excepted and natural is the most important for young americans to do. >> as a longtime reader it is a pleasure to hear you and%. >> you are a great moderator. thank you for coming. [applause] . .

>> fi given that this is washington, i hardly need to give you a background of the story but i thought that i would breach alito fondital it came into being. in 18351 andrew jackson was president, the united states learned it had become the recipients of this extraordinary request, this mysterious englishmen names james smith who never set foot in the united states had left his fortune to the country to found here in

washington under the name of the smithsonian and the sorrows and for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men. the money was worth about half a million dollars in the 1830's, or about 166 of the entire federal budget and there is no precedent for such a gift nothing like this ever happened before and they were not even sure they had the authority to accept it. there was a huge debate in congress and there was one senator opposed who said every whippersnapper that has been traducing the country might think proper to have his name distinguished in the same way so there is no chance of issuing this. and even after the united states did claim the money there was still more than a decade of debate in congress over what exactly the smithsonian should be so it was 1846 before it was passed. and as you know the smithsonian mind on to become the largest research and the complex in the

world. but this man who started it remains a total enigma and basically completely forgotten. we knew just a few things about him that he was the illegitimate son of the first duke and he was born and about 1765 the exact date was not known because his mother who was a wealthy widow and a cousin to the duchess had gone to paris to have him in secret away from society. he was never married, never had children, he dedicated his life to chemistry he has been dismissed as a sort of wealthy dilettante so we had a kind of sad picture of this eccentric recluse who wasn't even talented with no possibility of getting to the bottom of who he might have lost in 1965 at the

smithsonian only a decade after the building opened to the public and before anyone had really had a chance to go through all of the papers and the diaries and everything that had come over with the money. i first started working in the smithsonian when i was 19 as an interim coming and i went on to be a staff member there after rye graduated from college and all the time that i was working as a historian at the institution, i didn't give an awful lot of thought to some of sen. there were a couple stories that intrigued me but they all had to do with his posthumous state. he had been exhumed from his burial plot in italy by none other than alexander graham bell and a snowstorm in 1903 and then after he had been brought here to the united states in the building they had exhume him once more in 1973 for the

forensic anthropologist at the national history museum to have a chance to see if we could learn anything more about him from his bones. but in the course of opening up the with a blowtorch they were on soldering the coffin and they cut the silk lining on fire. so after all smithson had been through the papers and the fire and everything he was practically almost destroyed entirely. but the work men ran down the hall to the water fountain and came running back and saved the day. so anyway, again, even with those stories just smithson as a bunch of bones and not really a person. and i went to england to do this and after i was working for the museum, the historian of the institution called me and said

if you are refering to learn anything about smith's and it's going to be in england if you want to poke around. and i thought that sounded like a lot of fun and sort of research project because i honestly didn't expect to find anyone. there had been lots of people over the last 150 years, and anyway, six half years later, whatever it is, i had finally gotten hooked on and i begin the book with a story of a fire because they gave me both a chance to sort of have a dramatic theme to start and also an opportunity to show the reader that it isn't going to be a typical biography because you don't have a big cache of documents to deal with and i want to show why it got about recapturing what i was calling the lost world of james smithson

but body set out to map the social and scientific network that he had operated in and i went to oxford and poured through all the people that he had been at college with and had been at the royal society with a scientific society of england and samson because manson had become a member when he was 23 and the first years had brought a guest to every single meeting. so i gained this wonderful list of scientists visiting the capitol that he had become friends with and that sort of thing and then also i found his bank record which gave me hundreds of things to follow-up on. succumb it is like a great big puzzle at the beginning with none of the pieces fitting together the then slowly everything started to coalesce.

