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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Our friend, Kenneth C. Davis, is back with us now. He's the author of the Don't Know Much About History series and many more books, and now he's curated a selection of 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction that form a compendium, as he calls it, of some of the most consequential but concise nonfiction ever written. It's called The World in Books: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction. It features short excerpts from texts as ancient as the Epic of Gilgamesh from around 2000 BC, to Thomas Paine during the Revolutionary War era, to Ida B. Wells-Barnett, to Joan Didion, to Timothy Snyder, just to name a few. Why? Well, Ken puts it this way in the introduction, "To win this current war of ideas, we need first to acknowledge how much books matter, how they educate, inform, and inspire. We need to fight for the right to read what we want to read, and perhaps most importantly, we simply need to read more books."

Ken, welcome back to WNYC.

Kenneth C. Davis: Good morning, Brian. It is always a great pleasure to join you. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: You've been on with us so many times over many years to talk about different aspects of history. Now you've turned to writing a book about nonfiction books after your book about short fiction books. Why this direction?

Kenneth C. Davis: Well, it's actually a full circle for me, Brian. Because in 1984, that very remarkable year, I wrote my very first book, and it was called Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America. It was a book about how the paperback industry grew in this country and how the availability of inexpensive-- for those who may not know, paperbacks used to be $0.25 or two bits, so that's the genesis of the title. Two-Bit Culture was about not only the rise of the paperback industry, but how books have consequence in the society. They either reflect the society or they change where it's going.

This passion for books and a passion for history come together in The World in Books because this is as much about history as it is about books. These are about books that have had great consequence in their time and continue to have consequence for our time.

Brian Lehrer: In your book about great works of short fiction, you wrote, "A short novel is like a great first date." If a short novel is like a great first date, what's a great work of short nonfiction like?

Kenneth C. Davis: Well, it's probably like a great second date, where you've gotten past the familiar things and it's exciting, and now you're really going to find out a little bit more about each other, I suppose. I hadn't even thought of that, so that's a good catch. Both books, I think, Great Short Books and The World in Books, are really about the importance of reading not just for pleasure or as an escape.

I learned during the pandemic, when we were all in lockdown here in New York, in particular, that I was doom scrolling like so many people did, and I found I had to get away from that. I started to read the books that were on my shelf because I couldn't go to the New York Public Library, where I am practically every day, or to the bookstore in our neighborhood. I was reading books, and I realized that because our attention spans have really come down quite a bit, that it was a good idea to start with short books, so I did a book about short novels and now short nonfiction.

It's the same idea. This is a way for us to get back into the habit of reading. We need to make a reading resolution. Reading has effects beyond just the information that we gather from these books. It's a source of psychological pleasure. It relaxes us. We think more deeply when we read, especially nonfiction. This is really about changing ourselves and helping to get into a better place by reading books. Of course, if you go to the library, it's free.

Brian Lehrer: In fact, I saw a headline, I didn't get to read the article. I think it was in The Atlantic, I'm not sure, that was something like students at elite colleges are having trouble reading whole books.

Kenneth C. Davis: That's correct. I saw that piece show up yesterday, and it goes exactly to the point that I'm making, that we have-- partly because of the pandemic, partly because of the political crisis, we've been so locked into these things that we've forgotten about reading, but most of all because of our reliance on screens. Yes, that article talks about young people being unable to get through a book. That's, again, one of the reasons that I concentrated on short books.

In this book, I talk about it comparable to exercise. Exercise, they tell us the best way to get fit is with high-intensity interval training; short bursts of power and then you work up. I think this is the same thing, in some ways. This gets us into the fitness to keep reading and then move on to longer pieces. That's certainly one of the things I do in The World in Books. I recommend these short books, but I'm then going to tell you what to read next and some of those might include longer things. Especially, short books by people who are notable for some of their longer books, whether it's Plato or-- I can go down a list of writers who have written very long books.

Speaking of your excellent previous segment about the environment; we all know the name Rachel Carson, primarily for Silent Spring and her focus on DDT. One of the books I include in The World in Books is the Under the Sea Wind by Rachel Carson. It's actually her first book, and it was part of a trilogy of books about the ocean and our connections to the ocean. Again, this is a book that was written in 1942, I believe, and it is as timely and as beautiful and poetic now as it was when it was written.

