festival. this is the first year that the festival has expanded to two days, so the national mall is full of people, it's full of authors, over 120 authors are down here. the c-span bus is also down here, and we're handing out these book bags. so if you're in the area in washington, come on down, pick up a book bag and say hi. the national book festival is sponsored by the library of congress, and president and mrs. obama are the honorary chairs of the national book festival. well, now we're going to go to the history and biography tent. doug waller is being introduced by maria rana of "the washington post". >> 11th year. it's a wonderful event, and i think going for two day has been a real experiment for the national book festival, but it is so rewarding to see that there are actually people out here and milling around, ready

for another day. so thank you very, very much for coming. my name is marie arana, i am a writer-at-large for "the washington post". i was the books editor for many, many years, and i am now a very happy member of the board of directors of this festival. and "the washington post" is very, very proud to be a charter sponsor of the festival for so many years. ..

>> almost two decades as a washington journalist, doug waller has covered the pentagon, congress, state department, the white house, and the cia. from 1994-2007 he served as "time" magazine's washington bureau. first as a correspondent, then as a senior correspondent. he has also served as diplomatic correspondent traveling throughout europe, asia and the middle east as well as the persian gulf. in pursuit of stories. he has carried out extensive coverage of the middle east, peace negotiations, and the wars in iraq. before coming to "time" magazine, doug was a correspondent for "newsweek," reporting a major military conflicts from the gulf war to somalia to haiti. he was born in norfolk, virginia, study at wake forest

university, and did graduate work in urban affairs at the university of north carolina at charlotte. before joining "newsweek" in 1988, he served as a legislative assistant on the staff of senator william and representative edward markey. douglas waller is now a defense analyst for bloomberg government. among his many, many books, a number of them, bestsellers, are the commanders, the inside story of america's secret soldiers. air warriors, the inside story of the making of a navy pilot. and big red, the three-month voyage of a trident nuclear submarine. his new book is a biography of an outsized american character, general william wild bill donovan, the founder and director of the office of strategic services, the

precursor of a modern cia. in this superb biography once a cliffhanger and a work of deep scholarship, doug waller tells the story of a man who built a far-flung intelligence organization out of absolutely nothing in the middle of one of the most brutal wars of our time. and ambitious young lawyer with political aspirations, working donovan had written to president franklin d. roosevelt in 1942, and told him that what the country really needed as it hunkered down for war was a good operation. roosevelt, desperate for information, gave him the task. donovan was fearless, even reckless, always itching to be in the center of attention, and the story waller tells is full of action, on the ground and in the corridors of power.

david weiss has written extensively about the cia wrote on the pages of the "washington post," "wild bill donovan," the name of the book, is a first carefully researched in depth biography of the legendary world war ii spymaster. for anyone interested in history of american intelligence, it is required reading. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome a terrific writer and journalist, douglas waller. [applause] >> i'm sorry but before i bring him on, welcome to answer, before i give him the microphone i must say we expect you to ask questions after he speaks. but i must warn you that your image come if you come to the microphone which we hope you will do, will be found and been buried in the tombs of the library of congress forever. so be careful.

>> thanks, marie. it's great to be here. actually we are actually sitting in a very appropriate spot for a discussion about "wild bill" donovan because just a few blocks from here is where his spy agency had its headquarters. it was up one navy hill right next to the state department. his staff called it the kremlin. his headquarters. it was an abandoned, had been an abandoned public health services building. in fact, they have been doing selfless research there. when donovan's men moved into the headquarters they were still animals in cages up on the top floor that they hadn't carted out. joseph goebbels, hitler's propaganda minister, had a lot of fun with that little morsel. in fact, he said that propaganda broadcasts that donovan's new home was for 50 professors, 10 goes, 12 guinea pigs, and as she.

which actually wasn't far from the truth. "wild bill" donovan really is three stories in one. it's a very compelling biography of a truly heroic figure. met a lot of tragedy in his life. it's also a spy story, and exciting spy story about world war ii. and it's a story about political intrigue at the highest levels of washington which is a part that really intrigues me the most because i'm a journalist. i said in some talks i would have loved to been a reporter covering "wild bill" donovan back there in the '40s. and i probably would have. donovan liked reporters. he liked leaking to the press. he had reporters on his staff as propaganda, and before he heads up the oss, the office of strategic services, he would go out overseas on mission for the government or for his own private industry, posing a big correspondent and putting two different news agencies.

he wasn't a particularly tall men, only about five-foot nine, one of his agent, betty mcintosh, but when he ran the oss he can look in when she. she told him that went on. he didn't appreciate it. one of his other operatives, mary bancroft said he looked like a qb golf. don't anybody asked me what a qb doll look like but that's what he looked like them. he slept five hours a night, could speed read at least three books a week. he was an excellent ballroom dancer. he loved to sing irish songs. he would go to broadway and pick up the latest sheet music so he could learn the latest musical things. he didn't smoke. he really drank. he enjoyed fine dining which added to the weight. he spent lavishly, had no concept for a dollar. when he was overseas basing stations, which is where he was most of the time, in aid was always be with him with a bunch of quarters and dollar bills

because he was always mooching them off of him. he was witty but he never showed are never told a dirty joke, never laughed out loud. never showed anger. instead he let it boil up inside him. he was rakishly handsome. particularly as a young man. he a bright blue eyes that women found captivating. his life, however had a lot of tragic aspects to it. his daughter died in college in an automobile accident. his daughter in law died of a drug overdose. one of his granddaughters at four years old died when she accidentally swallowed silver polish. he was born on new year's day 1883 in buffalo's port irish first war. i gave up booktalk in buffalo during this, and discovered that all this time i've been saying donovan stand wrong. if you're from buffalo's irish first ward, you pronounce it donovan, not donovan like i was saying. it screwed me up for the rest of the booktalk. he thought he might be a priest

and every irish catholic family was always assumed that one of the sons would become a priest. donovan realize he wasn't cut out to be a man of the cloth so we went to columbia university, was a star quarterback you senior year until a cheap taco from a princeton lyman hobbled him for the rest of the season. he attended columbia law school after columbia university, franklin roosevelt was a law student within. in fact, roosevelt like to say that he and donovan were old pals in law school. donovan said that was a bunch of baloney. roosevelt had nothing to do with somebody as low as social stress as donovan was. he returned to buffalo, set up a very lucrative law practice, married one of the wealthiest women in buffalo. then world war i comes. he goes off to war. he commands a battalion in the famous 69 to irish regiment, a very famous new york regiment.

he was awarded the congressional medal of honor during world war i for some very heroic actions. his priest in the 69th regiment, father francis duffy, said donovan was one of the few men he had ever met who actually enjoyed combat. he really did. he would write to his wife that going out on combat was like going out trick-or-treating. in world war i is where he earned the nickname "wild bill." he was actually a very rigorous and brutal trainer of his men because he realized in this war they were going to be going into a meat grinder, which they were. so before they went into action in france he had them when they're running over hill and dale and under barbwire and obstacle courses and whatever. finally, they all collapse in front of him, his battalion. he stood up and said what the heck is the matter with you? i'm 35, during the same that you are, you don't see me out of breath. from somewhere in the back a

soldier shouted out, he never figured out who it was, but we're not as while as you are, bill. okay? from that day on "wild bill" donovan start. he claims he didn't like that nickname because it ran counter to the cool, calm collected spy energy he wanted to project. but his wife said he really did like being called while bill. he returned to new york he wrote. eventually became an assistant attorney general in the coolidge administration during the roaring '20s. his goal at that point was to be attorney general of the united states. and he thought herbert hoover had made a promise to. hoover had. but the ku klux klan which is very powerful, powerful political movement then was up in arms over the idea of an irish catholic becoming attorney general of the united states. donovan was a prominent republican made his share of enemies in washington and senate

democrats vow to block his nomination. so hoover reneged on the promise until the day he died, "wild bill" donovan never forgave herbert hoover for backing out on the attorney general ship. he returned to new york city, set up a very prominent law firm there, made millions as a wall street lawyer, then in 1932 he ran for governor of new york on the republican ticket. his goal then was to be the nation's first irish catholic president. and it was the ideal steppingstone for achieving that. franklin roosevelt, 1932, was running for his first term as president. donovan ended up running as much against roosevelt as he did against lieutenant governor lehman, roosevelt's lieutenant governor who is running for governor. said some nasty things about roosevelt on the campaign trail. at one point he accused fdr of being quote, crafty.

back then that was fighting words. kind of mild today. another time he accused roosevelt of being a quote, hyde park figure because roosevelt on the campaign trail claimed he was just a simple farmer am hyde park and donovan said that was a bunch of bunk. roosevelt, for his part, took a shot at donovan. had surrogates do. eleanor got on the campaign trail and started criticizing him during the election. donovan lost that election. turned out he was a horrible campaigner. if he was here talking to you in a small group he could turn on that irish charm and he would have you've totally wrapped into what he was saying. before a large group though, he was a wooden stick figure, just terrible as a campaigner. in fact, his lieutenant governor, a guy named davidson, that donovan should be running for lieutenant governor and he should be running for governor because he was so lousy. the reason i mention all this by

background is it's amazing that roosevelt may donovan his top spymaster in his administration, considering all the nasty things these two guys said about each other in new york. but fast-forward to 1940, 41. roosevelt is building the country up, telling the defenses up, preparing the nation for war. donovan, even though he is a conservative republican, he thought the new deal was a calm spot to take over america. nevertheless, he was a member of the internationalist wing of the republican party. he to believe that the nation needed to build itself up for war and the country needed to prepare for this down the road. in the summer of 1940, roosevelt since donovan on an informal diplomatic mission to england to answer but just one question. can britain survived the war? donovan is given access to the highest level of the british government, to naval

intelligence, military intelligence over there, mi5, mi6 and all the war agencies. he comes back with bags full of documents, classified documents from great britain. and with an answer to the question that yes, britain could survive a war but it would need a considerable amount of u.s. aid to do so. as we all know that came eventually in the form of land lease. roosevelt since donovan on a second trip at the end of 1940 that lasts to the beginning of 1941. this time he went not only to england but he went through the balkans, the middle east and eastern europe. his mission was not on to collect intelligence about what was going on in that region but also to deliver a very private message from franklin roosevelt to the balkans and middle east leaders, which was that roosevelt did not intend to let great britain lose this war. so if you are decided at this point which side you will be on, and a lot of balkan leaders were at this point, just keep in mind that the allies will be the

winning side. georgia was delighted. he cabled roosevelt that donovan had been a heartwarming flame. churchill supplied him a british plane to fly him around the region and yet british military escorts with him to open were sorted and also keep an eye on what he was doing and report back to london. one of them was enough for me, the novelist who wrote the james bond novels. the state department wasn't too pleased with this mission. here you have an american citizen who had no diplomatic standing in the american government or the british government, strong army balkan leaders behind closed doors. in fact, the state department at one point investigated whether donovan should be prosecuted for violating the logan act which makes it ran for u.s. citizens, a private citizen to negotiate on behalf of the u.s. government. roosevelt was only too happy to have donovan after freelancing. because keep in mind in 1940,

going into 41, roosevelt has no foreign intelligence service in his government to speak of. you have the army and navy have small foreign intelligence units, but they were largely dumping ground for poor performing officers. roosevelt is making major foreign policy decisions overseas, you know, how much and how to get land lease aid to great britain. how to circumvent congressional control. he's running against wendel willkie for an unprecedented third term. he's really worried he will lose that election and he's making all these decisions overseas, largely blind to what lay ahead of him. it working so much that sometimes he became physically ill. when donovan came back from the european mission, that's when our spy story begins. in july 1941, this is before pearl harbor, roosevelt signed an executive order designating donovan is coordinator of

information. about a year later it would be called the oss, the office of strategic services. but in the beginning it was the coordinator of information. just a one page document, very vaguely written, said colonel donovan, his world war i rank, will collect information of national importance for me and other unspecified things. the document was so vague that they of the cabinet members in roosevelt administration begin scratching their heads and wondering what in the world is he up to, appointing this republican wall street lawyer to do all these unusual covert things in his administration. donovan liked to say that he began his spy agency, the oss, really from minus their which is really the case but it was really just one guy and that was "wild bill" donovan. in the beginning he was kind of like a player in a pickup basketball game looking for agents and operations anywhere he could find them. so for example, the philips land

company, they made and sold lands overseas. they still may be in business today for all i know. donovan arranged privately with the philips lamp company to have a salesman when he went on sales calls overseas to report back to him, particularly axis occupied countries what they saw and what they heard. the eastman kodak company, in my day they made the cameras, i think to make disposable cameras today. back then they have thousands of camera clubs around the united states. donovan arranged for the camera clubs to send him the photos that terrorists had taken of military leave important sites around the world. another project he hashed was projects a car. pan american airways, europe probably all float on pan am, not a new tv series about pan am stewardesses or whatever. accton project cigar, donovan arranged privately with ticket agents for pan am in africa would report to him on the

movements of nazis throughout the continent so he could keep track of access agents in africa. he cooked up all kinds of wild schemes. he was open to practically any crazy idea, or at least willing to consider it. his code number, which you see on the oss doctors is always 109 which just happened to be the room number of his office in the kremlin. his secretary said end of the code name for him. they used to call him seabiscuit because like the racehorse he was always kind of running around all the time. he was always a constant blur to them. he kept $2000 in his desk drawer at all times to pay off sources for information when he went prowling around washington. i don't think you'll find a cia director that keeps to grin in his office now, in petty cash. he had a research and development chief, a guy named stanley lovell, who invented all the spy gadgets for them. donovan used to call him his

professor moriarty after the sherlock holmes character. stanley lovell made things like the miniature cameras that spies have to use. with silencers, incendiary devices, pencil like incendiary devices used as explosives. donovan was very, very interested, for example, in truth drugs, fascinated by the use of truth drugs and interrogation. so he had, stanley lovell had one of his officers test out the truth drug on a new york mobster, a guy named little all geek, okay this was a new york guy who worked for the oss. he had little on the up to his apartment for some smokes and a chat one day. and little obvious are puffing away on a cigarette which is laced with the truth drug, puffing away, puffing away, slowly get the silly grin on his face. starts telling the officer about all the mob hits he's carried out from his working for lucky

luciani and all the congressmen he has brought. little auggie secrets were safe with the donovan. he could never bring him to court. it would expose the truth drug they were testing. other ideas he had. one time he proposed to franklin roosevelt the he have a button at his desk he can push it any time and it put him in instant communication with every radio in america so he could warn people in los angeles the japanese were attacking, or people in new york that the germans were attacking on that site. roosevelt ignored that idea, but roosevelt was open to everyone of donovan's ideas. roosevelt was a spy buff himself. he liked his entry. he liked the whole idea of espionage. so for example, one time donovan, i'm stanley lovell talked about the idea of getting bats, but that's the fly, how they were going to tie incendiary devices around the bats, okay? the idea was that you would fly

over japan, drop the bats out, the bats would fly in to the paper and wood houses, and said the incendiary devices would set off and it would burn down japanese cities. okay? i'm not making this up. this really happened. terrific idea. eleanor roosevelt had heard about it. someone had written her she passed it onto critical. franco thought it was kind of cool, and gave it to donovan and he had stanley lovell check it out. so they got a plane, loaded up with a bunch of bats with incendiary devices tied around them. flew over somewhere in midwest, some desert area, dropped out the bats, guess what happened to the bats? they all sank like stones. the idea didn't work. but donovan was willing to try. he was willing to try other things. one of the side apps scheme that he had was that satanic level had concocted some female hormones, okay?

if they could find hitler's vegetables they would inject in the hormones into the vegetables and it would make his mustache fall out and get in a falsetto voice what should be a real bummer. [laughter] eventually donovan built his spy organization, and over 10,000 covert operatives, commanders, research analyst, support personnel, scattered in stations all over the world. again a remarkable achievement the incident really start out with one guy which was "wild bill" donovan. they mounted covert operations in north africa during the torch campaign in november 1942. had extensive operation in sicily and italy. in the balkans they aided the guerrillas in yugoslavia and greece. was very wide-ranging operations there. in asia they were really limited to burma and china, those two theaters. interestingly enough, macarthur, command of the

southwest pacific theater, in want of any part of donovan's force. in fact, banned him. didn't think you have any use for them. admiral, commander of the northern pacific force, also didn't think much of donovan's force and wouldn't let him in there. his most extensive operations came in france, northern france and southern france. they mounted or they had a good bit of research in targets in france and germany. they also infiltrated, parachuted in commandos during that operation. donovan also like to go in on landings, the beach landings. he went in on the landing in sicily and italy and it started to worry is on staff because they thought a spy chief, and intelligence chief with all the secrets and said, the last thing you want is at the front or he might be captured and he might be a valuable target your george marshall, chief of staff of the

army, thought he had donovan banned from going in on the normandy landing. so did dwight eisenhower. they thought they had been prohibited and he would stay in england. donovan managed to talk his way aboard the heavy cruiser and land the second day in the utah beach landing. had a great time. he was on the beach on a jeep, german measures myths lies over and sprays the beach and he goes diving into the same. he then marches in about five miles with an aide, gets pinned down by a german machine gun nest, reaches in to the pocket of his field jacket to look for a suicide pill because all oss officers carried a suicide pill, including donovan. realized he left it at the hotel in london and was all worried. had an aide rated back because he feared a made mike cunning and mistake it for an aspirin. it took almost two years for donovan to bill up despite organization. it may seem like a long time but

the u.s. army quite a while to build up its forced to become a credible force in the war. but eventually it became very, very proficient and turned in a lot of good intelligence, like all intelligence agencies it did suffer from its failures, to pick one of the most striking failures was the vessel? donovan thought he had a silver bullet agent planted inside the vatican. the codename in his codename was basso, who was supplying him with cable transcripts of conversations, private conversations that pope highest was having with foreign leaders, japanese envoy, and with his own envoy on peace initiatives, particularly in asia. turned out vessel was an italian pornographer with a very vivid imagination who had a talent for writing dialogue. snookered donovan, all of donovan's staff. as i say this is also a story of political intrigue.

donovan liked to say that his enemies in washington were asked to assess adolf hitler was in your. and that was really the case. he had ferocious fights with j. edgar hoover. over the donovan's organization was the biggest collection of amateurs he had ever seen. and actually in the beginning it was a big collection of amateurs. hoover had his fbi spy on donovan, collected a lot of information on them. they spied on oss officers. he had moles in donovan's organization to donovan spied on hoover. had moles in hoover's organization. when i was. when i was doing the research i got winded have time to spy? the pentagon at first wanted no part of donovan's office of strategic services. george marshall thought that this was a plot by donovan to take over army and navy intelligence. which by the way is exactly what donovan had in mind if franklin roosevelt would have let him do

it. so marshall eventually comes to accept donovan's oss, but a senior intelligence officers never did. and, in fact, they fought donovan's organization throughout the war. at one point toward the middle of the war, his military intelligence folks even formed their own secret espionage units behind donovan's back. it was nicknamed the pond. its job was not going to spy on the access behind donovan's back to spy on donovan, and spy on his officers. the evening collected information on the wives of oss officers. in any war, you are going to generals on the same site fight among themselves. world war ii was no different from any of the war. the british and the americans senior officers, there were constant battles among them. in donovan's case though the fights were even more intense because the conventional admirals and generals really

didn't know what this guy was all about. when he got up and start talking propaganda and espionage operations and transport and that's with incendiary devices, conventional admirals and generals found that truly disturbing but not really the american way of war. donovan also brought along a lot of the problems on himself. by his operating style. he had the habit of never taking no for an answer. so if the command in front of them said no, you can't do this, he would make an end run around the commander, tried to get a decision reversed. which, of course, doesn't win you any friends in the pentagon. one time he was at a cocktail party in washington chatting with an adult and he had his men burglarized the admirals office, steal some documents office desk, and bring the dodgers to the cocktail part to show the admiral what his agents could do. there's nothing in the record that shows what the admirals reaction was but i got the probably pretty not great.

