covering this week. many of these events are open to the public. look at them to air in the near future on the tv on c-span2. >> senator lamar alexander, someone asked you for a recommendation for a book about tennessee or tennessee history, what would you recommend. >> guest: i would recommend alec stewart, by john griese. alec stewart was a cooper, it's a barrel maker. he lived up maker. he lived up in hancock county which is one of our remote counties and john rice irwin is the creator of appalachia and he interviewed alex stored about his life. he was a a remarkable man. he can make anything. he could pull teeth, he he could catch a squirrel, skillet, fright, eat it. he was so interesting that he was invited to washington to be part of the smithsonian folk festival on time. if you want to get a sense of how some mountain people lived and totally off the land, alec stewart, john reiser. >> a lot of things politicians from tennessee, that jane's couple of presidents andrew jackson, what about biographies of them. well i will mention two. american john beauchamp's best book, i like i like the way john beauchamp writes, in fact he wrote a book called american gospel that not many people know about, it's a short book about i think that's the name of it. the role of religion in america. his jackson book won the pulitzer prize. it is the best book about polk. i have read polk's pokes diaries. after about six months he sat down and he must've done it with a quill pen. this was 1850s. 1840s, and he wrote sometimes lengthy notes, like senator houston showed up at 9:00 p.m. for an interview, took me an long time but i read it all the way through i don't know any president who has written such detailed diaries. >> host: what is currently on your religious? >> guest: i'm reading a book about the biography of alex haley alex haley was in tennessee, he is in the news right now because this is the 40th anniversary of roots which people may have forgotten was the best watch television show ever, the last episode of roots, about about 85% of the american television sets, people who had television sets watch some part of roots in 1977. and alex haley's book about haley's book about slavery really told it in such, in terms of having been presented before. that was combined with the movie it jolted the country. and it filled up the libraries with american searching for their own family histories. robert in a row row is the university of tennessee professor who wrote a book about haley, bowed his two books, the autobiography of malcolm x which she wrote in the sixties, roots 60s, roots which he wrote in the 70s, which the author says is the two most important books about black america in the 20th century and maybe the two most important books of american culture in the 20th century. >> that's one, what else to have on that list. >> i am reading a couple of, growing up by russell baker. john beauchamp told me that was the best memoir, i love the way russell baker row. i'm reading a book, just finished a book about limbo and the, who lived to be 95, he was blind and he was the last person to live in the great smoky mountain national park. because that park was bought by the state and people had to move out. they let him stay in there. i let him see them at age 95. it's a book about his life i enjoy reading a lot over and over again where i grew up in lipton amounts of 1130. >> host: where did you grow up? >> guest: maryville, tennessee. >> host: where is that? spee2 it's outside of knoxville. right at the edge of the great smoky mountain national park. i can walk out my back door and walked 2 miles and i'm in the park. >> guest: what kind of. >> host: what kind of books attract to? they sound like biographies. >> guest: well, they do. do. i have always liked biographies. i liked like most americans i loved almost anything hemingway wrote but i haven't read much of that lately. mark twain's books, i read a lot of biographies, dianne feinstein, she gave me a book i think it's called the death of caesar. by barry strauss comments about the senators who killed julius caesar. it is remarkably detailed. if you are a senator, a united states senator you read it with a certain amount of interest. caesar appointed roman senate was about 500 senators. hundred senators. caesar appointed them all in about 30 of them persuaded him to come on the senate floor and stabbed him to death. >> do share books with your colleagues or do colic share books with you? >> guest: yes. i think think i mentioned the senator from wyoming. he underlines the books he reads and he rates himself a book report and he'll tell me about it. senator durbin he reads a lot of books i will talk about a book. >> host: let's go back to maryville, tennessee. what sparked your sparked your interest in reading and education? >> guest: my parents, when the new york times interviewed my mother once and wrote that i grew up in a lower, middle class family in the middle of the mountains. when i called home that weekend my mother was reading thessalonians for how to deal with it in the family, she said you have a library card from the day you were three. and a music lesson from the day you are for. you've for. you had everything you needed that was important. i've had people tell me that my mother took me down to the public library and they said, mrs. alexander we do not have library cards for three-year-olds. and she said well, you should. and i got one. so i give her some credit. >> host: where do her some credit. >> host: where do you get your books today? >> guest: i buy them. people send them to me. i have bought john lee chums book. david rubenstein has some things in the library congress where he interviews authors. he is interviewing meacham about his franklin whiston book. so i get out of that. basically i buy them. and if i hear about them and then i give them away. i gave the alec stewart book i mentioned to about three or 400 friends at christmas one year. and i gave another book to the same people, just because a lot of tennesseans are interested in alex because he was a tennessee. >> host: a couple of senators have mentioned the library congress series, and they bring in authors, have you tried to attend that? spee2 i've. >> guest: i've done to for five of them. he does a good job with it and he doesn't interpose himself and i will say this to you, and you're doing a good job with it too. he knows his subject and he ask questions and brings out the author. the authors who do the best are the ones who can carry on the best conversation. thomas who wrote send was a good book. it's on my bedside. it's really the most balanced picture of richard nixon. it was remarkably successful president except for the big watergate problem which was a big problem. he interviewed him and it was very good, he interviewed bob very well. john beauchamp was the next one up. >> host: you have a few pictures on your wall but that was before you and the political career tennessee. >> guest: the first time i ran for government they call me nixon's choirboy. i worked in the nixon white house for man i brace how low, a wonderful individual. and a former eisenhower aid who hasn't had enormous respect for everybody. so that was really the beginning of my political activity. i really started before that with howard baker. that. that was early in my time. >> host: as president of the university of tennessee, could you, what was your experience with the students when it came to reading, literature and and some of the classes being taught? >> guest: i try to drop in on classes that were interesting features. one was not there anymore and it was richard mary us. he had