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I'm Jesse Thorn and this is the Sound of Young America from MaximumFund.org.

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It's the Sound of Young America, I'm Jesse Thorn. My guest on the program,

Makita Brotman, is the author of the book, The Solitary Vice Against Reading. The book

that connects the dots between Hitler, the Unibomber, and books. Makita, welcome to the Sound of

Young America. Thank you for having me. Did you like that? We just before we were on the air,

we were discussing different interview styles. I was talking about Bill O'Reilly's interview style.

I felt like I should just go for it. That's the kind of thing Bill O'Reilly would say to

introduce me, I think. Because you do connect the dots between the Unibomber, Hitler, and books,

in assentance, in your introduction. The dots are kind of far apart, but you could put it that way.

So to say that this book is on the theme of being against reading, is a gross oversimplification.

Tell me a little bit about what the sort of rhetorical tropes that were going on in our culture

were that you felt like you needed to respond to with this book.

Well, I didn't think I felt like I needed to, but I wanted to.

When someone asked you what kind of book you wanted to write, what led you to respond for this book

proposal? Well, the subtitle against reading is something that the publisher thought would make

the book very accessible and marketable, and it has really, but obviously the book's not

completely against reading. It's not really very much against reading, so it's a kind of tangen

cheap title. But in the introduction, I talk about how all these book-boostering campaigns and

...