followed by theresa may taking questions from the house of commons and giving an update on the recent poisoning of a former russian spy on u.k. soil. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," colorado college professor thomas cronin discusses his book, "imagining a great republic: polirixl nocwla ns rhw political novels and the idea of america."

brian: thomas cronin, in your new book, "imagining a great republic," you say "all the kings's men" is the best political novel ever. why? tom: it's the best american political novel. first, it is beautifully written. warren is a great craftsman. you could add in some people like steinbeck and others, but warren was a gifted writer. it is important because he captures the paradox of politics and power. politics is inevitable and necessary, and you have to have power to make things happen and bring about change. it also talks about how power can be toxic, and can be intoxicating for somebody who wields it, and power shapes the wielder, and for the character, it captures that story. most of all, it is important because it is about moral responsibility.

half the book is about governor stark's aid, jack burden, he is from the oligarchy in the privilege class, highly educated, a former reporter, and he gets sucked in and becomes the bagman and the dirt collector. he does horrible things and rationalizes that even a flawed person doing good things is ok to work with, and only very late in the novel does he come to understand a moral awakening about good and bad. nobody in american literature has captured that as well as robert penn warren. it's why he is generally revered as the best american political novelist. brian: how many books to do read to write this book? tom: probably about 150 novels to select 40 or 50 novels i treated. tough decisions. "the scarlet letter," faulkner, cooper. in many cases, which steinbeck

book to use? in the middle of my writing this book, harper lee came out with another book, and i think her second book talks about politics better than her first book, even though it was not a literary success. a lot of great books i had to say no to. brian: i want to go way back to the 1960's. you came to this town as a white house fellow. what were you doing at the time and what impact did the white house fellowship have on your career? tom: a good question. i first came in 1963 as an intern for a republican senator or massachusetts, he was a three term governor, three term u.s. senator from massachusetts, wonderful man. i was an intern for a lengthy summer for him in 1963. i came back in 1966 as a white

house fellow in the west wing. that was a fantastic opportunity. i was a graduate student at stanford and studying a look opinion polls and voting analysis and city governments and all of a sudden i was thrown into what i jokingly call the original lbj school of politics. i learned a normal sleep. that program and similar programs, they are invaluable. it encourages people to think differently and ask fresh questions about how democracy works. one of the great novels i treat in the book is henry adams' book "democracy," it was written anonymously.

he was worried he would get lawsuits. his protagonist is a woman, she comes to washington, not as a white house fellow, but she was across from the white house, she is wealthy, she gets to know senators and operations and she

>> which of your books have sold the best? bei was fortunate to associated with the authors of a leading american government textbook, and i joined in as a third author. i-80 became a managing partner -- i became a managing partner of a textbook company and we had a spinoff on local politics as well. "theo wrote a book called state of the presidency. it was widely used in presidency courses. the co-author and i wrote a book called "leadership matters" and in 2013. award i love writing about elections.

i wrote a book about direct democracy. have is a newi venture for me and it goes beyond political science. it's a combination of literature and politics. it encourages more strongly a new field of american poli-lit, which is how can we learn about the american experiment through the eyes of our storytellers, the national storytellers. some people would be surprised, ratee have dozens of first storytellers. joe heller, harriet beecher stowe. harriet beecher stowe changed the nation. many of these books change individuals. i have met young people who say, i am a public defender because i read "to kill a mockingbird." i work in poverty law because i read john steinbeck when i was a high school student.

the filmmaker famous for the "civil war" series, ken burns, says "killer angels" changed his life. he read that if you wanted to write a new documentary. brian: was there a novel that changed your life? tom: i don't know that is the case, but collectively, all of these novels have altering my thinking. when you do a second and third reading of "the grapes of wrath," it is a powerfully spiritual book. although it is a real tough critique about the american economic system, it shows you what humanity is all about and that we need to help one another, we need to have .tructures

-- we need to have structures that are there for one another. the story of a family moving from oklahoma to southern california, a tragic story where they are exploited and scammed and so on. upton sinclair's "the jungle" is similar. many of these novelists are essentially saying, and i'm learning it again and again as i read these books, we can do better. the american political experiment, the idea of equal justice under the law and freedom and equality and opportunity is powerful. brian: let's look at john steinbeck, who won the nobel prize, this is back in 1962. "grapes of wrath." [video clip] >> a pale, emasculated priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches. nor is it game for the cloistered elect. literature is as old as speech. it grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed but to become more needy. brian: what was he like?

