>> on this columbus day weekend we have three days of book tv. afterwards, former radio host and msnbc contributor charles sykes looks at the conservative movement in america. he's interviewed by fox news contributor tammy bruce. tonight, authors on education and education reform. you will hear from a former pbs news hour education correspondent john marrow, author of addicted to reform. talkshow host sam whose book is "they are your kids" and cathy davidson county director of the futures initiative at the city university of new york and author of the new education work also this weekend nobel prize-winning economist mohammed younis talks about how to solve the problems of global poverty, unemployment and climate change. he's in conversation with jeffrey sachs and columbia university. michael waldman, president of

the brennan center for justice at nyu school of law examines the second amendment and the atlantic looks at the influence of tech companies like amazon, facebook and google on our news, politics and free will. on monday, calmest day, we had the finalist for the national book award which would be presented in november. that's all on this holiday weekend, three days of c-span2 book tv, television for serious readers and for complete television schedule visit book tv.org. host: your most recent book called shame. what is the title come from? guest: while, i wrestled with the title for a long time on this book. there are many different themes i tried to introduce in the book and i couldn't find that sort of single thing and finally i came upon with my wife the word shame

and that word seemed to bring together all the things i was trying to work with for this book. host: what was that central theme you are going for? guest: the ideas that america arguably the greatest country in all of history also committed one of the greatest sins perpetrated that sin over centuries. dehumanized an entire race of people relentlessly year in and year out for a very long time, so it's a profound evil in a mixed stunning great next-- greatness comes another greatness i think is what finality delivered us from what we were doing wrong, but on the other hand it is a shame that we will now have to deal with and so may be we are still too

close to the 60s when we first acknowledged the shame to understand its importance, but i think it's one of the most important events in all of american history, certainly how does this society that believes in freedom grounded in freedom deal with having the trade as and so the book tries to look at different aspects of that irony. host: in my reading of it, the shame belongs to the 1960s liberal movement in your view and that is what has caused our current political polarization. guest: yes, thank you. host: is that a fair assessment? guest: a very fair assessment. in the 1960s american liberalism change and took responsibility for dealing with that shame and saying in effect we are the politics, the ideology that will redeem america.

going to bring back american legitimacy as a democracy. that's our mission and liberalism has i think dominated american politics for the last 50, 60 years simply because it took propriety over this terrible shame and said we will save america from it and we will end racism and we will and sexism and we will overcome all of those things and the people we heard we will have great societies and war on poverty and we will redeem them and bring them up to power with everyone else. we will correct that and that will really restore our legitimacy as a free society. host: in your book the letter and word is used pretty liberally. guest: i guess so. host: you say some groups co-opted it.

they didn't necessarily want to be, but they co-opted the word. guest: yes. host: for their own political purpose. guest: yes. took it over and almost made a romance around it and an sort of subscribed to the word a kind of power and a truce that had never been really there before , but did serve the their argument because much of the argument certainly coming to minorities in america for the last 50 years since the 60s has been now you have admitted all that you did and we now demand in the name of what we suffered that empowers us and gives us an entitlement to special

consideration in american life now and so that word was just a part of a theme that contributed to that larger point of view, power and victimization. host: why did you include the story of your swim team and quitting that swim team in this book? guest: i included that story talking about quitting the swimming team and the story that i was the only black kid on the swimming team. host: you're the captain. guest: captain of the team and the coach and i were very close, really. in the summer before my senior year he had three week sort of summer vacation for the entire team at his mother's home in upper lake michigan and he never invited me. i was excluded and not meanly in any way, but

the team organized around without me knowing anything about it. this wonderful time they were going to have on the lake and i was never told about it. well, the implication there is that he collaborated with racism he was my friend. he was a good coach. we liked each other, but he-- his mother said no blacks can come and so he honored about and he plotted with the parents of the other swimmers and so forth. he was a metaphor for america. he knew better. he liked me. i liked him. i babysat for him. yet, he collaborated in a way that was certainly at the very least cruel,

but sending me a message that larger america said there was something unacceptable about me and he claimed he was not able to see that, but i think he was. so, i talk about him as this is the situation of this sort of profound hypocrisy that america is now in. america is now looking at minorities as my swimming coach looked at me and he called me and he got mad and called me every name in the book and said i was a militant and all of this i was very calm of because i knew he was wrong and he knew he was wrong and america now stands before its minorities humble, apologetic, begging for some relief from the stigma of racism and that is minority power.

