>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> good evening. i am jon meacham, filling in for charlie rose, who is on assignment. we begin the program with a conversation about politics. in particular, why a polarized washington seems incapable of

action on issues ranging from immigration to entitlements. with fewer than 1000 days left in office, president obama must govern with an approval rating around 40%. by comparison, at this point in their second terms, ronald reagan was at 63%, bill clinton at 62%. obama's current standing is roughly akin to george w. bush, who stood at 39%, and congress? well, congress is even worse. only 7% of americans say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the house and senate. an unpopular president, a desperately unpopular congress. what is driving the dispiriting public discontent with washington? joining me now are two incumbent lawmakers who are typically more candid about what is going on than many of their colleagues. from washington, senator joe manchin of west virginia, and here in new york, congressman jim cooper of tennessee, my own congressman, i should add.

senator, i want to start with you. you have been quoted as saying that your worst day as governor is better than your best day as a senator. why is that? >> well, jon, i think if you base it on accomplishments, getting something done, and i think you and i spoke about this before, i was able to basically get up every morning excited as governor knowing that i could change somebody's life and make it better for them in west virginia, my beautiful state that i love so much, and go to bed at night feeling fulfilled that i had done something productive. i don't get that same feeling right now, but i am very hopeful that it is still the place if you're going to change the world, being in congress and washington, d.c., is the place to do it. we just have to get our act together and start acting like americans and quit worrying about being democrats and republicans. >> congressman, you have served in congress through five administrations, from 1982 with a little break in there. which was the most effective?

and what was it about that era that is missing now? >> there was never a golden age, jon, but there might have been a bronze age. >> [laughs] we'll take it. >> the tip o'neill era, in retrospect, was a pretty harmonious time because tip could sit down with president ronald regan and get things done after hours. that is almost no longer true today. there is such acrimony. and really, we are behaving more like a parliament than a congress, because so many of my colleagues vote 99% of the time with their political party position, and joe manchin and i are two of the few who sometimes break with our party because no party has a monopoly on wisdom. i am a proud democrat, but we need to make sure we are doing the right thing for the country. that is our main job. >> what is it that -- is it simply the personalities that you do not have a speaker and a president, or what are the other factors? >> personality is a part of it, but also some larger forces. we've gotten so darn good at gerrymandering with computers that these districts are preselected to send the most partisan people in america to washington.

then once they get to washington, they do not know each other anymore, because nobody lives in washington. an hour after the last vote, we are all flying back home to be with folks back home, and then there are bigger factors, too. the internet has changed politics tremendously. it used to be when we had three news channels, we had a common set of facts on which to operate from. today, whether you are fox or msnbc, you can see a completely different picture of america, so it is very hard for people to get along in that environment. >> two things that haven't changed and probably will never change is human nature and common sense, and that is what we are missing so much, is the human contact, human interactions, common sense. when you go home, and i have always said this, if i can go home to west virginia and explain why i am supporting something or why i am looking at something differently, if i can explain it, i can vote for it. it makes sense. if it does not, i cannot. i do not care if it is a hard party line vote that they want me to take, whether it be democrat or whatever it may be, and the thing that i have said

is that, basically, we are in an environment, jim and i are in an environment now, and jim can basically give you the experience of history here being through five administrations -- i have only been here from one administration. i do not know what five would have done to me, but -- [laughter] >> anyway, anyway, jon, with that being said, we are -- i made a pledge. i have made a pledge to myself and to every west virginian that i will not go out and campaign against a sitting colleague, so if you expect me to go out and beat up my colleagues who are republicans and are running, to go down in their states and get involved in the races, i will not do it. >> senator, you came to national prominence in a significant way after the tragedy at newtown, in connecticut, as a democrat from west virginia, someone who in a campaign ad had shot the cap and trade bill, coming out for some common sense gun legislation.

