the scenes pictures and videos, author information and to talk with authors during live programs. facebook.com/booktv. >> we want to introduce you to

kevin young who is an author. before we too far in the book, what do you do for a living? >> part of new york public system and i've been there since summer, great announcements, we discussed the james baldwin papers and we have just announced two days ago the rollins papers and we are happy to have those papers come to harlem and we have been there 92 years in harlem, same corner, malcolm x boulevard and we are happy to have

where i sort of begin the book. really u -- comes about from new media which sounds familiar, right? and that new media sort of the press, papers you see more expense ifer and then became a penny and were like two sheets, they were pretty scandalous, you know, full with hope which often amuse readers. that spurred on a lot of what we

are seeing as fake news but as old as 1835. >> host: most resembles the current change demonstrated if not caused by the internet. >> guest: yeah. i think the internet is a free press and not in the media sense that you are all in but in the sense to taking penny press to extreme, access, access and often they are getting reflected back what they like. it's very competitive much like news outlets now and you see a lot of proliferation of them and the similar thing on the internet. also similarly it's hard sometimes to debunk, they kind of circulate and circulate and that's what's happening now that we are talking about the fake news of today and how hard it can be to untangle ourselves from some of these shared

notions or notion that is some people have become hard to eradicate. >> host: why do you start with barnum? >> guest: he's at the center of american culture. helping to invent of what we now think of pop culture. he took the side show which was always a thing but made it professional and people pay money and go to elegant places to see these figures of dubious origin that he would concock. barnum, famous early hopes, the one that sort of got him going as successful showman was his display of a woman joic heff and pretended that he was george washington's nurse and took her

around the northeast and said, come see george washington's nurse maid and sort of connecting to george washington, the father of our country and people, you know, physically examined her. it was very troubling mostly because then she dies and then he has a medical theater where he dissects her in front of people. yeah, it gets pretty intense but he realized, oh, she wasn't that old that was also part of the hoax, the revelation. that's talking a lot about the idea about not only what you could say and make it almost patriotic to believe in this hoax but also that questioning the hoax or wondering about it was al part of the hoax, you know, he was great of making that part of it and you see that part of it now where the accusations of fake news are just as important as the revelations that they are fake and that kind of circle and circus as it were is part of

barnum's legacy. >> host: trump signals a far more troubling mind set one in which the truth isn't so much absent or contested as it doesn't matter. >> guest: yeah, well, i don't know if i'm alone in saying that we are in an interesting time where there are these kinds of questions about what is true. those almost predate our current situation and the proliferation of conspiracy theory as news but it's almost hard to eradicate and debunk the false notions. take obama's citizenry, what is that about this kind of birtherrism and i'm interesting on why do we have that at all and same thing that joic life and death were about, citizenry, patriotism, who belonged, all

the kind of big cosmic things that are part of our fabric as a nation, but they can be kind of evoked and resurrected by the kind of suggestion and it's even hard now even though candidate trump, has denied, oh, that wasn't true, it's hard to unsettle that and a notion of belonging and selfhood on attack of the birth certificate. i'm interested on why we do as why we believe and how much as we deceive. >> guest: why do we believe sometimes? >> as people sort of want to believe. we are almost programmed to and in the absence of an answer that is complicated and sort of maybe troubling, we sometimes settle for the easy answer. it's easier to believe that

misdiscomfort comes from some facts that is being hidden from me. i think the difference from barnum's day to now, there's a notion that i'm an expert and also he would trout out sort of fake experts but ultimately he gave the power to people to decide, i'm an expert, i can see that, that looks like a mermaid to me. he had a famous fake mermaid or that doesn't look like a mermaid. that was part of the interest in the show and now there's a kind of assertion there is no expert. you know, scientists don't matter, climate change. there's a fascinating denial of expertise at all and that, i think, becomes even more troubling and more of a difficult position to be in. >> bunk is the name of the book, the rice of hoaxes, plagiarism,

fake news, kevin young is the the author, thanks for joining us. >> great to see you. >> here is a look at some books being published this week. citizen newt, the making of a reagan conservative, 50 inventions, tim hartford reflects on how technology influenced the market, former national security and intelligence official timothy edgar argues for reforms in government surveillance in beyond snowden. also being published this week, the expanding blaze by jonathan israel, exploring how the american revolution inspired revolutions in europe. ..