memoir." she tells of explain the tragedy to within five year old son and becoming a leader in a circle of grieving women and the present of the 9/11 widows and victims' families association. this event was hosted by the old first reformed church in brooklyn, new york. it's about 20the righ minutes. .. ago. for a long time ago we were the only church in the village. this church has always had a special mission to the whole community. we have had the great privilege and pleasure to work with the community bookstore for the last few years in hosting writers, speakers, and it's been great for everyone. it's a gift that we give back to the community. there are so few places where people can come together and grieve together and learn together and develop a common

ethic together, and this sanctuary is a great place for it. so thank you for coming. we've had a number of different readers and speakers over the last few years and it's wonderful to have someone from our own neighborhood who can speak to our own experience in a poignant way. in the gospel of john, jesus says to his dissipeles, greater love hath no man than that he give his life for his friends. as a kid growing up, firemen represented that to a boy at least and we >> well, as a kid growing up firemen represent at least to a boy and we projected all kinds of feelings and excitement of the firemen. you may remember that little golden book "the fire little firemen" and how much we loved that book. the lord jesus didn't have a

wife. some are saying now in print that he had a girlfriend. that may be the case. i've never preached about that from this pulpit but to give your life to be friends but what happens to those who love you when you go home? we all of us have loss. one of the most important functions that this sanctuary serves is for people to come to grieve together and to understand loss and to look for encouragement from each other. we all of us have loved ones who have been lost and that way we are all equal. we all share. but there's always -- there are always certain persons whose loss becomes symbolic, who becomes the object of our own projection and tranparence and

during 9/11 the doors were open for anyone who come in to pray, to hope to grieve. and we grieve not only for the people who are in the building but for the people who voluntarily opened those doors to come in to help others. the cops, the firemen who were willing to accept our mission on our behalf in the way we grieved for them especially in a poignant way. so, too, we are now grateful to marian fontana who has accepted that office as well. to provide us with her own experience and her own reflections, some of which we've seen on pbs, perhaps some of you. others who know her. she has done us the favor of allowing us once again to put upon her our own experience so

that in her experience we can find out more about ourselves and about the world that we live in. thank you so much for coming to listen to what she has to say about her own experience and her own life. thank you for coming to support this effort on our behalf. i'm speaking on behalf of her first but on behalf of the community bookstore whom made this possible and who made this possible. i would like to introduce the owner our local hero. mra[applause] >> danny wanted me to say something but he did a perfectly job of introducing -- i'm sure i'm not saying anything surprising when i say recent events in the south have brought the day after 9/11 back in a

horrible poignant way. the store is once again filled with donations. people are coming in, their generosity are incredible asking what they can do to help, just the same as it was september 11. there are also just sitting in the office today, you could hear whispered conversations all over the store, did you see this image? have you seen that? how could this happen? what can we do? and, likewise, a similar thing that particularly moves me is the bewilderment in people's faces, literally, they come not knowing what to do and i think as i thought when my father died when i was very young that as a country we're not taught how to grieve, how to handle grief, which assuredly we will all have

to do at some point. and i think about that a lot. years ago, before any of that happened, i was fortunate enough to spend some time with marian. and sometimes her family a little. and marian has made me laugh than any human being ever has. we must also have to learn how to grieve, i wish that you didn't have to have the knowledge to be the one to teach us that. there's nobody i would trust more and that's all i really just wanted to say. thank you. marian fontana, actress, comedian, reader.

[applause] >> thank you. thank you. >> thank you. my goodness. well, i assure we were friends. i was reminiscing about us, things i can't say in a church but we have some had good times and when my publicist said there any place you want to read and i said community bookstore because i'm a big fan of the dying breed of the small bookstores and i'm here. i would have been happy to have been in your little bookstore and not this giant church where i feel so inappropriate standing here. and i know this is the only reading i'll do sitting in a bishop's chair. this is what i've been looking for to the most because all of you are my friends. i can honestly say you are. you know, i've said it a million times but i really know in my

deepest heart that i couldn't have made it through that time without you guys and i talk about it on radio and tv as much as possible and i feel very blessed when it happened and i can't think of a better way to have been and the way you guys rallied, i don't think i cooked for a year. there was lasagnas on my stoop every day when i came home and you can't duplicate anywhere you go. so i miss you guys. i'm glad to be here and i'm going to read -- i'm just going to read short little snippets of the book. i know a lot of you have heard a lot about it. this is just a little short snippet of it. we're probably just a couple months in. in the evening i watch aiden jump into his bed his skin still shining from his bath. he has always loved the water from the moment i laid him on top of me in the bathroom when