Interesting little fact there. Rachel Carson was working for the US Bureau of Fisheries as a freelancer. She couldn't get a job as a marine biologist, partly because it was the Depression, partly because she was a woman. Her supervisor told her or asked her to write a brochure about the fisheries, and she brought something back to him and he said, this is not what I was looking for, but it's so good, you have to publish it somewhere else. We can't publish it. It's too good. She actually did publish that in The Atlantic. The book came out just around the time of Pearl Harbor, so it kind of disappeared because they couldn't get paper to print it.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is Kenneth C. Davis who has written a book about books, 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction. Anybody want to shout out one that you might have in mind? Maybe it's on Ken's list, maybe it's not. Even a passage from a book of great short nonfiction, or talk about reading in general. Maybe that idea we were just discussing that was in that article called students at elite colleges. Of course, part of the shocker there is that students at elite colleges are having trouble reading whole books, and it goes on to say it's not because they're not trying. They just haven't grown up doing it. They haven't been trained to do it. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

I'm going to pick out a couple of the books that you write about and summarize an excerpt in your book, and just read a few lines so listeners can hear a few of the words and then invite you to riff on them. One is from Susan Sontag's On Photography. The opening words which appear in your book are, "Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato's cave, still reveling its age-old habit in mere images of the truth." Because that's dense, I'm going to read it again. "Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato's cave, still reveling its age-old habit in mere images of the truth." Now I have no idea what that means, but I can imagine 15 ways that it applies to the year 2024. Why did you include that line in Susan Sontag's On Photography?

Kenneth C. Davis: Susan Sontag, of course, is one of the major public intellectuals of recent history. This is from her book On Photography, which I hadn't read before I undertook this project and it was a revelation to me. Because I'd read some of Sontag's other work before and found it, as you just said, a little dense. I think that On Photography is less dense than some of her other books.

She was a public philosopher in the sense that she was really looking at serious things about the way we look at the world, and On Photography in particular is about the way we look at the world. I think there's another line in that book where she talks about her first encounter with a book of photographs being a book of photographs of Dachau and Bergen-Belsen, and this was a transformative experience for her as, I think, a 12-year-old at the time. Then she goes on to talk about how photography has not only changed the way we look at objects, but about the way we look at the world. It's only more true now that we are all taking pictures 24/7, it seems.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and she could write another book, if she was still writing books, on video and how it has changed the world now that we're all taking videos too and sharing them and everything like that.

Kenneth C. Davis: Just to put an exclamation point on it. In the book, she writes, "Like guns and cars, cameras are fantasy machines whose use is addictive," and my goodness, if she'd only been around [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: 1977.

Kenneth C. Davis: That's correct, yes. There were certainly Polaroids at the time and instant film, and film was much more accessible than it was 20 years before then, but now, of course, there are billions of photographs being taken every day.

Brian Lehrer: Right, I don't even think there were home camcorders yet in 1977.

Kenneth C. Davis: No, I don't think so. Maybe a Super 8mm.

Brian Lehrer: Another really superb bit of prose comes from Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions. I'll read these couple of lines. She writes, "I felt our nation's turning away from love as intensely as I felt love's abandonment in my girlhood. Turning away, we risk moving into a wilderness of spirits so intense we may never find our way home again. I write of love to bear witness both to the danger in this movement and to call for a return to love. Redeemed and restored, love returns us to the promise of everlasting life. When we love, we can let our hearts speak." So beautiful.

Kenneth C. Davis: Very beautiful, beautiful writing. That's certainly one of the things I set out to do with The World in Books, is not only just find sort of important books you must read, but find books that also give us pleasure. In fact, the pleasure of the reading was one of my key components in selecting each of these books.

Bell Hooks was another writer I had never read before. I certainly knew her more by reputation as something of a radical feminist and talking about race and gender, and so I understood all that. I was really struck by the fact that this book, All About Love, had been on The New York Times bestseller list long after it was initially published and continued for weeks and weeks, if not years, on The New York Times bestseller list. I partly read it out of the curiosity, what is the nerve that this book is touching?

Certainly, the excerpt you just read, Brian, gets at part of that. Each of the 13 chapters in the book briefly describes or focuses on specific elements of what we think of as love, certainly romantic love and all those things, but honesty, spirituality, community, loss, healing are some of the things she touches on. These are very, very universal feelings. I think the fact that the book has survived and thrived for decades now after it's first published, I believe it was published almost 25 years ago, is a remarkable testament to its longevity for a good reason.

Brian Lehrer: Also, tying the personal to the political or cultural, just to reread the very first line of that passage, "I felt our nation's turning away from love as intensely as I felt love's abandonment in my girlhood." Then I think that Martin Luther King, as he was arguing for civil rights, he used to talk about love. We have even Kamala Harris now running for president on a vibe of joy, which is related to love. There's what happens to us as individuals and then there's what happens to us culturally, and it seems to me that Bell Hooks was tying them together.

Kenneth C. Davis: Absolutely, and she talks about the beloved community as Dr. King did. That's one of the other things that ties many of these books together. I think, Brian, if there's an overarching theme to the books I've included here, it's, how do we change? There's that old saying attributed to Gandhi, mistakenly, that you want to become the change that you want to see in the world, something to that effect. I don't think that anyone has documented Gandhi said such a thing, but if we want to be the change we want to see in the world, books are one way of accomplishing that.

