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on about the books we delve into the latest news of the publishing industry with insider interviews with publishing industry experts. we also give updates on current nonfiction authors and books, the latest book reviews and we will talk about the current nonfiction books featured on c-span booktv. >> host: welcome to the about books podcast and program. a little bit later we will be talking with the "washington post" book critic and getting his take on some of the notable books of the past year but first, here's some publishing news. this week former white house chief of staff mark meadows book was published. lots of news came out of it including that president trump tested positive for covid-19 prior to the presidential debate. the former president was in a bunker for safety following the murder of george floyd and the then president threatened to

bomb a village of a taliban leader didn't cooperate with him. they since denounced as fake news and all seasons presses the publisher. also this week the children's publisher scholastic, home of the harry potter series and worth an estimated $1.2 billion is facing a potential challenge to the company's recent leadership. the former ceo robinson who died earlier this year left the majority of the company stock to a long time employee. now this surprised mr. robinson's family. a scholastic was founded by mr. robinson's father in 1920 and was considered a family business. according to news reports, mr. robinson's two sons have requested argumentation related to his will and they are considering a legal challenge.

on this issue, "the wall street journal" has reported extensively. in other news, random house announced they will be publishing national book award winner historian next to book a dual biography about harriet jacobs and. beecher stowe entitled harriet's mirror and it will look at the relationship between the two abolitionists. she won this year's national book award for nonfiction for her book all that she carried. also in the news, nicole parole is an award winner. her new book is called this is how they tell me the world ends and it won the financial times mckinsey business book of the year. an annual award given to the most compelling and enjoyable insight into business issues and it comes with a 40,000-dollar monetary prize. finally, according to the npd

books scanned book sales were up almost 10% from the week ending november 208th as we enter the holiday book buying period. adult nonfiction sales were down 1% and is still up 6% for the year. a side note nearly one quarter of all books are sold during the holiday period. in the author himself and a pulitzer prize winner as well, he joins us on about books. this is a look back at 2021. what has your year been and what are you doing? >> i've read a lot of books and enjoy having my kids back into real school which has made it easier to read a lot of books. i've been reading particularly a lot about 9/11 because the 20th

anniversary i wanted to look back at that as well. >> what did you find in some of the rereading of those books? >> guest: i wish i could say they were all really reads. there was one i missed along the way and one thing that i concluded from reading about 21 books on various aspects of 9/11 is that it was an attack that our leaders said was on our values and yet in our response to the attack we often undermine the values we claimed we were upholding so that was one of the tragedies of the era and it wasn't something that was entirely novel to my own thinking but i hadn't hit on that until i went back and read a lot of these books.

>> host: one of the books you read was lawrence writes the looming tower. does it hold up after all these years? >> guest: absolutely. the looming tower is one of the truly extraordinary works on the run ups to 9/11 on how we got to that moment. i would also highlight ghost wars in that mix. it was interesting one of the reasons i was thinking about the looming tower this year was not just because of the 9/11 anniversary that because i read lawrence wright the plague and in many ways i felt that i was reading just a different version of the looming tower because it was all about warnings of a great threat that was coming. mixed signals and different

officials. i probably wouldn't have connected those to if it were not for the coincidence of the 9/11 anniversary and our experience with covid. >> host: before we move on to some of the notables i want to ask you how long did it take you to write that essay that was published in the "washington post"? >> guest: i have to thank my editors at the post because it took a lot of my year. probably late 2020 is when i had the idea okay the anniversary is coming next year. i want to look back on the literature of 9/11 and my editor at the post said go for it. first started putting together a

spreadsheet of relevant books and when i got to a few hundred i realized there is no way i can do this in a comprehensive manner so i have to be ruthless and how i select the books so i ended up picking 21 books and i was reading them on and off i would say from march of 21 this year to the end of july. i was reviewing other books along the way but i was trying to focus as much attention as i could and then i spent a good chunk of august writing it. i've never devoted that much time to a single essay. i devoted that much time to the book i wrote and published but never to something writing for the post and i am just grateful i have that opportunity. >> host: as the nonfiction

book editor at the post, how much freedom do you have in your day, how do you structure your day? >> guest: there are days that are all about reading and there are days that are all about writing. they split sort of evenly throughout the week. so i'm usually up doing some reading. now that we are working from home for the most part to return to the "washington post" early next year. the writing days are completely different and i kind of hold myself up in my home office i

