on c-span2 -- is taking a look back at authors, books and publishing news. you can watch all the programs from the past 15 years online at booktv.org. >> ann arbor on booktv with the help of our comcast cable partners. for the next 90 minutes, we'll explore the history and literary scene of this city of about 115,000 that is home to the university of michigan. coming up, we'll learn about the poet, robert hayden. >> all his poems are written in different styles, different voices, different forms and techniques. >> we'll see a moon you script from galileo when he discovered the moons of jupiter. >> but he decided to keep track of that little piece of the sky. so he watched jupiter every night for a week. >> and meet others who help us understand the roots of the area. we begin our special look with local author don fakeer, and we learn about the youngest governor in michigan's history. ..

>> in 1830, and he was appointed as a territorial secretary at 19, which is a record probably that will never be broken. another record that certainly will never be broken was 1835 when at age 24, he was elected the first states governor. and in time the people of michigan and the people of detroit came to trust him as, even though a young person, a

very skilled and dedicated leader. well, mason was regarded first of all by the people in his own territory as a bit of an interloper, just coming in from kentucky. when the logical thing for jackson to do what it into a point in michigan person, a detroit politician for the number two position in the territory. but because mason had made such an impression on jackson himself, they had met and jackson thought this young man had a lot of confidence in itself and a vision, so that i will appoint him. the strip of land that was dispute between michigan and ohio actually dated back to the northwest ordinance when that ordinance determined that the southern boundary of the soon to be state michigan would be a straight line from the southern end of lake michigan to where it

intersected lake erie. nobody knew for sure where the southern end of lake michigan was. and went ohio became a state, they slipped into the constitution a provision calling for a slightly angled line, their northern boundary, so that it would include the future port of toledo, which was going to be the northern terminus of a series of canals that ohio was building. all of its investors were ohio people so the governor of ohio had to protect this investment. so they made sure that their northern boundary included toledo. after two surveys were taken, one by michigan and won by ohio, the one by michigan determined that toledo was in michigan. the one by ohio determined it was in ohio. thing settle down and michigan people moved into that strip of

contested land organized into townships, collected taxes. but then in 1835 things all came to a head when governor lucas said i'm going to protect that land, and governor mason said, i'm going to protect that land. and they organize their two states -- ohio militia and the territorial militia, and actually into a shooting war over 470 square miles of basically swamp and farmland that michigan claimed legally it owned. the war then proceeded in a series of skirmishes throughout 1835. nobody was killed, so if you're going of a war this is the kind of work you want. it ended up being brokered by congress in 1836 whereby they said, congress said that michigan, if you give up your claim to the toledo strip, as

compensation we will give you the entire western two-thirds of the upper peninsula of michigan. that's how michigan ended up with the upper peninsula. and it wasn't until 1837, finally, that michigan was officially welcomed as a state. when mason was elected governor he had already participated in helping to write in michigan's first constitution. that constitution called for a superintendent of public construction to oversee the schools but this had never been done in any state in the union up to that time. that constitution called for a prohibition against slavery which was pretty progressive at that time, considering that the civil war was still roughly 30 years down the road. mason was so far ahead of his time, he called for an appropriation to build the sea

locks up in sault ste. marie and for that he got laughed at by no less a statesman than henry clay, the great henry clay of kentucky who said in effect why don't we just also but on the face of the moon? but all those many years later when michigan and detroit became known as the arsenal of democracy, michigan mason to thank for that vision of building those locks which could then get those ships bringing all that iron ore and minerals down to the downstate steel mills where they could make the planes and tanks and everything else to help defeat germany in world war ii. we have to mason to thank for that. the unfortunate thing is his timing, because as soon as mason became governor, the national financial panic of 1837 hit. and michigan was one of its chief the dems.

because mason had outlined all these expensive plans for development, hoping that he could fund it with good money. but then the banks failed, in part because of president jackson's policy, in part because of economic conditions at that time. and so mason was left holding the bag, and he soon developed a quite coherent set of enemies who attacked him for bringing michigan into the condition that it was. when mason ran for reelection, he just barely one. and by that time his opponents were really on his case and accused him of being a demagogue and taking the state and enriching himself at the state's expense. so that in effect, they ruined nation in the eyes of michigan people who, in their shortsightedness, forgot all the

things that mason had done prior to them, which was set into place all of our institution, the educational institutions, get us on the path to statehood, that sort of thing, and they forgot. so mason eventually had to leave michigan in virtual disgrace. mason was elegant. he had a wonderful virginia, kentucky demeanor about him, which at first may have set him off to michigan frontiersman and some kind of very lofty individual, but he understood michigan politics and how it worked. he became a man of the people. and they loved him so much for that, so by the time he died already at age 31, by the time they brought him back, his body back to michigan in 1905, enough years had rolled by so that mason was regarded as a great statesman and a person who had

sent michigan off on the right path right from the start. >> on our recent visit to ann arbor, michigan, booktv stopped into literati bookstore to talk with owners hillary and mike gustafson on bookselling in the digital age. >> literati bookstore is a general independent bookstore selling new titles in downtown ann arbor, michigan. we focus on literary fiction and the social sciences, poetry, literati bookstore is literary -- latin. i work for simon & schuster for about five years. so my job was done out of the thousands titles, to pick up announce i thought were appropriate for independent bookstores. >> help introduce introduce the culture and books to me. when we were living in brooklyn, we visited bookstores, and in

new york, and we saw how they were successful. they were just part of our livelihood. >> we always say, we would have conversations about what makes bookstores work, you know, fantasize the opening of our own bookstore. but kind of watched with what was happening to bookstores, watched the evolving. when the other independent bookstore in downtown closed in 79, and then when borders announced they were closing in 2011, we were like how is there no downtown bookstore selling the titles in an arbor which is a college town, a huge literary culture here. so that's warlike what if we did that. what if we open a store? >> hillary clinton -- were up in ann arbor issue group on the north side and she grew up going to this. i have family here.

