those new programs are trying to have public defenders offices deal with the source of the problem and look at the root of the problem and deal more broadly with the people that come through their system. so there is some good news out there. >> thank you for your time. >> thank you for having me. >> the world is on fire and things are moving extremely fast. my education expires after five or 10 years and everything is new. the cloud his new facebook's new twitter is new. historically what we have done is resized human life and to

five slices. one is the first five years and the next 20 years, the work phase in the resting phase afterwards. what i think we should do is play, learn and work and rest at the same time because the world moves so fast today we can't afford to have education anymore. we need to stay up to date.

>> next on booktv historians myron magnet recounts the personal and public lives of america's founders through an examination of their homes. this is about one hour. >> are we all adjusted? >> well adjusted, rick. >> myron you have written a

sumptuous book. it's sumptuous physically and it's also very rich in terms of its content and something quite surprising. let me start with the devils question. we have had a founders revival going on for 20 years. we have had put -- dig books on all the big guys. we are getting books on the lesser-known figures. why do we need another one? >> first of all it's nice to see you. you will see 32 pages of very expensive color. it seemed to me that one of the things that people hadn't really looked at as carefully as possible with the founders is their ideas. they were brilliant, very thoughtful guys and some of them

were read very widely. some of them had a very wide experience and the founding came out of a worldview. i mean that's why i wanted to tell the story as biographies. i wanted to ask the question not just what did these guys do but who were, what did they think? what was driving them and i was impressed that there really were sort of three large themes that they were concerned about. one was, they had a thirst for liberty and the way that, you know the way that people who know concretely what its opposite is like, the way that eastern european's who had finally escaped from communism understood what liberty was. and that's because so many of

them were descended from descending protestants. the pilgrims for the first of them but then for 105th years there were presbyterians, baptists quakers and others. >> you cannot. >> well coming from europe, protestants in europe were escaping the persecution of catholic church. and this was very much a living memory for them. so they knew that they had come here seeking liberty -- >> for a reason. >> and they weren't going to let go of it. they just weren't going to let go of it. then there is that tragic paradox that we all know is at the center of american history.

it was slavery. >> that was everywhere in the 13 colonies. >> even -- had slaves as he was president of the society. so i mean. >> how many people are doing something that they are not doing anything about that? [laughter] i just had to respond to that ripple of laughter. >> well, but even the slaveowners, as you well know, knew how obscenely unjust it was the smart ones, thomas jefferson avenging god would take action and show that the world is not covered by blind chance in a passage that you were writing what will be another great book about lincoln right now and you

he just told me you were writing about the second and you read this just as lincoln revivified jefferson in the gettysburg address talking about how all men were created equal. so, so he ripped to provide him in that statement. >> jefferson didn't often speak about avenging gods or of god at all. >> that issue, if there were a god, this was something he would be concerned about. that's for sure. and so, now comes to be george iii comes to the throne, this 22-year-old martin at who has

succeeded his grandfather, george, ii for 30 odd years and he starts messing with his north american colonies in a way that you know, all through the era, nobody had messed with america. and george washington and many other colonists look out and thought, we know what's happening here. george washington said he wants to make us as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway and george washington said this. it took george washington and lifetime to understand the full implications of what he was saying and free his own slaves on his deathbed. so they made a revolution for liberty and i wanted to make

clear just how you know from the very, very beginning from the trial in 1735. >> here in new york. >> here in new york where so much of the great events of our history happens. from there on out, the colonists were concerned about libertad's. they had huge this country out of wilderness and they were going to run it themselves. >> now tell us who exactly you are focusing on in this book. you have six figures in a family. >> the reason for that is my wife barbara and i took a trip to virginia just kind of on a whim to go see the founders houses. at our advanced age you would have thought we would have done this many times but we never had it just knocked my socks off to

