>> from the 2012 roosevelt reading festival, mary stuckey on her blog, "defining americans: the presidency and national identity." in which she discusses the impact of presidential speech and how it shaped the american public. >> the sadness is now have to try to engage them. i think the most important thing to understand about the presidency in this context is that we always have choices. when you pick a president you are absolutely picking a particular kind of policy but you're also taking a definition of our national identity. if you hear a president and you like what they are saying, if you feel yourself called to the presidency, then they are

speaking to you about a sense of the national self that is deeply embedded in all of us, and every time there is a presidential election, what one of our previous presidents learned is sorrow and the vision thing, israeli an important part of what the presidency does because we see ourselves as a nation through the ways that president talked that nation into being. so what i'm going to do today is talk although the bit about franklin roosevelt subversion of what it meant to be an american at this particular moment in our national history. i did this a little earlier but i want to go back today are at this talk and say that prior to roosevelt, presidents tended to be very hierarchical and the way they understood the nation. they were often very explicitly exclusionary. there would be people like immigrants are african-americans, and sometimes women, who didn't get to be citizens and who are

specifically located in presidential rhetoric near the bottom of the hierarchy of the nation, and the nation was understood as hierarchical or as local, for many presidents the south became sort of the demon region. and there are reasons for that because they are building coalitions that depend on including people but also always on excluding people. one of roosevelt great geniuses as president is he almost never actively exclude people but tended to base his notion of the nation on a very inclusive sense of what that meant. and so that's what i'm going to talk about right now. this book is actually goes back a little ways, and it's a book on the presidency in which franklin roosevelt is the pivot, the actual center of the book, and in the larger book i examine the complex was in which our national history can be

understood to -- also maintaining allegiance, the hierarchies of class and race that allow force abilities. in that history all of these things are short fully contested during the roosevelt administration. the economy lay in ruins, african-americans were making increasing demands for civil rights, women were flexing their political muscles, i'd like to think of women as muscular. immigrants were increasingly incorporated into the policy. all these groups of course were integral to the famous new deal coalition which continues to have an important influence on our politics. it was to roosevelt's rhetoric is much us to his actual policies that he crafted his coalition which has proved him to be one of the most enduring, one of the most practice and what was confiscated international history. roosevelt's vision was rooted in a pluralist political condition which are quite flexible leadership such as the president could juggle the various claims made on cover. and the metaphor of the juggler,

which i clearly am not was one of roosevelt's favorite ways to describe his understanding of his job as president, the others being had and magician. he accomplished his demand using for primary tactics. the inclusion, you know, deflection and deferral. these were all enabled by his overarching understanding of america as a nation perpetually in progress. in 1936 the president said i do not look upon these united states as a finished product. we are still in the making. it is notable that prior to roosevelt it was always these united states. after roosevelt the nation understood itself as the united states. it had moved from and notion of collective states to one of an actual nation. for fdr the nation and hierarchy in its citizenship were premised on much on the future as much as the present it in his first inaugural he declared the basic thought underlying his policies quote is not narrowly

nationalistic. it is the insistence as a first consideration up on the interdependence of various elements. for roosevelt, the entire nation was interconnected but was not there for static and fixed it was always in motion, always developing. it is therefore required constant attention and constant adjustment. the kind of attention that only strong president seeded in a strong central government could give. importantly he understood the nation as already fundamentally united. the various interests that made up the nation were perpetually contesting against one another but they were not a revocable he opposed to one another. he said, quote some people of this is rather land across the seas find it difficult to great effect that our nation sprung from many sources, 130 million strong, stretching 3000 miles from east to west and all the greatest central of its -- is a whole. or not going to we speak one language, not only are the customs and habits of our people

