>> it is wonderfully gratifying to me as a writer. that means the bookstores all over america are part of bestsellers. .. there's a phone number where you can call it order the cd-rom. you can order the documentary.

if you want to totally immerse yourself in "black hawk down" and hopefully in a year or so we'll have a feature film. >> host: mark bowden, thank you are joining us on booktv. appreciate it. >> we are fascinated by every aspect of the matter in theory and this. maybe not quite as much as ken starr is, but no less. >> i wanted to give the reader a chance to understand the process by which i've made decisions. the environment are legitimate decisions, decisions, the people i listen to effort made

decisions. this is not an attempt to rewrite history. it is not an attempt to fashion a legacy. it is to be part of the historical narrative. >> every single justice on the court has a passion and love for the constitution and our country that's equal to mine. then you now but if you accept that as an operating truth which it is, you understand that you can disagree. >> for me, what's interesting is negotiation of a moral position. do no harm, let somebody i respect yourself. all of that is reduced to simplify notions. the philosophers have spent

their lifetimes trying to imagine what it is like to live a moral life, what morality it is, but responsibility is. >> and if you say to a child i must anywhere in this country in the schools all over the country, more than 600, once upon a time that chad will stop and say not a better cash a check. you better have more to say after that. but that phrase is still magical. >> my father is in the diplomatic service. his job has been to be press attaché at belgrade. my mother wanted you to be born in prague where her mother was. so i was born in prague and then we went to belgrade and then my

father was recalled in 1938 and he was in czechoslovakia when the marched and marched at income in 1939. >> booktv continues now with brenda wineapple. the author recounts the ever-changing american landscape during this time from its growing borders to the debates over slavery, the civil war and reconstruction. this is about an hour. [applause] >> are coming back. thank you to all of you for coming tonight. thanks to the great people at harpercollins who came to give some support in making such a

beautiful book as you can see it is quite lovely. i'm talking just about the physicality. check out the inside on your own. as nick said cogently, this book covers a 30 year span of american history in the middle of the 19th century when nothing much happened. it was just i don't know the women's movement in the country divided in two primary spiritualists and a spirit rappers and pt barnum, all part of the same cultural moment. and of course, just in case you're getting word, there is a war, a dreadful war for 750,000 people were killed and that is probably -- that is probably a figure that is not finished

being revised. and of course there is the period of reconstruction that occurred in this at the same time the settlement of the west by the gold rush back in may 248 and completed with the slow and painful and very disturbing removal of the indians from that particular part of the country, just a few things i concern much the last two years. it is a strange and complex moment in american history essay just suggested. populated by a very unusual group of people that you would think of necessarily occupying the same historical time nevermind plays than i can give you some of their names. there's of course ulysses s. grant and abraham lincoln, who

always threatens to take over every book that he spared us, understandably enough. seasoned dm to me and frederick l. glass, charles sumner, william lloyd garrison, harriet jacobs, harriet beecher stowe, amerson was still alive and writing into going after this. longfellow. you have emily dickinson, william tecumseh thurmond, two people have got to see meet one another. as well as victoria would have assumed was the first woman who ran for president in the united state and not victoria woodhall, but a name -- a man's name i won't even bother with it, and then unscented the scientology, which is rather strange and interesting and unusual and of course it may be not of course come in a can at third. i could spend the whole time

tonight a lot if you're just listing names. but not to worry, i'm not going to do that. i'm going to give you a little background. some of the things important to me in the writing of it and i'm not going to be very briefly and be very delighted to take and answer questions if i possibly can. so to go back to the book itself, i did name some names now. i want you to think for a moment about the tremendous innovations that particularly technological but not exclusively technological innovations during this particular period. for example, the first that comes to nine we have many of us who live here in new york is probably gone to seed the civil war photography and also civil war. it's also interesting to think the civil war was documented in this country from beginning to end by photographers, which is

shocking really and often when i thought about why it is that the revolutionary war, which is in a sense also brother against brother, country against country, why that war hasn't captured the imagination the way the civil war has in addition to obvious reason like let's get rid of slavery once in a while, the reason is there with their photography at that particular time. we don't know what people look like. we can't really see them strewn, maybe for good reason or for better on the battlefield. there's also the time of the railroad to railroad started a little bit before this particular. i became so instrumental in the war effort because after all they do so many men and so much been issued during the period of the war into a certain extent

