they become much more sophisticated. witches have access to so many more ingredients and tastes, and our cuisine is more varied today than anytime in the past. on the other hand, we haven't changed that much. our passion for food, our attention to what food means to the cultural significance of having fancy food on the table and beingle able to take people out to a nice restaurant, instead back then it was having the food at your house but it was a way to impress people. we haven't changed all that much, so two contradictory things. >> host: max miller is the author of thisis book, "tasting history: explore the past through 4,000 years of recipes." we appreciate your being on booktv. >> guest: thank you so much for having me, peter. >> next it is both tvs in depth program pulitzer prize-winning

author and barbara stacey schiff. her books include "a great improvisation," the witches, the revolutionary, a market of founding father samuel adams tier one of the masterminds behind the boston tea party and the leader of the american revolution. >> author stacey schiff beside the fact your written about them, what did ben franklin, the witches of salem, cleopatra and sam adams have in common? >> guest: i guess all the top of my head they are people or moms to change our world. so each of them in some way leave the were different than the one they've t been born at which they came. i think that's what i'm always looking for any subject is some subject which resonates for me obvious on a personal level because market is a marriage. but also something we feel there's a shift in time, , you feel like there's a shift in space. in cleopatra

is case the world comes crashing down with her death and the roman empire begins. it's truly a hinge the moment in history. the sandwich sandwich n various ways forever for better or worse, as a vaccine, as a sense of usually don't want to go, here's what you don't what to do, they're sort of an anti-message in a way. case it ig moment and i come to each of them what they certain set of questions that start to obsess me. those questions write themselves into the book in some ways but not necessarily in a way you as a reader will ever notice. this is a way of getting there in some way. cleopatra was born largely out of a series of articles of women in power. why are women in power such a toxic and difficult combination? i cap think in cleopatra is

perfect but how do right a life of cleopatra when you have no material? there sometimes a driving question were set up obsessions and i feel like they reveal privately in the book. host: one of the things you writing cleopatra is she's unaware she lived in a hellenistic age. stacy: and the person that would be her undoing would be the name of gustus. that's the beauty of reading history is that we come to it knowing how it's going to turn out but for 300 or 400 pages, the author is going to pretend they did not preordained in some way and the reader can in a good way suspend disbelief and be along for the ride. host: what was the hellenistic age? stacy: it's basically a greek age in which the greeks no longer participate. a culture has survived, by

cleopatra's day, it has become alexandrian. alexandria has become the capital of what remains of greek culture. cleopatra, the end of the hellenistic age, the death of alexander the great, alexandria is immensely written about in the ancient world. but we have two no trace of it. every traveler who went to alexandria said in short i cannot describe this city. it's impossible to describe and then they went on for 30 pages describing it because it was a city of such sophistication in such marble. if you want today dog trainer or tutor or doctor or craftsman, you went to alexandria because it was a city of such sophistication and opulence. host: i want to read a quote from cleopatra -- in the absent -- in the absence of fast, this

rushes in a kudzu of history. one record we have constructed around a front then another. a commanding and -- commanding woman, versed in politics, fluent in nine languages, silver tongued, chariat, cleopatra nonetheless seemed th joint creation of roman propagandists and hollywood directors. her history was written by her enemies and the fictions have only proliferated. stacy: those are just a few of the problems writing about cleopatra. women's history for starters is more difficult than writing about a male figure. women are famously not as good at keeping their archives and their lives are not well documented through history. they often don't keep their papers, their papers get lost. in cleopatra's case, almost uniquely, she is inflated by her critics, by the romans to write about her because she needs to

be a larger-than-life figure to justify the victory that octavian will win over her. he has to magnify cleopatra's powers. so she becomes this oversized figure. she's also this larger-than-life character. from the start, by the time the romans start to write about her, they emphasized her tremendous shrewdness, her tremendous sexuality, what an incredibly crafty woman she was and poor mark antony. but they make her something of a cartoon character sometimes, but this larger-than-life figure. host: was she even a gypsy in? stacy: alas, she was macedonian greek. host: -- was she even a gypsy in? stacy: we not only know she was macedonian greek but from every angle, it is possible there is a

persian princess who snuck in there somewhere but she is macedonian greek. we know relatively little about what she looked like except what is on her queen portraits. the two conceptions about her was that she was egypt in and look like elizabeth taylor are erroneous. she looked largely like her father if the queen portraits are to be believed. plutarch tells us she was by no means beautiful specifically, but sort of sunken cheeks and a hook nose and deep set eyes, very somatic looking. other than that, all bets are off as to what she looked like. host: and she was cleopatra the seventh. stacy: exactly. host: who are the other

cleopatra's? stacy: she descends from this kind of meddlesome, rancorous queen. one of the interesting things about writing about cleopatra was women are not just powerful in egypt, in ancient world, there were quite a few females that wielded a great deal of power. at the height of cleopatra's power, she ruled over a term and a swath of territory, from libya to egypt and modern-day israel to the south of turkey. she rules over a term in this territory and she's the first female to have had that kind of power. previous women had held power as well as other sovereigns in the ancient world, but quite different than they were in the mediterranean world. host: was she raised to be the

queen of egypt? stacy: all the children seem to have been immensely well educated. the library of alexandria was quite literally in her back yard. we know a great deal about her education. her education would have been the same education marc anthony or julius caesar or any wellborn member of the mediterranean world would have enjoyed at that moment. we know what she would have read, how she learned to read, which texts she read, which comedies she read, how she learned how to speak. it seems as if every child was raised to rule because it was a very bloodthirsty family and siblings would very often eliminate each other to hold on

power. everyone -- you never really know to whom power was going to descend. cleopatra was the only sibling to survive. host: it really was a game of thrones, wasn't it? she limited her 13-year-old brother husband. stacy: her brother at one point goes to rome, an interesting dynamic at the point when cleopatra is born. when the father returns, he eliminates that sister. cleopatra will end up in a civil war with one of her brothers and in the course of that war, that brother seems to die. she will then eliminate the other brother and later marc anthony will murder her sister. so she's the only one that survived over the age of 21.

host: when she descended from alexander the great? stacy: no, but the perception in the ancient world was alexander the great, a very enterprising general, ptolemy had turned his body to alexandria and claimed descent from this family. it's like a mail order coat of arms, a trumped up family pedigree that served them immensely well in a world that worshiped the memory of alexander the great. there's something about ptolemy that in roman eyes spoke of alexander the great. a very tenuous connection. but there was this splendor about cleopatra because of the relationship, the purported relationship with alexander the great. host: was she a deity or did she have a belief system? stacy: that's one of the many unanswerable questions here. she was thought to be a deity,

she dressed as the goddess isis, comports herself as the goddess isis, sacrifices are made to her. did she think of herself as a deity? it's an impossible question to answer. certainly in the eyes of her people, over whom she ruled with immense finesse, she is thought to be a benevolent, supreme deity. host: she lived before christman even born, once you decide you want to write about cleopatra, where do you start to research? stacy: i had thought about cleopatra as a subject before and this sounds crazy, on benjamin franklin. i couldn't figure out how to write a book where we have one word at most from cleopatra's hand. we have no documents, all of our sources are roman men who most of them were not quite hostile

to cleopatra. most of our accounts of her are from her detractors. how do you possibly get your mind around it? how do you reconstruct these lives from these biased accounts? i had gone back to plutarch whose portrait of marc anthony cleopatra almost hijacks. he's writing about cleopatra and can't seem to stop himself. there is a theme of mark anthony and cleopatra out fishing one day in which mark antony, who is not faring well at fishing gets one of his men to dive under the water and attach a pre-call -- pre-caught salted herring to the line which she -- wish he reels up and cleopatra catches him and challenges him to a fizzing -- fishing contest. she then informs him that he

should be fishing, he should be conquering kingdoms. which is like telling your husband you have better things to be doing. i suddenly thought plutarch is born 76 years after cleopatra died. this is all hearsay. but you have this dialogue and he sets the scene. could you not reconstruct a life of cleopatra and give her scenes that have come down to us with some validity and real sense of scenery? once i started researching, i realized there was a lot more there than i realize and you could actually construct something like a full life as long as you kept an eye on who the chroniclers were and what side are they on and why were they saying what they were saying? you have to keep the chronicle wears them self in the picture -- the chroniclers themselves in

the picture. that may have been someone -- something someone who is writing that hated women or writing for a future roman emperor. host: act one, rise to power, back to, julius caesar, act iii, caesar and octavian. stacy: it's pretty good, right? when she comes to power, that would not have been the way she would have perceived it. an astonishing two decade long hold on power at a time when rome is inexorably on the rise, egypt is about to fall to rome as it remained for thousands of years as an independent power, but she still thinks there's a way to maintain the integrity of egypt. host: how would you describe the relationship between rome and egypt? stacy: it is an interesting one. egypt is the richer of the two

