Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words Carlos Lozada What Were W

Can you primarily think of yourself these days. I still think that im very much to see as a book critic. This book is just sort of an extension of that work. Carlos but these days, if you like of a political journalist and hunter lost as well in any ways. And using books as a means to do that kind of work. Pamela and also an author. Did you know that you would always wanted to write a book is a book critic or is it something that you actually kind of steered clear. Carlos i did not have a sense that i wanted to necessarily be an author or write a book on reading other peoples books was putting for me. I worried a little bit that if i went in the process of writing about, i would end up far too sympathetic to the authors. And really for me for my day job. I thank you so been really useful to see what that process is like. In all of the work that goes into creating that finished product that i usually just get at the tail end. Pamela b think it will change as a book critic. Carlos i think it almost has to. I dont know how it will go. I want to see that when im sonia back in the swing of just reviewing a lot of folks. But i suspect that it has to in some ways, beyond just sympathy for the authors. I hope that it will give me a better sense of the decisionmaking that goes into one of book covers. How any chapters, why do you devote attention to this versus that. So i hope it will make me better at my main job is a book critic. Pamela now you know all the answers. But this will, youre too far away from what it is that you do during the day. And that you read 150 books about the trump era for this book. Do you see this as a about books or Something Else. Carlos basic level, i think it is a book about both. Think of it like creamers Coffee Table Book about coffee tables from seinfeld. But i hope that it simply uses books to try to understand a moment and try to get a snapshot of a moment. I think that since it couldve been a lot of things. I couldve been found, it couldve been theater, get an infection. I focused mainly on the infection. And so i think it is mainly a book about this moment in american civic life. It invokes just happened to be the prism through which i understand it. Pamela you call this book also about the intellectual history on the trump era. The subtitle to some people might consider to be sort of ironic. But what you mean by intellectual history. Carlos there are a lot of ways to imagine intellectual history. Any common exercise about and during the 12 years and trying to find that one book from like 1973 that is dissipated everything. Her this one essay this oncoming. And some of that myself on tape. But that is not the kind of book that i wanted to write. I wanted to grapple with how americas public intellectual and writers and insiders in academics and journalists, what they were thinking about in this moment in real time. Some of you better way to explain it is to think of it as a snapshot of an intellectual moment that i hope perhaps the future intellectual historians and look at to get a sense of how we thought about trump in the moment. Pamela its interesting they talk about books is oversimplifying things as how we got here and how happened. And then right after the 2016 election, there was this increased interest in sales and particular novels the sort of got into the car moment, in 1984 the bright new world. These post apocalyptic novels suddenly became the best sellers again. And then books that said well this is what this means that. This is what is happening in the current moment. An hourly moving into this sort of phase where this is what this is going to be moving forward. This is what is going to happen next to these implications. What i hope so. I hope that we will be getting that new wave of books. And i think that there has been this, the party books that i read and reviewed and thought about the sort of a testament to this. The subsection with trying to understand how we got here. And why donald was elected in 2016. Now what the future can hold in american politics. I do hope that we might try to move beyond sort of singular obsession with the occupants of the oval office. And do a little better at grappling with the forces brought tropism into american life. Pamela thus the title and title presumably entered presumably. Carlos yes definitely theres been enough psycho alan analyzing of donald trump. I did not want to do more of that. In fact the original discussion of the title was included, and started with what were they thinking that i wanted to be more all encompassing without. In one of exhaust anyone of responsibility remote agency. Certainly not a book about what the Administration Officials were thinking. So there is some of that in some of the insider memoirs. They wanted to be as broad as possible with the sort of sweep of thought and frightening. Speech of what you make of that fact that early interest from the books of people started to turn to to explain what was going on, they were mostly fiction novels and memoirs predispute wanted some of that myself. I went back and read that it can happen here. I started being reengaged and that sort of thing through fiction. But they spoke to that so any people thought that this kind of impossible, right, no one will if it is but were we thinking. There was the sense in which trump could not be elected. Even trumps own campaign didnt necessarily think it would happen. So i think that we drew on fiction early on because they fit with a sense of unreality. Kind of like the sense of the sort of weird like time displacement five that the trump years has given us where people talk about how the weeks feel like months and months feel like years and all that i thank you so part of that sense that this is not normal. That it is not something that could be happening. So i think that fiction with the next internationa national outlt even though you sort of quickly move beyond that. Pamela speaking of quickly and abnormal tempos. The usual pattern with books about eight Certain Administration is that people leave office, their cabins disband. And maybe five or ten years later, somebody writes a memoir. Now you have in this administration, people fighting memoirs sort of two minutes and tell us out the door. What you make of that. What extent do you devote yourself to read those kind of quickie, tell all memoirs from people who were in the trump circle and left. Carlos remember how insane it seemed when George Stephanopoulos wrote his memoir clinton years while clinton was and still they have a sprint it is a huge controversy like how dare he do that. It is sort of exiled for the clinton world. That is just now absolutely, the moment you reside, go straight to the literary agency. So i did try to read a lot of those books. I do not read all of them as soon as they were out. I sort of came to others like ron. And theres a certain urgency and immediacy with them that i think that is