i wouldn't blame anyone for staying outside as long as possible. thanks for having me tonight. a real honor to be here. my book covers the six year period when sam clemens became mark twain. in years immediately after the civil war first discovered his true calling as a writer and famous in name, it is the thrill to be here in the san francisco area where he spent many event full-year is as a newspaper reporter and a bohemian and self-described dodger of landlords. he left san francisco although he is supposed to have said -- know when can track it down -- the coldest winter i ever spent

was a summer in san francisco. i have a mental image of mark twain as a no man in a white suit looking wise. in his early years he was more of a wise guy. a real life tom sawyer who was always getting into trouble and talking and walking his way out of it. he was always on the verge of going somewhere and when he stopped writing out in spring of 1910 he listed five continents and had gone around the world several times and cross the atlantic ocean 29 times. travel was liberalizing. whenever you write a book the first thing people want to know is why. why did you write this particular book? not why did you write this particular book. this is a combination of things. as a civil war historian and old

english major, i like to combine writers and everything. ambrose bierce lived in san francisco for many years as a newspaper reporter as a union army veteran and probably some of more military service than anyone in american history and i wrote a book on walt whitman who volunteered in washington d.c. during the civil war. they saw a good deal more than mark twain who buy his own admission was not equipped with this awful business. the award began in 1861. he was living in new orleans working on the mississippi river as a riverboat pilot. not wanting to be drafted into the confederate navy, he left his job in new orleans and went to stay with his sister in st.

louis. he went back to his home town of hannibal, missouri, when he joined a new group of military guerrillas known as the marion rangers. they were not exactly a crack outfit. they spent most of their time arguing about strategy, falling off of their horses and retreating from what they imagine where hordes of union soldiers. one ranger accidentally shot his own horse for not giving the proper password. another got carried off by a watch dog. the entire group fell down the hill falling into a creek and sam clemens sprained his ankle when he jumped out of a burning barn he set on fire by smoking in bed. the rangers did so much marching and countermarching that one

farmer said they were bound -- no government could stand the cost of the issue that it would take to follow them around. mark twain agreed and by the time he left the rangers himself he said he knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating. he left the rangers after three weeks without bothering to formally resign and went back to st. louis and hid out in his sister's house for three weeks the torn -- surprising is that he had been named secretary to the governor of nevada territory. he even had a formal piece of paper signed by abraham lincoln himself to show it. he was dead broke. and mark twain offered to pay to

take him along. in 1961 they both went to the territory and for the next 21 days were constant companions rattling across nebraska, utah and nevada. the stagecoach stopped every 50 miles or so to take on other travelers or let them eat. he ran into jack slade which is a great name who works for a stage name when he wasn't robbing it. he carried around the year of one of his victims as a good luck charm. he noticed my cup was empty. he politely offered to fill it and i politely declined. he might be needing the

diversion. he survived that confrontation but slade was lynched a couple years later by montana vigilantes' given the comparatively lax standards that must have been a good disturbance. the brother stopped in salt lake city. sam went along for the visit. mr. young had 17 lives himself and advise mark twain to stop that doesn't. take my word for it, ten or 11 is all you need. twain agreed. mormon women were so pathetically homely that the man who marries one of them, christian charity which entitles him to the applause of all mankind.

the builders finally arrived in nevada near the epicenter. mark twain deciding he had nothing better to deuce to become a millionaire. he was walking out and the silver would be on the rocks. you just walk over and pick it up and it was a lot of hard work digging and blasting. that is not something he was cut out to do. he decided it would be better to let other people do the hard work and he would just sell the stock. it still didn't work. he estimated later that he had become a millionaire for ten days before he neglected to doing enough work to establish legal ownership. his luck finally changed when he

was offered a job as a newspaper reporter -- it was the next town up from carson city. his luck changed at last. the enterprise was the liveliest newspaper between st. louis and san francisco. he fit right in besides the prospectors and stock swindlers and other desert rats. the town was home to a contingent of prostitutes. and an entire regiment of gunslingers going by names like six finger peak. he spent the next two years reporting and inventing names. he joined himself at other people's expense but creative reporting got him into trouble

