>> there's a lot of boxes here filled with little folders filled with papers, and there's a lot of stories hidden in the papers. in fact, you get really quiet, and you listen really closely, you just might hear somebody take a piece of paper out of a

box upstairs and read it and go, "holy cow!" you don't have holy cow experiences often, but when they come, it's really a thrill for researchers, and that keeps us going. this book exists today because i gave in to one of those deep dark desires that lurks in the depths of the human soul. i refer to the desire to prove that your boss is full of bolonga. this happened in 2010. i was hired as a editor at "american history" magazine, and i immediately made a suggestion to the honcho of the place who just hired me. i said, the 150th anniversary of the civil war is coming up. why don't we take a couple pages in each issue and run a newspaper story about some event in the civil war that happened 150 years ago.

i thought it was a pretty good idea. apparently, he didn't. he said, well, that would be a good idea, but civil war journalism was really lousy. i thought to myself, you know, i used to be a reporter, and i couldn't imagine that all the reporters covering the civil war had somehow missed the biggest story in american history. i thought to myself, this guy's full of bolonga, but i didn't know. i was not sure. i checked it out. i went to the library, and i took out a couple books on civil war journalism, and i found out that a lot of civil war journalism was really lousy, and some was really great and some was -- most was mediocre. sort of like today's journalism. more importantly, i came across a synopsis of what seemed like a great story about two reporters for the new york tribune who

covered the civil war. their names were julia brown and albert richardson, and one night in may of 1863, they were desperately trying to catch up to general grant's army, which was outside vickburg ready to attack vicksburg. these who reporters got on a barge that was going down the mississippi filled with bails of hay for grant's horses. the barge set out at night so the confederates wouldn't see it, but, unp fortunately, it was a night with a full moon, and it was really quite visible, and the confederates fired cannons at it. one of the shells hit the barge, exploded, killed about a dozen union soldiers, set the hay on fire, and the reporters jumped into the river and attempted to float away. the confederates sent out boats and captured them and em

prisoned them in various prisons for the next 20 months. they escaped from a prison in sulsbury, north carolina, and with the help of slaves and prounion bush whackers, walked 300 miles over the appalachians to the union lines. i read this, only about as long as i just said, and i thought to myself, wow, that would make a great movie. unfortunately, i don't make movies, but occasionally, i do write books. i thought, well, should i write a book about these guys? i support if i was a novelist, that little synopsis would have been enough, and i just could have made up the rest, but i write history, not fiction, and so i had to do what nonfiction writers do in such circumstances, which is do some research and find out if there's enough facts available to tell the story.

i did a little research and learned that, yes, indeed, fortunately, for me, there were such facts. there were memoirs, letters, diaries, and newspaper stories some written by junius and albert and others who shared a part of their story. i just had to dig them out of various archives and various places in america including right here at the national archives, and that was great because that enabled me to have that great "holy cow" experience as i picked papers out of boxes. i wrote this book, it's called "junius and albert's adventures in the confederacy" because it's animal adventure story that keeps you awake late at night wonders what happens next? do they make it home? will they get shot or hung or

otherwise detained on the way? it's also a work of history, and i think it shows parts of the civil war that most people don't know about. the culture of reporters in the civil war, what it was like in confederate prisons, and most importantly, the gorilla war that was fought by prounion folks in the mountains of north carolina and tennessee and virginia. the story has many colorful characters, but, of course, the main characters are junius brown and albert richardson. they were both 27 years old when the war began. they were best friends. they were very different. albert richardson was a big strapping handsome farm a boy from massachusetts. he grew up on a farm. he hated farming. he was a romantic young fellow

who wanted to be an explorer of the american west. as a teenager, he headed west, and when he got to cincinnati, he took a job as a newspaper reporter. as it happened, he was a great, natural reporter. he had the reporter's ability to attract people to him and make them want to talk to him, want to tell him things. during the war, he managed to hobnob with ordinary soldiers and escaped slaves and generals and even president lincoln. he also attracted women. when he was in cincinnati, he started dating a young bookstore clerk named mary lou peas. she soon got pregnant, so they got married, and when albert was captured, he was married with three children, and his wife was pregnant with a fourth. junius was different. he was a scrawny, gawky,