essentially summer and every part of the country, but we've given repeated proof on many occasions and especially in recent years that we're willing to forgo advantage were such advantage can only be obtained by one at the expense of the country as a whole. because the nation should comment believes, common culture and common interest then, some groups will be granted by the president temporary political primacy. others would be legitimately deny their claims on government, and other claims could be deferred while others were deflected. most importantly the roosevelt administration was marked by its enormous efforts of political inclusion. these efforts were most clear in his willingness to offer assistance to the poor, differing sharply from previous practice. roosevelt trade all of the poor as if they were deserving poor am approaching that always been distinction made between the deserving and undeserving poor. release was a matter of right. legitimate needs of the poor also legitimated their demands

on the political system, and he therefore earn their loyalty of the poor. in addition you legitimated organized labor in ways that have not been previously seen. up on signs the national investor recovery act, he said its goal is the insurance of a reasonable profit to industry and living wages for labor with the elimination of methods and practices which have not only harassed on his business but have contributed to the ills of labor. now to the importance of capital and labor is the subject of his discipline. he made a distinction between on his business and tyrannical business. we all know that roosevelt did not hesitate at all to criticize business and business been challenging and through analogy, his name is story, and welcome to hatred in the 1936 election. the flipside was the organist lead was able to see it as their champion and did so even when his policies were substantially more pro-business than was his record.

this is important because roosevelt became an advocate for labor. he argued as an organized labor was good and worthy and important to the life of the nation. he subjected business to differentiation distinction between good business which the government would support and tyrannical business which the government would not. through this kind of rhetoric and fdr was able to include labor which going to don't include many members of the immigrant groups as already fully integrated into the american system while also protecting business as a whole but only bad business practices will be subject to discipline, capitalism remain for him the absolute foundation of the nation. as the new deal continued into the mid 1930s can he became a little more suspicious of labor. strikes unleashed by the passage of the wagner act were inconvenient, to say the least and his relationship with labour leader john l. lewis is famous. to increase with them began to differentiate between good and bad labor just as he did with business. he helped labor become more

politically visible and also more politically powerful and the expected him to be decently grateful, which for him meant unwavering political support for fdr. one of the important side effects of this inclusion withg labor as gi mentioned brieflyg earlier was this inclusion of immigrants. the americans in the 1930s remain somewhat suspicious of immigration. immigrants were often associate with equally doubtful groups such as catholics and back. some people refer to the jew do. throughout the decades are various efforts to restrict immigration to americanize immigrants and to control the behavior of new arrivals to roosevelt avoid all of these tendencies in favor of a narrative of inclusion. one of my favorite of his speeches on his he says the night is falling and the spirit of other days brood over the

scene. andrew jackson looks down at us from his prancing steed and the four corners of the square and which were gathered around the daily at christmas tree are guarded by the figures of the intrepid leaders of the revolutionary war. the german, the poll, and from the shores of france. this is in keeping with the universal spirit of the festival we are celebrating. and notice here he dates the inclusion of these immigrants back to the revolution. this is not new. he's arguing these people have always been with us. they have always been incorporated and in his time we recognize that. it is hard a thing to imagine a more eloquent claim. it is clear this rhetoric was meant to be inclusive although it also of course as exclusionary potential for all those who don't see themselves reflected there. but it is well worth noting he doesn't act include many of those were previously

marginalized and that this inclusion might well be one of the reasons why members of these groups chose to vote democratic with such consistency. blue-collar immigrants, catholics, african-americans and jews, also were subject to, they all joined the new deal with what can be called enthusiastic force. this rhetoric was based on the centrality of shared value. men he said, everywhere throughout europe, your ancestors and mine, suffered from in perfect and often unjust governments of their homeland. they were driven by deep desire to find not alone security, but also in large opportunity for themselves and their children. it is true that the new population flowing into our land was mixed population, differing often in language and external customs and and habits of thought. but in one thing we were all like. they shared a deep purpose to rid themselves for ever of the jealousies, the prejudices, the intrigues and the violence with internal or external that disturbs their lives on the