do you know? tom: i never met steinbeck. i met his oldest sister when i was a graduate student at stanford. she hosted me for tea. steinbeck went to stanford and he never graduated. he came from a republican family in a republican town of salinas, kansas. well he was a teenager or young adult, there was a crushing of a lettuce workers' union in his town and he became embarrassed by that and he became interested in the plight of migrants. he wrote for 10 years without any success, but he found his voice when he went home to salinas and monterey and san jose. brian: you are talking about salinas, california. you said kansas. tom: i meant california. thanks.

steinbeck wrote so many awesome books. he was radical in some early books, "in dubious battle" was about communist organizing. men," "east of eden," powerful contributions to american literature. i think if you do a quick reading of "the grapes of wrath," you don't really profit as much as going back, rereading it, maybe watching the film in between. it's powerful in terms of his spirituality. it was thought by some people to be a track for socialism. eleanor roosevelt, immediately after she read it here in washington, d.c., said it was a profoundly urgent and spiritual and pro-american book. on that note, i would like to quote bono, the singer, he recently had an album in which

he had one song called "the american soul," and in a recent interview he said, "the irish people are wonderful people and france and great britain are great countries, but they are not an idea. america, he says, is an idea. that is why we become obnoxious and boisterous about when you don't succeed." "the rest of the world," bono is saying -- and i think he was speaking for everyone worldwide, the whole world wants america to succeed. it was speaking about aspiration, from jefferson and lincoln and the founders. what i found in writing "imagining a great republic" is that american aspirations are constantly present, even when an author is upset with america. if it is upton sinclair or sinclair lewis or philip roth or

ray bradbury or richard condon, they may be critical of paranoia or failings, harriet beecher stowe, tough on our ancestry. but there is always the notion that the country stands for something and we can do better. bono was right, there is an american idea and it is worth fighting for, writing about and making documentaries and movies about. i think a reading of major american political classics is ennobling and empowering. we stand for something, and the great writers like stowe, harpers lee, they are reminding,

they are storytellers saying our tribe wants to be something special. not just a city on a hill, but a city that cares and loves one another and is willing to work with one another and understand that politics is indispensable to our bringing about progress for as many people as possible. brian: when did you start this? tom: three or four years ago. brian: where were you when you started? tom: colorado college, nearing -- colorado college, and i was nearing the end of my professional teaching career. i did not have the necessity to meet peer standards and i could read and write and assign things. i talked for a couple of years a course called the american political novel. reading together with students was powerful. laura adler had a wonderful phrase, "reading alone is almost as bad as drinking alone. " i love that phrase. it is true. you need to read books like this

with other people in order to get feedback. i learned enormously from students who would write a paper on some of these novels. they would sit down and have tea with me and chat about richard wright, "the native son," which is a very brutal, stark treatment of racism in chicago. it took two or three years reading -- it was a delight to read these books. brian: how hard was it to get a publisher? tom: i asked some of my regular publishers like harvard and oxford and they were polite in turning it down. it was hard. this publisher and a couple of others were quite interested. this publisher produced it within six or seven months. they have done a nice job.

brian: i want to show on the screen, i think i counted 41 novels you list, just so people can see a lot of the different names and put them up there and we will pick a couple as you look at it. harriet beecher stowe, sinclair lewis, richard wright, ayn rand. let's go to the next group. tom: mark twain, this is not anywhere near the most famous book, "the gilded age," but it gave a name to the post-civil war period. regularly refer to "the post-civil as the war period. brian: "seven days in may," tell us about that. tom: we met chuck bailey in the white house. he was a reporter. a tall fella. had a distinguished heritage

from new england. that is a great novel. one of my students pointed it out to me. it's really a book about military-civil relations, civilian control of the military. both the book and the movie are quite good. it was written by two veteran reporters in washington, d.c. in the early part of the john f. kennedy presidency. both of the novel and the film gives us the most believable american president in american literature. even that alone. also, military coups occur regularly in latin america, africa and other nations. it could happen here. they are one of the few teams or author examples that crystallizes the possibility that a coup could occur. within seven days, the president and staff were able to prevent

occuring.rom brian: what year was this? tom: 1962 published. brian: go to the next list. one of the ones i wanted to ask you about is "catch-22." what does that mean? tom: the original title was "catch-18," and the publisher wanted to switch it to 22. it is fascinating. "manchurian candidate" is another word in a lexicon you know without reading the book. catch-22 means that two things are asked of you and it is impossible to do both. bombardier in a

