think the latest news of the publishing interim just straight with public sharing experts. we will also give you updates on current nonfiction offers and bucks. the latest book reviews, and we will talk about the current nonfiction books featured on c-span's book tv. and welcome to the about books podcast and program. a little bit later we will be talking with the washington post book critic, carlos lasagna, and getting his take on some of the notable books over the last year. first, here are some publishing news, this week, former white house chief of staff, was published, lots of news came out of it including that president trump tested positive for covid-19, prior to the first presidential debate. the former president was in the white house for safety, following the murder of george floyd. that then president, threatened to -- if the taliban leader did not cooperate with him. while president trump did write a book, he has since denounced some of the revelations as fake news. all press is the published. also this week, the children's publisher scholastic, home of the harry potter series, and worth an estimated 1.2 billion dollars, is facing a potential challenge. because of the company's recent leadership. the company's former ceo, who died earlier this year, left the majority of the company's stocks to a longtime employee. now, the surprising mr. robinson's family. scholastic was founded by mr. robinson's father, in 1920, and was considered a family business. according to news reports, mr. robinson's two sons have requested documentation related to his well, and they are considering a legal challenge. now, for further reading on this issue, the wall street journal has reported extensively on it. now, in other news, random house announced that they will be publishing a national book award winner, historian, next book. it is a biography about harriet jacobs. it is entitled, harriet smear. and it will look at the relationship between the two abolitionists. miles won this year's national book award for nonfiction, for her book, all that -- also in the news, nicole is in a ward winner. her new book is called, this is how they tell me the world and. it won the financial times business work of the year. the annual award given to quote, the most compelling and enjoyable insight into business issues book, and it comes with the 40,000 dollar monetary prize. finally, according to the end pd book skin, the books sales are up 10% for the work of november 28th, entering into the holiday book buying period. and all nonfiction sales were down 1%. still up 6% for the year. a side note, nearly one quarter of all books are sold during the holiday period. and carlos lozada, here is the washington post non fiction book critic. he is an op for himself, and a pulitzer prize winner. he joins us on about books. mr. lozada, this is a look back at 2021. what is your year been like? what have you've been doing? >> i have been reading a lot of books. i have been enjoying having my kids back in real school. it has made it easier to read a lot of bucks. and, i have been reading a lot of books, in particular, about 9/11. it is the 20th anniversary, and i wanted to look back at that as well. >> what did you find in that reread of some of those books? >> well, i wish i could say they were already breeds. they were a lot of books i had missed along the way. one thing that i concluded from breathing about 21 bucks on various aspects of 9/11, is that it was an attack that our leaders said were in attack on our values. and yet, in our response to the attack, we often undermine the values that we claim we were upholding. that was one of the tragedies of the era. and, it was not something that was entirely novel to my own thinking. i had not hit on that. i went back and read a lot of it in the box. >> now, one of the books you read was lawrence writes, the looming tower. does it stand up after all these years? >> oh, absolutely. the looming tower is one of the truly extraordinary works on the run up to 9/11, and how we got to that moment. i would also highlight the ghost wars in that mix. it was interesting. one of the reasons that i was thinking a lot about the looming tower this year, was not just because of the anniversary, but also because i read lawrence right, the play gear. in many ways, i felt that i was reading a different version of the looming tower, because it was all about miss warnings. of this great threat that was coming. mixed signals, indifferent officials. i would probably not have connected those to, if not for the sort of coincidence of the 9/11 anniversary. and our experience with covid. >> before we move on to some of your favorite books of the year, some of the notable's you found, i wanted to ask you, how long did it take to write that essay on 9/11 that was published in the washington post? >> i have to think my editors at the polls for this. it took a lot of my year. probably, in late 2020 was one i had the idea that okay, the anniversary is coming next year, i want to look back on the literature of 9/11. my editor, and outlook at the post, said go for it. that sounds great. first i started putting together a spreadsheet of relevant books, and when i got to a few hundred, i realized, there is no way i can do this in a comprehensive manner. so i have to be ruthless and how i select the books. i ended up picking 21 books. i was reading them, on and off, i would say for about march of 2021, this year, until the end of july. i was reviewing other books along the way, but i was reviewing glass. i