this sample letter dilettante person that we had before the there's one letter between italy in smiths and's friendship to that of a fine diamond and there's another great letter that i found out someone thinking this woman for a dinner party and saying to her that smithson that was the name before she was 35, is my delight his brain like my own it's fruitful, so i just started seeing this much more complex, which high-intensity person, and one of the biggest insights i got into his life actually came from his mother where in the public record office in england i found this huge cache of lawsuits which she turned out to be extraordinarily what he just

been a ed just about everyone her husband, her sister, her cousins, architect and the farm tenant who had in lawsuit and eventually even her own lawyer. there's this amends portrait of how his lawsuits were concerned ancestral estates so i started to gain the idea that he had been growing up with someone who was very interested in her family. she threw her maternal line could trace herself back to henry the eighth. but she is surely instilled in this idea defendant from king and destined for greatness and

was growing up in this culture where your name and the birth rate meant everything and it was how you advance in life and his illegitimacy way hugely on him. there is a quote that i had at the beginning of the book about the best blood of england through my veins on my father's side and on my mother's i related to king but it reveals not my name will live on in the memory when the titles of the northumberland's and percy's are extinct or forgotten that quote is one of the few things pulled from his papers before the fire as why this had happened. getting in insight started to make that seem more understandable in terms of his psychology. but the other -- the real thing that unlocked his world for me

was the scientific context, and initially but i had to go on with these 27 published papers that he had written in the transactions of the society and they had titles like a means of discrimination between the very willingham's and strontium. capillary if metallic tin. there was another one. in that set of fixing the particles. there was the ingenious and improved method of making coffee. but the was the only 1i could make sense of. yet the language, the discussion of the mineral analysis is this completely archaic. this is one sentence from his paper thus besso mendicant extremely viable and a spread yellow flowers and of continuing the fire know very long time entirely upheld.

so it took me a long time to get my head and not when he was excited about this. i ended up finding this person who was actually extremely talented and very highly regarded by his contemporaries and the best example of that was in denmark to discovery of the electromagnetism and she had come to paris in 1923 and i knew he had met smith and so i was helping to find a letter from smithson. if there wasn't one that i called up since i was there a call that the letter written to his wife. we don't read the data through all these letters just looking

for the word smithson, and sure enough, there was and was a wonderful passage that talked about meetings with some and then going to his house to observe him in the laboratory for a day and is talking all but the technique that he was highly skilled and working in miniature and he was able to analyze particles the workfare debate could barely visible and there's a great line about how smithson's instrument were considered a trace that they were so small. and so, it turned out as i spend more time with this circle of scientists across europe bissell scientific culture that time was the key to unlocking the story. the chemistry was the cutting edge field and it was also at the heart of making us the

modern commercial society that we have come and his formative years were unfolding in this time of incredible discovery that at 19 he gets is attached to this geological expedition to scotland, and it's the hereafter the first balloon launches ever which were, you know, triumph over gravity for the first time and just one of the most exciting things that happened in his lifetime, and something that was possible entirely because of chemical explorations of the properties of gases in the 17 seventies. and on the trip to scotland for two of their early aeronauts as they were called, and one of them is a young italian who is this explorer and it today in italy they call and the indiana jones of the 18th-century, and i

went -- i was looking through the papers hoping again to find a letter but didn't find anything. but i did find this wonderful record of his balloon launch, and it opened up for me realizing how extraordinary the optimism and the sense of discovery was at this time that the observer -- he was describing 20,000 people hanging out of trees and of balcony's as this balloon went up out of the garden outside of mullen and the this silence had fallen over the crowd. and he explains in the record it is a sensation [inaudible] which i knew meant it was new to them and new to all of the

proceedings and the word i went to look it up, and i was completely stunned to discover that he was an excellent extraordinary words stress and mend scruffy so it was this idea that the previous canal was shabby because nothing on earth could compare to this moment that they were living. now i think the excitement over science at the time is hard to overestimate, and especially the impact it would have tell somebody like smithson because in science for the first time he found the world where he was valued for his contribution other than for his father was he ends up being the closest thing that they had to a meritocracy. for smithson it also opens up the possibility of a new future