countries and rome as a military power. egypt did not believe -- it believes in buying power, not conquest. all hellenistic sovereigns were looking at the rise of rome and seeing their wad -- they are marching toward us about to devour us. cleopatra's father had essentially tried to buy off the romans. egypt is also the breadbasket of the mediterranean. so rome is very reliant on egypt and is looking at egypt and this plays an in norma's role for cleopatra. it is a land of excess, a land no one can quite trust, terry exotic, very erotic, everything is sensuous there and the romans don't trust it. so they are already being looked at askance and at the same time being looked at with tremendous envy because of its riches and

incredible harvest. host: the cover of cleopatra -- who did that and why did you choose it? stacy: i'm so glad you asked. when you write about someone about -- someone like cleopatra, how do you do the jacket? the images we have are the queen portraits. in my mind, i told the publisher we put a coin on the jacket because that was the only image upon which we could rely. the publisher replied would you like to sell six copies are seven copies? we know how cleopatra did her hair. we know from the queen portraits that she rolled pearls into her hair. this was the genius idea of the artistic director at little brown who is actually have to danish and have to minnick and. her hair is done in the fashion you see on the coin.

host: so this is a photograph? stacy: it is a photograph that looks like a painting. the earrings, which i will tell you and your viewers was done with a glue gun on a kitchen table matches the earrings she's wearing in the queen portrait. host: you spend quite a bit of time and cleopatra talking about the city of alexandria. undescribable and then you describe it. why did it rise to such prominence? stacy: it's the wealthiest city and immensely cosmopolitan city. it's a city in which you are likely to meet people from all over the world. if you wanted anything in the world, you went to alexandria. it was the new york or paris in the terms of the day. it was immensely important to make clear this was the cosmopolitan center, the center of learning, the center of sophistication. there's a reason cleopatra

speaks nine languages and that's because it was this melting pot of a city. it's a city without a rival, a city of automatic doors and huge avenues with marvelous amounts of onyx and precious metals and it gleamed like no other city. host: founded by alexander the great. stacy: founded by alexander the great. host: the greatness was because of him or cleopatra? stacy: the greatness was an inclusion after the age of alexander the great stop people had gravitated there, the library had been built there and cleopatra's forbearers -- this collection was said to have held -- we don't know if it is true -- all of the books of the ancient world, which was possible at the time. they had built this library with a terminus premium on learning.

something cleopatra would have known and learned in alexandria listings that would have been forgotten for thousands of years. she knew the value of pi, she knew longitude and latitude, new -- that is the work of the previous ptolemies and their having raised the library to the that shirt it is. host: does the library still exist? stacy: there is but it is not the same library. we don't know what happened to the alexandrian library. it may have been burned when julius caesar -- julius caesar was there. there is now a new library there. host: in the maps you have in the book of alexandria, there appear to be three temples of isis. who was isis or what was her reputation? host: iced -- stacy: isis is the

supreme goddess of egypt. she combines them at her, hera, combines all of the goddesses of harvest come of love, the goddess of families and eternal love, she sets the earth in motion, she has tremendous power. it's the reason women were so well respected -- you have this female deity who is the willing deity. we have many accounts of isis temples in rome having been destroyed because she was understood to be a somewhat dangerous cult. but in egypt, she reigned supreme. cleopatra dresses like isis, is worshiped as a manifestation of isis. host: does she have children? stacy: she has one child with julius caesar and twins with marc anthony. she has this remarkable ability

to get pregnant by the right people at precisely the right time. host: did they rise to prominence? stacy: they would have had she survived. it becomes a problem once -- what to do with her son with julius caesar which is one sees too many. at this point when he's a teenager, she tries to send him off to safety with a fortune, dispatches them from she dispatches him as quickly as you can from alexandria. these ultimately brought back, betrayed, brought back to alexandria and killed. the other three children are taken back to rome by octavian and raised by his sister and her household. are displayed as a triumph in rome which was over cleopatra. we lose sight of the sons we never hear about them again but the daughter is married off to the king of mauritania. she holds court for number of

years. very much as her mother had done. we lose sight of her pretty much at that point. there is a grandson, oddly enough since you asked the back room and is murdered by caligula. >> host: and that's the end of -- >> guest: as far as we know. >> host: died at 39. >> guest: which is osgood and a biography subject. someone who is fast and i showing. >> host: was she bitten by an asp? >> guest: the asp story understand why we ended up with it. it doesn't really holdst up. we've ended up with it for several reasons, one ofha whichs the asp is the sum of the chipset makes a lot of sense. it looks great in the painting, a woman with a bare breast and an asp looks terrific. women and snakes go back bg way. an association would like to romanticize. when she dies, octavian who rushes to the scene and finds

her bed,, which is not purportedly what he wants, will call in some libyan magicians, doctors who were known to be able to save people who had died of snake venom and resuscitate people have been bitten by snakes i guess is what i mean to say. because the fact they rushed to the scene the implication was it must have been a snake bite. if you go back and read the first people to write about cleopatra is death, no one mentions estate. some of them say we do not have my say we do not know how she died. the kindht of death she has witching to be a very narcotic rather thans convulsive death would indicate she was not bitten by a snake. i did a lot of research on asp at the time but would've been a much more, much more dramatic death than when she suffered and she had her ladies in waiting all die at the same time which would been a very difficult

scene after scene to ask of a single snake. pretty certain it was poisoned. she would've been -- she would've had a doctor on hand who could've clearly assisted her with that. >> host: but self-inflicted? >> guest: self-inflicted. >> host: what is her legacy? >> guest: there's a lot of hollowing costumes out there. interesting question what is her legacy. i think we look at her as this symbol of sexuality and what we lose is the fact that you had an immense, capable clear eyed, shrewd woman who ruled this extra labor expense of territory and held up the romans for two decades. so in a way to be the poster woman for being up, up, up up and i to us for reasons i discussed in the book. as a siren. >> host: how much time did you spend in the alexandria library on your research? >> guest: i spent probably an hour in the alexandria library

and none of it and research because it had not, they were very few books in a comp still new and went to visit it. i spent a lot of time in that part of the world equips interesting so little tip actra is left. the romans did everything they could to annihilate every trace of her. so in order to see here i think the best place to get a sense of her is out in the desert where she camped at the beginning of the book and when she's at work with her brother. she's got off to the eastern sinai to essentially plan how she's going to retake alexandria. the remains of that fortress exists and you can really get a sense of our world as you can from certain temples that exist. otherwise there's very little of her left. everything is in one place even the nile is in the wrong place, the coast of egypt has changed. the angle of the moon and the sun are probably all you have to

go on. the color of alexandria remains the same. to answer your question and spent a lot of time in the new york publicar library where you can read your way to the works of the ancients who were all of them so astonished and wide-eyed at the alexandria of the ancient world. >> host: what issrl your advice to someone who watches the 1963 movie cleopatra with elizabeth taylor and her husband? >> guest: get a double popcorn is my advice. there's a brilliant article about the making of the moving which i would recommend reading maybe after you seen the movie to find that what had gone into the making of it. it's almost as extraordinary a story as the movie itself. >> host: from 40 b. c., 1692 new england, what to read a quote fromm your 2015 book the witches. america's tiny rgn of terror, salem represents one of the rare moments in our enlightened past. when the candles are knocked out

and i do and seemso be groping about in the dark, a place were all gd stories begin. easy to caricature. it is the only tragedy that has acquired its own annual unrelated holiday. it is more difficult toda comprehend. what happened? >> guest: which input you like me to start with? >> host: anywhere. >> guest: hollowing seems to be our theme today.th what happened is an early 1692, january 1692, 2 little girls, 19 and 111 and a ministers house house begin to exhibit signs which they begin to rise and grimace and bark and yell and shutter and are paralyzed and unable to speak and speaking in what appeared to be nonsensical terms, andnd throwing themselves in the fireplaces and falling down a well. no one can quite figure out what

the symptoms are really meant to convey. madison in 1692 massachusetts was fairly primitive of epilepsy with no about, though burnett epileptic symptoms no one just jump to conclusions but there'd been a few years earlier an outbreak of witchcraft which event very well described by a minister in a best-selling book. those symptoms and these symptoms were identical. fairly soon thereafter, no one rushes to an immediate diagnosis, but several weeks after these girlsls begin to exhibit these signs and after they spread to another household, a diagnosis of witchcraft is made. this is in the house of the minister so it particularly difficult for people to comprehend, particularly important in its in a household of minister. the girls would have felt more on display as the ministers daughter and niece. once the diagnosis of witchcraft is suggested, then obviously of which needs to be found.