donovan had a penchant for showing up at meetings at the pentagon, usually late, keeping the other admirals and generals waiting. he was eventually made a major general in the army. his uniform would be very carefully tailored. and he would come into the room with only the medal of honor ribbon he had one sewn onto his uniform. as a not-so-subtle reminder that he had really the only metal in them that actually counted. eventually donovan couldn't overcome his political enemies. he had drafted a plan for a postwar central intelligence agency, and he wanted to leave it. after the war. walter troll man who was a reporter for the "washington times" herald which was part of the mccormick patterson newspaper chain, which also on

the "chicago tribune," every public and newspaper chain strongly anti-roosevelt, they despise rosa rosa despise them, he gently to him donovan, a copy of donovan secret plan to set up a postwar cia. most likely j. edgar hoover did to the document but it could never be proven. anyway, he publishes the article in the "washington times" herald and the "chicago tribune" verbatim, along with a very highly inflammatory story that accused donovan of want to set up an american gestapo in the united states. back then if you choose any organization of being a gestapo like organization, you about killed it politically. and it did with franklin roosevelt. he basically shelve the plan. harry truman comes into office. okay? j. edgar hoover had one of his agents plant a particularly

nasty rumor with truman's top military aid, that donovan was having an affair with his daughter-in-law. they play pretty hardball back then. now, i had to run that rumor to ground, wasn't it particularly present chore but discovered it wasn't true. donovan was close to his daughter-in-law, but only as a daughter-in-law. even so, donovan had had a number of affairs over the years to get a number of mistresses. it was common knowledge in buffalo, new york. it was common knowledge in washington among oss circle. and military intelligence. had no problem getting to the fbi getting passed on to truman. that was a really what some of donovan's organization with harry truman. what really probably killed it was a 59 page report that the pause, the secret espionage unit, they managed to get to truman's desk to an army officer in the white house serving as a

conduit. that 59 page report accused donovan's agents, agency of all manner of misdeeds and malfeasance and blown operations and corruption. in fact, at one point even accused oss officers for staging a orgy any which i found no evidence that was the case. truman also didn't like donovan. on the one hand you have a successful wall street republican lawyer. on the other hand, you have a diehard democrat. there was never going to be good karma between these two guys. so in october 1945, truman shuts down the oss to he wasn't naïve to the threats that were out there overseas. he knew he was facing an impending cold war threat. and he needed an intelligence service. he just didn't want donovan's organization or the oss having any part of it. truman in 1947 formed the cia,

central intelligence agency, patterned after the vision and the idea that donovan had. donovan lobbied through surrogates to try and make himself cia director. but truman wanted -- didn't want any part of that. dwight eisenhower comes into office in 1953. donovan thinks he has his best chance to become cia director. eisenhower was republican. thought a lot of donovan's work. instead the eisenhower makes allan dulles as cia director which deeply disappointed donovan. he thought dulles was going to screw up the cia. dulles had been a station chief. donovan's station chief in switching. had done a terrific job. ironically does not donovan had done a lousy job of running the oss and he could have run that agency better. so, let me end it there. we can talk about his life

afterwards or anything else you'd like to discuss, his legacy, what you see today among the cia. [applause] >> yes. my name is max gross. i read quite a few books about the oss, and about donovan. one thing i've never understood and you didn't bring out yourself, there was no intelligence oversight committee. i've never known congress' role regarding the oss. and how did he get paid for it? >> good question. on the first one, whether there was any congressional oversight of this operation, the short answer is no. in fact, at one point harry truman had sent over some requests to get some information about what the oss was spending its money on. truman was in charge of that government, efficiency committed during the war. and marshall came to him and

talked him out of it and truman backed off. senator harry byrd, virginia, at one point tried to find out what the oss officers were getting paid. they were getting paid pretty high salaries. he wanted to cut that back. as far as the funding for the os as, a game initially of two accounts. roosevelt in the beginning had a private slush fund, a white house secret fund that was called an voucher money, which wasn't accountable to congress. he could pay at whatever he wanted. so he initially pay donovan's organization out of the private fund. he also had his own little secret intelligence unit run by a washington columnist. did domestic espionage work for them. none of this was really overseen by congress. eventually, part of donovan's sons come his budget expand into the hundreds of millions or more, came from appropriate funds from congress. but even in congress really

wasn't doing a lot of oversight of what he was doing overseas. he was basically free to operate on his own. >> i wonder if you could say something about the sources that you used for this book. for example, are all the oss archives available? where are they? do you think they are complete or do you think that some of them may have been deleted at some point? >> yeah. the good news is that all the oss documents have been declassified. frankly, all of them have been declassified. the bad news is that practically all the oss doctors have been declassified because it runs into the millions and millions of pages. in donovan's own office, i have to go through a good bit of that mature, in donovan's own office at the kremlin he had something on the order of 170,000 documents their that were under his control. which took me about a year to go through. his personal papers from his law

office and other sources, his letters to his family are at the army military history institute in carlisle pennsylvania over three her 60 boxes. i also had to go to the three presidential libraries, the fdr, truman and eisenhower libraries. then they are scattered and archives in libra's all over the country are different parts of the donovan story in the oss story. i also had to go to england to the british archives their, because the british been a good bit of time monitoring donovan's organization. they were integral to setting up this organization, but the officers that were spying on donovan's organization and a new donovan was spying on him. so you could go there for special operations executive papers which are extensive, some mi6, the churchill library had

some, too. it took about a little over two years to go through and vacuum up everything. >> thank you. enigma was an enormously successful operation. what i learned is that donovan had no relationship whatsoever. was he aware of enigma? did he have any control whatsoever? >> yeah. actually he did with enigma. and for enigma, this was the code-breaking capability the british had for the german military and diplomatic codes. donovan was given access to that code-breaking capability. in fact, he had some of his officers stationed in the park where, involved in the code-breaking. ironically though, donovan was not given direct access to magic, which was the army navy

code-breaking capability of japanese military diplomatic traffic. marshall didn't trust donovan's organization, thought he would leak it all out. so throughout the war he actually had a close relationship with the british code-breaking capability than he had with his own american code-breaking capability. and he recognized throughout the war that this was really, you know, the key intelligence find, and had the most by, more valuable than his own organization. >> i just finished reading the book last week and i'd like to say that's one of the best bios i've ever read. wonderfully, well done. i had two questions. the donovan leisure law firm cratered several years ago. i wonder if you could explain to the audience with relationship was with mr. donovan and the law for because i know some of his early travel on behalf of law firms and in second question is

i just finished reading a book about the cia. and i guess the way i came from the book was this was the gang that couldn't shoot straight. so i wondered how the historical aspect of the oss would tie into some of the fiascoes that they were involved in? >> right. the donovan law firm was formed after donovan came back from the coolidge administration in the 20. he formed it didn't. really right got going in the middle of the depression. it was a highly successful. donovan and four choice been a lot of the law for money along the way. he had no concept for a dollar. use a lot of the law from account to fund his travels overseas. he later was ambassador to thailand from 1953-1954, and traveled around the region on the law firm account. he came back, particularly after world war ii to the law firm.

and after ambassadorship to thailand, a sickly broke, and the law firm was not doing well at that point. at that point he became a rainmaker for the firm. he was a good argue were before the supreme court but he wasn't a dry parchment will or. and so he was good at drawing in business. as far as the legacy of the oss and as it carries over to the cia, the question i get asked is what difference did the oss make in the war, did it win the war for the allies? the short answer is no. did a shortened the war for the allies? and again the answer is no. but you are setting the bar awfully high when you establish that kind of benchmark because there were broader factors at work that we're winning the war for the allies. the fact that we could basically a mask more men and machines against the axis and acts as could ever field against us. and as i say, signals intelligence back to and enigma were much more valuable than the

oss was an donovan recognize that big one of the vital of the oss is that it became the petri dish for the future leaders of the cia. a lot of future directors, allen does, richard helms, william colby, bill casey, all were officers who served under donovan. counter teeth under him and became future cia director's. >> we don't? okay. sorry. [applause] >> specular watching the tv on c-span2. our live coverage of the 11th

annual national book festival. that was doug waller talking about his new book on "wild bill" donovan. mr. waller is going to walk over and join us here on our book tv set now. and if you'd like to talk with him, here are the. (202) 737-0001 for those of you in the east and time zones. (202) 737-0002 in the mountain pacific time zone. you can send an e-mail, booktv@c-span.org, or tweet coming twitter.com/booktv. our handle is at booktv. we will talk with mr. waller, do i call him within. and then following that, siddhartha mukherjee will be here. he wrote fisher's pulitzer prize-winning general nonfiction book, "emperor of all maladies: a biography of cancer." he will be here to take your calls as well. then we will be returning to the history of biography tent in about an hour or so for kristie

miller wrote a book on woodrow wilson's two wives, two women who serve as first lady during the woodrow wilson administration. our live coverage several hours ahead. we will be concluding today from the national book festival with bill to prize-winning author david mccullough, taking your e-mails, we can phone calls as well. that will be our final segment today. that is at about 5:00, five, 6:00 is when we will be doing that and that east eastern time. it's national book festival we can hear on booktv, but as we've been showing you all weekend, it is also charlotte weekend on booktv. so here's another look at the literary life of charlotte, north carolina. >> do you sell online? >> yes. we have a website.

>> what we've been doing, we go on twitter and you can buy signed stock. >> absolutely. >> i just made these based on what england did. so it is my e-book only. >> you are wonderful. spent if i can lead them. >> that would be the smartest thing that penguin did. >> as soon as i sought i thought i'm going to go home. people can pick it up but i want it to go through hard road because you guys are so awesome. >> do you have more? give me a couple and output can buy your book. spent i was a sales rep so i've been in the book business my entire adult life. just in different acts at time. i had north carolina and south carolina, savannah as my territory. it was great because what people are reading in raleigh was different from what they're

reading in columbia's after lead. it was exciting. at the end i was just feeling to large chains and it wasn't fun. i could've been selling anything. i really like placing the book in someone's hand. i felt like i was another called in the wheel rather than spreading the word about books. >> what do you say about the relationship between publishers and independent books? spent with some of them it's a very strong relationship. i know editors. i know publicist. i know marketing people. they send us manuscript. they ask our opinion. i just had a sales rep on the phone before you came asking about the availability of books for young girls dealing with their body. and what kind of a market was therefore a chapter book? so i think we stay in casa communication. phone calls, e-mails. we see each other at book expo, the southern independent booksellers alliance, very

strong, very strong relationship. >> how would that compare with the relationship between publisher and larger bookstore? >> the larger books or, if you're a chain, the probability of people, clerks staying at the store for a while and developing a relationship is really sometimes it's possible but on the most part they are people who are just looking for a job. they're not looking at a career. everyone who works at this or has been doing it a very long time. we have over 120 years combined experience of bookselling. there's not a chance for relationship to evolves in a chain bookstore. and there's always exceptions to the rule. but it's also with a chain bookstore, when random house, they're not talking to front-line booksellers. they're not talking to people who actually place the book in somebody's hands.

>> so with a big box bookstores closing, such as borders, what does that mean for the smaller independent? >> it's a huge opportunity for us to reestablish ourselves, the front runner up was going to be new and upcoming in the literature in the book world. and it's just, we don't think the box store really could survive with that amount of square footage. so this i really think is in opening up for small stores. we send increase in small stores. we see it at booksellers school. we just see a lot of people now being and arrested. they don't want to be everything to everybody. they just want that little niche book store that caters to their needs. >> we are back live on the national mall here in washington, d.c., for the 11th annual national book festival.

if you've been watching our coverage today, you just saw doug waller in history and dog of the can't talking about this book, "wild bill donovan: the spymaster who created the oss and modern american espionage." mr. waller now joins us here on our booktv set to take your questions by phone, e-mail or tweet. mr. waller, before we get started, we'll put the numbers up so viewers can participate in our conversation, but how well known was bill donovan during his days of active service? >> actually in washington he was very well-known. in fact, he was somewhat of a celebrity in washington, being a spymaster, head of this secret organization that franklin roosevelt had that everybody had heard about but nobody really knew a lot about. so there with comic strips in washington newspapers about "wild bill" donovan, the gossip pages we track what he was doing around the city. unfortunately, axis espionage

agents would track it also as well and feed it back to berlin. to propaganda. >> host: was a well-known outside of washington? if you're living in l.a. or denver or whatever. >> guest: to a degree. keep in mind, when donovan came to washington, he was a national celebrity. he had run for governor in new york, was a prominent republican, had been mentioned several times as a republican candidate for president. so he was serving on the white house radar screen. in fact, when he came into the white house, a lot of roosevelt aides said why are we bringing in this guide and serving as a foreign team for a future presidential candidate. he was somewhat of a national celebrity. he was a hero in world war i had been awarded the congressional medal of honor. >> host: hov injuring three to question into you, why was he called "wild bill"? >> guest: a good question. each ethnic name in world war i.

he was a very rigorous trainer of his men. almost a brutal trainer. because he knew that the time he commanded when it went in to world war i would be going into a meat grinder, which it really did. so in france before they saw action he was running his men over hill and dale, through barbed wire, obstacles, whatever. they finally collapsed in front of him, and he stood up and said what the heck's the matter with you? i'm 35 years old and i'm running around in a fullback. you don't see me out of breath. someone in the back, a soldier in the back, he never figured out who, said that we are not as wild as you are. from that day on "wild bill" donovan stark. >> host: second question that they tweet, what would he think of the last decade of cia intelligence failures? >> guest: he would be disappointed with them. donovan would be pleased that the central intelligence agency

today is a huge, very technologically advanced organization. i mean, the u.s. government has a premier class intelligence operation. not only in the cia but in the dozen or more other intelligence operations in the government. what he wouldn't be pleased with is that you have this vast intelligence community with a number of different agencies, not really under the control of a single intelligence czar, as he wanted to be in world war ii. you know, there's always been the same that the intelligence architecture of the net states was built by a drunken architect. donovan at this point was a the architect still hasn't sobered up from an doug waller is our guest. "wild bill" donovan is our topic. tacoma, washington, you are on booktv. >> caller: mr. waller, thank you so much for your presentation. it was so compelling. i'm going to certainly get a copy of the book. donovan has come into my radar screen only because i worked for

years finding and developing stories for the entertainment industry, motion picture, television production, et cetera. right now i'm working on want about an american who was with a unit, and oss unit in burma called detachment 101. are you the money without? and and from what i understand, that china, burma, india did was sort of the poor stepsister to europe and the pacific in terms of resources. so they had to be extremely forceful. and to do some really kind of crazy people like the british officer wingate, or and oss officer that donovan appointed to run the 101. and i was just wondering, i have found this incident and these stories to be so captivating. i wonder if you could just maybe talk a little bit about the activities of the oss in that particular theater?

>> guest: the china burma theater and the overall asia-pacific war was a minor theater. it was one that donovan's people were confined to. his detachment did a lot of interesting command to work inside burma and it was run by a colonel is one of the more colorful figures in the oss. it was a very, a ho chi minh. he ate ham hock. and his base camp across the board in india, he kept a pet bear to wrestle as entertainment on the side. eventually though donovan fired him from detachment 101. brought them back to the united states. because he suffered a severe head injury in one of his operation. had traumatic brain injury. but not before donovan visited his base camp in india and he flew him into burma to one of their operational camps there in

a rickety biplane which was a very, very dangerous mission to actually i for and donovan had no business flying that plane into burma. but donovan was kind of the daredevil tight. and was anxious to go in there and see the front. >> host: florida, you are on with doug waller. here's the cover of his book. go ahead with your question. >> caller: mr. waller, i served in the navy during world war ii. we went in, ran our country's first computer and we broke the german code. on our citation we were told that we say many u-boats. and possibly two years, saved countless lives. i heard her talk, you mentioned the park where they were having, they were breaking the code. but they were having problems because they would break the code after the fact. but when we got into it, the war, with our computer, the country's first computer, and we broke the german code before the

action took place. and i'm wondering if you are mentioning, our contribution because we had to keep it a secret from 1943-1983 were not allowed to talk about our contribution. so tell me, did you mention us? >> guest: yeah, i do. the enigma code breaking. and oss, donovan's people have access to the. very, very close working relationship with the british on it. and it was a very, very important in terms of valuable intelligence for the war. even just as important was the british help with donovan, and setting up the oss counterintelligence operation. this was to bet its own agents and to keep track of german agents. this eventually was called x. to in the oss. and the british were key to this particular operation and as you

say, it was kept secret for a long time after the war. a lot of people didn't know what happened to enigma or magic for quite a while. >> host: doug waller, a tweet. we at st. joseph's collegiate institute, buffalo, are proud of "wild bill." what can you tell us about his high school years? >> guest: well, they should be proud of "wild bill." donovan went to saint joe's collegiate institute in buffalo. he went to high school there. he was on a scholarship, and was a fairly good student, somewhat mediocre. he had good grades. for example, in oratory, he was a good class speaker, didn't do so well in geography and some of the other classes, but did well enough that he was eventually able to graduate from there and went to niagara university. ..

they trained to have problems with colonists in do they affect your work in intelligence field in occupied france? thank you. >> there were several factions within the mackie. there were french communists who did a lot of work. or the free french you were to de gaulle forces. they were holdovers that were

part of that big key for us, too. now, when the allies invaded dermody, there is some question among the allies on how much they should arm the mackie to fight against the germans. there was concern the factions might fight against one another. donna didn't advocated for getting his many weapons and items to while factions to fight future events. in his view, prevailed among those who have doubts about it to >> this is doug waller's sixth book, all of them were related or world war ii specifically? >> well, this was world war ii. the previous was on general building mitchell. that was world war i. then, the other books were on special operations forces, one book i flew with navy pilots for a couple years. another book chronicled the

voyage of a nuclear submarine. postcode next call for doug waller comes through denver. >> caller: thank you, mr. waller and thank you took tv. i'd curious if you are familiar with the movie the good shepherd and what your opinion of robert de niro and also, what was the later years of donna villette? what did he do? >> guest: well, i saw the good shepherd, robert euro the italian-american may not have been cast properly for irish-american head of the oss. and so it's a drama. it takes a lot of historical aces. after world war ii, donovan was broke. he needed to go back to his law firm and earn money. from 1953 to 1954 however, if he became ambassador of thailand

and the eisenhower administration was a strong anti-communist. he came back from that assignment physically frail, a very -- ended up being very ill and really spent his last years physically weakening. unfortunately he died in 1859 of our chillier sclerotic atrophy of the prank him which is a severe form of dementia, secure form of alzheimer's are your pre-shrinks in size. it's a very sad way for a man so intellectually vibrant to go unfortunately. >> host: doug waller, what are his legacy is? >> guest: first-come he's the father of modern american espionage in the national intelligence service said. he's also special operations command in tampa florida.

they claim paternal race to jonathan as well as the caa does. down there to have his encased in a glass case and a portrait about him. donovan is also the author of modern strategic communications, psychological warfare. in his day come he practiced a bit crude technology co. which basically rumors, leaflets and radio, but it was the same principles used today in terms of television company and an outcome even cyberwarfare. the principles come from donovan's actions during world war ii world war ii. >> host: los angeles, you were on the air with author, doug waller. >> caller: mr. waller, dean harry truman was a captain in world war i and mr. donovan was a colonel in world war i, wouldn't that be same reason for relationship between truman and donovan?

>> guest: good question. you would think they would be because both served honorably in the war. truman also had particular affection for medal of honor winners in world war i and world war ii. one of the most pleasant duties he had as president was spinning on for medal of honor to recipients of the lord appeared that these were two guys that had different personalities, different approaches and there is just bad karma between them. they were never going to get along and even after the war, truman continued to hold a grudge against donovan. at one point truman was given a st. patrick's day speech, where his aids had put donovan's name in the speech as one of the heroes, one of the irish-american heroes. treatment cross that may not put another person saying they appeared >> host: what was his

relationship with fdr? >> guest: it was a complicated relationship in roosevelt had a complicated relationship with all his senior aides. donovan was not close to roosevelt, but not many a4. personnel is kind of a secretive president. he kept things compartmentalized. if you read the papers of his senior aas, they didn't know everything roosevelt did and he kept things from donovan, too. donovan also said at one point he didn't want to get too close personally to roosevelt. he felt like i say moscow into a flame to burn out quickly getting close to this president cares that they still respected each other. these are too canny politicians who saw value in each other. >> host: relationship with eisenhower. >> guest: very, very warm. he thought highly of donna fenn's work in europe when he was commander of the year europe. eisenhower was a republican. after the war, eisenhower became president of columbia university, donovan's alma

mater. even so, eisenhower pointed out mentalists as head. he had other plans of donovan and madonna and want to have a much more expansive job in the state department, eisenhower correctly cut it back on them. >> host: we are talking with doug waller, author of "wild bill donovan" appeared we are at the national book festival. next call for him comes from gainesville. >> caller: i'm just wondering, i'm still in high school and i've never heard about bill donovan. i just wondering like what most of the things about him, what inspired you to write a book about him? what inspired you? >> host: what stood out to you about wild oblivion and what made you decide to write a book about him.

she still has clonus ever heard of them. >> guest: maybe he'll read the book and find out more about him. i was attracted to controversial. there is. other people either loved or hated it. no one lives in between on wild will donovan. some thought he was the best general since robert e. lee. as dangerous adolf hitler during the war. these historical figures are often glossed over by history i found interesting. my previous biography was on another such biographer, billy mitchell who is court-martialed during the coolidge administration. >> host: we have about five minutes left with our guest. >> caller: yes, mr. waller, really enjoyed your presentation. a number years ago a story was related to me by a former oss

agent about to oss agents that are actually occupying the seller a general casts players headquarters while we retreated to italy. supposedly the reason why they repair and he was aware of the fact that general koestler was aware of the fact they repair. so the reason that general koestler, he wasn't able to successfully defend his line, that he would be able to surrender through the communications and surrender and save some of the lies of his troops. is this something you're familiar with? >> guest: what i am familiar with is during the assault, particularly after the anzio landing that we had oss officers in the realm. one of the groups come in the intelligence were headed by an

oss officer named peter tompkins to one of his agents was in his senior staff there, reporting to him. so there was a lot of good intelligence, and they are that he was getting not only to fight they were doing in rome, but also the movement of german troops down into the anzio, trying to close in on the pocket. >> host: farmington, connecticut, go ahead with your question. >> caller: this is doug and i wondered whether or not you that any information regarding richard bissell under dulles deputy director of the cia. i'm interested because mr. bissell's office in retirement was right next to mine in farmington and were both graduates of the same little boy's school and mr. bissell would never say in the thing about jfk or gary powers or

anything, but he was still sharp as a tack. what do you know about mr. bissell? >> guest: unfortunate not a whole lot because that comes history after the zero assassin i don't want to pretend to be a cia taxpayer. of course i had to study his tenure at the cia because donovan was around for a good bit of it, at least until 1959. and he had a somewhat close relationship with dulles. he gave him a lot of advice when dallas was that the cia, said he appreciated in others he didn't. i mentioned and i talked at donovan but ellis would be a poor choice. he thought he was going to script the agency. dulles was one of donovan's top agents had been up as burns switzerland station. dulles actually thought he could have done a better job running the oss and donovan could.

donovan was at that point on the outside of the cia, really looking then he would offer advice. you pass along agents and operatives from the oss the dulles might use. it was definitely not federal at that point. >> host: doug waller, what is this photo on the front of your book? >> guest: that was when donovan was in the balkans in the 90s talking to their are actually reporters and correspondents. you know, it was a good, compelling picture for the book because he's in a trenchcoat, spike arpa and everything. but it's a bunch of reporters around him at that point. >> host: germantown, maryland, please go ahead. >> caller: hi, i enjoyed it a lot older than the high school girl, but the only time i heard of wild bill donovan today was when i had the pleasure of being the first line supervisor of a man named conrad k-kilo witt

known and worked for him in the oss. and i've been going on to the cia, where he was a training officer in on one occasion he then let me read to training. anyhow, he quit when they wanted him to rewrite the training manual. he didn't think that was what the constitutional framers had in mind. so he came looking for a job as a probation officer. i have to say my colleagues didn't want to hire him, even though he had this high scorer. he looked a lot more like elmer fudd and james bond. i said you're going to hire him. i supervise him for 10 years and he was a great junior professional officer. his opinion of donovan was he was a crazy some of the pitch, but also glad he was ours. >> guest: donovan was a

character. i sat and sun toxic that the cia could use a wild bill donovan now, just not to offend because he did have, a strong personality. very charismatic. at one point the senior staff around him try to oust him out of the oss because he wasn't paying attention. donovan crashed that goes like a bug. he had lunch in a phone is phone is going to know when one was launched soon. in his defense he was a charismatic leader. i mean come his agents are intensely loyal. when he was in the field among his agents, he rarely almost never issued a command. it would usually be a request of his agents would follow him loyally. >> host: doug waller has been our guest on booktv. this is the cover of his most recent book, "wild bill donovan," the spymaster treated the oss and modern espionage.