going full played the sort of give you an instant sense of what it was like inside. But i think that also, makes them a little with the word, it makes them feel like they are not going to last long. You will superseded by the next immediate insider alcohol memoir of the trump administration. Also all of these books, just make you, they obviously present themselves in the best possible light and everybody is the hero of the story. Of course all of the stories cant be exactly true. Pamela is going to say, do you have this experience like ua are okay and were switching angles. Were sing this particular meeting from this persons point of view. Carlos theres a lot of that. Even one particular meeting of trump, and maintaining at the pentagon with a bunch of senior officials were basically staging an intervention trying to get him to see the world their way. In multiple books including insider memoirs, but also journalistic accounts of the early trump. And then they did the same thing obsessed with china on meeting or one moment turn on conversation. He put them all together and you basically like a running transcript of the meeting. It almost seems cinematic. Estate individually these books try to show us the way forward collectively they show power start. What did you mean by that. Im. Carlos i think a lot of these books of the trump era reflect the very same blind spots and the imagination, that saves us from tropism in the first place. People bring to all of these stories and all of these accounts, their own blinders. Though all of these political scientists insane this democracy and philosopher say this is not true. In the international is, and historians of course will say that we have been here before. We have always seen this. And people find validation longheld beliefs about the world. They find this in trump. That is everyone from naomi klein, this book says no, is not enough. And she said they saying all the things ive said all along. In the audience of one, really entertaining book. What he says, trump is the ultimate television character. And all the things that i have been writing about, in this culture for decades. And so doesnt mean theyre all wrong. It just means that there is an easy tendency to retrieve into familiar arguments. And also frankly, to speak to whatever silo you are in. A lot of books and came out of clinical sort of resistance writing, they fall into that category. And they look at trump and they see a broken moral compass. Therefore assume that there always points north. So i feel that worrisome. Pamela you coming to the smoke probably with your own lens, your recent immigrant. And nuisance another. Not recent immigrant. Name background is largely in foreign policy. Did you find yourself looking at things through your own lenses and if you try resist that in your assessment. Carlos i am sure that i did. I believe it to critics and reviewers to identify my lenses. I came to the United States as a child but only recently became an american citizen in 2016. That was the first election their wives able to boston. And so i think that certainly has to have an impact on how i see this. And certainly how i read books about immigration debates at this time. I also think that becoming a citizen, immigrating becoming a citizen is sort of activated think and it is this notion that you have confidence in the experiment that is suddenly you are part of. And so i think underlying maybe my writing of this book, is a sense of faith in the american experiment. The despite all the mayhem that all the fighting all the controversy that takes you someplace. That is just one identity. If we all carry multiple identities. And my faith not just in america but in reading, i think was significant in my writing of this book. Thank him again that we think about how this is a country that always defines itself in fighting. Some common sense on all the big battles are litigated on paper. Not only a paper but on paper. Pamela what can books do in trying to give a sense of this current moment the said the journalism when the internet can do. What is it do better. Carlos i think this will be unfair to journalism and the internet but i think that possibly a little bit of greater staying power in the order can be in the act of committing words to book form. Even our colleagues at the Washington Post New York Times for example who are very talented journalists who have covered this president see in great detail. Through this daily ongoing journalism. Any of them have felt the need to try to take a step back. In goat deeper in book form. I am glad theyre doing that ever a lot of those books. And i feel that if journalism is supposed to be first step of history as bill graham said, in a first draft of how we think more deeply about history. How we see ourselves how we decide what that means. We will be writing this forever. I think that i can only imagine that the best books on the trump era have yet to be written. Yes. Pamela the quality of the books targeted sue and there were terrific books but there will be a lot more to think through. A lot more to understand. And images new information to obtain documents are declassified and new investigations come forward. They were going to keep learning a lot more. Theres a ton of memoirs prayed intact but having memoirs that been coming up from officials. This would be a lot more. On some of the key debates. I want to read dr. Anthony faucis it memoirs he writes one and one on homeland security. And those are essential narratives that have yet to be fully told. They have been wonderful books about the trump era so far. I think that we will be with them for a long time to come. Pamela i dont that you are not writing about the man donald trump. But he is an unavoidable figure in all of this. In one of the thing that i think it seems that these writers have been saying in one way or another, is very difficult figure 200 and down. Like what is going on in side him. In the same way that i think biographers have famously had trouble writing about ronald ragan. They just couldnt getting sense. Did you have a trouble. Carlos im a slightly different perspective on that. Carlos this whole project for me beginning monday for the book. Deciding that i would be reading all of this books. They started it in the summer of 2015 when trump was first a candidate for the nomination. So i went back and i read a bunch of his books. Even ghost written books reveal a lot about how somebody wishes they could be perceived. So i read eight from cloaks including the foundational document, there is a deal. And several others. And its all there. Like everything we have seen that donald trump is there. This kind of petty variances and his obsession with the wealth and and insecurities and mistrust of the press yet constant quest for its approval. To lie and deceive. It was all of his own books. Trump can be shocking but if you just spent time with his own words, it could not have been all that surprising. Pamela but were there any