we had always wanted to move back to michigan and start a bookstore. >> that was the time orders was closing, and bookstores so much was changing within the publishing landscape. but from what i could see from the bookstores i worked with, it was at this rebound of local shops that were smaller in scale, and i think that also ties in to the local shop movement that's been happening for a few years. all of our bookshelves are from borders. number one is what they called it corporately because it was the one based here in ann arbor where borders started. we bought the shelves i should before he even signed the lease here. like, we're going to open up a bookstore and we don't know where, but it will happen and we really wanted the shelves from borders. and so we bought them and stored

them until we were ready to move in your. it's really, really great. i mean, now part of borders be part of who we are because borders is so much ann arbor. >> we have people that come in and they say, oh, i've seen these books shelves before. they will say it in an emotional way because they had a solid connection with borders. we are just really lucky to have these in the store, sort of a piece of ann arbor that we can keep going. >> providing the space people can meet and discuss ideas in an open setting, and bring people together that otherwise wouldn't come together is the importance of a brick and mortar store. >> customers will come in and buy a book and goes on buying this because i don't want you to close. they have seen borders close. facing others close. >> and a number of customers say they shop at the store because they want to be able to be part of their downtown. >> there's so much emphasis these days on algorithms

providing people with -- companies using algorithms to provide customers with what they think they want. and it loses some of the whimsical nature when you rely on those algorithms, and i think a bookstore can offer those types of surprises. >> some independent bookstores sell e-books on their website. we chose not to because want to focus on the printed book and the written word. our store is a kennedy center instead of just a store that sells a product. and i think that's what a different jesus from being an online retailer or e-books in general. they each have a place within the market. print books and e-books, i think there will always be a place for both. >> reading books, it's an individual process, a solitary

process, an isolated process. but it's also a collaborative process. that's why book clubs are so successful and that's why writing groups are so successf successful. >> and bookstores, too, because we see people coming all the time, strangers will be looking at a book and some will say, oh, that book in your hand, that's a great book. you should read the. it's fun to see this people who otherwise wouldn't be chatting with each other kind of come together around an idea or an offer or kind of writing spent other customers coming inside i have digital burnout. i stare at the computer all day long, and the long, and lastly i want to do for i go to sleep is looking at a tablet or look at another screen. i just want the soft feel of a paper book purchased for my local independent bookstore. there's a thrill i think about having something that exists in the world that cannot be deleted, cannot be changed.

it is there and we try to embrace that with our typewriter logo and offering out to public a typewriter. some people, and a type really positive messages or quotes, or just general salutation. of the people come in on a saturday night and tied the really dark stuff. is the point of allowing someone to come in and type something that isn't going to go into the black hole of twitter or the internet or something. >> and sort of the reason we chose the typewriter as our logo is with the typewriter your words to appear on a page and there's no delete key. you have to be thoughtful about what you're writing. that's the kind of writing we want to support in the store is very thoughtful, engaged writing. that you don't find all the time. i think the future of bookselling is independent bookstores, is what i would say.

they really are the place where, you know, incubators of ideas and places where writers can practice their craft and grow. because the booksellers and independent bookstores are reading so much and interacting with writers and providing space for new ideas to come across. i think that really is the future of bookselling. >> on our recent visit to ann arbor, michigan, located talk to library and curator peggy daub to recover the creation of papyri books and showed us a letter stating from 200 a.d. >> from michigan p. 46, papyri manuscript of the letters of st. paul from paul the apostle, by jesus christ and god the father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers with

me to the assemblies. greetings to you, and peace from god the father and our lord jesus christ who gave himself for our sins in order to save us from the present according to the will of god our father to him glory for ever and ever, amen. this manuscript is famous because it's the earliest known copy of this part of the bible. there are many caching things about peace 46. all start with the fact that it was produced as a think of a codex form rather than a papyri scroll. these two leaders which would've been next to each other show that. you can see by the way the damage is metered that these two pages were part of the same book form. they are written on papyri. papyri is made from the plant

that grows along the banks of the nile, and so the papyri you find comes from egypt, not all because they did come from other parts of the ancient world as well. it was created as a book. we originally believed that it had 104 leaves. the university of michigan holds 30 of the leaves. the library in dublin, ireland, holds 56 of the lease. so 86 of the 104 still exists. the reason they can estimate how many leaves there were to begin with is because each leaf has a page number at the top and these are created by folding them together. it would be like having stacks of 52 pieces of papyri and folding them and creating a book out of it. and so because they know some of the leaves were still attached to each other along the folds,

and so they know the numbering of one in one part of the book in one any other part of the book and found that they could estimate how far from the beginning the person was so they knew how far from the and the bottom one was. p. 46 contains most of paul's letters to the early churches. so it's part of the new testament is part of the new testament that is documentary in a way because it's not telling the story of jesus life, but it is factual correspondence from paul to these early churches. it's the earliest known copy. there's no sensational new book of the bible there, like some of the dead sea scrolls, for instance. and so it's actually interesting that the text was pretty stable. in the text we find in his copy that is the oldest known, is still pretty much as it's come down to us today. the are a few rearrangements of

things, but it really is not sensationalistic which really speeds to the care with which it was copied and the stability that the text had for all of those hundreds and hundreds of years. the papyrus is written in greek. and unlike modern greek, ancient greek was written with no spaces between words and no dissension between capital and lowercase letters. we don't know the exact date of the 46 because it's not dated. we do have things like tax rolls or case reports from ancient egypt and a very carefully have dates written on them, but this doesn't. it's more in the category of literature. so the way experts tried to guess what day it probably is from is from the nature of the object itself, and especially from its handwriting. based upon its handwriting, a destiny made of the time it came from.

