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]ittersweet 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]