mr. waller, thank you for joining us. we continue our live coverage from the book festival on the mall in washington d.c. the festival takes place between the washington monument and the u.s. capitol, sponsored by the president and mrs. obama. this is the first year that the festival has expanded to two days because of its size. we had great crowds yesterday. a lot of live coverage. more crowds to date and more applies both to the up. we'll let you know that kristie miller will be talking about her book on woodrow wilson's to wise and their roles as first ladies. then, david mccullough will be in the history of biology tend to conclude the entire festival. ill be talking about his most recent book about americans in paris.

but then, booktv will join mr. mccullough in the history of diet or pretend to continue the conversation with you. we'll take phone calls, e-mails, to eat, et cetera. this is what is coming up next. siddhartha mukherjee wrote this book, "the emperor of all maladies: a biography of cancer" has won the pulitzer prize for 2011 for general nonfiction. he'll be here in just a minute to take your calls, e-mails and tweets. we covered mr. mukherjee on booktv a little earlier this year. we want to show you a portion of that before he comes out to take your calls. >> like a book on the medicine is like storytelling. eight begins with the motion manic act. if you take away all of its paraphernalia, medicine starts with a bloodstained cover your story. that is the first thing that happens when you meet a.or is he began to impact his story. i make a claim in the book,

doctors than tell the story back to you. it's one of the most ancient interchanges we have is human and then that itself, that process in itself begins the unpacking or unburdening long before you receive your first dose of whatever medicine you will or will not receive, it is the burdening of the story that is the first shamanic act of medicine. if you forget that, it seems to me something very important will stop happening in medicine. and once i come to that realization, it can inspired that his comments, it then became clear to me how one could rate this book again remembering there was a vast history here, but it could be written through the eyes of patients. it could be written by telling stories. if i could tell stories that began at whatever point of time

for a thousand years ago to sell those stories, i could flesh out these stories. then, what seemed like an insurmountable problem, which is how does one tell this history would become actually solvable, which is taught the history by removing from story to story, typically focusing on those who were right there, those who experienced it most directly and that his patients. again, that solution in principle of the problem. but that raises a second question, which is how does one find the missing stories? how does one uncover the story of a woman who experienced breast cancer in the 1950s? remember, i recount a moment in time in 1950 in fact, when a woman, standing rosenau calls at "the new york times" and sends it back to please an advertisement for survivors of breast cancer. "the new york times" society

editor says we actually can't print the words breast cancer in "the new york times." what if we said to assist survivors group of women for survivors of the chess world. this is in the 1950s. as did make sure you print that because it's a reminder for us, all of us including doctors that we need to be humble about what can and cannot be achieved here. so this was the background. the missing stories, the word is whispered about the dixie and the question was whether the stories? one thread that came early on is that i knew somewhere in this story would have to be the story of one of the most remarkable women in recent intellectual history of matters mary lasker. mary lasker among many other things directed her

philanthropic energies. she was a very unusual woman for her times, and much but they were, a person had been direct and an enormous amount of philanthropic energy towards solving, as she put it, transforming the geography of american halt, the landscape of american health. if there is one sick essential characters spinning to the story, it would be mary lasker. for mary lasker, i found sidney farber, who actually begins the book. she was mary lasker's friend, scientific collaborator and give political legitimacy to the war and provided the scientific legitimacy for the word cancer. so the book then begins with sidney farber. sidney farber when we began in 1940s, he was so-called dog directed that the case primarily

they would perform autopsies. he was a pathology who specialized in children pathology and typically bodies of children who died in the hospital would be wheeled down into his basement laboratory. the laboratory was no bigger than about 12 feet prison in cuba at the bottom of one of the buildings. so that's where we are in 1948. firebird became interested in trying to find a mechanism or an understanding of the disease, which was extremely peaceful, swiftly lethal form of cancer and that was child acute leukemia and that's where our story begins. >> host: now joining us live is the author of "the emperor of all maladies." you can see the paperback edition has come out. pulitzer prize winner for 2011.

siddhartha mukherjee. dr. mukherjee, what is cancer? >> guest: it's not one disease, but a whole family of diseases. these illnesses and diseases are connected is a deeper level and essentially cancer is a decent country and disease in which cells don't have to start dividing its outgoing. they keep growing over and over again and over time eventually becomes the mass and the mass protests assizes, but ultimately the south is not how to start growing. >> host: when was the first documented case of cancer? >> guest: the word cancer doesn't come into vocabulary until much later. we don't know when the first documented cases where, but what is interesting is that the first medical manuscript we possess as human beings goes back to 2500 b.c. there is a case very similar to breast cancer. again, the word doesn't exist, but it goes back to the very

commensurate origins of human medicine. >> host: dr. mukherjee, you see in our lifetime, one of three women, one of two men, every one of two men will develop some kind of cancer. has it grown over the years, et cetera? >> guest: it's grown somewhat. the pics driver is the aging of the population overall. so cancer is a disease that they did to cancer. it's because we are dying of other things. cancer becomes a limit of one of the things that kills even as a and the book at the double negative when all the other killers or killed us on cancer emerges. postcode is it possible to live a lifestyle that reduces your risk of cancer to nail? >> guest: absolutely it's possible. we now know there's a big link between cancer and the diet and cancer in the environment, cancer and smoking. so absolutely as possible.

that said, that would still leave us with cancers that don't have to do with the environment. so in a sense, you could reduce the risk, but i think it's unlikely to eliminate cancer completely forever. >> host: when it comes to treating cancer, have we in the last 50 years exponentially increased our knowledge? are we using techniques we used one, 200 years ago? >> guest: were using a patchwork of everything. techniques that were present when a hundred years ago invented things invented as recently as a few months ago. so is a huge variation in depends on a combination of surgery and radiation therapy so everything we're doing is deployed to treat cancer. >> when you look at cancer rates over the last couple hundred years, do you see spikes? >> guest: well, much of them are related to very known carcinogens. for instance, you see a big

spike in one cancer and that cancer, but lung cancer in men and women after a long tail of the smoking up adamic. >> host: and when did that start? >> guest: it starts from the early part of the 1900s and begins to peak in the 1920s, 1930s. the trick is you don't see the peek into 30 years later because it takes time to develop cancers. so it's really in the 1960s and 70s and that's imaginable, the peaking of women comes after that because women started smoking later. >> host: dr. mukherjee, can you predict to read the terry cancers? >> guest: we can predict some of them. they predict we don't mean 100%, but for instance the breast cancer regimes that hayley predict to whether a woman look at or ovarian cancer. men also get breast cancer and it's predicted that men, too. here's the interesting point.

if you take brca1 and prc to, how much a vanilla breast cancer is predicted by these two things come it's only 20%, 25%. the 75% cannot be predicted. we just don't know the genes. we will soon, but we don't know yet. >> host: siddhartha mukherjee is the author of this book. 2011 pulitzer prize-winning nonfiction book of the year, one of the most awarded books of the past year, "the emperor of all maladies: a biography of cancer." we're going to put numbers on the screen in case you'd like to participate in our conversation with dr. mukherjee who teaches at columbia university. what is that you teach, sir? >> guest: medicine and oncology. i've been interested many, many years in the field. it started as a cell biologist and gradually became interested in treating humans. >> host: washington d.c. you are first up with dr. mukherjee.

please go ahead. >> caller: can you hear me? my question was on the future treatment. another said if they can learn the language of cells that can detect cancer cells early. i want to know if you know anything on that question of the possible treatments and mouse may not take allergy the idea 15, 20 years from now to eat the stuff. you know anything about the possible cures or treatments? >> guest: i tried to stay away from miracles and treatments because you have to be specific about the cancer were talking about. i'll tell you something going on that were doing another people are doing to an iris technology available that you can detect down to single cells. you can trap the cells in the blood and ask a question, arthur cancer cells they are? if do find, you can look for the source of the tumor in the body. that's an exciting direction.

in fact, if use of technology which is nanotechnology. he built census law that can go inside to be put inside the body and detect these very, very few cells. right now limits of detections are still quite large. you require quite a big tumor containing millions of cells before we can use standard type allergy. that's just. >> host: do you encourage people -- the new test that are out where you can get a body scan, does that help prevent any evidence of that preventing cancers? >> guest: we know the evidence and related to the fact if you are a very high smoker and if you are screened by ct scans under a trial, there was an extensive -- an increase in survival. this is in the setting up a big nih trial. i follow the recommendations of the national cancer institute coast are clear, written in lay language and tell you what's

working what's not work. there's a website that tells you in great detail. the quick answer is i don't believe in body scans because they've never been shown outside of the situation to save lives. >> host: next call for dr. mukherjee comes from new york city. you are on with siddhartha mukherjee, author of "the emperor of all maladies: a biography of cancer." >> caller: good afternoon, gentlemen. can you hear me? yes, i'd like to ask a brief three-part her and all is sent over the air. as i can to talk more about some of the panic dose of his research and are they to hear more about some of the typos things that particularly struck him as he put book. two particular cases in our actual reality. recently it came out that in

boston were so-called tsa, i called them talk says and assaulted had the scanners that there have been pluses of cancer. tsa workers. as i can to talk a bit about why i have my is radiation, even in so-called low doses is dangerous. the last part of my question, peter is, recently in massachusetts, a prosecutor had the temerity. i like to know if you'd be familiar. she elected not to give her son chemotherapy. with 30% of the people dying and adults being told that their bodies are too weak, i know someone personally who was not given chemotherapy at some point with lung cancer because he was told it would kill him. i'd like you to talk about that

massachusetts case and the outrageousness. >> host: thank you so much. >> guest: let me take the questions one at a time. so as the caller points out, radiation can cause cancer. radiation causes cancer and part by damaging dna. when you damage dna, you can change these growth controlling regimes. here's the thing stressing about radiation. if you look at very those doses, it turns out at the bottom end of the peak we don't know much about the role of cancer in that very, very low dose of ionizing radiation. one important point is we shouldn't confuse ionizing radiation with any other. for instance, radiation emitted by the microwave for cell phone is not ionizing radiation. we're still trying to see if they have any effect on cancer

or not. those are different things. radiation caused by sunlight is radiation, but it's nonionizing. the second has to do with the case in massachusetts. i know about the historical case and it's an important case of a child named chad green who had a curable form of leukemia and this is in the 1960s and 70s if i remember correctly. his parents decided not to do chemotherapy and there was a very complicated case in which they try to make the unfortunate thing about this case, these particular cases without leukemia was curable and the parents ultimately decided to move to mexico, where he underwent some other form of therapy and unfortunately died. so one has to have humility and figuring out what to do in situations like this, where the treatable form of cancer and a

problem with trying to figure out how to treat a child. i don't know whether to keep the particular case. postcode dr. mukherjee, she also asked about and it does. i want to ask who is barbara bradfield? >> guest: and amazing women. yarbrough bradfield is one of the longest survivors that you could take a medicine and all the cells in your body would ultimately in the 1980s and 1990s, new medicine began to appear can only kill the cancer cells as they are every other cell in your body. she took one of these medicines for brights can't figure and survive. she's an iconic figure in the history of what we call targeted therapy. >> host: next call from dr. mukherjee comes from arlington, virginia.

>> caller: hello, thank you for the call. the segue of ms. bradford led to my question about the targeted a repeat of christopher hitchens, who had one of the greatest writers. he had a targeted type of gene therapy for esophageal gold cancer they relied on having his dna sequence. i was wondering if you could talk about that. thank you. looking forward to reading your book. >> host: chris hitchins, and a great emigrates and eviscerating and i wish he was here at the festival. i don't know the details and i don't want to discuss particular details of that case. but in general, the idea behind targeted therapy is could you go into a cancer cell and sequence all the genes. based on the genetic sequence, could you find a treatment that only acts on cancer cells and spares normal cells? that's the principle behind

targeted a repeat. it's still in its infancy so the number of medicines that can do this you can still count on your fingers. but they are there and i suspect this is the direction that all of us are going in terms of cancer therapy. very quickly to tell you, every cancer, even two or three variants of breast cancer, if you take three samples, they will have different genes. so the trick is to figure out what is common to four or five of these samples and direct a medicine against that combination of genes. that's what the future of targeted therapy lies. >> host: dr. mukherjee, wasn't there a time where cancer wasn't mentioned, you called it the dixie or whatever? >> guest: there's a moment i discuss in the book. in 1950 she says she wants to place an advertisement for survivors of breast cancer and the society editor of the times

says the know, we can't use the word breast cancer in "the new york times." what if we said this was a supporter for survivors of the chess world. you can imagine what it was like to be this woman, to have an illness and not talk about it publicly. that stigma still exist today. >> host: interview, is there enough -- are there enough resources spent on cancer research? >> guest: adult think so. the national cancer institute budget is $5 billion a year give or take. to get your point of comparison, we spend 1 trillion to $3 trillion on the war in the middle east. that is led to talk about men and women below the age of 60 dying of cancer in the united states, we are already up to hundreds of thousands every year. so there's a disproportionality

and the amount of money we spend and the resources were putting into the problem, which still kills 600,000 americans every year and 10,250,000 young americans every year. >> host: are cancer rates different for people in the u.s., brazil, india, japan? >> guest: they are different. the big driver is aging. so as the population moves from 70 to 74 to 75 to 79, rates will increase with russia -- more than proportionally. there's different cancers changing. for instance, we now know the smoking-related cancers growing up in many developing countries because of the increase in tobacco smoking. and then their peculiarities, stomach cancer used to be predominate in parts of the

world and have slowly vanished, then replaced by different cancers. we still don't know exactly why. we think it's a change in diet, change in refrigerators which incidentally has decreased the rate of stomach cancer. there's somebody really don't know about. >> host: siddhartha mukherjee is our guest in fort worth texas. you're on with dr. mukherjee. >> caller: thank you so much for having me on. this is a fantastic topic. i wonder if you heard of a dr. burzynski. i'm a documentary junkie and i watched a very interesting documentary the other day about a path that he has a name probably famous round, but it's an toper cross lines and it looks to me and this documentary that the fda was trying to stifle in some senses innovations because it looked to me they were trying to protect the traditional means of treating cancer.

it's a hurdle to get trials done under renovations is like $20 million. how many scientists and independent researchers have that kind of money? maybe i'm wrong, but i sincerely believe the reason we don't have a cure for cancer is because of the fda and the national cancer institute. this actually compels you to think and i was just wanting to listen. >> guest: i disagree completely. i think the reason we don't have a cure for cancer is because cancer is one of the most complicated problems and elemental illnesses we face as humans we. i don't know about this case. i can't comment and it is absolutely true that the cause, the hurdles to developing medicines is huge and part of the reason is we need to make trials have been that are safe,

that drugs enter these trials had been previously tested in some system, animals are possible in a show of advocacy. so i think it's very important to understand what a complicated thing it is to bring a drug cheat real life. again, hard for me to comment on this case. the fda i have to say is on the word and understaffed. it manages from the lab purview over 10% to 25% of the u.s. economy grows turns. food and drugs. and yet it employs only a handful of men and women who can regulate this. i believe we have to empower the fda, give it more responsibility and funds to be able to bring drugs to development and have inventors of on the road, including in america bring their ideas and. but there's a standard testing these and have to stick to

standards otherwise have language about what works and doesn't work will be generated. there's a standard mechanism otherwise will never renew medicines to market. >> host: why did she use the word emperor? >> guest: i found it in a scribbling in a book by presumably a surgeon had written, "the emperor of all maladies" is one of the most elemental illnesses were facing a stephen means and therefore i thought it would be a title that would look after what happens to patients when they undergo the freight and life-changing event, but also some of the anxiety around cancer. this idea comes and conquers your life and your job becomes decided that. >> host: siddhartha mukherjee is a staff physician at columbia university and is also an assistant professor of medicine at columbia university in this year he became a pulitzer prize

winner. "the emperor of all maladies" is one of the most awarded books of 2011. it won the pulitzer for general nonfiction. he's here with us and the tv to take your calls. el paso, texas, please go ahead. >> caller: thank you for allowing me to talk. the book homebrewing is very, very good. i've been listening to this program. but as a health care provider, i believe they are both traditional and alternative approaches, anything that works for the patient. unfortunately, in western medicine it becomes costly where people don't have the means and it becomes unreachable. so i'm going to end with a

question. i did a little research and helping patients, he was one of the first people who came out with therapy and how to treat the first rockefeller, which the project could be raised to treating cancer. now, does not move forward now to today? the traditional care to treat a lawn care alternative is not as possible if you add all kinds of approaches, but it's best for the patient. >> host: we've got your point. thank you. .dear mukherjee. >> guest: my idea is to fund

preventive medicine until it becomes mainstream. much still derives itself as to why shouldn't there be more of those and why should we not incorporate the wisdom collected over the years and these alternative forms of medicine? number one is back to my earlier point that i said alternative medicine is wonderful. it helps patients, helps them heal, but we have to have the same metrics to judge any form of medicine because we are deeply biased. we need to have the same kind of metrics around what treatment as begins to degenerate. it's like me saying to you, it's your treatment not mine. we need to make decisions overall how to treat patients. so we need language and standards and metrics. my plea to the alternative

medicine community is bringing on, but make sure we have the same metrics. point number two is there are dangers attached and in fact, two or three times when the fda and cancer institute have gone ahead and taken is very popular medicines have turned out not to work. i'm sure there's others that would work. i'll give you two cases. the mci spent hundreds of millions of dollars pursuing this miracle kill for cancer is made of apricot kernels and they ran a trail across hundreds of cancers and it didn't work at all. so i'm sure there's new medicines we don't know about. i encourage people to bring them to attention, but metrics must be the same. >> host: next call from dr. mukherjee comes from san

jose, rochester new hampshire. sorry, rochester, new hampshire. >> caller: good afternoon, peter slen this is david smith. and dr. mukherjee, you appreciate this interview you're having with peter slen and imsa in the volleyer interviews, mr. slen and the tv in general. i really appreciate what c-span does for the general public. my question has to do a little bit with one of your previous callers who mentioned dr. burzynski. i have a young relative who is 11 years old and he's got disused pond teen, which is a tumor which is around the brainstem. you know, he's had different treatments. he said chemotherapy and they did this other thing where i can't remember the name, but it's almost like an mri and they

place them inside this machine and the machine is able to blast out like a chemotherapy treatment. the biggest chemotherapy in places where every dealer machine couldn't do it. but you know, they say this disease really affects young children and you know, it's a site to this site, speech, his face is really tough to. i mean, remember this little boy before he became an and he's very smart, where he think he's in upper grades, upper class. >> host: mr. smith, what would you like dr. mukherjee to respond to? >> caller: i was wondering if there's anything and your book. i didn't know if maybe you had some part of your book that

deals with that or if you personally know as anybody or of cases yourself and let the outcomes of those cases. >> guest: they are very serious thing. i don't write it in this particular form of cancer. my book is a more general history of cancer and has particular variant, but not this one. >> host: every once in a while you hear about magic clinics in mexico or germany where the fda has prevented from being in the u.s. or green tea and fish are the cure for cancer. first of all comfort talk about these clinics that have popped up. >> guest: i find myself skeptical of these clement. i don't follow this world very well. i'm reminded once again of the chase of chad green, this 2-year-old boy come in maybe 3-year-old boy in massachusetts

who was kidnapped by his own parents because he was made a ward of the state's, brought to a clinic in mexico and he had a curable form of cancer, when toxic leukemia and ultimately died being given layer trail. so i'm personally skeptical. as i said, i broke into the idea of there being amazing new medicines that we don't all about, whether in traditional realm, whether a physician practicing it. just to give you two examples, one of the latest new therapies for leukemia comes out of the observations made in china by physicians who are really part of, far from the periphery of american medicine. this creates one of the very first targeted medicines and cancer, comes from a clinic in china. so i don't think the idea is absurd. we have to have again is that

worked with the chinese government. it worked with the fda and ultimately destroyed came to be. so the metrics have to be the same otherwise have language became to become nonsensical. >> host: is tweaked for you for mrs. hughes. do you think there will be a cure for cancer in your lifetime? >> guest: there will be. there are der. other forms of cancer will be converted to chronic illnesses. breast cancer comes to mind. and others who learn to treat and extend lives but never cure. and yet others will become still kind of the next new frontier. the next decade or so will begin to divide into various cancers, figuring out which ones have become curable, which was treatable. >> host: siddhartha mukherjee, winner of the 2011 pulitzer prize for general nonfiction, "the emperor of all maladies: a biography of cancer."