you can imagine why it was the south is at a disadvantage because there are fewer lines of the south then there was in the north. and of course that's really important because by 1869, after the war, the transcontinental railroad was finished and that took even more settlers to the east of the last and presumably back again although i'm not so sure about that. nonetheless, that too is very important. it is a port for the native americans who lived in those areas where settlers were going. taped to the development of a brand-new american religion, which is really so interesting, really becomes dominant, important in this particular.

when i mentioned the list of names, i could've put burkett in young and not list as well as everyone else. imagine him meeting emily dickinson. mormonism began in new york state, as many of you obviously probably know, right in upstate new york and a place called the burned over district because the series of religious revivals sweeping through that particular part of the country and then went last and further west. so that is part of the spirit, too. of course should the intent go without saying as the antislavery movement, which was gathering more and more in the years after 1848, particularly after the mexican-american war ended in 1948 when the united states became a much bigger

country and the disposition, sorry about that, the disposition of the land was acquired from mexico was a matter of some can turn, shall it be freed or shall it be slaves. that was the dialogue that became so acrimonious, that became so serious that of course it spiraled into what we think of as the civil war were a setnor sometimes called it, the war of northern aggression. thanks to oakland its rights, which i mentioned before. early antislavery advocates were of course very much involved in the women's movement and were women themselves. but after the war, we have a very complicated historical moment when black men are given

the vote, but not white or black women, leaving black woman doubly disenfranchised. and what was interesting about the passage of franchise meant amendments is that enemies of both blacks and women make to pay blacks and women -- black men and not women against one another, which is of course something that seemed to me how to get again designate during the primary for president and maybe still have remained absolutely. and taken aback, think of the change in laws. and i'm not just singing at the 13th, 14th and 15th amendment, but i'm thinking of nefarious and rather fugitive stage saw been allowed southern planters to travel north to

places like massachusetts and not men and women, black men and women, slaves, former slaves and bring them back so. it was so horrible it began to be resisted movement against it and of course many like flocked around the relevant colin 1849, civil disobedience. of course that is before the fugitive slave act, but nonetheless civil disobedience became an important way to push back against the government as it stood the time. it was also a way of taking the law -- i will talk more about this than a minute -- into one of hands, which culminated of course indurated shawn brown and his associates at harpers ferry, which to some people really

began the civil war. and in that particular case, and also about people who were then, which interesting to me to find this term is used in that period of time, people who read the guerrillas and also took matters of law into their own hands and the kansas plains, where people from missouri but going to kansas and make sure people could vote against the slavery -- couldn't that he can free constitution. this is a time, in other words, this is a time of great change, tremendous change. technological terms of the law, people's attitudes towards one another and the belief that precedes this period, the certainly culminates and you could change everything. you could change your poetry.

you could change your prose. i remember at my dickinson. she is of course the freshest voice in american literary chair even today. you think of herman melville changing the shape of the novel. he changed it so much in fact in 1858, 1851 "moby dick" was published he torpedoed his career and went from being a bestseller right to security. but he believed he could change even if they know how to lead change for a little bit, but didn't like what the change is going to bring. he himself has gone to the talking community. as a time of tremendous exit tatian, huge expert patient and great failure as well. the expansiveness of hopefulness have agreed. let's not forget bottled

american greed among which is very much part of this. in one of many things i learned while doing this focuses the gilded age in the 70s because it's not ticketed the dog. the narrative nightmare as allstate to you about. so as i suggested, i came to this book and away from two earlier books. one i've written a biography of hawthorne as nick mentioned it to me, hop learned was a very abusive 19th century figure because it seemed as though he lived in a 20th century. in a couple of things about him were so out of keeping with our stereotype. for example, he met abraham lincoln. lincoln had more important things to do than meet a delegation from massachusetts,