surprises in there. Anything that you thought that people dont realize this about him. Carlos one thing that i caught on to early on and then you start saying it through love his books is that and maybe this may be surprising now. Nearly four years and, but he did not wealth he liked acquiring. He liked to win. He liked getting the notoriety and attention they came with some big deal. But then to running it and managing it. He got bored. Really quick. So remember early on i thought that i can imagine him wanting to win the presidency. He cannot imagine him really enjoying being president. Because that is a lot of work. It didnt seem to be his mo. The books he just kind of like we go to the next thing. You see that in a personal life and in all sorts of ways. So i remember this the guy who really was doing the presidency. Winning is everything. His world, youre either a killer or a loser. I couldnt imagine him really enjoying the presidency. Which is why we have seen the parts that he has drawn through the most. And then start of the theatrics of the presidency. Love signing stuff because thats what the president do. He likes these rallies because he feeds off of that adulation. There hasnt been a dealmaker in office yet. Hes not been able to do all those things that the day to day grubby job of being a president such as even getting the intelligence briefing done. So that was something that struck me when i wrote about him first back in the summer of 2015 and that i have seen and validated throughout the past four years. Pamela i have another question. Because you were talking about the trump era and sort of the president s that you would go to with your political leaning. It a lot of people when donald trump took office, it will back in the red earlier, earlier biographies of what they would be considered authoritarian regimes freighted they went back to the world war ii figures. How would you define in terms of looking at the trump era. Carlos that was a big challenge for me early on because i felt there was the risk of being too narrow and how i defined. But then i felt that opening it up too much, theres always going to be Something Else that i would have to read and incorporate. So i decided to just be ruthless and cast my own focus sort of narrowly. Im going to look at the books that came out between 2016 and 2020. And even that is unfair because the books that came out in 2016 were not written in any way to make sense of donald trump. It became a book. But it presented trump book to begin with. And that will be for you and the critics to determine if it was wise not. You need to be very focused on this particular. Because i knew that opening the door would just bring a dilution of different works that i would want to explore. I do that sometimes destroy itself. As i was reading and writing. I would read other books on prurience or experiences that i thought were relevant. So i decided to keep the focus of the books in my book, largely books that people were writing to grapple with this thing that was in front of us. Pamela plus talk about the first of what i think had become a kind of a sub genre the had reflected something that happened in journalism after the election which was everybody sort of listed our reporters out of the heartland. And to these industrial cities. In these rural areas and figure out who are the trump voters and kind of the one book that people latched onto. How well do you think the book kind of told that story. And are there others that are equally or even better. Carlos i think that hillbilly lg told a story very well. I think that is a very well written book. But i think a lot of it was the timing made people seize on it but this was the trump explainer book. I thank you so probably unfair to the book itself into the trump voters. In the sense that he tells a very personal story of growing up between he and mainly in ohio and his own rather conservative politics colored a way that he sees that experience but had such broad appeal as this sort of quintessential motorboat because i think it had very kind of bootstrap thing. Like dont blame anyone else. Troubles. Thats a very loser thing to do. Grandmother tells him that. And so he goes to the marines and shakes them up. But it also had a very, more of like in reticence, conservative feel free to go ahead the sort of appeal to the left as well because he went to gill law school. And it also kind of affirmed some liberal suspicions of the White Working Class and the kind of like social pathologies of his community. It so it something for everyone. Thats why i think that it became across the spectrum, this book that people relied on. And it looked like heartland, is about her experience growing up in kansas burning farm country. The very much from the left. Very much from a totally different political perspective. It. Pamela the publishers really pitch this. This is the liberal hillbilly. Coming out. Carlos that is unfair to march. That was its own book. It was in the works for a long time before that. It was not in any way in response to anyone. Not in a temporal sense anyway. It is not just the difference between the mountains of the planes. These were different ideologies that seem to bear on this one political reality. The struggles of the Something Else<\/a>. Carlos basic level, i think it is a book about both. Think of it like creamers Coffee Table Book<\/a> about coffee tables from seinfeld. But i hope that it simply uses books to try to understand a moment and try to get a snapshot of a moment. I think that since it couldve been a lot of things. I couldve been found, it couldve been theater, get an infection. I focused mainly on the infection. And so i think it is mainly a book about this moment in american civic life. It invokes just happened to be the prism through which i understand it. Pamela you call this book also about the intellectual history on the trump era. The subtitle to some people might consider to be sort of ironic. But what you mean by intellectual history. Carlos there are a lot of ways to imagine intellectual history. Any common exercise about and during the 12 years and trying to find that one book from like 1973 that is dissipated everything. Her this one essay this oncoming. And some of that myself on tape. But that is not the kind of book that i wanted to write. I wanted to grapple with how americas public intellectual and writers and insiders in academics and journalists, what they were thinking about in this moment in real time. Some of you better way to explain it is to think of it as a snapshot of an intellectual moment that i hope perhaps the future intellectual historians and look at to get a sense of how we thought about trump in the moment. Pamela its interesting they talk about books is oversimplifying things as how we got here and how happened. And then right after the 2016 election, there was this increased interest in sales and particular novels the sort of got into the car moment, in 1984 the bright new world. These post