can you tell us what that experience taught you, for good or for ill, about what is happening? >> well, i pretty much knew, you know -- all of these personal issues. i mean, icome from a gun culture. i am a lifetime member of the nra. i am a proud member. i shoot, and i love to go hunting and shooting and have friends that i have done that with all of my life. and with that, i have always felt that common sense would prevail, and if i wanted to be treated as a law-abiding gun owner, then do not look at me just because you do not have guns or come from a gun culture that i have committed a crime because i want to own a gun. maybe it's a type of gun you do not want me to own for whatever reason, but then i would look at you and say, "well, why do you have that car there that has 140 on the speedometer when the speed limit is only 70?" you have a right to buy what you want to buy in america as long as you abide by the laws. that is how i should be looked upon, as a law-abiding gun owner, so with that i thought

came some responsibility. we never put any restrictions on personal transactions. jim and i know each other. i want to sell jim my gun or give him my gun, i can do it. i don't need to have a background check. we have a personal relationship. a law-abiding gun owner will not sell it to a stranger, to a criminal, to someone who is mentally unstable, or even give it to an unresponsible family member. with all of that, jon, don't you think it makes sense that if i don't know you, and i go to a commercial transaction, such as a gun show, or i am on the internet exchanging, trading guns, that at least i ought to have a background check or have a background check on you so i know who i am selling it to? to me, that made sense, and if i want to be treated as a law-abiding gun owner with all of the rights in the second amendment, then i should at least show some common sense about getting a background check when i don't know somebody. >> but you did this in a bipartisan way, and it didn't work.

>> well, when you say it didn't work, we got -- you know, we had 60 -- i think it was almost 67 votes on cloture, and then they says, "oh, my goodness, this thing is going to pass," and then all of the wheels start turning, and jim will tell you how that happens, and people got scared and got threatened and this and that. it takes an awful lot of work. i have been asked the question, don't you wish you had not done it? well, you know, if that is the case, then why did you send me here? why do you not send somebody here that basically will do what is the path of least resistance would be and just do and go along to get along? i knew if i could not bring some expertise to a piece of legislation i knew an awful lot about, then what was my purpose, so, no, i don't, but it did take an awful lot of work, and, sure, politically, you take maybe a little bit of a hit. i truly believe if you work at it hard enough, people will respond. people will get involved, and people are looking at me now. do you know what the whole problem was, jon, on that? when i talked to them, and i said, did you read it, and they

said, no, sir, and we broke it down, one page, and after they read and looked at it, they said, joe, we like your bill. i said thank you. we just do not trust you. we do not trust government. that is why we are not for it. and i said this is a constitutional amendment, and it has to go through this process, and i can assure you we are not what you do anything different, and they said we just do not trust it. >> does that sound right to you? >> also, as we move into this polarization, we are finding that some people want pork. some people want peace, and they do not want to mix up the two, so it is very difficult to get compromise. joe was ideally suited to the compromise on the gun issue. he tried hard. it is hard for one man or even a group of senators to beat a group like the national rifle association. some issues are difficult to solve, and it takes time, but

there is so much more that congress can be doing. we should be humiliated that we are at seven percent in the polls. we should be doing everything possible. joe and i support eliminating congressional pay if we do not pass a budget. unfortunately, we were only able to pass that for one year. our republican friends took over the idea but limited it to one year, and now, it has expired, so this year, there will not be a budget in the united states of america. there are new approaches, incentive pay, penalty pay, also, game-ifying it. if we got to pick the committee members, that might change something. for people outside, this is way complicated and sounds like roberts rules of order or something like that, but this is the system the founders gave us, and on the fourth of july, we should be obligated to make it work, and one of the giants of

our time, he knew how to get along, and he will go down in history as one of the greatest, and today's leaders are not measuring up to that standard, so if we just follow the examples of the recent past, we can do better. joe's idea about not campaigning against colleagues would be helpful. he just cannot have unilateral disarmament. they have to agree to the same thing. some people said when bill frist first attacked tom daschle, that was one of the first times the senate really got off the rails and started personally attacking each other, and that makes accommodating very hard. >> you know, when you talk to people in the white house about these issues, they bring up something that jim mentioned a while ago. just a total lack of a common audience and a common fact base for which you can have something like the fdr, the reagan, go to the country at explaining things, even, god help us, ross perot, have a teachable moment.