was trying to focus as much attention as i could on the 9/11 books. then i spent a good chunk of august writing it. and then we published in september. i have never devoted that much time to a single essay. i devoted that much time to the book i wrote, and published in 2020, but nothing i was writing for the post. i am grateful that i had the opportunity. >> as the nonfiction book critic at the post, how much freedom do you have in your day? how do you structure your day? >> there are days that are all about reading, and there are days that are all about writing. and, they split, sort of evenly, throughout the week. so, i'm usually up fairly early doing some reading. now that we are working from home, for the most part, though we intend to return to the washington post early next year, my day kind of can wrap up when my children get home from school. then, you are with the kids. there is dinner, there is bedtime, and then i might read for sometime in the late evening as well. writing days are different. i just kind of hold myself up in my home office, and tried to write. it is a lot of writing, and rewriting. when the weather is nice, and it's a reading day, i lie out in my hammock, and i try to persuade my children that really, daddy is working, when he is lying out in the hammock reading a book. >> when you return to the office, does that put a crimp in that schedule? or is that going to be something that you have a natural fit and flow for you to write and read in the office? >> i like writing in the newsroom. it feels natural. i am comfortable there. i was a news editor for many years of the post before becoming a book critic, and so, even though it lacks an organization, the critics are sort of never around because they are doing what they do on their own time, and in their own homes, or in their own locations. i like being in the room. and so, if i could end up with a schedule where my reading is happening, a lot of it at home, some of it in the newsroom, but my writing happens in the newsroom, that would be great. we will see how it all shapes out as we get back into the swing of being in the physical newsroom. >> carlos lozada, you are not just a book critic, but a book author. what were we thinking, is the name of your 2020 book. what was the topic? >> well, it was a book that next in my role as a critic. it was a look at the vibration, expensive literature that emerged on the trump presidency. the subtitle of the book, what were we thinking, is a brief intellectual history of the trump presidency. and so, i explored about 150 bucks, and delved in some way, with that period. it was divided into some of the big debates of the trump presidency, over democracy, over truth, over identity, over the white working class, over russia, and i tried to see what those books were saying. collectively about america during this period. it was a way for me to try to get down on paper, how i thought about it at the time. and, the nice thing is that there are plenty more to come. that project does not and. there have been a ton of books, already, that have come out, about the trump presidency. and many more that are on the way. >> was there an added level of, i don't know, hysteria, in some of the trump books that you read, opposed to other presidents? >> while, i have never done as intense a dive into all the books surrounding one presidency. not as i have with trump. in fact, because my time is a book critic started right around the time that he launched his presidential campaign. there certainly was an overwhelming output of works on trump, and the trump presidency. i have read that there were about four or 500 books that in some way dealt with the first term of the obama presidency, and yet, for the equivalent period of the trump presidency, it was more like 1200. so that alone tells you, i do not know if you want to call it hysteria, but an endless supply. and a lot of those books would have a reoccurring line in the prologue, or in the acknowledgements, where they sit furs often said, i decided to write this book on election night, 2016. a lot of these authors may have not written books about a presidency, but felt compelled to write about this presidency. and so, you saw, especially in the beginning, many of them were driven by that kind of emotional impulse early on. i want to get down on paper how this is making me feel. >> carlos lozada, we ask you in advance about some of your favorite books of 2021. you have mentioned the play gear, by lawrence right. another one you mentioned was a post trump presidency book. adam schiff, midnight in washington. why did that a track you? >> a lot of what i would call the first generation of trump books, that came out during the trump presidency, where the kind of books that molded on the theory that they were competing for who could unearth the most outlandish anecdote. can you believe he said this? can you believe he asked that? or can you believe, fill in the blank? whatever it is that donald trump was doing on any given day, or week. and, those are useful. those are useful books for the historical records. they are essential. but, i think some of the books that you are seeing now, that can be a little bit more retrospective, are doing something more. they are developing some kind of broader argument. this book is one of those. he makes the case that, look, it is not just donald trump who was violating and up and doing all of these norms, accepted presidential behavior. it was republicans in congress, and the administration, who either did not