when a rival newspaper challenged him to a duel. he preferred to avoid conflict. he had no time to fight a duel just then and he had been drunk when he wrote the offending story. instead of fighting the double the left virginia city and came toç san franciscoñi where much against his desire, the morning call. san francisco had more than virginia city including such famous residents as the great unknown and elegantly dressed gentleman who paraded down montgomery street in funereal silence nursing a broken heart. a 1-man stock exchange. washington ii who strolled around in a powdered wig and colonial finery but without a doubt the biggest character in

san francisco was emperor norton i, the self-described emperor of the united states. he walked around in full military uniform with a sword and sash issuing daily orders abolishing the presidency and demanding the army cleared the house of congress. wasn't so crazy after all. mark twain began a daily earthquake almanac. sample entry, exhilarating earthquakes accompanied by occasional showers of rain and churches and things. he spent his days going from one police station to feeders where he would catch just enough of the performance to write a brief review of the action. it was sold as drudgery and awful slavery for a lazy man.

i am a lazier now than i was years ago because you cannot get beyond possibility. mark twain quit his job and went to visit a few of his friends on jack s. hill which was a rundown mining camp in calaveras county. he heard a story about a champion jumping frog secretly filled with buckshot to win a bet. if i can write a story like that told it it will jump around world. he was right. subsequent diversion of the story, later renamed the celebrated jumping frog of calaveras county was picked up all over the east and he awoke one morning to find himself famous. he still didn't have any money

so he went to hawaii for several months when he turned luxury is vagrancy. this is more like it. during his visit he became one of the first to try the native sport of surfing. it didn't go too well. the board struck the shore without any cargo. hi struck the bottom about the same time with a couple barrels of water in the. he spent the rest of his time observing native dancers for the sake of research. this is the site of captain cook's death in 1779. and hiked across an active volcano where the smallest sulfur is strong but not unpleasant. he returned to san francisco

dead broke and someone suggested he give a lecture on his present trend. he could charge people to have him talk which is something he had been doing for free nonstop all his life. he agreed and he made his performing debut in san francisco. doors open at 7:00. the trouble will begin at 8:00. at the appointed hour he strolled casually on stage with his hands stuck to his pockets, wandered around vaguely for several moments and noticed the audience for the first time. he peered out at the crowd with year, surprise, irritation and announced in an exaggerated missouri drawl i have the pleasure of introducing mr.

clemens, addendum and his numerous accomplishments and high moral character are surpassed only by his natural modesty and sweetness of disposition. i refer in general terms to myself. the topic of his lecture was our fellow savages of the savage island's. there are a residents were captain cook discovered them but the white man said he brought in a complicated diseases and consequently the population began to drop off with commendable activity. alliance are very hospitable. and baked dogs. they are particularly fond of dogs but that was all right. cherished american sausage with

the mystery removed. as for the rumored that hawaiians are cannibals he vehemently denied it. he offered the demonstrate the practice if anyone in the audience will lend me an infant. he left stage 90 minutes later to a standing ovation and discovered a new calling. i broke out as a lecturer he bragged and from that day to this i have always been able to gain my living without doing any work. two months later he left san francisco for new york city. six years into the tricky expected to last three months. in many ways these were the most important years of his life. out of work mississippi riverboat pilot and confederate army deserter and returning east as mark twain, a journalist and

traveler and stage performer. he wrote about his sanitized account of his misadventures in the west. in roughing it, he told the truth mainly with some stretcher's thrown in for good measure. it doesn't matter, he says. it went with the territory. thank you very much. [applause] anybody have any questions, i will be glad to answer them. >> he made up a bunch of very funny names. he was trying to figure out what

to call himself before he became mark twain and some of them were hugely funny. >> i wish i had the book in front of me. >> he also used strange words. are these real words or did he make this stuff up? >> i think it is a real word but i couldn't say myself. before he became mark twain, he claimed it was a name he took from the mississippi river named colonels sellers but no one could ever find any evidence that sellers had used that name before. it means two fathoms deep which is 12 feet which is the depth at which a boat can pass into safe water but his friends in nevada

say this is what he used to say when he would walk into a bar with two drinks. either one is a likely scenario. if i can find those names i know one was w. drastic blabbed. i should know my own book. one was josh. and a citizen came from the fact that his brother got into trouble for complaining about dogs that were barking too much. sam got mad about that and

challenged another editor to a duel in his early days but that editor ignored him because he was 14 at the time. he always held a grudge and wrote an article about the other editor who decided to commit suicide by walking into the mississippi river because he got half way out and decided he changed his mind to wave it back and he wrote a scathing account of that misadventure and said it was a shame he had broken everybody else's heart by not going through with it. i can't find the others. ten names were pretty big back then anyway.