prematurely bald guy with jug ears. he was a rich kid, son of a cincinnati banker. he was sent to st. xavier college in cincinnati, a very rigorous jesuit school learning to speak greek, latin, and french. he thought of himself as an intellectual and philosopher. in fact, one of the favorite past times was to read works of philosophy in ancient greek, french, or latin. his friend, albert, used to kid him about that practice. junius was not a particularly good, natural reporter. he was too shy. he would basically stand off, stand aside from things and watch them and then sit down and write these kind of flowery, literary essays about what he had seen complete with a lot of

quotes from ancient writers. that was an -- actually, that was a pretty common practice in those days, in journalism. it was much more flowery and purple prose than we have now. these two guys covered the civil war for the "new york tribune," rs agreely's paper, and sometimes they traveled together. sometimes they traveled apart with different armies. they were always looking for an army about to go into battle, which was hard to predict. albert was better at figuring that out than junius. they covered the battles of fort hen try, donaldson, shiloh, fredericksburg, and many naval battles along the mississippi. the first battle they covered was the battle of fort henry. they were in cairo, illinois, and hitched a ride with general grant as he put his army on a bunch of ships sails down the

tennessee river to attack fort henry and fort donaldson so i thought i'd read a passage about that. richardson went ashore with grant troops, troughing true the swampy woods. they accompanieded the march and richardson climbed a tall oak free on the river barchg for a better view of the battle. for an hour, the ships and fort pounded each other with shells until the air was so full of smoke that richardson could no longer see the gun ships. when the confederates ran up a white flag of surrender, albert shimmied down the tree to join the soldiers swarming into fort henry, quote, our shots had made great havoc, he reported in the tribe biewn. in the force, the magazines torn open, guns completely shattered, and the ground stained with blood, brains and fragments of flesh.

under gray blankets, six cormses, one with the head torn off and trunk blackened with powder, others with legs severs and breasts opened in ghastly wound, unquote. richardson wat soldiers delivered their highest ranking captive, confederate general lloyd tilman to the conqueror of the fort. general grant and commodore andrew foot, commander of the federal gun bus. how could you fight against the old flag, foot asked. it was hard, tillman replied, but i had to go with my people. a chicago reporter interrupted to ask every journalist's most prosaic but necessary question, how do you spell your name, general? sir, tillman replied, if general grant wishes to use his name in official dispatches, i have no objections, but, sir, i do not wish to appear at all in this manner in any newspaper account.

i merely asked it, the reporter said, for the list of prisoners captured. you will oblige me, sir, by not giving my name in any newspaper connections whatsoever. of course, richardson included tillman's name in the story as well as the absurd dialogue, writing the article on a union ship back to cairo dispatching it to the tribune. okay. albert heads back to file the story, and junius stays with the union army which then marched across 12 miles of swampy land in a snowstorm to attack fort donaldson. they besieged the fort for four days, fought for four days, and finally, fort donaldson surrendered, and union army took that fort and 12,000 prisoners, the first big victory for the

union. junius filed a long feature story about it, which was really good, but what he became most famous for among colleagues was an incident that occurred during u. battle. on the last day of the battle, junius and a reporter for the "new york times" were with a group of snipers, union snipers, who were trying to pick off the guys in a confederate artillery battery, and the confederates were behind walls made of logs, and they would sort of load the gun and pop off and fire it, and the union snipers tried to shoot them when they popped up, and the confederates trieded to keep the head down, and snipers were frustrated, and one was so frustrated he handed the rifle and said, here, you try it. i suspected junius fired a rifle before at some time in his life, but he was not a soldier or marksman or sniper, but he figured, what the hell, he

crouched down, aimed the rifle, waited until he saw somebody pop up, fired, and the confederate's battery went silent. the sniper turned to him and said, realm, i think you got him. junius said, well, i wouldn't be surprised. [laughter] although, of course, he was completely surprised. he did have the presence of mind to sort of walk galantly away before anyone could give him another rifle and expect him to do it again. i cant expect my boss would be happy to hear a correspondent in afghanistan put down the notebook and picked up an m16 and fired away at the taliban. journalistic ethics didn't exist at the time. i think if you used the phrase in those days, people would have laughed thinking it was an oxy

moron. the next story i have illustrates just that. a couple weeks after the battle of fort donaldson, junius was in st. louis, and he heard that a union army left southern missouri to invade arkansas and attack a confederate army there. he and a reporter named richard colburn of the "new york world" hopped on a train to catch up with the yiewn arian -- union army to watch the invasion. i'll read to you what happened next. "brown and colbur realize -- okay, they are in the town of missouri and realize the union army defeated the confederate army in what is known as pearidge. "brown and colburn realized that thomas knox would scoop them in the rival newspaper. they had a simple solution.