other side of the ocean. yes, they sought a life that was less better by exploitation for selfish men fed up under governments that were not free. they sought a wider opportunity. i read this and i heard ronald reagan's accent in the back of my head when you read this, any reason for that is every president since fdr has used this invocation of the american dream at one point or another, but it was defined for us by roosevelt. roosevelt nearly a consistent story of america personified not by those who founded the nation, but my more recent immigrants, those who despite their service culture differences were central to the american dream and full participants in americans were defined as people with a shared past, even though that path occurred in a variety of disparate and even incommensurate nations. americans were united by previous experience of oppression and, therefore, by both the desire to be free of it

and the will to act on that desire. that's what constituted the american citizen. that, of course, becomes extremely important as the lead up to world war ii. and that since then all americans no matter how recently arrived were understood as a legitimate the center, descendents of the founders and the citizens -- sorry, at least all the americans were willing to fight oppression as it was very's redefined over the course of his initiation were descendents on airs of the founders. those founders also had some children who grow the money changers, doubting thomas', economic royalist, appeasers, and in general pretty much anybody who opposed fdr. those people were excluded sometimes from the quality and sometimes simply from his rhetoric. he never spoke to asian-american groups. he never visited american indian reservations. he never spent time in hispanic or latino communities. he never so much as ever on

african-americans although shirley allender's efforts matter here. like some presidents, unlike some president he did not spend any rhetorical effort, but he simply ignored them. when he did at that groups and individuals, and as he may morph his airship such attacks it was an assault on behavior rather than demography. he never attacked people for the class or the race but only for their behavior. he undermined their status, and he caricatured them with a demonic glee. you made in the butt of many famous jokes and poor martin barton if this were never quite the same. he was incapable of wielding anger in him and said things like it is the only evidence we have of life yet growth and progress are opposed, opposed every step, opposed bitterly and blindly. would not be fun to be the

target of such an attack. his enemies were not treated as people with legitimate concerns but a reasonable point of view but malevolent obstructionists bent on destroying his administration and the viability of democracy. but it's important of these people are not identifiable as members of any particular race and ethnicity or religion. to the extent that they had a collective identity it was sort of the vaguely defined class or set of economic interest and occasionally during election years political affiliation. but he demonized most through those who are already well central in the american political regime and never the people who were at the margins. he did, in fact, protect many of those old hierarchies -- i'm going to skip some of us. the tendency to balance interests against one another to produce the common good tended to ignore inequalities in and among and between groups but it was applied to nearly every group at one point or another. it was true for labor who found

itself the target of roosevelt's attention, and also of his criticism. it was true for african-americans, never saw a single piece of civil rights legislation passed during his administration. but he did understand african-american needs not as racial but as economic. many new deal programs were legally desegregated and while racial justice was of course important, especially if you happen to be one of the people who was lynched, starving was also important. and while fdr tended to translate every group enters into an economic interest and would do what he could economically for them, even if he held his hands socially, it is notable he neither spoke nor acted when he could have. he maintained the columbine and the white house press conferences until very near the end of his life, took no public position on the scottsboro case, and it was his wife who took the strongest and on racial issues and famously moving a chair to sit in the middle aisle of the

segregated event. roosevelt wanted african-american support. he offered unlimited support. such rhetoric and denaturalize the lower position of african-americans international hierarchy and he did very little to address or alter them. through all of this rhetoric he did stress the issue of fairness and for him fairness demanded the deferral of some demand on the system that he considered excessive or unworkable and he never consistently favor one group above others either politically or rhetorically. but instead relied on language like quote we know the human factor which interests are largely into this picture. we're trying to apply to all groups needing aid and assistance and not merely to a few scattered or favored groups. demanding more than the president was likely to give you made that he within cascade you as selfish or unwilling to share or as unfair. this rhetoric has a powerful nationalizing function for