go down there. you walk into those houses and it's like you were walking into the presence of these guys. it's almost like they are haunted, and you feel them. a place like monticello, you feel like you know the men. my gimmick is that it had to be somebody who had a house that's open to the public that you can visit because, well because i wanted people to have some sense that these were not mythical figures, but they were living human beings who as the reviewing "wall street journal" said over the weekend who have mortgages which they couldn't always pay off as you wrote so eloquently. so that was kind of where he

made the cut and the other great cut i made was i left out john adams who had two houses you can visit because he has written about so many times that i figured nobody would need to write about him. i wrote about william livingston who was a signer of the constitution and important because he ran a magazine here in new york in the 17 50's that was -- you know john adams who are i left out of my book, said the american revolution, the real american revolution happened 15 or 20 years before the shots rang out at the lexington concorde. >> civilians remarked. >> well yeah that's true and intellectuals because he said it happened in the hearts and minds of america. if you want to see how they change their affections and their ideas, just look at the

literature, the pamphlets or the sermons even of the last 50 years or so. it didn't go far enough back. because the place it started was with william livingston's magazine in new york called the independent reflector. he wanted to model it on addison steele spec tater. >> is this a weekly or monthly? >> it's a weekly which he mostly wrote with the help of a couple of friends. it started with a fuss about establishing colombia college and it ventured into the sort of geopolitical, global political theory in which he talked to all of america the lockean ideas of government by consent, the right of the people to resist. well as jefferson summed it up so beautifully many years later,

the kings are the servants not the proprietors of the people. >> because colombia was kings college and there was going to be a tax that everybody had to pay. >> everybody had to pay in the said do you know what? most of us in new york aren't anglicans. why should everybody be taxed for the purposes -- >> sectarian. >> and furthermore this led to the idea of free thought and how there must be an orthodoxy. he was like jon stewart mill and he was like james madison in a way, believing and james madison when he was a student at princeton so i start with him. he is the first great intellectual influence on the founding. this magazine everybody read it. everybody all over america subscribe to it.

madison and his fellow students at princeton were still reading it 20 some years later. then i moved to stratford hall. it was the house that was the house. i saw this house on the cover and i thought oh, god. >> it's an odd house. >> no, it's gorgeous. i know you think it's odd that that's probably the only one you have ever been to. it's so beautiful and in fact the dean of the british historian sir john somerset says this house is so architecturally sophisticated that you would think it would have been designed by a british royal architect. but it wasn't. it was designed by virginia born william wilkins which nobody

knows. nobody knows anything about him. >> maybe my judgment of the house is affected by the oddity of the hamptons. >> well, i mean isn't it extraordinary, so you have these four brothers richard henry lee, francis lightfoot lee, and arthur lee and some sisters. and then the next owner of the house was the dashing commander of lee's legion in the revolutionary war who won the famous battle of what is now jersey city. he was an extraordinary caricature in his own right. a great real estate speculator who ended up indebted. >> our real estate speculators come back. he unfortunately did not.

and, then owning that house was his son robert. so imagine that, the man who tears apart the union that his ancestors made was born there and you know if you go there you will see there is one of those cast-iron fire that used to be in his nursery with a couple of crude cherubs cast into the back of that. and when they were leaving the house, when robert e. lee was three years old they couldn't find him. he was in his nursery kneeling in front of the fireplace saying good by to the cherubs who had been his companions. so, just as the civil war was

intending you know the letter that robert e. lee wrote to his wife saying, oh i wish we could i stratford. he said it's the only place that is infused with love for me, and i wonder if it's for sale. so the leisure stratford hall. >> tell the story of how richard henry turned a disaster into great account. his terrible accident. >> oh, that was a terrible leap of faith. he was out shooting swans. if you go to stratford, go to washington's birth lace which is about four miles of the road, hopes creek. it is so beautiful. it's like going back to, it's like going back to the america that the settlers came to.