somehow in the subsequent weeks fingers avoided of the three women are named as potential suspect. that is january to favor 6092. very quickly those women are deposed. two of them say they have no idea, they are innocent, this is not they're doing. they are i should say the three most likely suspect. one is a local woman who stauffer comment by peoples houses and -- >> host: sarah good. >> guest: exactly. and being quite unpleasant with them if they didn't give her what she wanted her sheba turk out of some sort of a baker, she didn't turn out of the peoples houses because they feared she was going to burn down the barn. she's married but on lousy terms with her husband. it are known to fight with each other. she has a small child with her and she recently paid a visit to the girls at the parsonage and seemingly terrified them. the second was sarah osborne was a very litigious woman who had

been disputing the will for some time so that also major somewhat and welcomed in the community. the third and we don't have an explanation for why the third woman is named was probably an indian slave in the ministers household who would have known these girls intimately, who prayed with these girls and eaten with these girls and probably slept in the same room with his girls, and she's the third person who's whose a potential suspect. when sarah osborne and sarah good deny all instances of witchcraft, the third will offef an extraordinary kaleidoscopic immensely colorful confession. of course as soon had confessed to witchcraft, then a witchcraft trial is set in place and things that can fingers begin to point left and right. >> host: how many salem witch trials were there? >> guest: the trials go

through, , the actual trust begn in june in in october. people are deposed throughout the tim various places. the are four sets of trials. the thing was a very, very quickly once the trials begin for the following reason. fairly early on english point leftnd right and the eire bowl the afflictions the girls are suffering spread and accusations spread. fairly early on it is discovered that if youonfess to witchcrao to prison but you don't hang. so confessions begin for various reasons but particularly that went to multiply. when you confess one of the best things you can do is confess and then someone else who is perhaps actively witchcraft he was perhaps the real culprit for which the authorities are looking. at this point the entire infection come dilution whatever you want to call it begins to spread and byev the time it's or has spread to 25 pounds.

so we call it the salem witch trials it really is countywide. >> host: 14 14 women, five m, two dogs all executed for witchcraft. >> guest: when you read that line allowedst people all say -- the dogs. the order for which people are tried and which of the accused are hanged is somewhat opaque to us. the first person was tried is clearly tried because she's a person who has the longest, record, it's a prosecutor screen. she's got years of infractions, she has lied, accuse prepa's witchcraft. she's been in trouble before. it was obvious place with which to start the prosecutions. it's the men who are sometimes more unusual in the sense that some of them are very powerful men. at one point the richest man in salem is accused. it's often men who had been constables and told people things they might not have wanted to have heard.

in one case a man who expresses skepticism about the trials, which makes sense because at that point expressed skepticism about what was happening was essentially to invite an accusation. in the most prominent case it is a minister in one of previous ministers from salem village who was clearly cleared a vn who left the repair terms of use earlier, had been an abusive husband, had failed to ingratiate himself with the women of salem village i hope e was accused and he will be, sort of a mastermind of the entire delusion. start out as an epidemic of witchcraft by defendants by the end of the summer as a kind of conspiracy against the state, as a plot to overthrow america. and he is understood, he is an ex-sailor minister is understood to be a diabolical mastermind behind the entire plot. >> host: what happened to our

two original girls, abigail williams and betty parris? >> guest: betty is shipped off, she lives in a different town and we essentially have nothing of her again. abigail will be involved with the girls who go to court and, i should've said the afflictions do spread to a bunch of teenage girls, or prepubescent girls altogether, who will be in the court and their kind of exhibit a for the prosecution because as a grimace and bleed, and equipment it's very hard to deny there must be witchcraft at work because there's no other expedition for the symptoms of the schools are displaying. you have this set the course of girls who are clearly screaming and clearly suffering from something very vile. it seems to make the case that much easier to prosecute. >> host: stacey schiff, our old friend cotton mather has a role in this.

>> guest:: he does. i spent a lot of time with cotton mather. cotton mather was the author of the book which i refer to the best-selling book on the earlier witchcraft prosecutions. i should preface this by saying to a man, everyone in 1692 salem, as far as we know, did believe in witchcraft. so we does not come we should remember this is not a united people laboring with a superstition. this iswi part of parcel of the religion come to believe in god was deleted in the devil and delete and the devil was to believe in witchcraft as well. and some of this accusing, some of the finger-pointing much of it was being done out of a sense of piety, being done because you felt you were doing your good for the community identify, helping to eradicate this terrible plague of witchcraft. if you take a screenshot in your household or a screaming child in the courtroom, you were very certain, you within very certain

that you are looking at this manifestation of evil, which people like cotton mather that help to identify. so he had written it earlier book which help people to both understand what the symptoms were and what witchcraft looks like, until 1692 there had been i think 100 accusations of witchcraft, very few people were prosecuted. the prosecution rate was a quarter. that year no one who walked into the courtroom will be declared innocent. so it's a very different set of parameters. that is largely the work of cotton mather who is this young minister, he's 29, a shining light of the new england ministry and the distance from a very illustrious father. he seems to write a a book evy time he breeds. he's immensely prolific and he's a person to whom the authorities will regularly turn for help him figure out how to prosecute, how to think about witchcraft,

mystified by proper procedures and they would repeatedly turned to cotton mather to ask him to help them figure out both what the proper diagnostics are here and what is been done in the past. if you look at what cotton mather response to, those men, he is very clear and distinct but also never writes a statement that it doesn't have the word nevertheless, it appeared on the one in this and on the other hand, that. but he clearly is very interested in the prosecution for his own reasons i'll piety. i guess i say that because at the end of the epidemic after everyone has realized this has gone too far, that somehow justice has not been served, cotton mather will still privately be writing that he has no regrets that would happen to those working women, five men and two dogs because god has got new disciples. so it really sees this as an

embrace of religion in some way. >> host: so described sailor in 1692. today it's basically a suburb of boston, isn't it? >> guest: that's right. >> host: what was alike in 1692? >> guest: there were two assailants in 19 -- 1692. the village in which the witchcraft breaks out where samuel parrish is a minister. it's a tiny little town that feels much like an outpost. feels itself at the edge of the wilderness as one would put in those days. these are years whether been frequent wars against native americans, in which people felt very volatile. and at a time when the colony with itself politically vulnerable. ..

>> to the people in salem town because they're the ones on the frontier and more vulnerable in salem town which is a much larger, much wealthier community as they should see it. >> here are things that i wrote town in reading this book and tell me which apply, if any, and we're talking about the witches, class, sex, teen angst, religion, peer pressure, conspiracy theory, puritan. >> i think you pretty much covered it. it's an early manifestation of the early conspiratorial thinking and everyone has a conspiracy whether he or she wants to admit it or not. i do think the politics plays a huge role that year.

we have an inexplicable event which no one really knows how to adjudicate. no one knows how to in any way alleviate the symptoms of these girls, but the great mystery of that year for me, other than aside from what is actually ailing the children, is why the prosecution is so intent and so robust. why that year? is there 100% conviction rate which had never happened before. as i say, this is a time of political unrest in the messages in the colony and it had actually sent a royal governor packing in a sort of preview of the american revolution several years earlier and waiting to find out what its penalty was going to be, a certain amount of tension, anxiety around that and a new administration to which the judges on the court needed to prove that they were a law and order place. this was a -- this was a

community in which justice could be served. >> good afternoon and welcome to book tv. this is our in depth program to invite an author to talk about his or her body of work. we're talking about stacy schiff and we've been through two of her books and she has written six books beginning in 1994, the biography came out about the antwan, who wrote "the little prince". and vera, and that's about vladimir nobokov's wife. the writer of lolita. france, the birth of a nation came out in 2005 cleopatra,

