one which is not often talked about is you really come up with an idea and you try to find the perfect writer, the person whose passion for the idea matches yours, and that's one way you can make a book at them. another way is you make sure to talk to agents as much as possible to see what kind of projects they are enthusiastic about, and then you raise your hand and hope that they will send you a good proposal. sometimes you cultivate just authors through the door and she plans ideas with him and you hope that over time they come up with a project that they want to spend five, 10 years with and make a great book out of. >> have you ever read a

newspaper article or a magazine article that that could be a books? >> yes. i read an article 10 years ago about how in, very shortly in the 21st century, more households in america will be supported by women and that that is a giant slot, i mean, a giant change. and it made me want to explore what the implications of that might be for men and women, for marriages, for raising children, for love, for courtship. and i got a great book out of it spent what was the books? >> it was cold the richer sex but it was written by a "washington post" reporter, and who is now at the new america foundation in washington.

it generated, landed on the cover of "time" magazine and it generated a huge conversation about how do we all need to adjust our lives to this economic new reality, and is this good for men and women? and i think we were in the camp of yes, even that makes couples stronger and live up to their potential is a good thing. >> one of the authors or pair of authors you worked with were nancy gibbs and michael duffy on the presidents club, a book that our q&a program cover. what was the process working on the presidents club with nancy gibbs and michael duffy? >> well, i wish i could to i came up with that idea because it was such a brilliant idea i didn't. nancy and mike leavitt working

on that for quite some time, and the idea came to them after they had written a very great book on billy graham. they realized the degree to which the president to talk to the ex-presidents at how much the club helped shape the presidency itself, and that's what gave them the idea to export the presidents club in a thorough way. and it was a very modern idea of understanding a president because we had to get to the 20th century for there to be enough longevity, and practical reasons for this to be possible. but what they found was that presidencies were made stronger sometimes challenged by people inside this club. what was interesting about it was that we had over one dozen characters, all of whom had

relationships with each other going towards the path and towards the future. so the big challenge in editing his book was how to structure it. anti-to look at how the book was filled, you know, we have an introduction to certain key partnerships all along the way because it helps the reader keep track of who the characters are and it helps them move along chronologically without -- while honoring history and relationships as they actually happened. >> nancy gibbs and michael duffy right the presidents club. what was your role? what part did you play in that? >> my roll is essentially help structure the book and give it an architecture that makes it so accessible to the reader, but easy so they forget that there are all these multiple characters on stage at once.

that they could see it and not feel overwhelmed by it. my role was to cut something that a big believer in. i think if you're bored as an editor then there's a good chance your readers will be. and my role was to make sure that some of the inside knowledge they had was made completely transparent to the reader so that they knew where things came from and how you new things. but essentially when you have authors as talented as nancy and michael, you are just, you get up in the morning and skip to work spent what is your editing process? what did you do when you first got the manuscript? >> it came in a section, and the first thing you do is read the

author. you can do serious editing winner in an office. you have to launch yourself somewhere else and completely immerse yourself in the book and become, i mean there were times when i would leave the book and go out and get dinner and still be living in the middle of the nixon administration and want to run back and get back into it. that's what you want. you want the ability to sort of think -- sink into the store as much as possible so you can see all its beauty and so you can occasionally make it more beautiful. >> do you take a red pen to let? do you take a pencil to? >> i take a pencil to it. it comes to my days in newspaper and magazine reporter and editor. it allows me to move back and forth easily. it allows me to sort of give it

back to them so that they feel they can't look at those notes and absorb them as they would on their own terms. >> another author that you worked with and are working with that our audience would know is karl rove. ddgs you? did you choose him? how did that relationship began? >> essentially i had to audition for a. i got a call from my publisher. he asked me to go down to washington. it was the first book that i was asked to edit. i had been a journalist for 30 years. and he had read up on me and what stories i covered. we had topics in common. i actually covered him as an editor for many decades and basically my argument is you should hire me because this is my first job and i can't screw it up. and it worked.

>> is it different working with a personality like that band is maybe with nancy gibbs and michael duffy who maybe are not as well known? >> no. i think every writer has to put themselves on the page. so the process is a process by definition that makes riders feel vulnerable. and i think the job of the editor is to essentially protect them but also make them feel comfortable with what they're saying. one of the first conversations i had with karl rove is no, you can't start the book at page 30. yeit to start the book with a lt of the pain of your childhood, including your mothers suicide, your father leaving the home, you finding out later that your father wasn't her father.

you learning, meeting a real father. all of those issues have to be on the page as difficult as they are to talk about, because they're part of what made you, you. if this is going to be a biography, you know, then he needs to include that. he told me later that often times when he gets stopped by readers they bring up the childhood stuff because they had experiences like he is. i think that's one way to make a personality who seems to be on stage more accessible to people. >> because of your background as a journalist be worked on a lot of the nonfiction a little books of? >> yes, i do. i work only on nonfiction, and some of the books really i'm not

so much political as they are journalism, a book on afghanistan, a book on veterans, a book on the meat bracket, industry of me that has now become an oligarchy. a lot of books that involve journalists spending many years of their lives digging alone into some of the issues we face and trying to make them readable, something that someone would want to pay in hard cover and $25 for and spent a lot of time with. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.or booktv.org.