his best friend on the territorial enterprise was william wright who went by the name d'indy quill. william wright taught him how -- the fine art of the written hoax. he wrote an article in the book about an inventor in death valley had been in a sort of temporary mobile air conditioning unit he wore on his back and according to this story it malfunctioned and he froze to death in the middle of death valley. mark twain got in trouble because he rode a hoax in which he claimed a one armed citizen in virginia city had gone crazy and killed his family and

massacred them and scalped them and written into town with his wife's scalp and cut his ownç throats. a terrible story this guy is still walking around town today so he wrote a follow-up story which said in total i take it all back. >> what happened to mark twain? >> what happened to mark twain's siblings? his older brother went from one failure to another and mark supported him financially and became a lawyer for a while and a preacher for a while and a land speculator. the entire family had the same gift for many which was a negative -- he married a very

wealthy young woman from new york and inherited a small fortune and managed to run through that and invested in a printing press that never worked and if i recall he started a publishing company which went under and he had to go around the world and to reclaim -- to pay off his debt and none of them had a way with money. his sister -- they lost money also and they are pretty much always broke and depending on mark twain for money and henry, was closest in age to him was killed in a river boat explosion

south of memphis in 1850 when he was 18 or 19 years old. i was in memphis last week and we were talking about that. he always blamed himself for getting his brother a job on the riverboat and always felt badly about it. in his book connecticut yankee in king arthur's court the day of his execution is the anniversary of henry clemens's death in 1858. >> considering mark twain's role as a lecturer and story teller who is the mark twain of today? >> who is the mark twain of

today? that is a good question. i was talking earlier. a southern writer named louis who wrote several books, he died fairly on. the way mark twain was, he was effortlessly funny individual. if he had lived he might very well have been considered. in san francisco lewis was talking about going to chicago and working up there for a while and chicago had two seasons. winter and the fourth of july.

he was very funny. yes? >> different book but in huckleberry finn he writes about the slave jim and he is really an equal rights guy. i was wondering if you had any comments? he didn't want to be in war. >> he was considered pretty much ahead of his time in terms of racial relations. one of his real mentor's was another slave who grew up with his family on his uncle's farm. uncle daniel. he learned a lot of storytelling techniques from that.

for some reason someone asked me about this the other night. he wasn't really ahead of the curve when it came to native americans. he had some scathing things to say about some of the indians he ran across on his trip from missouri to calif.. i know that personally he paid for several african-american students to go to college. in that sense he was ahead of his time. >> you mention he let something slip through his fingers in virginia city. did he a have other speculative endeavors? >> he bought up a bunch of claims. more people went around selling shares in feet of mines then

actually worked the mines. the original discoverers of the comstock lode were cheated out of their money by henry comstock who claimed that their mining property but joined his by a few feet so that he was technically their partner. he lost his money too and later ended up killing himself so there is a lot of swindling going on. yes, man? >> i was wondering if in your research you found something that either contradicted or expanded on anything he wrote about in roughing it.