2015. and recent book, the revolutionary, samuel adams we'll get into in just a minute. we want to let now how to participate as well. 202-748-8200 in you live in east and central time zone, 8201 in the pacific time zone and text message to stacy schiff as well 202-748-8903 is that number, for text messages only. please include your first name and your city, if you would. we'll also scroll through our social media sites. so, you can make a comment on twitter or facebook as well. just remember,@book tv is the handle for that. we'll begin taking those in just a minute. before we leave salem, how does salem celebrate or acknowledge

their history today? >> what happens after the trials, in the immediate aftermath of the trials is a stunning silence. a stunning silence which is almost universal. certain books are purged those months. the town that-- books that samuel would have kept for the salem village ministry is purged. people's correspondences, private diaries, those nine months disappear and it's years, even in the early 18th century when some of the survivors were offered restitution for family members they lost, the word witchcraft is rarely mentioned and they talk about the recent unpleasantness and no one wants to mention that loaded word witchcraft, there's clearly regret and shame and tenderness around what had happened that year that nobody would talk about it and actually, when

arthur miller goes back to salem in the 1950's, he finds that people were unwilling to talk about it, that it was an unmentionable thing and then in a stunning turn of events, an episode of bewitched was filmed in salem and suddenly, witches made the difference. >> did that make the difference? >> i think the age, some studio burned and they had a great idea let's do it in salem, an arbitrary decision. and suddenly, there was a full scale embrace of the past and in the way which contorted the witches as we understood them in the 17th century, a construct of religion and as we construct them today. a wizard of oz kind of construct and salem now, i think, this is your question, is halloween central and a place that celebrates the magic, the wickens, the history, all that sort of

looped together in a sort of superstitious stew, which isn't quite as solemn as the events might call for. >> so, given the fact that there was a scrub of this nine months, was it hard to do the research for the witches? >> it's hard doing the research for this book because we don't have the core records. we have the depositions for that year so we know preliminarily they said they can construct a little bit of the courts things and pointed out that the court papers may have been prefunctory. you have little in terms of personal diaries and the only one is samuel sto one of the witchcraft judges.

and comes to terms slowly and tenderly what happens in that year and writes about it in the dary and the only one that apologizes for his role. >> stacy schiff, what's your interpretation. >> what happens? >> what seems to ail the girls does conform, we have a lot of description what they looked like in the middle of these trances and paroxsms. what was known as hysteria and what is known today as conversion disorder. there's other evidence of that breaking out usually in similar cases in the sense of isolated communities among adolescent girls living together and which has a sort of contagious effect. so, that does seem to hold up from the many printed descriptions we have of the girls and their antics and what

we now today know as conversion disorder. as to why the robust prosecution, as i think our friend cotton mather had a great deal to do with it and when the court looks to him, and he says a speedy and vigorous prosecution would be in order although he qualifies that, and the attempt for masses to prove itself as a place that understood the law and could adjudication and the eyes of the crown was important and head of the witchcraft court in particular is eager to do that because he had been a very politically eye guile player in several earlier administrations and here, really wanted to prove that he was able to prove the authorities in massachusetts. >> the text message for you, ended quickly, what happened to

quickly end the witchcraft trials? >> a number of things happened over the course of the fall. massachusetts at this point appointed a new governor and he is not a member of this monolith of religious authorities which banded together to found the witchcraft court. he's a little more not skeptical, but doesn't buy into this apparatus as the others do. the accusations have gone so far afield they've begun to touch people in power. obviously, now there's a moment, wait, could there possibly be this many witches aloft in the massachusetts baycol-- bay colony and could they be in power? and it was fall, and time to start filling your cellar for the winter. and the new governor reached out to the new york ministers who were not themselves puritan

and who wanted another opinion and those ministers essentially submit a very different answers to him than cotton mather and his colleagues, so it's a number of things coming together at that point. you also, at the end of that, in that fall, have a couple of people who very quietly and anonymously begin to speak up, which had been a very dangerous, as i said, a delicate thing to have done and very dangerous thing to have done and one of those was a young 35-year-old harvard educated anglican, thomas pratter, spoke up anonymously, and a long and things, on the girls seeing things with their eyes closed, that's not seeing things, that's imagination. and the prosecution as what they were do would regret for

years and put a stain on new england. >> were these trials well-known throughout new england? >> one of the lousy things about 1692, no newspapers. yes, it was known by word of mouth and certainly people were worried in other communities, in eastern massachusetts because accusations had spread to those communities, but there's no news account as we would sort of understand it, which could be disseminated, but an interesting part of that year, one of the things actually that attracted me to the story was how much oral culture and internet culture had in common and how quickly the news and the accusations and the reputations could be both spread and decimated. some of-- many of the people girls accused of witchcraft are people they never met when the accusation comes to their doorstep they're flabbergasted they never met the girls, how could they be accused by them. >> true or false, ben franklin

was not in the colonies during the entirety of revolutionary war. >> true, he leaves in 1776. he is for a little piece, but returns 1785 and for those years he's based in paris. >> what was his role? >> when congress declares independence, it has a problem on its hands, it wants to declare independence, but what it really needs to do is to find a foreign power who will help it to bank role its revolutions. the two questions are tied up together. there's one find a suitor first or does one declare independence first? essentially the conclusion seems to have been that one needed to declare independence to be able to visit a foreign power, would you like to help us undermine the british. when you're in the 18th century

to undermine the british, the first port of call is france. bengal men-- benjamin franklin is tis patched to france, they have no men, no material, no munitions, no money and it's his job. and he's appointed in that role, congress understands, he's spent time in europe and understood to be a framed celebrity in paris and understood to speak fresh, which alas he doesn't entirely do once he first arrives in any case. >> could, in your view, the american revolution have happened without the money from france? >> no, not in my view. someone would have had to underwritten this and really the only candidate at that point was france and i should say that france had been watching the colonies very closely. far more closely in a funny way than the colonies had been

watching themselves and anticipated there would be a day when they would have this opportunity to essentially annihilate their ancient rival as they saw it and to undermine the british possessions in north america and at every juncture where there's a colonial collision with london, the french are-- are getting reports almost as quickly as london is getting reports. >> louis are the 16th, marie antoinenette reigned. >> after saratoga, there was a treaty of alliance, he finally is understood to be the french ambassador, the french minister shall the american minister, i'm sorry, to france and he goes to court, his obligation to go to court weekly to pay

homage to louis the 16th, which is the bain of france's existence because it's a long courage ride from his home to versailles and for a man with gout. and researched that to the hilt, i realized if franklin went to court every week with the ambassadorial corps and stood around then all of the other foreign ambassadors who were all of them utterly transfixed by whatever that thing was that was going on in north america, would have written accounts back to their home courts of benjamin franklin in court. and a lot of the material of the books was fund in the portugese archives, other archives, they were ambassadors watching franklin closely and were able to report. >> what about franklin and the english ambassador? >> the english ambassador is a

man of immense dexterity and sophistication and franklin arrives and almost not immediately, but very quickly recalled once franklin is recognized at court. 's doing everything he can to undermine his efforts. and franklin is doing everything covertly with a few friends and french friends who are very interested in the machinations behind the scenes and trying hard to reveal everything they're doing and find out there are these conniving americans in their midst and versailles is playing no there's no gambling in our casino, those are not munitions you're seeing shipped to america, i don't know what you're seeing. >> ben franklin louis says, is called the father of america. >> there's a wonderful conversation-- i'm sure off the cuff remark of franklin's, i can't remember which foreign ambassador reported on this, at the moment

when america is recognized by france and it's an astonishing moment. it's an unthinkable thing for a monarchy to have founded a republic. and this has never happened before. a monarchy has underwritten a new country and franklin goes to court for the official recognition, and in the few minutes he spends with louis the 16th he says, as he's leaving, something along the lines now going to butcher it slightly, but if all monarchs ruled with the benevolence in your heart, republishes would never be formed, which is kind after treasonous thing to say. >> let's get to some calls, we've made it through three books and have not touched samuel adams her most recent. if you've read it you can make a comment. cornelius, alexandria, thanks

for calling in, you're on the air. cornelius, i apologize, i forgot to punch the button. [laughter] >> you want to silence me, peter. anyway, peter and stacy, god bless both of you all and thank you so much for writing about cleopatra. i'm here in alexandria, louisiana, miss stacy, and what i want to ask you is that if you had a chance to write about the woman king that this new movie is out, so that's my question for you. god bless you and really enjoy in depth, peter. >> is that the viola davis vehicle you're talking about cornelius? he's gone. >> i think that is viola davis. and towns and cities alexandria, that's a great idea. i'm looking for a new subject i should say that right off. i'm sure we are going to come

up with one today. >> you spend about five to seven years between your books, why? >> i don't seem to be able to do it more quickly is the short answer. i'm usually researching for a good three years and i tend-- i have a lot of friends who do this in what i consider to be in a more efficient way, but they write while they research, i can't seem to do that because i don't know the confines of the material or the arc. story. i just don't know where i'm going to go until i've immersed myself into the material so usually in the archives for a good three years and by that point my three, three and a half years in you realize you're ready to write and steep in your mind and eager to get to your desk. and once you're writing, you hit a pothole and research. >> rip from texas writes in,

can you talk about your techniques over 30 years of writing, in the introductory notes to the adams book, volumes that i have regularly pulled from the shelf. is your research still old school as in books, legal pads and note cards? >> revealing to me to be the dinosaur that i am. not note cards, i'm happy to report, at least on that count. very much legal pads. obviously, archives i'm working with a computer, but i'm very old school in the sense that when i read an article, for example, that i think i'm going to be going back to or useful i want to print it out and write on the margins because those are the notes at that usually wind up somehow leading to something that's going to begin to simmer into the book. i guess the short answer is, i keep the computer files when i

go into the archives, and i keep paper files which are my subject. for example, with the samuel adams book, it would have been a stamp file, a sugar file, personal file, family file, land bank or the boston tea party and then sometimes those are subdivided depending how large the category is. and i write on a legal pad with a pencil for the very simple-- well, for two reasons, a, i've done it that way, i'm superstitious like all writers, it slows me down. i type more quickly than i think, certainly, and i think we all go on at greater length when it's easier to and typing is really easy whereas when you're writing, i think my thoughts are more distilled when i wrote and i feel like i wrote with more concission. it's arduous writing.