>> we explore science history with local authors starting with rodger mcdaniel on the suicide of wyoming senator lester hunt. >> lester hunt became i think in the late '40s and early '50s

one of the most six mythic and politicians in the country whose name is not remembered. part of the problem is that the nature of his death overshadowed the accomplishments of his life because in 1954 there was enormous stigma both about homosexuality and about suicide. and lester hunt soweto made it her life's work to make sure that the story of his suicide was never told. she went so far as to threaten the author of the premier wyoming history textbook that if you put anything about the suicide in his textbook, that she would soon. to although he knew part of the story about the blackmail, he left it out and so for all these years students of wyoming history have read a book that on page 521, who gets that far in a semester? but on page 521 of dr. larson spoke it says overcome by

personal and political problems, lester hunt took his own life on june 19, 1953. as a politician, lester hunt was enormously well-liked. this always has been a state where democrats have a hard time getting elected. but the first time he ran for office he was the top vote getter in his county. had elected to the legislature. people around the state asked him to run for state office and she became secretary of state and then governor. he was somebody who took public service seriously, believed that if there was a problem to be saltsolved he needed to lead thy to get it done. and as a result he became, as a democrat, the most popular politician in the state. he'd been governor for six your ticket just been reelected to a second, four-year term. and started thinking about running for the senate. then was elected to the senate

midway through his second term as governor. mccarthy was elected to the u.s. senate two years ahead of lester hunt the relationship was bad from the very beginning. three months after hunt was sworn into the senate, he was appointed to a select committee to investigate nazi war crimes at the battle of the bulge. at the end of world war ii, the nazis had massacred dozens of american soldiers after the battle of the bulge and after the war were tried as war criminals. the soviet union and others around the world begin making charges that the american military officers in charge of the prosecution had used torture and the right of other techniques to exact concessions from the nazis. it was not on the committee but he insinuated himself into the committee proceedings and that

the 27 plus hearings they held in washington and around the country, mccarthy sat in on the panel. when you read the transcript of those hearings, it's the mccarthy we know from history, constantly interrupting, constantly berating witnesses and other members of the committee, and ironically taking the position favorable to the nazis. eventually he stormed out of the committee, wrote his own report, accused hud and the others of whitewashing the investigation. so that was lester hunt introduction not just washington but to joe mccarthy. and hunt would soon become the first major politician in this country to challenge mccarthy quickly and he called him a liar and a drunk. hunt and his wife lived in a house that overlooked some apartment buildings below, and he could see the patio behind

joe mccarthy's apartment. he often talked about how he was forced to sit and watch my car to drink and can afford with women. joe mccarthy was not lester hunt type of guy. hunt introduced legislation to allow citizens to sue members of congress for slander, specifically targeted at mccarthy for the ways in which it ruined so many lives. so the two of them were very antagonistic to at one point an elevator operator in the senate office building reported to senator hunt that he had overheard a conversation, mccarthy to another person when mccarthy said, i'm going to get that s.o.b. if it's the last thing i do. so they were at each other from the beginning. that relationship was very antagonistic. in june 1953, lester hunt's son, young adult, was arrested in lafayette park across the street from the white house by an undercover agent for soliciting

homosexual sex. the background to the incident is really a fascinating piece of history, because when you look at the lgbt community back, before mccarthy, certainly there was discrimination, but homosexuals were not targeted. they seldom lost their job because of their sexual orientation. they had a vibrant social committee and the largest city including washington where they were parks and restaurants and bars and other places where they gathered without being hassled by policemen or others. mccarthy comes along and, of course, he makes his wheeling west virginia speech with the allegation that there were all of these communists in the state department. when he couldn't prove that, senator bridges who was one of the conspirators in the blackmail against lester hunt very powerful, a senate attempt

in those days third in line to become president of the united states. he goes to mccarthy and says, look, you're having a hard time proving that our economies in the state department there are homosexuals. we all know that homosexuals are security risks. so during one of the senate hearings on mccarthy's allegation, the state department testified and they were asked, one of the senators said we're aware you recently fired 91 people come state department jobs, is that because the recombinase? >> no, no. , they weren't communists but they were homosexuals. and was an executive order back to truman and eisenhower the required a discharge of homosexuals. and mccarthy and others begin to conflate the issue of national security with sexual orientation saying that homosexuals were security risks.

went so far as to make the outrageous claim that adolf hitler had assembled a lengthy list of american homosexuals with the goal of compromising their loyalty and turning them into spies for the nazis. and that the in the ford were to that list had fallen into stalin's hands and now stalled and was busy using that list to recruit spies for the soviet union. and so in all of the growing fervor about the cold war, this allegation overnight turned much of the country against homosexuals. new laws were passed, congress put pressure on the dish of columbia police force to make arrests, despite alleged homosexuals so that the names could be identified and they could be fired from federal government jobs. as a result of the loss their jobs. the d.c. police department created what they called the pervert elimination squad, with about 600 undercover officers who would go out in the

committee, to the bars and restaurants and parks to make eye contact with the males, which they were targeting males, and arrest them. that was one of the undercover officer's lester hunt junior encountered that night in june of 1953. initially the u.s. attorney and the arresting police officer made the decision that the charges should be dismissed. young hunt was a seminary student, never any problem with the law, would've been kicked out of his seminar he is charged with four. and so they said they would dismiss the charges. senators bridges and senator welker, herman welker from idaho, where the two leading republicans and who learned about this, and so they called in the police officer and made all sorts of threats about him, claimed they had evidence he had taken a bribe in order to drop the charges. then they contacted a friend of

lester hunt was also a friend of herman welker's, a guy named jacoby who was a big name in wyoming history. he was the athletic director in years when wyoming won a national basketball championship and was going to major ballgam ballgames. and he had grown up with herman welfare in idaho and their big sports fanatics. and so welker and bridges called jacoby and said look, you were a good -- you need to warn your good friend of lester hunt that he doesn't resign from the senate immediately we will make sure these charges against his son will be reinstated and he will be convicted and they'll be a problem for him politically. hunt said i won't be blackmailed, and so they did get the charges reinstated. that october young hunt went to drop a weeklong trial in the district of columbia. he was convicted. those who knew the hunts then

watched them everyday at the trial and they said you could visibly see them age. lester hunt's hair went from brown to gray, nearly overnight. he became a recluse. he would not even eat lunch in the senate cafeteria. it just almost destroyed he and his wife. and so over the next few months he considered whether he would run for reelection in 1954. at christmastime in 1953 while the hunts were back in wyoming celebrating christmas, somebody broke into the washington, d.c. apartment, ransacked it, took nothing of value but it was clear that they were looking for something that they thought would be there that would help us near lester hunt's name and there of course was nothing there but if you could imagine the pressure that that would put on senator hunt and his wife, having had your privacy invaded like that.