joining us here on booktv. >> guest: thank you very much. >> host: live coverage from the national book festival continues on the mall in washington d.c. next we go back to history and biography tent. you'll hear from kristie miller who has written a book about woodrow wilson's lies and how their time in the white house, how they served as first lady. she'll be speaking at match.com to the booktv side to take your calls. following that we talk with adam goodhart that the civil war. he will also take your calls. 1861 is the name of his boat. but right now christie mellor is introduced by at the national book festival. >> host: one of the country's most historically significant president is coming out of woodrow wilson. wilson's first wife, ellen, was his rock. she encouraged him, school of his children find digested

readings and train citizens books. without her, wilson would've never become president. then just 15 months into his first term, which began in 1930, she died. wilson was lost and disconsolate until he met a wonderful woman, a widow named edith. they married and she hoped hold the white house together after her husband suffered a debilitating stroke that left him largely incapacitated. she held that back. in fact, his stroke and their reaction to the stroke would later help spur the advent of the 25th amendment and what she do when a president is incapacitated. i'm eager to hear how kristie came up with this idea and executed it so well. she's a research associate at southwest center and the university of arizona and they

ought your isabella greenway, an enterprising women. an interesting fact right, she's one of the few people i've met who have taught english in four continents. she'll be singing your book at 4:30 p.m. and were all excited. let's give her a warm welcome. [applause] >> thank you very much, dell. it's wonderful to be here. it's very heartening for a writer to see so many readers in one place. of course, writers are first and foremost readers, too. when i started this project amazingly enough, i completely forgot the first rule of being a good reader. never judge a book by its cover. i had seen pictures of woodrow

wilson and i can to the conclusion that he was cerebral and cool, that he was a stern schoolmaster, that he was the prim presbyterian. i knew very little about his first wife, ellen askin wilson and i decided she couldn't possibly have been interesting or important. i've never even heard about mary ellen hobart pack, which are wilson's intimate friend for eight years. i had heard about edith bolling galt even in everything i heard was bad, she was a power-hungry woman who seized power when woodrow wilson had a stroke, that she was a secret woman president. fortunately i live right here in washington d.c. and just up the hill behind us is the library of

congress, the sponsor of this great event. and it is a temple of learning and a fabulous resource for researchers. so, i started reading woodrow wilson's letters to alan acts can in 1883, just after they became engaged. they had a two-year engagement and wrote each other hundreds of letters. and what i discovered when it is reading the letters is yes, he was very cerebral, but he was far from cool. he was very romantic and passionate. soon after their engagement, she wrote her, i am not a boy any longer. it is less for you to teach me that fast and measurable

difference to train a youth fancy and demands over austrian laws. and sometimes absolutely absolutely frightened that the intent to give my for you. two years later, just before their marriage, he wrote her, asking her to imagine the warmest of cases pressed down upon the sweetest center of the ellipse. woodrow was not just romantic, however. he was unusually dependent on women for the fulfillment of his own powers. he could not work unless he was assured that a woman he loved loved him also. fortunately, alan was the perfect partner for woodrow wilson. she loved him very much and she told him so eloquently. she was a very unusual woman for

her time and place. she corrupt after the civil war in a small town in georgia and was unusually well-educated. her father was a presbyterian minister and alan was an avid reader. it was said she could find an apt quotation for any occasion. she also had abundant artistic talents. her work had won a prize at an exposition in paris and by the time she was 23, she concluded she was never going to find a man who could live up to her ideals. she decided that she and her friends would open a women's boardinghouse and they would support it with her artwork. people began to call her alley at the man hater. and met woodrow wilson. i fell in love and got married.

allen was not only a loving wife, she was a capable housemate. woodrow wilson was at really a fan, but he may have suffered from a learning disorder. he was almost 12 before he learned how to read. he had great difficulty in learning foreign languages, so alan learned german in order to translate the political monographs that he needed for his research. she also made digests of political science books in english for him. with her help, he achieved the first of his ambitions, which was to be a professor at his alma mater in princeton, untreated university. once he became a professor at princeton, he was a popular professor. he began to be invited to make speeches and she helped him a great deal of his speeches as well, providing those apt quotations when he needed them.

he was invited to give a very important speech for the 150th anniversary, the founding of princeton. and they collaborated closely on that speech. we found manuscripts with corrections in both the buyer and ratings and at one point she said, the ending is a little slack. you need to make it soar. you should read a poem by john nelson. she told him which poem to read. if you compare that to the speech, you can see it's exactly what he did. the speech is all of metaphors that obviously came from her experience about art in domestic affairs. don not

>> and to think in a career of public service which is what he really always wanted. and but in 1906 with his rosy

prospect ahead of them -- 49 years old. and that he might have to give up his career entirely. there was no medication for homework they told him he would poe

>> he went on vacation to england that summer and ellen went to an artist colony in

connecticut. she had given up her artwork in order to devote herself to woodrow and she got back with it. all that summer he wrote her pleading letters, begging her to be forgiven. we don't know what she wrote because all her letters are missing. we think she probably burned them but at the end of the summer, woodrow wrote her a very happy letter. obviously, she'd forgiven him and he said it's even to be better to be loved if you don't deserve it. so wouldn't you think he would stop seeing mary peck. no, he didn't. in fact, as soon as he got back to the united states, he and ellen went up to massachusetts where mary lived we are husband during the summer. i don't know why she did that.

it could be that she wanted to see this rival. it could be that she wanted mary to see her and to know that she had the better claim on him. it could be that she wanted to protect woodrow wilson's reputation because he had a political career ahead of him. so she pretended that mary peck was a family friend. sure enough, in 1910, woodrow wilson was elected governor of new jersey. once again, ellen rose to the occasion. she'd been active in welfare work in her community. this was known as municipal housekeeping. women argued that if they could run households, they could also clean up their communities. this was considered a safe alternative to the scary idea of women voting. so she began to investigate the

state institutions. and she made a tour of many of them. this was a really ground-breaking move on her part. woodrow tagged along with that tour. woodrow's administration was such a success that he began to be spoken of as a potential presidential candidate. ellen recognized that there was a big obstacle to his running for president. william jennings bryant, who had three times been the democratic nominee for president and whom woodrow had insulted publicly several years before. so ellen arranged to have dinner with bryant, a very intimate dinner and woodrow found out he liked bryant and they spoke on the same platform after that. and she did, as she had done

before, continued to see mary peck as a family friend. woodrow began to travel around the country, making speeches. ellen followed his progress very closely. sending that telegrams of commentary. at one point she sent him a telegram saying stop saying you're not running for president. it just makes you look foolish he stopped. sure enough, he became the democratic nominee in june of 1912. partly, with the help of bryant. that summer when the republicans held their convention, william howard taft, the incumbent was opposed by former president theodore roosevelt. taft won and roosevelt was so bitter over that loss that he formed a third-party, the progressive or bull moose party. >> and he was really seen as the bigger competitor to wilson.

he was so popular. so one of roosevelt's advisors came up to him and he said, we've managed to obtain some letters of woodrow wilson's to mary peck. you should publish them and just campaign will be over. you will win. and roosevelt said, no, that would be wrong. also, he said nobody would believe me. who's going to think the man is a romeo. he looks like he ought to be working in a drugstore. [laughter] >> so he did not publish the letters and woodrow wilson won. so in the beginning of 1913, ellen found herself in the white house. it was not a place she ever wanted to be, but once she was there, she felt she had to use it for its maximum benefit. she began to be interested in what we would now call urban

renewal. up here behind the capitol were a maze little alley ways, they were little, dark and dirty. they bred crime and disease. they were full of dilapidated little houses. at that time the federal government was running the district, and she wanted federal legislation to tear down those houses and build modern hygienic new houses at low cost for the residents. she got a white house car, and she began to take members of congress around those alleys to show them the squalor that existed right behind the marbled halls of the capitol building. as far as i know, she was the first first lady to lobby outside of the white house to a car that was not on her husband's agenda but in the send year of woodrow wilson's term,

her health began to decline. and by june of 1914, she could no longer get out of bed. her doctor was in denial. he thought she was suffering from nerves. woodrow was distracted because at the end of june, the arch duke france ferdnan was killed. it was clear that ellen was dying. this was two days after all the european powers had declared war on each other. ellen knew she was running out of time. so she made two final requests. the first was to her husband's chief of staff. she asked him, please to go up to capitol hill and tell the congressmen she would die more easily if they would just pass

that alley legislation. the senate took action right away in time for her to receive word before she lost consciousness. the bill was eventually passed but it was never implemented. with the onset of world war i, they needed all the buildings they could have, dilapidated or not and in any case they had more important things to think about. ellen's second request was to the white house physician. she said, doctor, please take care of my husband, and then she died. woodrow was disconsulate. he wandered the halls of the empty, echoing. he told one correspondent that he was reading detective stories as a man get drunk just to forget. you might have thought he would have turned to mary at this time, but due to the pressures

of the presidency, their relationship really had cooled. and in any case, that would have confirmed the rumors about them. so he was alone. by the spring of 1915, the doctor became worried. after all, his patient was the president and the world was at war. so he introduced a friend of his, edith bowling galt to the president. mrs. galt was a widow. she was the proproprietor of galt jewelers which we old timers in washington remember fondly. it was known as the tiffany's of washington. she was 15 years younger than woodrow. she was vivacious, cheerful, flirtatious. the first night she came to dine in the white house in a long black velvet gown, woodrow wilson's secret serviceman said to his valet, oh, she's a

looker. and the valet said, yeah, he's a goner. [laughter] >> and he was. he proposed marriage to her just two months after they met. she refused. she said they hadn't known each other long enough and in any case it, hadn't been a year, the minimum amount of time before a remarriage. woodrow didn't give up. in july, he invited edith to vacation with him and his three grown daughters in new hampshire. and he proposed again. this time, she accepted. but they kept the engagement secret because it still had not been a year since ellen's death. there was another wrinkle to this romantic saga and that was mary. woodrow confessed to edith -- he called his relationship with mary a folly, long-ago loathed

and repented of. she forgave him but she made sure it was over. they announced their engagement in october of 1915. even before they got married, woodrow took her into his confidence. he wanted her to share every aspect of his work with him. he showed her secret state department documents. he annotated them for her better understanding, and she loved that. she liked to say, i love the way you put one dear hand on mine while with the other you turn the pages of history. they got married at the end of december, 1915. 1916 was a presidential election year and woodrow was running for re-election. edith campaigned with him. she was a big asset to his campaign because she warmed up

his austere image. in november, woodrow wilson was narrowly re-elected. they were using the slogan, he kept us out of the war. but shortly after his inauguration, the germans resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and the united states was drawn into world war i. edith's role changed almost completely. she volunteered in a red cross canteen, handing out coffee and sandwiches to the soldiers as they came through union station. what she really liked was anything to do with woodrow. she named battleships. when he had to sign commissions for new officers in the army, she made a little game of it, risking away one paper and putting another one down in front of him. trying to see how many they could do in an hour.

she even decoded the telegrams coming from europe, arguably, her most important job was keeping the president healthy. every day she would drag him out to play golf. they were both terrible golfers but they enjoyed it a lot. on november 11th, 1918, the war ended. and woodrow made the surprising decision to go to europe himself to negotiate the peace treaty. he was the first sitting president to go to europe and, of course, she was the first presiding first lady to go to europe. they were greeted like heroes. they were met by thongs of people throwing flowers and cheering them. they stayed at buckingham palace. edith wrote home, it was like a cinderella existence. but once the negotiations began, things got tough. and woodrow's health began to suffer. finally, in june of that year,

the treaty of versailles was signed. it provided for a league of nations, an international body that would mediate disputes and hopefully prevent war in the future. but when woodrow brought the treaty back to the united states to be ratified by the senate, the senate refused. they were jealous of their constitutional prerogative to declare war and they were afraid the league of nations would oblige them when they didn't want to. they wanted to add amendments or reservations. and woodrow wanted the document ratified as written. so he undertook a speaking tour by train all across the united states to california and back. it was september. it was hot. of course, there was no air conditioning in these metal cars. he was speaking every day,

sometimes more than once. as they returned from california and wound up through the rocky mountains, the altitude began to tell on his blood pressure. in pueblo, colorado, he collapsed. they raced back to washington, but it was too late. a few days after they arrived, he suffered a massive stroke. he was paralyzed. he could hardly speak. nobody knew what his mental faculties were like and as president he was completely incacapacitated -- incapacitated. edith decided to carry on. she had done what no other first lady since, she instructed the white house and doctors to keep his condition a secret. and she was the one who decided

what should happen next. the next 18 months, the rest of his term, she later characterized as her stewardship. she decided who could see woodrow wilson. she decided what issues would be brought before him. mostly, she just deferred things. she wanted to wait until he should recover. she was implored to take more action for the sake of the country and she said, i'm not thinking about the country. i'm thinking about my husband. some people say that if she had allowed woodrow wilson more access to his advisors, that they would have changed his mind and gotten him to compromise on the league of nations. we discovered that edith herself wanted woodrow wilson to compromise. she thought his failure to

compromise would mar his place in history. but she urged him gently. and when he resisted, she didn't insist. she always did what he wanted. so they stayed in office until the end of his term in march of 1921. they left the white house. they settled here in washington. he was the only president to have done that after leaving office. three years later, he died. after his death, edith had opportunity to run for office herself. she never took it. she was not interested in public office and political power. she never proposed any new legislation or lobbied for any cause. she didn't even think women audit to have the vote. i began this project thinking

that edith was the path-breaker, the secret woman president. but i discovered that ellen was the one who shaped history in her own way. she was the innovativer. in her husband's administration, there was an assistant secretary to the navy, franklin delano roosevelt. his wife, eleanor roosevelt, was a young wife who sometimes visited the white house and knew ellen wilson. after ellen's death, no subsequent first lady lobbied for legislation until eleanor roosevelt entered the white house in march of 1933 during her first week there, she went up to capitol hill and began to lobby for an alley bill. as we all know, she lobbied for

a lot of things in the next 12 years. and after her, most first ladies have felt they could and should have a cause of their own. this book festival was founded by laura bush, whose cause was libraries and literacy. arguably, a direct connection between ellen wilson and where we are today. i also discovered that being close to a president may seem glamorous, but it's very tough. all three of the women involved with woodrow wilson paid a heavy price. but i think that ellen realized this.

she, of course, died in the white house. mary peck had wanted to go to the white house, but she wound up in a boarding house on the wrong side of the tracks. edith had to nurse an invalid in the white house. but ellen could have been speaking for all three of them, when she wrote woodrow at the end of her life, this has been the most remarkable life history i ever even read about. and to think that i have lived it with you. i wonder if i am dreaming and will wake up and find myself married to a bank clerk. thank you very much. [applause]

>> so i think we have a few minutes if anyone would like to ask a question. sir. >> i'm really looking forward to reading your book. i've probably read a couple of biographies of woodrow wilson and most recently went to his childhood home, et cetera. and i saw a documentary about the women's party and the women's suffrage. and he let women be jailed for protesting at the white house. >> that's true >> alice paul led a number of women in prison on hunger strikes. and he comes across as a southern gentleman who had racism and antisexism as part of his nature. so it's really surprising to hear that he was as dependent on women as your book will demonstrates. do you have any comments on these weaknesses of his, i

guess? >> well, the first comment, thanks very much. that's a very, very good observation. one of those is that -- it was a sign of the times. many women themselves did not approve of the vote. there were two branches of the women's suffrage movement. my grandmother was involved in the non-alice paul one. i discovered in the course of my research that she had been received at the white house because they were not picketing. they were trying to do it through political action. and he respected that, and he wanted to encourage that. i had not known that before i started researching the woodrow wilson papers in the white house log. edith was even more indignant than woodrow. woodrow used to invite the picketers into the house during cold weather for coffee. and when they refused to come in and be given coffee, edith just

had a fit. she thought that was terribly rude to take their gentlemanly overtures which we understand that would cut their point. but it was certainly nothing that -- that i'm a big apologist for where woodrow was concerned. i certainly think the women in his life, particularly, ellen, were extremely admirable. ellen herself was a great activist through her work for the alleyways. and she was recognized by the leading african-american newspaper at that time, the washington bee. after her death, they wrote and said, if only other white women could be as active as she is in trying to ameliorate the conditions of the african-american community in

washington, we'd get ahead further. but woodrow wilson was a southerner. everybody in his, you know, large number of the people in his cabinet were southerners. it was part of the culture of his time and his administration. thank you. yes, ma'am. >> that's not on? >> yes. >> thank you for writing this book. it's very interesting. and my question is, what happened to edith after his death? was there some sort of federal support or pension for her to care for her or what happened? >> good question. she lived for 38 more years. at the time she died in 1961, she was 89. and by the way, she died on woodrow wilson's birthday which kind of gives me goose bumps. but there was no definite policy about giving pensions to the widows of presidents.

they had to be negotiated kind of on a year by year basis. i think eventually they were established. but in the beginning, it was a little bit dicey. she, of course, had been quite wealthy before she married woodrow. she had that flourishing jewelry star although that kind of took a hit during the depression and she had economize from time to time, she did all right. she never had children. and she donated their house on s street near dupont circle to the national trust for historic preservation. it's a wonderful little museum. a little time capsule of life in the 1920s. so if you're interested in woodrow wilson, that's a great local place to visit. >> thank you. do we have any indication as to what ellen's illness was? >> yes. she suffered from -- what was then called bright's disease, which was kind of a catch-all

phrase for kidney trouble. she had first been diagnosed with kidney trouble during her third pregnancy in 1889. but, again, they didn't have a lot of medicine or treatment for that, and she probably would have succumbed to kidney disease in any case. woodrow was extreme guilty about it. he felt that the pressure of the white house had done her in. but i think she -- she always was going to get kidney disease. and that's what she died of. >> hi, i wondered if you would talk a little bit about the course of your research for this book? you mentioned the library of congress. what -- what documents you came across that were most important? if you knew what you were looking for when you came in or if you found things while in the course of your research that you didn't expect? >> well, first, i have to say i couldn't have done it without the help of my research associate robert h. mcginnis.

and also the fabulous annotated collected letters and papers of woodrow wilson which were edited arthur link. 69 volumes of papers. the originals are in the library of congress on microfilm but thanks to that wonderful annotated book is always resource but some of ellen's papers are there. edith's papers -- one of the most poignant i found among ellen's papers were two notes that she wrote to margaret, her oldest daughter a few days before she died. and she said the doctors say i'm going to get better, but i don't feel i'm going to get better. and she also said, my nights are so full of pain. they were just, you know, heart wringing to read those and to hold the papers that she wrote

is also very magical. and especially for edith's papers. all of edith's papers are there. many of them were not collected because, of course, the woodrow wilson papers pretty much stop with his death and she's got another 38 years. so the papers for the chapter on her life after woodrow were very, very key there. and at the risk of sounding like an infomercial, i just have to have a big shoutout to jeff flannery and the manuscript reading room because they're just wonderful. anyone who wants to do research there, will find a great team. >> thank you. >> first, i'd like to thank you for your tribute to these great women. i was wondering if you could talk about ellen and woodrow's three daughters. if any of them followed in their mother's footsteps with advocacy or supporting other great men or what of their own accomplishments they had on their own. >> great question.

their oldest daughter margaret was a singer. we felt at the end of the day she probably didn't have a whole lot of talent and people were nice to her because her father was president. i think this might have gradually dawned on her because eventually she went off and lived in ashram in india where she died. the second daughter got married and their son became dean of the washington cathedral. a very beloved figure in washington. and, of course, woodrow wilson and edith are buried at the cathedral so there's that nice connection. the youngest daughter known as nell married one of woodrow wilson's cabinet members, a man considerably older than she was. william gibbs mackado and they had children. and they were later divorced and he married somebody even younger. i would say the middle one was

the closest to her mother. she had been active in the settlement house movement. she used to argue with ellen about woman suffrage. jessie certainly felt that she -- that women should have the vote. ellen simply didn't want to come out and say something contrary to what her husband had said but in one interview she said at least working women should have the vote to protect themselves. i just got a couple minutes. you have one more question, madam? >> yes. thank you. i was intrigued by edith's role after her husband had the stroke. it sounds like she was a surrogate president. was there any debate at that time about wilson being declared incompetent and the vice president taking over? and if you would care to speculate what that would have meant for our history? >> it's a big question in 2 minutes. but it's a good one.

i'll do my best. yes. she was deceptive. no two ways about it. there was a committee of two senators who came to see what his condition was like. one democrat and one republican. and she and the doctor orchestrated the viewing of woodrow to have him seen at his best advantage, completely hoodwinked these two senators who came away and told all the press that he was doing just fine, thank you, when he could hardly get out of bed. so she definitely was duplicitous about that. and, yes, i think it would have made a huge difference if she had not lied to the american people, basically, about his condition. she knew that he wanted to stay in office, and all she cared about was what he wanted. she was not thinking about the country. alas and alack. certainly, if he had resigned,

the vice president would have taken over. the vice president would have compromised. we would have joined the league of nations. then the question gets trickier, would that have made a difference? some people say, yes, if we'd joined the league of nations, then there wouldn't have been world war ii. there was a league of nations, of course, we weren't in it. but it did nothing to stop world war ii. in 1937, bob found a great study that showed that 70% -- a gallup poll showed that 70% of the american people thought it had been a mistake to go into world war i. this was in 1937. we were a very isolationist country at that time. even if we'd joined the league of nations, it would have been with those amendments, which would have meant we wouldn't have had to do whatever the league of nations determined. so i don't think at the end of the day it would have made any

difference but there are plenty of wilson scholars and some of them disagree with me. if you want the argument on the other side, i refer you to the wonderful biography by john milton cooper of woodrow wilson that came out a couple of years ago. he's very eloquent for the other side. thank you so much for coming. [applause] >> and you've been watching kristie miller on woodrow wilson. professor miller will be joining us here at the national book festival on our booktv set in just a minute to take your calls, emails and tweets. 202-737-0001 if you live in the east and central time zone and

would like to talk about woodrow wilson and his first ladies. 202-737-0002 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zone. you can send a tweet twitter.com/booktv or you can send an email booktv@c-span.org. she will be over here in just a minute. as our live coverage from the national book festival continues from washington, d.c. as we've been doing all weekend, it is the national book festival weekend here, but it is also our weekend on booktv to look at the literary life of charlotte, our local content vehicles were just down in charlotte, north carolina, looking at the history of charlotte, the politics of charlotte, and the literary life of charlotte and on booktv, we're pleased that we can bring you some of the literary aspects of that southern city. here's another. >> what is the history of the charlottes writers club? >> it was founded in 1922.

