Ebook and 5 off lit fest merchandise. Todays program will be broadcast live on cspan2s booktv. T if theres time at the end for a q a session with the author, we ask you to use the microphone locateed to your right. Before we begin todays program, we ask that you silence your cell phones and turn off yourdi cameras flashes. Please welcome associate professor at the university of chicago and todays interviewer, jean daley. [applause] hi, thank you. I am here with david daley, no relationing, who is the no relation, who is the editorinchief of salon and has published this new book. Theres been some controversy on how to say the title, but i think im just going to say rat fd. So thats quite a story. You tell us a bit about how you came to write the story. Absolutely, thank you. What really interested me was my own confusion over what happened in 2012. You have a president who was reelected with 332 electoral votes by 206, wins the popular vote by some 3. 5 million, the democrats take 25 of 33 senate seats up that year. They win the popular vote for the house of representatives in3 the aggregate by 1. 4 million, and that moved seven seats, and the republicans retained a seves 235205 majority. And as we all know, the house had become the key obstruction ist lever in the republican plan to block the obama agenda. And this was the First Time Since 1972 that the party that won the most votes in the aggregate did not, as a result, take control of the chamber. And i was curious to find out why. And as you look into it, your. Understand that there was an active plan put into place by the republicans during the election of 2010 and then followed up during the remapping of 2011 that radicallyelection reinvented gerrymandering in a brand new way and used it as a blunt tool of partisan force and remapped america. Right. So youre saying every ten years we have the census. The Congressional District lines are redrawn, and you Say Something this is something that happens every ten years. But youre saying that whatss happened in 2010 was different in kind from all of the other decennial remappings. Zero years always reverberate longer because the census mandates that every seat in state and federal legislative bodies be redrawn based on population. And jerry mearnding gerrymandering, as a tool, goes back to 1790. Its an ancient political dark art and has been used by both parties throughout that time. You know, sometimes in roguish ways but sometimes as an incumbent protection racket, other times as a way to shiv a political enemy. But what happened in 2010 was fundamentally different from any of the previous gerrymanders over the last 210 years. Its a combination of the dark money unleashed by citizens united, its brand new technological mapping tools that allow you to draw these lines with precision that you could have never before imagined. I mean, think of the different ways we texted each other in 2000 versus the way we did on a smartphone in 2010, and that is the kind of advances that you saw in Mapping Technology over those years. Between 1990 and 2000, even in those years youre still using par be. Ment to parchment to draw these lines and slow computers. Right. The technological weapons available changed it as did a really brilliant strategy by a handful of republican strategists. Right. So lets talk a little bit about that strategy and also what kind of data theyre putting into these programs. Because its not just how many registered voters there are, you know, how many people. Youre supposed to just count the people, right . So tell us a little bit about who are these people behind the 2010 gerrymander and whats thee data that theyre working with. What you have to do is you have to go back to the night that barack obama is elected president in 2008. Right down the road here in grant park, theres a tremendous celebration. And on television that night everybody pronounced the Republican Party dead, that the looming demographics were going to roll them over. 2008 was the fourth president ial election out of five that theyd lost the popular vote. On tv even the republican pundits are wringing their hands in disbelief at what has happened. The following summer chris genachowski, who is a brilliant southern strategist, is reading a story in the new york times, and he comes across a note about how 2010 is a census year, and what he already knows is president s tend to lose seats in a midterm year. And he says, boy, if i coulddy understand the redistricting process in all of these states, and if i could raise the money to go in and influence and flip state legislative chambers statf by state, we could radically alter the map were fighting on. And when you draw the map, you make the rules. And that is what they did. They identified about eight states that well, there were many more than that, but there were about eight states in which they had the most impact. And these are, essentially, you know, blue or purple states like ohio or michigan and wisconsin, North Carolina, florida. And in some ways it was the greatest political heist in history because for just 30 million, thats all it cost, they were able to go in and run negative ads in all of these, you know, small state legislative districts that weree not used to seeing that kind of money come in. And for a song, they were ablee to draw new maps and build themselves a firewall for the next decade. For a time they were able to draw new maps and build themselves a firewall for the next decade. So they use the money, they elected republicans to state legislator and then those peoplemake. Of those people in 2011, once you had control of the chambers and control of the process in each of these individual states, they hired brilliant mapping firms and people who really understand how every line matters. I went out and drove a bunch of these districts and you can see, turn by turn, exactly why they did some of these things that they did. On the map when you look at some of these districts they seem insane, it looks like a roche a test of some sort. The actual true meaning and intent of it all when you get close up is staggering. So you make a strong claim in the book that the intent behind the Republican Redistricting process was not simply to protecting covenants, which is the oldfashioned way, politicians dont like competition, they dont want to run for reelection every two years, they would rather have us a seat and we have seen instances of that, sternly by both parties in the past. Youre making a. Youre making a bigger claim than that. You are suggesting that the republican operatives who did this went in with the intent to erode popular democracy. The goal was nothing less than to build a firewall against popular democracy, yes. It held because in 2012 again, 1. 