citizens were encouraged to think of themselves as part of a greater national whole rather than members of a small local or statewide community. he deeply believed in the importance and the reality of democracies of central fairness and argued consistently that his policies were designed to promote and maintain that fairness which would always work itself out over time. for fdr being a good citizen meant being a good neighbor. able and willing to accept temporary sacrifice for his or her fellow citizens, on voluntary appearance on national ideas including the prescription that everyone should have equal access with the necessities of life and above all, on an overriding commitment to the common good. these values are important to they do in fact undergird the national sense of ourselves and let me be very clear, i'm not arguing against them body and noticing and making these kind of argument roosevelt was making the challenge of building a unified nation seemed a bit easier than it was. he ignored the structural inequalities and regional differences and enabled of the

system. he disregards a very real and sometimes principled opposition of republicans and anti--- is unifying rhetoric like that all presidents have some exclusion elements. he did all this within an integrated presidency that was newly central to american politics and which was based on a strong sense of the kinds of unity called for by both generals and priests. in his famous first inaugural, for example, he said quote, if i read the temple of our people correctly we now realize that we've never realized before our interdependence on each other. we cannot merely take but must give as well. but if were to go forward we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. we are, i know, ready and willing to submit our lives and

property to such discipline because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. good citizens of a the president and good soldiers all they their commanding officer. the invocation of a nation organized to fight a war which is powerful and at the time covered, it is also potentially dangerous. for while the military model is a useful one for certain kinds of endeavors, even here in hyde park in the shadow of west point, no one is going to argue that the military is an ideal model for democratic government. as noted this is especially important because in fdr's public rhetoric there's an explicit combination of wartime unity with specifically religious view of the nation, and there's no doubt that roosevelt had such a view. we cannot, he said, -- without reckoning with the place the bible has occupied in shaping the event of the republic. it's teaching has been widely suggested. it's allowed into the very heart

of the race. for roosevelt the united states was to dominate judeo-christian nation built on a foundation of belief in the judeo-christian god. that religion underpinned authorized his leadership, criticizing the president can very nearly and unchristian act. combining two kinds of nondemocratic leadership, a generalship and the pastor, combining wartime and religious claims to authority meant to challenging president was a particularly difficult thing to do. however while this may have certain roosevelt's a media political ends, invoking military and religious leadership as models for democratic leadership remain problematic. especially in the context of his claim to be a protector of democracy and given the rise of dictatorship in europe, these models set into the fear he was promoting a democratic dictatorship. whatever the problem at the ours take your brand of leadership success is unquestionably roosevelt argued consistently for unified nation under the guidance of a strong chief

executive. that unity was premised on what he understood is the fact of increasing national interdependence. he also understood american citizens -- that is, he thought of citizenship and national terms and citizens as connected to the economic interests. all these interests were roughly equal and had roughly equal plans on the national government. the president's main task was ensuring a balance among and between these groups of the nation would be both stable and just. but when social justice is understood and largely economic terms, something important is being overlooked. committee life is something akin to social justice is not reducible to economics. when the president puts himself in charge of decide when social justice has been achieved, those who are underprivileged lose the right to decide for themselves what such justice might look like a winner might be appropriate for them to push

their claim. make no mistake, the roosevelt administration is an important moment in very real progress, earlier presidents were prone to argue paternalistically for the flutie of specific and clearly demarcated national hierarchy. fdr assumed the position as spokesperson for those who tended to be placed at the bottom of those iraqis. -- hierarchies. roosevelt relied on a form of civic nationalism of inclusion on the base of commitment to common belief rather than on hierarchy. this meant that disenfranchise have powerful to support them and later argued for inclusion on an equal basis. this became incredibly important following the second world war with african-americans, women, american indians among others all began the arguments and debates that would explode throughout the 1960s and would eventually lead to unsettle

international order and weighs roosevelt could not have foreseen, and that he would probably have not. in that sharing, constitute an american public among those people who came to the u.s. with specific sets of goals and expectations. one author has argued the world we live in is still franklin roosevelt world. and in many ways for better or for worse our national identity is still very much the one he put forth. thank you. [applause] >> [inaudible] >> shifted the new deal. >> i don't think, i do think it

