>> i want to know your feel of where we are right now, i assume you are here partly because you are interested in that. so, man with the mic if anybody looks like they want to interrupted me, let them, please, give them a microphone and you guys, feel free to make this a discussion instead of a

-- from the front of the hall to the back. i'll interrupt myself briefly here, when i went to a lot of ed conferences there was always a guy who would stand up in front and say, the way -- we know how children learn and that used to make me crazy, just to start the conversation, i wanted to say, you know how they learn every hour of the day? do you know how every child learns? but, then he'd say they learn by doing things not by being lectured to, if someone tills things, don't absorb itted as quickly or easily or maybe not at all and i used to nod my head and said that is righted, why are you in the front of the room telling us things and i don't want to tell you things, i hope we'll discuss that as well. so i got -- i think the start of the book, really, is -- i have two kids who went through public school and before they even got, got interested in what the

schools were like -- got in, i got interested in what the schools were like and, you know, got called an educational activist and that means i cared about it. not for my kids as for the whole environment of the place. and my central question, really, was, what is this about? why do we do this and send these kids to this building on one side of town and why do we think it is so important and what do they come out of it knowing? and i got started with a group of african-american mothers who had organized something called the parents coalition in my town, my town has by high school, it is -- population of 60% what we call white, and self-identified as white, and 40% i think what we identify as other. but it went from -- there is a haitian population, and there is what we think of as the traditional african-american

population, spanish asian and there was a mix and these mothers were concerned, their kids, african-american kids were not getting equal treatment in the school and i was interested in the, because part of what i wanted my kids -- let me put it in the negative, part of what i didn't want them to learn was racism. i was interested in that not being part of the curriculum if i could and so i stayed with them for a while, and then, i guess their kids graduated, and they got less interested and we started a group called partners in education. which was parents, some brave teachers, some students, community members, who wanted to look at the schools, and see if there was some way we could partner it and make them better. and it was sort of an alternative to the pta because the pta, essentially was baking cup cakes and raising money for it as-is and it was a good thing to do, but, we were interested in what the quality of education

was and we did it for about ten years. and in many ways it was horrible. i mean, i -- i don't know what you guys' experience is with trying to work in schools but it can be hard if you are an outsider because you are perceived of as a threat, and we tried not to say you are not doing well enough but you get into that position if you don't watch out. we continued to be interested in what is now called the racial gap. between how white kids did and other kids did on tests. and to give you an example, back in that day, the school board said there is no such thing. it isn't there, because there were not public figure guars ab the test result and there were a money of memorable occasions from that but a school board member when we said, how come there are more black kids in special ed or so many white kids in the honors program and one of the school board guys said, well, i don't see color and it

doesn't make' difference to me and i remember well the african-american woman raising her hand and getting recognized and standing up and saying, you don't see color? what do you do at a stoplight? and there is a kind of pause. and she sat back down like that. and there was another moment when somebody said, i think you are saying there is racism in our town and there is no racism in our town. and there was one black principal in the system, who said, not at the meeting, because she wanted to keep her job and afterwards said it is interesting, because racism is a national problem, w.e.b. dubois one of the profiles i have in the book said it was the problem of the 20th century and she said as far as i can tell, it ends at the south end of our town and starts again in the north end. and we are the only town without in a racism in it, according to the school board. so, we kept having this kind of discussion, and one of the --

one of the hard things about it was that we wanted to be talking about the quality of education. and got into this business of whether all the kids were doing the same. and, there is actually a moment in the w.e.b. dubois profile where he says i went through school just wanting to get on the train with everyone else. and it never occurred to me where the train was going. or how fast it was going or what it was about. i just wanted my ticket. as a black man you understand that. we kept trying to have the discussion would you even if all of the kids were getting hundreds and passing all of the tests, what are they then learning? what is the object of the exercise? it was very, very difficult to get to that. people didn't want to. we finally ended for a couple of reasons. one was, that the -- that you

all may remember, real estate, used to be very valuable in the country and not long ago and as the houses got more expensive in our towns, the people who bought them didn't want to hear anything about the schools being anything but excellent. because they are investment -- their investment went down, they thought if you started talk, so the realtors in our town, particularly didn't like us because they were trying to sell houses and if we said, well, how come there are so many, you know, black kids in special ed for whatever, they said, please, dope bring it up, we ended up with a story on the front page of "the new york times" about the sort of discussion we were having, and the real estate people were really unhappy and a lot of the homeowners were, saying, now you have given our town this reputation. so, that was one factor i think and the other factor was, that the no child left behind was just about to happen, that was, what, 8 years ago, so i think it was -- you could see it coming. and, at that point, it was clear that the discussion had kind of