4 million more people vote for Democratic Candidates the republican candidates and they managed to hold onto the house thanks to this a plan that they enacted. What americans go to the voting booth and they express disfavor with the party in power and nothing happens, that is a deeply dangerous problem for a participatory democracy. You have a story about how the districts are done, a North Carolina district that has asheville in its, can you tell us, one of the things that happen particularly in the south is that moderate southern democrats, which is a must always synonymous with white southern democrats in that part of the country, have become extinct. Its true. Theyre pretty much entirely gone. There has been a twopart strategy that turn the south republican. The first piece of this begins in 1989, 1990 when out water takes on the Republican National committee and he hires a new counsel main name to ben ginsberg. Ginsberg says theyre going to do something about redistricting. What they come up with was dubbed the unholy alliance. It was an alliance between democrats in the south who were eager to increase the representation in congress and republicans with a lot of money and newfangled computer programs, and they worked together in many states in order to what was the interest of the black democrats working, it does some i cannot holy alliance. Well, they are able to build the africanamerican caucus in congress to the highest level since after reconstruction in 1992, 1994. Two, 1994. But the cost of that was that the republicans took many more seats so state like North Carolina which had been eightfour democrats with the 12 members, suddenly flipped eight for the other way. You pack all of the democratic voters into a couple of districts, you give yourself the rest. And so thats because the Voting Rights act. The Voting Rights act. Where you want to have these majority, minority district so you end up with all of the black democrats put into one circle and then what everybody else, and youre suggesting that black democrats actively cooperated with that plan. In many cases they did. You can understand why, africanamericans were probably one of the most essential voting blocs in the demand Democratic Party but there are radically underrepresented. But its a couple gated arrangement. Theres winners and losers of all. So lets talk about some of the winners and losers because one of the big losers at the moment is the Republican Party itself. You have talked to me about to the unintended consequences of some of this brand, this grand strategy for the Republican Party. Well, i think what happened is they created a caucus that they could not control. You mentioned asheville, what happened in asheville in 2010, asheville was represented by a moderate represented by a moderate conservative democrat named schuyler, when they redraw the line schuyler takes a look at the district and says i cant win here and knows it. He retires. He is replaced by a tea Party Conservative name to market meadows, who runs on a very angry campaign against barack obama and suggest he was born in kenya and months to send him back there. It is a horrible, horrible, ugly campaign. Meadows wins this district which is created because they cracked asheville and have a put half of the democratic votes in one city, im sorry in one district, and put the other. So divide and conquer. Exactly. Called cracking. And meadows gets elected and he becomes the renegade republican who makes the parliamentary move that ends up on boehner. This is where it gets good. So essentially what happens is the republicans creates noncompetitive districts across the country, in which the only election that matters is the republican primary. And as a result you end up with a different breed and they are not controlled by boehner and are barely controllable by paul ryan and the tenor and the tone of congress changes. When elections dont matter. So these are the guys and. , taliban. And they are also all white. And disproportionately to the south. These are the people who brought you, lets shut down over the debt ceiling. And theyre trying to investigate benghazi again and again. A medic came to lets overturn john boehner as a speaker of our party. You talk with meadows about the tenor of the elections and the language that is common for this extreme fashion of the Republican Party thats the core of the Republican Party. When you have a meadows c say elect me working to send barack obama back to kenya. That sounds to me like it just creates a nice path for our presumptive nominee. Its the republican Presumptive Republican nominee as if nobody can bring themselves to say. Thats exactly right you can draw line from the line they return congress to the presumptive nomination of donald trump. The Republican Party empowered their angriest, whitest space. They purged all the moderates and they created these districts that are so noncompetitive that you do not have to speak to the rest of the country. We have lost the art of persuasion, of trying