The books I've included here, in a wide variety of ways, really get us to think about ourselves, increase our-- We're in an age of artificial intelligence. I like to talk about natural intelligence, that we do have it, it should be cultivated. Reading books with great ideas and then learning about the people behind them. I include a biography for each of these writers, including Bell Hooks and Susan Sontag. We get to know that there's a person behind these books.

These books are really about how we can change ourselves and perhaps, in that way, change the world. I was thinking about that specifically in your previous segment when you're talking about the environment. Several of the books I include touch on environmental issues; in particular, Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert, which is one of the last selections in the book, or something like Michael Pollan's Food Rules. A lot of people have said, "Gee, that's a surprise. Why'd you include that?" Well, it's these rules for how we should eat not only for our health of our bodies and to improve the health of our children, but it's really also about the fact that the way we produce food, the way we market food has an environmental impact. When we're talking about changing, changing the way we eat and think about eating is one of the most important things we can do. That's why I included Michael Pollan's very delightful book, Food Rules.

Brian Lehrer: A few more minutes left with Kenneth C. Davis. His latest book is The World in Books: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction. On why people aren't reading whole books anymore or having trouble even at elite colleges, as we were describing the article that references that before, Michael in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Michael.

Michael: Hey, how are you, Brian? I just have a little story to recount and then a recommendation. The story is about a high school student I know, and I feel that, yes, screens are a problem, but I also think our schools are failing our children. I asked this student if he had read The Great Gatsby, and he said, "Oh, yes." I was like, "Oh, okay, good." He continued to tell me that in high school, they read the graphic novel version of The Great Gatsby [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Michael: [inaudible 00:18:00]. We're not challenging them. Then just for a recommendation, I would say nonfiction, it's short, but Letters to a Young Poet. I think every high school student should read that.

Brian Lehrer: You want to give us a one-line blurb on Letters to a Young Poet?

Michael: Me?

Brian Lehrer: You.

Michael: [chuckles] Okay. Well, to me, as an artist, it's inspiring, and it's also about mentoring, so when I'm older now, I can see how I can help a young person and give them advice. It's just inspiring letters between a young student and this world-renowned- well, now, today, world-renowned poet.

Brian Lehrer: Michael, thank you very much. Nice pick.

Kenneth C. Davis: I'll put a point on that one. I did not include Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, but I do include a book somewhat inspired by it, which is Letters to a Young Contrarian by Michael [Christopher] Hitchens. That's a book that I think is very important. It certainly spoke to me. It spoke to me in this time that we are living in, so an interesting connection there. [crosstalk] Hitchens was clearly inspired by Rilke.

Brian Lehrer: To the larger point he was making there, about students not even being given whole books in class. I wouldn't want to dismiss out of hand using graphic novel versions, even of great works of fiction, to get kids interested. Of course, Great Gatsby is such a short book to begin with. We have a related question from a listener in a text message who asks, "Do audiobooks count as reading?"

Kenneth C. Davis: That's a very good and fair question. I'll come back to Great Gatsby in a second if there's time. All of my books, I think, for the most part, have been on audiobooks. I know over the years, people have talked to me about how much pleasure they get from driving or commuting and listening to them, being on a family car trip and listening all together. I think that audiobooks are books.

To the point, though, that there's something specific about reading words on paper, and that may be connected to this disconnect that younger people are having; psychologically, there are studies on this that reading books on paper, you absorb the meaning differently. You probably stop and go back and reread things. I actually discuss this in the introduction to The World in Books. I'm a big supporter of audiobooks, but I do think that there's something specifically different about reading a book as opposed to listening to a book, but please, if you like to listen to books, enjoy.

Just a word on The Great Gatsby. It was one of the books included in Great Short Books. I grew up reading-- there used to be a comic book series called- I think it was something like World Illustrated Classics. That's where I might have read A Tale of Two Cities for the first time. I don't know. I'm not opposed initially to the idea of looking at easier entry points into this, but I think then you have to progress, and I certainly hope students do that and teachers lead them. That's one of the things I do with my books is introduce these easier entry points, and they're stepping stones to read something more challenging down the road.

Brian Lehrer: You said- or I know that Thomas Paine is one of the authors in this collection of great works of short nonfiction, and Suzanne in Philadelphia, I think wants to talk about using something by Thomas Paine in her own teaching. Suzanne, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Suzanne: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. Yes, I'm retired. I just retired last June as an AP language and composition teacher, and yes, my smartest and best and brightest stopped reading novels and stopped reading longer texts. The wonderful part about AP Lang is that you use smaller pieces to get to rhetoric and the beauty of rhetoric, and I used Thomas Paine. I started with our Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, Common Sense, and then moved on to Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, because kids don't have civics information or knowledge anymore either, so always looking for a way to kill two birds with one stone.