so they talked for several months about whether or not to run again. the polls showed he would win overwhelmingly. and so in april 1954 he announced for reelection. the senators, welker and bridges, continued to update haiti but they printed 25,000 posters, told senator hunt if he didn't resign immediately that they would put one of those in every mailbox in wyoming. the reasons they needed him to resign immediately is the control of the senate was one seat to the democrats, and here you have this democrat in republican wyoming. if they could just get him to resign, the republican governor of the wyoming would appoint a republican and control of the senate would shift overnight. and so that's why that pressure. at some point during those days in may of 1954, a white house

staffer, a high ranking white house staffer in the eisenhower administration shows about lester hunt's office with an offer. the president had approved that said to haunt, if you will resign immediately and agree to never run for the senate again, you can run for governor back in wyoming but never again for the senate, president eisenhower will point you to the federal trade commission, which was a censure appointment at a salary about what senators were paid. hunt wants to do. is tired of all of the pressure. he wants to get that behind him. but his wife and his friends say, how could you do that? how do you explain that to your friends back home that you this big important job and the control of the senate is shifted to the republican party? and so he decided that he would not do that. sent word to the president that he was not interested. and then on the day before

lester hunt kills himself, the reason happened, people who understand suicide say that those who think about it go through kind of a roller coaster, up and down. one day they feel like they want to take their life, and next day maybe not, but for those who ultimately to take their life, there's something that happens in the hours preceding the suicide that is the final straw. and for lester hunt, that was a joe mccarthy press conference on friday afternoon when mccarthy announces publicly that he intends to open a senate hearing to investigate a democratic member of the senate who was involved in taking a bribe. ..

what it would mean to be dragged through a joe mccarthy hearing and how much of your name with the sneered and your reputation ruined. he was sorry the distraught because he knew last october in september if he had just resigned from the senate then, his son could have spared all of this. his wife could have been spared all of it in their life could've started over. so now in june of 1954, sun has been conveyed it. all of these threat and

blackmail and now he's a keen head to the future of emma kirsty hearing. it pulled out of the race. they needed to get amount of the senate mouse of the control could shift before the fall elections. through his letters and diaries in speeches that that is a moment when there's only one way out of this and early the next morning he took it. my view, that was the end for joe mccarthy. just a few days before all this happened, for the mccarthy hearings they really started mccarthy's downfall and caused the public to turn on -- to begin to turn on mccarthy. but i think when one of their own, a very popular colleague in the senate committed suicide,

others had committed suicide as result of joe mccarthy. but when it was one of the relevant amman was popular and well-liked as hans, i think that turned the tide solidly against mccarthy and it was censured by the senate and the end came for him. i have an old friend a little younger than me whose family was very political. his hand was on senator hans staff the day he killed himself and bernie phelan, this fellow's name said, you know, i remember a time in our family where every day we talked about. but there came a day when we never talked about them again. i didn't understand not. but the nature of his death and the circumstances surrounding it were such that they can almost

completely erase this man's accomplishments. so one of the real pleasures about researching and writing this book was to learn about his accomplishments in to read about them because while his death was sensational and certainly a compelling story, as i said, this is an individual who is probably the most important national politician whose name was forgotten at the time of his death. >> of next, learn about women homesteaders from martha hensley, author of "staking her claim." the author spoke during a recent visit to cheyenne, wyoming with the help of her cable partner, charter. >> it's a new and exhilarating experience to me. to be able to say that this fine

stretch of land is my own, my very own data something to one's ego. it gives one a sense of security, of stability, of belonging and being a part of the land itself. many times i would go out in the evening with a feeling of inward satisfaction, survey with my eyes by newest day. happy in the thought that all of this with i am, that i was part of this new community and was contributing my share in converting a wilderness in a civilized habitation, men, women and children. just as there paid our forefathers had done when they take possession of other parts of our country. but as i look out now, i realize those are the dreams of a youthful idealists, all pioneers are idealists and dizziness. if they were not, they would never have the urge or the kerch

to leave the old establishment, and a new uncharted world. >> the name of my book is "staking her claim: women homesteading the west." it features stories of women who homestead alone. not with the family, not with a has-been. they chose to homestead by themselves. it covers approximately the early 1900s up to the latest homesteader in my book is actually 1930s. the women were allowed to own homestead ever since the homestead act was enacted in 1862 because it said any head of household good homestead if they were 21 years old. a single woman was considered a head of household come and just as a man once. so when they began to figure that out and other factors came to make it more possible, late

trains, the opening of trains into the last meant that a woman should have to go in a wagon train pulled by oxen. she could get on a train and go to wyoming or montana or wherever the land was available and that made a huge, huge difference. the early part of the 20th century was a time of change for women. they're just coming out of the big taurean. where woman's role was thought to be in the home. this fear of their children, the family. but the women's suffrage have started, trying to get the vote, the temperance movement, which was sealed by women, all of these things taking place. there were opportunities for women to teach school and she got out and began to get training it be in the

professions. so all of this was beginning to happen and i think it opened up her ricin for women who wanted to have the economic opportunity of homesteading. i think they had a sense of adventure and many of them spoke about dealing very confined in their roles back home. those that made the choice on their own to do that. they wanted to move west. the west had that war of opportunity about it and they wanted to be part of that. as i said, since the stereotype of the women has to stay home was changing, they were able to do that. and actually another factor i found that kind of surprised me was economic security. they were looking for economic security. and about the position of a woman at that time. if she was unmarried, she had no

