To you. I still see myself as a book critic. This book is gamma extension of that work but these days i feel like i am a political journalist and using books as a means to that kind of work. Or is that something you actually steered clear of it has to in some ways beyond just sympathy for so i hope that it will give me a better sense of the decisionmaking that goes into what a book covers and how many chapters. What is it that you do during the day then you read 150 books about the trump era it is a book about books like the book about coffee tables from seinfeld but i hope it simply uses books to try to understand a moment and get a snapshot of a moment so it could have been a lot of things. It could have been film, theater, fiction so its a book about this moment in america and civic life but what do you mean about the intellectual history . There are a lot of ways to imagine. It anticipated everything and ive done some of that myself, guilty but that isnt the kind of book i wanted to write. I wanted to grapple with how americas public intellectuals and writers and insiders and academics and journalists, how they were thinking about this moment in real time so maybe a better way to explain it is to think of it as a snapshot which they can look at to get a sense of how we thought about trump in the moment. Its interesting you talk about books that oversimplify things into this is how we got here. This is how it happened and thats after the 2016 election there was an increased interest in particular novels and these postapocalyptic novels became best sellers again and then they said this is what this means. This is what is happening in the current moment. Now are we moving into a third phase of this is what its going to mean going forward, this is what is going to happen next and here are the implications . I hope that we will be getting a new wave of books with the books ive read and review it and thought about as a testament to this, theres been an obsession with trying to understand how we got here, why donald trump was elected in 2016 and what the future can hold in american politics. I do hope that we might try to move beyond a sort of singular obsession with the oval office and do a little better at grappling with the forces that brought it into american life. Theres been enough psychoanalyzing. I didnt want to do more of that. And the original discussion of the title was included and started with what were they thinking but i wanted to be more encompassing and i didnt want to absorb any responsibility or agency. It isnt a book about what Administration Officials were thinking but i wanted to be as broad as possible. I went back and read st. Louis that came out i certainly engaged in that searching through fiction but i think it spoke to how so many people thought it seemed kind of impossible. If it is about what were we thinking, we were not thinking that hard. The trump couldnt be elected even trumps own campaign didnt necessarily think that it was going to happen so i think that we drew on fiction early on because it fit in with that sense of reality like this time displacement that its given us where we talk about the weeks feel like months and the months feel like years and i think that is all the sense that this isnt normal and this isnt something that could be happening so i think fiction was the National Outlet for that even though we quickly moved beyond it. Speaking of quickly and abnormal tempos about the particular administration a is e believe that there are cabinets that disband and may be five or ten years later somebody and return rates a memoir. Now in this Administration People are writing memoirs. What do you make of that and what do you devote yourself to reading those kind of quick memoirs from people who were in here and left . Remember how it seemed when George Stephanopoulos wrote his memoirs while clinton was in office there was a huge controversy about how he drew that and was sort of an exile that is how it is now absolutely the moment you will go straight to the Literary Agency so i did try to read a lot of those books and came to others later on but theres an urgency that i think is great and they give you a sense of what it was like inside but it also makes them a little, whats the word it makes them feel a little like they are not going to last and they will be superseded everyone as the hero of their own story theres a lot of that in fact there was one particular meeting early on in the presidency meeting at the pentagon with a bunch of senior officials staging an intervention to try to get him to see the world their way and theres multiple books including insider memoirs but also journalistic accounts a lot of the books of the trump era reflect the very same blind spots and failures of imagination. There was an entertaining book called audience of one. It doesnt mean that they are wrong it just means that there is an easy tendency to retrieve the familiar argument. Its what i call general resistance writing that falls into that category. Therefore they assume it always points north so i find that a little worrisome. I will leave it to the critics and reviewers so i think that certainly has to have an impact on how i see this period and how i read books about the immigration debates but i also think. Its of this notion that you have confidence in the experiment that suddenly you are part of and so i think underlying my writing of this book is a sense of faith in the american experiment despite the controversy that that takes you someplace but i also think thats one identity. We carried them in different moments. They come together from the big battles they are litigated on paper. What can books do lets say journalism or the internet cannot do. What does it do better . I think that this is going to be unfair to journalism and the internet theres a little bit of staying power or there can be in the act of committing words to book form and our colleagues at the Washington Post and the New York Times theyve covered this presidency and in great detail in this journalism not many have felt the need to try to take a step back and go deeper. Ive read a lot of those books and so i feel if journalism is supposed to be the first draft of history as the books are