something hofburg found very amusing us to stay in a grim sort of way. he later wrote that hawthorne was the homeland and. soccer is the handsomest man. and sorry, like it it was the home homeliest homeliest minis ever seen and he was wearing shabby slippers and he met the delegation from massachusetts, but nonetheless he liked him for his rice and kind look. this is hot. presa seemed to me because he mustn't forget what it is your closest friends was franklin pearce. he may have forgotten that because franklin pearce is not exactly a conjure with particular days. but he was a southern sympathizer, which is all you need to know for the purposes of this talk to think of hawthorne being friends with franklin pearce and of course what i used to like to say would be as if jd

salinger were friends with george bush. examples got a little dated. i read a book about dickinson, her relationship to a man, which is fascinating to me because it again with this idea of the strange historical moment when you have the reclusive poet or axons who never crosses her father's house or grounds first for anybody or anything, enter into a 25 -- 24, 25 your wrench it with man named thomas hankinson bost is now, except of course name, but none had his own time, famous in his own time is urgent abolitionists and so fervent was he that he was the leader of the first federally authorized group of lack troops during the civil war, long before the massachusetts 54th,

which was stationed in of all places south carolina. so in that pare i was very intrigued by this particular. , wanted to know much more about it, wanted to do it just as timeout was one of my first questions to myself is how can i be responsible to the complications, the pain, the sorrow, the death toll of the great sense of liberation, a great sense, how can i responsible to all of those historical events and many of those people who gave everything to make the country a better place and who also gave everything to keep the country from being a better place? how can it be responsible to those events and people and issues and yet tell the story in a different way, a way that

actually may say not just another boring book about this particularly not boring time, but nonetheless. and so what i decided to do to broach the boat as i said before is if i were a visitor from another planet very far away and then i had just stomped out of the 1850s, 1860s, 1870s. the first thing you want to do if you're from another planet is read the newspapers. well, at least that's what i wanted to do. i thought, how would i make sense of a newspaper from 1850 -- 1867, 1864 and on and on. in other words, let me put in a different way. if you were to come from another planet and sit down to read the times, i thought i understand everything on the front page.

but to give you an example, of course there's a tremendous and terrible violence in egypt going on at the same time as they see that headline, they say charges against two traders for lack of oversight and then i see finding poetry on the pace and later in the canvas, using the where am i., what planet is this? apology and wikileaks. what is even not? so what i was wondering about is what sense would i make of these juxtapositions as they literally did read them. the questions that come to my mind, for example, would be something like what did the rise of the mormon church have to do with the lincoln douglas debate. they must be a connection between now and. i don't know if the connection is between them, but it's my job

to find out and create a pass between these two are among many events, just as a coming attraction they seem to me the connection between them is the idea of popular sovereignty and that was the issue of whether you can vote in an almost liberatory status if you can vote whatever you want in or out of the law. take for example slavery at one extreme. take it another string and i'm not saying varmints are necessarily involved in this, the taken another name, polygamy. we want to vote men, why not? if we want to vote in the ownership of other people why not and you realize that's what the debate was about in the underlying issue is popular sovereignty, which also says to me the issue is ultimately slavery. similarly, take some of the carrot or so people i mentioned.

forgive me, i called and characters not because they think of them as caricatures, but as people who populate a kind of almost being scape. what did pt barnum had to do with abraham lincoln and what to deeter of them have to do with walt whitman? well, easy lincoln and whitman because the minute with lincoln and wrote a wonderful apology shortly after lincoln was killed. pt barnum i'm not so sure. whitney mr. pt barnum of a witchery after all. whitman may not agree with me and i see there's some here, but i don't mean any disrespect. do i contradict myself? of course i contradict myself. that contain multitudes, which is exactly what they did. but it's a spiritualism before the war?