kind of layout in my hammock and i try to persuade my children that really daddy is working when he's laying out in the hammock reading a book. >> host: when you return to the office, does that put a crimp in that a schedule or is that something that's more of a natural fit for you to write and read at the office? >> i like writing in the newsroom. it feels more natural. i was a news editor at the post before becoming a book critic and so even though the critics are sort of never around because they are doing what they do in their own time and in their own homes or other locations we will

see how it shakes out as we get back in the swing of being in the newsroom for the literature that emerged on the trump presidency. they dealt in some way with that period and divided it up into some of the big debates of the trump presidency over the democracy and truth and identity

and i tried to see what those books were saying collectively about america during this period it was a way to try to get down on paper how i felt about it at the time and the nice thing is there's plenty more to come, that project doesn't end. there've been a ton of books that have come out already sort of post trump presidency and many more on the way. >> host: is very an added level of hysteria or animus in some of the books that you read as opposed to other presidents? >> guest: i've never done in tenths of a dive into a book surrounding one presidency as i

have with trump in part because my time as a book critic started around the time he launched his presidential campaign. there certainly was an overwhelming output on the trump presidency. i've read that there were four or 500 that in some ways dealt with the first term of the obama presidency and yet for the equivalent period of the trump presidency it was like 1200 so that alone tells you i don't know if you want to call it hysteria but a sort of endless supply. a lot of those would have a reoccurring lien in the prologue for the acknowledgments where they often say i decided to

write it is on election night, 2016. people felt compelled to write about this presidency. many of them were driven by that emotional impulse early on. like i want to get on paper how this is making me feel. >> host: we asked you in advance about some of your favorite books of 2021. another one that you mentioned was a post trump presidency book. adam schiff, midnight in washington. how did that attract you? >> what i would call the first generation trump books were the

kind of books on fire and fury that felt like they were competing for who could on earth the most outlandish anecdote. can you believe he said this or ask to that or can you believe fill in the blank. those are useful books for the historical record. but some of the books that you are seeing that can be a little more are doing something more and developing an argument. shifts book is one of those that makes the case it's not just donald trump that is violating end up ending all of these norms of the presidential behavior.

it was republicans in congress and in the administration that didn't have the courage or the inclination to stand up to it. in the course of being an essential person in the process of president trump. his book also is a how-to manual for attempting to hold leaders to account when oversight feels like it's been weekend and will continue to be useful down the road. >> host: the former chief of staff published. is that one that you think will be a valuable resource and would that you will review?

>> guest: i haven't read it yet. i do intend to. there are so many of these trump books and sort of memoirs that come out that reviewing them one at a time isn't always the most useful approach sometimes i await for a mass of books and then tie them together to see what we are learning collectively. i've really only reviewed a handful of the latest generation. jonah hill, stephanie grisham, there's been a lot of journalistic books that have come out in the recent months and more that are coming next year. i will probably wait to tackle a lot of those and i think as the readers appreciate that because there are so many different books out there and they want to know how do these kind of speak to each other and compare to one

another. >> host: another was the free world. why did that appeal to you? >> he is best known as a terrific new yorker writer and he wrote the pulitzer prize sometime in the 2,000's for his look at the pragmatists and his impact on life. john dewey, oliver wendell holmes. this book is a delightful read and a look at the cultural life of the cold war mainly the united states partially as well and europe. any moment when american foreign-policy and national forn

policy and national security policy was about containment, the american artistic and cultural world kind of exploded. he explores composers and novelists and artists and painters and essayists. each chapter it is a lengthy book around 800 or so pages and each feels like a mini book in itself or for any other number of art forms that were prevalent in this period. it's the weirdest thing because i didn't want it to end. i wanted it to keep going. i feel in some ways it spoke to his prior book.

