You received from your aunt. Tell the audience what it was. When i was a boy in new orleans in the late 1960s, i had an aunt named maude who was an elderly retired schoolteacher. She was a family historian and my mothers family. She was the keeper among others of our clansmen. She had some papers and files and she had a way of speaking about our Family History that was like this. The one to remember is our clansmen, my grandfather. He was a redeemer. The redemption returned in new orleans after they had been dislodged. And if you had not battled liberty place, we would not be here today. When she died, her papers went to my mother. This is now decades later her files came to me. This is how i rediscovered the story of our clansmen and wrote about it. You remember your aunt mod. You have emulated her well. It sounds like she spoke of [inaudible] constant, he was a french carpenter. He spoke french. Is it fair to say that he was heroic . He was heroic for 100 years. As were the clans people, the clansmen were most white southerners. Clan, first genesis after the civil war, overturned reconstruction and overturned it when it was challenged by black authority and black business and black authority. For a century, he was a hero. The memory was altered, returned to some sense and when it came to me, it was with some ambivalence that our clansmen was no longer a hero. You had known about your clansmen as a child and you were afraid of his story. Why were you afraid of his story because the clue clocks were the First American terrorist and to acknowledge that is not an easy thing to do to say my people include white terrorists. That is a difficult thing to do. It is radioactive and it hurts. I was afraid of it. You use a creole phrase that roughly translates to wash your dirty laundry within the family dump, put it out. I have read this before with your book slaves in the family and. [inaudible] you sort of portray that. Writers do memoirs. Right. The famous remark by the poet. If a writer is born in the family, his or her family is lost. Are condemned to exposure and shame. Right. Lets dive into the story. He is a carpenter for hire. He tries a lot of things and fails at things. One thing that he gets very good at is killing. In the military, in the civil war. You talk about that. He was 38 when the civil war began. He was an elderly man, as far as soldiers go. He was a confederate infantry men for three and a half years and fought in many battles in louisiana and he returned home at the end of the fighting like half a million other whites having seen battles and having staged guerrilla attacks. Very knowledgeable about tactics this was something that fuels the rise of the white militias. Many of them, white militiamen, clansmen where confederate veterans that knew how to stage a military assault. Such an interesting insight that i had not thought about. All the white men that participate in the civil war, that is where they learn organized violence. In fact, he experiences his first massacre, does he not, in the civil war . He does. During one of the last fights of upstate louisiana and a place called the red river, he participates, appears to participate in a massacre of union soldiers. Killing u. S. Soldiers who did not surrender. That is right. This is a brutally honest book. I really appreciate it. There is a line in this book after you tell the story of this massacre and you say the chances are better than half that fi, me, edward ball, was there as a white creole, i would have shot, too. Wow. That is honest. The chances are better than half that i would shoot captain yankee. Can you explain why . You would have shot union soldiers. Had i been raised in that place and time, i believe i would have been swept into the ideological climate of White Supremacy and of defense of the white south which is the ferocious drive of the confederate soldiers to defend their homeland which they believe had been invaded by others. In general, we flatter ourselves about the past. We tend to think, oh, i would not have been a white supremacist. I would have been farther resistant. Had i been in germany in 1935, i would have been in the underground resistance against the nazis. We can send to our predecessors by giving ourselves a kind of morally superior position in relationship to them. I do not feel that that is honest. That is one point. The other point is, it is an impossible imaginary projection to say the 21st century liberal person in this country, and by liberal i mean any person raised after 1960, any white person raised after 1960 that has some understanding of the disasters of our National Inheritance around the stories of race. It is impossible that we could be ourselves in a previous century. That is another piece of selfdelusion. This is what is so wonderful about a micro history. You are telling a story of everyman. He was a carpenter. He was a soldier, a domestic terrorist, a clansmen. Be careful what you wish for as you go off searching for your family. You point out you have 16 great, great grandparents. If you go off looking, you my find there are scoundrels and domestic terrorist and slave owners and you done this with both sides of your family. You paint a picture of the time that he lived in and all the ideas that were swirling around and you used the terms terms that describe working people. You described their resentment, their hostilities. Particularly, not a wealthy person. He did not do as well as his brothers and he was depended on slavery, what little wealth that he had. Can you talk a little bit about those people and your hostility towards black people. The source of their hatred. This part of the deep south was about 52 african american. The majority of the africanamericans were enslaved, of course at the time of 1860 when the civil war was warming itself. A relatively small White Society of slaveholders. 