>> that is a good question because with mark twain he never let facts get in the way of a good story. in roughing it, which he wrote not long after he got married to a proper young lady from new york state to a personal he left out most of these things, hanging out in bars and his association, trying -- fairly straight laced when it came to that and when it came to drinking and gambling and stock swindling he was right in there with the best of them. but he left that out of his book so i tried to double check other people to see if he was telling

a stretcher. more often than not he was. there was enough truth in it that it wasn't a total loss. he was a fiction writer and even his nonfiction is sort of fictional. he was his own best character. he gets the impression -- his older brother got this job and envied him because heç had nev seen anything and by the time sam clemens had been on his own for 12 years as a printer and journalist and mississippi riverboat pilot he would exaggerate but always in the sense of making himself a comic character.

what was surprising about him, one of the things that surprised me is he had no sense of humor about himself. he loved playing jokes on other people, but when he went back to virginia city after his first speaking for and he had gotten some fame his old friends decided to turn the tables on him and disguised themselves as road agents and held him up and took his money and his gold watch and left him in his underwear. the next night they gave money and he walked to san francisco. he had no sense of humor except where other people were involved which you can say for a lot of comedians and humorists.

>> i was trying to think of someone in the twentieth century the might of been marked wayne and will rogers came to mind. he was the closest in his writings. >> like mark twain, will rogers was a midwesterners and accountable westerner as well. very similar. i am trying to remember the quote. i can't remember it exactly but mark twain said the united states had no native criminal class except for congress. and i know that will rogers said he didn't belong to an organized political he was a democrat.

okay. thank you forominhere tonight. i appreciate it. [applause] >> white morris has authored biographies of walt whitman and ambrose bierce. he is the editor of military heritage magazine. visit bookpassage.com. this weekend on c-span2's booktv, former education secretary bill bennett examines america at the end of the 20th-century and beginning of the 20 first. he is interviewed by former managing editor at time magazine. from new york financial critic -- circle and look for highlights from the virginia festival of the book. find the entire schedule online

at booktv.org. >> delighted to see you all here at the embassy and a special welcome to tina brown. we are delighted to participate in the launch of harry's book, through stories of vanished times. the book covers a huge amount of ground from harry's childhood in england and living a few hundred yards from where juliet later grew up. and onto his professional career as an editor and publisher and author. but this isn't just another autobiography. is also a biography over many

significant decades and it describes the industrial process of producing a newspaper over the best part of the last century. all of that has vanished but the book is not an obituary. mark twain says i am not the editor of the newspaper and i always try to do right so that god will not make me one. harold evans is ten years editors for years and editor of the baby times of london. produced work of extraordinarily high standards. journalists named him the greatest newspaper editor of all time. and he championed yesterday's

review of the book called the crusading style of journalism in which he and his paper afflicted the guilty and championed the innocent. people of my generation who got interested in national politics very often did so because of the sunday times because of its cultural leadership and field. this is also a transatlantic story. and his fellowship in 1956 began a lifelong association that lived here for 30 years. tina doesn't remember it and we were contemporaries and she had a knack of stopping the traffic just as she has done here and since. the american career took him to u.s. news and world report and a number of top publications to random house and publishing to

writing including the award winning american century. you are both american citizens. i am not holding that against you but you retain the u.k. and this embassy and i wish to remark every success. please join me in welcoming harold evans. [applause] >> i can't be elevated. thank you so much for those excellent words. it is always good to come back to britain where we are because this is a british television you understand. not to go through the formalities of proving who i am which happens when you go through any security.

nigel is so lucky. juliet lived very close to me and he is lucky because we never met. because the knows what might have happened if i had met the gorgeous juliet which became a scientist and like me ended up in the united states. tonight should be a celebration. reporting -- that is what my book is about. it is about what newspapers could achieve, not what an editor can achieve but what the reporters on the ground can achieve. i am here to have ben bradlee here who represents journalism at its best and many other excellent reporters here. i am glad we are here with a

synthesis of remarkable quality about what is going on at the moment because few people apart from me can read every newspaper every day and so it provides that synthesis as well. so celebrating reporting which all of us know what reporting is, news is what somebody suppressed. everything else is advertising and the truth of that. what i would like to say when i was writing this but i got nostalgia. especially in these times when people are questioning my new print and what it might do. and what ought was able to

achieve was not by me but by these reporters and when we were campaigning for my victims who were without arms and legs or government approved prescription. and we won the great battle against the attorney general and dual citizenship. that makes life difficult day. we were able to do this. actually studied the chemistry of that and i remember going to the office of inside group. no one has looked at how the disaster occurred. the largest air crash in the