pension. she had no social security, what was to become of her if she never married? so owning property was a way to ensure some economic security and almost everyone than who wrote about her experience talked about that, the importance of the economic security she was seeking. when a woman started to homestead, she first had to find land to file on. often not mentioned to take a trip to that plays and just go out with the land locator. the land locator facilitated people going in fighting where the land was available. so that bag be a model t. ford have associate kind of land and do her best to choose some rain was thought was appropriate. then she had to build a place to live and in most cases for the

women that are written by both, they were building not be as charming log cabins that you picture, but they were building tarpaper shacks, nine by 12. that was the minimum you had to build. you know, this was kind of a new venture for them. they didn't know if they would succeed. they had to pay up on this land for three to five years in order to prove a. so they usually come unless they had a lot of money, dated the minimum. then they had to prove up on the land. proving up that they had to make a project that in some way. so usually batman take garden for a crop of some sort. said they would have to left the land of make that happen and it was in the cfa said. most the river and property was already taken. so they often had to carry water

to their gardens. some of the hardships they faced, oftentimes they would be living in an isolated place and they wouldn't have companionship. sometimes occasionally there were stories that have been frightened. not as much as you would tank. i think that's an adjusting aspect that when they were writing about their experiences, they intended to write about the good names. they didn't emphasize what is offensive very difficult times. they had trouble growing their crops. i mean come you can imagine they're out here in this uncharted territory. they build a garden and never rabbit in a 10-mile radius is coming to be their garden. they had those kinds of difficulties. sometimes they were full of people in the region may be coming by their house.

one woman described speed and one woman describes being in her cabin on a winter night of the bulls howling all around the cabin and she was afraid of the wolves. so yeah, those encounters with nature had to love nature to a certain extent to be wailing to think about this. they had to be able to endorse solitude well. they had to be able to keep themselves busy. however, some women did come out with friends or sisters, family members. one couple of woman i think about and wyoming were fran and a high aesthetic claims right next to each other and instead of building to separate claim checks, they built one that straddled the property line and that societies for the proving

up requirements proving up requirement and they lived there together and help each other out. alan coburn howell and mary culberson were the two women who homestead had in wonderland. they had an interesting story because they were from iowa. they were from a nice little town and their dads had invested in this irrigation project. so one of the women says she came home from college and her dad said hey, instead of went back to college nick stier, how would you like to wyoming and homestead? i mean, she did not know what she was getting into. she was so clueless that when she packed, she packed a tennis racket to go out to borland, wyoming. worland was barely a town. it was just a few little building and she ended up teaching school and she met a man dare and married him and that they are in war than the

rest of her life. quite an interesting story. she has a very interesting, in her account of outing for the first time because of course you could vote in wyoming when you couldn't in other states. so that was a big deal when i first got to go vote in wyoming. there are a couple of women that i thought i would mention. one is a one-man named alice newberry. alice is one of the ones who homesteaded in a dugout. she lived in a dugout in eastern colorado. they could have been anywhere very much, very much like wyoming. so she had some interesting experiences living in a dugout, killing snakes was often something she had to do. many of the stories talk about

the snakes. they talk about encountering snakes and i think that has such interesting implications symbolically because here at the women in the natural world and there are snakes in the garden so to speak in the biblical sense. anyway, i think alice was writing letters home to her mother and brother. i would like to read a little bit from one of the letter she writes to her mother and it has to do with plan to the crops on her land. she called her -- she called her place the borough since she was in a dugout. she says dear mama, when i heard you about a month ago, i did not tell you that i have a border. i didn't have him then i believe. he's putting in the crop on my farm. mr. wellman furnishes the team and a man and the seed and the farming implements and

describing my land. i'm going to stop. then it because that was sent same that women homesteaders usually had to be able to hire someone for that really heavy work of plowing and planting. i have to have so much land to prevent breaking past $2 for every acre broken. this way it costs me nothing, but the board of bother of having the man here gives a very good, mild, meet, patient, respectable, married man from north dakota. when you first hear that, you have to stop and ink. she is writing to her mother about a man of enormous property with her allowed out in the middle of no where. and how would your mother react to the situation? so she is trying to reassure her mother that nothing inappropriate is happening.

there is no one else to board him because by the time he drove the team back and forth from moment to 10 miles, the remainder of the day would not count for much. anyway, he is so slow. then it would be hard on the horses and wake in the south seems to tire them very much as it is. i am sure there never was a man who aged so much as henry. he is very nice to cook for her because he eats all of my experiments without a murmur, but there is usually very little left over to where my. he will get through this week and i know it is wicked, but i want to say praise lord. i wouldn't be married for anything. not to a man who eats so much. it takes all my time to cook. she did not marry. she writes a letter to her mother. she says i've decided to create

formulas for day 365 this year for the term of a natural life is more than i can face. i have decided to study up a little and try to fit myself for a hire car. she was already a schoolteacher. she was teaching in the area and she did go back to school in the summers and she eventually did leave the land after she approved. but she kept that abandoned the family and although she didn't have children of her own, she will did to her nieces and nephews and they still own that land. so i think that is a lovely story and gives you a sense of the kinds of things they were dealing with. when i first came to wyoming, i read a book called letters of a woman homesteader about a single woman who homesteaded near rock springs, wyoming. at the same time i was taking a class in western history. the western history textbook kind of summarize all of women's

experience in the west by saying they were reluctant pioneers. well, this woman homesteader i had in reading about was anything but relaxing. she was very excited. in fact, that was one of the motivating factors for me to write the book because there was this disparity between what the historians were saying, which is not even recognizing that were single women who homesteaded. so i want to find out if there were indeed other women and if there were, how did they feel about it? was a positive? when i found or 12% of all homesteaders were single women, that is a significant number of people two of homesteaded. i feel like single women at that time, homesteading were validating that notion of greater freedom for women.