taught at the university of tennessee and when i was governor i created governor school for teachers of writing. he came down from harvard where he then brought the freshman writing course to teach about 200 tennessee teachers for two weeks every summer how to write how to teach. they they might be third grade teachers senior english teachers. so that that was a part of the university of tennessee that i have a lot of interaction with students and teachers. >> host: was there any value in a whole city where they're saying everybody let's read this book or the university, let's all read this book. is there a shared value to that? spee2 yes. roots, as close to that as anything. there we were in 1977, tv for eight consecutive nights. we only had three networks at the time. 85% of the american people watched at least one episode. so i think roots as i mentioned earlier did two things. it confronted americans with ugly story of slavery and how brutal it was. and the heroism of slaves. there's got to be a better day kind of thing. and then it showed a family story was seven generations from himself. it caused americans to pour into, filled up the libraries with people looking for their own genealogy. so there is example of a country watching a book, roots and the two major effects that came out of it. so it would be an advantage to a community family, book club, reading the same book. >> host: was writing hard? >> guest: yes. i love to write. alex haley, new him for about ten years, he said that he would write sometimes correct his manuscript 26 times. i tell this to students who write a paper and turned it in, say alex haley won the national book award, not by turning his book in the first time, he rewrote it. he also said use a green pen instead of a red pen because a red pen looks like a high koch you wear a green pen is really for your corrections. i like to write, i enjoy writing and i encourage my staff members. it is a skill that people today do not learn because they don't do it enough. there to glue to the screen and to twitter. but being able to write sentence or or pick out a massive information what the essences have been able to persuade at least half the people you write is an apartment a public life life and being a good writer helps. >> host: what was your book six months off about? spee2 it's it's about six months our family spent in australia after his governor. my wife set after about seven years of it she said we have to get out of here. so we picked a place, we had three teenagers in a 7-year-old. the day i was sworn out of office we moved to sydney and lived there for six months. that was her six months off. i had a friend called peter jenkins who had encouraged me to write a book about being governor. we visited the publishers in new york. i went to random house and the publisher said to me and peter who wrote a best-selling book, book, what you want to write about. they want to write about what a great governor he's been in the publisher says well his mother might read it. what else are you doing. set i'm not doing anything, just move enough for six months. and he he gave me an advance and out came the book. they read it in its entirety on national public radio. there's a program where he reads for 30 minutes and and he did that. so 1988. >> host: is there another book ready by you? >> guest: well i thought about writing a memoir sometime but if i do i'll probably call it, what my grandfather used to tell me when i was a kid he would say amy for the top, there's more room there. but i'm not thinking of doing that right now. i'm too busy, i'm enjoying what i'm doing. >> host: a lot of your colleagues have written books, have, have you had a chance to read them? >> guest: i just read senator mcconnell's, the long game. i interviewed him for an hour on c-span about it. when asked me to do it i said, i don't think mitch mcconnell can talk for an hour. he has a story in his own book where he says one of the president george w. bush staff members came in and told the president won't mitch mcconnell is very excited about a boat and president that, how could you tell? is mitch, he doesn't say much. but i thought his book was very interesting. there are lots of good stories starting with the polio he had in the early 1940s and how his mother -- we forget how desperate parents were then. they did not know what to do about a kid with polio. they would see people with the iron lungs, no care. no vaccine. and his mother took him down to warm springs where president roosevelt was and learned something about what they did their with their pm for two years when he was two and three, massaged his legs for an hour or two per day and kept him from walking, i don't know how you keep a two-year-old from walking or three-year-old, and he credits that with the fact that he can walk almost without a limp today. >> host: do you recommend any books to your staff? >> guest: yes, sure. i tell them about the books, i recommend roots to everybody. because it is such an essential part of the american story. the fact that it was such a learning experience for americans i think it really change the way we think about african-american life in our country and change the way white people, i told them about the death of caesar because i think that will be interesting to anybody who worked in the senate. senator feinstein. [inaudible] >> host: is there relaxation reading for you? >> guest: my favorite piece of fiction is all the kings men. robert penn warren's book. i reread it last summer and i was just astonished by how i forgot how good it was. he was a gifted, gifted writer. he wrote that just after world war ii. it's a little racy for that time which is probably why it sold so well. he won a pulitzer prize for. it is so intricately put together in the characters and you can see willie stark and jack burton and you can know they are and see the family difficulties in the pictures of life in louisiana. it had such a powerful book. another book which is not fiction that i've been reading for months is a book called the seven pillars of wisdom. now that may sound strange but this was lawrence of arabia. this is a book he wrote about his time in the desert back there in world war i time. according to his preface, he lost, he didn't take notes and then he lost the first draft or two or got burned up and he still wrote it. if you read the book it has this enormous detail about the sand dunes, what happened, what happened the day in this war in this movement. i don't know how he could possibly remember all of it. it was some of the most elegant writing i've ever read. so i read at night to go to sleep. if i if i want to go to sleep i read a little bit of the seven pillars of wisdom and after a chapter i am zonked. >> host: to have enough airplane time to read? >> guest: i don't read on the airplane very much. i just go back and forth to tennessee, that's about one hour. i usually read the newspaper or catch up on work or sleep. i read when i'm by myself and before i goat to better sometimes early in the morning. in the summer i go fishing for a few weeks and i will take some books to read. spee1 mrs. alexander is also a readers. >> guest: yes, she loves to read. we went to a discussion recently that and pageant to loosen nashville was holding. she was talking about the best, her list of the best books which she had done for parade magazine. she went through them i found my wife knew almost everyone of them. i. i knew very few of them. >> host: senator lamar alexander, former governor governor and university president. we appreciate your time a book

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