do you think that that kind of presidential leadership is possible in this environment? >> don't you, jim, think people are hungry for that? >> they are hungry for it, but we also are at fault. we make the presidency the toughest job in the world, almost an impossible job. u.s. historians know their is never an time for u.s. president. thomas jefferson did not have it easy. andrew jackson did not have it easy, and now, we make it almost impossible, because you are dammed if you do and dandy if you do not. if you look back to harry truman, he made some of the wisest foreign policy and domestic policy decisions in history, and only in retrospect -- look at the present situation today. it would be common sense to pass the highway bill, and infrastructure bill, and a doctrine in which thankfully senator corker broke with in favor of a $.12 gasoline tax, but he is the only republican i know what in the senate that is willing to break with orthodoxy,

so used to be common sense for congress to pass highway bills. we have really blown it for a long time now. we have not had a real highway bill for seven years. it is crippling for the country and crippling for the presidency too, but it is not all his fault. >> immigration is very important right now. it is reaching the level of a humanitarian crisis in california, texas. what is the hope for congressional action in terms of addressing this with some dispatch? senator? >> in the senate, we passed a bipartisan immigration bill, which basically said secure your borders first. those people who came here illegally will pay a fine and go through a process. there was no amnesty there whatsoever, and it is something that i think -- it was a good building block for us to work off of. we are just asking our friends on the house side, both our

publicans and our democratic friends to look at this. with what you see the influx now of the young people coming from all over south america, something has to be done. we have got to secure these borders. we have to make sure that we are able to do it in a systematic way that is fair but is also manageable, and right now, it is not, and you can't do it without immigration reform. thinking that you have got 11 plus million people here that came here illegally, and you are going to round them all up and throw them out, we cannot even stop the 1-2 are coming here just recently and getting them turned around to go back. we are having a hard time with that. that is what henry and i are working on, seeing if we cannot eliminate that and repeal that piece of legislation and treat all of the non-contiguous countries the same as we treat mexico and canada and get them

turned around quick and get them back to their hometown or their home country within a 48 hour period. >> joe is exactly right. the comprehensive immigration reform has passed the senate, and that is something of a near -- of a miracle. but today's house of representatives won't even allow a vote on it, which is outrageous. they are so afraid of alienating their ultra-conservative base that they are not even willing to consider it, and even after eric cantor, they are even more paranoid, and you have a semi-functional senate but a completely dysfunctional house. if they did allow a vote on it, it would pass, and it would be more or less solved, but they will not allow a vote because it is all internal republican party politics. they are worried about the tea party, and that is why folks like marco rubio are having to go the ascending in the party, or even a jeb bush. >> i do not want to let you go without asking you about senator mansion's hospitality and

whether or not you have been out drinking with him on the potomac river? you have a houseboat? >> i live on a houseboat. i just could not come to invest in real estate here in washington, d.c., not in my dna, no matter what the deal, and i said i just could not do it, so i told my wife i was going to buy a boat, and then when things get crazy here, i can just float away, and no one will notice the difference, but the main thing is it really has been a great thing for us to have an evening to get a few of our senators together, maybe 4, 5, six, or eight, maybe more at times, and i try to get a balance of democrats and republicans and people from one end of the spectrum to another. one night, it was a beautiful evening, and i know that tom looked at me, and these are both my friends, and before i knew it, you could not have separated the two from conversation, and

we don't get that type of opportunity here, so we have to make every minute count. >> senator manchin, congressman cooper, thank you. >> thank you, jon. >> we continue our conversation about politics and polarization with presidential historian michael beschloss, who joins us, and also from new york, david brooks. we just talked to senator manchin and congressman cooper, and they are in their arena, trying to make things work. how do you see this moment in a historical comparison in terms of polarization? >> well, you know, i think one way of looking at it on if it were a perfect system, then the most polarized congress would be at the most polarized times of american history, like the run-up to the civil war, perhaps a 1940, 1941, when americans