the first draft of how we think more deeply and how we decide what that means we will be rewriting those forever it would be on the trump era to have yet to be written. I hope the commentary youve had to read for this book. They were terrific books but there is going to be a lot more to think through we talked about how many more has been coming up from the trump officials. Theres going to be a lot more and some of the key debates. I want to read an Anthony Faucis memoir in the Homeland Security. Those are essential narratives that have yet to be told. We are going to be with them for a long time coming. I know you were not writing about the man donald trump himself, nonetheless, he is an unavoidable figure in all of this and one of the things i think it seems that at least the writers have been the saying is in a difficult figure to kind of pinned down to get an understanding of what is going on and in the same way its about Ronald Reagan but they couldnt get the sense. Did you have that trouble . I had a slightly different perspective on that. This whole project for me began even after the book deciding this is what i was going to be reading all these books and several of the others and its all there. Everything we have seen about donald trump is there and the exception of wealth and facts and security is and his willingness to lie and deceive one of the things i caught onto early on and then you start seeing it in his books and may be this is surprising now nearly four years ahead but he did not, he liked acquiring things and getting the notoriety and attention that came from some big deal then to managing it and running it, he got bored really quickly. I remember early on i could imagine him wanting to win the presidency. I cant imagine him really enjoying being president because that is a lot of work you see it in all sorts of ways theyve been drawn through the most in the theatrics and atmospherics because that is what president s do but he hasnt been a dealmaker or able to do those things the day to day job of president tang such as getting the Intelligence Briefings so that is something that struck me when i wrote about him first i have another question because we are talking about its easy to think about the historical precedent that you would go to on your own political leanings. But how do you do you define the era because a lot of people when Donald Trump Took Office kind of went back and read on a hunch earlier biographies of what they would be considered an authoritarian regime and looked at world war ii figures. How did you define when they start in terms of looking at the trump era i felt that there was the risk of being too narrow and how i define the period but then i felt that opening up there was always going to be so much i would have to read to and incorporated and so i decided to just be a ruthless and cast my own focus narrowly like im going to look at books that came out between 2016 and 2020. The books that came out in 2016 were not written in any way to make sense of donald trump. It wasnt a trump book to begin with. And so, i decided to be focused on this particular period i knew that opening the door would just bring the deluge of different words that i would want to explore. Sometimes just for myself as i was reading and writing i would find other books on the periods that i had experienced that i thought were relevant but try to focus on books people were writing to grapple with this thing that was in front of us. Lets talk about hillbilly elegy for a moment because that is what has become a subgenre that requested something thats happening after who are the trump voters and that was the one book or the first book people latched onto. Are there the others that did that equally . I think that it told jd vance very well. It was a wellwritten book and it was very effective to read, but i think a lot of it was in the timing that made people see use this is the explaining book to the book itself and to the trump voter in the sense that growing up between kentucky and ohio and his own conservative politics cover the way he sees that experience because i think dont blame anyone else for your trouble that is a very loser thing to do. His grandmother tells them that so he goes to the marines and shakes them up but as well he worked his way up the meritocracy it also kind of affirms some liberal suspicions of the White Working Class and social pathologies of the community is so it had something for everyone and thats why i think it became across the spectrum that it relied upon. A book like heartland. Its about her experience growing up in kansas, the foreign country and very much from the left. Very much from a totally different political perspective. Just to the liberal and thats unfair to its in the works for my understanding for a long time and it wasnt in any way a response to jd vance in the temporal way. So these are its not just the mountains and the planes. These were different ideologies that came to bear on this one political reality on the White Working Class. So, i think that we put these books in conversation with each other. I certainly did that in my book. In the work sort of going at it directly. I think that is rights. I think that i felt that good books have to accept a sort of messiness and everything is to perfectly tied up in about, i always worry like what is been left out of this. When i might not getting. And i found this pair of books that actually it went out to look at the top volker cohen and in some cases they even profiled same people. Which was bizarre like there was this one voter in pennsylvania right, was a longtime Democrat Labor organizer the switch to jump in 2016. These prominently featured in two different books. And the crazy thing is these books give him significantly different motivations for supporting donald trump in one book is this populist. Worries the democrats have forgotten working class and then the book, hes a 911 trooper, cultural warrior, and really hes the same guy. But often hes interpreted through the prisms the journalists and writers bring to the story. And dont want to sit in judgment have that. I just want to pointed out. And show how hard it is sometimes to avoid that. You mentioned these expertise areas