they would wing it. simply concoct the accounts of the battle based on brief reports and rumors that reached raleigh. it was unethical, of course, but hardly unprecedented. journalists in the 19th century were not finnicky on facts and did not permit them to ruin a good stories. newspapers routinely lisped meager facts by garnishing them with rumors, exaggerations, rants, vicious invectives and prose that escaped the pulls of truth and soared off into fancy. during the civil war, reporters routinely made soldier's dying words sound as lofty and eloquent as soliloquy. the dead soldiers never complained, nor did their kin. all these habits contributed to a slang insult that was popular during the war. he lies like a newspaper.

even by the lack standards of the day, what they did was outrageous. they wrote long vivid eye wnsz accounts of a battle that occurred 200 miles beyond their eyesight. the pieces were so crazy overblown that perhaps the two men were competing to outdo each other in the art of fiction. it seems quite possible that alcohol was involved. the story reads like a parody of the style of first person journalism that stars the reporter as the main character. even now, he began, while i attempt to collect my blurred and disconnected thoughts, the sound of booming cannons and the crack of rifle ring in my ear while vision of carnage and flame of battle hover above my sight, three days of watching without food and sleep, and excitement of the struggle have quite unstrung my nerves." that was hard to top.

brown topped it with a you-are-there style of prose reading like fiction, which, of course, it was. junius learned the union won a victory with a dramatic charge led by general frans siegl, he was cast the hero of the yarn. never better was fighting done, never ground more closely contested, sword and cannon did their bloody work and the earth was stained and slippery with human gore. every soldier kept the eye fixed on the fearless leader, wherever they saw his streaming hair and flashing sword, they knew all was safe, hope of victory while he survived. strange that sieglfuls not killed. he was well-known to the rebels, and hundred rifles sought in vain to end his career. the balls wheeled above his head, none touched him, but one carried away his spectacles and

another peered his cap. on and on it we went filling upa page. there was an editorial suggesting the union army reprinted it and give it to every union soldier. of course, nowadays, reporters would be fire the for doing that, but in those days, the other reporters thought it was a hilarious stunt, and it was more hilarious when times of london announced that it was the best story of the war. a year later, they were captured outside vicksburg, and they were not worried about it at that time because reporters were captured by both sides fairly often, and they were usually quickly released or traded for reporters or other prisoners. they thought they would be released and, n., --

in fact, given a parole paper. they hated the "new york tribune" because it was an abolitionist paper, and there was a banner saying, on to richmond, on officials didn't really like that. they were in charge of political exchange, and they just said point-blank, i'm not releasing the guys, they are the most compossive prisoners we have. they held them for 20 months, moving from one prison to the other for 20 months. before i did my research, i thought, well, 20 months in prison, i don't know, people get bored with that, one grim thing after another. that was not true. actually, the prison stuff is interesting. there's a lot of strange weird incidence in the prison, and there's a lot of fascinating characters. for instance, for five months,

they were in castle thunder prison in richmond. the war don was a colorful character named george washington alexander with long black hair, long black beard, black shirt, black pants, black belt, with two big revolvers on it, and a blackjack. he set off a grim outfit with a big red sash. he would saunter around prison with his 18 # 0-pound black russian wolf hound dog that scared the hell of the prisoners. captain alexander looked like a pirate, and, in fact, he was a confederate pirate that seized boats early in the war on the bay and sailed them to richmond. he got caught doing this in 1861, locked into fort mchenry, escaped, jumped into the bay, swam to shore, and somehow made his way back to

richmond. when he got there, the authorities, the confederate authorities, i guess, figured, well, if this guy knows how to escape from a prison, we'll put him in charge of a prison. they put him in charge of castle thunder. now, in addition to being a wardon and pirate, he was a poet and a playwright and song writer. he wrote a comedy, a truly awful musical comedy performed in rich richmond during the war. he would leave the prison after a workday and go to the play house where he wrote at the climax of the play, rode across the stage on big black horse and dog and black outfit and everyone would stand up and cheer. this really happened. you can't make this stuff up.