on an island off of italy. the book is largely autobiographic but in novel form. he tells of a mindless superior asking of his crew and of him to do things that are implausible or wrong or done just for bureaucratic purposes or the promotion of a colonel in charge. his is a profound story, about dilletantism, about organizational bureaucracy, where the bureaucracy becomes overwhelming in terms of its own needs and self interest rather than the individuals and souls of the people that work in them. joe heller had no compunction about serving in world war ii, he thought it was a just war, but the book becomes anti-bureaucracy, antiwar, historically because of the tales he tells. brian: here is a clip from the 1970 movie, "catch-22." [video clip]

>> is orr crazy? >> of course he is. he has to be crazy to keep flying after all the close calls he's had. >> why can't you ground him? >> i can, but first he has to ask me. >> that's all he's gotta do to be grounded? >> that's all. >> then you can ground him? >> no. then i cannot ground him. >> [groan] >> there's a catch. >> a catch? >> sure, catch-22. anyone who wants to get out of combat isn't really crazy, so i can't ground him. >> ok, let me see if i've got this straight. in order to be grounded, i've got to be crazy. and i must be crazy to keep flying. but if i ask to be grounded, that means i'm not crazy anymore, and i have to keep flying. >> you got it, that's catch-22. [end video clip] already flown 50 missions. now he is asked to fly 60, and

the next week 70. after a while, he feels as though they are not caring about him, they just want to submit their record. it is a long, torturous book that should've been edited down by 100 pages or more, but it is worth reading and a classic. brian: what is the longest you sit while you read? tom: i can usually read 200 pages or so. with "atlas shrugged" or "gone with the wind" you are talking 1500 pages. steinbeck's books are long. brian: do you have a routine while you are doing your research? tom: i have a study in my colorado home, i would go off there separate from the house, and i could read at length. i would make notes and mark of books, nobody would want my used books, there are scribblings all over them.

so i thought my obligations in this particular venture was to interview the book and the author. when possible, i went to their archives, the concord historical society in new hampshire. there is an american author called winston churchill who wrote a great book. it is about the teddy roosevelt progressive movement in new hampshire. taking on the railroad monopoly. i went to harper lee's hometown and spent a day walking around, going to the courthouse. i went to margaret mitchell's apartment where she wrote "gone with the wind." whenever possible, i try to do fieldwork and visit these places.

brian: here is ayn rand, put her into perspective after we watch this. [video clip] >> i am opposed to all forms of control. i am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy. let me put it briefly. i am for the separation of state and economics, just as we have separation of state and church, which led to peaceful coexistence among different religions. after religious wars. the same applies to economics. if you separate the government from economics, if you do not regulate production and trade, you will have peaceful cooperation and harmony and justice among men. brian: i want to add a quote from you in the book and put it in perspective. "novelists are generally regarded as left of center," but certainly rand was not. tom: she grew up in russia when

communism was developing. her father's pharmacy was nationalized. she was an immigrant to los angeles, was a screenwriter. she is the godmother of the libertarian party, the tea party, and she is a cult. you can run into randians. people who celebrate john galt, her main protagonists. she has had an enormous influence. it celebrates individualism and freedom and liberty. and she goes overboard, but she was a great storyteller. her books were turned down by a lot of publishers. i think "the fountainhead" was turned down by 12 publishers. who felt it was too radical, or too long. but she still is a bestseller, and half of president trump's

cabinet view themselves as influenced by her. paul ryan used to give out to everybody on his staff, a copy of atlas shrugged and the fountainhead. he does not like the fact she was also anti-religious and an atheist, so he would downplay that. but her theme that we have too much national planning, to much government control, is an important one in the american political dialogue and debate. anybody in politics, everybody in politics should read her work and come to terms with them individually. nobody can read her work without being inspired by some of her prototypes, rugged individualist industrialists who are making things, manufacturers. i don't think president trump reads, but he would like very much the movie about "the fountainhead." brian: did you read both? tom: yes.

brian: they are both big. tom: yes. brian: when was she most visible in our society? tom: probably in the 1950's and 1960's, i assume. she lived in new york and she had a coterie of people she influenced. one of whom was alan greenspan, who viewed himself as a disciple and was very unapologetic about it. he was chairman of the federal reserve board economic advisor , to presidents and a major economic guru. he toned down some of the randism. but there was some influence in president ford's period. he was very close to president ford, one example of it. brian: who is edward abbey? tom: he grew up in appalachia, served in world war ii.