where people look to these particular lenses. We havent talked explicitly about the most obvious point which is ideology will that we live in such an incredibly polarized. Right now in america and i am wondering, did you sort of have to try hard to find books that were not ideologically 100 percent for trump or in the resistance. Any guests there were jumpers and how hard was it to find books in the middle. Carlos i dont know if it is the middle there were looking for. You may end up. Some like you have to be the middle between resistance and base to get a clear perspective. You just have to not be sort of in the tank one way or the other may end up in a different place. So what i often why read a bunch of books just of four years. It cooks i was reviewing for the Washington Post. But then when i realized that i was going to try to take a bigger more sweeping book of these books i went back in sort of backfield different areas that maybe i had read five books, read five more. Then i could pick and choose. Different perspectives. Not a luxury for me to have the time to do that. I could never do that like is none going for clinic. I can only do it as an author in this case time. So for instance on these books about the White Working Class and this what that really missed the first time. It is called we are still here by jennifer silva, sociologist and a first i thought was going to be very, she spent time in pennsylvania talking to people. I found though that she was able to first she pointed out that harland is not entirely White Working Class. As it is been sort of branded. Hence this debate that weve had about the motivations of the hard to land trump is always been narrowed down to our they motivated by their cultural prejudices the economic struggles. Her book helped me see how these are really intertwined. Its like person a was noted they did buy this in person b was motivated by that. That more than seeing how these struggles push them to vote for trump or somebody else, that they showed how they often leave them leaving theres no place in the political system that all for them. In one of the most striking moments in the book for me for instance was election day 2016 france written during the 2016 campaign targeted through election day. And the author went to vote and she came back with her i voted stickers she so proud of herself. Shes interviewing the people in discussing the book and they left interpreting the monitor for thinking and daring to believe that the political system would be responsive to her voice. Because thats how she felt about it. And that to me is not necessarily a midpoint between resistance and base been entirely different insight it really stayed with me as i read it. Pamela another version of the way the people feel like there is no place for me here. And there are people who are questioning what happened to my republican party. Im assuming that was a whole subgroup of the book as well. What was that like. Carlos i read maybe four or five of the books and the more prominent ever trump conservatives and then in my book i put those in a broader chapter about the sort of divide among the right. Those were books that i felt were very focused on what happened to my party. What happened to this movement that have been part of for so long. In effect that it grill grappling and kind of lament about the conservative movement. In writing the book like breakup letters to the party in their movement. One thing that struck me about them though was i didnt feel like be fully wrestled with sometimes their own role in what had come to surpass. A lot of these have been long time conservative commentators and campaign strategists. And they had been fine feeding this base. Or at least ignoring the kind of like really intense base of support that the party increasingly was embodied by. Until it didnt produce one of their more conventional type of nominees. And suddenly like oh my god what we done but if we created. And that to me felt a little insufficient as a reckoning. The said i think they do a really good job at dissecting the problems in the evolution of the conservative movement. And kind of shows the inability now to do what past generations have done which is purged with the most extremist voices from the ranks. And those voices have kind of taken over and have left these writers outside looking at this. Pamela one of the ways to look at this sort of trump leinart timeline of the trump era, for my perspective visible person, as a journalist and i expect from your perspective as well, has been this series of huge embargoed books. If you hear about the book it is going to come out in the embargo breaks and ready writes about it jumps about it. A huge bestseller and its gone from khomeini to the first vav the two fear to bolton to the millennia trump book. It but the one that i think that started it all was probably michael wolf fire and fury. You write a chapter about that book. The first line is i blame michael. What he done. Why does it matter. Carlos first of all, i hate reviewing those books. I have to stay up all night reading them and like crash something together and i always try to tell publishers, you hurting yourself because you not letting people really wrestle with the book. Just give me a few days. Came to me early. But i never get anywhere. I think michael wolf spoke sort of perfect for like a time capsule of this. Pamela now feels like 20 years ago. Carlos said this was january of 2018. And he had spent an amazing access panning out or hanging out of the white house. And they seem to be insignificant sort of source and entry point for him. But it suddenly, we heard a little bit that it was about to show up. It is only thing that anyone could want to talk about. Theres any books now and every few months theres like some huge bestseller. With this was the first. Everyone was talking about it and i literally stayed up. Get the book and started in the afternoon that i stayed up most of the night reading aspirated and he started writing the next morning and i found my review by 3 00 oclock that afternoon on friday. Michael wolf had think that book created animals race for the most oh my gosh can you believe that in a dude. This kind of arm grace among these books. All