i guess is probably somewhere between 180 a.d. and 250 a.d. it's not from a lifetime of paul himself, but it's as close as we can get to paul's lifetime, having a copy of the letters he wrote. p. 46 was not found as a result of archaeological digs. it was -- we don't know the actually found it. it came on the market, and so it is affected by the fact that it has no context in archaeology. we don't know like what layer of strategy game from. we don't know what other objects or books might have been near it that would help us date it and places in to that of struggle conflict. unfortunately, it was found by someone who wasn't a scholar or wasn't interested in preserving that kind of scholarly evidence, and as i said, so what. it's really interesting, it was sold in pieces over a period of years.

and even the 30 least that we have, we got some of them in like 1931 and the rest of them two years later. the library collected some over a period of years until they finally had 56. i think that in the '30s people kept thinking, that whole codex will eventually be found. but it never was. so another interesting thing about p. 46, and this has much more to do with book production than bible production, is that describes the road were professional and when they came to the end of the book, say they are finishing up one book and beginning to do the book of hebrews, they wrote here how many lines they had written in the previous book. that have to do with how much the material might be sold for our how much they might be paid for rather than the text itself. and they do it here and this is

another example where you come to the end and you're starting fallacious and cancer cell side note under the text that gives the number of lines in that part of the epistles to it was clearly a battle. there were three publications in a row. the first one was this michigan publishing the 10 least they had at the time and then chester said we have some. so another edition was published with the leaves they had at the time. and then the third edition was published with michigan saint, we have more leaves. we have 30 leaves now. so that was published, ma again, the instruments being included and it was after that that chester beatty said we have 20

more. server seems to be some kind of competition between the two. but it's actually very nice because now some of the leaves are on the side of the atlantic, some were on the other. people can see them both. and, of course, people can see them online. the papyri are one of the first parts of the library's collection and they're readily available. >> as part of booktv's visit to ann arbor, michigan, we stopped at the university of michigan to learn about universities joseph a. labadie election. the oldest research collection of radical history in the country. curator julie herrada showed us around. >> joseph a. labadie was a labor organizer and anarchist from popeye michigan born in 1850. he got involved in anarchism by reading a newspaper called liberty, which is published out of austin by a man named benjamin tucker perkins and influential newspaper at that time in 1870s and 1880s and

he wrote a letter to the publisher asking and talking about his ideals on anarchism and was admitted to the letter was published in the newspaper and they became lifelong friends after that. his views were more like individualism. you mind your business and all my mind combat kind of thing. nobody should be coerced into doing things they wanted as long as you're not hurting anyone else. it's a unique collection that represents radical and special protest history of the united states and abroad. it's an international collection. so we don't stop at any borders for collecting. we collect materials going back from the 19th century until the present. and it's heavily used and it's very popular and it's growing all the time. so have a portrait of joseph a. labadie and was taken in detroit when he was around 30. this is a sample of one of his booklets that he bound himself to he did his own sewing on bindery and his little hand

machine that he had created and he did his own printing in his own shot. this is a sample of one of the pamphlets. many of the pamphlets he made were bound with scraps of paper that he had length around because he couldn't afford good bindings in the. so here i have some sheet music from various time periods. this is the international which is a very famous radical song that is known throughout the world and published in many, many languages. and this is one of the additions of that sheet music. and we have, there's many different kinds of sheet music, so this is an earlier one about, about unions. much of our earlier collections are about live -- labor unions.

joseph a. labadie was not a member of the i.w.w. but the very first curator of the joseph a. labadie election was a member. she became the first curator in the early 1920s but because of her work with one of the best collections of i.w.w. literature in the world. we have this post which i really like a lot. he kept us in his pocketbook and uses the club so he can wear diamonds. by organizing right we can give him a space by which to earn an honest living. we have the action. this is the envelope that his ashes were distributed in to all the different union locals around the world. of his body was cremated and the ashes split up. a letter came around with this envelope of ashes thing, any local can distribute these ashes but please write us and tell us what to do with and so have a record. >> we have an interesting collection, a court case of city street who was convicted of desecration of the flag in 1966.

when james meredith had gone to mississippi to actively participate in the civil rights struggle down there, he was murdered. sidney street was very upset by this, and in new york city he got word that this happened to everybody knew about it. there was a big protests, demonstrations all over the place. he burned a flag in protest, saying that if that happened to james meredith, that we don't need a flag in this country. so he was arrested and convicted of desecration of the flag pic eventually the case went all the way up to the supreme court and it fell on his side then as a first amendment case in his favor. so he had freedom of speech to burning the flag. so part of the collection includes the burned flag, raymond's of the burned a flag that were used as evidence against them in the case.

and you can see that this is the court document behind it. this is a flyer protesting nixon and the vietnam war that was held at the university of california at berkeley. and it says demonstrations to protest the racist and fascist attitude of tricky dick nixon gang, and also handwritten on the site, freaky we. huey newton was the head of the black panther party at the time he was in prison. and free bobby, was bobby seale, the minister of defense for the black panther party. bobby was arrested several times were various things, one of the things that he was famous for was the chicago eight trial. during the democratic national convention in chicago in 1968, there was a massive protest. eight people who were leaders of different organizations at that time were rounded up and convicted were put on trial for conspiracy to overthrow the government. and bobby seale was one of those

people. and one of my favorite things is this flyer here, said bobby free by letting him speak. because he tried to act as his own attorney during the trial, and the judge, the judge would not allow him to act as his own attorney. to bobby kept trying to speak on his own behalf, refusing legal help. they actually eventually bound and gagged him into court to a chair. they tied his hands and he taped his mouth, and he had to sit there, and it was an incredible scene of oppression and racism in that courtroom, so eventually he was separated from the trial and he had his own trial eventually, but he was part of the original eight. ..

and be made accessible to the world for free. so that's what i want people to know is we are preserving days for everybody to use and it's free at open to the pub the. >> a single leaf document, which consists of a letter and no southerners of jupiter britain by galileo in the early 17th century. booktv learned about the manuscript on a manuscript to the university.

