Transformation of dictionaries or the complete transformation of lexicography in the english language. Anyone whos read the professor in the mad men, you can remember the descriptions of what it was like to assemble a dictionary in the mid 19th century. There were read arers all over readers all over the world who would submit little files, and eventually those usages, wherever the dictionary was revised which was about every 80 years, would make it into the next round. So it took an incredibly long time to update new meanings of worse. Of course, now its of words. Of course, now its online, and now you have crowd sourcing and people reporting tweets or web sites x its led to this kind of massive democratization of language in this really interesting way. Its also led the oed to have to go back and relearn whole words that, you know, with all of the newspapers online now you can discover usages that no one had ever possibly heard of the last time the dictionary was revised. So it really is this kind of extraordinary revolution in language. But along the way, he introduce cans us to all of these fascinating through histories of words. Like, my favorite is the word serendipity which was introduced into the language based on a story called the three princes of serendip. Thats the historical word for sri lanka. Thats something i had never known. I also didnt know that there was a word to describe the place on a dogs back that it cant scratch. I didnt know that the word ganja had been introduced into the english language by the duke of wellington. There are all sorts of things on every page that you learn about language, so i think its the perfect book for word nerds, between mow and me by mary norris, anybody whos interested in books, anyone whos interested in words. Its just a fantastic read. Host is mr. Simpson in favor of this democratization of language . Guest absolutely. I mean, i think one of the things thats great about the memoir is his description of himself coming to oxford as very much an outsider. He was not an oxford or cambridgetrained lexicographer, he wasnt from that class or that world. And realizing the extent to which the dictionary had been shaped by upper middle class readers because, of course, the types of people who have time to read and send in index cards are people who dont necessarily spend a lot of time working. So the dictionary had been shaped by these people who read milton and tennyson and maybe occasionally a middle brow detective novel. But it was very white, very male and very british. He really forces, and this is long before the dictionary starts going online, forces the dictionary into the modern age. He gets interested in magazines like Popular Mechanics and gets particularly interested in reggae and the language of rastafarianism. He brings a man into his office because hes trying to find the proper definition of skanking, he makes this man skank in front of him so he can take notes. This is the kind of language that a sort of old gentleman sitting in his cottage in the countryside with his hounds by his side never would have found. So it really is part of a mission, i think, for john to open the dictionary to new readers, to new writers. And then eventually to the whole world by putting it online which is his great accomplishment as the editorinchief. Host will he be going on tour . Book tour . Guest absolutely, he better be. [laughter] absolutely. Hes done a lot of public speaking as the editorinchief of the oed, and i think were gearing up to have him do a lot more. Host how important is a book tour to selling a book . Guest i think it really depends on the kind of book, honestly. For fiction it remains very important. For certain kinds of nonfiction it does as well. I dont think its essential. A lot of kinds of books i do are reviewdriven or driven by npr and other radio. I think weve certainly seen tours as sort of smaller and smaller factors in the way that we, in the way that we publish and promote books. I mean, there are all of these other ways of promoting books now too like social media, of course, or people can do, you know, enter into peoples homes in book clubs through these programs i know nothing about. [laughter] you know, youtube, etc. So i think the physical traveling of an author from town to town is maybe less important than it used to be. Host what else do you have coming up this fall . Guest on a very earnest note, i have a book on the history of the caliphate coming up by hugh kennedy which is particularly important right now. I think the word caliphate isnt one that we spend a lot of time talking about probably before 2001. And then suddenly it enters the lexicon for all of us with, first, alqaeda and now isis talk about restoring the caliphate. And hugh kennedy is an expert on arab history with deep demand of arab sources at university of london. Hes written a number of books on middle eastern history, and this is his effort to establish the caliphate both as it was and the history of an idea. And i think, you know, theres an obvious reason why the caliphate holds such enormous appeal for so many young muslims particularly, because it was a time when islam ruled the world. I mean, baghdad had half a Million People during the time of the call lives caliphs when london and paris had maybe a few thousand. This was the muslim world at the height of its power. But i think what hes trying to show is the caliphate with these incredibly heterogenous qualities. Theres no one caliphate. The idea of a time when islam was pure, when the polity was led purely by worship of god. But, of course, like any political structure, its much more complicated than that. There were caliphs who were deeply spiritual and deeply war like. You can find a justification for almost anything, any form of Political Action in the caliphate. So i think this is a necessary corrective to this kind of, this rhetoric of the caliphate as a purer and better time. Host one more book you have coming up. Guest well, theres an interesting book in Political Science could locked in by john fath whos a law professor criminologies and a statistician which is about why we struggle so much in america with mass incarceration and how everything you think you know about mass be incarceration