shifted all that much because what he, i mean, there's very clear evidence on the archives that roosevelt was sort of on from a very early moment. and when he started arguing in the mid 1930s, so even before his 36th election, he starts arguing against dictatorships and for democracy, and he does in explicitly christian terms. he uses light and dark, up and down, all those kinds of metaphors. and because that language was so consistent over time with this slight pickup for russia, because first off russia is like on the side of the dick tater and our bad and unlikely for him, likely for him there is this siege of stalingrad which allows him to then talk about the russians in exactly the same

way he can talk about the british, right. but he keeps that same light and dark christian kind of movement throughout, and that language authorizes domestic policies and also makes very clear the argument he is making for war. and it causes the anti-interventionists all kinds of problems. because the anti-interventionists end up having to argue that there is no moral principle at stake in world war ii. and hitler makes that argument increasingly tricky, right, and the more people know about this the more people have to say there's nothing of value. there's no american value at stake in this war. and that argument just becomes absurd after a while because you have to end up saying that there are no moral values that matter, which is essential what happened. and then roosevelt does the nasty things. >> following up on your theme of

exclusion and inclusion and disenfranchisement. my understanding is that the right to vote was defined not only to white males, but white male property owners, real property owners. >> that's certainly from the constitution, yes or. >> did roseville taking active role in extending the right to vote? >> now. because by the time, roosevelt administration, the last group to get the legal right to vote is african-americans who get no policies under him. american indians get the right to vote following world war i, and the argument is very similar for american indians as it becomes for african-americans later. they shed blood in the war for the nation. they have a right to citizenship your and that becomes a very important parallel in the civil

rights movement and the right to vote. but fdr didn't ever, as far as i know, there's no evidence that he was at all interested in extending the suffrage. >> i was just curious, because fdr -- >> i don't think he was relatively wealthy. >> the guy was rich. i always kind of wanted to know, a lot of people of his class actually started hating them for the fact -- >> of his class. >> the poor. and what exactly triggered the idea? because he simply could have not cared in a sense. >> sure. >> a lot of other rich american at the time didn't have this

humanitarian -- i was always kind of curious what really brought him to be the man he essentially, before he became the greatest of all time really, how did he become this man who was looking, like i said before, the -- >> there are two answers. i'm not a psychologist, i'm a political scientist. one answer a lot of biographers go is there was a combination of a certain noblesse oblige combined with an experienced of polio and his experience that allowed him to both understand suffering from the inside out and to really experience poverty among people who welcomed him, at a time when polio was such a tricky disease that they were, polio victims were often ostracized and yet it was the poor people of warm springs road really welcomed him, and so

that's one answer. the political science answer is probably a little more cynical. barry goldwater was once giving advice to richard nixon. how's that for a horrific combination? and when asked like how would you build a coalition, goldwater said go hunting where the ducks are. if you want to get elected, find a boat. abraham lincoln is the guy who said god must love the poor people, he made so many of them. if you want to get elected, the democratic party has always had, the extent of the democrats have had what they embody. that got no money, no resources. as will rogers said they are not organized. but if you want to vote a political coalition, you will have big campus if you bring in the new immigrant groups, african-americans who at the time were voting only in the urban north and always for republicans. so he went hunting where the ducks were.