when you walk through the woods to see the deer scampering away the wave agents get out of your way in the park. and the potomac at that point is about seven miles wide, so it's just spec pakula really beautiful and the potomac forms into these little bays. when we went there there were thousands of geese, hundreds of swans and overhead if you can believe it, a bald eagle. i mean it was like it had been set up a hollywood. but when i set out to describe this you know, i like to use adjectives so i wrote that overhead a fat bald eagle and i realized that doesn't sound right. so he was out shooting swans, which i guess they ate just as

queen elizabeth i yeasty eat them. and, his gun blew up. the barrel of his gun blew up and blew the four fingers off of his left hand. so you know, and this was the same year that his young wife died with two babies sons. he had a black silk glove made to cover his disfigurement. he had had a lot of stage frighe a great orator. he was a tall aristocratic with hollow cheeks. he looked like you. [laughter] and so he learned, he learned to gesture with his black silk

glove as he got off his latin quotations when he was serving at the continental congress of which he was finally the president. he got to be one of the great orators of all time. you know though, on the topic of his stage fright, he gave his maiden speech in the virginia house of burgesses in 1759 so now we are talking 100 years and 100 years and more before the civil war. andy gets up and what does he say to his fellow slaveowners? he says, abolish slavery. he says, on prudential grounds it's not good for us to have other people do the work while we sit around and furthermore it's going to breed all kinds of strife in the future.

furthermore, if we are christians how can we think that our fellow creatures are not created in the image of god as well as ourselves and entitled to liberty and freedom? so you know we have a complicated history here. 100 years and more before the civil war. here is one of do you know representatives of one of the great slave owning plantations in virginia making this statement. amazing. then i have three paragraphs on the great george washington. >> a chapter, surely. >> three chapters. it will feel like three paragraphs it reads so beautifully. [laughter] i fell in love with him. and i couldn't stop. you sit there reading his

letters and speeches, 1200 pages. >> did anything surprise you about him? >> yeah. i had to that he was kind of like a high term -- high toned intro was dummy. that he was a very handsome man that looked great in a uniform and that all these much smarter guys like addison and hamilton were pouring the ideas into his head. and you know, he got up there in his uniform and he would say these lines and true they did write the speeches. but the fact of the matter is when he was serving out their on the western frontier of the french and indian war in the 17 60's and having to be, i think in effect the government of this

territory with savage indian enemies he said then having to requisition supplies at sword point from the very people whose interests he was trying to protect, already he was starting to think that we needed a strong central government to protect us and we needed to be a unified country. so this is decades before the articles of confederation, decades before the constitutional convention over which he presided. he had these ideas so what i came to see about him is that, and you know you wrote a book about this too, a wonderful book about how george washington is like a ceo.

he had the capacity to make a large strategy and then he had the self confidence to pick out brilliant young men to flesh it out. and get the details done. so he wanted, he wanted a strong central government. he needs a constitution. let madison do it. he will sit there quietly. he knew that's what he wanted and that's what madison intended to do. he knew very well that the mite of a nation depends on its wealth. >> armies have to be paid. >> he knew that england was so powerful because it was this fiscal military state that had a bank and a great system of finance. so he knew he wanted to

diversify the economy. and he didn't want just farming. he wanted it to be a modern tundra with every kind of industrial activity there could be. let madison do it. let hamilton do it. when madison objected of course he thought long and hard about well, was this really the right way to go but in the end he said yes. let's absolutely do it. so that surprised me. it's not simply that he was a handsome guy who looked good in a uniform. but what i say about him in the book is that he was the visionary chief. i came to find him. >> and in the case of choosing hamilton over madison's objections, he is going against what you would think were his

proclivities. his virginian advisers, the people who were most like him were saying he's a strong guy but he goes with "the new yorker," the immigrant. >> he was an entrepreneur himself. he saw mt. vernon as his business. he had -- everything was useful for him. the tone is beautiful but it's full of fish. so he builds a fishing fleet and he's exporting barrels of salted fish to the west indies. he builds a distillery and it soon turns into the biggest one in the united states. i can't remember how many gallons of ride bourbon a year, if you are allowed to make bourbon in virginia. as the virginia soil became exhausted, he experimented with