were struggling whether we should go to war against hitler and the imperial japanese or not, and i hate to say it, but if you had to look at what was done in congress in those times compared to now, i think the congress of 2014 does not measure up very well. >> that is remarkable, so we were better off in the 1850's, there was better legislature in the 1850's? >> they disagree, but i do not think there was such a habit of disagreeing almost out of custom. >> so the reflexive partisanship is on the rise. >> sure, and there were not a lot of members of congress who were terrified if they took a position that was not extreme enough that they would get primaried, which was, thank god, a word not used in the 1860's. >> sometimes what david does as party tricks is he subjugates the verb to primary. >> i just gave in that opening deliberately.

>> do you agree? >> in early times, my hero, alexander hamilton -- i consider that a reasonably polarized act, an act of polarization. >> just to be clear, even though he deserved it. no, i take that back. >> so we went through the cycle. i think the 1860's, if you look at some of those campaigns against lincoln, pretty polarized, and it started in the 70's, and we should be pulling out of it if you look at rough historical patterns of 30 years. i think what prevents us from pulling out is strictly institution. if you go to a dinner party in washington, on the left, there are academics and donors and think tanks, so they have got a real infrastructure on the left. on the right, a bunch of donors, think tanks, and they have got structure. in the middle, just lobbyists. there is no infrastructure. there is just a void, so if you

are a politician and want to head out to the middle, there is just nobody there, but if you deviate from the right or left, there is punishment. >> i agree with david. i think it is institutional, but i would say one thing, and that is through history when we do pull out of the period like this, where there is intense hostility between the parties in congress, there has been, god forbid, some overwhelming foreign crisis or economic or social crisis in the country that calls everyone to essentially say, let's knock off, and you go back over the last 15 years, in the wake of 9/11, there was a little bit of an effort to pull together, the same thing after the crash of 2008, very brief, but even those huge crises, not much sign there is great intentional change in washington, at least in the next few years. >> one of the things i've changed my mind on, the question is, is the polarization in

washington, or is it in the country, and i used to think it was in washington, and now if you look at the latest research from pew and other institutions, it looks like it is more in the country, that people are moving into areas where there are people like themselves, people checking out, and then if you look at the promising young people we see at the universities, they want to get something done, and they get away from politics, but they are getting politics at the local level. they are much less excited about politics at the national level, so the people defeating polarization are getting away from washington. >> michael, you live in washington. if you were pulling apart the sociologist of this, what do you think? >> it is built into the system, as david was saying, in a way that it was not for most of american history. let's take the house of representatives. if you were somebody elected to the house, and you wanted to be a leader, the way you would do it for most of american history was to prove that you are able to make deals with people on the

other side of the aisle, and how do we think that people like jerry ford or bob michael got to be leaders of their party in the house? it was not because they were ideological firebrands, it was exactly the opposite, but now during the last 20 years, if you wanted to become a leader in the house, the john boehners of the world are not going to be around for too much longer, and probably be advised to somebody who wants to do that is to be extremely intense. that was not true for most of our history. >> but i would say three things have changed institutionally, just in the model of how you want to be a politician. passing legislation has become much less important, as michael says, because much less is being passed, and there is a tremendous emphasis of the media about being a tv performer instead of being a legislator. there is an aversion, making

friends in the body, much more interested in making stands for future reference, and second, the donors, the money. the donors tend to be much more polarized than other people, and so that is where the money is on the right and left, and finally, i would say democracy. we have become much less democratic, much less republican, and my friend says government should have some lack of transparency for the same reason that middle-aged people should wear clothes. you do not want to see everything. in response to telegrams and e-mails, it makes people much more responsive, and so all of those things, you know, it is multi-cause. all of those things lead to polarization. to me, the way out is either a crisis like an invasion from mars, quite likely, or leadership. people are sick of it. if you talk to the members, they are sick of it, and not even the coopers and the manchins. out of that creative tension, i