15 of the white population. That was a rather large working class white population. A ship carpenter. He was one of the workingmen. Manual labor. Slaveholders to some degree. I think that they enslaved eight people. His grandparents had enslaved Something Like 30 or 40 people. He is a person that experienced a class slide. He became popularized and he believed, i think, i have never found any diaries or letters of his, he believed that his status had been robbed from him. Like many southerners of the day , they turned this resentment and frustration into a rage directed towards people of color who had recently become emancipated and entered a public sphere. The very first Civil Rights Act and the history of this country, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 just passed over johnson and his messages giving civil rights to black people is favoring black, silver, whites and you immediately get white democrats organizing to promote White Supremacy. You talk about how whiteness gets shaped. Very much shaped in opposition to black rights. There is a line early in the book where you talk about i am struggling to make the concept of whiteness as concrete as blackness. You show all the ways in which culturally, you know, whiteness is getting defined. New orleans was this hotbed of pseudo race science and this idea of whiteness and after reconstruction it becomes much more potent. Many of white people then and now do not regard themselves as part of racial groups. We as whites often think that people of color are those that inhabit race and whites are not part of the racial group. You referred to in the book, i am trying to make white racial identity as visual, as conspicuous to us as africanamerican racial identity is conspicuous to us. I have an idea that White Supremacy and white self regard is born, or at least greatly amplified after the civil war by events surrounding the acquisition of Voting Rights by black people and by the first entry of black people by position of authority. You mentioned that new orleans was a center of scientific racism and it was. This is an interesting discovery for me. The earliest american scientists are people in the deep south, and also elsewhere in the north who are trying to describe how races built into the body. Bone diggers and people who are interested in the fantasy that there is a separate origin of each race. Each race is a different species. Some of these guys worked and taught in new orleans and they published in journals there and other worked in philadelphia and new york and elsewhere. The First American sciences race science. It is very peculiar. This become some of the intellectual justification for enslavement. Enlightenment thinkers did this around the finding as well. The stories we tell to justify the way things are is very much a part of our history. Lets talk about what he did after the war is over. Tell the audience the mechanics. Institute the mechanic set institute massacre. Tell the audience about this and his role in it. Right. The year after the end of the civil war, black people are petitioning for the rights to vote. In july 1866, a meeting is convened in downtown new orleans. Two or 300 africanamericans who are newly in politics and about 300 africanamericans outside of this place called the Mechanics Institute. The purpose of the rally is to petition for the right of black men to vote. White politicians are in power at this point in new orleans and the mayor of the city sends the police force and the Fire Departments to the scene of this rally to break it up. He is a member of a volunteer fire brigade, as are many confederate veterans. He apparently came to the scene, there is no fingerprint evidence that he was there, but the circumstantial evidence is quite persuasive. Within two hours of police and the fire brigade arriving, meaning africanamericans were dead by gunfire and by bludgeoning and lay scattered in the streets of new orleans, this massacre provokes congress to pass the reconstruction act. Rights. Which i did not know about that particular incident. I have been teaching reconstruction and the Civil Rights Act for years. I did not realize there was a central animating event. John lewis and other attacks on the bridge, that is providing the impetus for the Voting Rights act. A similar kind of event. 200 black people dead and that helps the radical republicans pass reconstruction over Andrew Jacksons veto. I feel implicated. I have a feeling of richness and shame. Lets just talk about that. You are really hard, i feel like your self, your family, your tribe. You say whites are my tribe. Is this family shame that you feel . Well, so many of the disastrous cellblocks are hidden behind curtains and this is one of many. Here is the crux of it. It is not an overstatement to say that their rampages of the clue clocks and the assaults, and some distance and mediated way, have cleared further way for white life throughout the succeeding generations down to our own. It is not a falsehood to state that the night writing and torment that they perpetrated gives ordinary white folks, including myself, a greater sense of authority and security because they were fighting for our people. They were fighting to extend the authority of our people. White people. That is the net. Rights. A very honest book. You write whites are my people, my tribe. Ways that he belongs to us into hundreds of millions. I know the honest way to regard race and violence is this. American history is full of it. It is pandemic. The United States was founded upon racial violence. It is in the core of our national identity. That is breathtaking and the opposite of what children are taught in school. I want to ask you what you think is lost or gained by seeing the nations founding in this mean violent term. Well, what is lost is much of the self