the books that followed have been competing for trying to get that story. Into my mind, this may be a disservice to those books themselves because sometimes the best stuff the most deeply interesting revelations are not just the oh my gosh this trump in this meeting said this or trump stumbled while he was reading the words of the constitution because he didnt know with a mentor people still documents off his desk. As a memorable. But in the book like my colleague had written a huge bestseller. It was like that that ended up at of overpowering conversations surrounding the books. And to me that was far from the most interesting stuff in the book. Like that was the first book where i learned instance the rubber moores team had passed up the opportunity to take a look at the letter that the general was going to put out characterizing the mueller report. In hindsight the seem like a big mistake. I only wish that we had looked at that letter and weighed in. An unlimited in the book. Its not what dominated the discourse around it. And sing that book like rage by bob woodward when 17 or 18 conversations between woodward and trump were the dominant part of the coverage surrounding the book. But in fact the first half of the book is about Major National security challenges largely to the eyes of jim mathis. And the director of intelligence how worried they were about an actual Nuclear Conflict with north korea. Thats me seems like really big deal. There are parts of these books often get overshadowed because of the michael will phenomenon that were just looking for the make them in for the insanity. But he came home place. Michael wolf second book on the Trump White House siege kind of came and went. Didnt receive the same kind of attention by think because after a while, this was presidency was shocked without surprising us really anymore. We were of used to that chaos. Pamela it feels like were constantly saying about the internet and the news cycle that it is so fast we hardly have time to understand what something means into digesters. It sort of like the book cycle is going to mimic that produce started this rush for these anecdotes and juicy bits to dissect immediately there were losing some of what books generally do which is to offer a kind of perspective and deeper and broader thinking then you can generally get that kind of rush of the 24 7 news cycle. Carlos i think there is a risk of that. I think that if you go back even before the campaign, the book that is largely widely considered to be one of the greatest Campaign Books in American History is what it takes. And that book came out four or five years after the 1988 campaign. That was kramers book. That is unthinkable now. Looks come out almost before the campaign is over. In game change came out a year and a half after the 2008 race. Now, if its more than a few months out, they feel incredibly dated. I think that is has to have an impact on the depth of the reporting period were even when theyre deeply reporting on just how much time the writers have time to think through and digest what they want to encumber her with the didnt cover. And so i do think that books are coming close to mimicking the speed of the long magazine pieces. Among magazine pieces are moving at the speed of things and that is probably less than ideal for the readers, and for the writers who have to crash through material much more quickly. Plus more for history. People look back on these initial accounts. To start crafting larger histories of a. And we lose something probably in this kind of quest for speed. But i dont see it going away. Pamela you mentioned earlier, that you approach a review is a book critic. Like his last brain wont let start with what do you try to do if you had the say the luxury of two or three weeks to review something and to read and review Something Like michael well. Whats we who have done with that extra time that you cant really accomplish when youre writing against a 24 hour deadline. Carlos with Michael Wells book, i am not sure. It probably would have tried to contrast for instance some of his revelations and recordings with reporting of the time to see where things lined up her with delivering something something new or or was he covering material that we have already been overwhelmed by. I think when it comes more useful is soon we will get baraka, some are afraid of falling his president ial memoir which is coming out of the 17th of november. On the book like that which i expect i wont get until shortly before is this out read with look like that i want to do so much. I want to compare it to dreams from my father. I would like you look at other davids biographies. Therell davids exasperated these authors. And see what i can find and see what stands out and see where maybe obama himself as we consider things that he had written before. You put that sort of book in conversation with past work in history and way. It has book will be a furthering of the obama story but also in conversation and competition with other president ial memoir spray his how does it stack up against clintons book or against George H W Bushs writings of the gold standards memoir. Theres so much you can deal with a book like that rather than just plow through it in a couple of days and then out 1200 words telling people some of the highlights. Pamela do you sort of doing that background reading a few weeks ahead of time. Ahead of getting the book instead of having to rush the writings. Carlos yes. Sometimes i do. I did that when davids biography came out a few years ago. I did read to other obama biographies before that because i wanted to see what was novel here. And when i can, try to fill in the gaps in my own knowledge. Which are considerable. Especially, i move back and forth a lot between the United States and peru going up. Most of my junior high and high school was in peru entered peru. So theres you these huge chunks of americana they missed out on the never read. So theres a constant insecurity. So i am often reading prior work that i hope you give me insight into whatever im going to be reading next. Pamela s any consolation, ive been here my whole life and i dont understand like every obamas memoirs a there. [laughter]. What aspect of americana