ended, that in our system, anyway, you guys may have it different, the last couple of months in the year at least were about preparing for the tests, and the schools were just judged on these tests. so, any question of the best way to learn, we did a lot of talk about hands-on learning. and i remember when my kids were little, we -- in elementary school, i led a group of sort of ten-year-olds up through the creek that ran through town, so that we could investigate the history of it, we're all in big rubber boots and, you know, we were kind of saying, maybe this is education, too. maybe this is something important. but, between the testing and the real estate prices, we kind of slowed down and finally stopped. and, one of the lessons for me was, that whoever came up with the phrase, "think globally, act locally", had never actually tried that. because, it is a horrible thing to document you end up with enemies, go into get a roast beef sandwich and they say aren't you the guy who said the

teacher were no good and no, i never said that, can i have mustard pleads on the sandwich? so, i pulled away from it. but i didn't pull away from the thinking about it. because i still cared about the issues, my kids are now out of school, but, i wanted to get back to my central question, which is, what is this exercise about? how do we learn what we need know? and what is a good education? what does that mean? so i need a drink of water to get into this, but -- and do interrupt me, guys, if you have questions about this. you're good? okay. i'm sure you do have questions but you are shy but you will get over that! the microphone would put me off, too, frankly, but... so i wanted to try to get at this question and one of the things i saw in the book -- and the book opens

and closes with this scene: if you were to -- at a play ground with a bunch of parents, and guardians and aunts an uncles and community people and started talking about the schools, somebody would say, well, my kid got mrs. clemons and she's supposed to be great and i said we got mr. dork and he's awful, right? and then, there would be this kind of talk and then, if it was a nice summer evening and went on a little longer they'd say, yeah, the school, i don't quite understand the education any more and i don't know what they are learning in the classroom. when i was a kid... there was always that beginning and it didn't usually go, i walk ten miles through the snow to get what i wanted. but it was sort of when i was a kid, you learned often -- often they'd say you learned the basics, reading was always a big issue, which is, you know, they are not teaching him how to spell, not teaching them pho

phonetics any more and it is something called whole language and there was a kind of nostalgic moment and if you really stayed out and it was a particularly nice evening and everybody felt comfortable, my experience has been that people then start talking about how they learned. and, it -- they remember a great 5th grade teacher or great 11th grade teacher and will rhapsodize that person and then they also go... there was -- you know, the thing i use a lot now, is my aunt louise, taught me how to do needle point. and it is we're, because i was a boy. and i was the only boy who knew how to do needle point but it got me so i really liked doing stuff with my hands, fine stuff. and so when it came time to decide what kind of medicine i was going to do, i thought, the surgery is going to be totally cool because i love doing that stuff with my aunt louise or somebody else says, you know,

what i learned most in my childhood was we were out in the woods one day and fooling around and set fire to the woods. and i'll never forget it. you know and the fire department had to come and, you know, i have been interested in forest renewal and working the woods or whatever, ever since. so there were these whole series of events, that happened outside of the school system. and though we now have our kids in school, whatever it is, 7 or 8 hours a day, i think we all know we learn stuff beyond that. and very important stuff. so, i thought, now how do i get at this? how do i try to talk about that, because our education, too often now, i think, when i say, did you get a good education, you then think well, did you go to private school or did you get straight as or -- and in fact education is this very broad thing. and so i thought, what is the american tradition of learning and of education?

and started -- i think i looked actually at w.e.b. dubois first and he was a guy, real briefly, you guys probably know, great black in leck tulle, grew up in western massachusetts in a basically white community, with you know -- he was a minority. and his way out was school. so, he learned an awful lot of what he thought was important in school, and ended up a professor, cared about that. but, there was also all of this other stuff he talks about in this is autobiography about, he never knew his father and met his grandfather and saw his grandfather toast another man in a formal coat and is a major image in his autobiography and thought, that is what a gentleman does. i want to be a gentleman like that. there was this like moment for this kid who was i think 14 at the time. so i thought, great. let me do this. let me start before the revolution, and pick americans that we -- that we think are

important or noteworthy. and kind of jump every 20 years and see what they said about what they cared about their education. and the real prototype for this in a lot of ways is the education of henry adams which maybe some of you guys have read. and i read it when i was in college, i went to harvard. and i hated it. i hated every minute of it. unfortunately. and what i loved about the education of henry adams was, he said i'm going to write a book about the education that mattered to me and he tax about his childhood and he said and then i spent four years at harvard which i don't need to discuss. and then went onto what the other stuff he did and i thought... this guy and i have -- share something here! so, his prototype was, i am going to look at my life and see what i learned that i actually ended up using and how i learned it. that is the basis for the book. and it goes -- star at ben

franklin, and as you said, goes through elvis presley, with -- let me talk briefly about franklin, with franklin as this kind of prototype in a lot of ways, americans think of it, he talked about his self-education and franklin went to -- he was the tenth child, so he was tithed and you are supposed to become a minister in the puritan church and went to boston latin, the first public school, they say in north america, or at least in what became the united states. and significant to me the first public school was a religious school, basically, but there it was and got through boston and you are supposed to go to harvard and come out of harvard and become a minister and that was the route you within and he last aid year at boston latin and it is very kind of circumspect, his autobiography, of what went wrong and he admits he was a leader amongst the

other boys and something of a trouble maker and i kind of put two and two together and he did another year at the dames school, a reading an writing school and then never went to school again and my thesis here about him and i think the autobiography bears it out, it's dropout who advocated dropping out and thought that is how you got an education and didn't go into the institutions, you went off and you -- apprenticed himself and was apprentice to his brother and learned outside the scooch that was the beginning of it and i tried to track through what the story is, and you are right, it a collection of essays and my hope is as you read it, there is a narrative line there about how we as a nation think about education and how it developed over time, and what is it, 1740 to i guess, i get elvis up to

