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Why has the level of political discourse become so low?

Alan Wolf will be here to talk about his new book, The Politics of Petchillance.

Who was Lucille Berlin and what's behind the renewed interest in her writing?

John Williams will talk to Naja Spiegelman who reviews two recent collections of Berlin's work.

Alexander Alter will give us an update from the publishing world.

Plus our critics Dwight Garner, Paul Segel and Jen Salai will join us to talk about the latest in literary criticism.

This is the Book Review Podcast from The New York Times. I'm Pamela Paul.

Alan Wolf joins us now from Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a professor emeritus of political science at Boston College.

And the author of 23 books, his latest is called The Politics of Petchillance, America in an Age of Immaturity.

Alan, thanks so much for being here.

Sure, my pleasure.

This is not a cheerful book.

Did you start writing this immediately after the election or was this in the works before them?

Well, immediately after the election, like the very next day I went for a long, glad trip to Israel.

And that gave me a chance for a couple weeks to think about it.

And I came home and tackled this book.

Yeah, I liked how many people I just was obsessed by what happened and shocked at my inability to predict the outcome.

In your acknowledgments, you also say it sounds like this book you were unable to predict the outcome because you say that the idea of this book stemmed from conversations with your agent, but it ended up being quite different from what you originally envisioned.

That's right. I think the original idea that my age of thought would be good.

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