to convince somebody else that your cases correct. Now that we are down to a dangerous handful of competitive districts in this country, maybe its two dozen, you dont have to talk to anybody on the other side. So you can completely understand how an angry white base might want to build a wall that is a beautiful and huge. So, you talk about this been republican strategy and it was a grand republican strategy that they were going to take the house, perpetually. There are then going to elect a republican president and that republican president in the senate wouldnt act the house agenda, the paul ryan agenda, we have Grover Norquist up at the very nicely about looking at 2012. He says looking at 2016 all republicans have to do is we just need a president assigned this stuff. Pick a republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. Thats the strategy. How is it working out for them . They thought thought it was going to work out perfectly. Paul ryan thought that he could be president as speaker of the house, essentially. It has not happened. First you have a caucus that may or may not even be on board with elements of the ryan agenda. Then essentially, all of the president s with working digits to hand over a pen that the establishment favored, whether that was jab bush, chris christie, john kasich, marco rubio, or scott walker, kasich, marco rubio, or scott walker, or anybody they thought would essentially execute the ryan agenda from the other side of pennsylvania avenue, we saw how they did, they crashed and burned. Now they have a nominee a nominee with small handholding. [laughter] i think in some ways that is the real concern that the Republican Party has with donald trump right now. I think it is probably naive to think that the party that created the southern strategy is all that upset at what he calls a judge. What concerns them is they dont know if he will execute the ryan agenda if elected. It seems like one issue that was really have been seen with Republican Party this year is reluctance to acknowledge the separation of powers in our republican, with a small are come our republican government. So we have a senate who will not a hearing to a Supreme Court nominee, nominated as per the constitution by a sitting president. We have a president who has resorted to stretching some of the executive powers in the face of the congress that will not do anything that he wants. Donald trump is promising the impossible. To the people who are voting for him. He just stands up and says im going to do this, im going to do that. They seem to either believe it, or like it, people are comparing him to a strongman which is apparently what the voters, for him, want. I think the success of wave of more deeply conservative republicans have made these promises that they were going to take care of obama care. That they were going to do something about immigration. And it did not happen. Because of separation and powers. They kept winning majorities and elections for now and they never delivered on things that they said there were going to. Even after rigging the game. So as a result, that angry base gets even angrier and someone comes along and says im going to do this and people are willing to give that a listen. People are also not interested in the jabs and other republican candidates that crush of her this year. They have seen that before, they did not trust it, they did not buy it. Again, you talk about this as a strategy for the republicans. They went into this with the goal of permanently maintaining control of the house which requires enunciation of participatory democracy. You talk to these people, the architects architects of this, do they seem bothered by the fact that they are undermining participatory democracy in the United States . They think think they were doing their jobs. Frankly. There is a gentleman who spent a lot of time with me knowing that i had different Political Parties than him, and i asked him that question. I said well, is this fair . And he said yes, i was doing my job, the other side was not doing theirs. He is completely right about that. This was a strategic failure on the part of the Democratic Party. They did not have the imagination or vision to see this coming even when karl rove announces the strategy in the pages of the wall street journal in march of 2010. He says, we he says, were going into the state legislative districts with the goal of effecting redistricting next year. Maybe the democrats dont read the wall street journal, i dont know. Hopefully they are all reading where were you guys on the story . So they simply did not plan, when he tells me in september and october that he is wondering where the democrats are. Hes in the state spending money and working on campaigns of theres no opposition. Steve israel steve israel who took over the Democratic Campaign committee after this a debacle for the democrats in 2011 theyre saying the dnc was whistling past the graveyard. They did not have the strategic mine to comprehend what was happening or the ability to block it even when the Republican Party announced a plan in big, flashing neon lights. That is disturbing. You do wonder what the democrats are thinking or what theyre doing. Its malpractice. So its political malpractice buyer Democratic Leaders like nancy pelosi. Why didnt they do anything . On one hand i think they lacked the imagination to see this because it had not been done before. Perhaps they simply did not imagine a. Nancy pelosi was in it very safe district, she she does not have to think really about redistricting. The democrats who, over, over the years did raise alarms about this or guys like john tainer tennessee, were or martin from texas. There were democrats in Southern States he recognized what was happening and wanted to do something about it. Nancy pelosi were less interested in it. They had opportunities. John tanner had a