really think we can get some prominent leadership. if obama had not come into office at a time of crisis, i think he would have done something, but somebody is going to have to show leadership and just get the top five officials. >> do you see something changing? >> well, i think i agree with the way david listed the things might change, and i think there is another line, and that is money. right now, as long as money is as central to our political process as it is, i do not think it is going to change, even if you have leaders that are as noble and well-intentioned as the ones david is talking about, but for most of american history, there was not this kind of need for enormous campaign funds, mainly because there was not tv, and it is entirely possible if you are imaginative that there can be a future not too long from now where it is not the cheap way he or she tries to get the message across.

it may be other areas of the internet or other things that don't cost so much money, and then you do not have to raise campaign funds, and money becomes less important, and therefore you have fewer people in elected office sending out letters saying nancy pelosi is satan or mitch mcconnell is satan because that is the way you raise money. >> right now, the money is on the exchange. it is possible to imagine a world in which people raise money from the center, and the center does not have to be the mushy middle. it can be a combination of left and right ideas that create some sort of balance. there are some that could say they are tired of the koch brothers, and i am looking over his shoulder and seeing the name bloomberg and talking to mayor bloomberg. >> or people like him. one of the amazing things to me in recent history is there is an

absolute opening for an independent candidate to run. as we know in 1992, ross perot four months was running ahead of george bush the elder, and the amazing thing for me, especially given the things that people have, it has not happened again. >> it is a remote possibility. we are closing in on a jeff bush hillary clinton raise. i think the country is really in the mood for change, and therefore, you could see a ted cruz and rand paul on one side, and then that does create an opening. you still have the house of representatives problem. he cannot win outright, but how do you get a body composed entirely of republicans and democrats, but i think both parties are moving towards the edges, and there is just threw in there for another party, which is what this country needs.

>> michael, historically, is there an example where this kind of new center has been created? >> the history of party realignment, a party developed to fill the void that has been left by others. he was talking about the whig party, and that is how the republican party started in the mid-1850's, and you could see that again. i think what we could see is something different for most american history, that is if there is a movement like this or a candidate, a person may not be the head of a party at all. >> so we have the possibility. the technology exists. certainly the public discontent. congress has a seven percent approval rating. most congressmen you say that to say they cannot figure out who that percentage are. exactly, and on the payroll. but it does takes, as we all know, michael wrote a book called presidential courage,

which is about individual action. it takes a person to do this, and outside of mayor bloomberg, the kinds of names in recent past floated around that we have talked about in the last 30 years, lee iacocca's name has been around and others, but does someone come out of the academy? where do they come from? >> the media. no. [laughter] >> david is exploding himself, i see. -- excluding himself, i see. but my basic view is that people want to know what is your character and where did you establish it, and did you establish it in an institution in which we have faith, and so the media is pretty much it. >> we are the only thing lower. >> and i doubt a business person can do it. i think it would have to be a general -- people have faith in the military, and very few institutions, so it has to be something of that nature who

comes out of the blue with some leadership skills and some management skills. the other thing is if you had a boring person, if you had a business person who was exceptionally boring, because i think the model you could look for is someone who could say i am charismatic. i am not bill clinton. i am just a boring guy who has a very limited view of politics. i am just going to make it work. it did not work for a lot of reasons, and former governor mitch daniels of indiana would have been a good candidate, because he was low to the ground, in touch with the people, but not a super charismatic guy. he has just managed to run things, and i think there would be an opening for an anti-ideological candidate as opposed to a polarizing candidate. >> mike, do you agree? >> i do, but you can say there is an opening for someone like this, and where are they, and, i guess, the thing that sort of depresses me about the full