have the courage, for the willingness, or the inclination, to stand up. that was the argument that he developed, and in the course of, obviously, being an essential person in the impeachment process of president trump, schiff spoke also is kind of a highly to manual. and attempts to hold leaders to account, in an era era where oversight feels weekend. in that sense, i feel like it is a book that will continue being useful down the road. a lot of these books are very much in the moment. they feel ephemeral, and dated, almost on publication. this is not one of them. >> now, mark meadows, the former white house chief of staff, -- is that one that you will think will be a valuable resource? >> you don't, i have not read it yet. i do intend to. there are so many of these trump books, and memoirs that come out, that reviewing them, one at a time, is not always the most useful approach. sometimes i sort of wait for critical mass a box, and then try to tackle them together to see what we are learning collectively from them. so, i really only reviewed a handful of the latest generation of trump books that reviewed jonah hill's memoir, grisham's men war, there have been a lot of journalistic books. there have been a lot of books that came out in recent months, and more that are coming next year. i will probably wait to tackle a lot of those together. i will see when i am learning. i think readers also appreciate that, because there are so many different books out there. they want to know, well, how do these speak to each other? how do they compare to one another? >> another one of the books that you sent us in advance was the free world. why did that appeal to you? >> that was a very different kind of buck. so, this author is best known for, well, he is a terrific new yorker writer, and he wrote the metaphysical club. it won a pulitzer prize, sometime in the 2000s. he looked at the pragmatism, and the impact on american intellectual life. -- and, this book, it is a delightful read. it is a look at the cultural life of the early cold war, mainly in the united states, partially, as well, in europe. and, in a moment when american policy, foreign policy, and national security policy was all about containment, the american as artistic, and cultural world, kind of exploded. it was totally uncontained-able. he explores composers, novelists, artists, painters, dancers, ses, and each chapter, it is a very lengthy book, and each chapter feels almost like a mini book in itself. looking at whether it is pollack, or it is the beatles, or any number of art forms, that were prevalent in this period. the weirdest thing is that is a book that i did not want to, and that was 800 pages. i wanted it to keep going. i feel that, in some ways, it's spoke to his prior book. i wrote in my review, i think, that he is a chronicler of the american mind, in moments when that mind is having second thoughts. when the country is going through a cultural, and intellectual shift. he is able to kind of zero in on those moments. that was a book that i very much enjoyed reading. >> one other book i wanted to bring up before we close out this discussion. the 16 19 project -- >> i think the 16 19 project was able to bring to the floor a massive conversation. a seismic matt national conversation about the legacy of slavery. i reviewed that book very recently. it is the one i think i reviewed most recently. and, it is interesting, because the project is all sorts of things. it is the original magazine essay. it came out a few years ago. it is a wonderful podcast series. it is a children's book. it is this new book. would i attempted to do, in my review, is see how the project has evolved over time. one of the things i found most interesting, is that it has moved from being, primarily, portrayed, and executed, as a historical corrective. let's look back at american history, and see the importance of 16 19, which is when the first slave ships came to the american british colonies. and place that moment of importance in its proper place for american history. it has evolved into a political project. a policy agenda, that it's offers, especially its primary author, argue flows from that new history. and so, to me, that is an interesting evolution. maybe an interesting tension, coming from a news organization like the new york times. that is what i tried to explore, as i was reviewing it. it is certainly one of those books that is impossible to ignore, and avoid. but that was the way i came out it. >> carlos lozada, a final question, a little bit out of your area, but book sales, nonfiction book sales, are up about 10% this year. do you see anything and that number, and, when it comes to hardcover sales, as opposed to e-book sales, hard covers are still the dominant force. it looks like e-books have pretty much plateaued. >> this is going to sound silly, but i do not really follow the trends in the publishing marketplace. i am delighted that book sales are strong. i think that sometimes it depends on what month you are looking at, at the year over year sales. some books come out like, barack obama's memoir, and it accounts for something like a huge number of the book sold in a particular period. but, i am not surprised, as you put it, that hardcover sales are doing well. i think, especially in a pandemic period, people are not going out as much. it may be that folks like to cozy up with an old-fashioned hardcover book. that is how i read. i hate reading digitally. i cannot. i feel like it is a completely different experience. and so, for