Books as a historian what is your contemporary view of how our world will be viewed . We have so little perspective on this moment is quite impossible to say but the perceptionptio t many peopln the United States and around the worldha have the extraordinary initial time. In a way that was experiencing. Host thinking about today do compared to any other period of history . Guest know. As a historian i think we have a cognitive tendency to enjoy analogies to be thing like anotherre f. And then to say that looks just like my great grandma with the baby but then also with my need for familiarity so as my career as a historian that is a journalistic tick to understand theres a whole crop leftparenthesis president ial beyond the one biographers as a way to contain that chaos as a way to avoid with that moment in time. Host you gave a talk on your book what do we mean in American History . How do we reckon that it is two different as to share a common ancestry as a people and it seems a fairly perilous state of affairs. I still stand by that statement we are just as polarized our past is not change but our perception is more divided. And with that bipartisan fashion. That is been obvious as a historian of what the confederate monuments shoulds stand. G and to occupy the attention ofhe the media and then really than just thehi last year with other controversies in the past and of the 19 nineties with a history of a particular era. But now we have the daily sense with that crazy goofy internet meme some people saw it as blue or gold. That is the world in which we live now that it is what can be seen a little differently them interesting how you got here and that is really most of the stories. And then like you find with justifiable politics. Host i was going to close their thatut in this forever and revolution lover struggle against chaos. Guest yes. In the course of conversation you Say Something to me which i have changed my mind and i will not stand by. Us the nations dont exist in nature. But in those Natural Communities is that humans have invented as a category that has proven extremely important because the liberal nationstates only one i cannt guarantee to people and as a particular place with the rise of the liberal nationstate due to the consent of the people and with the guaranteeee of rates less anyone a shared languagea. And that is just the daily english of people of what will happen if people dont believe in the idea anymore with the constant edginess of that chaos. So appointed you say one way history of the United States with a hundred pages spent i been asked to write us history textbooks throughout my career they are cs jointly written and those that specialize its like a 20th century local historian. So it takes a team of scholars to playtex back and a textbook but i would write anything that would be very interested in doing that at a certain point in every career men were late this is a Public Service to offer up in this moment in time and then quite violently repudiated so it seemed to me something of the day or to resurrect this loss tradition and they worked with the publisher that i usually admire they let me write theed book the account that i thought needed to be written decades of teaching American History and writing essays. So yes i said okay i will do itit for me its important to write it quickly i get bored with looks very fast. They had this idea and those who have read the book i guess i thought if i wrote it fast it would read fast like that momentum to it. And then to move on. Writing history in the United States you can spend ten years onn it. Host do you start chronologically with a project like that quick. It is not a compendium each chapter makes an argument it is not an encyclopedia made it is significant in its ability each part has four chapters theres a lot of symmetry to the organization. And then i went to the library and checked out and in a stack in my office on chapter one in chapters two and three and four i may get to the bottom of theoo stack and then i get the stack for the next pile day by day i teach the word in my office isnt too far from the library building. If you check out books at theks circulation desk just to make sure the been properly checked out and then you can leave the building i know the security guards pretty well but they also came to know what i was doing so the new deal i cant wait till we get to truman. And then we recommend books. Host what got left out . Guest a lot. And ray in the United States and that stork in the academy in the last halfcentury and in that scholars that is really quite potential with the Demographic Group and no other. A and we have a very narrow understanding of politics is when women and people of color and the womens studies program which is lgbt cues sex and gender studies. This incredible expansion with those groups and topics from American History but that changed from those that exploded give and now we have such a broad understanding of the diversity of the American Experience how do you cram all that into a single volume . With a rhetorical act of violence and exclusion in any case been up there was an academic scholarship and it was the disincentive for this type of work and also thehe idea you will be promoting the action that could be reduced to one story that these are the years of intellectual ferment and the academy and increasing diversity is the like the untenable project thats via did not get done for a long time. There were many nights i lay in bed and a reader needs to know why and to be in support of this claim and for needs to be there that they all cant be secondguessed this is not the lab last definitive account to that other people come along and that is how historical scholarship works. Is meant to be a beginning. Host what prompted your followup book . So i was asked to write an essay and there was a time in 2018 and at a Campaign Rally and said im a nationalist