of the world governed by science and reason is that means progressing into the future, and america of course is that world and that if you think in the 1780's that simpson is coming of age in oxford and then in london and the route local coffeehouse culture where they are all discussing the chemistry experience and blowing things up. across the ocean we have the constitution and we are embarking on an experiment as an awful and radical is any scientific one of the government of the world has ever seen, and american statesman like franklin and jefferson who are all scientists and they were also founders and directors of scientific societies the election of the team hundred i

was amazed to discover was also the contest between the president of the american philosophical society and the president of the american academy of arts and science. and something very particular to simpson and these scientific compatriots that he had with the idea that the pursuit of knowledge would lead to the advance of society as a whole that he believed scientists were benefactors of all kinds and there's a wonderful quote where he writes the work of scientists for all nations gave themselves should be considered citizens of the world and he writes to this french founder of comparative anatomy while there are two countries at war and it's just a year before smithson's up getting captured and imprisoned

for two years during the napoleonic war, and this really is the idea, the sort of key behind the request in this archaic language we don't connect to this idea of an institution for increase knowledge among men to get chopped off not because it seems to be excluding half the population but it's actually a really important. it shows it wasn't just for america. it was for america was the trustee to carry out for all of mankind. and our founding fathers were putting this idea as well that as jefferson said, liberty of science and virtue, and the nation would be great in proportion as it is free and george washington in his

farewell address to the nation he also has a line about promoting as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. and so, it's true uncovering this context of smithson's story that i found a whole new perspective on the creation of the smithsonian and hat this gift that was fought for be so long random scenes in fact to be a sort of exceptional product of somebody that came of age during this exploiting culture of knowledge of the end of the 18th-century, and also of course remarkable tribute to the enlightenment of the founding of the country. thank you. [applause]

>> every time we see him in the capitol i'm thinking okay how would the states get him in there? do they break things? >> it is a small, but it's i think the bones are he may not be fully laid out. i think it's not the little marble, the coffin is down at the very basis. it looks like a little tug at the top and that is he's actually down at the marvil. >> when this money just plopped down, congress had a debate

about what to do with it. whether the government should get into this business was the debate a philosophical debate or was it a technical debate? can you fill us in a little bit more? people say we shouldn't get into the science business, we shouldn't get into the university business, it was the library of congress or is it we can't trust ourselves with this money because we are going to squander it or -- demint there are a bunch of different debates. there is to the discussion whether you would even appoint someone to go to england to get the money and they agreed to do that. and then when it comes back it takes two years in england. i don't know if you have red bleak house which describes john this as this case it is chewing up the entire generations of

families and the red tape of the points of england, and this case has to go through the court system, and remarkably it only takes a few years and is considered really quick in this time, and so then when it comes back the start again and the debate is about what this the institution of knowledge and everyone has their own idea. some people think it should be the university and some people think it should be a national library. john quincy adams wanted an astrophysical. everyone wanting their little pet project and so there were i think 11 bills and goes on and on and people across the country are renting in saying this is completely criminal. it's embarrassing we have to do something to acknowledge this wonderful gift. could you please get on with it.

so this clause a congressional compromise where just about everything gets thrown in in this initial institution had lots of different functions inside of it but what happens in the early decades of the smithsonian is that this is the time there are all these government expeditions out west and their spending thousands and thousands back to washington so more and more is becoming dhaka depository for these national collections so eventually the head of the smithsonian nutter she gets this appropriation from congress to take care of the national collections because they want to safeguard the system to pursue science which is what he felt was the most important mission so it starts becoming more and more a museum which is we think of it today,

and there is lots and lots of scientific research going on. >> did he have his name on the institute? >> that's one of the only requirements, yes. >> there wasn't a reason why he never came to the u.s. and secondly, given very little was known about him, how much has the current institute of health his idea of what the institute should be about? >> those are great questions. i think he might have wanted to come here. one of the things i discovered is that he was -- although he liked to travel a lot and he was in trouble and many ways, he was climbing down planes and going down volcanos and stuff like that, but he really didn't like to travel, and this is in fact why he ends up getting captured as a prisoner of war.