i can understand after the war why you'd want to contact the recently departed. there were so many. spiritualism started in 1848, probably before, but i think of 1848 as upstate new york. there are two sisters who share knocks and they begin to interpret those knocks and they can actually tell you and put you in communication with loved ones who have lost or perhaps not even want, but usually loved ones. many of them, especially the quakers who went to the fox sisters would find out there was no flavor and having, which was here. [laughter] so you see what i mean in that context. what i mean as i was even bringing together various

questions for various items of various people, various event trying to figure out what their relationship had to do with one another. they may not be answered is the people that have different answers. what did reconstruction in the south after the war have to do with the settlement of the west in the indian war? lo and behold he realized the war is so rare, but the not over and that is some indie think about as well because appomattox does not necessarily symbol of the end of fighting. many of the military come to think of sherman or sheraton who were soldiers during the war went to the last and became part of the army movement there. so asking these kinds of questions come to see in these juxtapositions, coming in from

another planet am looking at these disconnect events or people assert jested to me a different kind of path perhaps that i could take through this material and also that they been considered necessary labor her sing for you what happened up old run on the nicest opinion that she went to call it, i thought i would think about how was it covered? who covered it? how did they get their? did they write them at night in the tent and then have somebody write it to tom or he quickly? those are the kinds of questions that intrigue me and that got me to thinking about the journalists who covered the war, not just as they set the photographer for that particular context, i began to wonder, why was it that many of the photographers we associate with

the war, like alexander gardner and timothy o'sullivan, two major ones that you see again in any discussion of the civil war, why did they go west after the war? that's where they went and they did landscaping team with no people and not generally. generally often not. so there must be a reason for that. that struck me really so interesting. so i wanted to come at those events, people, historical skin sons that we are familiar with. mccain's assassination. we know lincoln was assassinated. i am not going to tell you otherwise. but what i will tell you when

lincoln was assassinated, there were a group of guerrillas, speaking of guerrillas from missouri who are headed east. they were headed to washington and they are coming to kill the president. makes you wonder. the interest of if they were to drop to get adult are much further than -- i don't know, but they didn't get fired before they heard the names and that was the end of that. it was cointreau admits case you're interested, and unsavory group of people and i try not to make very many value judgments. i don't another race want to ignore, as i said, these kind of angles or different angles. that is done talking the assassination per se, i'm also going to tell you about the conspirators who are executed

because or i suppose this is a strange claim to fame, the first woman to be executed in the united states was one of the lincoln conspirators. her name was mary survived and that several people who are part of the military tribunal who called for this execution, they had been president andrew johnson for a stay of execution. and he said in a misquote too. he denies tristani said not enough women had been hanging in this war. so she was in fact hanged. i'll play the story about bookie james, rather if henry, alice and william who went to florida after the war. went to florida to start a plantation where he would pay

black laborers and create a new perk farm that didn't work out because the great backlash against the free biochemists out. and so i wanted to talk these kinds of stories also partly because i believe history is in david and it's often embodied in people at this particular time who are a side effect confident, confrontational, accentuate, off into the night and you may or may not compromise. that's one of the books that titles and who attend some redefining the american nation and also doing that, i wanted to cleanse myself as much as possible the perceived wisdom. issa things we we know about. but there's number of things we think we know about, particularly me who always says

she's been miseducated and in that case, one such example would be the person who you may have met most recently in the spielberg lincoln movie played by tommy lee jones. he did not seem like the creature editor perdita bucher for birth of a nation, where he was dreadfully caricatured. but it was that caricature of thaddeus stevens is a devilish creature with a club foot, which was supposed to be signed double that i learned about when i studied history. someone recently said to me, you know, who tidier history? southerners? it was actually part of a whole school of sudan reconstruction of the dining school and dining had been a professor at columbia

and a famous book of his published in 1907 influence the nation. the thaddeus stevens, one of the interesting things that can summarize for you, when he was sick and dying and knew he was going to die, he had a cemetery plot that he brought near lancaster, pennsylvania. when he realized that cemetery was not integrated, was segregated, no black men or women allowed company gave a thought and made sure he was buried elsewhere and had written on his tomb sound and that is your attention. he said i would post in this quiet and secluded plot not for solitudes, but finding other cemeteries who is limited charters such as chosen and able to illustrate the principles which i had tainted for his long

life, the quality of man before his creator. it's very moving actually that he would make those choices and that he would want that in perpetuity. so i'm not particular scent, as i said, i am cleansing itself of certain kinds of prejudices and i want to expand this particular. two other choices they briefly want to mention. they both resigned in the beginning of the book. many fewer riders and one of the things that always ask about is how do i begin, why do i begin which is another question. these are the questions i don't want later. in any event, my first thought in the first chapter begins with a filibustering expedition to cuba. filibuster at a particular term