>> welcome to the special collections library at the university of michigan library and show you some incredibly special thanks we have. the first thing i'm going to be talking about is the manuscript by galileo galilee, a very notable scientists, often credited with inventing the telescope. he didn't really infante. what he took was the telescope and improved it. so he could see things that no one else could be. what i'm going to show you first is the manuscript at the university of michigan owns. this manuscript is just one page. it's written only on one side and it is basically a piece of scratch paper. to me, it wasn't some name that he carefully thought out. it wasn't a spanish project. it's really where you can see is my network. the manuscript itself is divided by line in the center. that line represents two

different types use this piece of paper. the first half, the top half of the piece of paper he used in the summer of 1609. apparently he had heard there was a man from the netherlands, who is trying to have an instrument maker himself. he could certainly build one of those. and so he did. he sat down and built one. he did it in one night. they've taken longer than that. in fact, you don't build a telescope and large things at least three times. he got better and better. he started making them within a few months. he was making telescopes that could magnify 20 to 30 times. after he had the first telescope, a man who is a great entrepreneur route to the of dynasties just that he could share this for a price of

course. this piece of paper is where he wrote down his first ideas for the latter. it is his draft ideas and starts out with very flowery language. i'm your great servant and so on. and he describes he made this eyeglasses he calls it that could very useful. as for business and for military application. with this you could see the enemy at cu, for instance. can see the sales that they shipped two hours before you code without the telescope, which would give a great military advantage. so after seeing them come you could decide if there were too many to fight and go away before they do you repair it or you could stay and engage them in battle. one thing he says in this draft or that he puts down fmap at this draft is he would keep it a great secret.

that changed. in the final letter, which still exists in the library in tennis, he instead suggests a public viewing of the telescope and that's what happens. he had people come in august of 1609 and climbed to the top in venice and look through his telescope they are. so this was some of the noble men and court. it was so printed them and they were all very best of course. so he did today position. not much money. he was granted life at the university and venice. so that was the summer of 1609. one of my favorite things about this manuscript and one that shows us that galileo was human was that this piece of paper. i laid around his house for a few months and then he pulled it out. so when he posted it again, it was january of 1610.

what he is different than them is a different purpose in writing the letter. in january 1610, used a piece of paper to draw together some and that was troubling him. what was puzzling him were some bright objects that he saw him on the planet jupiter. these are visible only through the telescope. no one had seen them before. he didn't understand why they removing and the way they were. and the manuscript, he shows on the seventh of january they looked like this. and he shows it was a straight line of three thing that cross jupiter. i think that straight-line health remember so when the next 98 and came across jupiter and saw three things on the eighth of january that looked very different, he couldn't remember even without consulting his nose that they weren't quite a different configuration than they had been the day before. now at that point he didn't know

what they were. if your background stars, which would eat a logical conclusion, they shouldn't have been moving. so he didn't know if they were somebody else entirely. if you made a mistake. he didn't know he was seeing the same things each night. but he decided to keep track of that little piece of the sky. so he watched jupiter every night for a week and here he gathered together what happened during that week from the seventh of january through the 15th. so he goes to the days of the week. the only cloudy night with the 14th when he said it was cloudy and here is the 15th. after that week of observations, this is what mark's galileo's modern scientists. this is kind of the difference between theoretical science to observational science of the modern times. what he did was to try to make sense of this data. he had data and he was trying to use it. in this corner of the

manuscript, the scientists tell us that galileo was trying to imagine what these objects with the click if instead of looking out of jupiter as we must do her rights, if he was looking down on jupiter and it was when he took that leap of intellect to try to fit his data into completely different way of looking at things that he realized the data fit the four-story objects going around jupiter. this was news. this was huge news. in fact, in its polar, complete manuscript in italy in the ninth of january 15, 1610, he switched from writing an italian, which is what all this is commit to to writing and not. the reason was not for secrecy, but for publishing. at that time, scientific texts were published in latin. that was the language used by scientists all over europe. so he went to make sure that he

let other scientists know about this and want to make sure he was the first to let them know about it. he didn't really know who else might be out there with their own telescope in their own observations. so he switched writing in latin right away and within two months he published a small template, not large at all, but one of the most important books that has ever been published. as many people have said, it demonstrates many discoveries that galileo made that are very important to us. the city recently that he calls the four-story objects that he called around jupiter. he names them after the domenici and his three brothers. the date of the dedication is here. it's the fourth of march, 1610.

been in italy, one port and thing that has to happen is that they had to be passed by the centers. so this is a page in which he shows it was passed by the centers on the first of arch, 1610. one of the first things that galileo had to do in this little book is to explain how he received the names. so he starts out with an explanation of the telescope. another very important finding shown here are features of the moon, which no one else had seen. on the page here, it starts out a paragraph saying on this last seventh of january that's really where he starts discussing what he saw around jupiter. so he starts out with a diagram of what he found, things make in a straight line across jupiter. the notices that have been take note,, he straightened it out to make it much easier to publish.

and then on the eighth, he shows them being all on one side, just as they were in the manuscript. unlike the manuscript, the book goes on after that first week. it goes on for all the rest of january. and for all of february, showing each night where the subjects were around jupiter. by then, his argument could really be conclusive that these objects were not background stars, but worm is going around jupiter and is indeed really change the way we view our universe. that's why this manuscript, which is part of the process of his thinking is so important.