1955, something like that. a little younger and may theory was we begin the era we got educated in, right, there are still people alive educated in those years and i don't want to talk for you and i'll end the book there and you can, you know, make your own conclusions. ask your own questions about it. let me stop a second there and let me ask you if it makes any sense to you, that sort of thought process and you guys have thought about this stuff yourself. if there is... if i put you on the spot, which i won't, and ask you, how you learned what you end up -- what you end up really using now that is useful, can you kind of conjure up, was there a mentor, a great event and a trip and something that made a difference? >> my family valued education a bit and i remember book at the

library and i learned a lot about planes, there was a frank leahy, i think it was, who wrote of pocket an planes, and this is many years ago. -- i was born 1943 and ten, so 1953 and i also read about edison and inventions and horsepower and what was meant by those terms and making an electric magnet with a dry cell, and getting wire from the -- on the transformer, on a bell, house bell, and putting things together from, you know, parts you found or things you could staff venning and i learned like that and i don't know if that happens now. >> did you you it? have you ended up using some of that in one way or another. >> well, i became an engineer. >> there we go! >> i also made model plans and glued together the wing and struts and put what do they call

the cheese cloth and dope to shrink it on and painted it and that was quite an experience, taught you all the detail that went into building something. >> did somebody help. >> no. that was the amazing parted is i had no mentor, and actually, the stuff i accumulated, was kind of in the way, and space was an issue and that kind of thing and so i did this, you know, with -- if anything, trying not to get in the way and finding corners to work in there. >> right. >> so, i -- one thing i remember getting from my dad, specifically, is i can read a book like the book right here. and when i'm finished, somebody might remark, gee it looks new. and my father was like that and he never said anything to me. but, you know, we imitate or parents, okay? and what i'm concerned about is we don't have -- newspapers are going out of business, and if people don't read, and the kids don't see parent reading magazines, newspapers,

discussing things, what have you, if they listen to talk radio, and are educated by that, or educated by conversations built on that kind of thing, information, at work or school, playgrounds, what have you, we will not have much of a public discussion here. >> i see your point, i have the same faith about that that i do about the store, which is i think people go to books when books have stuff they need in them. and i don't think that is going to go away. i think they get stuff off the internet, too, and off video and things, but, every once in a while you go, i really need to find this out and this only place to find it out is in a book, there are also -- if i can interrupt a second, there is a bunch of different ways 0 learning and yours is a cool story for me because some people don't learn from books and don't read much and learn that way and the one in here i think is most clear about that is henry ford. and henry ford spent his time, taking apart pocket watches, most of them manufactured here.

because connecticut was the first place to make you know -- what's it called, alternating parts, where all of the parts are the same and you can put them in a different watch arrangement. >> interchangeable parts. >> thank you, interchangeable parts and we could fix a watch anywhere and that is what he loved and he had -- your story remind me, he had a secret work bench because his parent thought he was nuts to do it and it fits under the bed and he could slide out at night and could work on stuff with a little -- i don't know what he did for light but, so he could work on the watch when no one else was paying any attention and he was a guy who talked about getting inside a machine. he was the -- it was the only way he could understand it, and it is all he cared about. and he went to detroit, as the mecca of machines, the place you know, the place where god was, because it was a place where machines were made and, did nothing but work in machine shops and learned from this

process, and he -- you know, he was rich and famous and people said, how did you get to be henry ford, he said, well, it wasn't from reading, i think too much reading can be harmful. he wanted to get in there and do stuff with his hands and i am sorry if i do a sequel, i'll do an athlete, too. i have a wife who is a dancer/choreographer and she learned by moving and you watch her, having made a dance, remember the dance, and she's kind of going... and she's going through it, in her body and figuring it out that way and nothing to do with riding, right? she's a great reader, too, but, you know, it is just a different mode of getling at it and part of what i wanted to get in this book was there are all these different ways, so when some expert says we know how children learn i wanted to go, well, you may know how w.e.b. dubois learned but henry ford has a whole other way and he did okay. by himself. anybody else else have one of them, i like those stories,

those are good. >> there is a parallel. that we were hag dinner with our -- a friend, ed morgan the historian, retired, yale professor, in town and he always tells the story about being sort of a ne'er-do-well at harvard and never got his confidence intellectually until he spent three years during the war being a tool and die maker and it was the same kind of thing and he didn't really have the confidence in his brain until he was sure he could see that he was a really good tool and die maker. >> wow. >> and the people around him immediately appreciated it and sort of moved -- and he said that is where he got his feet and went onto become and in credible historian and went on using, you know, cutting salad bowls in his basement on a lathe all his life and system does that. >> it wasn't what he did, what gave him the confidence. >> exactly. it was an education of a