regard that our National Storytellers tell us. America as the land of freedom and opportunity. If you tell the National Story with racial identity as the engine, and i think it is possible to do that without distorting it, you find that the settlement of the east coast of america was a racial act with neither people being displaced and shoved aside, the import of enslaved africans was a racial act with, ultimately, 4 million on the plantations of the deep south. The movement of the country across the continent into the middle states and finally to the west was a racial act. Native people literally being driven by forced march to leave parts of the country where white farmers wished to take up land. If you tell the story that way, you find that it is quite a different story and it is not a progress narrative. It is not a narrative of gradual or universal extension of authority and rights of property to all people. It is not that at all. It is something quite different. Do you think your tribe is open to hearing it the way you are presenting it . In your terms . You said white people are my tribe. Yes. It is a novel claim to make. Africanamericans often complain i cannot speak for all black people. Africanamericans are often asked by whites to represent their tribe. Two white so society. I am not a tribal representative. Okay. Okay. All right. However, i am telling a story. We have a new moment of multiracial mobilization. After the deaths of george floyd embryonic taylor and others, i think it is fair to say, it has been claimed one of the largest demonstrations in the support of black lives in the history of this country. You getting some resistance to that resistance. You return to this idea of White Supremacy rising, falling. White supremacy rises and falls and rises again and subsequent generations are with the traumas of the past. Part of this reckoning that much of your work seems to be asking us to do. Can you talk about that a little bit. Why you think that it is important for whites to understand how they may, you have alluded to this, you did this really brilliantly in a New York Times piece that i read and 2015. The poet claudia rankin, this idea that the past is in you. I will let you say it. I am not saying my klansman is the same or the slave patrol is the same as stopping today, but there is a certain entitlement attitude that comes from this history. Can you talk about that . I think the more that we acknowledge the experiences of our predecessors stand their foot on our own lives, the better off we are, the more honest we are about our current circumstances and the experience of enslavement does hearken down. The experience of being an in slaver, the experience of being a fighter for White Supremacy speaks over the generations down to the present. You mentioned the protest of the summer. It is an encouraging time. This year is a surprising turn of events. The marches and the aftermath of the tragic death of george floyd, one could see, i think, many, many white folk participating in protests in a way that suggested they or we, regarding ourselves and our history and a fresh way and for the first time, it is a historical kind of shift in consciousness the way the protests almost immediately moved to the takedown of monuments. Right. A very interesting turn of events. I think that it is very encouraging. We also see that White Supremacy does not lie dormant. It advances. It grows more sophisticated. It finds new commanders to carry out desires. I do not think that we are going to fall into a bed of roses in our Racial Climate going forward, but it is a very interesting change of tone. We tell our audience about this white league, would you call it a massacre or the white League Battle it was part of the effort to and reconstruction. Which are generally described as ku klux by the newspapers. And one of the white blemishes attracts thousands of members and is called the white league. And in 1874 in september, the white league organizes a ballot, an assault, a coup attempt involving 3,000 of its members including my ancestor that overthrows the white reconstruction government in the streets of new orleans. About 30 people die. Half of them black, half of them white. And the success of the white league in toppling the reconstruction government for only a few draws is so pull rating draws is so exhilarating that it becomes legend and lore through new orleans and the deep south for generations. Ultimately, a monument is built, and the event the battle is commemorated in annual ceremonies in new orleans for many decades. And in your personal family lore, according to your aunt maude [inaudible conversations] yeah, has his head split open in this fought. And its a turning point in reconstruction. It causes the federal government in washington to lose its nerve and to lose its desire to continue the efforts to integrate institutions of power and, ultimately, within a year, the federal government agrees to discontinue and remove the federal troops. So its the beginning of the end of reconstruction. And your klansman is em myth blue candidated in it implicated in it. And ive got to tell you, one of the things you like to do in this book and in your previous cook is interview presentday africanamericanss who are descendants of people who were operating at the time. And you do that, and i want to tell you with, im the descendant of a reconstruction legislator in alabama, right . So my great grandfather in the 1870s was, you know, a mixedrace son of a former slave, of a slave owner and a woman of color. Hes serving in the Alabama Legislature from 18701874. Im talking to you, your great, great grandfather was one of the ones who was shooting, right . [laughter] so here we are talking, right . And i have to tell you this is the power of an intimate microhistory, right . I have read about this all my life, but