>> thank you. >> sure. i don't know if that actually helps. other questions? [inaudible] >> all those ducks. [inaudible] yes. i'm going to get this wrong so this is completely unfair. you said that there were concerted efforts made by the roosevelt administration to allow veterans, our soldiers overseas to vote, which would of

course have included african-americans, although not specifically targeted african-americans. and you pointed out that the democratic national committee -- the justice department was helping to overcome the white primaries in the south with what has to be seen as a spectacular lack of success. [inaudible] >> come up here. or go to a microphone. so people can hear you. >> the justice department in the roosevelt administration offered limited help to the naacp when they were fighting the white primary in what became the decision of the supreme court. >> thank you. i could never have done that. yes, sir. >> maybe this follows up a bit on the gentleman's question. it seems that a very prominent middle-class spring forward after the roosevelt administration, and a lot of people could argue that his policies and attitudes contributed to that.

and it has become a part of our national identity since then. and i'm wondering if that was intentional on his part? was his vision to create the great middle-class, and ended up coming forward? >> you know, i don't know that he would have understood it in those terms. because the middle-class is afraid of so much more current in our times than i, i never saw a phrase like that in the documents of the time. but i do think that he felt very strongly that every person in this country have the right to a living wage, and the right to a certain kind of security. you know, the ability to feed your family, those things seem tame to be a fundamental -- and he would've called it a fundamental human right. and it's interesting because he

understood so many things in economic terms, and the u.n. itself had so much difficulty over the question of economic rights. so there's a lot of interesting speculation as to what the u.n. would've looked like had roosevelt lived. well, thank you all so very much. [applause] >> tonight in primetime on booktv, journalist lindsey aeld him talks about her coverage of the favorite 2011 uprising in libya and the eventual overthrow of libyan leader moammar gadhafi.ld leaved suppose one of the people's story that i tell and bodies what i think. what this is a man, i met him in tripoli. he's the guy who makes a halfntn months, copper half months. he thanks them out. he told me how in 1969 he loved

moammar gadhafi. he thought yes, we've arrived as a country. we're going to be like egypt because the pen arab leader was in egypt at the time and he went running out to demonstrate his support.ing and felt that this was libya's chance to end the modern world but that is exactly what happened.. i said and what made you changeb your mind?the mode he said well, in the '70s i would go home from work and people woueld say no go down tht street because they've erected 7 caliber and someone is hanging. so he said then i saw how he picked up his enemies. and then one day men inone was g plainclothes surrounded and they grabbed mohammed and he spent the next 11 years in the army. and he ended up fighting the war in chad. that's got to be one of the mosd futile wars the world has ever do. it was over a stripu of desert about 60 kilometers wide.

i have to tell you, something that libya doesn't need is a bit more desert. there is plenty, believe me. s and so this money which was i originally spent on health or education was now being spent on war and on terrorism. >> you can see the entire interview on the libyan uprising tonight at 8 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> this book is about women but you also talk to men. let's talk about what the men are saying. let's focus in on them in because we talk so much about the women. but the men are who we love, we stand by, we are with as well. talk to me about the ones who are standing up with a women and accepting this change because of job situation with them or if this is what they chose, and even talk to me about those who talk to you who were intimidated

or turned off. >> okay. all those men are in the book. one of the things they said explicitly, most of them have dads who were bred would've to work overtime, who were gone all the time. and these men, and we know the sister of men, they want more time with her children. bit more defensively confident that we give them credit for. so these guys were very intent upon spending more time with her children than their debts have been able to spend with them. love my deck and is a great guy but he wasn't able to be around when i was growing up and i want to be a round. so this situation for them enable them to spend more time with her children and they were very happy about that. so i think that's one of the really positive outcomes for men in this situation and one of the reasons that these guys were very supportive, and proceeded the benefits of not being a provider. we also know that the recession

really eliminate the changes in the economy because -- >> three-course of the people lost jobs in recession were men. a lot of these were factory jobs and construction jobs. some of which will come back, some of which will not come back. a lot of guys are laid off. one of the things i don't think we give women a net credit for a lot of women can't households afloat during the recession. your wives and girlfriends, this is not to say during the depression when women were pretty much not in the workforce and not supposed to be in the workforce but and i think one of the things that kept our recession from being a depression was the fact that we did have working and earning women so we could keep the households afloat because they were nurses, and health care industry, they were teachers. or they're willing to take the were paying jobs pick so they were able to give households afloat. we know that when men lose their jobs they become more likely to leave a marriage. men in general are reluctant to