one other thing, he was cooked as a protect sel, ran the prison in an old tobacco warehouse with a thousand prisoners in it, living in squaller, huge rooms, no beds, ate two meals a day of the rancid soup, usually speckled with maggots, but he set up a country club prison inside castle thunder with one room called the citizen's room with room for 50 people. it had windows to open and close and beds, a wooden stove to heat the place in the winter and picked out prisoners who were either rich, not too many of them, or connected and could get shipments from the north of money and food. if you got money and food from the north or sought, you stayed in the citizens room provided you shared your shipments of

money and food with the captain and his cronies. the prisoners in the citizens room lived well. two of them were albert and junius. they got money and food from their buddies at home on the tribune, and they shared it with captain alexander and lived well in castle thunder, but in february of 1864 #, they were transferred to a prison in sulsbury, north carolina. that was not too bad. there were a couple hundred prisoners, a few hundred, living indoors in old cot tin mill buildings with a yard outside to stroll the grounds and play baseball. they amused themselves playing baseball. a lot of the prisoners in this prison were political prisoners. they were guys who had either dodged the confederate draft or deserted from the confederate army or just generally known

they were not down with the confederate cause. most were from the mountain areas of north carolina, virginia, and tennessee. the mountains were filled with prounion people. there was plenty of proconfederate people, but plenty of prounion people because there was not a lot of slavery up there, mostly small farms, family farms, poor farmers eking out a substantive living, couldn't afford slaves, and they were not all that excited about risking lives fighting for a confederacy established by the slave owning, plantation owning rich people from the lowlands who never treated the mountain areas all that well. they met a lot of these disdents from the mountains in the prisons and they formed a secret prounion organization called the

heros of america that had something like 10,000 members in north carolina, tennessee, and virginia, mostly in the mountain areas, and they learned all the secret handshakes and secret signs and passwords that the members of of the heros of america used to identify themselves to each other. these were things that came in handy later when they escaped. life in sulsbury was not bad until the fall of 1864 when the union army circled richmond, and they sent prisoners south. the union prisoners, most to andersonville, the infamous prison in georgia, but about 9,000 union soldiers were sent to sulsbury, so instantaneously in the fall of 1864, instead of, like, 800 guys living indoors in sulsbury, you now had 10,000

guys with 9,000 of them living out in that yard where they used to play baseball that was now filledded with makeshift shacks and just holes in the ground that the guys were living in. it was a very cold, wet fall and winter, and it rained a lot. it snowed some. these guys didn't get much food. they were exposed to the elements, so by the time december came, they were dying at the rate of about two dozen a day of dissentary, starvation, and expoture. by the end of november, they massed and attacked the gate hoping to break out. the guards on the stockade beat back the escape attempt killing 16 and wounded 60. about three weeks later, albert

and junius and a couple of their friends managed to escape from the prison with the help of a guard who was a member of the heroes of america. they set out on a rainy, cold december night heading for the nearest union lines in knoxville 200 miles away across the appalachians. they had only the barest of clothes, no food, smuggled tea, and that was it. they headed for knoxville 200 miles away. the only way they could make it is to get help from the kind of people who might be sympathetic to escaped yankee prisoners in north carolina. who would that be? well, slaves. so they would walk all night headed north, they hoped, and walk all night and when dawn was coming, they'd look around for a slave cabin. let me read a little bit about

that. "it was almost dawn when they located the slave cabin. the slaves inside said the area was not safe. several white men were nearby and led them to a barn down the road. it was filled with damp corn husks, and the yankees burrowed into them seeking warmth and sleep. they found little of either, but remained there until dark when they emergedded, their muscles soar, joints aching, their skin itching from the huffings. they shook out their wet clothes and made feeble attempts to comb their hair and beards. brown realized that he'd lost his hat among the husks, but there was no time to look for it. they needed to set out in search of someone who might feed them. ten minutes later, they came upon another slave cabin. when the old man who lived there heard they were yankees, he said he was happy to feed them. he invited them into the cabin and introduced them to his wife

