think that they are bumpkins who don t think deeply about the problems of butter and the. frankly, i am envious of the. how wonderful the have the certainty that some many of them have. the sense that there was a moment in life when gile spoke to them and told them of their purpose and gave them a sense of mission. not to say i am not aware of the powerful place of doubt in these communities, but part of why i enjoy writing about them is because i find much about their world view very attractive and in the them for it. host: this is book tv on c-span2, and we are on the campus of the university of north carolina at chapel hill. we have been talking with history professor molly worthen. here is her most recent book apostles of reason: the crisis of authority in american evangelicalism . visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here on line. type the of the war book title in the search bar on the upper left-hand side of the page and click search. you can also
from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. the grave fundamental issue now before our people. are the american people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? i believe they are. historian, an author, so much more. her books have wrought to live so many amazing people. when did they first meet? taft as solicitor general. they lived in the same part of washington. they walked together to work. i love that image, taft listening to teddy. what s the difference and the sizes? taft would have been at a slimmer level 250 to 270. is five foot nine inches but taft is closer to six feet tall. they would have looked shorter. what happened to the friendship? makes taft his hand-picked successor when he was not running again. he gives him all the advice in the world. don t play golf. it s a rich man s game. fight. don t just answer him. william jennings bryan? taft wins.happy when he trusts him with his legacy calling him a beloved pe
please keep the spirit of lit fest going all year long with a subscription. this year we are also introducing a new digital bookstore. please take one of our promo cards for information about the app and axis the special book deals. before they can today s program please file ensure cell phones. you return your camera flash off. we will allow you to take pictures. you can post those pictures online using hashtag printers row. gives me great pleasure to introduce to you guys are moderate today s conversation, eric banks. mr. banks. thank you. thank you very much. welcome everybody. it s good to see you here this morning and it s my pleasure to welcome today monique brinson demery, the author of the amazing book, finding the dragon lady: the mystery of vietnam s madame nhu, which has recently been published by public affairs books. she holds a masters degree from harvard university, and when she made contact with madame nhu who was the unofficial first lady of the south eas
there has been a fork in the road drawn for me. i don t think i m going back to engineering at this point in my life. there are a lot of signs that say keep going this way. host: how many drafts did it take to get one, the poem he read at the inaugural? guest: i have at home probably a stack about this big. again with poetry drafts take on a different meaning. it might mean a change to words and you throw it in the drafts pile. i only had a week and i had to write three poems in three weeks as the story goes. so there wasn t room. in some ways there was incredible pressure and in some ways i m kind of glad i didn t have six months to write the poem because god knows what may have happened. i would have ended up locked up somewhere i think so there s something to be said about the time to exercise and giving yourself a time limit on writing. so yeah it took drafts and drafts and drafts but there is a big turnover right in the midd middle. part of that have had to do with m
juxtaposition to my grandmother who was a big character in the story it was very and xenophobic so how she shaped my life as well and part of the reason i became an engineer was because of that and in pursuit of a career in the arts early on. in this book you sort of see you are reading i would hope you are reading with the context of this little kid who i am showing you eventually grows up and has this amazing moment in history. wide view open the story with a wave of? host: in some ways she is the cause of a lot of trauma and she was very verbally abusive and very homophobic as i said and xenophobic. but on the flip side of that ironically in some way she made me a writer because she made me were withdrawn and maybe an observer of the world versus a participant. also that led me to become, to learn how to read people. i had to know how to read people to know how to respond and not get called a you know what by her by others. all that power of observation and reading in