i think it was something like 60 different kinds of crops until he realized wheat was the thing to grow. he was no lazy aristocratic winter. he was an entrepreneur and he saw that hamilton, this illegitimate west indian immigrant in new york on the make, real genuine new yorker, that hamilton was in certain ways, well it's like hamilton this fatherless child really was the true soul son of this child was founding father. and he saw that. >> okay so we have washington and then hamilton. >> and then we have, well before hamilton we have john jay.

>> now he's an interesting one because we all have copies of the federalist papers. >> of which he wrote only. >> he writes only five but there he is forever with hamilton and madison. so we know the name but he himself is a little pale and i have to say of all your portraits, maybe his was the most interesting to me because of well, partly because of what he was willing to do during the revolution. he had a lot of tough assignments, really tough stuff, tough stuff morally. >> yeah, he did. he ran a spy ring during the revolutionary war and he came to believe that you couldn't be

neutral in this revolution. you couldn't just sit back and say, okay i will just wait and see what happens and if england wins i will be english and if america wins i will be american. you have to choose so he said look, if you were not going to choose to be an american, then you have to be disarmed and put out of the protection of the united states or you have to be exiled. exiled, he drove some of his best friends into exile. there was a kind of -- it was a civil war. >> in new york state. >> and in new jersey to boot so there were partisan gangs. there were the patriots scanners and the loyalist cowboys and there were just a gangs of thugs is what they were. they were using the war as an excuse but they were out there do you know steal as much as

they could steal all while saying look, these people are rebels. so of course you are coming to confiscate for the king's own loyal subjects or vice versa. but they would kill people in doing this. and they did it to john jay's own father and brother and did not thank god, kill them but they took everything. they took everything except for the clothing on their back. then there is john jay serving as the first chief justice of new york and he is up there in albany. and he says now i am doing the worst part of my job. he said, trying loyalists traders. he had a gang of cowboys in front of him he writes in this letter. and they had broken into his

patriots farm when his son, a continental soldier was holed -- home on leave for visiting, killed oath of them and then got caught by continental troops. john jay sentence the whole gang to hang so this is very disagreeable work but it has to be done. and the reason you know the least about john jay or didn't know before this is there really hasn't been a satisfactory biography of him. so there was one by his son, which is very good but of course is very partial. and, but you know letter's and all kinds of documents and there are all kinds of official correspondence. >> you love his wife. >> i love his wife. she's like a jane austen heroin.

as i say in the book, its sense and sensibility to spare. she has such, oh, when they get shipwrecked on their way to europe and end up in the west indies. >> this is as a diplomat. >> has a diplomat. they are on their way to. >> so they are cast out, i forget on what island, santo domingo island, santo domingo may be and she comments on how beautiful it is and what she likes is what human activity has done to it and how up to the very mountain tops they have planted coffee and sugar cane. she writes her father william livingston the writer of the wonderful magazine in the 17 50's. she writes her father to precise paragraphs about how a sugar

mill works. so she loved -- she was fantastic. when john jay was off making the jay treaty she writes and she says now don't, don't be mad at me. but you know we have been investing our money by lending it out and so now everybody who owes us money has paid us back and nobody wants to borrow money just now. so there is all this bank stock going on and you know what seemed to me like a really good investment. she gives a little kind of investment report about the kind of analyst report on why at this stock would be good to purchase. so she said i took the money and i bought it and she said it's

already gone up x are sent. so she was fantastic. the thing about john jay that is most striking, although we remember him as our first chief justice justice in fact he is most important for having made the treaty that ended the revolutionary war and what's so interesting about it is that the congress under the leadership of madison's party, had given him instructions to share everything with our french allies. the negotiations altered place in paris, france. well, john jay realizes that the french have their own interests in the new world and yeah air helping us but not because they

