Politician and how he came to form his political values and attitudes and political habits. An enormously political person who had a real sensibility how to approach the political system. At the foundation of it were strongly held moral convictions and blumenthal told the story about lincoln telling people i was a slave and he talks about how his father rented him out as an indentured servant to do work on other peoples farms, the backwoods country of kentucky and the money was taken away from him and his father pocketed it and he had an instinctive hatred of slavery and what that meant to pilfer someone elses labor from them and steal their labor from them. Unlike a lot of other white politicians, whether they were antislavery abolitionists or equal locating in the middle he talked about slavery from the standpoint of the slaves and what it meant to have their time taken from them, to have their money taken from them, to have the family lives disrupted. That is one of the things i found powerful. Lincoln was a political actor but there was this moral core to everything he did. He was not formally educated. He was completely an autodidact and found his way pretty quickly to the freethinkers and became a fan of tom paine as well as the bible which he studied carefully and that came in handy for him politically when he was trying to combat the argument off a lot of the christian churches, something that was approved and sanctified by god in the bible that he would quote versus back at them. He could hold his own on the religious front while he made what were basically arguments of political philosophy about the crime of slavery against humanity. The first book is all about his childhood and growing up and how he got into politics, spotted immediately that Stephen Douglas would be his nemesis and his rival throughout his career. He made a deal his other friends he spent that term in office fighting the mexican war and challenging president polk about the justification for that war and he earned the nickname spoty bunch euro because he wanted to know the spot the mexicans attacked us first. He was very antiwar about the Mexican American war and pulleds lieutenants were aligning him with enemies of the country and that became a kind of trope in lincolns career that he the Mexican American war which he did proudly. This sets the stage for the next book which i can talk about again if you have any facts for summertime reading. This is the book i am reading right now, house of trump, house of putin, untold story of donald trump and the russian mafia by this journalist, craig unger who is the New York Times bestselling author, it is an extraordinary book. And unapologetic telling of the story of our days. It is about how donald trump went bankrupt multiple times and now american banks would lend to him anymore and he ended up connecting with the russian underworld, the russian mobsters and the money started flowing in from russia and most of this money from the oligarchs that had been looted from the russian treasury and that many came into the trump tower and trump hotels and other trump investments. There is some extraordinary photographs in the book as well as description of what took place and it sets the stage for how the president ial election got derailed and hijacked by russian interference in 2016 and how russian money came in for the purposes of cybersurveillance and espionage against the dnc, the linking of those emails interfering in the election systems of a couple dozen states and how Vladimir Putin paid for what unger called the greatest active measure intelligence operation in Human History where they set up a whole internet operation, Internet Research agency i think it was called, in moscow and pumped poison into the american body politic by trying to create and exasperate decisions of long lines of race, and Political Party and so on, basically to contaminate politics with all the divisions and polarizations that have overtaken this ever since. An extraordinary story. In the broader sense it is part of the story of how our attempt to create honest democratic government devoted to the people has been undermined because the whole struggle of our revolution was to create a government that would be an instrument of the common good, not an instrument of one person gets into office and uses the government for selfenrichment and self, with his family and friends and associates. That struggle is continuing in america today. House of trump, house of putin, highly recommended. I reread very quickly a book i have read before by adam winkler called gunfight about the history of the conflict over gun regulation in america. It tells specifically the story of the National Rifle association and how the nra went from being a very moderate middleoftheroad pro regulation organizations that wanted to promote gun safety, all the boy scouts and girl scouts held the nra badge for learning to use rivalry in a proper way how it went from that kind of organization to a bought and paid for instrument of the Republican Party and rightwing politics and its goal was no longer common sense gun regulation but driving a wedge between the country, between the metropolitan areas in rural areas. That is a division that now is festering in america and tying it back to the craig unger book, the russian propagandists did everything they good to exacerbate in 2016 election driving a wedge between people in the metropolitan areas through gun violence is a daily threat and people in the country who dont deal with it although they deal with it, who believe guns are a part of Daily Culture and so on. That is a real difference in view but it can be worked out in terms of the kinds of laws and regulations we can develop and there are things the vast majority of American People want a criminal background check on gun purchases. That is the reasonable common sense regulation the nra no longer supports and gunfight tell that story and others but it is fascinating the discussion of gun politics going to the beginning of the republic. And last is this wonderful book the First Congress, how james madison, George Washington and a group of extraordinary men invented government. I have always been curious about the First Congress because there is a canon of constitutional construction in our law which says decisions made by the First Congress are given some difference in terms of interpreting the meaning of the constitution, they were on the ground floor when the constitution was written so their practices deserve special scrutiny and a lot of members of the First Congress themselves were signers of the constitution and the declaration of independence. The First Congress met not in washington but new york. James madison described the congress as being in a wilderness with no path forward that had ever been written so they had to decide where was the capital going to be, the Politics Around the decision to locate the capital on the banks of the potomac into the get discussion of lands, to have congress accept that and build a capital there and the Politics Around that and the question of the revolutionary war. There is also the question of the committee system, how would congress operate, what would the rules be, what we do with all the deaths bequeathed to the First Congress from the revolutionary war about a standing army, a government and a bill of rights because the bill of rights had not been adopted yet. Will there be a bill of rights . Madison was the champion but are reluctant champion. He didnt think he needed it but he became a champion of the bill of rights which had been demanded by the antifederalists who were afraid the Central Government would become too powerful and overweening. A fascinating story with incredible people including the author of the first known gerrymander which we hope to get rid of in this congress with hr one but he makes a number of appearances in the book along with roger sherman, architect of the great compromise between the big states and small states where the house would become the body of the people represented accorded to the population where in the senate it would be done by the state and each state would get two senators. There are a lot of fascinating etos about our political history and the First Congress. Marylands eighth district, thank you for your time. Thank you for having me, always a pleasure. We want to hear what you are reading, send us your list on facebook, twitter or instagram, booktv. Booktv is television for serious readers all weekend every weekend. Join us next saturday beginning at 8 00 am eastern for the best in nonfiction books