and daughter. he went outside and killed two chickens. he stay outside on guard while the women cooked the birds and yankees huddled near the fire, their wet clothes steaming. looking around at the little cabin, richardson realized it was the first private house he'd entered in 20 months. it was crude and cramped, but it had a diner table with plates, utensils, and beds with sheets, civilized amenities making him long for his own home and family. when the yankees devoured the chicken and hot corn bread, richardson took out the bag of tea smuggled from prison. the women never had seen tea before so he showed them how to brew it and the slaves and the escaped prisoners sat down to an odd little tea party. revived by the food and tea, yankees thanked their hosts and hostesses and got up to leave. may god bless you, the old woman

said, with tears in her eyes. the husband noticed brown had no hat to wear on the long cold journey, so he pulled off his own hat handing it to the reporter. the hat was humble, an ancient shapeless, sweat soak swollen sock, but the gesture was grand. he was a man who owned almost nothing, not even himself, but he was willing to give his hat to a stranger he would probably never see again. brown thanked him, pulled the hat over his naked head, and the fugitives headed off into the night." for the first few days, when the friend were in the lowlands, they would look for a slave cabin, and the slaves would take care of them. they never failed. they never let them down. junius wrote later, god bless the negroes, they never let us down. they got into the mountains, and there with respect any slave

cabins anymore because the farms were smaller. there were not any slaves. they could not tell friend or foe by color of the skin. they knew there was a lot of sympathizers, but you couldn't tell by looking at them. they were teaming with bans of armed men, calvary, confederate home guards, and there were these bans of prounion guerrillas made up of draft dodgers and guys who deserted the con confederate armies, took their rifles, headed to the mountains, formed groups, and they were living out in the woods and staging occasional battles. there may were, poor junius and albert trying to figure out who might help them and who might shoot them. let's see, where are we here?

so there they are, in the mountains. there's a lot of war fair -- warfare going on up there. if you read "cold mountain" or he bushwhackers anddepicts well guerrilla war. about a third of my book takes place as they attempt to make their way through the mountains, and i'd like to read one scene from that part of the book. at this point, junius and albert have joined up with a union bushwhacker named dan ellis, another great colorful character in the book. ellis was famous in that time and place for leading groups of prounion people across the mountains to the union lines. he also had a long black hair and long black beard, a thin mountain guy, looked kind of like he could stand in as a base player for the band zz top.

he was almost killed so many times taking people through the mountains that he concluded that god was protecting him from confederate bullets, so having this protection caused him to take a loot of chances which scared the hell of the people which he was leading. his -- he financed the trips by stealing horses from rich confederate sympathizers and took them across the mountains with him and sold them to the union army in knoxville. the modus operandi was to go as fast as possible through the roughest terrain possible, and as a joke, he called the people he took with them "stampeders" because they were stampeding across the mountains. let me read a piece of that from there. at this point, calvary are chasing them, and they divided the guys, several dozen. those on horse back go one way

with ellis, and the stampeders on foot go another way. albert is on horse back, going with ellis, junius is on foot, going the other direction. it's the first time they've been separated since they were captured 20 # months earlier. so i'm talking about ellis and albert now. "the riding rough. ellis led the group across country so rugged they regularly had to dismount and walk their horses. in the bit l cold, the frost covered mud on the tram was so deep that the horses sank down. worried that the rebels would catch up, ellis pushed the tired men and exhausted animals so hard that several horses died or came so close to death they were abandoned. their riders proceeded on foot or doubled up on healthier animals. in the ride, the men encountered an old man perched on a fine horse. one of the stampeders, now

without a horse, saw an opportunity. what are you, southern or union, he asked, holding his rife menacingly. well, said the old man, looking very nervous, i have kept out of the war. i have not helped either side. come, come, that will never do, said the stampeder. you don't take me for a fool, do you? you never could have lived in this country without being either one thing or the other. are you yiewndown or succession? the poor old man had to guess immediately who the strangers might be. he conceded they were dirty wearing ragged, muddy, slept-in clots that included pieces from the uniforms of both armies. they looked like rebels. i voted for sulsbury session -- secession, he said, tell the entire troops, the interrogator, insisted, well, sir, i do.