nothing brings it to life more than seeing on the ground the shooting, the maiming, the killing, the raping. And im reading it, and its like fresh pain for me. I can see my grandfather, you know, he gets elected on a day i dont know how he survives, but he got elected on a draw when people were shooting at black people who went to the polls. So it brings it alive. And i want to share that. One of the things you do so well, tell me about your obsession or compulsion to go and speak to what i call descendants, africanamerican descendants yeah. Both of slaves and of radical republicans. You did that in this book. In your first book, you went to speak to descendants of slaves. In this book you went to speak to descendants of a certain type of person of color. Very successful, accomplished africanamericans who were in the fight for reconstruction. Tell me about that and anything you want to share about that. Yeah. I had the idea, and im sorry that its painful to you, i had the idea that revisiting the scenes of historical trauma with personal testimony, if you like, has a positive effect insofar as we can pass through some of the hard stuff of our National Life in a personal way. It has a positive effect. There are reasons why stories of violence and domination are little known. They are repressed and forgotten intentional lu in most cases intentionally in most cases. And its not properly comment rated. Commemorated. So there are two families that i write about in life of a klansman, africanamerican families who were members of the cree e yell of color elite which was a large minority of africanamericans in new orleans. These were Business People and educated people of all stripes in the reconstruction era, and they were on the scenes of one of the events that i write about, the Mechanics Institute massacre. And i identified a family whose ancestors were nearly killed at this massacre and asked, with their permission, if i could tell some of their Family History. And for them too. Its not uncommon that a family who experiences the trauma of night riding or lynching or abuse generations later have this memory intact. And this was the case with one of the families that i went to visit. And they, with some i think with some sense of discovery and renewed appreciation wished to share the story of their familys experience. So i think that at a micro level with individuals and individual families, it does provide some kind of medicinal effect. I appreciate you doing that. Youve been on this project with, this is your sixth book, but particularly your first and your latest books of showing how intertwined africanamerican experiences with white experience. Theyre not black history is american history, right . Theyre so intertwined, and theyre intertwined, you know, particularly in the south, right . Back and white people on the ground even during the most virulently awful times were intimately involved with one another. Do you feel like things have shifted since you wrote your first book in terms of people beginning to embrace this idea that the africanamerican story is central to the american story . You know, there seems to be a hunger, you know, for [inaudible] id like to think that things have shifted. I think that large numbers of order of ordinary folks are interested in and able to tell the stories of africanamerican families and of africanamerican life, and i think that there is definitely a much wider appetite now. But the key is what you mentioned, which is the interlocked nature of white and black society and memory and experience. I mean, we have been in each others dreams, we have been in each others beds, we have been in each others lives [laughter] right. For centuries. And one hand cannot move without the other hand responding. Right. Thats, thats something that is a, an ideal frame of consciousness to achieve, to understand the interlocked nature of our destiny. And thats something that were sort of inching towards. Right. I want to ask you a question thats sort of animated as a fellow writer, and i also wrote a family memoir that went back four generations. I can appreciate some of your struggle to tell this story where the pauper trail ends, particularly youre writing about a klansman, and klansmen were intentionally clan december ton, so they werent going to leave a paper trail about this maas consider or whatever. And you give yourself permission to fill gaps with your imagination, your speculation about, you know, what they said or felt, you know . You say ive seen him doing this, i dont see him doing that. I wonder about that device as a writer. Yeah. How you feel about that and how you feel trade historians feel about that. Right. Well, i dont actually provide dialogue for people who i dont have evidence of their dialogue. But by imaginative projection, it is i think when you tell the reader that you are reconstituting or constructing a scene, youre okay. And there is enormous circumstantial evidence right. For the lives and behaviors and movements of all kinds of otherwise anonymous white people and black people. The reality is that only about one in a thousand people of any class leaves a piece of paper behind that historians can lauter consult can later consult. And so built into the archive method of historiography is a kind of radical, collusion. If you radical exclusion. If you depend only on paper, youre, colluding an overwhelming majority of individuals. A microhistory, such as the one ive written, tries to tell the story of ordinary folks who had access to little education, who lived inconspicuous lives and who left no papers and diaries and what have you. Thats the experience of the majority of americans. Whites and blacks and asian and what have you. So using imaginative reconstruction and projection, i dont give interior narration of my characters, but i do as you imply take