he was just three weeks old. i want bankie he said in his newfound baby voice this whiny sound thoroughly reminds me but mary his therapist assures me it is normal for grieving children to want to go back to a time that was safe and secure. i slide into the bunk next to aiden and he nuzzles me. i love my bankie. i know, sweetie it's very special. the heart on it it means i love you and he turns to a light pink part on the square and the cars i want to run you over and i smile knowing this sentiment perfectly synthesized the polar extremes of feelings that seesaw aiden from me to one to the next. i begin reading the star wars book i have read 100 times. uncomfortable with stuffeded bears and monkeys poking me in the back i stop and grabbing a handful of animals to make more and i hurl them on the top bunk bed, no, they are part of my

kingdom. well, i can't fit i stand up and aiden tries to make more room. piling animals at the bottom of the bed. i squeeze back down keeping one leg on the floor to keep from falling off. are you sure you don't want to read something else i said wearily but aiden is insistent. he's beautiful boy with freck oz his nose and full expressive lips. i'm not going to read if you don't pay attention, i say. i try to skip parts but since he has memorized it i have to go back and re-read them. when his foot lands hard on my shin. i slam the book, that's it. no i'll stop. i'm moving over here pulling up the old kennedy rocker i bought in maine for $25 when i was preliminary hearing my patience is waning. i can't fit in your bed. there's someone sitting there already he said sincerely. i feel my brow firefighter. it's a firefighter angel.

i chill trickles down the back. no, is it daddy? no, his clothes aren't dirty. it's one of daddy's friends. who i try trying not to sound desperate but it's too late aiden is finished with this conversation. keep reading he insists and i slide back into bed not wanting to sit on an angel. i'm going to read a lighter part and there's not too many of them. and it's hard not reading comedy every day and having people telling me that i don't make them cry. this is on my way to -- one of the wakes, the many wakes. alone if my car en route to the wake my mind is blank. i can't focus on anything. i don't even answer my cell phone which sits on the

passenger seat ringing and ringing. things have continued to spin outfit control. i stair ahead on an old aspen station wagon on it. it has a bush sticker on and i smiled thinking of aiden's therapy center. he had a puppet one a policeman and the other is a gray haired man. the president. what does the policeman telling the man. he's telling him about the towers aiden and he said my mom things president bush is an ass hole, aiden i scolded. that's not a nice word. i made a mental note to think more quietly on the phone. the front portfolioer of the funeral parlor is wide with faded blue carpet, crooked carpet on the font i pin my

squad patch on follow some firefighters in a room to white. rows of gray folding chairs are sit in the middle of the room where a few people have hushed conversations. i wonder why people always rush into funeral parlors as if they are entering a library. as if death requires quiet. denise carries mike, jr. who is now 18 months old. he is a serious little boy with teresa small's lips and stick straight strawberry blond hair. the rest of mike, jr. looks like his fire the wiry build and big blue eyes. michael's parents stand next to teresa. spotting me teresa signals me to come up to the front. i greet michael's parents and mike's older brother tony that it looks so much like mike. you got to see this teresa pulls me back in the room where a reith of golf clubs stand over 5 feet tall. i cupped my hand over my mouth

stifling a giggle and there's a wreath of a harley-davidson motorcycle so large it takes three easels to hold it up. another wreath is squeezed in next to it tepicket ago football jersey the size of a blackboard. a few weeks ago teresa and i entered a funeral that looked like an soprano episode. we saw in line with men in dark suit and they are talking about meat. the thing is, when people think the fat's bad you you got to have some fat to grill it. that's called marbleizing the second one said. the fat like you said it has to be marbled. what the heck are you talking about? fat, you know, fat. of you talking about the fat and i happen to know something about it. all together fat freaking head the third one said. and teresa and i tried not to giggle too loudly about them. they went on and on like this as the room snaked on where we went to the large room as the casket

stood. funeral wreaths stood. a giant fire truck made from red and black carnations dominated the corner. i've seen these wreaths most of the wakes despied, depicting everything a firearm loved, surfboards, logos, of bands and movies. i do not want these are the mike's funeral teresa had said motioning to a soccer ball. we couldn't made laugh a gallery's wreath of flashy flower art. and i'll stop there. and this is the last little spot i'll read. this is when we went to hawaii and it was in december and all the squad families were going and they convinced to come with them. and i reluctantly went and this is the day aiden and i learned to surf. aiden learns how to paddle and