did not mean people stand up in the house or senate, and it's been a particularly corny davis and talk in a time. if they were that described position, illegal expedition went to various countries like cuba to the teeth and also funded by former congressman and particular series of expedition at the intention liberated from the spanish bug day of pigs and best of all they could a slave state. what was interesting about this year and sander that one could take a long these more neutrality and disco and say i'm bringing you home so you could

wear it like a pad and uncle sam's pocket. now, that's not what interested me although that's pretty interesting. we never think of the book that contains the middle section -- a large middle section beginning to cuba, but in a sense it does because it's not just about the support. is this outfit is the extension of this out. and then i thought that's fine, but why not begin even earlier because after all, john quincy adam, the last third of remnant of the founding father, who was the president himself, who is now in the house of representatives in 1848, he died in the house of representatives. he died as if it's,, serving his country and he died after saying no because emily dickinson of

course the wildest word we have in the language insanities betting treat being general from the mexican war and more grass than metal. he knew what was going to have to weather forecast was gloom because he didn't do the anti-anti-slavery in the deferred very long time and he said no. i thought that was rather marvelous because at the end of one error in the courses they match the beginning of another area, an era of resisting change, an era of ecstasy in all senses of the word, ecstasy of freedom, ecstasy of happiness, ecstasy enraptured, ecstasy is

delirium. so it was a way to begin to understand for me what those were going to come to mean and what it meant to change the law or put oneself against the law or to say no in so many cultural and political ways in which i send is where i went to the view from my remarks and actually just read you very briefly revealed being of the book, which is straight after quincy adams --. the president was in the future would also be a time of delirium, violence and refusal. refusal to listen and finer create the heart, that compromise. refusal to do so great. refusal to change and refusal to

imagine what it might be like to be someone else. john quincy adams knew how to save no but the negative could be a flexible,, fanatical, particularly with a better tool than compromise on compromises of was so i'm just to be meaningless, particularly if it invaded matters of human life in dignity. in short, america was an ecstatic nation, smitten with itself and prosperity and in love with the land from which he drew britches, exciting from one to another in which citizens felt entitled coming if there is a problem, hh, a block. because of that he forecast with doom the price the country would have to pay. some of the people are so

familiar, lincoln and his grief stricken face, the confederate general george pickett charged at gettysburg the elegance and battle weary property late, cigar smoke in an oddly gentle s. grant. the richness and variety of america lies during this time of confidence in christ is in its consolidation, bring it to purpose other events, other care areas, the schooner pearl as it tried to flee washington d.c. with a boatload of fugitive slaves. today, hungry women ran through the streets of richmond, begging for bread during the war. susan anthony writing on wagon without springs through kansas to secure the ballot for women. exuberant men such as walt whitman and pt barnum embracing her but melville, the powerful editor jean jean the execution

of the lincoln conspirators in the head of the andersen prison in the impeachment of a president. not emily dickinson, chief red cloud, new york, fired by soon-to-be disgraced ticketed and the grandeur whether through men such as clarence king who possess nature in the wild and there was the war, the terrible war and all the while before, during and after, the idea of compromise which was being bandied about, debated enough in hot response buffer the country's failure to face its fatal flaw for a selfishness ensures sidedness and reconciliation at the end of reconstruction that opened a new

era beyond the scope of this book of jim crow. i now present to say say that people should or should not done, which is not to suggest and without judgment or certain astonishment still. the principles and gas, compromises next to one another, perhaps he can emphasize that the choices people may or may not thought they had given within which they lived in a very mixed motives become to understand if we do put through a class darkly. in the middle of an 18th century, when america's look within, not without coming to us and no salable intensity and imagination and exhibiting and spirited community and frequently cruel or. there is also a seemingly a shibboleth, most fanatic west for redirects preston's ibook eating ways for the possession