apocalyptic novels suddenly became the best sellers again. And then books that said well this is what this means that. This is what is happening in the current moment. An hourly moving into this sort of phase where this is what this is going to be moving forward. This is what is going to happen next to these implications. What i hope so. I hope that we will be getting that new wave of books. And i think that there has been this, the party books that i read and reviewed and thought about the sort of a testament to this. The subsection with trying to understand how we got here. And why donald was elected in 2016. Now what the future can hold in american politics. I do hope that we might try to move beyond sort of singular obsession with the occupants of the oval office. And do a little better at grappling with the forces brought tropism into american life. Pamela thus the title and title presumably entered presumably. Carlos yes definitely theres been enough psycho alan analyzing of donald trump. I did not want to do more of that. In fact the original discussion of the title was included, and started with what were they thinking that i wanted to be more all encompassing without. In one of exhaust anyone of responsibility remote agency. Certainly not a book about what the Administration Officials<\/a> were thinking. So there is some of that in some of the insider memoirs. They wanted to be as broad as possible with the sort of sweep of thought and frightening. Speech of what you make of that fact that early interest from the books of people started to turn to to explain what was going on, they were mostly fiction novels and memoirs predispute wanted some of that myself. I went back and read that it can happen here. I started being reengaged and that sort of thing through fiction. But they spoke to that so any people thought that this kind of impossible, right, no one will if it is but were we thinking. There was the sense in which trump could not be elected. Even trumps own campaign didnt necessarily think it would happen. So i think that we drew on fiction early on because they fit with a sense of unreality. Kind of like the sense of the sort of weird like time displacement five that the trump years has given us where people talk about how the weeks feel like months and months feel like years and all that i thank you so part of that sense that this is not normal. That it is not something that could be happening. So i think that fiction with the next internationa national outlt even though you sort of quickly move beyond that. Pamela speaking of quickly and abnormal tempos. The usual pattern with books about eight Certain Administration<\/a> is that people leave office, their cabins disband. And maybe five or ten years later, somebody writes a memoir. Now you have in this administration, people fighting memoirs sort of two minutes and tell us out the door. What you make of that. What extent do you devote yourself to read those kind of quickie, tell all memoirs from people who were in the trump circle and left. Carlos remember how insane it seemed when George Stephanopoulos<\/a> wrote his memoir clinton years while clinton was and still they have a sprint it is a huge controversy like how dare he do that. It is sort of exiled for the clinton world. That is just now absolutely, the moment you reside, go straight to the literary agency. So i did try to read a lot of those books. I do not read all of them as soon as they were out. I sort of came to others like ron. And theres a certain urgency and immediacy with them that i think that is going full played the sort of give you an instant sense of what it was like inside. But i think that also, makes them a little with the word, it makes them feel like they are not going to last long. You will superseded by the next immediate insider alcohol memoir of the trump administration. Also all of these books, just make you, they obviously present themselves in the best possible light and everybody is the hero of the story. Of course all of the stories cant be exactly true. Pamela is going to say, do you have this experience like ua are okay and were switching angles. Were sing this particular meeting from this persons point of view. Carlos theres a lot of that. Even one particular meeting of trump, and maintaining at the pentagon with a bunch of senior officials were basically staging an intervention trying to get him to see the world their way. In multiple books including insider memoirs, but also journalistic accounts of the early trump. And then they did the same thing obsessed with china on meeting or one moment turn on conversation. He put them all together and you basically like a running transcript of the meeting. It almost seems cinematic. Estate individually these books try to show us the way forward collectively they show power start. What did you mean by that. Im. Carlos i think a lot of these books of the trump era reflect the very same blind spots and the imagination, that saves us from tropism in the first place. People bring to all of these stories and all of these accounts, their own blinders. Though all of these political scientists insane this democracy and philosopher say this is not true. In the international is, and historians of course will say that we have been here before. We have always seen this. And people find validation longheld beliefs about the world. They find this in trump. That is everyone from naomi klein, this book says no, is not enough. And she said they saying all the things ive said all along. In the audience of one, really entertaining book. What he says, trump is the ultimate television character. And all the things that i have been writing about, in this culture for decades. And so doesnt mean theyre all wrong. It just means that there is an easy tendency to retrieve into familiar arguments. And also frankly, to speak to whatever silo you are in. A lot of books and came out of clinical sort of resistance writing, they fall into that category. And they look at trump and they see a broken moral compass. Therefore assume that there always points north. So i feel that worrisome. Pamela you coming to the smoke probably with your own lens, your recent immigrant. And nuisance another. Not recent immigrant. Name background is largely in foreign policy. Did you find yourself looking at things through your own lenses and if you try resist that in your assessment. Carlos i am sure that i did. I believe it to critics and reviewers to identify my lenses. I came to the United States<\/a> as a child but only recently became an american citizen in 2016. That was the first election their wives able to boston. And so i think that certainly has to have an impact on how i see this. And certainly how i read books about immigration debates at this time. I also think that becoming a citizen, immigrating becoming a citizen is sort of activated think and it is this notion that you have confidence in the experiment that is suddenly you are part of. And so i think underlying maybe my writing