and i'll have the first draft and then etiquette in the computer. you're rephrasing as do that. and subsequent drafts are computer printouts there. >> i wasn't sure i was going to mention this, but in reading you, you seem to have fun writing and fun in your sentence structure. fun is such a bad word to use, but there's how it struck me. >> i'm so glad. there's meant to be delight in the lines for the reader so that's the important thing. >> delight, much better word. >> and i think that comes to me only on the page and if i'm younger on the screen, but the collisions, the ideas coming together only happens as i actually sit down to write and the beauty of this and the thrill of this for me when you sit down in the morning, you don't know what's in store and all sorts of anxiety.

you don't know what's going to happen between here and there. and that's where i think the thrill is for the reader, or i hope that the thrill is for the reader. >> buddy, thank you for holding on. you're with author stacy schiff. >> hi, stacy, i really enjoyed your program this morning. i was curious about if you considered about eva perron or alexandria alexander hamilton, and-- >> why eva perron or alexander hamilton. >> i was interested in her and i read a long book about alexander hamilton and he was really interesting, he was. if they would ever-- i can't remember the author, but like 700 page book and it was absolutely great. and they shouldn't put that in the--

in the united states, something's wrong with the united states, i'm telling you. thank you. >> thank you, buddy. that 700 page book is by ron chernow and i can't agree more with the schools in america. and 700 pages, because of that i would not write a book about alexander hamilton because that book is not to be rivaled. and eva perron, it's a trouble writing about someone where i don't speak the language. that's come up a few timings. and i do not speak russian, but i had a translator and lucky enough, the book begins in russia and makes its way across europe and basically, it's a

tri-party book, and he writes in english in correspondence. the russian material was somewhat limited. i've been wary of a book where i can't read the native language. >> speaking of, why did you write about vera rather than vladimir. >> she was utterly central to the story, but had not written and both wrote,here's a whole at the center of story and that didn't seem right. i relatively. it was a very, very close lile about her from the start anal but one of the books is dedicated to her. and when you look at that, there's a story in that page and dedicate your books to her,

every book is dedicated to her, she was jewish, he was not. and that was in that world unusual. and she carried a gun in her purse. and when he was in cornell-- on some level this is what i mean about the private questions embedded in the book, i think i was probably interested in writing about a marriage. i was newly married myself at the time. i wanted-- it was my second book. i wanted two lives or a family life, something that was structurally more intricate or more ambitious than my first book had been and she was the perfect vehicle to get at him. not only had people said she was central tohe story, but he was famously difficult and famously controlling and i th if you could look at him through the marriage a through the two people who made their marriage a workle out.

>> and you won the pulitzer for the biography of that book. >> i did, i did. >> when lolita came out, what was the reaction? >> their leadership with lolita, a middle aged man who fell in love with a 12-year-old girl. a little problematic for us today. vera was his greater defender. and at one point, nabokov, frustrated the way trying to make it work tried to burn the manuscript. vera comes in and saves it from the flame. and she actually herself takes it in a package to new york to try to find a publisher for it because they were afraid of entrusting it to the mail because it could have been considered obscene.

so she's always from the beginning, its greatest defender. i don't think either one of them could possibly have anticipated in what seemed at the time an unsaleable book that it would become in 1958 this run away best seller, that would allow them to completely reinvent themselves yet again, and in fact, allow him to retire from teaching at cornell and move back to switzerland. a novel finally after all of these years after believing himself a complete genius puts him on the map in general genius, and a brand of english no one had before. >> what was it about that. >> this was 1950's america. it's interesting, the book was attacked in its prime to the right and today it's been attacked by the left. so it's a controversial book no matter how you look at it.

but, yes, this book includes scenes between middle age men and nonconsenting 12-year-old girl that are extremely sexual and extremely colorful to say the least. it is a novel about an obsession, about a passion, a novel about america in many ways, but at its heart an ill list love story, but publishered abroad the understanding that no american publisher would touch it. and walter took the dive and thought he might be prosecuted, and it's published in america. and it was at the same time as dr. zhivago, and he loved seeing lolita getting ahead it on the list. >> mark, you're on the phone

with stacy schiff. >> hey, stacy, you seem very knowledgeable and make a lot of good points and very interesting. i wanted to ask you about witchcraft. i guess that's what the topic was when i first tuned in. i want to ask you whether in writing the book whether you actually-- you're a historian, i guess, but isn't wicca actually like a religion that many people follow? >> thanks for the question, mark. it is. and i didn't spend a lot of time-- i spent a lot of time with wickens because i spent a lot of time in salem, but i didn't spend a lot of time attaching that story to the 17th century because i was immersing myself in the theology of the time. when you go back and look at

it, what's interesting about the witchcraft literature is how specific it is and it doesn't have anything to do with what a wiccan believes today. it's really-- in this case, an outgrowth of what the puritans made of witchcraft. as you know, there were witchcraft trails all over the world in the middle ages and through the 17th century. by the time we get to 1692 most countries are no longer prosecuting, persecuting women as witchcraft, and outlaud in many countries. massachusetts has been insulated by its ministry, for those messages. and it's holding to this belief in witchcraft and a witch, i should say it was a biblical construct, thought to be accomplice of the devil and did the work and animals played role in the salem story. and the literature about her was codified.

a witch was understood only to cry from the left eye and three tears at a time. and tests to tell if someone were a witch. as you know, putting a witch in water was a way to tell if someone were a witch. there were codifications and specifications through the ages, ap the new england ministry had all of that literature under its belt. so it's an unusual moment in the sense that you have a bun bunch of men and they're all men and the phenomenon led astray in many ways by their reading. i spent a lot of time in short with that body of work because it helps us to understand what the court was thinking and what the people thought they were seeing when they looked at these writing girls. >> stacy schiff before we get too far from matt in savannah talking about alexander hamilton, what was the relationship if any, between

samuel adam, ben franklin, alexander hamilton. >> hamilton isn't on the radar because he's so much younger, franklin and adams were a generation older, thomas jefferson, auld enough to be their father are although jefferson and samuel adams have a tight relationship. and they're both from boston. and one left for philadelphia. i don't think they meet until 1770, one moment franklin went back to boston, and tried hard to figure it out. i don't think they crossed paths. and franklin, there was a lot of correspondence, and adams will be slow to believe that franklin is sufficiently revolutionary, as are man people.

many people find ben franklin's politics suspect because he's been in great britain for years and taken on british airs and tried hard to keep the empire together and has come from massachusetts to be a little more cautious, a little more prudent than its being and adams seems to think perhaps he's not on the side of liberty. very quickly the two of them will realize that's not true and they become friends in philadelphia. it's interestingly, samuel adams that makes franklin a great patriot because the news of the boston tea party will arrive in london as ben franklin is held responsible for the cashless, stolen letters published by samuel adams and friends in massachusetts and franklin is hauled before the privy council in london and roundly

humiliated days after word that the tea is marinating in boston harbor. and it's certainly that dressing down that makes him the ardent patriot that he becomes. so in a funny way, it's samuel adams indirectly, who makes ben franklin the patriot. >> give us a sense. how long did it take for london to find out about the tea party? >> quickly. in this case, it was january word arrived and mid december the tea fell overboard. >> it was a quick shift. what's the shortest time span that could happen. >> three weeks or so, and it could be as many as a couple of months. so, but i think when franklin sailed for france, i think he set sea for a month, and it could take a while and that disconnect explains a lot of the -- a lot of the problems. >> a lot of the troubles of the colonial relationship because