national, nonpartisan redistricting plan that he introduced i believe three congresses in a row including the two that democrats were in charge of at the end of the 2000s. He told nancy pelosi would not even given the time of day on it. They had no interest in the issue at all. I dont know if its clear that congress can actually do this when their control that the state level so winning all the state legislator seems to be the absolutely crucial piece. Along with a understand, judges, judges who would rule on these things to make sure that they went their way which is also the really interesting thing about this is exactly how many levels they affected the game. The system has been rocked in about four 55 different places and it will take a lot of different keys in a long time to undo what was done in 2010 and 2011. This is not a single cycle problem. It a single cycle problem. It is not a single state problem. This is have a huge impact across the country and it has to be on done in each of those states, 11 legislative chamber at a time. Now that they have built themselves in, how do you do that . How do you get out of this circle . It is almost impossible to imagine. The democrats in their usual, strategic blundering, are going about it by trying to run the same play that the republicans did in 2010. Theres something called advantage 2020 that theyre trying to re70,000,000 dollars for to do the same thing. Except same thing. Except they will be running it on republican maps, with less money, and with no element of surprise. Its not going to work. Its an elements for failure. There are a handful of things that could be done. I think voters understand that this is a serious problem and voters of both parties want elections to matter, they want votes to count, they believe in the idea participatory democracy and are bothered by the fact that the results does not hold up, doesnt count. In states where nonpartisan redistricting has gone to a referendum, and this includes red straights and blue states, arizona, florida, arizona, florida, california, ohio, it passes in large numbers. So that is one possible route. There there are also some really interesting election reforms, some of which feel like they are very radical indifference, the idea, the idea of multimember districts are ranked choice voting. A lot of those are being used in more more cities across the country. As people become comfortable with them thats another way around it. Its going to take a lot of different keys to undo this. Theres also the possibility of a Supreme Court case that could rule on this. Over the years they have not chosen to ever, to disavow gerrymandering. However kennedy has has suggested that hes open to a standard if one could be shown to him. So there is ample of cases right now where smart people are attempting to define the standard that might appeal to justice kennedy. I think it was i think they said it gerrymandering gets out of control as a threat to democracy. We are talking before and i think it sounds a terribly partisan having this conversation because it is all dumped on the republican, but in the spirit of dumping on the republicans, there is another facet to this which is this disenfranchisement campaign which the Republican Party has been raising in the name of antifraud. Theres no evidence of fraud in any of these cases. The photo id laws, the limited laws, the limited hours, all of these things are designed to reduce the electorate which goes along with i have such a hard time believing that this is really their goal. We have been there before this country and it has not worked out very well. There is that famous autopsy after the 2012 election when republicans lost the fifth out of six popular vote at the president ial level and they said, we have to do something different. We have to appeal to latino voters, we have to appeal to minority voters, that is not in the end the path that they chose. The path they chose instead was to try to block those votes and the impact those voters into fewer and fewer districts. We are going to open up for the audience for questions in a minute. Its tremendously disturbing to see all of this. And part of it goes to the anger of the trump voters because when people feel like they dont have a chance to win next time, you can lose this round because theres always a chance for years from now youll have a chance to win. Maybe they will do it you want to do. But i can see the trump voters to being frustrated with the same process. I think there is a surge of voter anger and one of the reasons is because the system has been intentionally sabotaged not work. Right. But when you get to that point, its a very dangerous one. Its extraordinarily dangerous. When majorities at the ballot box are arranged in ways to make them look like they are not majorities, its not democracy. No. Its when government of the people, by the people of for the people. Ceases to exist. Then you dont have a republic anymore. On that note. There are some questions from the audience. I am really glad i stuck around it to the very end of the day to hear this. Its very interesting and i cant cant wait to read your book. As im listening and learning, im thinking about a book i recently read, c street, about street, about the fundamentalist threat to democracy. Im curious as to if they who you have been talking about are the fundamentalist in the Republican Party and is there really that thread to our democracy . In the imposition of religion in our government . I do not think that the people who were behind the strategies were especially motivated by that. I think that if you look at the people who were most directly involved in it comes out to be Something Like the Republican State Leadership Committee which is a very established concern run by ed glaspie, he was a former chair the party. He was he was a candidate for some of virginia, they were