the power of minorities that they have wielded for now 50 years. that little incident of quitting the swimming team and i did not quit the swimming team because of what he excluded me. i grew up in segregation i had seen it all the time. i was-- i would be here all day talking about the instance of segregation i endured, but i knew he was compromised and so that's what it into debt amounting to. host: what was your parents lifelike in 1940s chicago? guest: my parents are two very exceptional people. i will actually write about them in the future my father was black from the south, third-grade education, targets up to read and write and my mother was upper middle class white from ohio, daughter of a contractor

and went to the great university of chicago and so forth. on the surface they were very different. once you got to know them, you saw that probably was my father who was better read and spent more time reading and-- then my mother. but, for them life-- they were exceptional people in that they knew and had no illusions about the fact that they would have to fight for a place in american life and they did it. they did it without ever complaining, without any compunction. they were founding members of core. i grew up as what they call a core baby, and then they had core baby's. was a core baby, so i marched all through childhood and demonstrated and that was what i came out of and they lived their

entire life fighting for civil rights and they were true, admirable people. host: were they wrong? guest: where they-- host: were they wrong? guest: they were not wrong. they were writes through this is something that is important. they were not wrong. in their day this was a deeply blanket lee racist society. i grew up and i couldn't go here, couldn't go there. i never ate in a restaurant until i was 17 on the swimming team. because blacks could not go into a restaurant. you could not get a job there. segregation was everywhere. they were fighting a real concrete unapologetic enemy in american society that said you are going to stay inferior.

or like william a faulkner the great novelist said in a famous essay in the 50s, you are probably right, but go slow. well, obviously he had never heard of patrick henry, give me freedom or give me death. my parents were give me freedom or give me death they were not ever apologetic and they fought and so i grew up seeing all of that and it is certainly had an impact on who i became in the long run, but they were too-- now many 50 years later america is a different place. america is not dearly we racist. racism is no longer-- no longer stops the dreams and hopes of any black person in american life. you can do anything you want. you can be the president's. you can be a ceo.

you can be a dishwasher. you could be anything you choose to be in america today. does that mean every white person will love you? i don't know and don't care. what's important is that you have that opportunity. the opportunity is what it's all about, so the civil rights movement today is very different than back then. they are not fighting against a real raises him, a real enemy that will stop their life with bigotry. of they are fighting now basically for the rewards, for their manipulating white guilt. they are using the story of black victimization to manipulate the larger society into entitlements and we have a generation of black leaders who do nothing but shake down major american corporations. this is not the civil rights movement of my parents.

it's not the one i grew up in. it's very different. host: was your connection to stanford university and the hoover institution? guest: i am a senior fellow at the hoover institution at stanford university, which always there-- very happy about. great, great institution with great people there great environment, colleagues and it's meant everything to me and to my work and has facilitated that, so i am a fan. host: this is your 15th book? guest: not that many, but some were kind of here and there. but, it's probably the fifth of book i have written on racial matters. host: shelby steele has been our guest on book tv. "shame". doctor steele, one final

question. i know you are here at freedom fest. is there a specific reason you're here? guest: yes, there is. i have a son, shelby eli steel, a young doctor-- documentary filmmaker and he has a film out he is showing here called "i am: how jack became black" and it's a look at identity politics. jack is his son and he tells the story of taking him to school the first day and say he had to identify his primary race or he couldn't go to school here in the united states of america well, that's how it-- it explores all of that controversy. i think shows the essential corruption of identity politics. white hurts people it was to help. host: thank you for your time. >> i am here to see that

and cheer him on. >> here's a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals happy around the country. next weekend we will be live for two full days of author talks at the southern festival of books in nashville. later in october, there are two book festivals happening on the same weekend. in the northeast it's the ninth annual boston book festival and in the south of the louisiana book festival takes place in baton rouge. in early november, two state capitals host book festivals on the same weekend. is the wisconsin book festival in madison, and look for us live at the texas book festival in austin for more information about upcoming book fairs and festivals and to watch previous festival coverage click the book fairs tab on a website, book tv.org. >> when the island to ask you before we finish is you have been flat out running and it's