very often a royal governor will write back to london for instructions on what to do, and there's a month, and then he has to wait for his answer and there's at least another month. it's faster in one direction than the other so there's a lag with being able to respond in any responsible way to what the colonists are doing or thinking. >> were ships sailing daily. >> i don't think they're daily, definitely not daily from massachusetts. at this point boston has fallen a little behind new york and philadelphia. and i don't know about new york and philadelphia shipping schedules. really good on boston though. and you waited for the right ship. i think they may be smaller vessels, but for a big ship you booked your passage several weeks out so that was an event. >> bill, rockland, california, please go ahead with your comments or questions. >> and ms. schiff, in the books, they're wonderful and in addition 0 chronicling your

sources, what do you look to as a writer that makes a good end note and what do you believe the value is for a reader to read notes as they are consuming the book? >> bill, before you hang up. what made you pick up the samuel adams book? >> oh, i love history and american history and i've known ms. schiff's work and think she's a great writer and i nonfiction writers as she said in an e-mail, unscramble the eggs. >> thank you, sir. >> bill, that's such a lovely question. there's nothing better than knowing that someone reads your end notes partly because there's a certain circle in hell that's end note hell at least for me. i've not found a way to write skeletal end notes while i'm writing because that takes you

away from the narrative. so i kind of make primitive notations within the text and ultimately grow up and become the end notes, but that's two or three years later and which time i can't read my handwriting anymore and i'm reading notes a slight trail earlier. for that reason you can overand notate. i don't think you need to annotate the new york times on d-day. you're looking from a great number of sources and you want to be able to sort of give the reader a bouquet of what the sources are in case they want to go back to them and obviously, any material that's directly quoted must be annotated otherwise it's invalid. and i sometimes do the former of that bouquet as a head note for every chapter. you can see, for example, in the cleopatra book, and those

come from neighbor 30 ancient chronicler. and i glom those into notes. and i spoke to 50 and those are all in one end note. sometimes interpretations, interesting little bits, you know, the dirty secret of end notes is when your editor has cut out something that you really want to put back in, the dirty secret you i can stick it in your end note and you can project get away with that. little bits and pieces of things are integral to the book and editor may not agree that it's integral to the book could be in the end notes. >> what percentage of your time is in the end notes in the totality of the writing. >> probably six or eight overcaffeinated weeks after i finished writing the book. you think you're finished and hit your deadline, guess what you haven't written the end notes yet. there's always a mad scramble

to pull everything off the shelf and inevitably there are two or three you can't construct how you came up with this or you can't find the source. that's helped tremendously now so many books are on google and you can google search the document. my first books that was not available to me. in the book, material unpublished from an archive in switzerland or from an archive at the new york public library and none of the material was online and i couldn't search that way. >> 1994, your first book is published, a biography, and i don't mean that offensively, but who were you writing that for? >> you, peter. all of these years later. you know, i had been in public r publishing, the source, genesis of the book is that i had been in publishing and read

wind, sand and stars, which is one of the biggest selling books. and was surprised by how brilliantly it held up. it's one of the best accounts we have of flight. it's a generous book, and made me go back to the rest of it and discovered that he had done much writing in new york and had had various relationships with various americans which were instrumental in the work and i noticed there wasn't a book on the shelf that really did him justice, i thought. so i was looking for a writer who i could commission, i was with simon schuster, looking to do that, and every time i went to lunch to mention it, and i left my job m publishing to

write this book and then i thought i'd go back to publishing. i'm not sure i had an ideal reader in mind, but that he was ripe for discovery. writers don't necessarily lead interesting lives. he leads a fascinating life and it conflats to that keep your hero in trouble, he's constantly in trouble, crashing an aircraft or unable to find himself in an aircraft, it's a deeply-- a romantic life, and there was a sense to wanting to bring the literature back into focus and so many people are crazy about the little prince and don't know the origins and the pain of the them. >> and how did it do? >> i think seven copies, i think you have one, maybe eight. it sold nine copies. >> and you won the puitzer

with the next book. >> i did. >> have all of your books been best sellers. no, cleopatra outsold all the rest combined and then the witches. >> mike, detroit, good afternoon. >> yeah, yeah, you you've covered a lot of ground from cleopatra to the enlightenment for sure. you know, one thing that fascinated me about rome, ancient rome and egypt they had the huge pantheon of gods. how did that maneuver that. they didn't have the scientific knowledge we have or the scientific method and was it-- cleopatra and caesar took on god-like, and did they really believe in the pantheon of gods? >> it's such is a great point you made and we probably should

have mentioned it. thank you for bringing it up. they believe in the pantheon of gods and cleopatra with the relationships with goddesses and in rome, a female supporting, a female friendly cult, when cleopatra is summoned by marc anthony to appear before him and pars that great entrance about what shakespeare writes, she says in advance to marc anthony as she makes her way up, this is vee venus comforting herself. and take themselves, associate themselves with gods and goddesses and very much the vocabulary at the time. a great point. let's hear from carman in new york city. please go ahead with your question or comment. >> yeah, you're on.

>> hello. >> hey, got it turn down the volume on your tv and go ahead and ask your question, okay? >> okay, my question is back to salem, there were only females, no males and why? >> thank you, carman. >> thank you, i think you mean among the accused and there were both men and women accused. ultimately there would be 14 women and five men executed. the accusations begin only with women. fairly quickly thereafter, men are added to that mix. it's a very-- it's obviously very difficult to say who was accused and why. at a certainly point, for example, the minister of the neighboring town of andover discovers he's related to something like 30 witches and people around him are being

accused of witchcraft and one of the men accused is john proctor whose name appears in the crucible and becomes a character in arthur miller's the crucible and he's accused because he doesn't buy into what's happening and he said he would rather thrash his servant rather than let her go to the depositions taking place at this point. because of his skepticism he's probably named. anyone who is in any way a standout. anyone who had firm opinions, people who-- elizabeth proctor, john proctor's wife who had a book in her pocket all the time. people who were overintelligent were often accused. among the women, relatives, whose female relatives earlier had been accused or themselves had earlier been accused. among the men, hit or miss, it's not quite so scientific. yes, men and women are both

accused. the only thing, i should say mothers accuse daughters, daughters accuse grandmothers, and the only become relationship that's not compromised is fathers and sons never seemed to accuse each other. husbands would say of their wives, i always suspected she was a witch. >> and executions 14 women, five men and two dogs. why dogs? >> they were understood to be die ddiabolical accomplices. but if so, he wouldn't have died when they shot him. a lot of questions about this. >> walter, hi. >> a wonderful program. miss schiff, years ago in college i had a revolutionary war class and the professor

said that he had-- he highly suspected it was sam adams who fired the first shot at lexington and i was wondering what your thoughts were on this? >> thanks, walter. i think that adams gets a lot of credit for things he didn't do, especially among the crown officers in boston. gets credit for a lot of things he doesn't do and doesn't get credit for things he did to. one thing i am fairly certain that he did not fire the first shot. he's in lexington as the troops march out. and we know that paul revere gets on his horse and gallops wildly west that night, but i think none of us really thought for a minute to think where was paul revere was actually going? he's been dispatched, in fact, by samuel adams, his closest associate to warn adams and hancock that they're about to

be arrested. and the reason had a revere gets that message is that actually was the order from london. the lord from london to general gage in boston was to arrest them quickly as possible, the essential first act. there was nothing in there with collecting munitions in concord. gage, for whatever reason and i think i know the reason, sends the message with his officers that they are to collect the munitions in concord. he doesn't mention actually arresting adams and hancock, i think would have been too dangerous at that point. 's not eager to detonate a revolution. paul revere goes at night and his message to warn adams and hancock, who not as quickly as they should have finally vacate the par sonnage and hiding in a swamp a few miles from lexington when the shots are fired. paul revere will be on hand. he'll be near the village green

at that moment. he'll hear the first shots, but not see them and adams and hancock are a few miles safely away. >> text message related. would the colonies have declared independence samuel adams didn't exist? >> i think it's pretty clear to the french who were watching all of this, that were the colonies were independence bound or bound towards some sort of rupture with great britain. what adams does in a way rather dazzling, i think, articulate what the thinking is to essentially funnel these ambiant ideas out of the air, give them vocabulary, disseminate them and then stand by them over the course of 14 years when-- or 12 years, i guess, when everyone else has vacillated. deserted the cause, not necessarily decided that this is-- that american rights and privileges are worth fighting

for. but for the fact that he insists on the measures and articulates these measures, i think we owe him a massive debt. would we have got there anyway? there are a lot of other people who are right into the similar subjects at a similar time just not as articulately. >> and the relationship between john and john quincy and sam adams? >> one the other great contributions of sam adams, immense recruiter of men. he's good at recognizing talent and folding the new recruits into the cause and one of his earliest recruits is his younger cousin john. 13 years younger and he looks up to samuel in a sort of starry-eyed way and samuel was more urbane, older cousin and he's starry-eyed when he looks at samuel. john is very much in samuel's