some liberties with narrative events. And i announce it when im doing it. And you first tried to tackle this as a novel . Correct. And tell me about that and why dud you give up on that why did you give up on that and decide to do it this way. Right. Well, when i reencountered the papers that i inherited from my aunt maude mccorn, i thought this story is so sering that it would be like holding a coal in your hand, a hot coal, to write it as nonfiction. You should write a novel about this man. And trued, and it i tried, and it wasnt, it was not superb, so i set it apseudo. And finally i decided this story is so sering, i have to you it as nonfiction, and so i did. Well, i dont want to [inaudible] compromise. Just in cause our viewers just in case someone is not awe ware of that, could you explain the compromise and what form, how reconstruction formally ended . Briefly, in 1876, the president ial election putted republican Rutherford Hayes against tilden, the democrat, and it came down to the electoral votes of two states in the south, South Carolina and louisiana. And by this time, reconstruction was losing its steam, and democrats gave, gave the election, if you like, to the republicans which were the, initially the antislavery party, which were initially the party of reconstituting a society that makes room for africanamerican power and authority in economic life. And in exchange, the tilden camp allowed made the deal that if hayes, the republican, was allowed to take the white house, his government had to immediately withdraw the union forces that still occupied parts of the deep south and, thus, bring a formal end to attempts to rebuild a new society. And so hayes took the white house, the troops were withdrawn, and reconstruction collapses in early 1877. Right. So the rights of africanamericans depended on the willingness of the federal government to stay with guns, and they just basically get exhausted, right . Appears that way. [laughter] do you feel like it was inevitable in the society in which white status was so tied to subordinating black people that reconstruction following was just going to be inevitable no matter what . No. I dont think it was inevitable. I think it was one of these pivot points in history where things could have gone better. It could have gone the other way. And weve lived with the consequences ever since. White supremacy was after the hayes tilden compromise and the end of reconstruction, white spectrum i was supremacy was fortified in the deep south, and it was made extremely brutal in its forms of enforcement and with all kinds of measures such as convict leasing and voting, Voting Rights were withdrawn from africanamerican men, and all business run by black people was driven out of, out of power. And this kind of fortified White Supremacy, i believe, has been exported to the rest of the United States as africanamericans begin to leave the south. And some of the methods that were perfected by the white south are then taken up by whites around the United States in their own communities as africanamericans are coming into the northern and western states. So, yeah, its an extreme lu important turning point extremely important turning point, and it could have gone another way. It gets to your point about each, the next generation having to live with the consequences of what the ancestors did, you know . And you are making clear in your comments here and in your book how a violencebacked White Supremacy was the central organizing principle not just of the south, but of the United States. And whites in those eras, that was accepted. All whites participated in a racial order in which whites were on top, and they were in followon institutions from slavery, jim crow. And you alluded to the idea that today if we had an hbo special where constance mccorning was brought forward today [laughter] he would look around, and he might see some things he recognizes, right . It was a different spin, but there are a lot moral lieus for racial equality more allies for racial equality now. He might, yes. I think that White Supremacy is a not just white violence against people of color, but it is an attitude of mind that crosses the whole political spectrum. Many white people will tell anyone who asks that their families were not entitled, their families do not experience the benefits of whiteness, their families have struggled and have come up from modest beginnings to find a precarious foothold in economic life. And in many ways, theyre telling the truth. An immigrant family who comes to ellis island in the turn of the century in the 1900s, 1910s enters a quite low level on the platform of american society. But when they arrive at ellis are island, they set their foot on the upper tier of a twotier Caste Society that has been shaped by slavery and jim crow. And they are able to rise into Property Ownership and Economic Prosperity but using tools that are denied uhhuh. Africanamericans. Thats also a part of the Family History that many people are unable to acknowledge. This may seem a bit like a diversion, but its in the book, and its been in the news of late. The phenomenon of black face, right . Someone recently asked me, it was a white person, what is offensive about black face. And i wasnt automobile to really articulate able to really articulate well, but your book actually comments on it a lot. Can you tell us about the origins of black face and this phenomenon, particularly tied to mar duh gras, but this mardi gras, but this phenomenon of whites putting on black face and why thats offensive. Its an interesting dimension of our sort of psychological history in the early in the 1840s i think this enormously popular art called minstrelcy arises, and it consists of white people putting on makeup to appear black and performing music that they have taken from or parodied from black