he is just over in europe and he had gone over during this hostility with the peace then he ends up getting caught over there is everything starts again. but he's been trying to risk getting home in the north sea everyone is going and over. he had done that once and they wait for years literally for an opportunity to get through the channel eventually he doesn't do that and he goes through denmark and it's at the time that england is about to bomb copenhagen and they take everyone that is english and throw them in jail, doesn't matter who you are. so it was inadvertent. but i think clearly there is one guidebook of his library that survived the fire.

he makes a margin and one of the things i found most serious was a sort of direction about where he should buy his canoe if you are going to go into canada, and i thought that is so strange that he is actually that interested in the logistics to travel over here. but i think was mostly seasickness and then the other question which was also in a lot of ways smithson himself and how short the directive was it makes it possible for every secretary to sort of have their own interpretation validated. they can meet smithson do whatever they want. so, everyone has done things that seem in keeping.

synod did he have contact with any americans? >> it's always been thought that he didn't have any contact that this is one of those things i did find is that he knew the americans were traveling over in europe either through the will to grand terrorist types or diplomats and then there were also scientists who were coming from the states and studying and then i found a lovely mention of him going to visit smith some once afternoon and he found them trying to the plate snake venom that he had gotten from the united states it's been a vicious experience and i don't know if they know all of the constituents of snake venom and

it was showing to me that he was interested in all of the work was being done to analyze and explore the products of the united states. >> i have a question about something you were doing and let me know where. you fought at mahlon point you may have done a portrait of smiths and's mother. did that and now? >> it's in the book. [laughter] i couldn't prove it conclusively and i didn't want to spend a lot of time in the but talking about and i wrote a separate article that cannot in the tiny transactions in this pretty painting it's a private collection, and the owner wants it to be his ancestors and not

smithson so that's the other reason i didn't go on about it in the book but he finally let me reproduce a. but yes it is uncanny to the likeness as eight -- and the dating in the historian's on a bunch of sketches and with his mother. >> what he beatable to substantiate? >> we tried basically. we tried bank records, we went at this from every angle we could think of. we figured the people interested are going to read i think it's like 250 circulations. if there's somebody else out there that can't figure it out, they will do that.

>> there never the state left to his nephew it would go to the united states. did you find out anything about what his expectations of that happening? >> i never did. and he did make his nephew also changed his name to smithsons the five mother's family name and clearly also another indication of this idea of wanting to perpetuate his family story somehow and that's the other side of this that i didn't get into the nephew is the primary beneficiary, and he dies six years after smithson still in his 20s, and is the contingency which if he had no children the money was to go to the united states of america so that is what happened.

the part is still a mystery. there is also another part of the role where according to there are lots of questions i think. he's very concerned about that throughout his life. >> does he say much about what his specific vision was for the institution named after him come and do you think he would be pleased today? >> if he did write about its possible but i didn't find

anything. and i think he would be ecstatic of how important it is. that would please him immensely and the fact that it's still doing extremely important scientific work and has a huge educational component he would be really thrilled. [laughter] >> how did he come into the money? second of all, why is? >> that is a great question. the money is interested to me because there was also this idea that it must have all come from his mother, and one of the things i learned from these crazy lawsuits is that this woman was unbelievable and just

she turns out to have been a total fortune, she was after her stuff and he talked of her jewelry so she is so embattled and still incredibly grand and is ordering this architect to do huge renovation, house shelia as for her lifetime so she's not even in passing it on to smithson and she's ordering dresses from paris and stuff like this so lysol really quickly that she left him a lot less money than she could have left him what he clearly had because was the napoleonic war and nobody really had one place, you still get a very good

picture of somebody that is actively managing their investments and he's moving money around all the time, and in lots of different stocks and bonds and things. so, i think it's fair to say now that in fact he sort of made his fortune. he probably had a very nice little start that he did a lot with. >> time for one last question. >> i'm not sure what he called it the smithsonian. that was in the will. yes. >> arguably, not even arguably, but the expert on james smithson in the world and perhaps in all of history has he ever come to you? [laughter] >> i have a friend in england -- there's a fascination with the