>> ouimette cheney schopieray at the university of michigan's william o. clements library. >> william l. clements library at the university of michigan, where special collections repository cares for, collects, preserves primary source materials related to the history of early america. today we are talking about a few of the manuscripts books from mr. clements' original donation again in 1923 to represent the book division of the library select did this rather unassuming volume written in latin and printed in 1493 and the realm. it is a printed version of columbus' letter to the king and queen of spain in which he describes his discovery of the new world.

this is the first printed account of what later becomes the americas cornerstone of any collection of early americana, roughly 17 editions printed before 1500. this addition is 1493. these cornerstone collections of the division has an unparalleled look into the british administration of the american military ventures for the revolution. any dissertations, any original research done on the british side of the american revolution must make use of these materials. they are expensive and provide the most direct circuit resources on the conflict from the british perspective.

here is a manuscript written in the hand of thomas gage in april 18th 1775 in which he gives francis smith to pull together a group of infantrymen to seize military stores of concorde west of the city of boston. sir, you will march with the grenadier spit in your command with the utmost expedition in secrecy to concorde, where you see and destroy out the artillery ammunition. provisions, tents and all their military stores who can find in effect this is a draft of the order that begins the american revolution. mr. clements also acquired the papers of sir henry clinton purchased in 1925, ranked in the

states in 1926. one of the interesting components of sir henry clinton papers and which was rather profound is the lengthy set of correspondence and documents pertaining to benedict arnold and his treasonous correspondence with the british headquarters, a letter written in code by benedict arnold, said dictionary substitution code in groups of three and these numbers describe the page number previously determined volume in the line number and a work member of a particular page. once deciphered, this particular manuscript is benedict arnold's conditions for the act of turning over the important post of west point to the british. this sheet is a contemporary translation of the coded document and i'll read a passage from that.

if i point out a plan of cooperation by which sir henry shall possess himself of west point, garrison, et cetera, et cetera, cetera, et cetera, 20,000 pounds sterling book we purchased for an object of so much importance. another item from henry clinton's papers is during 1777. they are written in code in various forms for the right of the recipient both would have a mask, a piece of paper with some shape or multiple shapes cut from that and both having this now, the writer would place the mask over another sheet of paper and would rate the intended correspondence in the shape of that opening. and then i'm a meticulously

construct a letter around it so that in the case where this letter would be captured by the enemy, the actual intended message would be. to anyone who doesn't have an doesn't know to use the mask question. in this case, william hollis, commander of the british army at this point is taking his troops to philadelphia, rather than providing support to john burgoyne in north albany. this letter from henry clinton is informing of this unfortunate circumstance and that he is unable to provide any additional resources from the letter without the mask. he says, you will have heard dear sir and out not long before this reissue that sir william howe and the rebels imagine he's

gone he stood by the stand. however, he still chesapeake baby surprise and terror. once the mask is placed over the manuscript, the letter reiterates a similar sentiment, but also provides henry clinton's thoughts on the matter. sir william howe is going to chesapeake day with the greatest part of the army. here he has landed, but i'm not certain. left to command here with two small force to make ineffectual diversion in your favor. i shall try something at any rate. it may be of use to you. i ought to use your william smith at this time has been the worst he could have taken. also within clinton's papers is this letter by charles cornwallis in october 1781 in which he is informing his commander-in-chief of the necessity of his surrender at yorktown virginia. the letter announcing essentially the conclusion of

the american revolution. i have the modification to inform your excellency that i've been forced to give up the pose of your, rochester and surrender the troops under my command that by capitulation on the 19th as prisoners of war to the combined forces of america france. the next manuscript i'd like to show if the manuscript by george washington's personal secretary, describing the generals last hours at mount vernon in virginia. this is tobias lear's handwriting. he is providing this particular account to a recipient with an interest in washington's last sickness and death. in it, he describes george washington suffers for cutting him out her name and is bringing

home a third of throat and cough and subsequent -- subsequently his declining health and i'm expect to death in mid-december 1799. lear come ibm at the house, describes the comments and governments of the doubt or send the family that describes washington's mood in statement, a rather extensive description that is quite lovely for a deathbed description to read if i may, this statement regarding washington in december for team of 1799, we are right about 10:00, she made the attempts to speak to me before he could affect it at length. he said, quote, i am just going. have a decently buried and do

not let my body be put into the vault in less than two days after i am dead, end quote. he looked at me again and said, do you understand me, unquote. i replied, yes, sir. too slow. about 10 minutes before he expired they became much easier. he withdrew his hand and felt his own polls. dr. craig who sat by the fire. i laid it upon my. dr. craig put his hands over his eyes and expired without a struggle or a sigh. william clements library is a premier repository for the study of early american history currently stretching to about the year 1900 the library is

open to scholars and the public italy always encouraged researchers to come and utilize materials. >> nicholas delbanco is the robert frost distinguished professor at the university of michigan in ann arbor. during book tvs visit to the university, he spoke with us about the life and work of robert frost and the time for a spot in ann arbor. >> diebold stood in a yellow wood and sorry could not travel both come along i looked down as far as i could to the undergrowth, then took the other. >> robert frost is perhaps the preeminent as certainly one of the most consequential or american poet in the 20th century. he was principally known as a

new englander. as for a principally lived, often in vermont, where he is. in new hampshire, and partly also. but he was a poet who probably set the national standard for what it meant to deal in the plain american-style. poets knew him first as an important practitioner. they have a lot of trouble making a living early on. and we can talk about that in a bit. by the end of his life, he was very close to the defense of a national spokesperson and almost everybody alive in america saw him at john f. kennedy's

inaugural in the year 1961, january 1961 when he stood up at the podium and famously read a recited the gift outright. >> about the new order of the ages. >> by that time, he was unquestionably the most american poet, but it had been a long steady rise, probably his principal also ran for a contender with t.s. eliot, who moved the other way and spent his life, his largely life ending win. so frost is the quintessential american figure and he represents in a certain sense it emily dickinson did a century before that private new englander breaking new ground. he was always engaged in the formalities of her first and he was quite rigorous about them.