of this book, is a sense of faith in the american experiment. The despite all the mayhem that all the fighting all the controversy that takes you someplace. That is just one identity. If we all carry multiple identities. And my faith not just in america but in reading, i think was significant in my writing of this book. Thank him again that we think about how this is a country that always defines itself in fighting. Some common sense on all the big battles are litigated on paper. Not only a paper but on paper. Pamela what can books do in trying to give a sense of this current moment the said the journalism when the internet can do. What is it do better. Carlos i think this will be unfair to journalism and the internet but i think that possibly a little bit of greater staying power in the order can be in the act of committing words to book form. Even our colleagues at the Washington Post<\/a> New York Times<\/a> for example who are very talented journalists who have covered this president see in great detail. Through this daily ongoing journalism. Any of them have felt the need to try to take a step back. In goat deeper in book form. I am glad theyre doing that ever a lot of those books. And i feel that if journalism is supposed to be first step of history as bill graham said, in a first draft of how we think more deeply about history. How we see ourselves how we decide what that means. We will be writing this forever. I think that i can only imagine that the best books on the trump era have yet to be written. Yes. Pamela the quality of the books targeted sue and there were terrific books but there will be a lot more to think through. A lot more to understand. And images new information to obtain documents are declassified and new investigations come forward. They were going to keep learning a lot more. Theres a ton of memoirs prayed intact but having memoirs that been coming up from officials. This would be a lot more. On some of the key debates. I want to read dr. Anthony faucis it memoirs he writes one and one on homeland security. And those are essential narratives that have yet to be fully told. They have been wonderful books about the trump era so far. I think that we will be with them for a long time to come. Pamela i dont that you are not writing about the man donald trump. But he is an unavoidable figure in all of this. In one of the thing that i think it seems that these writers have been saying in one way or another, is very difficult figure 200 and down. Like what is going on in side him. In the same way that i think biographers have famously had trouble writing about ronald ragan. They just couldnt getting sense. Did you have a trouble. Carlos im a slightly different perspective on that. Carlos this whole project for me beginning monday for the book. Deciding that i would be reading all of this books. They started it in the summer of 2015 when trump was first a candidate for the nomination. So i went back and i read a bunch of his books. Even ghost written books reveal a lot about how somebody wishes they could be perceived. So i read eight from cloaks including the foundational document, there is a deal. And several others. And its all there. Like everything we have seen that donald trump is there. This kind of petty variances and his obsession with the wealth and and insecurities and mistrust of the press yet constant quest for its approval. To lie and deceive. It was all of his own books. Trump can be shocking but if you just spent time with his own words, it could not have been all that surprising. Pamela but were there any surprises in there. Anything that you thought that people dont realize this about him. Carlos one thing that i caught on to early on and then you start saying it through love his books is that and maybe this may be surprising now. Nearly four years and, but he did not wealth he liked acquiring. He liked to win. He liked getting the notoriety and attention they came with some big deal. But then to running it and managing it. He got bored. Really quick. So remember early on i thought that i can imagine him wanting to win the presidency. He cannot imagine him really enjoying being president. Because that is a lot of work. It didnt seem to be his mo. The books he just kind of like we go to the next thing. You see that in a personal life and in all sorts of ways. So i remember this the guy who really was doing the presidency. Winning is everything. His world, youre either a killer or a loser. I couldnt imagine him really enjoying the presidency. Which is why we have seen the parts that he has drawn through the most. And then start of the theatrics of the presidency. Love signing stuff because thats what the president do. He likes these rallies because he feeds off of that adulation. There hasnt been a dealmaker in office yet. Hes not been able to do all those things that the day to day grubby job of being a president such as even getting the intelligence briefing done. So that was something that struck me when i wrote about him first back in the summer of 2015 and that i have seen and validated throughout the past four years. Pamela i have another question. Because you were talking about the trump era and sort of the president s that you would go to with your political leaning. It a lot of people when donald trump took office, it will back in the red earlier, earlier biographies of what they would be considered authoritarian regimes freighted they went back to the world war ii figures. How would you define in terms of looking at the trump era. Carlos that was a big challenge for me early on because i felt there was the risk of being too narrow and how i defined. But then i felt that opening it up too much, theres always going to be Something Else<\/a> that i would have to read and incorporate. So i decided to just be ruthless and cast my own focus sort of narrowly. Im going to look at the books that came out between 2016 and 2020. And even that is unfair because the books that came out in 2016 were not written in any way to make sense of donald trump. It became a book. But it presented trump book to begin with. And that will be for you and the critics to determine if it was wise not. You need to be very focused on this particular. Because i knew that opening the door would just bring a dilution of different works that i would want to explore. I do that sometimes destroy itself. As i was reading and writing. I would read other books on prurience or experiences that i thought were relevant. So i decided to keep the focus of the books in my book, largely books that people were writing to grapple with this thing that was in front of us. Pamela plus talk about the first of what i think had become a kind of a sub genre the had reflected something that happened in journalism after the election which was everybody sort of listed our reporters out of the heartland. And to these industrial cities. In these rural areas and figure out who are the trump voters and kind of the one book that people latched onto. How well