so that makes it one of the -- the oldest arts organizations in north carolina. i don't know if we're the oldest but one of the oldest. and it started off, i think, a little bit more of a social club, a reading club for lovers of literature. and then it's just evolved over time. so it's going to be 90 years old -- or no, is that right? 90 years old next year. >> what is the focus of the club? >> well, we have a variety of focuses. we want to be a support group for writers. so we offer workshops, contests. we met once a month during the academic year and listen to presentations by established writers. and we want to offer resource and networking for writers but we also have members who are publishers, writers, people who love reading or literacy. we're advocates for literacy as well. we have been people who published a number of novels, poets, playwrights who have been

produced but we have a number of young people who are just starting out who haven't published anything. we have journalists. we have -- the mystery writers. i have a friend who writes zombie and vampire novels. and you have academic poets, historians, a little bit of everything, and i think that's wonderful. it's not an academic group particularly, although we have certainly academic people in it. but we have people who write bestsellers and so on. and then charlotte is an interesting place because it's a large city, but it also has different kinds of communities, ethnic communities and different kinds of groups. so that makes it fascinating. we have a lot of critique groups and that's one of the things we offer to writers. i would guess maybe as many as half of our writers belong to critique group and these are typically four to six writers in a group and you might be -- it might be a novel group, or a

science fiction group or a poetry, short stories, children's literature, young adult. and you get together with these people and you read each other's work and writing is a very lonely kind of endeavor. you do that by yourself. but then you want to go out and interact with other writers and get feedback before you send it to the publisher. so we offer a lot of that. we offer opportunities for new writers to connect with people, get a mentor, join a critique group and listen to his presenters come in. we have a number of great writers who come in to talk about their writing. they read from it and then they talk about how they wrote and they answer questions and -- about publishing. we have the man coming at our september meeting, kevin morgan watson is the founder and editor of press 53, which is one of the leading independent publishers in north carolina. and he's going to talk about getting published with an independent press, which is a

little bit different than some of the mainstream. the novelists, susan haasler has published with the mainstream publishers so she can talk about that. so we try to offer a lot for our members. >> and we are back live at the national book festival sponsored by the library of congress and the honorary chairs. as you can see there on the banner, president obama and mrs. obama. this is our live coverage of the 11th annual national book festival. and if you've been watching now, you just saw kristie miller talking about her book and the history and the biography tent, ellen and edith, woodrow wilson's first ladies. she's joibd us here on our booktv tv set to take your calls, emails and tweets and i want to start, ms. miller, with the front of your book. ellen and edith. >> yes. >> tell us who the two women are that we see here? who's seated, who's standing? and why you chose these

pictures? >> ellen axon wilson is the won is seated. she was woodrow wilson's first wife. edith bowling galt wilson is standing and she was woodrow wilson's second wife. woodrow wilson was the only 20th century president to have two wives while in office. >> now, when did ellen die? and when did he mary edith. >> ellen died in 1914 in august he married edith in august of 1915. >> did he know edith while he was married to ellen? >> no. but he had another friend during the time that he was married to ellen. mary peck and they were close friends for eight years, but after ellen's death, he could not marry mary because that would have confirmed rumors about them and in any case, their relationship had cooled due to the pressures of being

president. so he met edith in the spring of 1915, and he proposed to her two months later. it was a whirlwind romance. >> what were a couple of big differences and similarities between ellen and edith? >> i'd say the biggest difference was in their education. ellen was unusually well-educated for a woman of her day. her father had been a presbyterian minister. she helped woodrow with his scholarly research. she helped translated his books in german. edith had only two years of school in rural virginia. she was a businesswoman. she'd made a lot of money. she was very flashy. ellen was very modest and quiet. they couldn't have been more different in their personalities but they were similar because they were both utterly devoted to woodrow wilson and he was utterly dependent on both of them for his emotional well

being. >> kristie miller, when you look at your books it's about history and politics? why? >> my first book was about my grandmother. my grandmother was in politics. she was a member of the house of representatives in 1928. the ninth woman to be elected to congress. i went to school at a time when they didn't have women's history. it was a shock to me to find out how many women had done amazing things before 1960 when we think the women's movement began. >> kristie miller is our guest here at booktv. we're talking about woodrow wilson and his wives, ellen and edith. and our first call comes from scranton, pennsylvania. good afternoon, scranton, you're on booktv. go ahead. >> caller: i would like to know just what the 25th amendment entailed in order to prevent of a situation that edith caused with the president's stroke? >> you want me to tell you what

the situation was with woodrow wilson when he had a stroke. >> caller: no. tell me what the 25th amendment said to prevent edith -- any other white house first lady from doing what edith did when the president had his stroke. >> all right, thank you, caller. >> thank you very much. i think that's a great question. and it wouldn't just be the first lady who would be prevented from doing something. it says that whenever the president is incapacitated, that the vice president must take over. unfortunately, it's a little vague on what constitutes incapacity. but these days, when a president is going to even be anesthetized for an operation, i believe that the vice president is read into the program at that point. and it was to prevent an incapacitated president from staying in office. it was many years after the

wilson presidency that the 25th amendment was passed. it was actually passed in the 1950s. but eisenhower had suffered a heart attack and i think the two events was what finally propelled people to propose and adopt the 25th amendment. >> kristie miller, how long was woodrow wilson incapacitated or slowed down during his second term? >> 18 months, peter. >> and during that 18 months, what were the newspapers saying about edith wilson? what was the general gossip here in washington? >> well, my favorite story is of the senator who stood up in congress and pounded on the desk and said, we have petticoat government so everybody knew that edith was kind of running things or that she had charge of the sick room, which was tantamount to running things. and there was a lot of gossip. at one point, they saw bars on the windows of the upstairs of

the white house. and they said the president is crazy. and what had actually happened is that when theodore roosevelt was in the white house, they put those bars up there because his children kept throwing footballs through the windows. but everybody -- there was rumor and speculation rampant because edith had been so secretive about his condition. >> san antonio, texas, we're talking about woodrow wilson and his wives ellen and edith. please go ahead. caller: i want to thank you for your presentation. it was very enjoyable. my question was related to the previous question. what did -- she seemed to take on a role, edith, as a very powerful chief of staff. and how did the internal white house staff feel about her having so much power over the president? and as well, how did he sign documents and -- were they forged? i'm not sure how physically

incapacitated he was. but in general, what did the internal staff feel over her role after he had his stroke? >> woodrow wilson had a male secretary, as he was called. but he functioned like a modern chief of staff. his name was joseph patrick tumlety who worked very, very closely with edith wilson. they were not best friends to put it mildly, but they worked together very effectively during woodrow wilson's incapacity. and he wrote a number of things that went out over woodrow wilson's signature. whether woodrow actually wrote his name, whether he had actually read the documents is something that will never be known because tumlety could combatant his style. he had been with woodrow wilson since the time he was governor, and he really did most of the work. and as i said in my earlier

remarks, it was less that people were concerned about what edith was doing and more that they were concerned that she wasn't doing enough. they really wanted her to either do more or push woodrow to do more. she didn't want to. she wanted to wait for him to get better. and she postponed things as long as she could. >> now, ellen wilson was in the white house, what, a year and a half or so. how visible was she across the country? was she active in his first campaign, et cetera? >> she was. she was, as far as i know, the first first lady to campaign we are husband before the convention, in the primary phase. so she was very political and active. and at least in washington, it was said that nobody could move in polite society who couldn't talk alleys because that was her great cause and i don't know how much she was known across the country because, of course, the

media then was extremely limited. we didn't really have much radio. we didn't have television at all. there were interviews with her in some mass circulation magazines like good housekeeping and "ladies home journal" and she was always portrayed as a very sweet housewifely person and she downplayed her role because it wasn't appropriate although she didn't get any criticism for what she was although some people thought it was kind of silly. >> kristie miller is our author and this is live coverage at the national book festival and we're talking about woodrow wilson's wives and the next call comes from fisher's indiana, please go ahead. >> caller: thank you for your wonderful book. i was thinking of the relationship of ellen's three daughters. i read some of the first lady display that the figure of the second mrs. wilson wasn't worthy

to be displayed next to the figure of her mother, ellen wilson. could you comment, please? >> yes. i don't know about that comment. i've never run across it so i don't know which daughter it was. edith had a somewhat contentious relationship with the youngest daughter from time to time. although at the end of her life they made up and were very cozy with each other. but ellen wilson had not wanted an inaugural ball. she didn't approve. she was a very sober, intellectual woman. she thought it was extravagant to have an inaugural ball. she thought it demedian the presidency to have a commercial event around it. so i don't think she had an inaugural gown. so she may have said that it was more important for her mother's gown to be there than edith's but i don't know which gown they would have used, frankly. >> when did edith wilson die?

>> edith wilson died in 1961. she was supposed to have inaugurated the opening of the woodrow wilson bridge, which shows of us in washington, d.c., know well. and as i said in my talk, it was to be inaugurated on woodrow wilson's 105th birthday. and edith died on that day, just linking her fate with his forever. she was 89 years old. that was older than any first lady up to that time. and so she was really the grand dame of washington. >> so she was still active after she left the white house in 1921? >> yes, she was very active. she went to any event she could that honored her husband during his -- the year that was the centennial of his birth. he was born at the very end of 1856, so 1957 was the kind of centennial year. she was in her 80s.

she ran all over the country, going to things and opening events and she was so active. she was actually proposed for public office in the 1920s when women were just getting into politics, this was a typical way that women got into politics. alice longworth who was the wit of the day they used their husband's coffins as spring boards. she never took it. she was not interested in politics. she was interested in her husband, anything to glorify him. and she was very active in that. >> towanda, pennsylvania, you're on with kristie miller. >> caller: thank you. and i'd like to ms. miller for talking about the secret first woman president of the united states. my question is, was wilson a stroke or paralysis?

and who was the vice president who should have taken over and avoided world war ii with the league of nations? >> thank you very much for your question. woodrow wilson died of a stroke again, but i think his body was just shutting down. he was in seriously declining health for many years before he actually died so i don't know what the final cause was because, obviously, they don't have the same kinds of medical descriptors that we have now. there's some very, very good medical descriptions of woodrow wilson's condition by contemporary doctors that are in the arthur link papers as an appendix. so if you are a physician and you're interested in the really cutting edge medical analysis of

woodrow wilson, then i would refer you to those arthur link stories. thank you. >> but about the vice president, who was vice president at the time? >> marshall. and he had been a governor, and he was the man who was famous for saying what this country needs is a good 5 cent cigar. but he didn't -- he was never taken in to the wilson administration in any key way. woodrow wanted to run the whole show himself and so when he became incapacitated, he had no way to take over. >> did edith wilson have allies up in congress who worked with her? >> no, not that i know of. there was one senator who was fairly friendly, but even he was sometimes prevented from coming to see woodrow so she really did not have allies in congress. she wanted to keep congress in the dark, and she did, literally. she turned all the lights out when the congressmen came to

visit him and kept it as dark as possible in the bedroom so that they couldn't see just how sick he was. >> walk us through the day that woodrow wilson had his stroke in the white house. >> he woke up in the morning and tried to go into his bathroom and he fell. and edith had been sleeping in a separate room, and she came in and she found him having difficulty in rising. and she got him into bed. she used a telephone that was kind of a closed circuit telephone and contacted the white house physician to come upstairs and take over. and they then tried to decide what they were going to do next. but it was not a surprise to any of them because he suffered from high blood pressure. he had some kind of a mini stroke just a few days before in colorado.

and she knew pretty much then that everything, as she said, our life lay in ruins, and everything was over for us, at that point, even before they came to washington, even before he had the massive stroke. he was very ill for about six weeks. and then he did recover somewhat. and accounts vary as to how much he recovered. some people feel that he made an amazing recovery. some people say he was never more than a shelf his former self. it's hard to know because people had their own agendas for explaining that. >> next call for kristie miller on woodrow wilson and his wives comes from howell, new jersey, please go ahead. >> caller: ms. miller, thank you for your book and all. and thank you very much. i was wondering if you could tell me did edith wilson -- i mean, did edith realize what she was getting herself into when she was marrying the president

of the united states? and you said she had no interest in the right to vote for women and all. but after -- when she did come to light, was she seen a champion of women's rights? >> i don't think she was at all interested in women's rights. and, no, i'm sure she didn't know what she was getting into. i don't think woodrow told her much about his medical history before they married. i'm not sure how much she knew about his history of hypertension. he could be as i said at the beginning of my talk, an intensely romantic man. he was a very, very eloquent writer, and he just showered her with attention. and she was swept off her feet. at that time he was revitalized by her love and i think she thought he was a very vital and

vigorous man and so he appeared for quite a while. but i think she thought she would be a good hostess, which is usually the role of a first lady. and she was. she was a very good hostess. she was very popular. much more popular than ellen wilson was. ellen hated big entertainments, and in any case she was already extremely ill when she entered the white house. i think in the beginning i think edith thought she could do the job, she could probably do the job better than ellen in some respects and she didn't expect her husband to have a stroke. i mean, i think very few of us know what's in our future. >> where did ellen and woodrow wilson meet? how long were they married? was it a happy marriage? >> they met in georgia. he was visiting the town where she grew up. her father was a minister. as a good presbyterian, he went to church.

and his father was also a presbyterian minister. his father knew her father. and when he realized that this pretty girl sitting two rows in front of him was the preacher's daughter, he immediately went to the preacher's house to meet her. they were married for 29 years and i think it was a very happy marriage. she was not happy about his relationship with mary peck. ..

were they as ray says as he was? >> guest: i would say eat it was. i would say that ellen was not. she had grown up right after the civil war and came from a very racist culture. but she began very early in her life to try to overcome her up her game. she thought it was wrong and she wanted to make strides to get away from it. she went to art school before she and woodrow were married and it was an art school that was integrated she also did social work among african-american families in new york at the time. she was in art school. woodrow did not provoke this and she did it anyway, which is a strong signal that she thought

it was important. and she worked for urban renewal in washington d.c. after she died, the leading african-american newspaper her here in washington wrote that they would that more prominent white women would follow her example. they did not say she was the most enlightened human being that they nailed, but she had done a great deal to improve the living conditions for the african-american washing to and they want to recognize her for that. host a last call for kristie miller comes from new mexico. you're on booktv. >> caller: thank you very much for your presentation. i want to follow up on the last question. i want to find out how pete is and a ellen felt about women of

color. it either them or give him kind of feelings with regards to african-americans? >> as i said to the previous caller, i don't except nine or woodrow were particularly interested in improving relationships. although, when woodrow wilson was president of princeton university, he did entertain booker t. washington. ellen was his hostess and it scandalized their georgia relatives. so certainly they had both devolved beyond the place they were raised and at times in which they were raised. ellen worked very hard to improve living conditions for the african-americans. the people who lived in the alleyways would probably

african-americans, but also atoll against another democrat. at one point she said that she had mentally progressed and that she was having more trouble progressing emotionally with the equality to which she aspired. i don't know how much influence she had on woodrow. it's hard to say because a great number of the men in his cabinet were also seven or and they were racist so it's hard to know who influenced woodrow in that regard. >> host: kristie miller is the author of a couple bucks in the code editor and several more. do you have a day job as well? >> guest: i don't happily. i used to be a journalist but i am now retired. so this is my full-time job. >> host: where do you live? >> guest: and live in washington d.c. and i spent a lot of time at the library of congress which is sponsoring this great event. >> host: when it's your next

book coming out? what is the topic? >> guest: the topic is mark cannot. he was the campaign manager for mckinney of scared i don't know when it's coming out. his papers are widely scattered in ima research associate of mcinnis are working hard for, the cic can. >> host: this is your first it isn't necessarily women centric. >> guest: that's right. that's still in politics. i'm very interested in politics. >> host: we've been talking with kristie miller. here is her most recent book, "ellen and edith: woodrow wilson's first ladies" published by the university of kansas press, part of the first lady series. thank you for being with us here in the tv. now coming up in just about an hour or so, here's david mccullough's most recent book,

"the greater journey: americans in paris" david mccullough will be in the history biography tennant talking about facebook and after that, booktv will join him in the history biography tennant to take your calls, e-mails come in beats and audience questions. that is coming up in half an hour or so and we will join him. a large coverage from the national book festival continues. coming up on booktv as another chance to talk with an author. adam goodheart, "1861: the civil war awakening." he will be joining us on our site in just minutes. we covered that earlier given a book talk to an audience. we want to show a short portion and then we'll come back and take your calls for adam goodheart. >> fort sumter and fired upon making calls up 75,000 militia men to defend the nation's

capital and be ready for this war that's going to begin. and then he very quickly seems to cerda disappear from sight during this crisis. he's in the white house, rating draft after draft of a message that he is preparing to deliver, actually has spent so message to congress that lincoln is called beginning on independence day 1861. people were asking, where's abe? thursday in the middle of this crisis? at one point even with about two or three weeks left until he has to present this document, he literally told the secretary, no more colors to the white house. i am sort of locked up with my rough draft. he and ralph waldo emerson, a great writer himself, said this

president of ours just seems to be intersecting himself come intersect in this country to the point of disaster. paul twomey, linking and writing this document, which is not gotten as much attention of the lincoln documents, he was fighting the war intellectually within himself. he was society and he was articulating what it was that was wrong about secession, howard was that secession was an existential threat to the united states and how the threats needed to be countered. as you said, the legacy of the american revolution was contested at this moment. i love discovering the moment when in virginia at the sport was speaking about deep in frederick territory. they recapitulate for completing to celebrate the holiday by firing off salutes and getting

wildly turn. of course the great american tradition. and they start firing off artillery salutes and very quickly start hearing from the other side of the confederate artillery firing and say it's a sneak attack. they are opening fire on us. they realize very quickly the confederacy is also celebrating july 4th. so who does this holiday belonged to? of course july 4th is about the establishment of the united states of america, also the southerners thought about separation from nature manacle mother country, tyrannical power. but lincoln really expresses in his address is that this july 4th idea belongs to us in the union. the reason it belongs to us in the union rather than to the confederacy is that secession is something wholly different from

our revolution. the american revolution -- the revolutionaries vary significantly were not represented directly within the british political system. this is what the revolution was about. taxation without representation. they were not given a voice. they were not participants in the system of majority rule. the southerners were took their cookies and go home they weren't ready to acquiesce to it. in fact, that secession was quite the opposite. secession was a rebellion for anarchy and then away at payment tyranny of the minority holding the majority hostage. and so, lincoln sends this message to congress. he sort of reviews the history of what's happened up to that

moment in the crisis. he talks in the end about how this is a people's contest. that's the great phrase that comes out, the people's contest. this is about ultimately democratic principles that involve all of us. he uses the phrase that it's about allowing the government to give its citizens an unfettered a new lease of life, something really extraordinary. it's time when you look at the rough draft. lincoln said it's about giving citizens and even start the race of life, which is sort of a much cleaner than before, but he struck out the word even and wrote unfettered and he's talking about slavery. you know what, i think they were right. >> host: this is the cover of the book adam goodheart was talking about in that tape segment.

1861 -- "1861: the civil war awakening." mr. goodheart joins us live. what is the photo on the front of this book? >> guest: that's a photo i regret to say taking in 1862. i tried hard to find one and 1861, but it's one of union soldiers in virginia sitting up on top of a hill and looking out over a mysterious landscape, we see 10-cent or and ships in the background and it reminded me that it seemed like a moment of people looking into the future somehow are on the other hand of the reader looking in the past, a mystical sensation i wanted to create. i asked my publisher to make this look more like a contemporary model than a typical history book as i try to write this book almost more like a novel than a conventional history. >> host: what was january 1, 1861 mike?

one of the newspapers saying, was the economy late? >> guest: well, this is a very dark moment in american history. if you have been just a few hundred yards from here at the white house that morning, you would have gone in and president james buchanan was holding a reception. it is tradition in those states that the president to hold a reception every new year's day and any citizen who is sober and washed with the allowed in to make the president and partake of some federally funded refreshments. so this reception is going on and unfortunately it's a very sad occasion. the marine band was playing dolefully, but people were circling around each other on opposite sides of the room with pro-secession people on one side and prounion people on the other side and went stooping white hair stooping white-haired buchanan knowing who to talk to at all. so this is a kind of nadir of american history and fortunately

enough and just a couple months time, a very different man from springfield, illinois, would come and take the presidency in history would begin to change. >> host: adam adam goodheart, january 110-1861, was secession inevitable? >> guest: that's one of those great what-if questions that simultaneously attempt a historian and also in the way we have to resist. i do think by that point, they january 11861, wherewith inevitable. secession was inevitable and the sun south carolina already had seceded 10 days before. the union was already breaking out. there were a lot of americans in the north who are ready to try to lure this out back in with all kinds of compromise. this had happened in american history where the south had threatened to secede and then the union had been sorted stitch together again with a series of different compromises over slavery.

but you know, as it turned out almost any compromise the north offered the south wasn't ready to take. they had in mind that they were going to be not just an independent nation, but a great and mighty nation of the world. today we often aimed at the southerners simply wanted to be let go in peace and go often to developing, but thing, but actually a lot of southerners southerners were talking and expanding slavery, this confederate nation until it stretched all the way across the caribbean and south america and formed an empire slavery like no other country in the history of the world. >> host: were events in april 1861 a complete shock, expected? >> guest: people for some time had known that something might be coming to charleston harbor. and yet, i think it was still an incredible moment of shock. i found myself thinking a lot a couple weeks ago on the anniversary of 9/11 about the

assorted eerie similarities. i wrote in my book about thousands of people standing around the rooftops of charleston, south carolina, watching smoke rising from fort sumter as if a volcano had erupted in the center of the harbor, looking at this eerie sight and wondering what it would mean for the future of the cells in the country. i couldn't help but think of september 11th almost 140 years earlier when i stood not far from here on 15th street in washington with neighbors and friends and strangers looking at the in the smoke rising from the burning pentagon and wondering what it meant. it was a shot of the country in the sense that when the nation comes under attack whether it's 2001 or 1861, it's something changing politics overnight to which people have a strong emotional reaction and can erase differences quickly.