working in hand essentially with american crossroads, they are funded by the big republican funders, the chamber of commerce, walmart, and at t. So essentially, this was the establishment wing of the party attempting to lock in control so that they could govern from the house and also so they could create a laboratory for conservative across the country. I think its important also think about that. And this reverberates at that level as well. When you look like a Something Like the transgender bathroom villa North Carolina which i think you have 60 of people are against, that is the kind of bill that comes out when you have the gerrymandered districts and on accountable minority in charge. You talk about that in the book. If you look at statistics with the americans on gun control, americans across the board overwhelmingly said their reasonable gun control, the majority of americans have, since the 1970s supported right to abortion, all of these issues are not polarizing issues. People are very clear about we are in your on the other side of those issues, and you want to remain in power, you have to change the rules. Thats what this is about, changing the role. And one of the things you have in here, when you change the rule so rules so that you get only the most extreme, someone is describing these people as saying they have their value systems and they are the right systems and they do not want to hear about anybody elses value systems. That it servitude is very dangerous to democracy. I think thats right. I think we see a very different Republican Party than we had ten years ago, certainly 20 years ago. So where are now the republicans, mitt romney, the bush family. David brooks. Its a very small room. What are they going to do . Are they going to go to cleveland and lift the fight for donald trump . If thats their option, yes. They will hold the house, no matter what happens to donald trump, they will hold the house. There will be panels on cable tv for the next four months of talking about can the democrats with a house . No. The answer is no. Even in some ways you need not even have the elections because the districts have been crafted so perfectly in precisely as to withstand even a large democratic landslide. So, they will have the house and they will have the senate, most likely. And the big states of ohio, pennsylvania, even if democrats take the state. So why not wait and see if donald trump wins and then they can and act their then they can and act their agenda. But i mean, and all of the states, pennsylvania you had 100,000 more votes for Democratic House candidates in 2012 then republican ones. The republicans controlled 13 out of 18 states. So 50 of the vote equal 28 seats. In michigan, in 2012, 240,000 more votes for House Democrats than republicans. It is a ninefive republican administration. In ohio at the state level, you had more votes for Democratic Candidates then republican ones, the lines were so good that even in 2012 as a barack obama takes ohio, and as a brown wins reelection, the republicans took a 6039 super majority with fewer votes. So that is what the democrats are up against. It is not not going to change in 2016. Republicans may as well try to see what happens if they get that president. We have another question. It strikes me there is another step to this process. The constitution does not require that the Electoral College be allotted on a winner take all, statebystate basis. So the next step and were starting to hear some of this, is the next step to apportion, according to Congressional Districts . Youre exactly right and that is one of the really scary things here. You saw this in pennsylvania in the last cycle. There are members of the house in pennsylvania who said, lets change the way we apportion Electoral College votes and do it by Congressional Districts. Then you would have a state like pennsylvania who has gone blue every year i believe sense, i think it George Hw Bush and 88 but has been democratic ever sense. If youve got a a portion of those votes by Congressional District, so 1318 gets you to senators which i believe is one democrat, one republican, so you would go 14six republican instead of 24 the democrats. And that would would be while on the opposite side. So its an amazing way to do the math. I know it depends on how it is done, but it strikes me that gerrymandering can make certain districts vulnerable to a real high turnout. That is a goes agosto a jerry benders plan. He said that i landslide would not help the democrats in the coming election, but are there districts that are vulnerable to unexpectedly high turnout and with that not create an incentive on the party to publicize that . There are some. There are some states where, im sorry where the republicans have gotten greedy. Especially especially texas is a really interesting case. There are a lot of districts in texas where they drew the lines based on modeling of how they believed latino voters would turn out. So the goal was to make it look like it was a district that democrats could win and that it was a majority, minority seat, except they knew from having all the Voter Registration information that you can overlay onto the program that draws these lines, they could have a sense of who would actually vote and who would not votes. So if you can find a way to get those people out, there are a handful of districts that would be vulnerable to questioning the wave of democratic votes. Those are few and far between. They use really interesting algorithmic indexes and all of the states to draw the lines for the worstcase scenarios. This just encourages the kind of, we can do anything we want to behavior that you see lately in the senate. Im thinking our course course of, genuinely what is a constitutional crisis, to handle a Supreme Court nomination. An extremely conciliatory, modified nominee and they are not giving judge garland the time a day. We have to find a way to make the system work again. It has been deeply and profoundly broken. On that note, i think we are about out of time. I want i want to thank you all for coming this afternoon. It is late in the day, please do buy the book on the way out and give it to your father for fathers day and your friends, neighbors, book club people. Thank you so much for supporting the printers row [applause]. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] that concludes the book tvs live coverage of the 32nd annual printers at bro lit fest in chicago. All the events for today will re air, beginning at 1 00 a. M. Eastern time. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] heres a look at some books that are being published this week George Gibson is the publishing director of bloomsbury. What is bloomsbury, mr. Gibson . Guest in the u. S. Anyway its a division of bloomsbury plc, a worldwide publisher. Founded in 1998. Bloomsbury, as a company, was founded in 1986, and after the publication of the first harry potter novel, they opened a business in the United States, and im the publisher of the Adult Division here. Host what kind of books do you publish . Guest we publish about 110 books a year, largely nonfiction. We do, id say, 20 of the list is fiction, but a lot of history and politics and Current Events and foodrelated books, popular science, those are the core areas that we publish and some memoir as well. Host well, we want to catch up with you here at the publishing convention to talk about some of the books that are coming out this fall, and youve got one coming up on lyndon johnson. Guest we do. Its called faustian bargains, and its really the story of the dark side of lyndon johnson. Lbj accomplished an enormous amount as president , but he had a very dark side. And story is told through the lens of a man completely unknown to history named mac wallace who only interacted with Lyndon Johnon son a couple of johnson on a couple of occasions. But the deals he made with cronies in texas to which mac wallace was very much involved and aware of. Mac wallace is an amazing guy, and the best way to describe this is he, in 1951, he walked into a small golf course owner in austin, texas, and shot the man dead. He was arrested two hours later, and he said to the arresting officers, the texas rangers, i work for lyndon, i have to get back to washington. Within an hour, Lyndon Johnsons personal lawyer was defending him, and he was exonerated. And then got top security clearance working for d. H. Byrd who was a weapons contractor in texas and had top security clearance for the next 12 years which the office of Naval Intelligence tried to rescind, and they couldnt. So theres a hidden story here of lbj who, for all of the great accomplishments he had, had a very dark side as well. Host so where did ms. Mellon get this informationing . Guest i mean, its really interesting. On the day before excuse me, the day after john kennedy was assassinated, that next day life magazine was set to release an article investigating lbjs dealings in texas with the likes of bobby baker, his aide in washington. That article never saw the light of day. , and indeed, the Senate Intelligence committee was doing an investigation of lbj also. That, too, was stopped immediately. Jfks assassination put him in the white house which is one of the reasons that people have argued he was responsible for jfks death, which he was not. He had nothing to do wit. But he did benefit from it by becoming president and also avoiding these investigations. Host what does the term faustian mean . Guest well, a deal with the devil. So that she argues that the young man who, like mac wallace, who came into lbjs orbit were, in fact, dealing with the devil and making a bargain with the devil. They got something for it, but they paid a steep price as well. Host a new book out on the american revolution. What are we going to learn . Guest its called of arms and artists. Paul is the former head of the Art Department at Mount Holyoke college but also a historian of note, and it is the story of the revolution through the lens of the five great painters of the era, peale, trumble, stuart, copley and west. And they are a Fascinating Group of men to begin with. But you see the revolution through completely different eyes when you the paintings that they did which were so iconic at the time. They were very influential in guiding americas feelings at the time towards britain or against britain, as a matter of fact. I mean, there were plenty of paintings that arouse positive sentiment for europe at the time, but each of the artists had their own connections. Charles wilson peale did portraits of all sorts of people at valley forge. He fought at the battle of princeton. John trumble, a great artist, was very involved with the army as well. His whole family was involved with the continental army. Benjamin west was very much in favor of the americans cause, but he was also the Court Painter to george iii, so he couldnt go too far in what he painted. He had to hold back in his own sentiments because he would have lost his interest in the court, if he had. Fascinating individual stories that give a wholly different look at the american revolution. Host what was your reaction when you first heard about that book . Guest ing that i didnt, i did not know this aspect of the story. I read a lot of books about the revolution and the revolutionary period, but id never really read about any of those artists. Id never read any biographies, so i didnt know their story. And reading the proposal for the book, you know, i was stunned by the vibrancy of their own stories, how amazing they were as individuals, those five painters, and the effect that they had on the American Public at the time. Whether you were in favor of the revolution or not, these painters had a huge impact on people