malae of gophers and their subjects that men often don't have and they call them biographilies. [laughter] that we should fall in love with our subject matter and i definitely didn't happen. it's the painting on the back. i found the will of a woman that had to paintings with some debate christmas and that she gave back the time of her death and this is before photography so this idea of giving a portrait to yourself as somebody that's very instrument acts the way they can remember you when you go off traveling. so this woman that had these pictures of him it was an important story for me to follow. the smithsonian ended up getting in the late 19th century so

there was a large full length portrait that i knew must probably be out there somewhere i sat down and i thought if i were smithson where would i have my paintings done and i fought in italy on the grand tour and i found all of these that he had fallen in love with and they all had their pictures done by these two french painters who had left paris after the revolution to go to italy and the aristocrats so i went and they have all of their files organized and better written in my diary that morning 1795 and its right to be vesuvius' i fought in the background and this is to get another picture i can't prove

and i am still working on this one. but the dating and the other paintings that were done and the lightness are also powerful and the painting itself is lost this on the black and white picture that is owned by a russian print nobody knows where it is today. >> anyway, thank you so much. [applause] >> if you are interested in getting a copy of heather's book they are available. we will do the signing back here. thank you again for joining us and we hope to see you at future events. have a great evening.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] that coincides with a significant occasion that happened that week in history. for more history programming check out american history television. we feature 48 hours of people and events that held document the american story.

[cheering] [applause] >> hello everyone. can you hear me? good. well this is so exciting. [cheering] this is my very first book and my first and probably only books lining. this is so good. let me say i am so proud of this product. the book american grown is everything i would have imagined. i wanted the book to be beautiful and i think that the

pictures are absolutely beautiful. i can tell because when the girls picked it up, mom, your book, how nice. they actually got pulled in by the pictures and then they couldn't put it down and they started looking through and then they started actively reading it and then i got a thumbs up so that's what we hope the book will be. the book is really not just the story of the white house garden and how it came to be and how we our ups and downs and tribulations but it's also a story of community of gardens across the country. everything from a community garden in hawaii to excellent school gardens that are happening right smack dab in the middle of new york with great school kids the so the stories of the work people are doing across the country are an important part of the book as well.

we also talk about one of my key initiatives it's all about getting our kids healthy so the book shares some of the really interesting statistics and work that is going on all across the country to help our kids lead healthier lives. then it's practical, too peery it gives a few tips. i am not the best gardiner in the world but i had a team of national park service people, and i had my kids come in. [applause] they are my partners in crime in this respect and these schools have been with us from the very beginning and that as one of the things we said when we started exploring whether or not we could plant a garden on the south lawn pity it would have to be teaching garden. it would have to be a garden that kids could participate and understand where their food comes from and they engage in that process because that is what i learned in my own life is that when i involve my kids in the food that day and we didn't

garden in chicago but we certainly want to a farmer's market and we got them involved and really in changing their diets and owning that process that they accepted it a lot more and we have seen that with these kids. these kids are working in the gardens and their own school and they are bringing back ideas and questions to their own families and helping them change the way they eat and do good things. so these kids have been amazing and they have just been a pleasure. they come to the white house. they don't get starstruck. they don't look around. they get to work and they get our garden planted and harvested in a matter of ten, 15 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes of the just get it done so we couldn't do this without them and i am so proud of you all. so proud, proud, proud of you all. [applause] thank you. thank you for helping me. [applause] thank you for helping me.

so, i just want to thank you all for staying in the rain for coming not. i am just thrilled and i hope you'll enjoy the book and i hope it becomes the beginning of many conversations in your own homes and communities and i hope that it leads to a healthier generation of kids at some point and there's also good recipes that are easy to follow and they are pretty good. so, i urge you to try them. thank you so much and i look forward to seeing all of you up here. all right. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] are you a working gardiner? >> thank you. we couldn't do this without you.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] it's so good. thank you so much for taking the time. >> it's my pleasure. [inaudible conversations]

are you going into high school? congratulations. what grade are you going into next year? ure11? you've got that down, right? are you interested in gardening? it's great to meet you. the girls went to their concert -- [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> here at the bookexpo america which is the book publishing industry annual convention in new york city, we are joined by drake who is the chairman and president of the norton company. i want to ask about some of the books that martin house coming out this fall, 2012, but i'm going to start with this one behind us. >> the book is a very scary book about a very important subject. this is what happens.