i guess im not supposed to use that word. But in an interview someone talked about nationalism and the history of the world and its meaning and implications. And then the way he wanted to define it. So in 2018 there was a lot of discussion. So i was asked to write an account of the history of american nationalism in the context of the nationalist movement the idea of america as a nation for the National History does what they can do to pose a problem. And then i turn that into a short book. I think i say in the process i wanted to explain what a nation is and what liberal nationalism is and why it matters and how it is that in the absence of the defense that poses a danger. Host we will get into those definitions in a minute but we happen have aon video of President Trump 2018 in houston yays and nays all globalist . A globalist is a person who wants to the globe to do well but not caring about our country so much. I have a word that is called a nationalist really were not supposed to use that word i am a nationalist. [cheers and applause] use that word. Host assert jill lapore when the president says im a nationalist what does that say to you . Guest it is so interesting to hear that. I dont have a video in this exchange not looking at what the viewers are looking at and the video is probably significant richer in the spirit of the occasion because it talks about salad on celebrating nationalism before the adoring crowd that a lot of people who have watched National Rise to power the unflinching fidelity of the people with acts of aggression its a very unsettling if not terrifying to bear witness to. Ai am stricken i had forgotten to identify a globalist which is interesting because the rhetoric of globalism in particular is anti somatic in the history of nationstates these are people without a nation and nationalism the fidelity to a nationstate as a core commitment of many people around the world tends to set to one side the black sort of the jews and a lot of the conspiracy theories have fundamentally anti somatic there is a secret cabal of jewish people who control all the money and they have no National Attachment and those ties under National Borders so sthe rhetoric of a globalist comes back and it it harkens back to the invocation and that is something really interesting about that. They are very strenuous and critiques of globalization one of those chief criticism of liberals even into the late 1980s is the kind i am thinking of globalism and the sense that certainty would be left behind but thats okay. But its for the best and with the number of financiers. That people watching trump feel recognized and seen by him are thinking about how globalization has been responsible for a great deal of income inequality around the world. Thats an interesting mix people are really angry of whats going on beginning in the nineties with the fantasy of globalization. But for trump to invoke t nationalism the way he does and then to applied is a classic work one of thee important things so define a globalist with the anti somatic history with the bad people and they are the good people and another form of patriotism that is an essential step urging people to make sacrifices for the nation that can only be asked in the authoritarian there is a messy history behind that. One of the things i try to do is pause whats the difference when people say nationalism now they only ever mean the liberalde and i will i do think its important i think its important to be willing to think about your obligations to your country and the civic duty that we owe to one another. That is something that is central to the nationstate. And its a vanishingly small spaceut to occupy talking about hating others and loving those of your own country. Guest the difference between a nationalist and a populist . Guest i want to be semantic i dont think its that interesting people use the terms of all different kinds of ways there is no simple definition that to makes appeals directly to the people rather than the policies and the fellow elected officials and they appeal to congress for support and that it is in the peoples interest so we live in a democracy so that would certainly be appealing to the people but if you have a negative connotation in the way that many scholars use the term they need to think about those institutions with the emotional support of the people with a political agenda in a meaningful way and in their own interest so talk about them to reengage listing the support of the people which may or may not be a fair definition because progresses did a lot of things but then they never delivered those things. Because thats not a populist nature. Host good afternoon thank you for spending time with us on tv this is in Depth Program a Monthly Program with one author and his or her body of work we are pleased to have join us from Cambridge Harvard assert jill lapore author of many books and received her phd in american5 h studies 1995 the first book 1998 king philips war and the origins of identity the second book 2002, a is for american. New york burning came out in 2005 the whites of theirea eyes in the battle of American History in 2010 and the mention of happiness in 2012 the story of america. In the book of ages the life of ben franklin 2013 i believe it won the National Book award secret history of wonder woman 2014. These truths we talked about the history of the uss in 2018 in the most recent book is how that corporation invented the future its a brandnew book we will talk about that in just a minute want to involve you in this conversation as well have a question or comment dial in or contact via social media Eastern Central time zone thats the number to dial. Will also scroll through social media facebook, comment, facebook, comment, email remember at the tv. What is a civil maddix corporation founded in new york 1959 the pioneering of the Data Science Corporation by a man named ed greenfield