thrall. and later they don't see eye to eye, by the time america is founded they know longer see eye to eye. in the interim in 1770's when john adams is sent to france to reportedly assist ben franklin, who couldn't assist at all. sexual , samuel is so much more influential and a greater samuel adams is so much more than john. >> and the defense secretary after the boston massacre. >> conversations between the two cousins in 1770 must have been remarkable and the massacre takes place in march. that fall, john serves as a defense attorney for the soldiers. among his colleagues is someone who only took the job because samuel adams insisted he do

so-so he also had a role in recruiting john for that defense team and obviously there were a number of reasons to do so you wanted to adjudicate this properly, you wanted for some secrets not to come to light. john could be counted on to do both things, but john does manage to see all but two of the men are exonerated. he masterly argues the case and acquitted. samuel after the acquittal will spent six months relitigaing the case in the papers despite miss cousin john. and they're close at that point it's clearly the result that they might have liked from the start. >> steve, barrington, new jersey, text message, i just finished samuel adams. after all the time you spent on him, do you come away liking him? i'm not sure if i do. >> (laughter) >> i did see the sense of -- i don't know about liking, i came

off admiring him tremendously. and i tell you why. the things on which he insists and the things that he really models are things -- austerity, integrity, selfless public service, all of these things, the dignity of the man i found sob stunning and very unusual and especially these days, very inspirational. were there a lot of book room negotiations and a great deal of strong arming and things like relitigaing the boston massacre trials, straight up, yes. they were always done he knew he was on the side of the angels and the strategy i think there was some wild in there, but john adams' descriptions of samuel bear up and tend to be descriptions of him as being very refined, very decorous,

and affable and a man on the side prudence and caution which is unusual in a revolutionary. >> a question for you eva perron, and steve in barrington, new jersey. next book, leo derocher, i'm not kidding. if ms. schiff has never heard of him. >> my website is stacy schiff.com. send me the information. >> have you heard of leo derocher. >> i have not. >> baseball. a long time manager, i believe with the cubs, and i'll be corrected shortly, i'm sure. >> okay. >> yeah, just kind of a gruff little guy. >> interesting. it's very funny because i had been toying with a sports figure. so someone is clearly reading my mind. >> who have you been toying with? >> i have not mention it had to my publisher or agent yet, this is not the forum which to do

so. >> looking at any book, what's the word, options for movies? that you can talk about? >> yes. and i guess the one to talk about is a great improvisation will be an apple mini series probably early next year with michael douglas playing ben franklin and i can tell you that it is the most beautiful thing, i think it's great, but it's the most sumptuous piece of film you've ever seen. it's just -- ever image in the series is like a 18th century painting. >> have you been able to consult on the series? >> i consulted on some of the writing, but the rest of it is someone else's baby, not mine. the director is an immensely talented man time von patton and done an extraordinary job. shot in french? >> shot in paris and right where franklin stood in the hallways where franklin walked,

interiors that look very much what would have been his home which was just outside of paris at the time. with his grandson in tow, played by noah, and a beautiful job. it's a piece of american history that takes place abroad and we therefore have lost and lost sight of because it's a part of the revolution i think we would prefer not to remember because we didn't do it ourselves, someone else helped us. we'd focus on george washington as opposed to what ben franklin did for the war. >> after the war when he came back to the colonies or the states, it wasn't a grand reception, was it? >> no, it's very poignant. he comes back almost like rip van winkle, franklin's return to america. he's been gone eight and a half years, he's not certain whether he should return. he's comfortable in france, beloved in france, a celebrity a woman he very much might like to spend his life with, but on

the other hand, what is this nation that he's helped to create. he can't help, but to want to see it and his family is here after all and he arrives only able to recognize people by their voices, can you imagine, he's been gone so long. very much disoriented, wondering how he's to be thanked for these eight and a half years that he's spent abroad and he considers to be the most difficult assignment of his life, which it surely was, and the answer is not really at all. nobody really wants to think about our debt to a foreign power. we'd much prefer to think this was the little country that did and had. and there's no recompense for him and recognition for his grandson which he counted and he sees other people being reimbursed for charges abroad and doesn't understand entirely why he's left out of the good graces of congress. >> he survived for another three years or so,

constitutional convention, governor of pennsylvania at one point afterwardsments he dies in 1790, exactly. >> so portland, maine, thanks for holding, you're on with author stacy schiff. hi, stacy. when you were talking about the library alexandria, you seemed to skip over like who destroyed-- there's always been this rumor that some christian bishop destroyed that library. so what's your take on that? >> i may have skipped over the rumor. there are a lot of rumors, i don't know the one about the christian bishop. there's a question mark, how big the actual holdings of the library. how vast the holdings of the library were and what its state was. we know that an earthquake carried off what remained of it. ... it, there are some theories it was a casualty of the alexandria war. it is one of the great

unresolved mysteries, which may be one day will be resolved. they are evidently still pieces of it still pieces of it in the harbor of alexander underwater. i have not seen this with my own eyes. >> host: victor out in los angeles. >> caller: i'm really enjoying this interview. my question is about the relationship between mark anthony and julius caesar. i read julie caesar, my favorite order. was it a jealousy doing market me and julius caesar? what was a rivalry about? was because -- seems cleopatra admired both of them. >> it's an interesting situation. after caesar's death, but say cleopatra has a child with a julius caesar and then winds up

in rome which i don't think most of us seem to place or when caesar is murder. she ends up with the child with caesar on rome on the ides of march when caesar is murder. she's very quickly shuttled out of town and returns to egypt. after caesar's death there's a number of essentially claimants to his mantle. one of those among the closest of those is marc antony. who is a very different man from caesar. caesar was precision andn control. marc antony was a a more impetuous, compassionate character. marc antony is kind of a frat boy.on marc antony just assumes he will be the air to caesar's mantle. when he doesn't understand, no one counts on caesar will name as his heir the young untried yellow haired, slightly frail octavian who becomes a guest is

of course here it comes as a surprise everyone. in those days after caesar's murder, here's i should say, there is a real sort of reshuffling of the most important and his powerful in rome. of attacks made against caesar's form associates. cleopatra's to figure out somehow have to navigate her way amongig these claimants to figue out where, who is best going to guarantee her and egypt's future. she's very hesitant at first to come to any eight. as one appeals to contribute to the efforts come to contribute money. she tries as hard as you can to hold back and only she'll throw in her hat with marc antony. >> host: do we know were cleopatra is buried? >> guest: we do not know where cleopatra is married. there is a modern theory about which you may have read that she is buried at a temple west of

alexandria. there is ae dig being done periodically, a difficult place today. >> host: is a still gone? >> guest: i think it is still going on. i haven't read about it for a while.t it's difficultlt partly because the water table is exactly right to dig. digg when mubarak was in residence and all kinds of restrictions. we know plutarch if plutarch can be believed cleopatra makes a trip to marc antony to want a day of her death. she would not have been able to do that if indeed that is where this took place. i don't know, we do not know the answer to your question although it's not a possible we will discover a toe one day. >> host: use in 70 years after the death of cleopatra he's writing, so who knows what he's writing? what was his importance in the roman empire? >> guest: he's not the

dispassionate chronicler, often is proving a point. he's often making a point with a life of marc antony for example, is a a portrait of dissipatioo some extent. he is writing with a certain position. but let me put his perspective, let me put his position, when marc antony is in alexander with cleopatra, the two of them are having feast after fees and revelry after rubbery. a lot going on in kitchen where pigs are being roasted dozens of pigs roasted daily. one of the cooks and vice in a friend off his is a a medical student so he can see this extraordinary act being performed in the kitchen. that student who gets to see the magic behind the kitchen, this is the kitchen hands-down the story to his grandson who tells itit to plutarch.