different sort. that well, yeah, like a different kind of a thing. >> right. exactly. >> that had to do with confidence. which is a big deal. in education. >> no question about that. >> wherever you turn. >> i mean, i think one of the things that is hard, often, in public school is there is one test, one way of measuring whether somebody is smart too often, and you can be a sports star but if you don't read well, you aren't good at school. and, it -- you know, we mouth the words that, okay. that doesn't mean you are not good, means you are not good in school but in fact, for however many years you are in school the feeling is, i'm failing here. i am no good. and these folks learned all kinds of ways, do you have any other of these? i like these stories, these are great. >> talk about mentors, some people did it alone and some

people liked teachers and liked having teachers and some people wanted to go off alone, rachel carson one of these profiles, when he talks about how she learned about nature, she led incredibly solitary childhood in a cabin up on a mountain in pennsylvania along the allegheny river. very poor parents, and i don't think saw a lot of kids and her description of learning about nature was to go out with an adult, not alone, it was to go out with her mother, more often than not who would in the say, that is, you know, a baltimore oriole nest and see how it hangs off the end of the branch like that and she firmly believed it was the one-on-one thing and it wasn't communing in nature, it was having someone to tell you the stuff. and i think some people, my wife is very good as a student, i'm probably could have guessed, as a student and i say, how do you know that,nd i kind of resent it. and i guess it depends on -- i'll probe you for more

questions and i'll tell you one more story, time to talk a little more, i have a friend in the audience who cares about this person who i profiled and i thought i would try and talk a little about nabby smith. and nabby smith grew up in new england where we are, and she's the profile that follows ben franklin and for all of ben franklin not wanting to have anything to do with school, she really wanted to go to school more than anything else and couldn't because she was a girl and it was that simple. you could conceivably go to one of these dame schools, for a year, and learn a little bit, but, essentially, no go. and i try to profile in here why not. and it is because, partly what women were supposed to do. and she was a well-off woman, which i'll explain -- well off girl and i'll explain in a second but the average farmers in weymouth, where she grew up, the women were, amazing list, when you actually research what

a day was, you got up and got the fire going and milked the cow and you got the eggs and you came in and you made the cheese an butter and then you made this lunch for the man, and then you either washed the clothes or would have the clothes and sewed the clothes and mean while you are raising typically five to seven kids, and all in this house with obviously no electricity and no appliances. so, there was this totally full day of all those skills, and it had nothing to do with going to school. it was, you know, i do a profile also of a slave and it was like the attitude towards slaves which was, the less they know the better. because if they start thinking we're in deep trouble, and butter will never get churned here, you know? and it was vehement. and she was the -- she was in a well-to-do family. her -- let's see if i get it right, unfortunately people in the audience know, i better get it right. her father was a minister.

and not very ambitious and did what ben franklin failed at. went to boston latin and went to harvard and came out a minister and kind of seemed to be content at it. the detail that struck me is he wrote out his sermons every sunday and read them, no improvising, twice on sunday, there were two services, and then went and wrote another for the next week and read them. and, nabby and her mother and the other kids had to listen twice every sunday to the same thing. and it may have been good. i don't know, maybe they were great sermons, i don't know that. but, and his father had been a -- started out like franklin as an apprentice, in his case in a butcher shop and went to see, worked his way up through that hierarchy and became a captain and came back to boston and became a merchant because he had been trading on his ships and made a lot of money and the second son could go to boston latin and harvard and become a minister and he then married. this minister, a quincy.

and a quincy was the finest of the fine in massachusetts. so his wife not only brought education and sophistication, but, money. into the family. so, they ended up with three farms and were doing pretty well for a minister, which i don't believe was -- handsome pay but not that kind of pay. and nabby smith, growing up, one of the rules was, not only couldn't she go to school, she was not supposed to mingle with other kid, because she was supposed to be the minister's daughter. and her learning was in her grandfather's library, and to some degree in her father's library, and it was intense, she was born to be a student as far as i can tell, and shy resented the famous letters you probably heard about to her husband, to, to spoil the ending turns out to be john adams and she's abigail adams, there are these letters to her husband, saying we talk about a nation offee quas and

democracy and how come the women don't get to go to school, and i got curious about it, i wanted to know why she wanted to go to school and what she wanted to get out of it and she said she wanted literature with a capital "l" and i thought, i kind of get that, why did she want literature? what was that going to do for her? and she said, her sister actually wrote, saying there was nothing more tedious than this little town in massachusetts and the only thing noteworthy about it was that nothing ever happened and that literature was a way to learn about the world, and to learn about sophistication, and was a salvation, so that was part of it, i think. and she wanted -- didn't want to change the school system. she watch henry ford who wanted to go out and make something. she wanted to do exactly what john nas had done and wanted an education and then you look at how she raised her daughters and wanted them to take the traditional daughters' role but with the education attached to