>> host: psalm one if you live in the east or central time zone. 202-737-0002 for those of you in the mountain or pacific time zones. send an e-mail to tv@c-span.org or twitter.com/booktv. adam goodhart is our guest. this is his first book 1861 -- "1861: the civil war awakening" he works for "the new york times" cellblock. los angeles, you are the first column today. >> caller: and really enjoyed your book, considering you said it was the first book you did. i wanted to elaborate on the point you made in a c-span lecture that you were surprised to learn when lincoln journeyed from springfield illinois to his inauguration in d.c. that he stumbled, that he was not as politically savvy as other historians. he pointed out evidence of his

speech he made on his journey. i wanted you to elaborate on that. was there other evidence besides the one speech to give you evidence to your conclusion and you might elaborate on the process about how you actually wrote the book. >> guest: i did. thank you for your question. link and i think we tend to looking back cms a giant, cms a saint in american history. it's a very different figure. to me and some days more appealing, more immediate human figure who was sort of stumbling and bumbling into the presidency. let's remember he was coming to the white house from farther away geographically than anyone had ever come before. he hadn't been to the nation's capital and over a decade. he hadn't been in national politics in over a decade. he was in many respects

unprepared. so he set out and decided to take a long whistle stop tour from springfield, illinois to washington d.c. people didn't know who the stranger from illinois was. leaving springfield he gave a simple powerful speech saying farewell to his friends and neighbors at the railway station but almost immediately he started to give speeches that were widely ridiculed. there is a speech in indianapolis where he made that it aureus and off-color kind of reference in present-day politics. he said clearly the southerners seem to view the union and as just a convenient for you to arrangement, which meant it was only a temporary liaison that they would give up as soon as they found something better. people thought that was completely inappropriate for a man who had just been raised to the dignity of the presidency. in columbus, ohio, the speech i talked about a lot in my book,

he if anything was even worse. he said everyone is talking about the terrible crisis we are written, but no one has really suffered any name. no one is hurting at all. it's really a question of what people think right now. it's not such a terrible crisis. meanwhile the country was falling apart. troops on both sides were joined for a word and lincoln was to send the key justly ridiculed. he did very bad cold that day, so that may partly explain it. postal baton rouge, louisiana, we are talking about the civil war era. >> caller: yes, my name is susan. >> host: we are listening if you could go ahead and ask your question. >> caller: my question as as did mr. goodhart calm across any reference to fort sumter that

lincoln's decision about fort sumter in the civil war? the two men didn't cross paths, but does it support have any paperwork where they said, you know, john would've liked this guy in this type of person. so is there any linkage there? >> guest: you know, i didn't find any evidence. i know john quincy adams had been dead for 12 years. he died -- he was a member of congress at the same time and admire john quincy adams. certainly john quincy adams had become a fervent abolitionist. it was argument relationship with slavery. it is true that lincoln center's president-elect did an impact in his immaculate dress he did not want to interfere with slavery anywhere it was then in existence. i think there was no mistake in

1861 and 1860 when he was elected that lincoln was the slavery. he was a candidate of the republican party created specifically to oppose slavery. he had been elected because millions of millions of americans are ready to draw a line in the sand and say no more compromise with the south. no more protection of this terrible and dictation. yes, i do think lincoln was a president who represent the feelings of people like john quincy adams. host to wind you first get interested in war? >> guest: like anybody who loves american history, i became fascinated even when i was a kid going on the eighth grade class trip to gettysburg. but then i had to say, i moved away from it in later years because the way the civil war is portrayed so often is a 19th century super bowl between the blue and gray teams. stories of battles that there is

moving across the map. that's not kind to the history i love nor the more suicide of academic is where you get the drive hard drives and pie charts and historians trying to say well, we have to categorize people as the blacks, whites, north, south, democrats or republicans. we know people don't march in ideological and socioeconomic status. i like actual human minds can experience is in so many what the letters people wrote, servants and so i came back into this history as a grown up as a whirl though i still have to acknowledge may grade history teacher mrs. respa first on the civil war and took me on the class trip to gettysburg. i came back more interested in some of the nuance. >> host: what were the major battles of 1861?

gusto i stuck my book just before the first major battle. really only the big military conflict i have is the battle of fort sumter itself, which is hardly matches 60 soldiers and a brass band, but i stopped it because they didn't want to tell the civil war story that goes for run schiavo antietam, second analysis and goes although they do the battles. i wanted to bring people back into the moment of uncertainty, crisis and change when the only thing people knew for sure was on the brink of some new. >> host: long island, good afternoon. author of 1861. >> caller: good afternoon. i'm interested in what happened on the international scene during this time if there is a chance at secession for the south, did any of the european nations feel that this was an opportunity for them to have

some attendants and the political system here in the united states were to have be able to come back into the united states but there are fears of intolerance? a >> guest: yes, this conflict i think we tend to give it just a sub and the tenor of borderers. it was a great event in world history of being watched from all over the globe and particularly european powers. the southerners come the rebels were really counting on england or france stepping in on their site, perhaps even militarily, but at least granting undiplomatic revolution of the regime. especially elites in this country saw this as a chance to take down this country that stood for democracy in the face of these imperial powers and had actually already become a threat politically and economically and

relatively few short decades of its existence. there were also many people who recognize this is a struggle about slavery and who themselves were strongly anti-slavery. in england there were thousands or millions of evangelical christians who had been very active in england bold abolitionist through meant. through tour through thought through really don't think the people of europe would have allowed their governments to take that kind of a stand on behalf of the south. i think the degree to which that was a problem has been overestimated. i do think people were watching this conflict and mccain himself recognized this was a struggle over whether democracy shall perish on the earth, not just america but the whole world. >> host: durum, north carolina, u.n. put tv. >> caller: i'm from durham.

i was just asking the question, where any slaves got to lurk over any southern chips? the second was -- i forget what it was. or maybe six years old. >> guest: thank you for asking your question. slavery was something that was incredibly entangled world system and i think there were southerners who say rightly enough that slavery was not sent them simply we were responsible for. it's not like the south was all evil in the north is located on this issue is slavery and race. as you suggest, the international slave trade involves people in the south and involve people in the north and people in africa. as many hands around the world.

on the other hand, it's not true that no southern chips are involved in the slave trade. writer mathilde civil war there were southerners who were actually smuggling slaves then. the slave trade had been illegal. international slave trade had been illegal for decades at this point. much more, there were many southerners and very few northerners involved in the just as terrible internal slave trade that tore apart families that send people especially from the upper south slaves to the lower south and also disrupt millions of lives much as the crossing of the atlantic to. i do think that looking at the records, you know, many people say because the south of the north were both involved in slavery, this means the south was not the cause of slavery. reading the documents and i've read many, many documents, he

was the southerners themselves set in 1861, it's abundantly clear that they were fighting for slavery, that the civil war was about slavery, not about terrorists, not high taxes, not internal improvements. this is a war they were fighting in order to preserve the institution of slavery. jefferson davis had it in a speech called the cornerstone speech, where he said the very cornerstone of the news that their nation is the institution of slavery. though it's complicated. neither north nor south. but the southern cause with that of slavery. >> host: adam goodheart, walk us through jefferson davis' 1861. with a headache that of this year? he had been a very respected statesman in washington d.c. he had been actually fermenter for quite some time. he'd been a hero to mexican war in secretary of war also had a somewhat controversial term as secretary of war.

one of the things he is most known for is trying to introduce camels in the u.s. army in the southwest, which was not wholly successful. in early 1861, even before they get was elected president, he had really recognized secession was coming. he had gone around giving speeches. he had spoken even before ncoln s elted about how if thnorth tried to send troops down, their men would be slaughtered in terribly bloody terms. like many southerners, he was using terms to talk about americans that are appalling to us today. one newspaper article i found were southerners and let those northerners come down to the south. we will strengthen our stable with her carrying crews upon their rotting carcasses. so davis was a part of that rhetoric very much at the time. >> host: did he spend most of your richmond?

>> guest: he started here in washington d.c. just on from where we are sitting, speaking in the u.s. capitol and giving a speech in which inmate january 8th 1861, he spoke about why it was his state was leaving the union. he didn't mention terrorists, didn't mention taxes. he said we are leaving the union because the preservation not simply a slavery is at stake, but also preservation of the supremacy of the white man itself. so he gave a speech, left washington d.c. and went down to actually he first was in montgomery, alabama, the first confederate capital was moved to richmond, virginia. jefferson davis was there in july 1861. he went to the battlefield of all run while the battle was still unfolding. he almost couldn't hold himself back. perhaps he thought that george washington in the american revolution he was going to be a commander in a commander-in-chief as well as the first president.

>> host: adam goodheart is the author of "1861". he's joining us here at the book festival. san jose, california, thanks for holding. you're on booktv. >> caller: yeah, it's hard understanding that allan tinker 10 handled abraham lincoln security during his travel from springfield to washington d.c., leading up to his first inauguration. it's my understanding their they are assassination plots against abrahamlincoln. >> guest: you're absolutely right. there were assassination plots. it's debated how close to fruition they swear, but most famously applied in baltimore to assassinate lincoln. it's unclear how they plan to do it, possibly by derailing his train, most likely he was going to be stabbed on his way passing through baltimore.

in those days when you come to baltimore, they actually had to unhook the train from attention and draw the streets of baltimore by horses and transferred to another engine at another station across town. of all people in italian driver and baltimore his name is carandini who is going to leap out of the shadows and splashed into the start of the word of this got to lincoln security detail and in fact he had been supposed to take a trip to harrisburg at the end of the day. instead of doing that coming he doubled back, got on the train were no wonder that he was boarding and incognito stole into washington d.c. by darkness, slipped to baltimore at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning when no one knew he was coming through. everyone thought it was coming to some hours later. he may have well saved his life but nearly lost his dignity as president he could see was

immediately lampooned across the country. cartoons depicted them in women's clothes and ace shawl and bonnet. he was making into washington d.c. come us that this is something that is deeply shameful at the time. probably it was per game. >> host: adam goodheart, which cited north or south during civil war made great effort to use technology to gain advantage? >> guest: i think those sites are trained to use the greatest technology. where there was a moment of great technological change when warfare was sort of on the cusp between the middle ages and modern times in very direct ways. on one hand you had project has been developed, hitting a target from five miles away and on the other hand of the same can, men trained to go into combat with swords. that's a very strange moment of

utter history. both sides have their own truth in a sense, technological crews. in the end the north is better able in a sustained way to mobilize technology on its side. >> host: next call comes from writer in washington d.c. good afternoon. >> caller: hello. i was going to ask a general recruiting was begun and whether in fact some people were organizing units even before lincoln was select it. >> guest: very much so. people were organizing. people were organizing. southern militias have enjoyed for years to do things like hunting down fugitive slaves to try to abolitionists after the raid in 1859 the warlike culture of the south ramped up by the time lincoln was select good,

there were military units openly drilling in cities and towns throughout the south and talking about fighting the northern minions. but we forget some of this is in the north as well. a group called the wide awakes a read of my book is a paramilitary group who supported lincoln's candidacy there were usually carrying guns and knives with lincoln's election in some of these same groups actually arm themselves for war and in some places begin to strike first blow. there's all kinds of dramatic stories that are very little known about this no one in history. one that i talk about with st. louis between blue coated in great coder jumps in and on the battlefield in the south was literally a street outfought in the streets of, missouri between armed games, programs out there

and processor. it's a rich and complicated story that i think much of the drama has gone unnoticed for a hundred 50 years. >> host: adam goodheart. ellsworth, north dakota please go ahead with your question. >> caller: south dakota actually. my question kind of relates to the technology issue. one of the things i've noticed about the civil war and they seldom seen anyone write about is all of a sudden we have a need for hundreds of thousands of pieces of uniform, rifle barrels, billions of caps, percussion caps. >> guest: that's right. >> caller: has anyone ever done anything about the way that this revolution for manufacturing came in at this point in time? >> guest: it is something that has been talked about a lot. when you look at turning points in the civil war, it was the

first time standard sizes in men's clothing were introduced. small, large, medium, extra large. a turning point in many ways large and small. >> host: is your next book 1862. >> guest: no, it's about 800 history, but i sent off my sign contract last week and reader should stay tuned. >> host: what part of american history is he talking about? >> guest: i like to let it brew while before we start telling the story. i will say it's got an answer that, andrew jackson, george washington >> host: thank you for being on the tv. >> guest: thank you for having me. a host of continuing live coverage from the national book festival. coming up in just a minute is

this gentleman right here, two-time pulitzer winner, national book critic, national book award winner, david mccullough. this is the back of his most recent book and it is "the greater journey: americans in paris." he's going to be over in the history and biography tent at the national book festival in two or three minutes. librarian of congress james billington will be introducing him. then after mr. mccullough is done talking about his book, booktv will join him in the tent. we're going to continue the conversation and take your calls, e-mails, tweeds and talk with the audience so you've got a chance now to interact with historian, david mccullough. you can send them now. twitter.com/booktv or booktv at my c-span.org. then we will begin taking those calls once we are on step with david mccullough. let's go now to the history and

biography tent and james billington, library of congress will be introducing mr. mccullough in just a minute. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. we are all here on this first national book festival in our

history to continue for a second day. thank you for coming. [cheers and applause] thank you for bringing the sun now and making it clear that sheer humanity can always overcome the most inaccurate of weather predictions. a special thanks to one of our new sponsors, wells fargo has specifically been sponsoring the history and biography provision. we are coming to the close of this 11th annual national book festival and all of us at the library of congress hope you enjoyed as much as we've enjoyed planning and bringing it to you with so many great sponsors and partners. it's a joyous event, but it's also an important one because the ability to read is the key to a good life in every sense of the word.

retain essential, not just to enriching our own minds, extending our horizons of our society and building and sustaining a dynamic democracy. and we are grateful to the 115 writers who have brought us the ongoing american creative spirit and mccullough of in public and national way here at the height of her account. in the 11th national book festival could nonfirst have been the success it has been. they impress attended number of people have participated without a work of over 100 volunteers and have given generously of their time and this is actually more than a thousand. it's a record in that respect as well as the number of people, unlike you, who have been here. i want to give special recognition to the wonderful librarian who keeps us all here in washington throughout the

nation. she's been executive director of the festival. jennifer gavin as project manager. john cole, long time head of our senator was a state senator and the author's coordinator to the direct or of development and the volunteers made up of library staff who are here on their own time. this is not their duty, but it is a pleasure and also members of the junior league, half a thousand of them and other individuals just love the book festival. the volunteers return year after year to help. we couldn't manage a book festival without them. stafford fleishman hilliard does their special accommodation for logistics at getting tents have been solving type allergy that has made communications possible. on the security staff, we are ensuring the books have a happy experience for all the

booklovers to join us this weekend. i think we are especially grateful for the many who have brought their children celebrated the multigenerational world and reading to each other and extending the conversations that you never quite had with that screen in front of you with one another. so is grateful to many, many sponsors who have contributed the financial resources of the partner institution with all kinds of tracks that made this event not only possible, but sustaining. i want to especially mention our cochairman other new board for the festival. david rubenstein has been a great benefactor and unfortunately he can't be here today, that deserves a great thanks. he is cochairman with me of this great board we have done this many members are here and we think them. finally, we think the authors and publishers are making the book and having them come a lie. the book festival on the national mall and a can of

landmark and continuing event here in washington. [applause] and noble laureates and we began the festival this year but they reading yesterday and reminded me that innova luria in science said, you know, he said they've reached the conclusion that the human brain is wired for narratives. and so we close our festival today with a man who was gone more or less than you can imagine into a fresh and new weight into parts of the unique narrative with the history of the united states of america. he's twice won the pulitzer

prize for harry chairman and john on this. out of the relative neglect that they had received compared to the president's that preceded and succeeded. after all, john adams is president between church rushing 10 and thomas jefferson. harry truman between you and clint roosevelt and. all are accounted figures, and history at a new icon who humanized history. and he is also celebrated the human stories behind great event that the building of the panama canal, the brooklyn bridge and also a historic tragedies like the johnstown flood. david mccullough is our season chronicler. his latest book is the greater journey, americans in paris. the 19th century story of

americans turning back across the atlantic to discover the science, the art and learning of the old world, even at a time when other americans were churning physically to this specifics to discover national resources, national beauty of challenges of the american frontier. america was opening up a new world physically in the west while in reaching itself culturally and intellectually in the great city of lights and the journey eastward across the sea. ladies and gentlemen, david mccullough came into my office two days after the first national book festival to say how important it was to continue to do this kind of event nationally and he offered to help in any way he could. one day after that came, the unspeakable tragedy of 9/11, one of the darkest days and all the narrative of our national life.

but he came back next year to get the final talk at the book festival a year later and he ended it and away he he would not forget. some suggested you have to regulate what people think and write and even read and he ended it with just two words, we don't. [applause] we are glad to have him here, the medal of freedom winner back in the first two-day national book festival whichever happens first of the second decade of this wonderful event with the library of congress are so privileged to share with you all. ladies and gentlemen, david mccullough.

[applause] [applause] >> thank you. match. thank you. thank you. match. what a thrill. what a thrill to be here among people who believe in ideas and the printed word and the use of the language initiate. as expressed in books and writing. and what a tremendous pleasure and grill and honor it is to be introduced by james billington. [applause] we have had a number of eminent distinguished libraries of

congress. archibald molise, the famous poet coming daniel boorstin, the scholar and historian and attorney. but we have never had in a more accomplished, picked up his inspirational or farsi and library of congress and james billington. [applause] i like to think of our library of congress is the mother church for a national public library system, one of the greatest institutions in american life. free to the people. [applause] just imagine every single citizen, everybody of every age in this country can get essentially a free education by going to the public library. [applause]

and furthermore, after one has finished once formal education, one can then begin the great adventure of learning, which is for the rest of your life through the public library. [applause] and so please let's not ever forget it but it isn't just the books from library or the manuscripts or the back issues of newspapers and the maps that are of value, but the people who work there, the librarians. [applause] it took me a while to catch onto this when i first started doing research for my work that as i went up to the library and told her or him what it was i was trying to do, what i was trying to achieve and how much a dog now, they went right to work for me and solved all kinds of

problems and they still do and night for ever and that it is done. [applause] i'd like to begin with a couple of lessons from history. there are an ever lessons history of course. just a future sorted set the scene. one of them if you can make a very good case and i try to make the case that nothing ever happened in the past. nobody ever lived in the past. they lived in the present, that it was their president, not ours. but they didn't live in the past. washington, john adams, jefferson did walk around saying this is fascinating living in the past. [laughter] are we picturesque interphone a close. [laughter] nor did they at any idea how would turn out anymore than we do. very important point. they couldn't foresee the future anymore than we can.

there's no such thing as the foreseeable future. just as there's no such thing as a man or woman or a man made man. it doesn't happen. life is a joint effort. a great accomplishment is a joint effort. education is a joint effort. progress is a joint effort. a nation is a joint effort. and we have to see it that way. one of the key fact here is that all of our accomplishments, all i let's come each and every one of us has been our teachers. we are more indebted to our teachers than anybody in our society. [applause] >> yes. and let's not do any thing that makes their job harder. [applause] each and every one of us i hope

has had one or two teachers who have changed our lives, be made to see an open net the window and let in the fresh air and changed her outlook, changed her love of learning, which is really what it's about. curiosity. curiosity is one of the essential elements of being a human being. curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. in its accelerators, like gravity. the more we know, the water we want to know. and i applaud particularly those teachers who encourage their students to ask questions, not just to know the answers to every question, but to ask questions because by asking questions you find things out. and later in life especially, i have never embarked on a project for one of my books.

this is a confession in front of a large and their imports in influential. i have never embarked on a subject that i knew all about. i knew something about them. i knew enough there was interesting to me in a compelled to want to write about it. but more important to know more about it. if you knew all about it i would want to take on the book because while with the use speed? it wouldn't be an adventure. i want to tell you how this present book of mine got its start or at least a good match in the right direction. it happens three-tiered washington. i was driving down massachusetts avenue one warning during the rush hour and all of the sudden right i sheridan circle, just past embassy row, there was an horrific traffic jam. everything stopped. i like over and there is still

shared and upon its course. the requisite on his hat and i began to wonder, how many people who go around the circle every day twice a day, thousands of them has any idea who he was? and as i that i'm getting a little discouraged, rhapsody in blue began playing on the car radio and suddenly the magic, the power that music not only lifted me out of my traffic jam doldrums, that sent me soaring. and then i thought, who is more alive in our world today, interlace today? sure men or gershwin? who is more important to american history? charmin or gershwin? of course they are both important. but we must not leave kircher and out of there.

history is much more than just politics and the military. i'll say it again. history is much more than politics and the military. [applause] there are as many of you appreciate them though, may be far more than i do, certain features and civilizations which we know is their art and their architecture. so we must take art and architecture and music and poetry and drama and dance in science and ideas seriously as a subject for history. it's who we are as human beings. take away will account for it, take away mark twain, take a weaker showing, take away winslow homer. take away the poets of our time and times before walt whitman.

it's as if you took away the mississippi river or the rocky mountains. we wouldn't feel the same way about who we are. and of course, some of our greatest statesmen of all have in their own way but masters of a literary forum. lincoln's second and now you're letraset they work of art. and here we are and this magnificent capital of are surrounded by science, art, music, history, all part of the story. so it couldn't be a more appropriate place for us to give our respect and our belief in that we have to do more to understand the history of our culture. and we have to keep on teaching the culture that we professed. [applause] we cannot -- we cannot, we must

cut back on our programs, music programs, theodore. [applause] and we must concentrate on what our children and grandchildren are reading. when i set out to try and understand somebody about whom i am writing, i try of course to read with a wrote. and because of our wonderful libraries, like the library of congress, university libraries, letters and diaries have survived to take us into the lives of these managed people. and you get to know them in a way that you can't get to know people in real life. in some ways you get to know them better than you know people in real life because in real life you don't get to read other people's mail. ..

