our coverage of the national book festival now continues with bestselling author erik larson. good afternoon. who here is a medgar evers fan of a mega-star and eric larson. journalist and author. erik larson is author of six national bestsellers the splendid and the vile dead week in the garden of beasts thunderstruck talk the devil in the white city and isaac's storm. collectively, larson has sold more than 10 million copies. one of them amazing achievement. his newest title, the demon of unrest a saga of hubris, heartbreak and heroism at the dawn of the civil war. brings to life the five months between the election of abraham lincoln and the start of the civil war and describes the tragic miscalculations made by key men in power who ultimately led america to the brink. the session is moderated by david

well, i want to thank erik larson. i want to thank you thank you. and several hours of live coverage still here. the national book festival coming. you're going to hear an author on disinformation. you're going to hear from pulitzer prize winner carlos and sara, jeff rosen, the national constitution center. but right now is, frankly, my favorite segment of the year. it's called are you reading the numbers are all on the screen. you can see there. go ahead. we want to know you're reading and we're pleased to be joined by the librarian of congress, carla hayden, for this segment. we're going to talk about the library. we're going to talk about books, and we're going to find out what she is reading as well. but, dr. hayden, i'm going to throw your curveball because as we were talking earlier, before we went on the air, we were talking about google and wikipedia. yeah. are those to librarians? no in fact, there are a lot of librarians who work for search engines because we are we in fact, librarians have a t-shirt and mugs, a bag that says librarians th

our coverage of the national book festival now continues with bestselling author erik larson. good afternoon. who here is a medgar evers fan of a mega-star and eric larson. journalist and author. erik larson is author of six national bestsellers the splendid and the vile dead week in the garden of beasts thunderstruck talk the devil in the white city and isaac's storm. collectively, larson has sold more than 10 million copies. one of them amazing achievement. his newest title, the demon of unrest a saga of hubris, heartbreak and heroism at the dawn of the civil war. brings to life the five months between the election of abraham lincoln and the start of the civil war and describes the tragic miscalculations made by key men in power who ultimately led america to the brink. the session is moderated by david and rubenstein, author and co-founder of carlyle group. enjoyed the festival and let us welcome them to the stage. so. how many people here have read a book by eric larson? oh, wow. how many people have not read a book by erik larson? oh, okay. well, you have to leave. would yo

and then i just watched your show with erik larson. his on lessons of demons so. but once again thank you very much for your show and love it. my favorite tv show. thank you for we appreciate it. doris kearns goodwin was on this program a little bit earlier. david petraeus of course has been on book tv. if you go to book tv, talk, that's our website. we covered about 25,000 authors plus in our, you know, 25, 26 year history every single. one of those videos is available to watch online for free book tv board search function up at the top. just go and type in an author's name and. you will find it. all right, amy, where is amy? hi, amy. amy is reading a fiction book about the empire. you dreamed of empires. alvaro. enrique. thank you. sharing that book with us. we appreciate it. and homer might like to get on your website. absolutely. he's reading, and he might think of authors. and yelp. and just listen to author as that might be a good activity. there you go, homer. there's your advice for today. joe in columbus, new jersey. joe, good afternoon. what's on your re

festival, which kicked off in 2001, founded by laura bush in about 20 minutes, bestselling author erik larson talking about his new book, which details the time between abraham lincoln's 1860 election and the firing on fort sumter in april 1861. that's in about 20 minutes. joining us now, though, is diplomat stuart eizenstat. his new book is called the art of diplomacy how american negotiators reached historic agreements that changed the world. ambassador eizenstat was domestic policy adviser for jimmy carter and u.s. ambassador to the european union during the

erik larson are two of the authors that you'll see joining us now on. our set. is the american the evolve event. his fifth book is called american covenant how the constant tution unified our nation and could again. mr. levin, start with the lead. how could the constitution unify? you know, i think it's very important to see that the american constitution was intended really a unifying document. its purpose, when it declares its own purposes first that it lists, is to form a more union. and i think we americans now tend to forget that we look at the constitution, a dry legal framework, else we see it as part of what divides us, as part of what frustrates us about american politics. but over and over, the constitution rises to offer us ways to unify across lines of difference, to compel americans who disagree with each other, to deal with each other, to negotiate, to compete, bargain that sort of tries to us to do. and to the extent that we fail to do that now, we're failing to protect this american constitutionalism. and i think the way to recover that practice