do you think the book kind of told that story. And are there others that are equally or even better. Carlos i think that hillbilly lg told a story very well. I think that is a very well written book. But i think a lot of it was the timing made people seize on it but this was the trump explainer book. I thank you so probably unfair to the book itself into the trump voters. In the sense that he tells a very personal story of growing up between he and mainly in ohio and his own rather conservative politics colored a way that he sees that experience but had such broad appeal as this sort of quintessential motorboat because i think it had very kind of bootstrap thing. Like dont blame anyone else. Troubles. Thats a very loser thing to do. Grandmother tells him that. And so he goes to the marines and shakes them up. But it also had a very, more of like in reticence, conservative feel free to go ahead the sort of appeal to the left as well because he went to gill law school. And it also kind of affirmed some liberal suspicions of the White Working Class<\/a> and the kind of like social pathologies of his community. It so it something for everyone. Thats why i think that it became across the spectrum, this book that people relied on. And it looked like heartland, is about her experience growing up in kansas burning farm country. The very much from the left. Very much from a totally different political perspective. It. Pamela the publishers really pitch this. This is the liberal hillbilly. Coming out. Carlos that is unfair to march. That was its own book. It was in the works for a long time before that. It was not in any way in response to anyone. Not in a temporal sense anyway. It is not just the difference between the mountains of the planes. These were different ideologies that seem to bear on this one political reality. The struggles of the White Working Class<\/a>. I think that we put these books and conversations with each other. I certainly do that in my book. I start the opening chapter the book about all of these books that i call the heart land genre. Is been a lot of time jd vance and sarah march. And i think about the authors who are not memoirs are these generalists take kind of dove into every rut belt town and diner they can find. Often brought their own preconceptions to what they were covering which is sometimes inevitable. Pamela is another gross oversimplification but it strikes me that a good portion of the book the you describe are books that explicitly set up to say okay, im going to explain to you what is happening here. And then there are books like hillbilly, and marshes heartland do not set up to do that but which you found to be in any ways better ways to use these as vehicles to explains. Than the books that were sorta going at it directly. Carlos i think thats i think i felt, good books have to accept the messiness when everything is to perfectly tied up in a bow, i always worry like what has been left out of this. When am i not getting. I found this para books that actually went out to look at the trump voter. In some cases they been profiled the same people. Which was bizarre. Like this one voter in pennsylvania. Which was a longtime democratic labor organizer. Wish switch to trump in 2016. And currently featured in two different books. An amazing thing is that these books were significantly different motivations for supporting donald trump. In one book, he a popular and where is the democrats have forgotten the working class and the other book, and the 911 cultural postal worrier, and really hes the same night. But often hes interpreted through the prisons as the journalists the writers bring to the story. I want to sit in judgment of that. I just wanted to pointed out and show how hard to do sometimes to avoid that. Pamela you mentioned these areas of expertise that people look through these particular lenses pray to be thought about the most obvious one is ideological that we live in such an incredibly polarized. Right now in america. I am wondering, did you sort of have to try really hard to find books that were not ideologically come 100 percent are in the resistance. Like i guess there had been traversed over here. How hard was it to find books in the middle. Carlos i dont know if it is the middle that we are looking for. You may end up, so like you have to be in the middle between resistance and base to get a clear perspective. If you just have to not be sort of in the tank when my of the other. You may end up in a different place. So what i often did is the right books over the course of four years, books that i was reviewing with the Washington Post<\/a>. But then when i realized that i was going to try to take a bigger mark sleeping look at these books, i went back and sorta backfilled different areas that may be a read five books that will read five more. Theyre just kind of really can pick and choose. Different perspectives. No such a luxury for me to have the time to do that. I can only reckon never do that is not going look. I can only do it as an author were have a little bit of time. And so for instance, these folks about the White Working Class<\/a> i found this book that i completely missed the first time. This called the we are still here. By a sociologist and at first i thought it was going to be very similar to the other one. She spent time in a cold country talking to people. I found though that she was able to while she was first pointing out that the heartland is not entirely White Working Class<\/a>. As it has been sort of branded. And that this debate that we had about the motivations of the heartland trump voters which is always been narrowed down to our motivated by our cultural prejudices or economic struggles. In her book helped me see how these are really intertwined. And sorta this person a motivated by this person be motivated by that. And more than saying how these struggles push them to vote for trump or somebody else, that they showed how they often think them believing that there is no place in the political system for them at all. In one of the most striking moments in that book for me was election day 2016 and through election day. And the author, she would devote. She comes back for their high stickered shes all proud of herself. It is been interviewing the people shes discussing in the book. And they left her. The marketer for thinking or daring to believe that the political system would be responsive to her preferences into her voice. Because thats how they felt about it. Select me is not necessarily a midpoint between resistance and base but entirely different inside the relate stayed with me as i read it. Pamela another version is like there is no place for me here in this political landscape. Than ever covers of the disillusioned conservatives. Our who are questioning what happened to my republican party. Im assuming that was a whole subgroup of the book as well. What was that like. Carlos yes. I read 94 or five of the books by the more prominent never trump conservatives. In