at the time. They were, i mean, peale was, in effect, a war photographer. He was the equivalent of a war photographer today. He was at valley forge doing portraits of people whether common soldiers or George Washington himself. He did a painting of washington at the battle of princeton. He was the war photographer of his time. And taking great risks as well. So these men had fascinating, vibrant lives, and they come alive in this book, and they also tell the revolution in a different way. Host George Gibson, who is Carol Anderson . Guest the head of the africanamerican studies in the History Department at Emory University in atlanta. One of the really great africanamerican professors in the country. And at the height of the ferguson riots in 2014 in june, july of 2014 she wrote an oped for the Washington Post called white rage in which she argued even though everybody understands why were talking about black rage and the deaths of people like Michael Brown and eric garner, we really should be talking about white rage because at every point since the civil war ended when blacks have made appreciable social progress in america, they have been with conservative deliberate white opposition whether it was the period of migration after brown v. Board of education in 1954 or the war against drugs and then the obama presidency. Every time that blacks have made progress in this country, there has been a concerted white backlash against them in the courts and in the legislatures. It has been coded as protecting democracy or preventing fraud or some other buzzwords for it, but it is systemic racism. And this is the first time that someone has connected 150 years of history from 1865 to the present to show that the attitudes that were very much alive during reconstruction are, sadly, very much alive today. They are coded differently, theyre worded differently, but that mic sense of racism and of pushing down, you know, a minority is still very much in our culture, sad to say. Host and when does that book come out . Guest publishing on may 31st, so tsa little bit before the fall its a little bit before the fall season. At the end of it, i came away with, first of all, an anger, but also a sense that this is undeniable. We cannot deny that this is happening. Host and finally, a little bit off the beaten path maybe for bloomsbury and for booktv, but mad enchantment. Guest so rob king is a historian of art and history. I mean, his skill is connecting great art with the history that stands behind it. And mad enchantment is the story of claude monet and the water lily paintings that are in museums all over the world. He didnt start painting them until he was 75 years old, and his wife had died. World war i was approaching. This was 19 and, 1914. His son was in the army, and he was terrified for losing his son. The town where he lived was turned into a Military Hospital and yet he produced these extraordinary paintings at this old age. His great friend was george yes men sew. He had been the Prime Minister of france, and he became the Prime Minister again. And when he wasnt doing his politics, he was go out to check up on monet who was notably depressive because he felt that monet was a treasure of france, and he ultimately convinced monet to give a lot of his paintings to the country after he died. They now sit, the famous giant paintings of the water lilies, in paris. But george was really the man who made that happen. Its this fascinating friendship that is at the center of this book. Host and thats just a quick preview some of the books coming out by bloomsbury. Heres a look at some authors recently featured on booktvs after words, our weekly Author Interview program. Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell discussed his political philosophy and his time in the senate. Vice president of policy and research tamara drought talked about americas new working class and its potential political power. And chaka sin gur weighed in on criminal Justice Reform and recalled his 19 years in prison. In the coming weeks on after words, natalia holt will profile the women instrumental to the Space Program in the 1940s and 50s. Pamela haig will look at the history of gun ownership in america. Also coming up, eric ferr will discuss his time in iraq working as an interrogator for a private military contractor. And this weekend senator Barbara Boxer of california will look back at her life and career in politics. Shes in conversation with minnesota senator amy klobuchar. Guest when a seat opened up, election for the county supervisor opened up in mar run county, california, which is a beautiful place north of san francisco, the issues were all of the issues, even stopping the war, what could we do locally to do it . And the environment and womens rights. So, of course, everybody came to stu, and they said, stu, would you run . [laughter] finish. Host of course guest and i said, stu, why dont you do it . And he said, honey, it pays 11,000 a year, why dont you do it . So i ran. Host in the primary. Guest it was so crazy. After words airs on booktv every saturday at 10 p. M. And sunday at 9 p. M. Eastern. You can watch all previous after words programs op our web site, booktv. Org. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies and brought to you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. Host and Chris Shelton is president of the Communications Workers of america union, and he is our guest this week on the communicators. Mr. Shelton, welcome to cspan. We appreciate your coming over. Give us a snapshot of the cwa, if you would. Guest we have approximately 700,000 members not only in telecommunications as most people think, but in just about every walk of life, every job you could possibly think of. We have reporters, we have nurses, we have even some rocket scientists in new jersey. [laughter] we have printers, we have manufacturing folks