of things, man and the last 2%. in many instances, there is a passion, sometimes self-righteous, sometimes of advocating for doing. , even if that could include a forest sake and in its name, acts of murder. thank you. [applause] i will take questions. see you to choose. >> i am interested in clarence king, a man with a very big secret. could you say more about him? >> i can say much more about him in fact be a he became very

interesting to me. the secret to it diluted here is the fact that clarence king was a very young and. he didn't go to the war, but rather went west and surveyed the west and became the first chief of the united states surveying expedition, was very well known, brilliant man at the delhi. a cause man, a good man, a man who wanted to be a writer aggregate very popular and i think very good book called mountaineering and this year, nevada. a man who a man who loves the west kept a secret mse groupwise he was the common law husband of a black woman in new york city or in queens i think.

he told her -- she gave hurried alias. she never knew he was clarence king and his friend who included notables like henry adam, they never knew that clarence king had the secret marriages several children. so he's interesting. the reason he's in this book is not just because of that interesting nowadays is because he loves the last and he's there who takes it to the last and seems to be in relative rescued and beauty and mount this anomaly keeps a secret, but actually begins to exploit the west who for his another people's riches, brilliant scientist arthur paper of you not think i pronounce it,

catastrophic as an in the 1870s and he was talking about you is positing a different view of evolution, different from darwinism on one hand and different from atticus the sioux had done. what he talks about w-whiskey tester fee and how catastrophes change the course of how geology, not the mountain, how things develop. it was so interesting to me that here he was the man who hated the war somehow and summaries and a catastrophe in scientific terms, also is still dealing with the wind 1870s had that air america was success by all standards and yet has the secret life, which seemed to me than to give us a sense of really what reconstruction was all about.

it was about a westward movement. it was about denial. it was about secrecy. it was about rapacious greed. was about brilliance and achievement and it was ultimately, it is about failure. >> thank you. throughout the wars, vietnam, the pope was talking to, but the first iraq war, the babies being taken out of the incubators sector fund possibly kuwait into iraq and the weapons of mass action. you look at a lot of different group and they are different groups that brought us into those waters and their incentives. the group says she spoke to. what were the appliances use of going across boundaries might not have? they are pushing towards war and

the conflict in shaping the forces of history to come. >> well, in one sense and it would be very clip of me, what my aunt there has to be though as everyone was participating in what you call the shaping of history for the move towards war. it's very confusing in many ways and humbling to be busy now and as you mentioned, the recipient of many, many words and then looking back and looking at a warlike the civil war and wondering how did it happen, why did it happen, who made it happen s. talking about this this afternoon in an interview, one of the things he realized his many people seem not to know what they were talking about.

not that they were brilliant. not that they weren't educated in many cases, but they didn't know what were meant. they didn't have that experience. they didn't have that imagination for some reason. so when you talk about who brought the war or what kinds of cross sections of groups, you have people in the south, people in the north. you have really almost everyone except the exceptions would be more sealand had to go through who are sort of part of it in the exceptions would have been perhaps strangely enough -- not strangely enough, but the quakers certainly because they are pacifists. whether it's somebody like a man isaac pose. the quakers, william lloyd garrison who was also believed very strongly in nonviolent, but

he who wrote civil disobedience and the strange person i would put msn may disagree somebody like stephen douglas, when he realized what was happening in the election of 1860 began to really work very hard to keep this from succeeding and actually set airlink at the lincoln maturation and had event, he diapers shortly after that, probably would have been a force for something very positive, more positive than the racism he is associated with during the next year. thanks. >> ramdac, how does you figure out what to leave out? >> so many times, you know, i felt on one hand every sentence in the book had i was sure, a

show for the company you know, written about it. and then when you have someone like lincoln, the presidential library dedicated to him. sadistic huge amount of his leaving out all of the time. when i decided to leave out was the sort of two categories. one said earlier wanted to be responsible to history i felt i had been contracted to tell. in other words, i can't leave out certain things that i mentioned. i'm not going to leave out the gettysburg address, for example because it's such an historical, important moment for language, for the war, for so many things, for lincoln himself. so i had to fall into that category. the sacking categories that had to hope neri story that i wanted to name me.