world at the time. congress began to invest and got board. so the truth of the terrible disaster was left to the press and i am proud of what the reporters on that particular story did or take another one. and exposing that great cover-up and the damage he did and the lives he lost was extremely tricky. straight reporting -- very difficult -- the team was the way to do itçç and i am proud bring some sort of understanding

of the history and currency of what was happening in northern ireland and john is here tonight, head of the inside team and working the through those difficult circumstances produced a fantastic book and report. when i was prosecuted by the i r a which i was for the suggestion, to go fast. he took a wrong turn and i got down with the reporter on the spot for doing that every day. that is what we are here to celebrate tonight. really good reporting is being squeezed out of existence, often by people whose think the

newspaper is a great way to make a lot of money and reporter or newspaper, we have to keep reminding everybody that it must change. i will always be very grateful that my publicist gave me the time to set out what the newspaper would do. and we have here tonight -- in the 1960s. created a most wonderful publishing empire and it is central to the conduct of indian democracy. when we drink tonight, let's

drink to reporting and thank you for coming tonight. [applause] >> this was a portion of a booktv program. you can view many other programs on line. you can type into the upper left-hand corner of the page and select the watch link. you can explore recently on booktv or the featured video box to find recent and featured programs. >> on your screen now is an administrator with the seed school in maryland, carol beck 11 and with her are several students. explain what the seed school is

and why you are at the national press club. >> it is a college public boarding school in baltimore city but has students throughout maryland. the school is two years old and the unique thing is it is a boarding school. our students are living with us in college like dormitories during the week and go home on the weekend and the idea is to have 24 hours and use it as well as we can sell all of our students will be prepared for college. the students here tonight are seventh graders and have been talking about college for more than a year. >> explain the philosophy? >> there are students who could truly benefit and have life changing experiences if they are given 24 hours a day to focus on their studies and all kinds of

developments that will help them be successful in college and beyond. our goal is to make sure all of our students are prepared. we are largely funded publicly because it is a partnership. the state of maryland has made a unique commitment to the operating of funds for the school but the private sector, individual donors have made it possible for the campus to be built and they are helping us with start up costs. >> why are you at the national press club of her night. >> at the invitation of the club which has taken an interest in the seed school of maryland and our sisters school. the school is brand-new and we have no books in the library. patrons here at the book fair are making their purchases for themselves and they are buying dictionaries and novels for our library and the students are

here to thank them and share with some of the patrons a small booklet of their own poems and essays. >> let's meet the students. tell us your name and what your favorite subject is. >> i am in seventh grade and i don't have a favorite subject because i am good at all but i really like math and i am doing algebra i right now. my teacher is a really cool teacher. >> why are you going to the seed school. >> it was away from my parents and i get to be someone of my own actions and really makes it open that you can be whoever you want to be and at the same time your goal is to go to college. >> what are you reading right now?

>> we just finished the joy luck club and we are supposed to read the diary of anne frank. it is about a german girl who was segregated and had to go to recreational camp and stuff and we really want an opinion of what she was going through. >> thank you very much. some more students here. this looks like devon. >> we have forms written by students of the seed school and artwork in the school. >> are you published in here? >> yes. one is the bishops i created and it is in the book. and also texture. we have different things in here. and here is some art work.

and i create wings and other textures which is the bishop. also baroque, clean and the king. >> so you are a chess player. >> also in the chess club. and basketball and football and soccer and other things. >> you are here at the press club's author night. what kind of books do you want for your library? >> we have a dictionary. i would like to help with this. also gives you tips about some of the words to be used against school. and this is very interesting. >> hold it up so everyone can see it.

is this the dictionary will use in school? we are hoping the cds and library is at school. >> we have two more students. how are you? >> i am reading the mystery of the blue down. i have been reading a book called chicken soup for the teenage school and it is about teenagers with their lives. and how to overcome and it is really nice. we are all becoming teenagers and stuff. >> how did you get in it?