he is as libertarian as rand, but with a different philosophy, to preserve the southwest. and he became a radical environmentalist, almost an anarchist. he wanted to preserve the southwest, which he loved. he spent many summers and worked in moab, utah, and went to school at the university of new mexico in albuquerque. he was prickly, his nickname was cactus head. he was not particularly ecumenical. in fact some of his writing is , misogynist and racist, but he was so dedicated, like rand was, to individual freedom, he was so dedicated to preserving a place. he said the american tourist and

automobile people have their national park, the interstate highways. but he did not want tourists. he was a great believer in freedom. brian: here he is from 1972. let's watch. [video clip] >> the major danger to this area is too much economic development. too much building, oil exploration. mineral exploration. development of commercial tourism. southeast utah is one of the great adventure places left on earth and i think we should try to keep it wild and primitive. it really is the property not only of the american people, but all the people in the world. brian: where did you go to see his material? tom: his archives at the

university of arizona. he taught there for a while, he lived in tucson off and on. and there are manuscripts, speeches and tapes at the university of arizona library. accessible for anyone in the public to visit. his book, "the monkeywrench," also gave a term to literature, monkeywrenching means fouling things up in addition to the mechanical tool. it is entertaining, delightful storytelling, but decidedly with a point of view. he was for population control and border security, he would be supporting trump's wall, because he did not want people coming in. very iconoclastic.

it is a book that should be read. young people enjoy reading it. it is kind of a called -- cult book, particularly in the west, for young people. he wrote a nonfiction piece of work called "desert solitaire," kind of memoirs of being a seasonal employee in the national parks in that region from his youth. brian: in your book from time to time, we get a glimpse of what you think. this is a sentence i pulled out. they say as earlier noted, the believing the founders of our country who wiped out indians, propagated slavery and gave us the electoral college, with the -- were the greatest geniuses in the world is flawed logic at best. tom: that is probably influenced from arthur schlesinger. who i quote around that same passage. the major thing you realize ours , is an experiment. who cheerith people

on american exceptionalism and i would refrain that to say that ours is an american experiment. experiments can fail, as all of us who took science in high school know. experiments can fail. and we continually need to reinvent and reinvigorate and renew the american experiment so that it does march on and succeed. america is an idea. an idea that which family you are born into or which zip code you live in should not predetermine the opportunity to succeed in america, and everyone should have a chance to excel and to learn. there is an american dream. one of the authors in this book is horatio alger. i would not have thought about him, but after a while, as my list got bigger, i thought i have to work on that. brian: tell us about horatio

alger. tom: he grew up in boston and went to harvard. he had some problems in the young ministry where he was active and he was kicked out of boston. he went to new york and had a second life writing about teenagers who are fatherless, orphans who found success. his formula was, work hard, to be honest, and to strive, but also get adopted by a mentor. in a sense he was saying internships and mentorships are crucial to success. he wrote 100 very readable, short novels. people like ronald reagan and my father and gerald ford, and probably your father, grew up reading these books in the 1920's and earlier. his heyday was from the civil war, he died about 1900. but he sold about 15 million copies. he was the harry potter of his generation.

most people misconstrue horatio alger to say that anybody can go from rags to rockefeller. that is actually not what he says. he says if you really work hard and study and become mentored, you can become a modest success in america. he knows that not everybody will do this and he rails in his books against bullies and schemers and usury. social conscience. he has a republican, whiggish background, and he is talking about the american idea in a way. i wound up going to the new york public library and spending a week in the basement with the special collections, carting out these boxes of horatio alger novels literally falling apart in my cubbyhole.

they are not read today and not much available. but horatio alger should be read, if one is an educated american. brian: what was "beloved" by toni morrison about? tom: a woman who escaped from a plantation in kentucky, over the ohio river, and into cincinnati. the fugitive slave act was in force, so plantation owners could come after her, and the fugitive slave act allowed local authorities, ordered local authorities to help recapture slaves. she was so appalled at the slavery existence she and her whole family had had that she starts killing her children in a mattress idle -- matricidal way, figuring that would be better

than slavery. but the book, it won the nobel prize, and many of her books deserve to be in my collection. i picked out "beloved" because it is perhaps the best-known. it is really a book about what we need to remember, and her book is urging african-americans and everyone to remember the tragedies and inhumanities of slavery. brian: here she is in 2001 talking about the story that led to beloved. [video clip] >> the story i had read a newspaper article about, about a woman who said, no, i am not doing that. this child is mine. her life is mine. she is my child. i will say how she lives and dies. and of course it was a crime, and a sin, but on the other hand, there is this other gesture, it was complicated.