love us but because they have their own plans. >> it's not lafayette. >> no, it's not. he disregards his instructions, proceeds to deal quite separately with the english negotiators and he says to them, what we have to do is negotiate a lasting peace because well we have to negotiate a lasting peace because it scares the daylights out of the english. a lasting peace? is that a code word for how the americans want to be arbiter of the balance of power in europe? and he goes to franklin who is officially but not really taking any part in these negotiations, he says what does lasting peace mean? frank ling tells him the story from roman history, which one i don't know i don't nobody spends about and he says so they

lasting peace is a piece that is fair and just to both parties, so they don't go to war again and hence it is lasting. oh says of oswald the negotiator, fine, then i think i can do what you want done which is recognized american independence which is not what i want to happen. >> they wanted a small america. >> they wanted america to be small hemmed in by powers on all sides, poor, at odds with britain and dependent on france, right? well, that's not what happened and the reason it didn't happen is because john jay you know, with this stupendous geopolitical understanding and imagination and with this stupendous american initiative

and entrepreneurship just said wait a minute, you know, i know i am here to serve my nation's interests and i think i know what my nation's interest is. and i'm going to do it, so it was just miraculous. then comes hamilton about whom you have written so eloquently. you know that i learned that you should tell the story of the founding through short ahec or fees from you because you have written a shelf of magnificent ones and you have been my kind of model all through this. >> well, you are my editor. [laughter] yeah but i didn't have a hell of a lot to edit. i mean sometimes you get flawless copy and that is what i got. so, and on hamilton of course, you and i see it the same way.

hamilton was the man who imagined opportunity in america. he wanted an economy with chad which had a niche for every skill, every talent, every ambition and it's because he thought of economics as sole crafts. yes it would make people rich and it would made the country rich but how are you going to fulfill your own potential if you didn't have the opportunity to find something to do with that would, allow you to bring out everything that was in you. >> which he had had only by a combination of trillions and lots. >> and the lock of course was that he got a job as a clerk for bingaman and krueger in the west indies. thing men and krueger is one of the great new york trading firms so even when he was a teenager

working as a lowly clerk in the west indies he was already, although he didn't know it yet, connected to the great dinah moe that was going to be the dinah moe of the united states but the economic dynamo that was the triangle which is what they were involved in. he was really just a genius. then i have chapters about the republicans as the progenitors of the democrats were called. about jefferson and his stupendous house. if anyone in this room hasn't been to monticello, go. it's the greatest house in america. i can't tell you how beautiful. >> you write so movingly about the use of light. >> it's got triple hung windows,

floor-to-ceiling windows in the kind you can open up and look out onto the veranda and it's got skylights, glass skylights and it's got mirrors everywhere. as you know jefferson had his slaves level the top of the little mountain on which it's built so there is sunlight pouring into it from all these windows and skylights and it's bouncing off all of these mirrors. it struck me that it was this perfect enlightenment icon and it seems to be crying out as he was to have said on this deathbed, more light. you don't realize that right at first but i remember you said when he looked at the pictures in the book, you were struck by how beautiful the pictures of monticello were and you know were they taken on a particularly sunny day you asked? no, that is what the house is

like. the house is enlightenment. and all of its amazing rooms with the demi octagons. >> which illuminate dark corners. >> which eliminate dark corners. there were peculiarities about it. there was her broom that was always called mr. madison's room because madison and his wife would come and visit so jefferson liked the alcove beds. here is an alcove bed and i always thought the madisons would come when they had retired from the white house. i thought which of the old couples slept on the inside? and how did they -- anyway. it was really a house built for for --. >> for a widower.