humans are moving deeper and deeper into the hinterland and as they do so, we are getting a lot more animals that are being transported over to the human population. it's not just a bowl and aids and sars any more. david has been out studying around the world that's, monkeys, guerrillas, he's a wonderful writer. i don't know if he knows books on of the dodo it did spectacularly well but it's been to be very exciting book. >> is this happening in the u.s. or other nations? >> this is a world wide phenomena but with the trends of people around the world now it will move very quickly. >> also wanted to ask about the last refuge coming out. >> if you want to understand terrorism, you probably need to understand yemen. if you want to understand yemen you can break johnson as a

terrific guy. lived there for a long time on the ground from speaks the language, he strained our ambassador is going over to yemen. this is a poor country that has most people know is for al qaeda and terrorism it is a country that you want to know about. >> david coleman. >> he estimates book called the 14th day. we are publishing that into an anniversary. october, 2012. it's wednesday and anniversary for the cuban missile crisis everybody knows. the question is how about the 14th day, the day of the cuban missile crisis. the book is sold mainly from the presidential tapes project at the miller center, transcripts from the kennedy white house. about how kennedy managed the outcome from making sure they

were removed from cuba to managing congress as the result of the crisis. >> what is his background? >> he's at the university of virginia. the history department and at the center. >> how long have you been with norton and chairman and president? >> 36 years at martin. i started right out of college. i've been running for the last 18 years and i've been chairman since 2000. >> when it comes to the e-book sea and real books what is the breakdown revenue? >> the trader sells last year which we finished up with a tracking 21% e books. we chose the average some genre publishers have seen much higher figures in terms of percentages and certainly when we look at our fiction sales on an individual title on an occasion we saw over 50% e-book sales.

>> to predict in the next couple of years they will take 50% or more packs >> i think we are going to plateau and it could be very much of the 50% range. the interesting thing for me is we will plateau i'm not looking ahead to the death of the printed growth i'm looking ahead to the world where a lot of people enjoy reading their books on the ebook reader and other people still enjoy reading them on paper and we are going to be ready for both of them. >> what is another trend in publishing that we should be looking for in the next couple of years? >> that's interesting i would say, you know, we are -- i watched the growth of the huge conglomerate but i also what is happening with independent publishing houses and i like the fact there's more access to the marketplace and that's going to be very healthy thing not only for martin roche as an independent publishing house, but for lots of smaller independent store growing.

>> who was w.w. norton? >> he founded the firm 389-years-old at this point he had been in the import export business made he and his wife who was deeply involved in the founding of the firm had a passion for books. began as an avocation. he was in the import export business bayh de starting to publish books by night. three years later he was doing it full time and the rest is history. >> you just revived in 1927 to? >> we have, very excited about the initiative with the publishing corporation. we informed that since the early 1970's. they are the publishing's of comings and first of faulkner, first publishers in the united states of ernest hemingway. of the list goes on and on of the publishing in the 1920's. the firm went bankrupt in the early 30's but wound up as they say in the 70's and his hands

through the wonderful energy of my colleague robert wilde. we've now revived the in print and publish that newest book, gail collins part two of the books of the revived. >> you are watching book tv on c-span2. we are in new york city at bouck expo america. we have been talking with drake but feel the to the cub president of the norton company. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you would like to see feature on booktv? send an e-mail at book tv@c-span.org or twitter twitter.com/book tv. during recent remarks that freedom fest in las vegas, senator rand paul talked about his time in the senate since gentry 2011 and the impact that he party have on the government. it's about 15 minutes. you are watching book