This is Inside the New York Times Book Review. I'm Pamela Paul.

What does the current wave of populism in America mean? And how did we get here?

Sam Tannenhaus, former editor of the Book Review and host of this podcast,

is here to talk about what recent political books tell us about this current

very strange political moment.

So if Trump can come along and speak about different ethnic groups

in a way that captures some of that language of anxiety,

well people in Alabama are going to vote for him, whether he can recite verses accurately

from the Bible or not.

Writing about race as a young reporter in the South in the early 60s

gave Calvin Trillin and his readers in the New Yorker an early look

at the Civil Rights Movement. He joins us now to talk about his new book,

Jackson 1964.

We've made some progress, but it's sort of disappointing to see

how the some of these stories could be written today.

Also, the latest literary news, your summer reading memories,

and the books we and other people are reading.

Someone very familiar to all our listeners joins us now at Sam Tannenhaus.

Sam, thank you for being here.

Always a pleasure, Pamela.

So we asked you to do something for this issue that was very wide open.

I don't know how many books do we send you about 30 books?

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