but he managed to sound spa and an the language were not something that came to you from an olympian height and required a dictionary. frost was a plainspoken person, both in life and in his area. frost was, as i said, celebrated as a known almost entirely as a delinquent priority. he spent some time in the wind. he spent some time in florida. but the vast majority of his life was in vermont and new hampshire, massachusetts also. nonetheless, he knew someone in ann arbor and came from the invitation of then president dan burton invited him in 1921 to be

kind of a writer in residence. now, you can't throw a stone at a university without uncovering a writer or an artist in residence. but at that time, which is after all almost a century ago, it was close to a revolutionary notion. artists are kept at a very stiff arms removed from academe and frost was not a scholar, nor a university graduate himself. he ended up receiving all sorts of honorary degrees and became often a dr. of humane letters. at the time, he was some i.d. who is more known as a farmer and private citizen. for a university to invite him and say you are a person of consequence, why do you hang around was really rather remarkable. he came in 1821. the state for a year. he went back to vermont and

returned again for a couple of years. 1923 and 224. so his tenure here was relatively brief. it was nonetheless during an important. but his creative life and the problems we think of as about new england were composed to your, perhaps out of a sense of nostalgia and absence. nonetheless, nature's first green is gold. her heart is due to hold. her early lisa fleer, but only subside to eat and sank to grief. so don goes down today. nothing gold can stay. his work became more and more consequential during the course of his life as i friday suggested.

and he was considered by many to be a sort of, you know, folksy poet and a local spokesperson and hero. one of the farmers almanac tapes are sidewise thinks about it and birch trees. one of his early biographers, demand called lawrence thompson uncovered, wasn't that hard to do, some of the less than splendid aspects of frost personal and public life. and at a certain point, people began to confuse or conflate the difficulties that he had the madness that ran in his family with the lighthearted seeming surface of his poems and his reputation took a bit of a nosedive. i think by now that has reversed again and he is understood to be a poet of great depth and

complexity. without overstating the case for ann arbor or making a crucial for his work, it is important to remember that this poet, who seems so rooted in a particular place also with elsewhere. and the fact that his work has crossed nearly county and state, but national boundaries has something to do with his willingness to be transplanted. he was rootless as well as rooted and the poetry thrives on those. some say the world will end in fire. some say in ice. from what i've tasted of desire, i hold with those who favor fire. but i think i know enough of hate to say the per destruction,

ice is also great and with the face. >> we spoke with university of michigan professor larry goldstein about african-american poet and essayist ima robert hayden, who is professor at the university from 1970 to 1980. >> directly out of my boyhood in detroit. sunday stew, my father got up early and put his clothes on. then with cracked hands for made in the weekday, whether i would weaken her the cold breaking. he would call and solely i would rise and dress, fury and anger is in the house, speaking differently to hand, who had driven up the cold and polish

make issues as well. what did i know? what did i know of less austere and lonely hospices? >> robert hayden i think is one of the major poets of our time. he is a fascinating figure because he represents the world of early future it. detroit in the teens and 20s in 20th century and all the way through the depression, through the war, the aftermath of the war, the life that people lived in the 50s and 60s. of course he was a chronicler of the civil rights movement. there are so many areas in which he has written beautifully, written compellingly. >> what is it about his works that makes it feel intriguing? >> well, one of the attractive features is that all of his poems are in different styles, different voices, different forms and techniques.

he was very deliberate about this from the very beginning. although his winter is really only 200 pages and of course we know that there are many poets out there who write 200 pages every year. hayden was not one of those. he took infinite pains writing each poem. he put them through many, many revisions and sometimes at the end of that process be throughout the poem. he didn't publish. >> you're a colleague of his? talk to me more about when he started working with him and may be described in more in a personal level. >> we talked a lot about poetry. we had similar ideas about what was important poetry and of course that was bonding. he had gone through 10 decades of relative neglect. he had never had, up until 1970, a new york publisher that was willing to advertise and distribute his work.

the hostility, even among african-american poet stores soon. this is something that he has spoken about in many interviews, where members of what was then called the black arts movement for resentful of him because he did not write political protest poetry. of these he did not protest as painfully as they wanted them to. so he felt like he was on the margins of the literary scene and he resented this because he could see the poets who are objectively speaking not as interesting as he was, were getting awards. they were getting appointments at major universities. and he was being neglected. but all that changed i think in the 60s there is a lot more attention paid to have because he had his groundbreaking works

about african-american histories. >> when it is finally ours, this freedom from his liberty, this beautiful and terrible name. when it logs in master well. >> there came that time when he was appointed at the library of congress. and that is the position they were in. so he was delighted. i was major recognition. he was the first african-american to hold that pose and so he got a lot of attention. everything started to come together. his collected poems came out. he began to get major reviews. a remember the review that julius lester wrote in "the new york times." i think maybe that was the happiest i've ever seen robert in my life. and so, those last 10 years, to 10 years i knew him were a happy time.

nevertheless, he had these as they call them personal demons that kept especially members of the past, memories of his days as a child and so forth that kept coming back to him. he kept returning to his work. >> was his poetry based more on a nonfiction life lived sort of poetry? >> some of that was, yes. personal poetry which is exactly what we mean when we talk about the first place that the speaker has some interesting relation to the author. the author is free to make up materials, but also tends to stick to some of the basic facts of his own life. hayden had a difficult up bringing. he was a child who had very poor eyesight and so he never participated in games. he was picked up on.