conversation is what we are saying is the best way to get out of this is for some miraculous person to come in and save us, and the founders would be horrified, because their whole idea, beginning with james madison, as you do not allow the american republic to rest on. you make sure it is a system that works so you're not dependent on the unusual moment of someone like this coming along. >> it was an epitaph to be somewhat of the hero on horseback, but nothing is really a machine that runs by itself. understanding the character of the people is the basis for the constitution. >> if the country itself is irreconcilably polarized, then in classic republican, lowercase r, thinking -- >> and i am coming around to

that view, which i was resistant to for the last 10 years that it is in the country and not in washington. i guess i'm more or less support that, and i believe it is a failing. if you think politics is generally a competition between half-truths, then you do not need the people on the other side, and you're going to value a similarity. you may screw the democrats or publicans, but you are still american, and you share the same culture. you have this mentality of you are half wrong, he is probably half right, but if you have an egotistical attitude that i am 100% right and you are 100% wrong, which is a moral failing, that it is very hard to come to an agreement, and i do think we have had a failure of modesty about our own greatness, and i, myself, have continued to did as much as anybody to this moral failure, but it has built up

gradually and has become somewhat consuming. >> one of our joint favorite writers, george elliott, talked about moving to a world of dim lights. it is not a point which raises much money online. >> and i want to defend president obama on one thing. he is hitting singles and doubles in foreign policy, and we have gotten such a heroic attitude that when it does not turn out aerobically, we get disillusioned and think it is a bunch of crap, and it is neither. it is just a modest enterprise to stay afloat from one day to another and had a couple of singles and doubles. >> michael, assess the validity of this statement, as they say at the academy. has richard's paranoid style in american politics gone mainstream now? >> no, because i think he meant that to refer to some very

specific moments in american history and sort of one threat, but i think one element is true, and that is the one point he was making was that we live in a clinical system that is based on tolerance and based on, for instance, in congress, relationships between people who disagree, and one of the central element in all of this is what you want in a president, what you want in members of congress is not someone who says, g, i agree with everyone, and let's express our differences, but what you want is someone with a degree of imagination to understand why someone on the other side might have a point of view even if you do not agree. a classic example, you know, lyndon johnson and dirksen, fellow leaders in congress in the 1950's, disagreed about just about everything, and you, they could get business done because lbj and he could at least understand why an intelligent, moral human being would have the views that each of them did. >> one pivotal moment for me in history that was crucial

happened in 1961, early 1960 -- 1961. jfk gave his inaugural speech, which was a utopian speed, and we can form the deserts. it was complete utopian, so it was all on one side, let's march, let's march, and days before eisenhower gives his farewell speech, and it is anti-utopian. the keyword in the eisenhower speech was balance. balance one thing off another, and so i would say in the early 1960's with this new generation of leaders, we gave away the sense that politics is basically about balance, and to a sense, some solutions and about her rote utopianism, and once we leapt into that world, which created the framework for both parties, the reagan revolution, the obama hope and change, we leapt into a very utopian style of politics that was bound to be frustrated and bound to be all capital letters, but if you keep

it small letters their way eisenhower really meant, if you think you're in a world -- it is not the crucial things in life, which are family, faith, and so you have a much more modest sense and are therefore more sensible about it. >> so the rise of this culture, the best and the brightest, that is the attitude that gave us vietnam. >> well, people have a sense they could be transformed through politics, and a lot of us spend a lot of time thinking about politics, but if you're looking for salvation in politics, you are barking up the wrong tree, so with a loss of faith and in the salvation of politics which gave us the russian revolution on a large-scale, but on a smaller scale, it gave us the sense that the 2008 obama campaign -- and i am as guilty as anybody about this, and you get caught up in the fervor of the thing, and when that fervor does not come through, you get disillusioned, and i think we went through

that, as well. >> i think michael would know exactly, but there was a scottish traveler in the 1820's who came to do one of those travel books, and he said a key thing about american politics is there was much more interest in the apostle them the gospel, and that personality was already been -- >> and the irony is that that is what the founders were terrified of, because they were so worried about a president who was too powerful, especially in making war. they spent an awful lot of time and attention to make sure you did not have a president who could get the country into war is on his own. for all sorts of reasons, like the monarchs and dictators of europe they were trying to get away from, so, again, what advantage of saying what the founders would think now is it is very hard ever to be proven wrong, but i think that is something that they would be very anxious about.