i have two sons in johnston's army. i was an original secessionist, a good a southern man as you can in the state of tennessee. that statement delighted the horseless stampeder holding the rifle. all right, my old friend, slide on down. what do you mean? i mean that you are just the man i have been looking for in walking a hundred miles, a good southerner with a good horse. i am a yankee. we are all yankees. slide down and be quick about it. the old map had no choice but to obey. he dismounted and watched as the man with the rifle rode off on his horse. there they are, they are riding away, chased by confederate calvary, junius is a few miles away on another trail chased by calvary, headed for knoxville. do they make it? do they get captured, shot, or

hung? i'm not going to tell you. [laughter] you just have to read the book and find out. if anybody has any questions, feel free to ask. [applause] >> these two were prisoners after the incidents of african-american troops, did either comment of seeing african-american prisoners or does what we hear about take no prisoners from the confederates carry the day? >> no. there were some black prisoners in sulsbury. obviously, as you suggested, there were incidents in which black prisoners were simply executed, but there were

accidents, and one incident after the revolts i mentioned, after that, the guards for sport would shoot at prisoner randomly when they were bored. one incident, they fired from the stockade fence killing a union guy, one one of the confederate doctors at the prison went to find out why this had happened, and he was informed by the confederate guards they had watched and saw three black prisoners standing together, and they thought they'd never get such a good comans to shoot somebody as that presented himself, so they fired at him, by ironically the guy they hit was a white prisoner standing nearby. yes, to answer the question, there were black prisoners there. >> tell us the story about the young girl, the angel of the mountain. >> oh, yes.

melvinina stevens. as i mentioned, they were led through the mountains by ellis, and ellis knew the union sympathizers in the mountains, and he would go at night when they bedded down, he would go to the houses of the nearby people and ask, you know, what they heard about where the confederate people were, and one night, they said the confederate calvary there and army troops further away, and so they split up and ellis' men rode away and the other guys, as i side, walked on a different trail. ellis hoped the calvary would chase them, the others stay ahead, and the others sneak away on scene. they had to cross the river, and there was only one real place to cross, and so first ellis and the riders went over, and then the next day the walkers went over. on both occasions, they needed somebody to go over the bridge

and make sure the rebels were not, you know, hiding at the bridge waiting to shoot them as they crossed, and so they found a person to ride over with, a young girl who lived by and the con fete rat calvary were quite enname moried with her because she was young and beautiful. they frequently stopped by to talk to her, giving her father, who was prounion, an opportunity to figure out when the calvary were around. anyway, she led them across the bridge, first the horse riders, and then the walkers the next day, and junius, when he wrote his book -- they both wrote about this -- didn't identify her as anything except, you know, this unknown angel. albert's book came out later and identified her by name as did ellis when he wrote his memoirs.

she became famous as the unknown angel who led union folks to safety, and there was a song written about her which you can find on the internet now. >> talk about the different points of view and the times and the world would have had about the events they were covering? >> okay. the new york papers, a lot of them at the time, had editorial policies, and they all differedded somewhat. the tribune with the people, very pro-lincoln, proabolition, although greeley was escaped centric and had weird statements that contradicted everything said before and he changed back again, but basically pro-lincoln, and they were one of the founders who helped lincoln get his nomination in 1860. the "new york times" was

prounion and pro-lincoln. the democratic herald, a democratic paper, prowar, but vicious towards lincoln. the world was also a democratic paper, grudgingly prowar. you couldn't really be against the war and not be considered a trader, i guess, in new york, but it was also slamming lincoln, which is why when they were captured, they were captured with a guy from the world, that guy, colburn, who i mentioned, who made up the story, he was with them and immediately paroled because the confederates didn't hate the world. you had all these papers and they had their editorial stances, but the reporters filing the copy did not necessarily agree with the editorials involved. junius and albert were abolitionists as was their boss, but colburn, a radical republican, who worked for the

democratic newspaper. they didn't really -- i don't think the world interfered with colburn's dispatching in that regard. >> hi, i -- sorry about laughing in the middle of your talk. >> that's good. i like laughter. >> i was wondering, this richardson guy had a wife, was there any way to write letters home from any of the 20,000 camps that they were in? i'm exaggerating, but -- >> yeah, they did write home, and some of the letters he wrote home exists, and i find them at one of the archives, one of the "holy cow" moment, and the richardson family papers are in the massachusetts historical society. >> oh. >> some of the letters he wrote home are there. of course, the letters they wrote him are lost to history. more important for me, the letters that junius and albert wrote to their managing editor,