>> a widower. his wife died very young and then most people believe, as i do, he then took her half-sistey hemings as his concubine and had children with her. so they had strange race relations in the 18th century. >> and the slave quarters and passages partake of this. >> it's like the more locks. a regular 18th century house has wings with the kitchens and the various service parts but the wings are like separate pavilions and there are arcades. so jefferson inverted dome, so he has got his wings but they are underground.

and what you have got our terrorist sons that you can walk out on and it just looks like you got these beautiful promenades but underneath, -- >> all the work is being done. >> all the work is being done in sally hemings has her room, in the wine cellar of course. >> jefferson is the only man in america who has a good bottle of wine. >> somebody wrote, jefferson came to dinner last night and bored board us all with his talk about the wine so sometimes i think you can know too much. and then two chapters on madison. one on madison the thinker and a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant creator of the constitution and the astonishing degree of political sophistication and historical understanding and

knowledge of human nature. these guys were not sentimental. he was making a government for real people as for who they are, not for prodigies or angels. if men were angels there would be no government he said in federalist 51. but you know, and then the last chapter is about madison's presidency which you and i disagree about. i love your madison book. i can't tell you how many hours of pleasure it gave me but i think that madison's presidency was a failure. i think that -- >> i didn't think it was that good. >> i understand that i thought it was that bad and it wasn't necessary to fight the war of 1812 and it wasn't necessary to come so close to losing it, as we actually did. >> we certainly came very close

to that. well then our curious. i'm going to open the floor to questions now. i want to instruct you all that if you want to ask a question we have standing microphones in the aisle. before you ask your question, say your name and please only ask one question and also don't give a speech with rising inflection at the end. there are two staff members on hand to help you with these arrangements. so i will start with the side. >> my name is peter goodman. was the jefferson and hamilton and tip the based upon philosophical differences or was it really more personal or was it geographic? >> oh no, it was philosophical for sure. that's a wonderful question. i mean and it had sort of to basics. one was that jefferson really

believed that agriculture was the only decent life for human beings. although he never noticed that his agriculture was done for him by slaves. the wife of the husband, healtho nature. it was such hogwash so he thought the idea of a diversified economy and a bank and a funded national debt were just plain evil. that was philosophical difference. philosophical difference two had to do with the french revolution and jefferson minister to france when the revolution broke out. the declaration of the rights of man and the citizen for his friend lafayette. absolutely believe the french revolution and he said you know he never bailed out.

and so many friends of his were killed. so many friends of ours, so many of our allies of the revolutionary war. he said you know i just look at the mess casualties of war. if there were one adamant one e. fluffed in every country and that a republican adam and eve, that would be fine with me. and whereas hamilton thought it was mere anarchy and terror was terror. >> next year. >> bob ulrich. a comment and a question. >> a question. >> okay. the question is in studying the revolutionary war, it became clear to me that one of the biggest reasons for the start of the war was the way that the war the french indian war ended. washington had done a lot of surveying as a young man out west. he knew the property. when the french and indian war

ended, a lot of the officers were given major tracks instead of money. washington went around and bought a those properties. the proclamation of 1763 made it illegal to develop it. my question is, did washington have a second agenda in saying i want to be commander-in-chief? he could no longer use those lands, could he? >> well, i understand your point but no, that is not why he went to fight the revolution. the real result of the french and indian war with was, as sensible geo-politicians saw at the time is that it ended french power in north america and therefore america had no need for british protection anymore. therefore in england some people

felt was only a matter of time because why should we let anybody boss us around? we don't need them. >> i am george shea and i'm wondering why you couldn't ring in robert morris who was so wealthy and so important to and he wound up in debtors prison. >> well, i'm just fascinated by robert morris and i've really wanted to include him. but he did not leave much in the way of writings behind him. >> that's a problem with sam adams. i mean clearly a semi-mom major figure. >> the papers are gone and morris' accounts are gone. >> along with his money.