my book and put those in runner chapter about sort of divided among the right. And those were books that i felt were very focused on what happened to my party. What happened to this movement that i have been a part of for so long. And i thought that he really grappling and kind of lament about the conservative movement. A writing the book the breakup letter sorta to the party and movement. One thing that struck me about that was that they didnt fully wrestle with sometimes their own role in what had come to pass. And a lot of these had been sort of long time conservative commentators a Republican Campaign<\/a> strategist and they had been fine kind of feeding this thing. Or at least egg ignoring the kind of like really intense base of support that the party increasingly was embodied by. So they couldnt really control it anymore. It did not produce one of the more conventional types of nominees. And suddenly it was what have we created. That to me felt a little insufficient as a reckoning. That said, i think they do a really good job in dissecting the problems in the evolution of the conservative movement. To the Melania Trump<\/a> book but the one that i think started it all was probably Michael Wolff<\/a> and you write about, you start a chapter in the book in the first line is i blame Michael Wolff<\/a>. What has he done and why does it matter . First of all i hate reviewing those books where i have like no time. Im dang up on my reading down and craft something together. You are hurting yourself because you werent letting people wrestle with the book. Just give me a few days. Give me a few days to read it but i never get anywhere. I think Michael Wolff<\/a>s book is perfect for a time capsule of this period. Go back to that moment because it now feels like 20 years ago. Guest this was january of 2018 and he had amazing access hanging out in the white house and clearly steve bannon seemed to be a source in an entry point for him but suddenly and we heard this a little bit it was about to show up and suddenly in its the only thing anyone could talk about. The books have become commonplace. There are there are so many of them now and every few months theres a huge bestseller but this was the first and it was mindblowing. Everyone was talking about it and i literally say i got the book on a thursday afternoon and i stayed up most of the night reading it and started writing the next morning and i filed my review by 3 00 that afternoon on a friday. And michael wolf, i think the book created almost a race for the most oh my gosh can you believe that a neck dote had an arms race among these books and all the books to follow have been competing for it or it have been trying to get that story and my mind its done so, it may be a disservice to those who do books themselves because sometimes the best stuff and the most interesting revelations are not just the oh my gosh trump is meeting said this or he was reading the words of the constitution and didnt know what they meant or those are memorable but for instance in the book like a very stable genius which was a huge bestseller books like that ended up kind of overpowering the conversation around these books and to me that was far from the most interesting stuff in the book. That was the first book where learned for instance that mueller steam it passed up the opportunity to take a look at the letters that attorney general william barr was going to put out characterizing the Mueller Report<\/a> and in hindsight that seems like a big mistake. I really wish they had looked at that letter and wade in. I love that in the book but it was not in any way what dominated the discourse around it to. The same with the book like rage by bob woodward where the 17 or 18 conversations between woodward and trump were the dominant part of the coverage surrounding the book but in fact the first half of the book is about Major National<\/a> security challenges largely through the eyes of jim mattis and gyms of u. S. National intelligence and how worried they were about an actual Nuclear Conflict<\/a> with north korea. That to me seems like a really big deal and those parts of the book often get overshadowed the cause of the michael wolf phenomenon that we are just looking for the mayhem or the insanity. It became a little commonplace. Michael wolfs second book on the Trump White House<\/a> speech came and went and did not go anywhere and receive the same kind of attention i think because after a while this was the presidency that shocked without depriving us. We were used to that chaos. It feels like we are constantly saying about the internet in the news cycle that it is so fast we hardly had time to catch our breath until understand what something means and to digest it. Sounds like the book cycle is starting to mimic that. Because there is this rush for the tellall books for the salacious anecdotes and bits to dissect immediately that we are losing some of what bugs generally do best which is to offer a kind of perspective and deeper and broader thinking than then you can generally get in the rush of the 24 7 new cycle. Guest i think there is a risk of that. I think looking at political campaigns, the book that is largely widely considered to be one of the greatest Campaign Books<\/a> in American History<\/a> is what it takes and that book came out four or five years after the 1988 campaign. Thats unthinkable now. The books come out almost before the campaign is over. Even game change came out a year to half after the race. Now if they are more than a few months out they feel incredibly engaged in that has to have an impact on the death of the reporting and even when they are deeply reported on just have much time the writers have to think her and digest what they have uncovered. I do think that books are coming close to mimicking the speed up long magazine pieces and long magazine pieces of moving up to speed up up beds and blog posts and thats probably less than ideal for readers, for writers who have to crash to the material more quickly and also for lack of a better term for history because people look back on these initial accounts to start crafting larger histories and we lose something probably in this quest for speed. I dont see it going away. Lets go the way you approach your review as a book critic what gets lost . Lets start with what do you try to do if you have the luxury of two or three weeks to review something to read and review Something Like<\/a> Michael Wilkes<\/a> burned what would you have done with that extra time that you can accomplish when you are writing against a 24hour deadline . Guest with Michael Wilkes<\/a> book i probably would have tried to contrast for instance some of his revelations or recordings at the times to see where things lighten up and was he delivering something totally new or was he covering material that we have already been overwhelmed by . I think where it becomes more useful is in, say soon we are going to get Barack Obamas<\/a> memoir volume one of his president