me, that habit is also comforting. all the books behind me are books that i have written about. in the washington post, or elsewhere. i just kind of like the physical presence of these books. i can imagine being a digital reader, or other person, i suppose we will all end of that way. >> carlos lozada is the nonfiction book critic for the washington post. he is a pulitzer prize winner, and an author himself. his book is called, what were we thinking, a brief intellectual history of the trump era. he has been our guest on the about book's podcast program. thank you carlos. >> thank you peter. >> before we move on to some other topics, let's look at some of the other washington post notable bucks that carlos did not mention. in the code breaker, bestselling author looks at the work of -- who invented a dna etiquette technology. heather mckee examines the cost of racism for all americans in, some of us. in the triumph of nancy reagan, washington post columnist looks at the former first lady's political life, and in other books that the washington post note as notable, michael pollen reports on how psychedelic drugs are being used for medicinal purposes. his book is called, this is your mind on plants. and, tangled up in blue, george town university law professor, former police officer, offers suggestions on police reform, and his books discuss -- of afterwards a few months ago. >> police can't change the laws by themselves. police cannot change the social context. i think often, police get the blame for enforcing laws they did not create in a social context. they cannot be left to change them. in a way, i think that blame of police is blamed for the way the rest of us look in the mirror and say, oh, cops are arresting people for trivial offenses. we think that harms the community. well, we voted for the lawmakers, who wrote the laws. and allowed cops to do that. when you look at long prison sentences, incarceration, a lot of that is prosecutors, judges, lawmakers. that is number one. i think there are some things that cops can change, but we as a society can, the massive over criminalization that we have seen this decade, excessive sentencing, and the cost to other social services, that may make some things -- that said, i do think there are a lot of things police departments need to be doing. as you know, again, one of the difficulties with policing, we do not have a national police force. we have almost 18,000 different law enforcement agencies. they do not always talk to each other. i think they ought to talk to each other. it is very hard, even if there is some approach that seems promising, it is tough to get everybody to pay attention. >> a georgetown professor and former law enforcer rosa brooks, was talking about her books, tangled up and blue. you can watch all book tv programs online at book tv dot org, and our afterwards program that you just saw with rosa brooks, is also available as a podcast. that is available at c-span dot c-span now, or wherever you get your podcasts. and, this is the about books podcast and program. it is book tv's look at the latest publishing news, and nonfiction books. until recently, authors, and historian, joined book tv for or monthly collin program, which is called in-depth. he came on to talk about american political history, and his many books, in case you missed it, here is a bit of that program. >> this idea that today, if you cancel someone because you do not agree with them, or you tear down statues of people without consensual votes from the city, or you rename them without consistency, it is trotsky easing. we are washing away people, or ideas, or that we do not like. we are not doing it in the light of day. free speech or the due process on campus so this isn't the democratic party we knew. >> host: author and historian victor davis hanson on booktv's in-depth program. a reminder that in-depth is live the first sunday every month at noon we invite a prominent author to talk about his or her body of work and to take your phone calls. in january another historian will be the guest and he will talk about the intellectual history in the united states reconstruction era, abraham lincoln, robert e lee et cetera and he will be taking your calls as well. in february, georgetown university will be our guest. finally, here on about books, here's a look at the best-selling nonfiction books according to the los angeles times. topping the list is pulitzer prize winning reporter and creator of the 1619 project, a look at american history and slavery and its legacy. that's followed by these precious days a collection of essays by novelist. after that, musician dave grohl the storyteller and the best-selling nonfiction books are two more memoirs, paul mccartney the lyrics and stanley, wife through food. that's the latest nonfiction books. thanks for joining us on about books, available as a podcast wherever you get your podcast were on the the plight of christian communities in syria , egypt, iraq and palestine. >> janine has been with us is 2018. she's a columnist of foreign-policy and award-winning author and journalist . she has dedicated her life to courageous work in war zones and humanitarian crisis around the world. she has reported extensively on the front line is a first-hand witness from the middle east, the balkans, across africa and from southeast and central asia and were so thankful to have her here teaching classes that draw on these just incredible experiences. she was a recipient of

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