i think they were kind of breaking trail for those of us who followed. and realizing that women can own property. they can take care of property. they can farm. they can manage their lies quite well independently. >> we sat by the university of wyoming topping prayerbook library to learn about the history and printmaking process. >> when i came to the university of wyoming 21 years ago, the first year i spent trying to get on my feet to organize the collection, we had about 50,000 to 60,000 books and i realize in addition to people coming in to research them, i wanted to bring in people myself so i thought what better way than to teach a

class. i thought wouldn't it be great to have a whole semester where i could teach book history using the toppan materials. the history department picked it up so now this will be the 18th year but never fall semester i teach book history, but i try to make a special topics so every semester changes to last fall was 15th and 16th century. this coming fall as america from the 17th through 20th century. the wonderful thing about our collections as it is so collected that we can do any kind -- many times of subject presentations or whatever department and whatever class or history and what i really want to do is be able to use the books for different purposes i may be able to use the printmaking class coming in, but also to show some in about the

19th 19th century come in the 18th century gender politics, race, religion. so we look at all different historical, cultural, social aspects. i brought out some of the books that will be starting the lectures with for the america book history course this fall. but i usually do a lecture on tuesday and i'm very sad to get to have a book club or they answer some questions and get to have a first-hand experience themselves with the books. some of the aspects i talk about it here brought out because there's illustrations that i think are quite struck to be a for example, this is the volumes from 1590 to 16,102,000 up there are three volumes in fact. i just brought up the first one. these are the brise, a publisher who worked at frankfurt, germany

in that time span. their original grieving, but were mostly ash. i have it open to a couple pages that are my particular favorite. this is one of the wife and daughter of one of the early contact native american groups with the settlers in new england. what we see with this child if you look closer, and i hadn't noticed this, but one of my student assistant said anne murray, i loved all of this indian girl's hand. i said what doll? if you look closely, there is a trade item here. it is a little ball from england dressed in tudor check her pink clothing. the contrast of the cultures between the early settlers bringing in english goods to trade with or give us gifts to the local inhabitants and i have

a contrast which i think is quite fascinating. one of the issues that came i noticed that the cover was a little girl of being when. she's holding a little ball. it's very, very similar to this one. in this portrait looks like what we would expect to see in england in the late 15th and early six hundreds. this looks like what we would expect. this was jarring when we see this little girl who's almost holding a fully dressed english doll. so that is something to really think about the contact between cultures that are so different because my backwardness or history of the pastors and art history as well as library science. i often focus on the book illustrations, particularly in languages i don't want them to be intimidated.

i just say let's look at the illustrations and how about visual literacy and people who can't read or don't know language that is for the illustrations. in terms of looking closer at the details, sometimes there are changes that you don't notice right away between editions, which is why it's to have different editions of books. we have the 1624 captain john smith from a general history of new england, et cetera in 1627 edition. if some important differences. in 1625, king james died. so in 1624, prince charles is still prince charles. look at what is happening now. someone has gone into the copperplate and matched a crown on to now has king charles. so it's a fascinating difference you don't see right away until you start looking. the difference between these

volumes. when i showed this to students, they say that's not pocahontas. as we think of her. but this is pocahontas when she is in england and is the story goes, some of them know, some of them don't. she was getting ready to get on the ship to come back to america and died of smallpox and never made it back home. this is when her english columnist has been brought her to england. they dressed her up in english closing, but it doesn't quite look like this. it doesn't look right. so that gets them thinking about this cultural connections and changes in interactions and we do have a portrait of pocahontas. both of these books we have the maps. this is a little more documents area. they are fighting one of the indians and he's being very

brave, showing he is so brave he's got a gun. but he didn't win that battle. here he is on the chopping block. is very helpless and this is the same most students remember, were pocahontas steps in enough time to save the life of kathy and john smith. look at the differences gail voorhees very small now. so this is a wonderful image showing the size and the power this particular native american not this time and how he said in this day she stressed that she would have been dressed in her traditional clothing. these are both images of pocahontas from the early 1600s. very, very different. it is not that common to have a welcoming atmosphere into a rare books library as those

undergraduates. we do encourage people to come in and enjoyable or from the books, but this is a phrase you often hear with cultural repositories to balance the access of the preservation. so yes, we are here to preserve the material for posterity after 500 years for us. what is the point of just having if no one ever sees them. >> while visiting cheyenne, wyoming with the help of our local cable partner, charter, we toured various sites of old cheyenne with lori van pelt, author of "capital characters of old cheyenne." >> "capital characters of old cheyenne" features some of the interesting old history. i focused on the era from the transcontinental brother from 1860s into the early 1900s and a little beyond that.

but i wanted to show a cross-section of the interesting people here at people did. there's many misconceptions about that makes it fun to be an historian in i am in. they don't realize how sick sampaio may miss and they don't realize that women have been right to vote here in territorial days than not was quite controversial. they don't realize how influential wyoming can be. people from wyoming are just old westside people. you meet some of those people which is fine and they are very intelligent inspired, but there were also some political influences that wyoming made and are still making. we are seeing the part of the wyoming state capital, which is built in the states history of course. also it has significance because estelle reel was the worst woman elected to state office in the

nation. she became wyoming superintendent of public instruction. this occurred in 1894 and even though it was only about four years after wyoming the equality state became a state, she felt that women should not hold the governorship, that women should be happy with the right to vote and equal pay. she was a proponent of that. but she also had another significance in 1898 presently mckinley for the first indian schools amounts of very important position in that area. she read a textbook of course the study for indian schools she traveled about 65,000 miles during her first three years in office and she traveled by horse back, not at all like theater today. she was an amazing person that way. also, she was kind of quirky and she loves to dress up.