is wrong. Its not about the war on drugs, its not about private prisons, its really about the role of prosecutors in our criminal Justice System which i think a lot of people havent really acknowledged as the major factor behind these very high levels of imprisonment in the United States. And, i mean, one of the things thats fascinating about this book is he shows at the very time the crime rate is dropping, theres a surge in the number of prosecutors who are working for the u. S. Government. And as a consequence, you just start seeing in and around sort of 1990 this incredible surge in prosecutorial zeal, asking for much longer sentences, prosecuting at a much higher level than they would have before. And this is actually the crucial factor in creating what we call the carceral state now, not necessarily issues of race or private prisons which i think people think of as conventional wisdom behind why we are where we are now. Host lara heimert, what kind of books does basic publish . Guest we publish only serious nonfiction by expert authors. So that means about 90 of our authors are academics, a handful of journalists, some statesmen and politicians. But pretty intellectually highend books. Host where is basic . Is it an independent . Is it part of a larger corporation . Guest well, thats a great question. It was until two months ago an independent publishing company, part of the Perseus Books group. It remains part of the Perseus Books group, but we have just very recently, about a month ago, been bought by hachette which is the fourth largest publisher in the United States. Host and so how does that affect what you do . Guest so far, not much. I think i have to learn all sorts of new computer systems. [laughter] but i think its a really good fit. I mean, hachette is known in the United States for publishing a lot, a lot of fiction. Perseus is all nonfiction, so i think its a really good counterbalance. Theyve been really lovely. I mean, theyre just taking the whole group and picking it up and moving it over. So i still have the same staff and the same books and the same boss. So its sort of minimally traumatic as a buyout can be. Host lara heimert is the publisher of basic books. You can look for some of their titles this fall. This is booktv on cspan2. Booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what theyre reading this summer. Right now im reading a book called Mountain Meadows written by richard turley, and cant remember the names of the coauthors. Its a historical account of an event called the Mountain Meadows massacre that took place on september 11th, 1857, in southern utah. It was a tragic event but one that factored significantly into the history of the tate of utah, where the state of utah, where i come from. And some of my ancestors lived in southern utah at the time, and one of them, my great, great grandfather was involved in the incident. So its an interesting book to read. Its a sad, tragic book, but its very interesting. Booktv wants to know what youre reading this summer. Tweet us your answer booktv or post it on our facebook page, facebook. Com booktv. Its interesting, though, that service the nazi ghetto that was the main ghetto that was on my mind growing up because, in fact, for most of history if you referred to the ghetto, you werent referring to anything that the nazis did. You were referring to the ghetto in venice in 1516 which was the first ghetto that was created for the jews. And it was the first time that the word ghetto was used to refer to a copper foundry that the jews were actually placed in. It was, the copper foundry was known as the ghetto, the jews were placed there, and i rely here in talking about this upon another sort of monumental field of history, the field of the early modern historians who have done painstaking work on this topic including professor Benjamin Ravid whose work i relied on heavily in this particular account. Now, one of the interesting things about the accomplishments of the early modern historians is that they have shown that when the palace of the dodge decided to place the jews in a ghetto, they were really not trying to create a whole framework for how jews should be treated, they were really trying to solve a very particular problem at a very particular moment. And the problem that they were trying to solve was that they needed people to loan money to their lower middle classes and their working class people, and they couldnt have these, their working classes in order to get loans have to get on a boat and travel 30 or 40 minutes or an hour away to get small loans. They needed them right there in the city. And so they created a space for them right there in this most catholic city. They were not trying to create a framework, for example, for how jews should be treated everywhere, but they created a solution for their own problem. And then that word came to be known as this place where the jews were living. And as i see it, the crucial moment was not venice which is now celebrating its 500th anniversary and in which the jews, by the way, at the very least one could say semiflourished, right . They had, as the early modern historians have demonstrated, great accomplishments in the production of books and philosophy and drama and family life. It was not the ghetto of venice really that was the crucial ghetto, in my opinion, but it was really the ghetto of rome which was forged in 1555 by pope paul. And according to Kenneth Stowe in another monumental work on this topic, was really created in an effort to try to get the jews to convert. And also at a moment in history when the counterreformation was leading to a certain need on the part of the vatican to make rome into a more attractive space and to create an environment in which the jews should be shown as an example even of what happens when you dont convert. But when the pope created this ghetto, he wrote it up in his papal bull x that was distributed and that was distributed around the world. And i see that as a very crucial moment in those years because now the ghetto becomes a cognitive framework that becomes an example of how jews should be and can be segregated around the world. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. [inaudible conversations]