tom: that is a beautiful clip, thank you for showing that. it is shocking to read the early passages in her book, but eventually she makes sense of it. she does not condone the mother killing the child, she tries to explain it in the context of what slavery is all about. in her book, is the greatest refutation of the plantation fantasies that margaret mitchell gave us in "gone with the wind"" which has a lot powerful stories in it, but among them is the misleading story that slaves were happy. it's like beethoven's sixth, it was a pastoral delight. tony morrison, one of the great morrison, one of the great books in american literature. brian: what are the couple of books that did not make the cut? tom: one novelist i have been reading lately and like is david

ignatius. he has written on the cia. i am a fan of what he does. they are thrillers. but he is a serious reporter and he knows washington inside and out. his books are a nice sequel to norman mailer's book about the cia. that would be one example. i have done a project on colorado writers. there are some delightful colorado writers. james michener, centennial, sweeping book about the early founding. dalton trumbo, famous from hollywood, wrote a book about his home town of grand junction, colorado. brian: here is johnny depp in "fear and loathing in las vegas." about 47 seconds.

[video clip] >> the fatal flaw for tim leary. he crashed around america touting consciousness expanding without ever giving a thought of the realities for all the people who took him seriously. all those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy peace and understanding for three dollars a hit. their loss and failure is ours, too. leary took down with him was the central illusion of a lifestyle he helped create a , generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers who never understood the mystic fallacy of the acid culture. the desperate assumption that somebody or at least some force is tending a light at the end of the tunnel. brian: why hunter thompson? tom: i met him a few times and in aspen. we would watch monday night hotel at the jerome hotel bar in the mid-1970's.

because our individual homes did not get that show. he was a character. that movie was a total flop, although johnny depp had a pretty good performance. but the movie had too much juvenile pranksterism. it was a vegas road trip. my students put me onto hunter thompson's book and kept urging me, you have to read it and they read it with me. it took me three times to read that book to find that -- and my publisher encouraged me to include it because it is a cult favorite. there are political themes. he celebrates freedom and individualism. he like rand and abbey and jack kerouac, they were all fierce proponents of freedom and liberation. and one of the themes of american politics is rugged

individualism and liberation, privacy. hunter thompson has many themes. the subtitle of that book is "a savage trip into the heart of the american dream." it is a complicated book, is a prominent example of gonzo journalism or fiction, where he puts himself in the story and makes himself central to what is going on. so it is disarming, it is not like a steinbeck book. brian: you mentioned this in your book, who gave him the name gonzo journalism? tom: i think it was an editor at the boston globe. i don't know which one it was. in boston, the last person standing at a drunken beer party was referred to as a gonzo for some reason.

so this editor described him as gonzo journalism, gonzo writing. thompson liked it and appropriated it. and there were others who put themselves in their narratives earlier. walt whitman and jack kerouac talked about themselves. but i think in our time, in the recent generation or two, hunter thompson becomes known as the godfather of gonzo writing. brian: we started talking about your time as a white house fellow in the johnson white house. in this book, you have a novel by billy lee brammer. why did you put that in? it is called "some of the way with lbj." tom: that is the subtitle. it is called "the gay place," and it means the earlier definition of gay, something

raucous. i chose it because political journalists view it as a cult classic. a generation of people, their generation all read the book and loved it because they knew lbj, they covered him. the author was a writer for the austin texas monthly or something, but was a speechwriter for lbj from 1957 until 1959. he would've been a contemporary of dick goodwin. writing speeches for john kennedy. he was writing speeches for lbj and they had a falling out. he went back to texas. he wrote this satirical book about an lbj, made him governor of texas. it turns out to be a book that

actually admires politicians and the craft of bargaining and agreement negotiating. so he has this lbj as governor of texas. and it delightfully captures texas politics and legislative politics. it is actually three novels in one. but one of the things i tried to do in this book was have books that talked about politics also elsewhere in the country, not just washington, d.c. i have a book about politics in new hampshire, the progressive movement in new hampshire. i have a book about politics in iowa. i have another book about texas. a book about governorship in california called the ninth wave. and of course "gone with the wind." i tried to have books

