very interesting conversation, and thank you all for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> up next we sit down with historian david and jean heidler who discuss the difficulties of writing about history and the importance of teaching it. booktv visited the historians with the help of our cable partner, comcast.

♪ >> met in graduate school so we've been writing history since 1978 when we met in graduate school. so writing history since then. for publication, really not since graduate school. we have written -- started company will be operating -- collaborating in the 1990s. but since we're in the same area and same field we decided to start collaborating. i think working as a spouse team is not -- it's not easy. we have had a lot of friends who have said to us, i could never do that. because a lot of our friends are

in -- both academics, not necessarily in the same field. we find it fairly easy. i think probably because we started out in the same field. we even took graduate courses together. that probably helped. not that we don't disagree, because there are times when we do disagree on interpretation and we have to -- that's where the collaboration really becomes important because we have to work out our differences. >> douglas freeman had a idea of when you know you're at the part where you can actually start writing. he said it's when you can hear the people talk. and that does happen. if you read widely enough and get into the archival material with due diligence and a real eye to what you're doing, at some point things begin to make

sense and the people become real. they cease to become merely figures from the distant past but become real to you, and once you have done that, then folks assume their own kind of logic, and when they don't, you know, you're doing something wrong. the hardest book we have ever written was a social history of the early republic which we thought would be something of a departure, something fun to do, and it wasn't. i mentioned to other people, it was like doing a samuel beckett play. there was the thing was so broadly conceived. that it was very difficult to do, some when we finished it, we more or less vowed we'd never do something like that again. it's actually a pretty good book, as it goes, but the fact is there's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears on the pages. just wasn't very much fun. so that is our biography, the frame is given to you by the

span of life. just the way you treat the subject and the interpretation. the other issue is what to leave out. that is key because you can't have everything. or just becomes, as many students regard hoyt, one damn thing after another, and that is no good. so there has to be something of a dramatic arc, thread that ties i together and tells the story in a way that is interesting, accessible and true. is accurate. that's the accuracy is the basis, foundation from which everything else proceeds. >> we had these bookshelves installed when we first moved interest the house, and -- first moved into the house so we put our favorite books in this room, which is really sort of the family room, family reading room. all of these books over here are a large part of our civil war collection, because both of us more or less started in the civil war era, so there's some really old books,, in this

section and also some we acquired more recently, a biography of civil war figures, as well as some of the artifacts that we have collected. since we moved out west we started collecting primarily american indian pottery, a lot of this is akama pottery, from new mexico, and that we have interspersed also with some of the books. this section of books, primarily early republic books, revolution, forward, through probably about 1850. most of these books cover that era, which is the era we cover more with our writing today. so, a lot of these book wes use very frequently, as well as some books in the library. we look for accuracy in books as well as the reputation of the authors. though we do buy lot of book biz new scholars because there are lot of new things coming out all

the time, different interpretations of people. most of these books on these shelves are not that recent, although there are a few. there are few here by more recent scholars. plus we collect published papers of a lot of the people we work on, people like andrew jackson, henry clay, george washington, a lot of their person papers are published so we buy their works as well. this biography of of tecumseh i found to be fascinating because it looks as tecumseh -- and i'm interested in american indian history and started doing a lot of work with that -- is one of my favorite books, and then -- see if this one is here. yes, this one right here. this book right here is one of my favorites because it was one of the groundbreaking pieces of

scholarship done on the creek indians, deer skins and duffles is an incredible book. i would recommend that to just about anybody. and it's accessible so a very scholarly book. a lot of historians write for other historians. and we want historians to read our books, but i think it's more important that you make the books or articles, whatever you're writing, accessible to a general public. so that they will be interested. how many people do we run into and say, history is just not my thing. and i think, part of it is they've never read interesting history, they've never had good history teachers, and professors, that make it accessible, make them understand how important it is. >> it's certainly true that it's declining. i think history is being emphasized less in secondary schools. and we have seen that at the academy. we have actually done some

testing of incoming freshmen, and discovered that over time, their knowledge -- not just of history in general but american history has declined dramatically over time, and part of that is it's not a subject that is emphasized and that is somewhat understandable because there's so much to do in high school and only is expanding. ...

the founder's greatest fear that we would forget, it is their reality that the republic cannot survive and lincoln essentially said this in a speech in illinois in the late 1830s when he made the remark that all the armies of the world and all the treasuries at their disposal and could not put a track on