in any case they get a sense of the close plutarch iss to event. >> host: next call for stacey schiff come from elizabeth in oklahoma city. you were on booktv, elizabeth. >> caller: thank you. stacey, in doing genealogical research on 17th century maine, i read a book in the devils snare. her . that many alleys two of the young accusers in salem had been part of or in garrison houses attacked by the natives. the psychological part of that i think she plays muses. what if that is part of your story and your history of the witches? >> guest: thabsolutely. these people are under she in so many ways. it's hard for us to get our mind about how vulnerable they would've felt. several of these girls had been

orphaned, and all of them because of wars with the native americans in those years, almost all of the girls, this will be true with a later epidemic of these similar symptoms can when that happened in new york not too long ago, several of these girls are living in homes where they're there not with their biological families or particularly with their biological father. they are very often orphans of the wars or girls have been apprenticed out to other households. everyone in salem village would've known either a family member or a friend who was a victim or had been mutilated and all these wars. it had been very traumatic. in essence anyone in new england would've conjured in her mind how she would deal with being taken captive our meeting with some intruder in the night. because when you read these accounts you very often here i confession of i had read a captivity and ie thought what i would do in that position, or i

did know if that was the devil or if there was an indian in my parler. or a had a dream in which there was this dark person. everyone is clearly working from a similar playbook of fears, and i should they are compounded in sermon. you see a lot of the imagery as well in some of the witchcraft testimony. you have a whole culture for lack of a better word of fears here that in particular the girls and the women would have shared. a yes, there's clearly some kind of frontier drama. to that you would also have come to that ii would add a certain amount of just teenage angst, these are years when imagine a world plays a very great role. nvidia girls like abigail hobbs, one of the girls who early on move the trials on very forcibly and she does in a way that most teenage girls like to be able tt say to the parents come i'm done with you. she basically sells both of her parents down the river and in

doing so really amplifies the fears that a bit at play until that point. >> host: text message to follow-up on that. this is from rita. i have been a clinical psychology for 25 years and i have always believed that there was a a very high probabilityf childhood sexual abuse within those communities. i see itt all the time in work i been doing and i'm wondering if you researched any of this regarding the hysteria and conversion reactions of the young women? >> guest: i researched that about as well as one can. i'll tell you why it's particularly easy to research. 17th century new england was a very litigious placement 17th century new englanders were very expert bookkeepers except for when it came to the nine months of the trials. we have this marvelous set of documents which are called the records, the documents of essex county which are nine volumes, 11 volumes, i'm not forgetting, of court cases of the previous years. inol those cases you see a lot f

the tensions that wouldse eruptn the course of the 1692, a lot of the confrontations between the families who would come to blows in 1692 and you also see a lot of sexual abuse, a lot of servant girls who accuse their masters abuse. he see a lot of girls who were abused at the hands of his fellow servants in the families. people hauled into court fairly often for sexual misdemeanors. you have a lot of pitchforks in the salem testimony. what you don't have is any girl that year who had made any accusation of a sexual assault of any kind. i think those girls would've felt under siege in this way as well but there was nothing i could connect between that prior testimony in with her so much detail about all of these assaults and this mishandling, and what the girls are suffering from at that moment. >> host: to use the word servants, not slaves. no slavery in 1692?

>> guest: the girls were servants apprenticed servants and other households. it's a curiosity about that moment in new england. kids were farmed outki to homes not their own. no one is entirely sure as to why this practice came to be. but the understanding seem to be the adults could better teach and discipline you than your own parents might be able to. many of these afflicted girls were servants in other peoples households and that was how to omit to be. t that was their her apprenp really for those years. >> host: the role of the broomstick and how that came into being for witches? >> guest: which is at salem are for the most part anglo-saxon witches by which i mean they conformed to theey literature and the imagery of the community from which these had come come with two exceptions. they fly. witches have not flown in new england before 1692 and they have, indulge in a diabolical

sabbath. when i see there was his plan to undermine america, it took place at this sabbath which many people gave it very colorful details about. those two elements came from continental witches, witchcraft. continental witches in the demolition to have lot more fun than anglo-saxon witches. it tend to haveun much more sexl concrete more sexual dynamics and to really disrupt households in much more perverse ways than the anglo-saxon witch. those two elements probably in my mind came to new england thanks to our print cotton mather written about an epidemic of witchcraft in his previous books, and those elements were incorporated into the imagery in 1692. >> host: brenda, alexandria minnesota we have about ten minutes left. go ahead, brenda. >> caller: 90. i am descended from mary who was

on for witchcraft in salem in 1692. she was home alone with her sister rachel town nurse and her other sister sarah was accused of witchcraft but never home. i would like any tidbits you my ancestry tragic you have an amazing set of ancestors. mary actually wrote a petition to the court which is bone chilling, essentially saying could we have, couldn't we been moved to another court? could we have a different set, could we be tried elsewhere where people are less perhaps a little more objective? and could we perhaps have some evidence other than that provided by these clearly deluded girls? it's a beautiful very pathetic piece of writing and either heroic piece of writing at that moment. and yet all three sisters seemed

to be accused because of an earlier land dispute in land which bordered salem village. you can read a lot if you go back to the files of the courts because the family are in court for years, for generations suing and countersuing each other about land boundaries. boundaries in those days were generally defined as from a rock over there to the yellow tree to the wall at the corner. it was a very honestly wasn't exactly objective way of delineating boundaries. there's a lot in the records and files about that land dispute which seems to be the reason why the three sisters were all of them accused. it was also understood witchcraft ran in families and to once afa woman was accuse it was not unusual for her female relatives also to be accused. >> host: we should note that stacy schiff was born in athens massachusetts. whether that significant or not we don't know. but every author that appears on

"in depth" we ask favorite books of what they're currently here were her answers. favorite books, shirley hazzard the leopard, harold nicholson some people, plus nearly everything by the late hillary mentone, mary carter, and elizabeth strout. currently reading three books, the go-between, snow, and neil williams this is happiness. speak to one of his books that you are currently reading. >> guest: i'm not reading them all simultaneously. if i can go back to adams massachusetts because liberal because i was mortified coming for at sam adams and i was mortified i did know more about them. it played role inti that sense. what am i to reading? >> host: this is a novel that people always comes up and sort of oblique ways and

he never thought to read of your it's a 1950s novel by fairly eccentric writer. it's a novel of which the first line is famous, the past is a foreign country, he writes. they do things different either. you could seere the appeal to se of the rights history for a living. it's a very odd, ella jake beautiful book that reads early, seems like it's a cousin to october. it's one of his novels that is wrapped around a young man looking back on his younger self. it hasn't this beautiful frame. it's remarkable. >> host: do you think you could write a novel? >> guest: no, i fear not. i should love to but now i fear not. >> host: why do you fear not?st >> guest: a double go home and start one today. i feel if there's something about nonfiction that really appeals in some way. there are boundaries of some kind. there's a chronology of some

kind. there is something that meant that i very comfortable. biographers referred to as an artist under oath because you can't make things up. somehow i feel like that somehow fits better with what i do on the page when what we do want to share one tweet you sent out. at stacy schiff as her twitter address. oh, my goodness, and what an astonishing company, barack obama's favorite books at 2022, and on there is the revolutionary samuel adams. adrian is in las vegas. you are on with stacy schiff. please go ahead. >> caller: hello, stacy pick your wonderful writer. if you get back i read cleopatra. i cannot remember what you said, great mystery for me is about her death. did she actually commit suicide or did arcadians been due to our first? >> guest: thanks. she does commit suicide. one of the mysteries there's a

counterfactual way to look at it, which is octavian may have encouraged her to commit suicide. the way the story comes down to was we have from two sources which cannot be really reconcile because they are so different. she commits suicide and he is astonished and in aom way frustrated because he had hoped to parade her inner strength and row. he has taken aback. did everything he could to keep her life. she tried to starve herself, she tried to stab or so. both times he interceded. he has done everything he can to make church remains alive and her treasure is not lost to him. but there'sea a counterfactual line of reasoning which goes like this. it wasn't necessarily a good idea to parade a very powerful female captive in rome, that have been done sometime to pity and it might even more convenient for him if he simply eliminated herself.

he could not be the one obviously to do with cleopatra whose beloved is will fire people and he is in egypt at the time. there may have been an ideal of this in the book of there's a line of reasoning go, it was convenient to him. it was convenient to him, he made a possible for her to dismiss herself from the picture. >> host: does the injury you have explored especially in cleopatra does it make usgu look like amateurs today with our clinicalur entry? >> guest: cleopatra shoot and conniving. i think i was halfway through writing the book when i really got my mind around how shrewd and conniving and what an expert timing she was. so, yes, i i would say, she is utterly resourceful and tactician of the first rank. when you read about american politics of the 18th century, you think many things have remained the same and i think the conspiratorial thinking, , d interesting thing with the revolution is the patriots

accused the front offices of conspiracy and the officers accused the rebels of conspiracy. the idea is this a conspiracy afoot if a much baked into the fabric care. >> host: unfortunately we're out of time. the last two hours we've been with author stacy schiff talking about her books, her most recent the revolutionary samuel adams. we pressure time on booktv. >> guest: thanks so much, peter. >> host: tv now continues. >> publishes weekly has released its choice of best nonfiction books for 2023. on theist are --