leave marriages. they will i in there than women will. but when they lose a job, when they can't be the provider, sometimes the psychological and emotional impact of that is so great that they leave the marriage. and so it can be enormously hard on men when they lose their jobs, and that identity as a provider is taken away from th them. but studies have also shown during this recession that men were appreciative and grateful of wives and girlfriends who are keeping their households afloat. a sociologist at a interesting study. they set am lucky to have her and i got up early and i made her coffee because she was the one who is going off to work. and i think it does suggest there's been a mindset. during the depression when women kept households afloat, maybe they were taking in boarders or whatever, they were not praise in the household. they were stigmatized, the working wives were.

husband felt devastated by the loss of their own jobs, but women were regarded as having taken a job from a man. but i think there is, even though it's difficult there is more gratitude and more appreciation and more acceptance by men who have lost their jobs in the recession of what their wives or girlfriends are bringing to keep the household afloat. even though it is hard enough on them that it does make them more likely to leave a marriage than it ultimately would be. >> you touch on an important topic. some men felt that their traditional role when they lost a job really affected them. they were not in the traditional role, and in reading the book i saw things about retaliation. some women have experienced that. and talking to friends i hear that quite a bit. and i know a lot of them have lost their jobs and their wives are taking over the home financially and otherwise because they just can't find

themselves. talk to me about the retaliatory part. >> for example, like i said, this young woman in texas, she was physically unattractive, this is something women might hear in a situation like that. >> they won't do anything. they sit home. it's not a masculine role. >> right. also, i ended one woman who really have sort of had employed her boyfriend because he was well educated but not that successful professionally and she had employed him and that was ultimately i think problematic for them. it's not always problematic because there are wives out there who employed husbands and it's fine, and she had been doing sort of a guardianship business, and he was helping her, but she's feeling that he was retaliating and not helping around the home. so she started a spot and she was working really hard to make it work. one night she stood up her leg pictures having a.

>> host: party like a wedding, and ever more people than she expected. she stayed up all my. she came home in the we hours of the morning and he was mad at her. and even though she was the breadwinner and she said, poor thing, she said what have i done to make you so angry? and he really wouldn't tell her, that obviously the fact that she was, i think was the fact she was gone. he said welcome you didn't call but she said i was so tired i climbed up in a man future and i went to sleep at 5:00 in the morning. so, you know, there was retaliation. actually he took her car out and he wrecked her car. there was more than one incident. almost like retaliation against the personal property of the woman. was something that i was told. >> spend that money you're making. >> yeah, i'm going to take your vehicle but i'm not going to take care of it. and again, you get back to the independent effect of the women i talk to in those retaliatory

situations that out of them, and realize that they were ultimately better off out of them. i mean, i would argue the guys going to react this way is not necessary somebody you want to be partnered with for your life. i mean, even under the best of circumstances. one woman pointed it was so much issued to dump them because i didn't depend on them financially. i guess i still get back to the idea that let us not assume all marriages were happy back when women were economically dependent because we know they weren't. this creates in some couples a new source of tension. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. >> coming up today on booktv, former new times supreme court reporter linda greenhouse provide to look into the workings of the high court. been in depth. and later author of john had

come talks about his life since leaving the military. >> spend the weekend in ohio's state capital, columbus, as booktv, american history and see spend local content vehicles look behind the scenes at the history and literary life of ohio's largest city. on booktv on c-span2, browse the rare books collection at ohio state university. >> it was published between march 1918 in december 1920, and i'm american periodical called the little review. we have copies of all of those as well. the reason i brought these out today is not so much to show you this first edition but to show you a later addition. that is extremely rare. 1921 the american government declared it obscene and pornographic. and the book was banned. people still wanted to read it, however, and we actually have a copy of one of the pirated editions. if you notice th