it. if that makes any sense and what ends up happening, i want you to read it. and i will not spoil it but i think what she ended up doing was, she used literature in ways that i think reveal a secret ambition on her part. which is, first of all, she ends up one of our great historians, and her husband was always away when he was a lawyer he was travel and she always wrote him letters and later when he was representing massachusetts, at the constitutional convention, and then the united states, over in france, there is constant letters, the only way they stayed in touch and these letters are the, my opinion the best stuff we have about colonial living, it is great from that class perspective. so, these skills she learned in the grandfather's library end up being not only giving us the history, but, making her a kind of player, a reporter, that i start to think she always was hoping she would be in some

ways. she always new her opinion was worth something and needed the skills to do it, even if she couldn't figure out what the avenue was. there is a great example where john adams is -- they are fighting the -- i'll read you a little, i swore i wouldn't but i will, hold on. if we have time? >> we're good. >> good. she ends up among other things, reporting on the progress of the army and the fight with england when john adams cannot get an honest report from anyone else and she ends up being this kind of almost spy in the camp. let me just read you a little bit, quick and then i will be done. let's see... okay, she's -- i hope this is self-explanatory, you guys are good at interrupting me if it isn't. it's after the battle of lexington and concord, when her husband is in philadelphia for months at a time, the nabb y

recognizes her job shifted. she still is her children's teacher and her sons and daughter s reached an age where she writes, a mother's care becomes less necessary and a father's more important and this is written to john adams, like, would you please come home and deal with this? and they are ready to learn more than basic reading, writing and arithmetic and with her husband away it is up to her to decide whether to send them to a dame school or hire tutors or keep them at home and more than that, she has to assume the man's role as the full-time and long-term overseer of what she considers her husband's private affairs. she now has, a quote, not only to pay attention to my own indoor, domestic affairs, but to everything without, about our little farm, et cetera. adams writes her that she is a heroine for doing this and she answers, i take the best care i am capable and then confesses to not knowing what to do with the boys since the war is -- closed

all schools. battles are being fought less than ten miles from the farm, one day she climbs a nearby hill and reports the sound of the canon is an incessant roar, and with most of the men off fighting, raintree is largely undefended and as the wife of a leading american politician, mrs. john adams offers a particularly tempting target for the british. perhaps the very next letter i write will inform you that i am driven away from our quiet cottage. her eldest son, john quincy, remembers how it felt like they were, quote, liable every hour of the day, and of the night, to be butchered in cold blood or taken into boston as hostages. isolated, thrown back on her own resources, she starts signing her letters to her husband, "hermidah, the female of hermit" and insists she's not prepared for this and her literary education has not taught her the skills for keeping the farm out of debt. the family together, and the long distance marriage working

and the facts speak otherwise, and soon she admits with some pride that she is learning how to handle it. i shall be quite a farmerist, another year, her faith helps her through. she takes comfort from her books, and she has come out of her hours alone in libraries with an iron sense of purpose, after adams returns home, for a few months, she finds herself pregnant again and alone again. she sits down one summer night to write her husband about the rising prices, and how the hay will be plenty but your farm want manure. she's had strange shaking fits, which are -- friends say are the vapors, but she knows otherwise. she knows they are -- her child is still born and as she'll put it later, i was perfectly sensible of its decease, as i ever before was of its existence. but in this letter to her husband, on the eve of giving birth to what she knows will be a dead child, she only pauses

between the reports on hand -- hay and manure to note she's beginning to people the first contraction. takes my breath away what she did and it is altogether, i try to tie it into the education and will of hers. anyway, i think i'm done, thank you for listening to that. and i hope we can talk a little bit more about this, if you have questions about i you look like you have a well, go on, speak up! take that awful thing. >> there was a recent miniseries on hbo about the life of john adams. are you familiar with that. >> i didn't see it. i heard it was great. >> yeah i heard it was great and i haven't seen it yet, but, it just seems like a fascinating subject to investigate. and realize that there is so much -- the history that was a

long time ago, the relevancy that is today, like for example, with president obama's interest in former president abraham lincoln. >> right. >> and how that he has brought that old history into the modern culture for people, children, to hear about, and. >> right. >> and i think it is wonderful, that, you know, he being the president of the united states and being an african-american, the first african-american elected, and, just being able to bring history into like i said the modern culture. >> yeah, thanks. i mean, you know, i think part of what interested me, as i got through this, it seemed to me there were two traditions, here and one lincoln had, which was, you freenld understand didn't have any education at all. that is kind of cool for an american, i think. and you know, you know, i pick this -- lincoln in fact went to school quite a lot for his time and he was very well read but it was all, i'm a log splitter