pop up in less than five minutes he's up water in john. i'm so exhausted watching the sun make shapes and circles on the inside of my lids. my limbs feel heavy like they are on the cusp of falling asleep with me. i listen to the water and the muted yells from the kids and the voices of kids being carried on the wood, look at aiden and i shoot up cupping my hand over my eyes. aiden is standing on his boards a slight smile on his face. i feel my heart racing with excitement and john is cheering him on. i grab my camera and run to the water. go aiden, go aiden i screamed and a smile goes into a half embarrassed scream and i'm laughing and crying at the same time. it seems like every emotion you can possible feel is feeling my heart stretching like an overblown balloon. i can feel dave everywhere in the warm beach air. for the first time i listen to him. i am right here with you.

we leave in the late afternoon when the orange light makes everyone look beautiful. i lean back in my bus seat feeling like a sated queen when tony says look i open my eyes to see a giant rainbow stretched in a perfect arc across a perfect landscape except for a tiny reflection of the sprinkle and an oily puddle. i have never seen a real rainbow. it can you have a mile from end to end. with colors that are clear they look like they are drawn but aiden look but he's asleep on my shoulder. everyone is quiet watching the rainbow and dozing and tony is on the cell phone now. is everything okay i asked donna who is sitting across the aisle watching tony. tony is one of the firearm and this is his wife. i don't know even ask anymore, she says. i nod and she turns to me her eyes watering with concern. he's so angry. he's just not the same. i feel funny funny you telling

you this, it's hard. i nod trying to imagine what dave would have been like had he lived. i know he would never leave the site except to attend funerals. i know i would be alone tucking aiden in each night worrying about dave's health as he inhaled the ground zero dust. i would listen for dave the familiar sound of the door opening his heavy footsteps in the hallway and when he crawled into bed each night i know i would be as alone as if he weren't there. i would listen to his breath growing heavy his body exhausted from work and he would toss and turn, his dreams as haunted as his day adrift in a sea of loss. it's almost dark when we arrive at the hotel the palm trees shaded against sky. we agree to meet at the bar for happy hour. aiden insists on going swimming again frommorn. from the moment we arrived he seemed to have been submerged in water. i shower last laughing at the amount of sand that folds from my baby suit. i tilt my head down there's a

tan line from my surf shoes. i sigh watching. leah knocks on the door. maybe aiden is back from the pool i swing open the door my body wrapped in a too small tall, there are three in the towel. they found dave, marian, mike says. i clenched the towel tighter around me to hold me together. where was he? i don't know the details. it was in the south tower, i think. was he in good shape the guys shift uncomfortablebly. he's twisting his mouth trying not to cry. i don't know. we don't know as disney. joe o'donnell was there. he didn't know it was him. everyone is silent watching me. waiting for me to react. i stair at a piece of lint on the rug. i feel confused. i should be happy he's found. it is what i've worked so hard for and yet the pain feels as heavy and hard as the day he

died. if you want us to go back with you, tony starts, yeah, we're here for you, whatever you need. we want to do what's good for you and i nod. this is a good thing, marian, no, i know it's good i'm nodding because i don't know what else to do. i'm glad you guys are here. yeah, i got the call when we saw the rainbow tony says and as soon as my eyes meet leah's i know i'm going to lose it and the tears to wait. when the doors closes i cry with abandon imagine dave in pieces and parts scattered across the street in seeds my beautiful husband i whale cupping my hands over the eyes the rescue workers excavating dave's shattered skull his body parts rotted beyond recognition. behind my lids i can picture the piece was dave as they zip him into the body bag and place him in a stokes basket. the rescue and steelworkers and volunteers heed the silent ritual by removing their helmets and hard hats as dave is draped in an american flag and carried

out in ground zero while i lay in bed thousands of miles away wondering what to do next. thank you very much. [applause] >> sorry. i made you cry again. thank you. so i guess there's a question and answer thing. they said you have to step up to the mic to ask a question. so that's it, i guess. somebody is going to ask me something embarrassing. anybody have a question? no? are you all going to be all shy? come on up and say something about college. [laughter] >> i hate question and answers because there's so much