sidney gaye of the tribune were founded by her grandchildren in 1950, and the family's stable on stanten island given to columbia university where they exist to this day and are quite -- most of them, not all, but most quite legible, so i could read letters they were writing all through the time they were covering the war, and when they were in prison too. that was a god send to me. i don't think i could have written the book without them. yes, sir? >> thanks for your presentation. very interesting and intertaping. >> thank -- entertaining. >> thank you, the book's even better. [laughter] >> i think you mentioned that at some point along the way that either or both junius and albert had contact of some extent with lincoln and grant.

could you expand on that a bit if that's the case? >> okay. good, i'm glad you asked that because it relates to the roars. in late 1862, shortly after the battle of fredericksberg, there was a battle near vicksburg in which general sherman sent the guys up the entrenched, and they got mowed down, and so it was an incredibly horrible defeat for the union, and a reporter named thomas knox for the herald were there, not albert and junius. they were elsewhere. junius kept missing, somehow missing battles. he's kind of funny in his ineptitude, but knox wrote a dispatch, sent it back, and they sent it in the mail bag with the union army boats, and general

sherman who hated reporters, thought they were akin to spies, he had his fact totem take the reporters' letters from the mail bag, open them up, and sherman read them, got mad at knox, had him court march shammed as a supply, was not shot, could have been, but sent out of the army and forbidden to ever enter the army again. richardson, who really had a talent for moving and shaking among powerful people, after fredericksburg, he heard from washington, had a reporter and politicians and others sign it and took it to see lincoln along with the guy named winchel from the "new york times," and they went to see lincoln, and lincoln met them, listened to them, and basically said, well, i agree that loyal reporters should be

allowed to cover this, and so i'll write to general grant telling him that he should let knox come back to the union lines, and he wrote that, and albert was thrilled, and goes, you know, generals are more important to me than reporters, and i don't want to irk them. i'll add this, you know, knox should come back to the union lines unless general granted decides he doesn't want him back in the union lines. [laughter] so as an upshot, knox ultimately did get back into the war, but it took a while, so albert met lincoln on that occasion. he met him when he was covering bleeding kansas before the war for the boston journal, when lincoln had a speaking engagement in kansas in, like, 1858 or 9, so lincoln remembered him from that, and, of course, remembered him from the interview that i just described, and when they were capturedded, lincoln instructed the union

officials in charge of prison exchange to get brown and richardson back from the confederates, and that's when robert uhl, the confederate in charge of prisoner exchange wrote the letter saying, i'm not sending the guys back. the tribune reporters are more -- i think he said something like they have caused more trouble for us than even your armies so i'm not letting them go. anyone else? okay. [applause] thank you very much. [applause] >> we'll see you upstairs in a couple minutes for the book signing.

>> senator ben cardin, what's on your summer reading list? >> first, a book by my former colleague in the house, john louis. we came to congress together in 1987. he wrote the book "march," looking forward to reading it, what an incredible person i had the opportunity to serve with, his story inspirational to all, and looking forward to reading about his life and becoming more involved in making sure people know his story. >> let us know what you are reading this summer, tweet us @booktv, facebook, or e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> now joining us on booktv to preview the upcoming new book, best selling author, bill bryson, one summer america,

1927, the name of the book. why "1927"? >> i stumbled into it really. i was always fascinated by the fact that ruth hit 16 home runs and the atlantic in the same summer, the summer of 1927 so i had it in mind that that in itself made it an interesting summer, that two iconic events happened in exact parallel, and maybe it was interesting to do a dual biography of the two guys with the narrative arts meeting in the summer of 1927. that was the starting point. when i looked into what else happened in 1927, i found that those were only just two tiny parts of the much greater hall. there was other stuff happening that summer, the great mississippi flood that year, the biggest natural disaster in america history, and you had al capone, the beginning of the end