and everybody else's money. >> and everybody else's including $40,000 of leaves lease that he had lent him. >> i think the figure was he owed 20 times more than he had. >> and just about the richest man in the colonies. so i agree. he's a fascinating figure and if you could suddenly go into one of these houses and find a dusty leather-bound trunk in the attic and open it up and there would be morris' papers, oh that would be wonderful. i would love to live to see it. >> my name is jim machen. you are obviously very impacted by the houses themselves up these great people. would you give us a reflection on the notion that notion that property is the rightful

creation or value of what you productively do and did they understand that do you think in creating their house is? >> oh yes that's a very good question and for washington, washington was always being condescended to in the french and indian war by british officers with royal commissions. he was just a colonial you know hayseed. they never thought that he was worth anything. he had this great issue with trying to show that he was just as much a gentleman as they were. so mt. vernon was the outward manifestation in the beginning of his inward ambitions to be that kind of a gentleman. however, this is very important however, later in the war a

british -- anchored off mt. vernon and his cousin who is managing the estate in his absence, the british were, anchored took a bunch of his silver, took a bunch of his slaves and his cousin went on board with a slave airing a tray of refreshments to say, i resupply you? can i help you out but won't you please give me back my cousin silverware in slaves? washington writes to him and says, you have to think of yourself as my representative, and i can't believe you did such a terrible thing. he said, you know, i fully expect that before this war is over i am going to lose all my slaves. i'm going to lose all of my

houses. i'm going to lose everything that was there at mt. vernon and that's the price i'm willing to pay. that is a noble man. >> and there is one fact that sticks in my mind about mt. vernon, the english architect who came to a america late in the 18th century. >> looked rob? >> right, he writes this famous description of mt. vernon and describes it as a neat country gentleman's house of about five and a pound a year and this is the same time jane austen is writing -- so i mean these houses are beautiful houses. and they are impressive but compared to english standards of wealth and pomp and circumstance

>> they are tiny and allen greenberg, the really wonderful classical architecture practicing now building buildings as we speak wrote a book called the architecture of democracy about american architecture. and he is absolutely right. these guys were building houses for republican gentleman, not grantees and if you compare even mt. vernon do you know some english great country house like zion hauser houghton, it's tiny. it's really tiny and you go up, and i hope everybody will get on the train and go up to 41st street and look at hamilton's beautifully restored house, but compared to, compared to an english gentleman's house that's a tradesman svehla.

a tiny, teeny little house. these guys did have their ambitions but they were not --. >> that's right. anymore questions? let's keep talking then. are they going to let you into boston for stopping your survey? >> you know i think what i will seldom is i felt i had to wait for everybody to forget the book and forget the movie and i intended to devote an entire book, in fact five volumes of it to john adams. i didn't think of that until you reminded me that oh my god i was going to go to boston and i didn't write about any single one. do you want to come with me? [laughter]

>> the houses that survived and i just want to say that the last one, the most recent one in timeless piece field which was where john and abigail came back in that state in the family until the 20th century. the adams is i don't think ever threw anything away. if you go to pizza bill, it's like an attic of american stuff and there is stuff you have seen in textbooks. you say wait that is there and you turn a corner and there is that painting and there's this and there is that. >> it's interesting. so many of these houses are like the houses the state in the family. john jay's house was really quite a simple villa like thousands and thousands of others. that's in katona. just up the road in westchester. but the jay family prospered and

they added on to the house and you know the house is filled with generations worth of stuff. it's wonderful and jay himself never threw anything away. so he has his huguenot grandfather's green card. and you can see it. it's this parchment signed by royal governor don can who became -- allowing jay to settle into business in the royal colony of new york. and it's got a little docket on the back. my grandfathers permission to stay in america and john jay's neat handwriting. >> this was probably the most moving thing to me in the whole book was the letter that he

writes hamilton's father-in-law. >> i can't repeat it because i will cry. >> okay, all right. you will have to buy the book to read it. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much rick brookhiser and myron magnet. ..