pressure. personally. but we don't have to. i can just go over there and sign books and then we'll go out for a cocktail? does that sound good? all right. let's do that. [applause] >> every weekend booktv offers 48 hours of programming, focused on nonfiction authors and books. watch it here on c-span2. >> there's a book -- the idea of america is just a fabulous book and you'll be doing a book-signing afterwards if i'm not mistaken and it really is one of those books that if you love history, not just the revolutionary period but history in general, this is something that we really should have on your bookshelf. so having said that plug, and i'm hoping for 10% afterwards -- [laughter] >> what i thought we would do is start out by -- i'd like to probe some general questions about history and then talk about you a little bit and then we'll ease our way into the book

as well. to start, since we're here at the national archives the first thing that i wanted to get your thoughts on was the following. many of us within the historical field have lament the lack of historical knowledge among young people. and can you take a second and tell us why is it important that we study history? >> well, history is to a society, i suppose, what memory is an individual without knowing where you came from, what your background is, you'd be lost. i think there's a movie where a man has no memory, memento. it's just -- can you imagine how terrifying that would be not knowing your past? and i think for society i think that's a comparable situation. if you don't know where you come from, it's going to be difficult where we're going to go and so i think to get our bearings, our directions, we need to know where we've been.

so that's the classic answer why we should study history. i think it is the queen of the humanities and without knowing history, i think one is living in a two dimensional world not experiencing reality as it ought to be experienced. i think history is a mode of understanding. i think it's as important as the other senses. and once you acquire a historical sense -- and i don't think history is just information about the past. i think once you study history and read enough, you develop what i would call a historical sense so you see the world differently. an added dimension on the world, on reality. and suddenly the whole world appears different. the perception of your present is different because you have an understanding of the past. >> as we sit here speaking, these set of remarkable

momentous events are sweeping the world today in the middle east the so-called arab spring where people are rising up and trying to grab a piece of a greater say in their destinies, a greater sense of self-determination. what do you think the founders could teach them and in the same breath what can they learn by looking at the experience of america as they -- young americans wrestled with setting up their republic? >> well, presumably these people are seeking democracy. that's what we're told and i think that's true. they want to vote. they want all the other things that come in their minds with democracy. they see how the rest of the world is living and they want a share of that. i think the -- the issue is that democracy is hard work. it does not come easy. and authoritarian governments are easy to put together.

and the world has always had authoritarian governments monarchy, although monarchies is hard to say. we have a lot of benign monarchies, england, sweden, holland, so monarchy is not quite the word but that's how the founders saw it. monarchy was the enemy and what they meant authoritarian governments. authoritarian governments have existed because it's difficult to govern a democracy because democracy has to be governed from the bottom up. people have to be willing to sacrifice their selfish interests for the good of the whole. that's what the founders meant by virtue. classical terms, surrendering some of your private interests for the sake of a public good. it required a lot of self-sacrifice and it's not easy to do. the leading french philosopher of the 18th century very much read by the founders said that democracy can exist only in

small states because you can't build a consensus if you have a large diverse population. that was a very, very important principle with which the founders had to confront when they were drawing up the federal constitution. because he would note be surprised by what happened when tito, for example, was removed from yugoslavia. suddenly the serbs and the other ethnic groups were at each other's throats in the yugoslavia area or when the soviet union was removed, suddenly all of the various parts began fighting with one another. he would have said, of course, once you remove this authority from the top down then these very ethnicities and differences are going to come to the floor and they make democracy very difficult because people have to willingly surrender some of their selfish interests and that's not easy to do.

the founders would have been -- and they became very pessimistic about the ability of other peoples to become democratic. they thought the french were following them. 10 years later. and, of course, many french leaders thought so, too. lafayette who was at the outset was one of the leaders of the french revolution 1789 he sent the key to the bastille, the bastille being the prison and bastille day in france is still july 14th -- it's still celebrated as the beginning of the french revolution and he sent that key to george washington and it hangs today in mount vernon. and that was his way of saying to washington, you americans, are responsible for our revolution and the americans assumed that. that they were responsible. and they thought they were responsible for all the revolutions that took place in the 19th century that somehow or another they were in the vanguard of history spreading democracy around the world.

but with the french revolution spiraling as you've written about in your greatly book, the great upheaval spiraling into tyranny then they became pessimistic about the ability of other peoples to be like them, which gave us that notion -- gave them that notion that they were exceptional. the exceptionalism theme which is very controversial is in comparison with europe. the hope, the dream that other peoples would follow us has always been there. and that is one of the articles -- one of the essays my last essay in the book is why america wants to spread democracy around the world. we wanted to do that from the very beginning. not necessarily by troops but by example, by showing the world that we could do that. and that's what lincoln was all about in his mobilizing the north of the cil