here, and lyndon johnson has a little bit of that, right? you now, i don't want to intimidate you and franklin as my first guy was real clear about this. education essentially was british. that is the people who were educated and they were the enemy, everyone is -- they are the ones keeping us down and i will not go to school, i'm a rebel and ben franklin was james dean in a lot of ways, he was saying -- and then you get the other side which is... i wrote it down, you get the other side, which is education is really the key that unlocks all of the doors. and when obama, you remind me of this, gave this speech about education a while ago, right? he said: it's that most american of ideas that with the right education, a child of any race, any faith, any station, can overcome whatever barriers stand in their way, and fulfill their god given potential. and my heart kind of rises at that and it sounds great but i also wonder about it. that is that really true, if

they get the education, in this country, you can achieve your god-given potential, he says? i don't know. but that is the other side of the tradition, i think. >>... [inaudible]. >> not just an american ideal. >> it want an american idea. i thought that we were mostly concerned about having people be property owners and farmers and with the louisiana purchase we were set for the next thousand years. and we would have enough for expanse and people farming and we didn't anticipate the industrial revolution. but, i think only -- owning property and having the ability to support yourself, was more fundamental than let's say the educational case you hear there and elsewhere. >> well, there certainly was and tradition of -- emerson was good at this of the farm, the farm as he said, that was the main thing, you got your own land and got to own a farm but i think,

key to this notion of democracy from jefferson, certainly, forward, was if it was going to work the population had to be educated and had to be able to make decisions and voted and be sensible, a sort of greek, goes way back, and so i think that is always in there, like i said, the boys believe -- w.e.b. dubois believed if you got an education you would end up being equal and obama's position, it is the same thing and i take -- and kennedy is the second to the last profile, jack kennedy and you know, he says it, too, but of course he had it all handed to him on a silver platter and his education was you know -- he in fact was bored to tears as far as i can tell by school. and became a great kind of leader but the kind of leader who was a trouble maker and he had a -- you'll read about this, he had a great club at one of his prep schools and he made incredible trouble, and the -- almost got thrown out but hughes you see this leader emerge, i'm the guy who can get it all in trouble, really well here! >> have a ball!

>> righted, exactly. exactly. anything else, you guys? yes? >> i thought it was interesting your chapter on bell, on so journ-- so jurner truth, and blacks were getting their freedom and there was also traffic to get them back south and reenslaved in a state that would allow them to be still somebody else's property and the whole underground railroad idea that they could keep in touch with the children that were lost and the whole chapter just mystified me, that there was all of this going on, under the surface. >> there was a grate grapevine essentially i think, a moment in that chapter, if you remember, where she's been sold to the guy who essentially beats her and she's a kid and is 12 or 13. and, he's awful. and she says she prays and then

her father shows up, in answer to the prayer, and then, a couple months later she's sold to a much nicer guy and me, while i believe in prayer to some degree, believe there was probably something else going on there, too, which is, there was a way of communicating among the slaves where the father gets wind of it that his daughter is in trouble, and then, manages to get this word out into the white population and somebody goes, well i'll you buy her and seems there is a communication going on, you know, that is not in abigail adams' letters but is this sort of like i say, grapevine, i think. and she then finally, if you remember, sues, because her kid gets sold south when he's supposed to be free and chak chilly goes to court which nobody did in those days, no black people and sued and got her kid back. yeah. amazing. >> did she read. >> no.

soj out. rner truth said i don't read such small things as books, i read men and nations, but, but she, i try to figure out how slavery stevens, because that is the institution she is in. and she's got to learn, with in those confines, i mean, you know, some people learn on a farm and some people learn in school and she learned from slavery. so... that was interesting to me because there are a lot of americans who learn that way. 1740, i read, one of -- one out of six people here were, you know, either slaves or indentured servants or bonded or something and were all trying to figure out this system from that perspective. did you read the whole book. >> [inaudible]. >> that's the title, you can stop there. >> the segue betweener chapters, like having lincoln's response to sojourner truth when he meets her, auntie. >> calls her auntie, and --

>> and it was sad to have that because i would think he'd be, the way he was with harriet beecher stowe, and he seems off put by that remark and that documented by somebody's journal watching that. >> yeah. yeah. i don't think he had a lot of experience with black people, as i understand it, abe lincoln. it wasn't part of indiana -- saw a little bit in kentucky when he was a kid, but when he's about 19 he takes a -- the chapter ends with him taking a barge down to new orleans and that is the first time he saw slavery and he didn't grow up in the middle of that and it puts him off and is part of why he's the great liberator and it doesn't make sense to him and also means he's not real comfortable when sojourner truth shows up at the white house. you know? i hope these segues between chapters is not me being a clever author but is also that there is this narrative going on, that the spirit of abe lincoln, his education kind of continues, people think about

it, go, is that how you learn, is that what a good education is, and from one to the next. going on. yeah. >> i found your book reinvigorating in many ways, because i think we have become so standardized in how we look at education, the test and so you have to the conventional teaching practices, which is given to us. but it reminds us that learning, teaching comesen so many different forms but the one essence was the value of education. to each profile. >> this other thing i kept seeing is when people had fun with it, however they defined fun, they really did it well, whether it was putting together an airplane or whether it was hard work, miserable in a way but there was an element of it