>> my friend told me. i wanted to go to a boarding school and i thought it would be a fun experience. my favorite part is learning on a higher level and learning new things i didn't know before and i never thought i would learn so many things i am learning now and i thought those things would be so hard that i went to tenth grade to learn and i am already learning those things. >> if people are watching this and want to donate something, what would be the best books or resources to donate? >> the best books would be something that would catch our ike, something that would be interesting. it could be real world writing

like biography and stuff and dictionaries too. you can always learn new words and stuff. it is school to learn new words you never knew before. >> if people can buy this dictionary and donated to the school is that what you are saying? thank you so much. one more students we want to talk to and this is madison. what are you reading right now? >> the diary of anne frank. i am thinking it is very good and it is how life was and how difficult it was to be in that situation. >> she was in seventh grade too. kind of weird to think about her life and your life. >> yes, is. >> are you a poet? >> i am and i as a culpable books in this book. >> what do you like about

poetry? >> it can express my feelings and tell what my life is going through. also helps me learn something different. >> are you in seventh grade? >> where you from? >> baltimore. >> thank you for spending time with us. one more question. if people are interested in donating to the seed school, what is the best way to contact you? >> our address and phone number. we have a web site. seedschoolmd.org. >> thank you and your students. >> thank you. >> we are talking with mathew spalding, author of "we still hold these truths: rediscovering our principles". what was the most enjoyable part of writing this book?

>> i love history. and before, during and after the american revolution and how to present these principles in the documents of the american founding, e. quality, natural rights, religious liberty, rule of law, how do they come up with this idea and what does it mean as a practical matter for running a revolution? putting that in story form is how all this came together as opposed to a legalistic discussion. the narrative of american constitutionalism. it is a great story. >> what is being rediscovered in rediscovering our principles? >> many of the ideas of american history we have forgotten some

things about it. and to rediscover how these principles, these ideas and concepts of are the core of how it defines us. it is not merely historical stuff. not merely about guys in hats. these are live questions of what america means today. american history on the left and right and in between. it is an ongoing debate about what those things mean today. the american founders were positive of that as well and made certain claims. our choice as a society, where we are going, there's a lot of discussion. this is a choice about notions of what these principles mean today. spend a lot of time talking about what the founders thought and what modern liberalism

framed the same principles and how this discussion is playing out. >> what inspired you to take this on? >> there wasn't really one book that did this. a lot of wonderful books talk about these concepts and biographies and it wasn't really just one book. i worked in public policy and the heritage foundation, and other public figures. there was no one book i could point people to that laid out this story. >> would you say it is a manifesto or is it different from that? >> here is what we stand for today. this is a different book.

to pegç the founders principle in the declaration, constitution from their perspective to understand what they did and take that as our perspective to look at the debate today in light of that. you get a good sense of where we are relative to those principles which they sought were self-evident and permanent. >> does the book contained criticism the formulation of a constitution? >> it raises important questions that are flawed. the most serious one to think through is human slavery and violation of inequality. i address these clearly, warts and all. and these were very difficult

problems. and the other problems with what they accomplished in light of that, how those principles operate as a practical matter and rediscovering them. none of these are easy things that apply directly. it is hard. it makes you think about what these principles do to key questions of humanity. what are we relative to each other? what does it mean to have religious liberty? these are the questions we face today. we thought these things through hard and deeply and wrote about them and put them in these documents. it is a great opportunity to think about them in light of our own circumstances. >> who are some of the other authors? >> heritage coverage any public policy question you can imagine. we have authors who do most of their time on public policy questions ranging from health care to national security policy. in terms of this kind of work,

the only person there, i love to be in the middle of that policy but the policy work we do at the foundation, following -- a very passionate historical understanding whether you are on the left or right, the history of entitlements or social security which rose out of the new deal period, we have a history of that, history which is so important to the current public debate. >> do you have another project going on now? >> i have several prospects i want to write about. my earlier book was on statesmanship. there is so much going on. we are finishing a study guide to go with all of these.

and you can build a discussion on a reading group and have a study guide to run your own -- it is a popular textbook for rediscovering principles. >> what do you read to prepare for writing this book? >> i read a lot of history. my own background as an academic. my phd as american political thought. i studied the constitutional convention and all these things for some time and i love all of that and at some point history changes from mir facts which they teach in school to being a story and you see the narrative. other people have done it and that is the nature of learning history. the book is really based