who's vocabulary's are declining, the vocabulary, the total number of words they know and use in everyday language is declining we have a very serious problem and it has to be faced and one of the best of all ways is to make sure we know what they are reading and to encourage them to read the best work possible and encourage the best teachers who are showing

them what they, the teachers love. show them what you love is what the great teachers have all known what to do. now, in my book about the americans who went to paris, i'm writing about a generation beginning about 1830 extending into 1900, really two generations who went to paris not because they are alienated with american life for american culture, not because they were angry or feeling an overwhelming sense of self pity. quite the contrary. they were going there to improve themselves, to better serve their country and they said so again and again not to serve their country in politics or the military but served their country to the best of their ability. the desire to xl, ambition to excel. not to be wealthy or famous, not to be powerful, but to excel

whether they were painters thomas physicians, writers, sculptors, physicians or in one case a politician named charles sumner who wanted to improve his mind, wanted to come back with a greater sense of civilization. in the public garden boston there's a statue for carol sumner. all it says is sumner. there is no explanation, no explanation of who he was worth a sculptor was. most people i think probably in one of the thousand people have no idea who he was or any thought about it is probably he built the tunnel which he did not. the charles sumner went to attend lectures and he attended them of all kinds and he took

notes and crammed before he started his lecture attendance and he became quite fluent and he took notes on everything imaginable, and one day his mind began to strain a little because the professor was running on a little longer than he expected, so she began looking around at the other students in the hall. cahal is still there by the way and close to a thousand students in cahal and he noticed that the black students were treated just like everyone else, they talked the same as everyone else, they addressed the same as everyone else and they had the same ambitions that he had, and he wrote in his journal that night i wonder if the way we treat black people at home had more to do with how we have been taught them of the nature of things and it transformed him overnight

literally overnight into an abolitionist, and he came back, got into politics and was elected to the united states senate when he was 40-years-old, and right up there on the hill he led the abolitionist movement in the senate with the strongest most powerful voice of all. second only to abraham lincoln in how he was felt as a force cahal a. if he was almost beat to death by a congressman from south carolina who attacked him, blindsided him with a heavy walking stick and a virtually killed him from which sumner never really recovered either psychologically or physically. that man, that remarkable man was changed by his experience in paris, and we were changed as a people in the country as a consequence and if you think that is something of an

exaggeration when john brown and his band of men and kansas heard about what happened to some are, that is what caused them to at tak and became known as the potawatomi massacre which is blamed on the country when that story broke to get one of the lessons of history is one thing always leads to another just as in a real life which is one of the reasons among the many reasons we have to do a better job of teaching our children and grandchildren history. [applause] i want to read you something written by an irish boy who was almost 21-years-old, not quite clear that no money, no friends in high places, but he was

ambitious to be a painter, so he went to paris to study art and he succeeded in a magnificent fashion which is a story unto itself. here is what he wrote. in those far off days there were no art schools in america, no drawling class's, and very few pictures on exhibit. i knew no one in france. i was utterly ignorant of the language. i was not yet 21 and i had courage and an experience which is sometimes a great help akaka to the desire to do my very best. that young man was the most

accomplished and commissioned a portrait artist on both sides of the atlantic. he painted a virtually everybody and anybody who was anybody on both sides. right now there are seven portraits by george healy hanging in the white house. there are 17 portraits by george healy tannin national portrait gallery and over in the courtroom gallery over in the portrait gallery is his great picture of abraham lincoln in illinois and springfield just after linking done that he had been elected president in the was while he was sitting for that portrait healy was painting him without his beard and he read aloud the letter from the young woman telling him that he would be much more handsome if he grew a beard and lincoln

turned to him and said would you like to paint me with a beard and healy in all honesty said no, sir, i would not. [laughter] so it's one of the very few images in color by a painter that we have of abraham lincoln and one of the greatest love all of healy's portraits. another healy portrait of abraham lincoln hangs over the mantelpiece in the state dining room at the white house. here is this young man who had known advantages colin none. he had never been to college, art school, who decided to take it upon himself to do this. am i consensus, my thesis is not all high in the years went west and that is what this book is largely about. oliver wendell holmes sr. was a poet and essayist. he'd already written a popular

poem called old odierno site which is what kept the uss constitution the famous ship in boston from going. holmes decided he wanted to be a doctor and in order to get the finest medical education possible, he had to go to paris. not so much because of the medical training in paris was advanced on our terms, but it was infinitely far advanced by the terms of the 19th century and particularly way ahead of american medicine. american medicine was prophetically backward. there were very few medical schools. over half of all the doctors at the united states in the 1830's and 1840's had never been to medical school and a trade with other doctors that had never been to medical school. the harvard medical school have a faculty of about seven. and when they got to paris the brimley medical school of several thousand students being taught by the greatest

physicians in france who were the greatest physicians of the world. it was a leading medical center of the world. and to go there in two years they could learn as much or more than they would work in general practice here in ten years. now there were two very important reasons for this. apart from the fact that we were so far behind and because paris was paris. it was the cultural capital of the world. both of these reasons had to do with our culture, our society, our moral rules and regulations than it had to do with science. most american women at that time would have truly literally preferred to have died than to have a man examine their body and since all doctors were men, thousands of women died unnecessarily because of that. in france and europe there was

no stigma about women being examined for illness or bird or whatever by male physicians, and equally important, students could make the rounds with a trained physician in the hospital to watch the physician attending during examination of the women patients. the second very important roadblock for us was the strong opposition to the use of cadavers. in many states, half of the states they were illegal. of what that meant was there was a black market for human bodies, and because of that, the bodies were very expensive and because of that, students almost never got to dissect a cadaver whereas in paris again in france there was no stigma about it and so bisecting for hours at the time every day for years at the time

was an enormous part of their training, and one of the young american students who loved this best became extremely good at was young oliver wendell holmes, senior, who came back from the training in paris to teach anatomy at harvard for more than 35 years, devoting his entire professional life to science. i bring up holmes primarily because he is only one example of the people who went to paris who came home to teach. they came home to teach in art schools and medical schools. they came home to teach and while school and to teach english and writing in our universities and the changed our educational system to a much greater degree than most people have any idea. one of my favorite characters of all that i was able to write

about is elizabeth blackwell who was the first female doctor, american female doctor in our country. another was the wonderful creator of the m l bluebird school in truly new york who was the first woman to champion higher education for women in america and spend her whole life and education. but if people like john singer sargent who's in a ability as a prodigy. painting the greatest pictures by an american when he was still in his 20s and paris working primarily under a french painter who really was his master and send him down to spain to study because he said everything you need to know is founded in alaska. it goes on and on. and augusta who liked george healy was a boy growing up on

the streets of the city in new york went to work when he was always 13-years-old by his father, very little vacation but they've great deal of talent and this drives, this desire to excel, and he became the great american sculptor of the 19th century. in my view the greatest american sculptor ever. and we have his monuments to our history and many of the most important spots. the greatest work in my view is the memorial on beacon hill in boston which is the first work of american art by a major american sculptor or paynter which portrays black americans in a heroic role. it's about the 54th regiment of massachusetts that served under captain shaw and so many of whom

were killed at fort wagner and if you have seen the movie glory, you know what that's about. it is a breathtaking and immortal work. there's a gilded reproduction of it that's a duplicate of it here in the national gallery, and there is another very important piece in the cemetery here which is his monument to clover adams the wife of henry adams, the mysterious figure with a shawl over the head which is also to be seen in a duplicative version of the national portrait gallery. the great statue of general sherman stands at 59th street and the entrance to central park right across the plaza hotel also i think is the greatest sequester and a statue in america. here is this boy who was a

shoemaker's son and he did indeed desire to excel and he did indeed xl and he did bring it home, and i want to read you something that he rode. this is years after coming back from paris after completing the sherman statute. writing to his friend who was a very good american painter who had also been in paris and old fellow telling him about coming home. i've had a wonderful experience and it's been surprising in many respects, one of which is to find out how much of an american i am. i belong in america, that is my home. he was ready to come home, and

he felt he was coming home with the best in him that would be impossible if he stayed home. we owe more to our friendship and association with france than we have any idea. we know about lafayette of course but let's not forget the french army that served in the revolutionary war was crucial under russian boe and the army under russian though was as big as the american army under washington and the money that they loaned and the fact that the country was more than double the louisiana purchase. the fact that the greatest tribute to our creed, if you will, as a gift from another country from france, the statue of liberty which stands of course that our greatest port of

entry in the country. the friendship left their names all over the states and cities and colleges and universities. we may not pronounced them correctly but they are french names, and of course let's not ever forget that more americans, more of our equal in france than any other place in the world except our own country because of those who died in world war i and world war ii, and if you've ever been to a battlefield and normandie for the battlefields of the first world war which in many ways are even more moving because nobody goes to see them anymore, you know what the toll it took. we are, again, more indebted to other people than we have any

idea. and we are particularly indebted to all those people who preceded us, who preceded us as painters, writers, artists and left us the poetry we love and the architecture we loved and the buildings that have shaped us after we ship them and we are indebted to those who have the fundamental ability and character to express the best of our intentions of words that have survived who were not just dependent on tomorrows toll or reading or getting our fees' is on television as the purpose of a duty to achieving high office,

but who were trying to do what's best for the country. and when you read about these young americans who are going to serve in medicine and painting and the feeder and to do what they did for the best of their country, it is inspiring beyond any way i can express' at least right now this afternoon for you. on we go. [applause] [applause]

>> that of course was acclaimed historian pulitzer prize-winning historian david mccullough at the national book festival talking about issues and his most recent book a greater germany americans in paris. well, now book tv is going to join mr. mccullough on the stage in the history and biography tent and we will be taking your calls, tweets and e-mails. if you want to call, 202-737-0001 for those of you living in the east and central time zones. (202)737-0002 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones and you can also send aziz tweet, speefifteen, @booktv if you are already twitter user and every e-mail address, booktv@cspan.org and we'll be back with david mccullough as we continue the conversation with

him. but first, we want to show you this book at the literary life in charlotte north carolina as we have all weekend. >> estimate a long history in north carolina. the first big reason is in the early 1800's banks across the states were allowed to branch and have multiple branches around the state said the banks here started getting a little bit bigger than some of the peers around the country and the first big bank was in winston-salem and wachovia and over time the banks started getting bigger and looking to get outside of north carolina

and the banks in charlotte started catching up to wachovia and the big ones were north carolina national bank which became bank of america and the other big bank was the union national became first union and those have been the two big banks in charlotte and they are competing with each other, doing deals, making acquisitions, a lot of the regulations without going outside of the state boundaries eventually came down and they got bigger and bigger. now they give america is the biggest bank in the country. it's based in charlottesville and has had a lot of struggles, lately has more than 2 trillion in assets. the other first union not to be merged with wachovia and took the wachovia name and got into trouble during the financial crisis and almost failed and that bank now is owned by wells fargo out of san francisco so in a theory the only big bank still based here is bank of america. although wachovia as a part of wells fargo the have their biggest employee base here in charlotte so wells fargo.

>> you mentioned some of the problems that they were having. what were some of those? >> the banks grew through acquisitions over time and then both kind of stumbled on their last big acquisition. wachovia bought a lender called golden west financial out in california kind of right at the top of the housing bubble and had a lot of mortgage issues they inherited about $100 billion of mortgages, a lot in california where the housing prices were really falling apart. they have investment banking issues as well, so that really put them in trouble going into the financial crisis and bank of america had bought first countrywide financial which was the biggest subprimal lender and then merrill lynch, which was the biggest investment bank and a lot of concern was about the merrill lynch deal and that led to the government bailout and congressional hearings and hand-wringing about what happened there. now the country why the deal was the one that is causing a lot of

problems in the that mortgages they still have. there's just a lot of drama concerning the financial crisis. wachovia over one weekend in 2008 was literally ready to fail and they are trying to figure out how to sell it to. they were going to sell it to wells fargo and then they backed out and citicorp was going to buy it and then a wells fargo came back with another deal and there were moments when relief wachovia was close to selling and they were not sure what was going to happen in another deal would come through at the last minute and then when wachovia switched from citigroup to walls cargo there was a sort of confrontation between the lawyers on citigroup on the wachovia side we are going to sue you for billions of dollars and they are like we know, and they eventually did and they just sold off long ago for about $100 million. >> what affect would that have had on the city of charlotte and the state of north carolina? >> a big effect. we saw from 2008 to 2009 we lost about 2,000 financial-services

jobs, inflated to about a billion dollars. some of that started to come back but we still have lost jobs some of it investment banking jobs. they are not going to come back because they are the mortgage related type of stuff that no one really does any more which is probably a good thing. a lot of the mortgage companies are not here there was a big mortgage company that had trouble. the couple of positives we have seen is some big companies have come into town and said they are going to create offices here or move operations and to get vantage of the financial services folks that are here. smaller firms have spun off in the investment bankers and private equity firms so we probably have a more diverse financial sector but we sort of definitely lost to one of the big banks to the bank in california and to go through all of the pain that happened here to it >> what would have and have all of these major banks what is it done to the city of charlotte? >> it means a lot to the banks

over time they grew up with the city and kind of the leaders of the banks really worked on building the community. the ceo of bank of america is really known for building the viet thanh amiriyah and trying to improve the art scene and they wanted to get people to move here. first union and was the ceo and the same type of thing they are building up the city as they are building the bank. when one bank would build a skyscraper the other would build a bigger skyscraper and they would go back and forth and help build the skyline over time and build aretas and distract so it has a really lasting effect on the city and we will see how everything goes forward but the democratic national convention was going forward and a leader of energy who was the leader that helped bring that here so we had an energy company instead of a banker doing the civic event so that was kind of a change for us. covering the banking street

since 2001 with first union wachovia merging which was a big deal for the big north carolina banks to merge together then we saw a lot of deals they did over time and then we were in the thick of it when the financial crisis was on folding in 2008 and 2009 and now we are still close to bank of america just in the last week warren buffett decided to invest in the banks of that was a boost of confidence but sort of an expensive investment and what there are still questions about whether they have the capitol they need to get through all of the losses to be certain standards they have to beat and balzar go and wachovia are finishing up the merger so we will see the wells fargo's line actually show up in north carolina and the wachovia name goes back to like 1879 will kind of be washed away so that will be a bittersweet moment for north carolina. >> we are back live at the national book festival in washington, d.c.. this is our final yvette of the

weekend of coverage on book tv and c-span2. we are here in the history and biography tent with pulitzer prize-winning historian david mccullough. we also have a studio audience as well. we will be taking your calls, e-mails, tweets. we will put those numbers up and we will begin right away with a call from manville new jersey. new jersey, you are on with historian david mccullough. >> caller: hello, mr. mccullough. first i want to say that you are a very good author. i read your book john adams and truman. both are very good. and my question is -- my questions are what is the criteria you have for determining what people you are going to write about, and do you see any present historical events since the election of barack obama to write about in future books? >> thank you. mr. mccullough?

>> i had trouble hearing the question but i gather he wants to know what i think about the present situation in relation to other times and other presidents. my specialty is deceased presidents. [laughter] but i think we can all take samples from the best that have held the office. i think one of the lessons of history is exceptional presidents are the exception, and we should not expect every president to be exceptional. and not every president is going to be a george washington or abraham lincoln or franklin roosevelt or harry truman or dwight eisenhower. it doesn't happen that often. with the case of roosevelt, truman and eisenhower, you have three right in a row. that is unusual. and of course some presidents have time in office cut off by tragedy or assassination, and we

never will know what extent they might have seen in them at six excel. what to look for in a president among other things is how have they handled failure in their lives before they became president? because every president is going to have to face disappointment and failure. it's extremely important that they have had some experience in handling that. it's also i think extremely important to understand if -- i really mean this, what degree do they have a sense of history. all of our best presidents are exceptional presidents without exception have been presidents who have a sense of history who read history in some cases wrote history and cared about history and biography. the only obvious who never went to college would be abraham lincoln and harry truman and both of them read history in

particular all the time. because as i mentioned earlier history gives you model the dozens of calls and affect but gives you a very profound sense that what they seem to be terribly important or terribly popular or unpopular at the moment may not be what counts in the long run and the president has to make decisions on what will matter most of what will be best for the country were the world in the long run. and to forget about tomorrow morning's hid lines and poles if at all possible and that takes a certain kind of gumption, it takes a certain kind of self-confidence. and it isn't just that they have to have courage. this is a think maybe the most important point. they have to have the courage of their convictions. [applause] >> mr. mccullough, we received this e-mail in tampa florida. what is your next book and would you consider doing one on ben

franklin, lincoln or washington? >> i don't know what my next book will be right at the moment. i'm practicing putting my feet up and taking a bit of a breather. i spent four very happy and busy years writing about a greater germany and it was in many ways the most enjoyable and interesting experience of my writing life. i always have a marketing list if you will a shopping list of ideas that i keep coming and i've been keeping it for years. future books and right now i think there are 27 ideas on the list. so i'm going to have to live a very long time in order to do it. [applause] but something happens, something clicks. my daughter was here speaking

yesterday and she mentioned the same feeling and i have never heard her say that before. it was thrilling to me to feel she has this same idea. it's all well and good to say such and such and so and so would make a great subject for a book. probably they would. first of all i'm not interested in the subject so much as i interested in the story. when james billington complimented me on my book as having a narrative attraction and narrative paul, that to me is exactly what i would hope the reader feels. i want to tell a story. i think one of the problems with the boredom that comes with a lot history as it is taught and read is that it is the subject, not a story, and i want to give you a very quick example of a story as opposed to a subject, and this comes from forrester's book on the art of fiction which

applies also to the narrative of history or biography. he said if i tell you the king by the and the queen died that is the sequence of events. if i tell you the king died and the queen died of grief, that is a story. so i moved by the story and i'm really moved by the story and excited about pursuing the subject of the story for three, four, 54 more years than i can't pull back. something clicks and i just feel i have to do it this is the one. it's not a question of what's going to be on people's minds or with the subject hasn't been done. it has all to do i want to do it, and my burning to do it, is this the book i have to write right now and i know when it happens. so far it has happened many times. >> we will go to the question in the audience. >> thank you. mr. mccullough, linus carmen and during my training i trained as a scientist. what i saw was many students

coming to america to train from china from india from all over the world, and my question to you is thinking about those americans in paris, what is it you hope those pioneers in other nations will take away from our nation, and how can we of their colleagues give the best of the country has to offer? spec that's a wonderful inappropriate question. thank you. >> we have created through our civilization over several hundred years the greatest institutions of higher learning in the world, the greatest universities in the world. and yet, our educational system below higher education has slipped steadily in recent years, and it's like all serious questions and problems it isn't answered simply. but the fact is our universities are phenomenal. and particularly now in science

and medicine. and it's no wonder students want to come here from every part of the world and the should come and they should be welcomed here and they should be encouraged once they complete their training if they wish to stay to stay. [applause] it is so short-sighted, so stupid. [applause] to give them all this advantage and to welcome them into our country. i went to yale university there are now students at yale university from 100 different countries. imagine. that's a thrilling. think what the american students, who are going to college and university and graduate school with those on our students are learning from them. it couldn't be a better sign of progress to come.

and i say let's do everything we can to keep them coming our way and let's do everything we can to get the best of them to express some of their ambition and their gift share in this country at least for a while if not for life. >> a to boca raton florida. you are on book tv. >> i greatly enjoyed your book a greater germany. you did a beautiful job of explaining and describing the 19th century and in particular you use the two historical even some of the franco prussian war and the -- to show what was going on in the country, but you never mentioned the case that was some important particularly in the intellectual world. what is your thought about that? >> mr. mccullough? >> i didn't go into that because

it was an immensely larger story and i didn't find any of the characters i was writing about who became involved with it. henry adams became involved in impleader ron after 1900. and goodness knows there were plenty who cared about it. it wasn't what concerned or changed the character always writing about. in this book i did not in the according to the calendar. i did not end according to the historic event it ended in 1900 but that was because at that point augusta was so ill she had to come back to the united states, he left paris and the was the end of my book. i had to leave a lot out of this book. i had to leave a lot of people out of this book otherwise it would have become a catalog, and catalogs are not generally very compelling reading. but think you for the question.

i do want to make one point, however, which i didn't have time to talk about why i was giving my earlier talk, and that is that it was at the library of congress for this book that my research assistant, mike hill sound and let me to one of the greatest discoveries of my working life and that is the diary of wash work which was in the library of congress but wasn't known to be there because it had been filed and bound in such a way that the diary pages were mixed with a letter pages so unless someone sat down and went through all of it very carefully we wouldn't realize many, nearly 100 of these pages were diary entries, and these were whether press copies of the diary and the was the 19th

century equivalent of carbon paper. if the letterpress copies were in the congress where workers the original diary and we found the original in a little town of livermore maine, the exact original diary, and that diary is a day-to-day chronicle written by our minister to france elihu washburn, a former congressman, a former very important congressman from illinois also through the civil war who went to paris thinking he was going to get a chance to rest a little bit, with his family enjoy the life of living in france and a riot right on the eve of the franco prussian war which was terrific both when paris was under siege surrounded by the german army and leader when the civil war broke out in paris and in what became known as the horrible commune. he never left his post. he refused to leave when all the other diplomats from all the other major powers left, he insisted he had to stay on it

was his duty as long as there were americans still there and if he had done that he would be a hero but he also kept a diary like no other diary of that historic event through that suffering and loss of life that helped shape the rest of history because the franco prussian war was really part one of the free part tragedy called world war i and world war ii. and there it was right in the library of congress. the assumption that because things are in a great library somewhere doesn't mean the people who are in the library working with the collections looking after necessarily know where everything is or what connection it might have to something else because nobody has come looking for at. so every time you go looking for something, which turns out to be of some importance were great importance, you are in fact

participating in the ongoing excitement of the library. you are helping to define that pleasure and what a treasure this is. the library of congress is a house full of treasures. it's can cut's tomb. it's a miracle the greatest library in the world and how appropriate it sits up there on our american acropolis. [applause] >> this is booktv on c-span2 and we are live from the national book festival continuing the conversation with historian david mccullough and we have another question here from the audience. >> mr. mccullough, i want to thank you for inspiring me to read more history which started when i read packed the see the building of the panama canal, a terrific book, and obviously building the patau canal was very difficult. what was the most difficult book that you wrote and why?

>> the most difficult and ljungqvist project of my undertaking life was my biography of president truman, and the reason for that is that of any time that you in part on a book about a latter-day 20th century president after say from franklin roosevelt and on, you are confronted with a mountain of material through which very few human beings can never make it while still alive. had i known what was involved in that book when i started out, i never would have tried to do it. so i'm glad i didn't know because i'm very glad now that i did it. it took ten years of my life. i had no idea that that is what would happen. and it wasn't that i objected to the work. it just went on and on and on, and of course in that case i was dealing with the subject that

could be reached through living people. so i felt i had a very great responsibility and obligation to interview as many people as i could find who knew mr. truman or who were involved in incidences' or major events in which he was playing the protagonist role and i enjoyed that hugely and again it was exciting. i interviewed one of his secret service guards with him virtually his whole time in office and after we were finished right here in washington after i was finished i thanked him to reply said thank you very much for giving me hours of your time. and when i feed how many people must ask you these questions over the years, she said mr. mccullough, no one has ever asked me these questions. so, the importance of verbal history of recorded history is extremely important now. and more so than ever because nobody writes letters anymore

and nobody in high office, public office would dare keep a diary anymore. truly. it is a huge loss. future historians and mr. billington has been talking about this and warning people about this for years. future historians are going to have very little to work with. even in the interest and in mortality, start keeping a diary, keep it every day, right about anything you want, local history, the family, you're own life, whatever, and when you feel that maybe the curtain is going to come down pretty soon give it to the library of congress and will be quoted for years because it will be the only diary in existence. [applause] [laughter] >> david mccullough, do you keep a diary? [laughter] >> no. however, however, i am married to my editor-in-chief who is one of the greatest letter writers still with us and who keeps

records of everything, bless her heart and writes wonderful letters to our very large and somewhat far-flung family fortunately but to write letters and get your children to write letters. many of us here remember when you expected to write letters, when you went away to college if your great aunt hadn't heard from you many weeks, your mother heard about it and then you heard about it you have the right and and that's not a bad way bringing children upper particularly when it is time to express gratitude. remember gratitude? it's a wonderful quality. we mustn't lose it. >> parcel george, thanks for holding to the door on book tv with historian david mccullough. >> thank you. mr. mccullough, i was reading your book 1776, and i would like you to comment on why there was no mention of the great american victory at charleston several

weeks before the american independence declaration was made june 28th. >> well, because my book is focused on george washington and his troops and his generals and experience. this isn't a roving camera that covered the whole span of what was happening in the country at that time. so there was much that i did not include or that i passed over lightly because that was not the point. the point was washington and his army and the question of whether they would or would not give up, but not whether they would or would not win but they seem to be virtually no chance whatsoever of winning of what they give up and never forget that one of the greatest of all of washington's many great qualities is he would not give up. so that's why i went by that. >> david mccullough, john and philadelphia e-mails to you what are you reading at the moment?