that -- then they learned, you know? and, when -- and i curse my other -- and of course my other belief is we are learning all the time whether we want to or not and if you are in a dull situation you are learning how to make spitballs or something but you are figuring it out. something is going on in the brain, amazing species that way, i think. thank you. >> how do you... how do you institute -- you know, all of those extra institutional learning, how do you institutionalize that or should you institutionalize that and maybe the school is just to socialize people and make people learn how to stand in line and maybe doesn't have anything to do with education, in the sense you are talking about. >> well, part of it clearly is that tradition, i mean, horace mann, largely responsible for starting education in the country, 1830s, did it to americanize people and there are a lot of irish immigrant in boston and he saw what amounted to a race riot, between the

irish and the, you know, old school of boston and said we have to figure out an institution that will get them to stand in line. >> huck finn, civilized, right. >> exactly. exactly. >> and they'll civilize me. >> yep, and he had trouble at first with the factory owners, and he said we could work these kids and they shouldn't be in school and in the they came to his side and he said if they go to school they are better as workers and take orders without asking any questions. yeah. so, i mean, that is a funny part of school, even as we are saying, this is to make it a democracy and let us all think, we are also saying, well, we can't run a society if we don't know the rules and schools are where the learn the rules. to finally answer your question, as you will see the book begins by saying, okay. how do we do this and ends by saying, okay. i have been through 200 years of history, how do we do that? doesn't have answers in it that

wait. i hope what you said is true, that we look at education, a little differently then and go, there are all these ways of learning and even if we can't institutionalize them let's give them the respect we give to the testing results. daniel wolff is the author of several books including "4th of july", "asbury park" a history of the promised land and his writings appeared in many publications including vogue and educational weekly. rjjulia book sellers hosted the event, for more information visit rjjulia.com.

the public affairs imprint it is part of the persius books group and here at the book expo america this year, publishing affairs is doing something different, susan weinberg is this publisher at public airs fairs and what are you doing here. >> well, the persius books group decided to take up a challenge at the ea this year and that was to publish a book in the 48 hours on the show floor at bea which meant from the opening day, thursday at 4:00, to today, saturday, 4:00, and we are going to have a book party then if you want to stop by and celebrate with us. and the idea to do the book, was to show case a lot of new things that are happening in publishing. one is that the way that electronic files and electronic formats and all of the different printing technology, how much it is changing and opening up new opportunities in publishing and book selling. and, the other was to continue in -- more intensify the collaboration we are doing with other companies and there are

lots of companies with lots of new ideas that can be innovative for the box world and when we announced we were duke it we thought we'd ask some of them to help and we found also many of them came to us before we had a chance to call them ande want to be part of it and want to help and we have over 20 companies, participating in this project, with us and public affairs and pierce yous books group to create the book. >> susan weinberg, let's walk over here, you have a schedule of event going on that you have done. and you have a story board here. >> story board, of course the first thing we had to do was say what is the book and had the idea for the publishing and of course had to have a good book and the way we created the book was through crowd sourcing and started a web site, www.bookthesequel.com and we spent a month inviting people through all kinds of social networking mechanisms, inviting people within the industry and also outside, people all over the world, to contribute to the book. we have had contributions from new zealand, japan, all over the united states, it has been a really fun process that way. >> what is this book about.

>> so the book is sequels, the first line of a sequel -- the first line of and as yet unwritten sequel, to any book ever written. it could be something like, call me, ishmael, which is moby dick's guide to dating at sea or something like... they were not the worst of times at all, things got a lot worse after that. the tale of three cities, by charles dickens. and, we created the idea for the book, people wrote and we -- at 4:00 on thursday we started the edding process of picking and organizing these sequel lines, and we also said to the art director we're not sure exactly how the book will come out and we need a few covers that we can look at and pick the best one when we have contributions and comments from people, at the show. >> when you pick a cover is that one of first things you do with a book. >> it's not one of the first things you do when you are talk about a book but one of the first things when are getting ready to publish the book and that is when you know really

what it is and the cover is a really important marketing tool and it is the clothing the book wears out in public and i say we never send a book out naked in public. >> we have four titles up here, four covers up here and why did you decide on this one. >> when we put all of the four together on the board, we got a lot of comment but the thing i love to watch when people look at covers is their very quick visceral react, because, once start talking about a cover and going into it, forget it. people in bookstores don't discuss the covers, they have a quick visceral reaction which is will i pick it up or pass it by and when we had these four covers up here, everyone's eye went to this one. >> why. >> we asked people after i saw it happen, they say it is about books and a lot of the comment and sequels are from older books and here's the older books and they loved the elegant and literary look of the cover and the twist of the electronic reading device, right there. and people got it right away and some didn't get it until the second look and they may have