of al capone, the down fall, and, indeed, of prohibition, and the information that prohibition was coming to an end. they started building mount rushmore, and calvin coolidge announced he didn't want to run for reelection as president. he could have won in a 4r57d slide, -- landslide and he didn't want to do it for reasons that are still slightly mystifying, and henry ford, the summer he had this mad idea to build an american city, and so it was just kind of one thing after another, lots and lots and lots going on so the nature of the book changed to not just be of the two iconic figures, ruth and lindbergh, but looking at all of the stuff that was happening, so what's interesting is the first talking picture filmed that summer. it was a demand of activity, a great deal of which changed the

world. you know, changed the way we perceive popular entertainments and so on. it was a consequential summer, but interesting and lively one. >> any reason all the events happened in the summer of 1927? >> they just happened. that's what's interesting about it is that, you know, sometimes these things just happen, you know, and all of these things happen then. it was not by and large any particular reason. there was not there because they had to happen in the summer of 1927. it's mostly they just happened then. there were connections. i mean, the reason that lindbergh was able to fly first to europe was because of the same storm system that was -- that caused the flooding in the midwest, that caused the great mississippi flood. the same weather system had all of the other aveuaters pinned down -- aviators pinned down in new

york, but this enabled him to get ahead of the others. if not for the weather system causing havoc in the middle part of the country, certainly richardson would have been off first, the first to cross the ocean, and that changed popular history a great deal. >> there was a contest going on at that point. >> there was a contest. i didn't know that before i did the book. i assumed lindburgh got in a plane and did it. there was a french hotel, and a man living there who just loved aviation. he had been conveyed exciting, and the first world war, the dog fights and everything, and he put up a generous fight, $25,000, a lot of money in those days, that the first person or team of people to fly between new york and paris in either

direction so there were a lot and lot of teams preparing to fly and take off that summer, and every single one of them were better prepared and funded than lindbergh who was a 25-year-old kid from the midwest who flies into new york, was a plane with one engine, no navigator, no co-pilot, just him and a simple small plane, essentially a dplying gas tank, and everybody thought it was suicide, and if he got away first, he'd crash in the water, and, of course, he was the one who beat everybody because he had -- his plane was so simple and less that was necessary in order to get it ready to take on. >> now, you open the book, though, talking about a fire in new york city and how people would gather for events. >> yeah, it's amazing, i mean, this happened again and again.

i don't know what it was, and i don't know anybody could explain what it was, but there was impulse by people to gather in huge crowds for everything. the style you refer to is the netherlands hotel in new york on fifth avenue, which was under construction, nearly finished, a whole lot of wooden scaffolding near the top of it because they were finishing off the summit of the building, and somehow it caught fire and all the wooden scaffolding was up in flames, like a match head, you know, a great flame at the top of the building, and within a couple hours, a crowd estimated in the hundred thousand people spontaneously turned up, and can you imagine what it would take to get a hundred thousand people in new york to gather in one space now? i mean, it would have to be something quite dramatic, and then, just a big fire did it and a lot of other things, and in the same summer, there was ship wreck kelly, a flag pole sitter,

he went up on a hotel flag pole in newark, new jersey, and tens of thousands watched that. people turned out for anything. you know, it's just strange. partly, it's in the way of popular entertainment, other diversions, and there was something going on, great crowds turned out for. >> well, bill bryson, on the macro level, american politics, coolidge not running, al capone, the economy, was there something happening on the ma crow level -- macro level as well? >> the economy was interesting because the economy was booming and america was just -- it was motoring along, overheating, if anything, and this was really a kind of a matter of concern to some, hoover, in particular, the commerce secretary at the time, worried it was overheating, right to be worried about it because it was overheating, and the federal reserve, four central bankers, federal reserve

bank of central new york and central bankers, britain, france, and germany met and had a secret meeting on long island, not far from where lindbergh took off earlier, and they decided, mistakenly, good intentions, but mistakenly decided to cut the interest rates everywhere that lit the fire that really led to the stock market crash in the following year and the great depression that followed after that. >> that's just a quick preview of bill bryson's upcoming book "one summer america 1927", and you're watching booktv on c-span2.

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and the strange world of the human digestive system. the former salon.com columnist is the author of five books including bestsellers "stiff", "bonk" and her 2013 release, "gulp." >> host: mary roach how did elvis die? >> guest: based on research from my book is that he was a victim of severe and associated sudden death. >> host: how did you find that out? >> guest: i found that out ,-com,-com ma one fine day i was talking to somebody here in d.c. they have a megacolin which is a monstrous