it had to have some kind of dramatic movement. it had to move the drama. it had to does the narrative forward and if it didn't come it really did have to go on the cutting room floor. believe me, the floor was littered with people, would have either didn't get an good those are the two witness has values. i was very grateful to the editor who basically never balked at the page number and didn't say you can't do this, they sentence. i kept doing whatever i was he made made to the story, which was why the book is not 20 pages or something like that, you know. the war was so very. the expurgated version.

yes. >> why do you think new york is such a hot bed of religion spiritualism in that. >> is a good question. i've often asked myself and i'm somewhat familiar with the area where new york was a hot day. for one thing, anyone who's been to the area in upstate new york from i suppose he recuse to the left, which is to say last, which is to say familiar with that particular area knows that it's very different from downstate. to my mind always seems to me much more like the midwest and then seemed like the west in many senses agricultural. there is a sense of a tremendous need for some game that was in the congregation or unitarianism

in the street place world in the sense could create the same thing you could speak to god directly through various means our various groups that became open in that territory because we somewhat open territories. i would be off-the-cuff answer because it's a fascinating question and i don't know anybody who's really not what i could >> in the course of writing the book, did you change the preconceptions? dgx area feelings you had concerning this. >> well, again, one change your

opinion unless i went from mass confusion to a lot less confusion. i don't know if that's an opinion, but it always seemed like a blog to me. not to put too eloquent a point on it. reconstruction was always a mystery to me because i was never comfortable with the way was handed down to me. everything there was new and what changed wasn't that i went from certain knowledge to different knowledge. it was morris as i went from no understand the two what i am comfortable with you some understanding down of the reasons for the successes and failures of rick section. that was one thing and that's very to me. for some reason i find it very satisfying because i learned things about political parties and what happened in the republican party. the issue of carpetbaggers and

scalawags and terrible radicals is not the issue at all of what happened. another scene that was a happy surprise was sacrificed a biscuit to call, forgive me, about abraham lincoln. i know he's an icon. i just saw somebody's eyebrows raised because i thought he can't be that good. nobody's that good. he can be that brilliant, that eloquent, that's sagacious. he can't be those things and i found out that he was, that he really was and that was kind of chilling and very hum lang. as of the two of the many, many seem. >> one of the things that's so exciting about the book is as you pointed out, ratings are as familiar to us and that you make them fresh and reading a lot of

stories that are familiar to us. so the challenge for you as a writer is how do you take something that the gettysburg address, how do you make it fresh for you and for us? the second part of the question is what stories did you come across to you especially excited about every new to you that you knew had to be in this book are going to eliminate and expand our understanding and give it different characters are different settings or some other understanding of this. >> let me take the matter of the example of the gettysburg address because that's interesting to me because as a writer, researcher and historian, whatever i had lunch with this particular book i'm thinking there's gettysburg looming ahead, what am i going to do? went to gettysburg, book after book and gettysburg. i'm not a military historian

when my husband drops my books r-romeo us -- not always but often does the guns pointed the wrong way. i should not make that. [laughter] but i get them right. but when it came to gettysburg, culminating the address, i remember the conscious decision and you never know if it's going to work. i thought i'd begin, which is something i don't believe in, counterfactual. i began with a different rhetorical device because i'm always committed, especially when he or she is knows it's coming. so when the rhetorical device was had there been no gettysburg address, you know, we may not. i use that device for the chapter had there been done. such right or whet your appetite

for the coming of the address, which i don't spend much time on. i wanted you to think about what it's like to live inside a time and think you would have known this address was coming. the battle actually started by accident. had this not existed, that's how i would decide in this particular instance is and that was fun for me, exciting for me because each event or person was a challenge about how i would then present it to a reader in a fresh kind of play about the different and new revelations, there are so many. actually when i finished a certain section of the book i thought how i can move westward.

and i realized i couldn't move westward. the question is how do i set the west at? i don't want to set it up as a place where we are going to destroy another peoples. i want to set it up for what it also represents to people, great beauty, tremendous natural resources not just in terms of goals or copper or trees that can turn into paper, but because of the grand expanse of sheer physical beauty, which of course involved the makers of people. ..