enjoyed it more because the cough had a two-step response and this one we felt was going to fade, people doesn't read it or site as quickly. and these two were fun but people real gravitated to the books. on this cover. and we as you, we had people join us at a cover meeting, pre-announced and had our sales director and other book sellers and people who happened to come by the boo and they kim came in and gave us that are comment and send the covers out on twitter at the same time and got response from the people who have been following the project on twitter, with their comments on the cover and this was a very, very heavily unanimous choice. and so, that was the collaborative process and we decided this would be the cover. >> we have a finished copy of the book here and, two things, an introduction by jeffrey nunberg and edited by clive priddle into the editorial director of public affairs and he's the one talking with the author, jeffrey, who is a linguist at university of

california berkeley and they came up with the idea together. so, clive edited the book and we asked jeff to write the introduction and he has written several books for us on public affairs and is a commenter on npr and had the right touch for it. >> let's dive in here and pick a page and see what we find and you can explain it to us. >> as i lay undead and dying... a chapter, part 6. >> yes, there were a lot of zombie contributions. and, there were a lot of contributions from certain authors, i don't know if i have got that righten front of me but i know if we come over here we have some people who have that information. mickey, do you have the sheet of the most sequel titles, what we are looking for. >> i do not. but -- i would try augustine na. >> nicky, what are you working

on? >> this is actually an important part. >> nick. >> guest: what are you working on. >> i'm working on the digital audio edition, so right now, i am waiting for -- here's your list, waiting for a final audio file to come from michigan, from our audio studio there, and i will proof them and do that right here in the booth with headphones and then, once i am okay with them i'm going to up load them to our dp site and let our vendors know that the audible e-music and overdive and can go on there and pull done the files and put them on their sites and we'll have an audio edition. >> in other words you have already recorded an audio version. why in michigan? >> our -- we have a great relationship with the studio out there. so, he's just done good work for us and we love him and he's fast and reliable and... we'll use him. >> and he was willing to do it in one day, we got him the manuscript at 11:00 a.m. yesterday. and he got us the final by this morning. so, he, you know, we need -- and he read it himself and he's book

produce, audio book producer and now, the digital downloadable audio will be available by any of the people who sell, distribute those sorts 0 things. >> will it also be available on kindle. >> it will be available as an e-book on every format that. >> guest: that includes kindle and sony reader and includes everybody who jumped in and said, we want to offer the book as an e-book and for many of them, i believe they -- they'd be able to buy the e-book today. >> susan weinberg, a publishing question, how important are e-books to your business. >> i think they are very important because they represent growth and innovation and a way to continue reading in yet another form and format. and everyone, the e-books now are a small percentage of people's overall business, but the potential for e-books and how they add to the choices readers have, about when and how they want to read a book i think is very significant for us. i also think in the world where everything's happening so quickly, we have sometimes been able to get book out une-book format faster and the print book and have sometimes, when we had

a book that is time sensitive, we did it last year, at public affairs with george soros's latest book on the financial crisis, released it as an e-book and took almost 5-6 weeks to get the physical book out there, but the message was so important and time sensitive we let readers have it as an e-book first. >> dry erase board, what is this schedule of events. >> here is showing all of the things that we are doing today, saturday, which is our second full day of publication and is going to end at 4:00. today we had the book web site created at the booth, and we created a reading group guide and this was a lot of fun and a great meeting and had librarians and a company, reading choices that does reading group guides an riccis out and helps reading groups organize. >> is that something you do on a normal basis for all books. >> not for all books but we do it for a significant number of books and a lot of publishers do, a vi popular way, not only to -- for books for riding groups and helps teachers in classrooms an librarians who run readers group and we had a couple of librarians join for us

the meeting and have great ideas for a reading group based on book the sequel but that also pulls in all a -- a lot of interest in reading anyways of talk about books and what people remember about books and how they matter. we have had teachers say we'll use this as a classroom assignment, and we have talked about selecting -- suggesting to stores that they put book, the sequel and a lot of classics around it as a way, again we site as a collaborative project and as a fun thing for everyone to have, a role and a role to play in it. the meeting at 1:00 is going to be very interesting. that will be our decision whether and how many to print, for the general public. so, we're talking about, we have some orders for the book in the system and we're talking to other retailers, people are hearing about the book at the show, and we will have to, as often with imperfect information make decisioner how many copies to print and how to best get them out there and our goal is to have finished physical copies of the books pretty well

sdribled by june 15th, which is aggressive and which if you were laying down dan brown you couldn't do it that quickly, but with this project we believe we can do it. >> is there a time you decide not to print any copies of a book. >> not a book we have decided to publish. that doesn't happen. you know, when talk about e-books in the future people talked to me about a business model and they say, launch a book as an e-book first and seeing how it does and then print copies and that is nor publishing model that some people are talking about but we traditional print publishers have not gotten there yet, at 3:30 a q&a with all the participant, over 20 companies who are participating with us, and any press and boo book sellers who want to come and ask questions and learn about the project and 4:00 p.m., we're going to open the champagne! >> and susan weinberg, right behind you is clive and we want to introduce him. >> what was your role. >> hello. >> what was your role