tough and you been writing a book and you had time to read much and what kind of books attract your attention? guest: i just finished a great book called "the boys in the boat". host: is not fabulous? guest: incredible book and now i'm reading the-- "the guns of august" about world war i. you would have thought i had read that book, but i hadn't. i read a fiction book i thought was really terrific, it's called "how to let you cannot see" and it's another amazing book. i do read and i read a lot of philosophy, i mean, a lot of really frankly spiritual philosophy, but my wife reads almost one book a week. she just finished of the book "roosevelt's last battle" and i'm so proud

of her. she's a voracious reader and then she will give me the things that she thinks i would really enjoy and so what i do is absorb a lot of information every day with my ipad and i read magazines, also. i mean, i wish the new yorker stories could be longer. host: are you sure? guest: i absorb a lot of information and a probably will do a lot more reading. host: i have two of them for you. one called "three days in january" but that transition between eisenhower and kennedy and what makes it so powerful now is that eisenhower's concern, nuclear weapons were an issue, cuban missile crisis happened right after the transition and his concern about ensuring that you had civilian control of the military.

five-star general, i mean, and there is a lot that translates. the other is again about eisenhower called "ike's gamble" the time of the crisis in the first time we really got involved in the middle east and the mistakes we made, big mistakes. very informational books guest: let me give you one more that i think is one of the best books i've read in a long long time and that's david macola's book on the right brothers. host: yes, yes. guest: he is just-- he's a genius. so, all these people from north carolina, kitty hawk all you had was a bunch of sand and wind. created the airplane in ohio, so just remember that. national title or not. we claim aviation, not you; okay? >> you can watch this

and other programs online at book tv.org. >> molly campaign for justice to pursue the killer, but because of prejudice, the way authority often neglected these crimes because the victims were native american, one of the things that shocked me was how corrupt much of the justice system was, back in the 1920s especially in this remnant of the frontier many lawmen had little training. it was often easy if you are powerful to buy off a law man. molly and others turned

a private investigator. private investigators had a much longer-- larger prominent role in society back then because they often had to fill the void, but the problem with private investigators were they often had criminal backgrounds and were available to the highest bidder. the boundaries between a good man and a bad man were extremely porous and many of the private investigators who were working on the case seemed to be concealing evidence rather than unearthing its and while this was going on it wasn't only molly's family that was being systematically targeted. others were dying. it was a championing who got a call one day and he left his house and when he came back he dropped dead, evidence later indicated he had also been poisoned most likely with strychnine and for those of you familiar with agatha christie mysteries you know strychnine is an awful poison causing the whole body to consult as if it were electricity and you slowly suffocate

while you're conscious until you mercifully die. one of the reasons poisoning was such a common way to kill is because even scientists knew how to detect poison and the local lawman would not perform toxicology so you could simply go to the local drugstore or the grocery store, pick up some form of poison and give it to someone or spike liquor and it was an easy way to kill someone and be undetected and by 1923 other people who had also tried to catch the killers were also killed there was one man, a lawyer who started to gather evidence and one day he received a call from an osage dying of poisoning in a coma city he took a train there and told his wife before he left, he had 10 children, that i have got evidence in this hiding spot and if anything happens make sure you get it gets the

authorities. he went to oklahoma city, that with osage, gathered evidence and after he died of the poisoning he called local authority said that i have enough evidence to catch the killer. on coming back to osage county and getting on the next train, but when the train arrived he was not there. he did not get off and they sent out the bloodhounds looking for him. there were local boy scout troops in the area that took up the search and he was eventually found with his body line by the railroad tracks. someone had thrown him from the train. when his wife then went to the hiding spot someone had already gotten their and cleaned out all the evidence as well as the money he left for her and the 10 children who were left destitute took many children were by osage family. it was another man, an oilman who was a friend of the osage and he went to washington dc to hopefully get federal authorities to