>> well i just finished a fascinating book called the hair which amber eyes by the writer named [inaudible] with and it is one of the most interesting books i have read in years. it is about a family in vienna and paris, a jewish family who were second only to the rothschilds not justin welch, but in their collecting of art treasures and what these works came to me to the family and the individuals and particularly what it means to one of their descendants, the author in the aftermath of the holocaust and it is beautifully written and it makes me a little upset because the man is a ceramic artist who's never written anything

before. laughter to know, it's really wonderful. i have been reading rendell who is my favorite [crying] writers. i love good mysteries and particularly the mysteries of those who really know how to make that aspect work. these are great novelists, and i reading trollope, who i love, and i just bought a number of new books that i intend to in oregon. i always have three to four different books going at once. i learned that from dr. gorgeous when i was writing about the panama canal. he always had four different books on his reading table and they will all be books about different interests, different categories, a medical book, novel, book of poetry, book of history and he would read each one every night for 20 minutes and then switched to the next

one and that way he was getting a liberal arts education as life continued through his experiences. a gorgeous as you know helped eliminate yellow fever in the panel which made it possible for us to proceed with building the panama canal. next question comes from the audience at the national book festival. >> i want to express my gratitude for your positive comments about teachers early on i have a background in history and i also enjoy reading your book. my question though is as you look at our students, one of five lessons from the history of america or otherwise that our students need to know before they graduate from high school. >> five lessens our students in history need to know before they graduate from high school. well, the first 1i would tell them is what i was told by a graduate students when i was a

sophomore in college and not only had i never forgotten it, it changed my whole point of view about history to the point i now realize it helped change my life. he said i am not going to hold you responsible for any dates or quotations. i don't want to memorizing dates and i don't want you memorizing quotations. that is what books are for. you can look them up and i thought that is what matters is what happened and why. i would want them to understand most definitely that the united states of america did not begin for the declaration of independence. there were hundreds of years of history before that happened. and particularly not to overlook or neglect because it is so rich and interesting the history of the native americans who were here before our ancestors arrived. [applause] i would want them to learn

history through other means than the books and teachers. i would like them to learn history through music, through plays. i would like them to learn history by doing drawings themselves. i would like to learn history through architecture and so in other words bring them into the tent not just because of books and quotations and dates and boring, don't deutsch boring because it isn't boring. it's about human beings. and then i would want them to -- i would want them to take on what i would call the lab techniques in order to teach history. one of your teachers here in the washington area, jim, has been doing much of that where he brings students and to study the different statues around town. they write papers about the statute. i would like to give them a photograph or show them a

building maybe two or three students for one building or two or three students from one quarter of the city or the neighborhood and make a little -- they all have these little cameras around. making little documentary or write a play about it or a paper. do a joint effort. figure it out ourselves to make them a figure it out themselves because when you come upon the answer yourself, when you resolve the mystery on your own, you never forget it. and finally, i don't know if that is 5412. [laughter] finally, let them have the chance, please, please, let them have the chance to work with the original documents. to hold those pieces of paper or the nearest facsimile possible in their hands to go to the library of congress, to go to the national archives, to go to the smithsonian and get the idea that this was written by a human being with a piece of paper and

pen and he was just as real as you are and he held it just about the same distance from his eyes as yours because you can connect with those people in a capital way that you can't connect in any other way and it really makes it come alive. the next best thing is take them where places have been caught take them to historical sites, take them to gettysburg, to williamsburg and that's for parents and grandparents. it works. don't ever forget. go to the battle of gettysburg and suddenly it isn't something you have to memorize or spend one night trying to get ready for a test the next day. it is a huge world onto itself. the scale, the volume of it is almost beyond imagining. you suddenly realize the people that stood there were told you have to march up the hill and you're almost surely going to get killed. what made them do it? and try to picture what it was

like an early july and all that wearing a wool uniforms and all the rest and they will never forget and it's very good that you show them you, the parent, grandparent, teacher showed them how much you are interested in it. show them what you love. attitudes, great, teachers margaret mcfarlane once said attitudes aren't taught, they are caught. you catch the attitude of the teacher. if you're excited about it, if you are enthusiastic about it, if you're willing to take time out of your life to drive them up to pennsylvania to go to the gettysburg battlefield get that and they never forget when you come back the next day they may not show it to years later they would say that trip to gettysburg that's what started me. [applause] >> next call for david mccullough for boston massachusetts.

boston, please go ahead with your question for mr. mccullough. >> caller: mr. mccullough, this is dick wingfield. i want to think you for bringing history alive to the american people and to me. i have every one of your books in your book case i'm looking at right now. i have to admit i haven't read any of them from cover to cover but once the most interesting things i've ever read that you have written is an essay in a book a collection of books what if when you describe washington's crossing not the delaware but the east river for the most important defense in the history of our country very few of us know anything about and should know more about. they should be a monument in this $250 million park around the east river. i've written you a letter about that which i've never heard back from you on. [laughter] i spent, ironically i spent

friday afternoon looking through your book at barnes and noble looking to see whether among the things that you've discovered in paris that was brought back to the united states was our engineering education. i notice i'm a graduate of one of the finest university schools in this country and i've never worked as an engineer in my life but i got a great education there. years later i discovered an alumni magazine heavy engineering educational program in the country was developed. it turns out it was developed by the west point going to the military in paris. spec we're going to leave it there. thank you for calling in from boston. mr. mccullough, anything you'd like to respond to? >> he is quite right. my first experience is washington roebling, the son of roebling who designed the brooklyn bridge said his son to paris to study how the french

developed what they called the qassam system for underwater foundations, for bridges and it's because of that training that young washington roebling received and young washington roebling leader after his father's death took over the responsibility for building the brooklyn bridge. .. it was while he was there,

noticing what the french were doing in science, that he got the idea for the telegraph. it's continuous. and, of course, more so now today when so much of the advances in medicine and the science of medicine, and science in general and technology are coming from all parts of the world. it's exciting. there are no barriers just as there should be no barriers between science and art. the fact that morris was both a painter and a scientist was not seen as incongruous or somehow a contradiction. so be careful if you tell your children or your grandchildren you're good in math and science, stay away from english, history or art. nonsense. they should be interested in everything. [applause] >> this is c-span2 at the national book festival. another question from the

audience. >> mr. mccullough, thank you for your kind words from your teachers. we try every day to get our students excited about learning. my question is about john adams. how many years did you spend with john researching and writing and what was the best part of it? was there something that you discovered that was a complete surprise? >> i spent seven years working on john adams. and the best part of it was that both he and abigail not only wrote letters and diaries, they poured out their hearts, their innermost feelings, their worries, their frustrations, their anger, their doubt, their affection for each other in those letters as very few men and women ever have. and if they'd done nothing but write the letters, our indebtedness to them would be enormous. there's no better window on life in 18th century american family

or 18th century american couple than the letters of john and abigail adams and their families all continued in the same tradition. the letters of abigail and john adams are all in the massachusetts historical society. as are the letters and diaries and papers of their distinguished son, john quincy adams, enumerable diplomats, writers, henry adams, and down the line are all in the massachusetts historical society. and to give -- and they're all on microfilm. and to give you an idea of how many letters that family wrote, if you stretch that microfilm out, it would reach farther than 5 miles. it's not just daunting but it's unimaginable and it's sensational they are beautifully written. you pick up john quincy adams diaries and there's a word

crossed out. there's never a change. and the handwriting is superb. he never seems to have a second thought. [laughter] >> truly. we've had some presidents who have immense genius and high iq, really, we have. [laughter] >> and by the way, they were never dismissed as being elite. [applause] >> but i think maybe the most brilliant one of all, just as a mind was john quincy adams. about whom we should know much more. who was responsible for the smithsonian. who was responsible for all kinds of ideas that were a little bit ahead of his time. if i had to pick one moment, it would be when i saw -- it's in

the boston public library, john quincy's first book he ever bought, which is -- i'm sorry. john adams' first book. it's a little volume of cicero in latin. he got it when he was 14 years old. we don't know whether he paid for it with his own money or whether he was given it. but he was so proud to own that book that he wrote his name in it six times. [laughter] >> that man never stopped reading. ever. ever, ever. when he was in his 80s he embarked on a 16 volume on the history of france in french, which he had taught himself. and that light, that fire was burning in that head right to his last day of life. he had every kind of ailment. he lost his hair, lost his teeth. but he hadn't lost any of that upstairs. a thrilling example of the life

force of the brain and of ideas. >> san jose, california, booktv, david mccullough, go ahead with your question. >> caller: regarding an era when americans were drawn to paris, did london have a similar draw on americans? if not, why not? >> hos >> guest: did who? >> host: london. >> guest: yes, with sculptors and painters. london was a big draw for writers, some of whom never came back and lived there the rest of their lives, henry james, for example. and it was a draw for painters, too. whistler round up living in london as did john singer sergeant. and it was, of course, a draw for all kinds of people who wanted to go and explore the experience of our own language. scholars who wanted to know more about shakespeare or thomas

hardy or whatever. and we are, of course, far more english than we probably recognize or want particularly to be reminded of. but let's all understand -- we all educated with english literature. we were all brought up in the traditions of english law. again, none of these things just hatched overnight here. they came to us through many channels. but our indebtedness to great britain, not just england and let us not ever forget ireland. [laughter] [applause] >> host: david mccullough, the subtitle of your newest book is americans in paris and on the back of it is a picture of an american in paris. i think our television audience will be able to see this better than our studio audience. but where was this picture taken? >> guest: that was taken right outside of the sorbonne on the left bank, same school where so many of these young people studied. still there. just the same.

there's a little outdoor cafe right there for everybody to enjoy. it was a beautiful september day. and it was taken by my son, bill, who was with his wife and with rosalie and me when we were there. i'm often asked a couple of things i'd like to make a point about. one is, did i -- i must have spent a lot of time in paris. well, i would have liked to spent a lot of time in paris but i really didn't have to because the material, the letters and diaries are all here. a very large percentage of them right up there in the library of congress. what we would do is we'd go over about once a year for two weeks or more to see how much i got wrong. [laughter] >> guest: to walk around -- walk the walk, make sure i understood how long it was to get from here to there and what the restaurant really did look like and the hotel and so forth. and, of course, it's just astonishing how much all is still is there and that's part of the fun of tracking it all

down. augustus st. gardens apartment is still there. the hotel where so many of them stayed. the hotel louvre where we would stay because we felt all good vibrations is all still there. the other thing i'd like to point out and particularly for students would be fellow biographers or historians -- i am often asked, understandably, perfectly good question, how much of my time do i spend writing and how much of my time do i spend doing research? what i am never asked, never have been asked is how much of my time do i spend thinking? [laughter] >> guest: and that is in many ways the most important part of the process. it isn't just assembling all the research or just writing it out. it's thinking about what you found. putting it together with other things you found. thinking about the connections. thinking about what's not been

said there, et cetera. and thinking about what you've written, thinking about how it can be made briefer, more to the point, more focused. how you can get rid of the unnecessary lumber in it. and not tax the patience and good will of your student or your reader. it's essential. and thinking is a good idea in life. [laughter] >> we all ought to think more. [applause] >> and if you know people who talk on television for a living, would you please encourage them to think a little more. [laughter] [applause] >> host: let me earn some money now. david, you dedicate this book to rosalie. is she here. >> guest: here's my chance. how much time do we have. >> host: you got all the time

>> guest: rosalie is my editor in chief. she's the mother of our five children, the grandmother of our 18 grandchildren. and she is mission control for all of us. and secretary of the treasury. [laughter] >> guest: and chair of the ethics committee. [laughter] >> guest: and she's my guiding star and the best dancer i ever danced with in my life. and i want you to meet her. here she is. please stand up, sweetheart. mra[applause] >> host: all right. back to questions for david mccullough here on booktv on c-span2. another question from the audience. >> caller: i'll begin by thanking you as so much -- can you guys hear me? >> host: a little louder, please >> is this good. all righty.

my name is ian hitchcock, mr. mccullough, i would like to thank you for all your contributions to bringing history alive for all of us. my question is about the founding fathers and the way we interpret that history. i've recently been reading a people's history of the united states by the late historian and activist howard zinn. [applause] will >> amen. and he proposes our awe toward the founders, our sense of their nobility and the grandeur of their ideas can sometimes mask what the true effects of the constitution might have been. in particular, he should we should analyze the constitution through its economic rather than its political methods and i wondered about your thoughts on that? >> guest: well, i knew howard zinn. i liked him very much and i agreed with much he professed and i don't agree with everything he professed. i think it's important to take an economic interpretation of lots about life and history. but i would not make it dominant

any more else history is composed of. i think it's a great mistake to see the founders as god-like characters. they were human beings. there isn't one of them that didn't have his failings or faults. some of them grievous failings and faults. and they were inconsistent. to say that they were all devout christians, for example, is not true. now, some were very devout. some were middle devout. some were hardly devout. and some were agnostics. and they are human beings and they had ideas. now, one reason i like john adams so much is that john adams is the only founding father who never owned a slave as a matter of principle. mra[applause] >> so when we profess all men are created equal, who are we

kidding? and adams and jefferson were not participants in the constitution. but the constitution, which was done in philadelphia in the summer of 1787, was in many ways an extraordinary and immortal achievement. but much of it was simply derived out of english tradition, english history. and some of it was grievously avoiding the issue. it's very interesting. we're raised and educated that the articles of confederation were inadequate, weak. it didn't give us is strong executive, et cetera, et cetera. but let's not forget that every time you have a winner, you shouldn't throw away what came in second. because sometimes what came in second it was in some ways superior what came in first.

the article confederation, after all, is inadequate as it really was, succeeded in winning the revolutionary war. also, the same summer as the constitution, 1787, the congress under the articles of confederation passed the northwest ordinance which created the five great states of the upper middle west. ohio, indiana, illinois, michigan and wisconsin. five states that composed an area bigger than all of france. hugely important part of our country. it's always, ever since. that charter, that law passed by that supposedly inadequate congress did two things that neither -- neither of which the constitution did. one, it said there will be public education. two, there will be no slavery.

in other words, we had banned slavery in just huge part of the united states before we even wrote the constitution. and that's the kind of thing were better known and more appreciated. because the people who did that really pulled off something magnificent and brave. brave. i'm very interested in bravery. not just bravery in battle but bravery with ideas, integrity and a willingness -- a willingness to go down to the feet if it's the right thing to do. the fact that john adams did not lead us into a war with france when we would have been headed for disaster deserves more credit. we need to judge more of these people not what they didn't do. not what they did do. eisenhower decided not to go into vietnam. and the letter he wrote about why we didn't go into vietnam ought to be in every classroom as a subject for discussion.

but i'm straying from your question and thank you very much. [applause] . >> host: we only have a few minutes left with our guest. we have time we're going to take this call from imperial, pennsylvania, and then we're going to hear from the two young ladies up at the -- up at the mics here in the audience. imperial, pennsylvania, you're the last call for david mccullough. >> caller: thank you. mr. mccullough i enjoyed your books i'm two-thirds of the book through truman. i'm curious is there any one thing that you have run across in your research, in any of your books that just totally surprised you and -- or took you aback and kind of made you say, wow? >> guest: well, i think as i said -- i hope i made clear the discovery of the washburn diary

was as magnificent a find as anything i've experienced. when i was doing the johnstown book, i discovered -- because it had been saved by a man who had a camera shop on main street, testimony that had been taken by the pennsylvania railroad of all their employees who were in any way involved with the disaster that happened. in lieu of potential lawsuits. well, there were no lawsuits which is inconceivable to us when, in fact, the railroad and others who owned the dam were very responsible for what happened. but here was this document -- the only copy in existence, and this one man -- just because he was interested in history had seen it about to be thrown out from a records -- an office full of old pennsylvania railroad records in town and saved it and showed it to me and there was a testimony, which was very interesting, but it also had the great value that it was verbatim of how they spoke then.

it was in the vernacular of the language. whereas, most of the written language from the victorian era is often spruced up to give it a little more shine, either by newspaper writers or by people who want their words to be immortal. so i got to hear what happened in the language of the day. but, again, and, again, it's happened and it's exciting. and sometimes it's something very small. very inconsequential. but it's often the small pieces built all together that create the larger mosaic, just as it's often the secondary characters, not the primary characters who tell you the most about the primary characters. and have the most honest recollections of what happened because they're not dressing it up in any way for their own benefit. so that when you're doing research on a subject, don't just look at the papers or the

surviving diaries and letters of the people who are involved, who are well-known, but look at everybody else who you find because they often have much more else to say. and this was particularly true, for example, in working on harry truman. many of those people who were close to truman, as members of the white house staff, or members of his hometown friends and so forth was infinitely valuable. >> host: the young lady right over here. >> mr. mccullough, when you're tackling these presidents like adams and jefferson that previous historians have written so much about, how important is it you find primary sources that nobody's used before? and can you still do that -- >> guest: i'm sorry. because of the airplane we couldn't hear you. >> oh, i'm sorry when you're tackling presidents like adams and jefferson is it important to find primary sources that no one's used before and can that still be done for presidents that we've all studied so much? thank you.

>> guest: it depends with the president. thomas jefferson was an extremely private man. and he destroyed virtually every letter that would let us in the door to his private life. he wrote to his -- after the death of his wife, he destroyed everybody letter she ever wrote, every letter he ever wrote to her. he would write to all their friends if you have any letters that my wife wrote to you, would you please return them i'd like to have them and when he got them back, he burned them so it's impossible to get beyond that shield of privacy that he established. which makes him a difficult problem in writing about him. we didn't even know what jefferson's wife even looked like. if it's -- if it's someone who hasn't really been looked over, worked over, it's incredible.

when i started work on the adams book, one-third -- only one-third of adams' writings had ever been published. and probably less than that of abigail's. now, if it's somebody as i was just saying who's a secondary character, almost certainly those people haven't been published at all. and my real love is to write about people who weren't big names in their day or weren't big names in history today. to work with the people who worked on the panama canal. to write about them. to get inside their lives, their experience. to work with not just oliver wendell holmes because he subsequently became well-known when he was a medical student in paris, but all the other young medical students. i could have written an entire

book -- a major book just on the medical students who went to paris in just the 1830s. so rich is that material. and so consequential was what they learned of history and development of medicine in our country. it's like working on a detective case. the more you get onto it, the more you can't get off of it and that's what's so exciting about it. and it should never be seen as some very difficult highly complicated profession which only the high priests of academe are qualified to undertake. we can all do it. i was an english major in college. i had no american history, whatsoever, in college. it wasn't until i got here in the 1960s -- i was working for the u.s. information agency. i'd taken john kennedy's call to serve the country entirely to

heart. quit my job and came down to find a job to serve as best i could. and while i was here -- because of my work, i had to start using the library of congress. and while i was at the library of congress, i ran across photographs taken in johnstown, pennsylvania, right after the disaster and i had grown up in that part of the pennsylvania and i looked at it, my god, i had no idea that this terrible destruction happened. over 2,500 people killed. what caused it? what happened? what went wrong? i took a book out of the library. it wasn't very good. i at least new the geography of pennsylvania, obviously, the author didn't. i took another book out of the library and it was even worse. and so i thought to myself, because of something that one of my professors at yale thornton wilder had said about how he got the ideas for his book, which was i try to imagine a story i'd like to see in a novel or i'd see performed on a stage and if

nobody has written it i write it so i can see it performed on stage so i thought to myself, why don't you try the book about writing the book about the johnstown flood that you wish you could -- you were able to read. and every one of my books has been exactly that. i'm trying to write the book about this subject that i would like to read and the current book about the americans in paris in 1830s to 1900, i wish i had been able to read a book about that and there wasn't one so i wrote it. [applause] >> host: and the final question on booktv for david mccullough comes from this young lady right here. >> hello, mr. mccullough, i also am a native of pittsburgh. yeah. and given its importance to our country over the course of its history with its steel and its importance during -- with the underground railroad and its importance as a major

destination spot for the great urban migration, have you ever considered writing a story or book your hometown of pittsburgh? [applause] >> guest: i've been considering it for about 50 years. [laughter] >> guest: it's big, big subject. and i have to figure out in my mind how to shape it. let me just close with a thought that i'm turning over in my head and it began with thinking about pittsburgh. when i grew up, pittsburgh was a giant mill town, steel town, the biggest steel production. they also made glass and all kinds of things. it was a mill town. and that's what we were proud of. and now that's all gone. all gone. what's there? what's replaced it? what do you think? who do you think is the biggest employer in pittsburgh now instead of steel production? the universities. the university of pittsburgh and

the university of pittsburgh medical center, carnegie mellon and duquesne university. and they are the most exciting and the most far-reaching, far-sighted enterprise in pittsburgh. it's true in lots of places. we have transformed in from this mill town of these thrilling universities in science and medicine and that's a major accomplishment. i kept thinking why can't westbound cathedral builders? why aren't we cathedral builders? what will our cathedral will be? maybe we're already building them, these great universities. and maybe that's what we ought to keep our mind on. [applause] >> guest: thank you all very much. >> host: david mccullough, ladies and gentlemen, all booktv. this is his latest book, the greater journey: americans in

paris. this has been booktv covering the national book festival. we would also like to thank the librarian of congress james billington right dooern for responsing the national book festival. it expanded to two days this year. and we have a gift bag -- we were going to give it to david mccullough but since the editor in chief we will give it to rosalie mccullough, thank you very much. booktv on c-span2. [inaudible conversations]