It's the Brian Larry 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,

and it features short excerpts from texts as ancient as the epic of Gilgamesh from around

2000 BC, to Thomas Payne 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. Good morning, Brian. It is always a great

pleasure to join you. Thanks for having me. And 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?

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 25 cents or two bits. So that's the

...