ial memoirs which is coming out on the 17th of november and with a book like that which i expect i wont get until very shortly before its out, with a book like that i want to compare it to dreams from my father and audacity of hope that i want to look at David Maraniss<\/a> biography of obama and david garros and i havent read the book i guess and see what i can find, see what stands out, see where maybe obama himself has considered things he wouldnt have before. You want to put that sort of look in conversations with past work and with history in a way. That book is going to be a furthering of the obama story but also a conversation in a competition with other president ial memoirs. How does that stack up against clintons book or against george h. W. Bushs writings are the Gold Standard<\/a> memoir. Theres so much you can do with a book like that rather than just plowing through it in a couple of days and dashing down 1200 words to let people know some of the highlights. Lets go in the weeks ahead of time doing that background reading. Do you spend a week or weeks ahead of time ahead of getting the book and having to rush the writing of that review do you spend it doing background reading . Guest sometimes i do. When david garros biography came out a few years ago i did. Two other obama biographies before that because i wanted to see what was the novel here. When i can i try to fill in the gaps in my own knowledge which are considerable especially i move back and forth between United States<\/a> and peru in junior high and high school and peru so i often feel there are all these huge chunks of american honor that i missed out on that i never. So its this constant security. I am often reading prior works that i hope will give me insight into whatever im reading next. Lets go its any consolation i been there my whole life and i dont understand why every obama memoirs written by either one aspect of americana thats totally inexplicable. When youre writing a book like that obviously some of that imagine is to answer questions that you have about what this is earned me but obviously youre writing for an audience anywhere writing to readers who translate these books and condense them and gives them some kind of answer to readers but im curious which questions go to you and what questions were you trying to figure out for yourself in writing this book . I think it has to flow from a kind of writing that i do as a book critic and when im reading any single book im trying to figure out what is the underlying argument here and what is less known . What is this writer bringing to the table that says it didnt exist before and i often get disgruntled writers telling me that this been disappointed in the books that my favor response when someone says you pointed out something in my book that i hadnt even realized was there so i think to me thats like tingo thats the great moment and so i think i tried to do that in my book that ive tried to do that with this whole universe of trump books but ive been trying to see if theres something that i can get at that is beyond the very stark but simple demise of this period and so for instance when i encounter jennifers book that i mentioned earlier it was that kind of moment for me. Its like oh this is a chance to look deonte is that economics juggles or cultural prejudice . Is it that a different idea in that moment of insight which shouldnt be so rare but that it is a little rare is just like this warm bath that comes over me as a reader. I wanted to try, i wanted to read these books and a sense to try to get past whatever my own preconceptions have been about different parts of the trump era thus far and what has allowed me the one thing i walk away with is that all the fights we are having weather over immigration or over democracy or president ial norms or over identity and race they are just a constant everpresent part of the american story. And those have been the best books for me and maybe its obvious to everyone but it wasnt necessarily so to me that this is just, this is not an anomaly. Maybe its an anomaly that is happening all at once but its not an anomaly in the american story and books that have helped me show how this period fits into the long arc of American History<\/a> have done the ones that have been the most helpful and sometimes the most discouraging but also the ones that help you think okay this is our turn. One thing that struck me as you mention in your book that certain books you have reviewed and reread before writing this book that your own opinion of them changed over time and im curious if there were other ways in which writing this book, your first book changed the way you approached your work as a book critic. There were certainly books that did that. Its not a book that i love and i read three years later and suddenly i hated were the other way around but it was more i saw Different Things<\/a> in them that would have struck me most the first time was not at all what i found important the second time around. At the beginning i was struck by his or fadec. Fascism and these dramatic moments in the book and when i was rereading it in 2019 and 2020 what struck me the most about that look is his refrain of being mindful of key institutions taking things to care about and sticking by them. And so i felt with some books i encountered things that may have passed over quickly the first time around and i do imagine that it will maybe give me some more humility when im reviewing knowing that all i can do is grapple with the book in the moment and whatevers drakes me, strikes me but to have enough of an awareness to realize that this may not be the most important thing about an argument for this book and that theres a certain nature to my own deep probing insight about these works. Other people spend years and im sometimes on this work and i show up in a couple of days reading them and then trying to pass some kind of judgment on them which is grossly unfair. I think having to reread and reconsider these books is useful for me because i realize there is often more there. Host carlos eire vardy one of Pulitzer Prize<\/a> for your book criticism for the Washington Post<\/a> and youve. More than 150 books on the trump era for your first book and now a kinder critic terry congratulations on all of that. Guest thank you so much pamela. Joining us now on booktv representative tom cole the republican from oklahoma. We have asked you this question before and you have always had a large reading list. Whats on your current reading list . Well i have just finished the splendid","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia801707.us.archive.org\/33\/items\/CSPAN2_20201112_222100_After_Words_Carlos_Lozada_What_Were_We_Thinking\/CSPAN2_20201112_222100_After_Words_Carlos_Lozada_What_Were_We_Thinking.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20201112_222100_After_Words_Carlos_Lozada_What_Were_We_Thinking_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240716T12:35:10+00:00"}