it was a danny ocean of the company. And Computer Scientist and the best and the brightest and then with the early Mainframe Computers and using a new computer language with the democratic nominee they expected to be at allied stevenson and those that had worked in 1956 and raised against right eisenhower and in 1960 and they expected nixon to run empty he did apply he be a formidable candidate and as a liberal candidate but the democrats will liberal because of the commission on civil rights and greenfield and his colleagues put this machine the people machine in order to the importancein of engaging the black voters in the north. Thats how the company t was founded and then with the democratic nominee and then went to do pioneering work is like the cambridged analytica a of the cold war how it significantly served and is the back story to facebook that does the data mining and thats the greatgrandfather or the great granddaddy of those Data Mining Companies today. Host where did you find the story . A staff for the new yorker magazine for a long time and those that provide the history of institution and that was very much in the news but it became pretty quickly the industry is and decline and in crisis why would you thousand people on the phone asked them a bunch of questions and higher a staff to do that if you could do that online and then got the political considers without having to do that the data science makes pulling industry obsolete so then i got interested in when that happenedha during the election simulation so that i wrote the article why is nobody ever heard of this company and with those corporate records they dont exist they are nonexistent i did find the largest path of material and those are political scientists at mit so i live in cambridge and then theres these on catalogued papers and then theres a lot of different thingst that that this company had done to have those that is done now that i never thought of and to explain to me but it is a compelling story. Host the corporate records dont exist is nefarious . It was headquartered in new york and went bankrupt in 70 they are fell into considerable the solution his estranged wife died was tragic circumstances and then he took to drinking heavily and basically sleeping on couches im sure he just didnt pay the rent and he was shredded people lose their records all the time. And with the people had done in 1977 is a political scientist to say and then they start asking them and then they get trashed. The novel written about the civil not ask corporation. And coming out and 19641 was a New York Times bestseller everybody expected it would be made into a film and the other was a Science Fiction novel that disappeared into obscurity but it was made in the 1970s and then we made into the matrix so this is a world living in the simulation from this 1964 novel with a sophisticated story in the 1964 because it sorted into 480 stereotypes. And with that president ial election with a very admirable president ial candidate with the best of intentions required to run for president and expected tosi lose in a way to help the pot on the party prevailed 1968 his campaign is conducted by computer simulation everything is told to do is buy a computer written by this guy like a california surfer and beach boy like a nav war hero and became a writer and then got a phd from university of california berkeley that was an astonishing success and coming out during the cuban missile crisis so working in 1956 on the adelaide Stevenson Campaign and try to help when the california primary against the democratic competitors and then he asked to join and he said no and with this famous celebrity but was fascinated and that would it would destroy american politics so we got these topsecret documents and for the Kennedy Campaign and then use that stuff to write a really distressing novel and then dies really young the next year with a terrible her condition so people dont know about that anymore but he was a public intellectual and that he was aba celebrity spokesman and then to be the most manly on american political scientist figure. Lets hear from our viewers is began with alberto in w Arlington Virginia you are in with harvard jill lapore. Caller hello to tv talking about nationalism and i think our country as a country of immigrants and it was american id how do you think of a country of all face is this about the same my only example when president washington was a day of thanksgiving and then and 1863 made a proclamation. So thank you. So to get to the question and of American History when we describe as a nation of immigrants po for each of those expressions of john f. Kennedy and the melting pot each of those expressions with people and the nation say havest a history and emerged from political battles of their own day we carried forward this is not used in 1960 and with that originalist interpretation in the opposition to the constitution. As people have alwaysg said that so that we all need to know where follows in the wake of where those things come from the without perception in particular of Ethnic Diversity which is interesting and wrong history and when that crisis of immigration and the constitution of the people so what is interesting to me is religious pluralism one pluralism and a deep historical way and with freedom of religion and battles of secularism and i spent time in this argument that our commitment is to inequality with more than one where people can speak against the government that political defenses accepted and called for the comes from the establishment of religious toleration mann dash and then tolerating religious views that makesak possible historically peoples different political views that the defense of the 17th century and english civil war. But the political philosophy emerges from people coming to see the protestant reformation and for someone like locke or nelson because the truth is always the