>> except for hamilton. [laughter] >> as a sign of grace and love, i will let you have the last word on hamilton. thank you. >> thank you. ♪

>> we conclude this evening with a look at morgan library "marks of genius" derived from the latin word to bring into being, create, and from the magna carta and others, the morgan library eggs or is the marks of genius as it has evolved. it features over 60 where books and objects on loan from universities. joining me is john mcquillen, the assistant curator, from the museum. >> thanks for having me. >> define genius for us. >> that is a tough one. that is what this tries to accomplish. i think it changes as we have passed through the centuries from the ancient roman idea of the genius being sort of a

guardian spirit that everyone had. every man had her genius, and every woman had her juno, to something that has become much more selective. 18th-century authors alexander pope, the great romantic poets, something that only a very select few could ever achieve and be whether given by nature or given by god, it was a very selective thing that sets them apart. >> and didn't require public expression? the distinction between public genius and private genius? a very 18th-century idea to present oneself to the world in a certain way. >> yes. i think -- well, coming from a book museum and the book side of things, a publication of what history will tell you makes you a genius or not, and then

history will ultimately be the judge, no matter if you think you are or not. history will let you know and decide that for themselves. >> then let's start with someone who did publish some books, william shakespeare. the first folio, which is in the exhibition. 1623. >> the first major publication of shakespeare's plays. a few little ones came out a few years before and small sort of pamphlets, small book sized. this is the first major publication of any plays in the english language -- it sort of really creates plays as a part of the literary canon. two of his former colleagues at

the globe playhouse, after shakespeare's death taken upon themselves to preserve his plays and worked on publishing them and had to work to get the scripts of his plays that were known, some of the published editions that had already been produced, and bringing actors together to recite from memory the plays they did not have scripts for two then reconstitute things which, like romeo and juliet, would have been lost had it not been for the first folio. so some plays like that that we think are so iconic we shakespeare we only know because of the first folio. >> not unlike the bible. >> no. >> jane austen. and this is purely a point of personal privilege because she is my favorite novelist, but you have a first edition of pride and prejudice? >> we do.

we also have -- it is a copyright library, so they are entitled to a copy of every work printed in the united kingdom, but back when jane austen was initially published in the 19th century, they did not collect novels. he did not collect trifles of literature, so it was not until the early 20th century that they started. they had to go back and read purchase her work. the next two, pride and prejudice, and we also have one of her rare manuscripts, a work she never pleaded, called the watsons, and it is a manuscript in two, and the morgan owns heart of the manuscript and bodleian owns another. and they tried desperately with the austen heirs to get the rest of the work, and they would

never sell it. again, we tried. it would have been great to reunite that manuscript, but the bodleian and was able to acquire it for themselves, so between the two w institutions, we share some of those. and they are real gems to see her hand, the work in front of you. >> the idea that she was sitting in the rectory, that parsonage, the family around. >> and you can see -- i think a lot of times, you think of genius as being that they are writing, that the things they say are flowing magically from

the pen and that it comes up perfectly on the paper. the jane austen manuscript, the mary shelley manuscript, a lot of them you can see they work at it. they struggle. there are changes. they are moving words and phrases around. mary shelley's frankenstein manuscript, you can see percy shelley's corrections and some suggestions in between the lines, so it is interesting when you think of the original author's work, there is the original, original what they intended and what came from the pan and how they changed it or how someone else might change it. >> which is one problem we have now, if there are geniuses. they are heavily edited. and they are computerized. so it is going to be trickier to get to see the progress of a manuscript. >> it is. there is some interesting work with sort of some hard drive archaeology, if you will, and

going back through time stamps and when the computer automatically save this draft of things, you can go back. i believe -- i could be wrong, but i think there are the computers and all of his discs and that material, and you can go back and see how he changed things. >> from arguably the most intelligent english novelist to the apocalypse. >> albert doer, the great renaissance artist, created this work. there are full-page woodcuts of the story of apocalypse, the final book of the christian bible. a popular work throughout the middle ages and the renaissance period. the work was initially published in 1498 in a latin and a german version of his large-scale woodcuts.

