you see mesopotamia, clean slate start over, all debts are canceled. commercial debts would often be left aside the consumer debts wiped out which we believe is another version of the same thing. the point alloys make is that you know, if aristotle were somehow put in a time machine and naturally transported to hear, he would probably think the distinction between selling yourself to work for strangers and renting yourself to work for strangers is some kind of a legalistic distinction. he would look at americans and say these people are desolate. i think they social crisis everybody is terrified for much of human history is happened to us and we have made up his language for what people used to think of a slavery is now called freedom. [laughter] [applause] that is what is happening and i think the old-fashioned remedy might be exactly that.

>> where would you advise people to put their money today? [laughter] and what you think of the current wall street social protest? >> where to put your money today? [laughter] i don't think i'm getting paid enough to offer that kind of advice. [laughter] what do i make of the occupy wall street protest? i think it is fascinating. i am a little bit surprised that it took this long. [applause] in fact if you remember the original agenda of the so-called tea party movement was its complaint against the bailout of wall street, but biden by maneuvers that i don't entirely comprehend, it was largely taken over by the republican party. i think the republican party is starting to have second thoughts about it, but the protests of

the occupy wall street movement remind me very much in the protests of the 1890s where it first when the populist got together they didn't have much of an agenda, but they had a sense that rings had really gone wrong. and people who work hard were not being rewarded. people who were suffering the consequences of other people's sins and missteps and in a country that was premised on the american dream, that dream became harder and harder to realize. and so they simply began to protest at first. they didn't know quite what they wanted to do, except to let people know that they were fed up with it. it is very early to tell i think what the occupy wall street movement intends to accomplish, except to get the word out that there are a lot of people that are very unhappy. the populist eventually devised an agenda. they put forward candidates. some of the candidates one.

their highest profile candidate williams ginning bryant did not -- williams ginning bryant did not make the presidency but the platform that he ran on was in most ways actually accomplished. the united states did not monetize silver but it turned out that new discoveries in gold in the next half decade did increase american money supplies and prices began to rise again. so i would be surprised if an occupy wall street candidates were nominated and ran for president next year, but i wouldn't be surprised if the various grievances that they are airing became important in the election. >> they want us to wrap up what could i give david one second to comment on this? speaking as one of the 80 odd people that started up the movement in new york, yeah, if

elected i shall not serve. we are not intending to do that but i think all of us would say that. the way the book and the movement are the same way, we haven't been talking about the things that are really important. we have allow the political conversation in this country to beer completely away from the concerns that people have in their day-to-day lives and i think that is what occupy wall street was about. did this change the political of the -- nature of the political conversation? if we can do that -- [applause] >> speech annie overcoming. >> this is a the handful of readers and i would recommend if you want to know more about this topic that would direct you to not only buy these books but take a look at richard hofstadter's book the age of reform a quintessentially important book about this but weren't these guys great?

one more hand. go buy their books. [applause] [inaudible conversation [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 wh