his interest in poetry, which developed at that time a given hot check among many people who knew him, who didn't take poetry seriously. i think hayden had a melodramatic life, a life that started in the ghetto in which there was sort of a lot of fighting in his house, in his neighborhood. a lot of violence. he was especially sensitive to violence, which of course made him a very interesting commentator on african-american history. he wrote poems like middle passage. >> i cannot sleep for i am sick with fear. writing is this fierce and still my ice tea these words take shape upon the page. so i write as one would turn, but not as he is calm again. >> what do you want people to take from this interview? >> well, i would like to thank that my colleagues and friends

would read hayden with more sense of how connected he is to the major writers of our time. that is often how it works in literary his jury. a person will calm -- a writer will seem hard to classify, hard to categorize and so not as much attention will be paid to them. gradually though, everything becomes configured or reconfigure and we see that person was of central intelligence of this time. what he was doing, what he was writing really reflects the guys, in the spirit of the age and he deserves more careful study and more attention. >> during our visit to ann arbor, michigan, poteet visited with professor nicholas delbanco

who talks about his book, "the art of youth: crane, carrington, gershwin, and the nature of first acts." >> the new work of nonfiction is called the ardith used -- "the art of youth: crane, carrington, gershwin, and the nature of first acts." the first and final chapters of this book are general considerations about, you know, the multitudes who died jean and the risks, as i said, attended on early success. the enemies of promise if you will. in a certain sense, this book is a pre-crawl through a book that i published a couple of years ago called lasting minutes, the art of old age. and not to, i considered a jury in the sense of painters, writers and musicians, who at

least maintained and in some cases advanced their art pastiche of sevena. in this case, i decided to focus on one writer, one painter and when decision and a worse even crane, george gershwin in the least known of them, a painter called dora carrington. >> a river tempted in the shot of the sphinx pro at the rbc. at night, when the stream had become a sorrowful black mess. >> stephen crane to an early prominence as the author of -- encourage and you had previously published a book called maggie, you grow the streets is a remarkable figure, came from a family of some consequence in new jersey. his father was a methodist

minister. his mother, an important member of the temperance union. an ancestor had been one of the founding fathers of the colony of new jersey. they were well set up folk. and he became a renegade ruling on. jobs out of college, attendance here accused of mafia college if that is true academy was where the streets and the police courts. he became a bit of a muckraker, a bit of a witness to lowlife. and then he embarked upon this extraordinary flight of cnc because he was born 20 years after the civil war close. he re-created in effect, the chancellorsville. that became a national sensation and to a degree remains that as part of the american canon. but all of this, in his very

early 20s, i told you i published my first novel at 23. at 23, cranium within old hand and matches celebrated one. he used his fame to a degree fortunate, though he was better at spending money than earning it, to ratify what he had imagined. they were chanting he became a war correspondent. he had written red patch of courage without ever having gone to the war. he had written maki, a crew group the streets without ever having been serious time. he then became a wanderer, a war correspondent of great consequence. his wartime dispatches and even the poems he wrote about it are fascinating laborers. he fell in love finally with a woman who fascinated me called

cora. she signed herself for crane in the end, but she never married him. he ran into her in jacksonville florida, where she was the proprietor of a bordello called hotels dream. and he washed up they are on the heels of what engendered some of his equally great prose, a ship wreck when he was trying to be a poor correspondent in cuba and the ship exploded and he wrote the open boat about two days at sea, with four of their companions in a boat. i wrote about this 30 odd years ago in a book called group portrait. crane had stayed with me and had

gotten me ever since because there was some thing about his duality, which i wanted to click into an attempt to solve resolve. by which i mean, the man was an extremely serious artist and also a hack. he produced what he himself knew and described as awful stuff for cash. and then he would write this on diet might interest you prose and poetry. i find myself wondering which one would have won had he managed to survive into his 30s. ♪ george gershwin, whose career trajectories more or less straight upwards. and he started from rural

poverty. died at the age of 38 of a brain tumor and almost literally at the keyboard. i mean, he first sort of understood something was wrong when he fell off the connectors podium. i was stuck researching gershwin by the prodigious amount of work that he produced, by the absolutely unending stream of songs. i mean, it is just an anchor bolt, she did have quickly. but he's an example of an artist rep to suddenly as crane was an example of an artist like keats, who died a somewhat lingering death of tuberculosis are wetter than cold consumption. dora carrington, the english painter did that third thing that causes careers to truncate. she killed herself and she did

so at the age of 38. also in part because she was despairing of her own work. i principally, because she was inconsolable at the death of her longtime companion. i saw her work in england years ago and was literally blown away by it. one of the things that is also characteristic of her life and art was herself negating, self doubting certain attitude. she was unwilling to show her work, unwilling to try and sell it. and so she remained almost wholly on no. dealing with carrington was in part a process of retrieval also. i want her reputation to be larger afterlife that was stirring. the three of them shared not all

that much, which is in fact why he picked them because i wanted to place an adjacent to each other and cover the art of you as the two main writ large. but they did have in common with energy. what they did have in common with ambition for the work. and what they did have in common was a ferocious focus. if i try to sit just, stephen crane was someone who got caught a in the coils of fame and commerce and with his left hand wrote what i think is close to hack work, what with his right hand he was trying to maintain a high seriousness. dora carrington represented the self-defeating, self negating, but triumphantly talented artist

who finally asked in wished her gift. and george gershwin presents the artist who comes out of nowhere and goes more or less steadily a. there were peaks and valleys in its upward climb. also of course he beggars the imagination to imagine what he might've produced. so there are three versions of young talent seemed to me by juxtaposition at least to cover the waterfront. >> for more information or about other cities visited by her local content vehicles, visit c-span.org/local content. >> would like to hear from you. tweet tester feed back at twitter.com/booktv. >> here is a look at this week's publishing news:

>> or romance of the mob, those of you are mafia aficionados to assert to create his romantic, but the level of brutality to it is just terrible, okay? as a writer, by the way, people say to this like i've been interviewed. peter, to get kind of captured and lost in who these guys are? the turmoil capture was that a federal prosecutor later used to describe what he thought happened to linda takeo, hanging around with these guys. you were a pinky ring, dress like a wiseguy, where gold jewelry. every other word is a café with a password. he said i had to get with these guys cannot be like when to convince them to trust me.

in fact, after a certain point from stockholm syndrome happens. he began to potentially cross the line. as a journalist, as fascinated as i am, i have to everyday out of myself. don't fall in love with these guys. think of the joe pesci scene in goodfellas, where he stabs the guy to death with a fountain pen. that's what you've got to remember. not everybody in the mob was like that. the second son to scarpetta and for -- this is how we ended up. the surveillance video outside of a social club. now, this is where he, in the mid-80s paid his dues with the g, the government. he became the most probable cause for the title iii wiretaps and the commission cases came from scarpetta seigneur. so linda takeo causes

championship season in his book. the mafia was broken when carmine persico on the left coaster prison. anthony, fat tony, salerno. you have to have a middle name like if you're in the mob, right? anthony diaz thought through. anyway, they'll go to jail and that's what makes rudy giuliani. now, this is one of the stories now. i will tell you from my book, that it's like wow. anthony gaspipe caso, another guy with a middle name. he was to locate the family took over after it ran away. she went after john gotti and had a guy a bomb in a guy named frankie chu keiko. he wasn't there and frankie died in his blown to bits. so now there's a contract and

three young guys came and shot at him one day and was eating an ice cream cone and he flipped out, survived. he wanted to know right away with these guys that get them. this is a famous interview he did with it rattly, great reporter for 60 minutes. he says to bradley, talking about the most famous murder. one of the shooters. so he got the mafia cops, who are living in vegas as you know in 2005 were arrested in vegas. i actually wrote a pilot for a series called missing persons on abc had my middle career was an episodic show runner. i started on crime story. my first trip to las vegas was to watch a script to about three days earlier. i tell people i started the business and work my way down. that was my first trip to las vegas. they shot at the biggest growth in that direction.

anyway, the mafia cops arguably the biggest organized crime line for a semester at the last 10 years were later convicted of supplying information that he would use to kill people. guess what he told me? he told me chinny hideout, the most famous murder delivered to him, but the intelligence he got to learn hideout was the shooter he got from gregory, scarper senior who he believed cotta from linda takeo. so this is another part of rewriting the modern history. he says to ed bradley, i shot in a couple of times. he says how many? 12, 13. anyway, anthony gave an interview from prison that was an eye-opener. this began the comparison of whitey bulger and john connally. his control agent, it is version two in life, to convictions, completely different stories. i told the story in my book, cover-up about linda takeo.

i introduced this whole story. scarpa junior, senior, the whole thing in my second book cover. the brooklyn da calls me in september of 05. the book came out in 04. a year later they call me and an congressman william delahunt of massachusetts had been a prosecutor also contact them, as did angela clemente, forensic investigator who got a lot of these trials. a confluence of the three of us. i'm writing my book and ageless referral resulted in the delvecchio on the 30th of march, 2006, came up from sarasota, florida, where he retired with a full pension and was indicted on four counts of murder. on the right, that is said the night before surrendering him. they allowed him to surrender. the next day, after he was a million dollars bail was set for an. 50 x agents supported him showed

up in blue suits, white shirts come either red tries or blue tights and surrounded him as he walked out on adams street from brooklyn supreme court and there was a seen him like you've seen. they are pushing people away. they looked like soccer hooligans and u.k. soccer match. they were protecting him by the reporters asked questions. they called it hottie checking. senator grassley of iowa mention this were even retired fbi agents should be so quick to protect somebody who's presumed innocent of course. the attack takes were pretty wild. the trial started in october 15 of 07. headlines like this everyday in the the new york tabloids. i mean, they basically convicted men. the star witness, one of the star witnesses whose linda shirov was alleged that by these

reporters. on the left you see one of probably the most famous and probably the greatest contemporary reporter and organized crime. he had a column called gangland new york doing this for years and the new york sun put himself on the sopranos. said tom robbins, the kind of metalhead worked with him at the daily news. they had interviewed linda in 1997 for a book they were doing. they claimed that it's kind of suspicious they claim they just happen to look for the tapes before trial because they don't for a year and a half is going to be a star but this. on the right is made to vicky on. either way, i'm half italian. at least half of my book is accurate. anyway, make ikea was the prosecutor. the new vacuum is on trial in so jerrica peachey, who by the way of the blended ikea was at the height of the colombo were, like

the war had waged from 91 to 93. 14 people killed including two innocent bystanders. six people that are really was no doubt be keen information to head that led to some of the deaths, which is why the brooklyn da and guided him. capuchin robbins wrote about it and they knew was going to be one of star witnesses. linda allegedly lies in the abruptly in the trial. now the headlight two weeks later. talk about a reversible portion. mall cape for each gene and. m. lynn couldn't be happier. you know what he did that now with his wife? they celebrated at the steakhouse over champagne. he was given his own little note of irony. listen to what judge gustin resch backside. this is his decision dismissing the case. here's what he said. what is undeniable in the face of the obvious menace posed by

organized crime, the fbi was willing to make their deal with the devil. they give the virtual criminal immunity in return for the information true and false billing misapplied. not only did the fbi shielded from prosecution for his own crimes, they actively recruited him to participate in crimes that are the directions. if that would be a play by the federal government is a shocking demonstration of the governments unacceptable willingness to employ criminality to fight crime. >> here's a look at some books being published this week.

>> up next on booktv, guest host leader curtis, heritage foundation asian studies center senior fellow. ..