in moments when it's having second thoughts, when the country is going through cultural and intellectual shifts and he's able to kinda zero in on those moments, so that was a book that i very much enjoyed reading. >> host: another book before we close the discussion, nicole hannah jones, the importance of that book. >> i think that project was able to bring to the floor it massive conversation, a seismic conversation about the legacy of slavery. it's interesting because the

project is all sorts of things. it's the magazine essays that came out a few years ago, it is a wonderful podcast series. what i attempted to do is to see how the project has evolved over time and one of the things i found most interesting is that it has moved from being primarily portrayed and executed as a historical corrective. let's look back at american history and see the importance when the first slave shift came to the british colonies and place that moments importance in its proper place for american history and it is evolved into a

political project nicole hannah jones argues that it flows from that history. so to me, that's an interesting evolution and attention coming from a news organization. that's what i try to explore as i was reviewing it. it's one of those that was impossible to ignore and avoid but that's the way that i came at it. >> host: book sales, nonfiction book sales are up about 10% this year when it comes to hardcover sales as opposed to e-book sales,

hardcover are the dominant force that have pretty much plateaued. >> guest: this is going to sound silly but i do not essentially follow the trends in the publishing marketplace. i'm delighted that book sales are strong. i think sometimes it depends what month you are looking at year-over-year sales because they come out like barack obama's memoir and it accounts for stuff like and inordinate amount of the book sold in a particular period, but i'm not surprised as you put it that hardcover sales are doing well. i think especially in a pandemic period it may be that folks like to cozy up with an old-fashioned

hardcover book. that's how i read. i hate reading digitally. i feel like it's a completely different experience. so for me it's just comforting. all the books behind me are books that i have written about in the "washington post" or elsewhere and i like the physical presence of these books. i can imagine being a digital person and suppose we will end up that way. >> host: nonfiction book critic and pulitzer prize winner and author himself. his book is called what were we thinking, intellectual history of the trump era and he's been our guest on the about books podcast and program.

before we move on to some other topics, let's look at some of the other posts books carlos did not mention. in the code breaker, the best-selling author walter isaacson looks at the work of jennifer, who invented and editing technology. heather mcgee examines the cost of racism for all americans in some of us. when the triumph of nancy reagan, "washington post" columnist looks at the former first lady's political life and other books at the "washington post" notes as notable reports on how psychedelic drugs are being used for medicinal purposes. his book is called this is your mind on plants. and tangled up in blue, georgetown university law professor, former reserve officer rosa brooks offers officer rosa brooks offers suggestions on police reform.

the police cannot change the law by themselves or the context and i think often the police get blamed for those that they didn't create in a social contact. it's a way for the rest of us not to look in fear and say if it harms the community we voted for the lawmakers and when you look at the long prison sentences that's prosecutors, judges, lawmakers. there are some things that cops can't change but as a society we need to change the massive over criminalization that we see in the last couple of decades and

the cuts in other social services that might make some of what the police do so they don't have to do any more. that said yes you know again we don't have a national police force, we have 18,000 different law enforcement agencies. they don't always talk to each other, so it's very hard even if there is an approach that is innovative and promising, it is tough to get everybody to pay attention. >> former law enforcement officer rosa brooks talking about her book tangled up in blue. you can watch all booktv programs online at booktv.org and the "after words" program that you just saw was also available as podcasts.

that's available on c-span now or wherever you get your podcast. this is the about books program with a look at the latest publishing news and nonfiction books. recently author historian victor davis hanson joined booktv for our monthly call in program. he came on to talk about american political history and his many books. in case you missed it, here is a bit of that program. >> today that you cancel somebody else because you don't agree or you tear down the statues with a city council or rename things without consistency. we are washing away people and ideas and things.

where the constitutional means or we are suspending free speech or the due process on campus so this isn't the democratic party we knew. >> host: author and historian victor davis hanson on booktv's in-depth program. a reminder that in-depth is live the first sunday every month at noon we invite a prominent author to talk about his or her body of work and to take your phone calls. in january another historian will be the guest and he will talk about the intellectual history in the united states reconstruction era, abraham lincoln, robert e lee et cetera and he will be taking your calls as well. in february, georgetown university will be our guest. finally, here on about books, here's a look at the best-selling nonfiction books according to the los angeles times. topping the list is pulitzer

prize winning reporter and creator of the 1619 project, a look at american history and slavery and its legacy. that's followed by these precious days a collection of essays by novelist. after that, musician dave grohl the storyteller and the best-selling nonfiction books are two more memoirs, paul mccartney the lyrics and stanley, wife through food. that's the latest nonfiction books. thanks for joining us on about books, available as a podcast wherever you get your podcast were on the