.. of 1892, and he was a supreme court justice for wyoming, and later in 1910 he was appointed to the united states supreme

court and he was a justice there. he served from 1910-1932. he was the first and i think the only supreme court justice from the state of wyoming. nathaniel robertson was a carriage maker here in cheyenne and he originally came from scotland. he was one of the finest, he billed himself as one the finest carriage and buggy makers, and wagon makers, in the area. in 1882 he partnered with george kaufman and expanded into farm equipment also. one of the carriages he built was for alexander swan of aswan land and cattle company and that was a large wrenching concern here in this area. it's based to the elegance of the era. this was the way that people traveled more and have buggies and carriages and had to make sure their wheels were properly attached.

it was an elegant form of travel. >> the first book i wrote i was new to account and i wanted to learn more about that counties history. so i followed the same pattern. i wanted to learn more about cheyenne and the people there. i grew up in western nebraska just a stones throw from the wyoming border here, and i've always been fascinated with cheyenne in the west and probably that old cowgirl misconception of their frontier people but they're very nice, very genuine and many are very intelligent and quite highly educated and that is true in history. and i think that's a misconception people might have about wyoming. to meet its the people who make the history of the place. the people were so fascinating to me and they made significant contributions to wyoming as a territory and as a state. >> this weekend booktv is in cheyenne, wyoming, with the help of our local cable partner,

charter. next we sit down with author sue castaneda whose book "the hitching post inn: wyoming's second capitol" takes a look at the unique importance in wyoming's political landscape. >> what the hitching post was was a center of activity for not only cheyenne, wyoming, but actually for the rest of the state of wyoming. it was a central part in politics, in cheyenne frontier days and even on a smaller level people's everyday slides, rodrigues, kiwanis meetings, wedding receptions, parties. anything that was big was happening in cheyenne was happening at the hitching post in. it was built in about 1925 which started with the lincoln court when peter smith is that after he and his brother had tried homestead and growing potatoes, well, there's a lot of potato growing in this part of wyoming, so once the homestead deal for them was overcome he decided that this road which is the

lincoln highway, that there was a lot of people at that point finally starting to travel and he wanted to start a hotel or a campground basically right here on this very hope to be busy road one day. he started with 25 rooms where people could just, they had showers and such. as time went on a cap expanding. his son came over from russia with his mother about nine years after this was started and a year later she died. it was harry, the son, who grew up. he went to university of wyoming and became an agent and went to work for bln. his father died. so harry has to decide if he's going to take this hotel and make something of it or if he's going to become an engineer. he decided his going back into the family business. harry gets married and brings his wife back here and she becomes -- kerr harry was the businessmen, the manager but his wife was the persona.

she was the person at the front desk who helped people. the politicians started saying here at the hitching post inn and making it there home. in the late 1960s when harry decided he wanted them to stay here persisting in downtown the hotel, their son went around to all the legislators throughout the state, even people are just running and said we want to stay out of hotel when you come to cheyenne. he offered them at that time a very tiny rate of $9 a night. they couldn't turn it down. harry knew when the legislators were staying here, and the lobbyists would follow. that's what started it. people who might be, have some contention over a bill of the legislature itself as one hard to stay mad at someone when you saw them in your hotel hallway walking through in their pajamas or you're down in a bar and having a drink with him and such, so many, many laws were probably decided right here at

the hitching post inn. >> one year the governor who came to the hitching post inn every afternoon at 200 afternoon with his buddies, we, at lunchtime we held a table in the dining room from 12-12:20 that was called the conference table and we didn't seek it. at 12:30 if he hadn't shown then we would release that but he would, every afternoon with a couple of his buddies and they would meet in the corner of the bar and talk about all the problems of wyoming and solve a lot of the problems. we got to know them very well through the years. one year with the legislature ended at the end come read the first of march and there was still some issues that needed to be covered. so the debates started. the governor started talking about them in the newspaper that the governor was going to call a special session. i got a call the next afternoon from the newspaper and they certainly understand the special

session is common on may 24. i said, they can't come on the 24th, we've got a convention then and would've completely filled. they can't come been. they kind of -- asked me if you are the questions at that was the end of the. the next i got a call from the covers secretary who said, the governor would like to speak to you. the governor says, do you mind if i run the state government and decide we were going to have a special session of the legislation? any laughed and laughed and said, tell me when we can come. then there was a cartoon about in the paper the next day of a stagecoach park in front of the hitching post and the captain said he was running the state anyway, the governor or the hitching post inn? >> national a lot of people came or not only because of the smiths but also because of the time there was a man who was the publisher of the newspaper who was very, very instrumental and a lot of democratic politics.

will be was the one during, he gave a final vote to put john f. kennedy over the edge to be the democratic candidate for president. a lot of politicians came here. not just democrats but dwight eisenhower was here, ronald reagan, george burns, gracie allen to tons of people came or and this was the central place to be. >> the kennedy spent the night. they came in on a train, spent the night, did a fundraising party in the coach room and left the next morning after a political speech on the back of the train. four days before spiro agnew was to arrive, security came in and they were very strong. they swept through everything, taking that light fixtures and the condition and marking everything. finished just the day before spiro agnew was to arrive. that afternoon or late that evening senator simpson arrived at the hitching post inn and checked income went to his room. i got a call about 2 a.m. from

chief of security for spiro agnew singh, del, we vetted reach and you need to come right out. i threw on my clothes and went with a master key with security to the front door of the room and knocked on the door, and at 2 a.m., senator simpson can all sleep and said, del can what you want? i said you are in the wrong way but i don't i got in the shrunken but i've got to move you. almond in the morning. no, i'm sorry, right now. get dressed, your movie. we moved him to a room. through the years i went to work the d.c. every time i saw just about remember that household spiro agnew maybe move at 2 a.m.? fire was on september 14 in 2010. my phone rang at seven and from a friend of mine that owned the business down the street and he called to say, del, the hitching post inn is on fire and it's bad. >> it took over the lobby, the restaurant, the kitchen and to