is probably inexplicable, when you are writing a book like that, obviously some of that i imagine is to answer questions that you have. About what is this mean but obviously writing print audience. And for the readers to sort of translate all of these and condense them and give them some kind of answer to the readers. With imperious which questions motivated you personally. What were you try to figure out for your self in writing this book. Carlos i think it has to flow from the kind of writing that i do is a book critic. When writing any single book, impregnating im trying to figure out what is the underlying argument here. What is left out. What is this writer bringing to the table that didnt exist before. Also get disgruntled writers thing that i missed the point of the book. And somebody will say youve pointed something out of the book that i didnt even realize was there. And so for me, that is a bingo. That is the great moment. As i think of tried to do that. In my book i tried to do that with this whole universe of books. Ive been trying to see, is there something that i can get out that is beyond the sort of very start but simple divide of this. And so for instance, when i and counter jennifers book earlier, its that kind of moment for me. Like hope this is a chance to look beyond is the economic struggles or cultural prejudice. This is a different idea that moment of insight which should not be so rare. But it is a little rare and is just like this warm bath that comes over me as a reader. It so wanted to try and read these books in a sense to try to get past whatever might own it kind of preconceptions and blind spots have been about certain parts of the trump era. And i think the one thing that i have walked away with is that all the fights that were happening whether over immigration or democracy president ial norms. All of those identities and race, they would just take constant ever present part of the american story. Pamela go ahead. Carlos and those of the good books to read. Maybe its obvious to everyone but it wasnt necessarily to me. That this is just or is not an anomaly. Maybe because theyre happening all at once but is not an anomaly in the american story. And books that have helped me see that and shown others. Isnt the long arc of the work in history have been the ones that have been both helpful and sometimes the most discouraging but also the ones that help me think about things and think this is our turn. Pamela you mentioned in your book that certain books youve actually reviewed and then reread. Let your own opinion of them changed over time. And i am curious if there are the ways in which in writing this book, your first book changed the way you approach your work as a book critic. Carlos there were certainly books that do that. Books where he felt was not certain that the book that are loved and read three years later and some suddenly hated it. Of the other way around. I saw Different Things in them. That wouldve struck me most the first time was not at all but for most important the second time around. Timothy snyders book did that for me for instance. Beginning is struck by a very prophetic, pre fascism. A very dramatic moments in the book. And when i was rereading it in 2020, what strikes me most about that book is his refrain of being mindful and protecting key institutions. Just take the institutions you care about and you stick by them. So i felt that with some books, i encountered things that i may have passed over quickly the first time around. And i do imagine that may be give me more humility when i have been knowing that all i can do is grapple with the book in the moment. And whatever strikes me, strikes me. But is sort of have enough selfawareness to realize that this may not be the most important thing about this argument or this book and there is a certain nature to my own deep probing insights about each of these works. People spend years in lifetime sometimes on this work and then i show up in a couple of days and read them. They try to cast them type of judgment on them. Seems grossly unfair. I think having to re breed and reconsider these books, is useful for me. As i realize theres often poor there and i anticipate. Pamela while carlos, youve already rent a Pulitzer Prize enterprise for criticism for the Washington Post and you have to read more than a hundred and 50 bucks on the trump era for your first book and i to be a kinder critic. Congratulations on all of that. Carlos thank you so much pamela. This program is available as a podcast, all can be viewed on the website and booktv. Org. You are watching book tv on cspan2 every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americans Cable Television company is a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Seo heres a look at some Publishing Industry news. Miles taylor former chief of staff and the department of Homeland Security has divulged that he would be an anonymous author of morning, the 2019 book that was critical of president trump. Mr. Taylor served for two years under former Homeland Security secretary kiersten nielsen. I let the department in june of 2019. In other news, but diane has died at the age of 86. She was the author of 50 books of poetry. I was part of the Beat Movement in San Francisco in the 1950s. Senator daniel medicare is also died he was 79 years old and mre fiction editor at the new yorker before becoming executive editor in chief at random house where he worked with alice munro and daniel silva to name a few. He also authored several books including a novel in a memoir. Also in the news, in print book sales continue the strong year of 13 percent for the weekend ending october 24th. And seth were up over 6 percent for the week. In novembers National Model writing month according to the Nonprofit Organization that has been providing the writing exercise for 21 years. The goal is to write up to 50000 words by the end of the month in the hopes of producing a novel. If more information can be fou found, booktv will continue to bring new programs and publishing news. Can also watch all of our past programs anytime booktv. Org. Hello and welcome to montgomery society. Thank you all for being here. We are on the top floor of a Tall Building on a windy