Using those documents allowed us to get a bird's eye view into where these people were at the inception of our nation and the beauty of the language. Talking about Thomas Jefferson, it gives an inroad to talk about race relations. How could Thomas Jefferson have been the most prolific of writers and have written the most beautiful document in The Declaration, yet then be the owner of slaves? It opens up a world of conversation for us, which brings us to where we are today. There's always connections. Then I used Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail, how we never really made good on those promises. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address also comes to mind, and then Obama's 150th anniversary essay about the Gettysburg battle. It's really mostly about the beauty of language, so I find that using those smaller pieces of literature can hook the kids, and once you get them hooked, they're ready to do it.

Brian Lehrer: Suzanne, thank you so much. Great story. Let me get one more caller in here before we run out of time with Ken Davis. Wendy in Springfield has a work of what she considers great short nonfiction and is even going to read a couple of sentences for us. Wendy, we're ready for it. Hi. What you got?

Wendy: Migrations of the Heart by Marita Golden, an African American writer in the '60s goes to follow her love and marry him in Nigeria, and cultural complications ensue. They have a son, but I'll leave that to you. Now here are a few sentences. This is from the very beginning. "My father was the first man I ever loved. He was as assured as a panther. His ebony skin was soft as the surface of coal. The vigorous scent of El Productos cigars was a perfume that clung to him. The worn leather seat of his taxi, a stubborn aroma, had seeped into his pores. And like a baptism, the smells rubbed onto me from the palms of his hands." Marita Golden, Migrations of the Heart.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Wendy. That was-

Kenneth C. Davis: Very beautiful.

Brian Lehrer: -wonderful.

Kenneth C. Davis: Thank you for sharing.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for having the courage to read on the radio. Ken, anything else to say about that?

Kenneth C. Davis: Well, I'm immediately drawn to thinking about, with the other caller as well, some of the books I've included here that are short. Certainly, a fundamental document that every student should be introduced to at certain point is the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, one of the most extraordinary men in American history. Not only for his story of how he found freedom, but I emphasize the fact that when he was about eight years old, and of course, he didn't know how old he was because he didn't know his birthday, he writes and talks about the mistress, the woman who was married to the man who enslaved him, was teaching him his ABCs, and the man walks in and tells her to stop right away. It was not only illegal, it was dangerous, because if you teach the slave to read, you will ruin him.

Douglass writes, at that moment, he understood the reason that the white man had power over the Black man, and he determined at that moment that he was going to learn to read, that this was the way to liberation, enlightenment, and ultimately freedom. I think that that lesson is important for its historic value, but I think it's important for all of us to consider as well, that reading is the way that we can be liberated.

Brian Lehrer: I want to close by noting that I said in the introduction, quoting from your introduction to your book, to win this current war of ideas, we need first to acknowledge how much books matter. Where do you see your book fitting in at this time when bad-faith actors seek to ban books and censor history curricula? It seems like you weren't just putting together this book of collection of works of great short nonfiction to write about, but as you said yourself, it's in the context of what you called a war of ideas.

Kenneth C. Davis: Absolutely, Brian. The introduction to the book starts out with the fact that in 1933, the Nazis were burning books. 10 years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt was helpful in sponsoring a program called Armed Services Editions, which gave away millions of books, and at the time, to service people, people in the military, got millions of free books distributed. Armed Services Editions was an extraordinary moment in publishing history. Roosevelt said at the time, books are ideas that can't be destroyed. They can't be burned. They can't be put in a concentration camp. Books are weapons in the war of ideas, and that was the motto for this program.

We are in a time when we are in a war of ideas. There's no question about it. We've always had censorship. We've always had banning. It is now on steroids, so to speak, because it is organized, it is very partisan, and it is very powerful. Certainly, part of my sermon here is that we as readers and thinking people have to fight back very hard against that, and there are a lot of organizations doing good work, like the American Library Association, like PEN, like the National Council Against Censorship. I urge people to be aware of these things and continue to buy books, support authors, support booksellers, certainly support libraries and librarians, because we are in a war of ideas. One of the ways to win is to show that people who care about books and care about ideas have power too.

Brian Lehrer: Kenneth C. Davis, author of the Don't Know Much About History series, for which he's best known, and many more books, and now his latest, The World in Books: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction. Ken, congratulations on the new book. Thanks for talking to us about it.

Kenneth C. Davis: Thank you for having me, Brian. It's always a great pleasure to talk to you. We've been talking to each other since we were very small boys, but-

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] So it feels.

Kenneth C. Davis: -we keep going on. Thanks a lot.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Keep on.

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