some of the hotel rooms. so they were here. the fire started like at 7 a.m. and it was not put out fully until 7:00 the next morning. morning. they use for an f. million gallons of water to put it out. for chile no firemen were hurt or lost their lives. but it was a huge, huge fire here. >> they tore down all of, you know, demolished what was left of the. tour it down and so there's a building right behind me here that they're not in any ground. nobody stays there but the current owners i'm told, they of the back to ice of room but they're actually doing out to people. there's a certain our restaurant, certainly not a pretty place to be at this point but part of it is still up and going. >> the importance of telling the hitching post inn history, not one, it's part of all of our history. again, the hotel and the smith family played such a huge part

in our history. i think memoirs and people's stories matter so much. it's one thing to-do list of the building and it was a building, but somehow in our hearts because of the smith family it was bigger than just a building. >> the night the we of the book signing for the book, it was so great. there were 300 people there, and i think especially former employees and people who really had worked here and a plate huge part in their lives to have something to hold in their hand, that's all there is right now of the hitching post inn that we all knew is this book. i am very proud to have helped create that. >> for more information on booktv's recent visit to cheyenne, wyoming, and the many other cities visited by local content vehicles, go to c-span.org/localcontent. >> and you're watching booktv on c-span2 two. here's our primetime lineup for tonight.

>> all that happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> and you're watching booktv on c-span2 but were on location at pepperdine university in malibu, california, as part of our university series. we like to visit universities and colleges and talk to professors were also offers. joining us now is craig detweiler, his book, igods.

here's the book cover but professor, before we get into that, what do you teach at pepperdine? >> i am a film maker first and so i teach screenwriting. i teach production. i help students navigate entertainment history. >> you are director, is that part of your professorships because yes. it's a bit of a think tank looking at how media and culture impact each other, sort of on both sides, you know, how film shapes our public conservation -- conversation and maybe students can figure out how to contribute to hopefully the greater good. spent your book, "igods," is listed, classified as christianity and culture. why is that? >> well, i'm also trained as a theologian but i'm a graduate of the seminary and to always been

interested in how religious feelings are transmitted across culture i'm a person who's been moved by moving pictures. and so this is a chance for me to consider how the small screen that we carry in our pocket is slowly overtaking that big screen of cinema. >> that big screen of center but also of religion. >> well, that's right. what i do in the book is i look at these new companies that have essentially overtaken our lives, whether it's apple, google, facebook, amazon. is a sort of the big four who at this point we are spending so many hours in a given day either on their devices or in their platforms that i wanted to figure out how they build their software, how does that affect

our relationship to each other, and even our relationship to god. >> and you quote kevin kelly. we tend to seek out reflected in nature, but my bet is that technology is the better year of god. next event is a picture of jesus with a laptop spirit he has the whole world in his hands is what we are thinking there. yes, kevin kelly is such a fascinating character. he was one of the early editors of "wired" magazine, and yet he also comes from a position of faith. and so i think is look at technology and how we organize our lives, how engineers structure things as what may be talking about the ways in which god might be the original technologists. when we look at our dna, you know, which that human genome project, francis collins headed

up, to what degree is the information that we have in our body sort of reflection. are we sort of wired or in coded in an organized fashion? and what role again does god may be the technologists play in all that? >> are you worried about how much time we are spending with technology? >> no. as a parent of a 14 year-old and a 12 year old, we'll deal with a lot of technologies in our household and the day my kids as i wan myself ago i had to sort f thing, well, what does putting a smart phone with access to all the world's information via the internet, what does that do, you know? and what kinds of filters might we need to help them understand how to deal with that. i think all of us are feeling the effects of too much information. and so how do we sort through

all of these prompts, all of the interruptions, all of the things tugging at our attention ahead we sort out what's urgent perhaps from what matters. >> you write jesus is more than a carpenter. >> indeed. it's funny, everybody knows that jesus was the son of a carpenter. they don't realize that the greek word for carpenter is actually the word tacked on. so it could be, you know, if we edited this new century that we'll come to think of jesus as more than maybe somebody good with his hands, a handyman type of person. but was he more of a builder? was he more of a design? was he more of an engineering? and maybe if we want to instill what jesus looked like maybe we need to look not to the front of the auditorium but at the back. maybe he's that person with tape and a flashlight and always forget how to tweak things and fix things.

>> are we idolizing technology? >> do we idolize technology? i think when i allow it to be the first thing that i interact with in the morning and the last thing that i do at night, i have allowed it to order my day. you know, the monks invented the clock and the way, the mechanical clock as a way of ordering our day so that we would understand there's a time for work and there's a time for prayer and the time for food. i feel like now we are allowing our smartphones to sort of dictate the hour of our day. and i wonder if i'll relationship is a little too intense. it's the closest companion, and do we need to turn it off occasionally, to take back the power in our lives, or have to power down in order to power up. >> do you power down? >> yes. you know, our family i think

loves to lead iphones behind. we live here in california, and so the condition might be to take that phone to the beach but isn't that supposed to be time away, time apart, you know, time to think, time to not be interrupted, time to wander. a need for space in our lives to i guess make room, to be surprised by what's in front of us rather than this thing that is sort of telling us what's next. >> is that tough to to? >> oh, it's very hard to separate ourselves from technology. you know, i have an assignment in class were asked the students to put it away for 24 hours, to have no cell phone use to put away their computers, the laptops. even the television set and almost drives them crazy. how can a costly do this? my parents will wonder what am i