sources; plantation blues and jigs. And back face minstrelsy, as its called, becomes the most popular form of culture for white americans for a century. It is hundreds of millions of people going to minstrel shows throughout the 1800s and 1900s right up until world war ii. It is the most popular form of public musical art for a century. And what it relies on is this fascination of white people for blackness. Uhhuh. This desire to paint what appears to them to be the essence of blackness and puppet it on themselves and put it on themselves and mock it. If you look at any film or radio archive source from the early 1900s, youll find loads of of this stuff. Right. And its offensive because it involves this thing that people call today appropriation. And its to its offensive because it involves a kind of desire to domesticate black identity in the white mind, to take control of it and hold it in the mind as a kind of toy. And thats whats offensive about it. Well, thank you for that. We only have a couple minutes, and i want to end with the hopefulness of the moment were in, you know . If as i said before, we have the largest demonstrations in the history of this country with a lot of white people saying black lives matter. I wonder if you think theres Something Different about this moment, whether were headed toward, perhaps, a thursday reconstruction that might be a third reconstruction that might be more enduring than these rituals of a few steps forward and then a retrenchment, a reassertion of White Supremacy. Do you think anythings different about this moment . I think its too early to say. Uhhuh. Were entering a third reconstruction for entering a third reconstruction. However, im optimistic that were entering a new phase of consciousness about ourselves, black folks and white folks together. The election in november will be, i think, a very loud sign of whether this kind of renewed understanding of our racial identities is going to evolve and complicate, become a positive force or not. And so im hopeful, however. I am too. So whats next for you . Have you exhausted your Family History and thought about [laughter] can you say . I dont know. Im working anything about different things. At least this is what i tell my agent, im working on a couple different things, and well have to see what develops. Well, listen, thank you so much for having this conversation. Its been very, its been a very nice one. Thank you. Ive enjoyed it immensely. All right. Be well. You too. This program is available as a podcast. All after words programs can be viewed on our web site at booktv. Org. Youre watching booktv on cspan2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. You know, when you read the things that were said about thomas jefferson, you know, that he was an infidel and that he was an agent of the french government . Sounds a little reminiscent, doesnt it . The things that were said about abraham lincoln, the things that were said about fdr, that he wanted to be a dictator. So it does kind of come with the territory, but i think in trumps case at least in the modern political era, postworld war ii ive never seen anything like it. Today at noon eastern on in depth, our live twohour conversation with author and faith and Freedom Coalition founder ralph reed whose books include awakening and his most recent, for god and country, joined in the conversation with your phone calls, facebook comments, texts and tweets. Watch booktvs in depth today at noon ian on cspan eastern on cspan2. Heres a look at some Publishing Industry news. Author and journalist gayle she e hi died last week at the age of 83. She was a contributor to vanity fair and new York Magazine as well as the author of 17 books which included passages that was published in 1976 and sold 10 million copies. The New York Timeses reports that an already busy fall publishing season has gotten more hectic due to the lack of capacity at the nations two largest book printing companies. Lnc printing, which filed for bankruptcy in april and quad, which is for sale, are trying to keep up with the the increased workload. In other news, best selling french economist Thomas Piketty has refused to edit portions of his latest book to make it available for the chinese market. He says, quote, they basically wanted to cut almost all parts referring to contemporary china and in particular to inequality and obesity in china. Also in the news, npd book scan reports that print book sales were up 8 for the week ending august 22nd. Adult nonfiction books continued their positive sales trend, up just over 9 . And the Miami Book Fair has announced it will be a virtual festival for the first time in its history. Author events will be held from november 15th22nd and will include more than 250 authors. The book fairs program director,ially set mendez, reflected on pivoting from an ifperson to an online event telling the miami herald, quote, i feel like im building a bridge across the grand canyon as im walking. Its a work in progress. Booktv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news. You can also watch all of our archive programs anytime at booktv. Org. And now on booktv, were live with author and faith and Freedom Coalition founder ralph reed who over the next two hours will be talking your calls and comments. His books include act of faith and for god and country which was published earlier this year. Host author ralph reeding when we asked you what some of your books are, the first one you listed was the bible. Is the bible a political book . Guest i dont think of it that way. Certainly, it has instruction about Civic Affairs and politics and how we order our societies, but i for me, obviously, the bible is primarily the revelation of gods man and principles for humanity and the best huawei to know best way to know the keys to living a godly life with intimacy with