representative of the country. brian: here is another of your quotes about politics. those who are anti-politics or who don't care for politicians are giving up on the grand experiment of the american republic. politics is the lifeblood of constitutional democracy and it is the price we pay for aspiring to achieve a resilient constitutional democracy. tom: i think i also set in the same passage that politics to democracy is similar to experimental method in physics and imagination to poetry and melody to music. you have to have democracy. you cannot have a republic, a constitutional democracy unless you understand that politics and politicians are crucial. they are imperfect. we are all imperfect, we have imperfect institutions and an imperfect constitution, but we have to strive to make our political institutions work and encourage good people into politics.

and virtually every novelist i dealt with in some way or another is saying don't give up on politics. that is the message that toni morrison and harper lee and philip roth and john steinbeck are saying. brian: did you ever think of running for politics? tom: i ran for congress in 1982 unsuccessfully. , brian: against? tom: the congressman named tim ken kramer, incumbent republican. my district was very conservative. my friends persuaded me that you believe in a two party system, you ought to run. i was a moderate centrist democrat. had i won, it would not be a good example of democracy because i would not have been representative. i learned a heck of a lot about myself and my area, and i encourage everybody to run for office once in their life, for

some office. politics is crucial. brian: what is the thing you learned as a white house fellow working around, you said bill moyers. who else? tom: john gardner. brian: what did you learn from being around them? about the presidency that has never changed? tom: if you get to work close at hand with members of congress or the president, you learn about complexity. that very rarely can you have sweeping change. most change is incremental. most change is getting part of something done, and compromise, which is a dirty word to many people, is critically important. you need to get people together with different points of view and try to work something out. now in this country, we are facing the issue of gun registration and background checks and regulation.

we believe in a strong second amendment but we also believe in safe schools. people have to come together and work on these things. brian: you have a quote you use in the book by alan drury. advising -- advise and consent. talking about people that come to washington, they stay 50 years, they may love, marry, settle down, build homes, raise families and die beside the potomac, but they usually feel and frequently will tell you that they are just here for a little while. tom: they are really from indiana or massachusetts. that is true. this house become a very different town in the last 50 years. it was a place where people -- the novelists are not just capturing washington, d.c. a wonderful novelist called echo house, a columnist for the

washington post, in the second half of his life has become one of america's best novelists ward , just, i recommend him. brian: the name of the book is "imagining a great republic." by thomas cronin, former president of whitman college, professor at colorado college. thank you so much for joining us. tom: it was a delight. thank you. ♪ >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. ♪ also available as c-span podcasts. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> if you liked this "q&a" with tom cronin, here are others you might enjoy.

journalist and author talking about his book where he challenges the authenticity of john steinbeck's cross-country journey depicted in "travels with charley." and, jason brennan who writes about libertarians and social issues. and from 2010, our interview with senate historian donald richie, who discusses the u.s. congress and how it operates. you can find these interviews by searching our video library at c-span.org. congress returns this week with less than one week to go before current government funding runs out. lawmakers have until midnight friday to pass an omelette this spending measure -- omni bus spending measure. the rightll involves to try drugs not fully cleared by the fda, and a bill exempting certain institutions from financial stress tests. the senate is set to take up a

bill that would hold websites more accountable for online sex trafficking, before focusing their attention on the spending bill, which if passed could extend government funding through the end of september. the house is live on c-span, the senate live on c-span2. >> this week on the communicators, the co-author of the book "a mind at play," -- >> in 1948, decades before anything like the world we know has come to pass, claude shannon sits down and rights a paper where he essentially shows all types of information are the same, and that that information can be turned into bits and encoded, compressed, and sent flawlessly so we can take a message from point b and have it be received. all those principles seem natural to us. of course that's the way it works. when i go on twitter, things

will happen when i send a tweet, but somebody had to lay the intellectual architecture of all that, the field of information theory, the field that in a very real sense claude shannon invented. >> watch the communicators, monday night 8:00 eastern on c-span2. this past week at the british house of commons, prime minister theresa may was asked about childhood poverty, managing the u.k.'s national health service, and the recent decision to ban the far right group britain first. the prime minister also paid tribute to the late physicist stephen hawking, who died last week at the age of 76. >> questions to the prime minister. >> prime minister. >> thank you, mr. speaker. i am sure members across the house will wish to join me in offering our heartfelt nd