investigate these cases especially given the local corruption. he got to a boarding house in the capital, checked in. he received a telegram from an associate in oklahoma saying be careful. the oilman carried with him a bible and a pistol that evening he left the boarding house. he was abducted and at some point someone wrapped the burlap sack around his head. he was found the next morning in the covert. he had been beating to death and stabbed more than 20 times. the "washington post" at the time said in a headline that the osage had long already knew, a conspiracy to kill rich indians. finally, 1923, after official death toll of more than 24 osage the osage tribal council issued a resolution pleading and demanding for federal authorities

tainted by corruption to intervene and it was then that the case was taken up by a rather obscure branch of the justice department. one that is not obscure on this day in particular. it was then known as the bureau of investigation and would later be renamed the fbi. i think it is somewhat fitting to this day to talk a bit about the bureau because i think it's probably on a lot of people's mind. the bureau back then was really a ragtag operation. it had only a smattering of agents. they were not authorized to to carry guns. if they wanted to arrest someone, they had to get a local law man to make the arrest and they had very limited jurisdiction over crimes , but they had jurisdiction over american indian reservation and so that is why the osage murders

became one of the fbi's first major homicide cases. 1925, the new box man jabber hooper-- j edgar hoover summoned this man to washington saying he needed to see him right away. , white is also a remarkable man and in many ways he's like molly. he reflects an embodied the transformation of the country. he was born in a cabin in texas, on the frontier. he was from essentially a tribe of lawmen. his father was a sheriff he grew up and saw people being hung, criminals being hung. he became a texas ranger as did many of his brothers. he practiced law writing on a horse with a pearl handle gun at a time when justice was often meted out with a smoking barrel of a gun. by the 1920s, 1925 when who are suddenly summoned him to

washington he has to wear a suit. he has to learn to adapt techniques like fingerprinting, handwriting analysis to come-- become an important part of this case. yes the file paperwork which he can't stand and when he gets to the bureau he doesn't know why hooper has a summoned him, but hooper at the time was replacing many old frontier lawman with a new breed of agents, these college boys who type faster than the shots and the old-timer -- in fact they had little criminal experience and so hoover kept on the role a few frontier lawman like white and they were known as the cowboys. this is actually picture of super taking-- taken a few months before white. this is exactly what hoover looked at his desk. he was only 29 when he became director and not

yet the autocratic power he had over the next several decades. he was new to his job and he was still insecure about his power the funny thing about hoover was that he hated taller agents and so taller agents hated to be summoned to headquarters because they were afraid if he saw they were tall he might fire that many also kept a diary behind his desk so he could stand on and seem taller. when he summoned white, white stood 6'4". [laughter] >> what's more, even though he had on the new suit he was supposed to wear he was finally wearing a cowboy hat which violated all protocol. here he was looming over hoover and hoover begins to tell him about the osage murder cases. the bureau had been at that time working on the case for two years and the results had been

completely disastrous. >> here's a look at some authors recently featured on both tvs afterwards. our weekly author interview program. investigative journalist art levine reported on the mental health industry. "new york times" magazine contributor suzy hansen reflected on her travels abroad and weighed in on america's global standing and progressive policy institute senior fellow david osborne examined the charter school movement and offered his outlook for the future of public education. in the coming weeks on afterwards, craig shirley will discuss the life and political career of newt gingrich, federal judge john newman will detail his career of the judicial system first of a prosecutor and currently has a federal appellate judge. former face the nation anchor bob schieffer will examine the role of the media today. this weekend on afterwards former radio host and msnbc contributor charles

sykes will provide his thoughts on the conservative movement in america. >> i'm a conservative who believes that america should be based on an idea. they reject the idea took they reject the values of the declaration of independence rather explicitly. they don't believe america is an idea took they can get geographical location. people by people of certain ethnic and racial backgrounds and there is a real dark side there and the reality is that throughout the campaign donald trump had more than one opportunity to repudiate them, reject them, speak out against them and he dodged and delayed again and again and again. it's a pattern. this is not a one off. is a problem. its cancer at the heart of the conservative movement and if we aren't willing to say that the left is not right that we tolerate these people. there are these moral

judges, these key moments in every movement. liberalism had to expel the communist in the late 1940s. conservatism had to expel the birches in the 60s and we have to deal with the alt right. >> afterwords airs on book tv every saturday at 10:00 p.m. and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch all afterwards programs on her website, book tv.org. ..