doing? where am i right and yet what they discover is they might begin that activity feeling very harry, but as they turned off actually make more space. they suddenly get a little more clarity, eleanor focus. they might get a week's worth of homework and went in because they suddenly are able to concentrate on one thing rather than having fragmented and distracted by many thanks. thanks. >> are the students who can't do with? >> all the students are supposed to do it. some of them confessed how hard it is, that they might have sneaked a peek and kind of picked up a little bit of that date when they heard that click. but what i find is that they end up kind of remarkably relieved, a little bit freed by this thing that is always beckoning them. and i think they start to wonder if there's a possibility of recovering a bit of an electronic sense, putting pons

on our lives. >> reg detweiler, is it possible to be good christian and still be very tech focused? >> i certainly also. i am. i'm on facebook, i am on twitter. you know, nobody sort of interacts with social media more than i do. and yet i'm just kind help us to refocus, to appreciate the genius of the icons of people like steve jobs and the engineers at google and mark zuckerberg. they have redefined our world in amazing ways. they have helped solve the problem of abundance, of too mucmuch information, of two mini songs, of too many friends. it helped us i think bring order to the chaos of our world. and yet like still is a little chaotic.

-- life still goes little chaotic. i'm challenging all people to question to a degree that we've made technology and idle. and perhaps to realize the limit of what they can and can't do for us. >> you point out here and i want to know the significance that both steve jobs and jeff basis didn't know the real fathers. why do you bring that up to? >> it's an interesting thing. you have such talented and a sense superior and driven people behind these companies. why is it that apple or amazon, you know, the vision is defined those companies were so relentless and reckless in their pursuit? yeah, it's interesting both didn't know their fathers. i feel like in essence they've all become our fathers now in a sense, fathers of technology. and just had this relentless

pursuit to be at the top, to be number one. i respect them but also wonder at what point they will be satisfied, at what point will they be happy? >> you have a subchapter in your called the problem with like, the facebook like. what is the problem with? >> one thing with the facebook like is visually not a dislike button. to all of them even if you have bad news to share, peoples only option is a sort of like it and say yes, i agree he lost her job. hey, i like -- no, you're not supposed to like the. what do i do? it forces you to make all your news positive. even if it's something that can have different in a way people say oh, i like that. i think that's a bit of a problem when you sort of limit human emotions and possibilities in a certain kind of way. perhaps that's the power of

hashtag that allows us to comment on this thing that might be bad and you sort of play with it a little bit. but it's interesting that the software of facebook itself or seizure to be positive and your something that deserves a thumbs up, deserves a like. >> a college professor at pepperdine, is technology interfering teaching? >> every teacher i think rustles with what to do with technology in their classrooms. i mean, the students into taking notes on the laptops they're also giving us updates, getting that twitter feed. and so you're constantly competing for their attention. even in an exam type of situation, the possibility of students accessing their information via their cell phone may be under the desk. it's very high, the temptation to cheat is ever present. so one way i dealt with it, i'm teaching medium and yet i allow no media in the classroom.

no laptops, no cell phone but they have to be fully present over to the discussion into each other. so i might use media on the screen. i might have a laptop that is bring up our points and slides and showing videos i don't want them fragmented themselves out of. yet when it comes time for exam, they are allowed to have all media access possible. >> wide? >> because there will never be a time in their workplace where they are cut off. and so to test them by saying what can remember from your head of what can you memorize is not actually a real test. the moment that kids are into have access to all information, so the question is how can you sort through too many options in a limited timeframe. isn't that the challenge of the workplace now? given all the options, how do you see through things? things? howdy recover them things? howdy recovery, county and was, how do you make wise decisions given almost too many options?

>> craig detweiler, you close "igods" with the question from is technology enslaving us? what's the answer? >> i guess will come to see technology as like smartphones, like something every day. is already moving into glass, google glass. i think will come to see it like a fork, like a spoon, like a pair of glasses. it won't be anything special, but at this point it is so captivating, so magical that think we could get ourselves to it a little too baldly and uncritically. so my book is an effort to push laws long enough to just gain a little perspective, make sure that those tools designed to serve us are not enslaving us. >> so the book is a warning shot across the bow of?

>> i think, i think "igods" is a deep appreciation for the people have created these technologies. i appreciate how they helped us to manage of abundance and too much, but it's a chance to say be careful, that you have it placed too much faith in technology and ascribe too much magic to something that is really meant to serve us rather than to drive us. >> "igods" is the name of the book. craig detweiler from pepperdine is the author. >> tonight on "the communicators," former federal communications commissioner's michael collins and robert mcdowell discussed merger proposals and several other issues before the fec. >> the issue with consolidation issue of huge companies who are not only in control of distribution, but of content increasingly and they're giving

hammered on the and news information that we as a democracy rely upon to govern ourselves. >> the adoption of smartphones is a factor and minorities -- minority communities that it is in white affluent committees the that is fantastic news for america producing the developing world about those technologies very, very rapidly. that's fantastic news for improving the human condition. for allowing people to the benefit of the new information and change its political expectation, economic expectations, all on a positive, constructive way. >> tonight on "the communicators" on c-span2. >> up next on booktv, "after words" with guest host arlin crotts, a stronger professor at columbia university. this week award-winning journalist william burroughs and his latest book "the asteroid threat." iin the former native university professor details several recent near collisions between earth

and asteroids. he discusses likelihood of impact in the near future and what, if anything, can be done to defend against it. this program is about one hour. >> host: today i'm talking with william burrows about this enjoyable book, "the asteroid threat." i wouldn't characterize it as a story about astronomers, planetary sciences, engineers might someday save the world. well, how would you characterize your book treachery i think you did it very well. i characterize it by saying that my point is that we don't have to be the hapless, hopeless victims of a nature. my friends in nasa and elsewhere in the space committee like to say the dinosaurs had a space program they would still be a. we've got the wherewithal to save ourselves.