there are about 15 in the work that illustrate the text, and here you are seeing before horsemen of the apocalypse, one of the most famous if not the most famous from the work, and albrecht durer took the work of the woodcut to heights that it still has not been surpassed. and what were very rudimentary outline figures in german and european woodcuts, he brings shading to and light and so much detail and space through just the carving of the wood -- >> and he, that was four, to go back to what we were talking about, popular expression. that was for reproduction? >> yes. he intended these always to be mass-produced. he was in charge of the printing and publication of this work. he has a couple of larger series like this, and one with the

virgin that sort of goes through the life of the virgin mary, and then one just on the passion of christ. he had all three produced in 1511, and this addition we have in the exhibition is the 1511 edition that comes with the entire virgin series and the large passion in one giant tome, and it is, i think, in my opinion one of the first artists. like with the passion of the virgin, but it is not illustrated in a way that we think of illustrated books now. the text for the apocalypse is on the back of the image, so you cannot read the text and look at the image. you have to absorb one, and then you can turn the page and see the story. so he really preferenced the images over the text. >> someone was asked, what do you make of the book of revelation, and he replied, i

have no idea. >> it is sometimes hard to wrap your head around. >> handel. you have the original score of the messiah. >> that he used at the dublin premier in 1472 and often on for about the next dozen or so performances, so he had the original composition score, and then this was the manuscript that his copyist, john smith, produced for him to use for the rehearsals for the performance, and he goes through, and you can see he changes not major changes but shortens some pieces, changes of little bit of the phrasing, changes some notes based on which performers he had available to him, which musicians are there, what he can and cannot do at each venue.

but as a working manuscript, and i think he changed and actually used repeatedly for performances, it is kind of just an amazing performance object. >> which raises one question about genius. we both have used the word in the past few minutes, i conical. there is an active genius that is interpretive of a classic. and it is a whole different tributary coming off of that initial river. >> and there are a lot of people, numerous people who are fantastic, but history, whether they have an actual role to play in the future, any emphasis on creation, i think that is where

historically we start to say the genius comes in. we still, every year, go to umpteen productions of "messiah." there are people who are great but that we do not speak of any more. >> which is an act of curation. >> curation and preservation. ptolemy. >> it is a fantastic book. a second century a.d. greek geographer. he took known authors, compiling them into a text. as far as we know, he did not make any maps. he's also have come later after his tax, and these, these printed maps, these are about

the fifth printed version of ptolemy. bible.he gutenberg ptolemy was printed numerous times, and you have the northern hemisphere. he is the one who figured out how to take the globe and put it flat into two dimensions. he discusses this. as far as we know, there are no maps, but he discusses how to do this. he created climate zones, as we call them, sort of the tropic of cancer, the equator, and he is the one that sort of orients the northern hemisphere at the top of the globe and puts it up above, but he also thought that the south of africa connected around to asia, which made the indian ocean kind of like a large lake. >> right. >> and it was only later geographers, the great arab geographer, that fixed that,

saying, no, this is completely open water and africa and asia don't connect. >> still, not too bad. >> no, and this was in the library of ferdinand and isabella of spain, and produced in 1486, and in 1495, they gave it to the ambassador as a present. it is interesting to think that this book and another copy they might have had minor played some role in christopher columbus's journey across the ocean. >> this is a wonderful exhibition. john mcquillen thank you. >> thank you very much. ♪

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